Concerning Shining Booster Techrider
I regain consciousness hours later, and return to the tower to see what fate had befallen the city. But nothing is amiss. I head to the penthouse office and see that the damages are being repaired. Entering through an unfinished skylight, I am greeted by the tall one. I ask about the robot and this “challenge” I had lost. They say that it was really more of a judgement…
Shining Booster Techrider, Justice Enforcement Machine. Created by the engineers who designed the domed city, it is his home, his charge. He will stop at nothing to protect it. Until the internal barrier went up, he dispensed hard justice across the city, but since his Prison was on the outskirts of the city, he was shut down and his Fortress locked up and abandoned…
“But as far as for why he’s back, that info’s downstairs.”
When I step off the elevator, the short one spins around in their chair and shouts my name. They then inquire as to why it was so difficult for me to simply agree to not kill anyone in the city unprovoked. My lack of reaction prompts an explanation that those were the terms of the judgement laid forth by Techrider. He knew I could not be killed. They had shouted it after me, the words from his oration, but the sound of the duocycle must have drowned it out, though they assumed he would repeat them before the fight. I inform then that he did not. I had thought the stakes were much higher. There is a brief pause before they move on to talking about how he has returned.
This Techrider’s final outing was the night the inner dome was turned on. He was given crowd control duty, killing many. He was tinkered with for years in secret after its public shutdown. Augmented specifically to battle the Gravity Surge. Though the project was abandoned when the AI could not be hardcoded as a private assassin due to a fail-safe in the living brain within. According to the recovered files, they’re not the only secret project. The scientist must have activated it as petty revenge when they launched their escape pod. However, since the Techrider used to have a support team to control its outings, it’s now purely running of its own accord there is no way to know when it will appear again…
Beyond that, they say, there’s nothing to be done. They could search for how the scientist made their way into the Prison Fortress in secret, but that could take a while. Their current focus is on getting the city unified again, not only ensuring it’ll be ready to leave when my craft is, but also re-starting construction on the outskirts. The largest empires are glad to be a part of this new direction for the city, out from under the heel of The Executive. However, the return of Techrider has fractured public opinion even further, making what could be simple return to form into a dilemma. There are those who say I am a fake, and oppose the changes based on that, but then there are those who believe I am who I say I am, but also oppose the changes based on that, and all sorts of combinations. I tell the short one that the opinion of the masses is not my concern, and inquire about my craft.
GuNNhead 
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