Tanuki Man had a major problem. He figured there were few things he couldn’t eventually repair, given enough time and resources. Right now, he had neither. The short robot was in the reactor room of the Sky Lagoon, the emergency lighting turning the purple of his fake fur a deep crimson. As the warning klaxons continued to blare, he set to work, trying to reconnect the damaged reactor to the power grid. The city was rapidly running out of its emergency reserve. He noted that whoever had burned through the web of power conduits, they had avoided entirely blowing the reactor- a curious detail.
The Sky Lagoon was an honest to God superstructure, a flying chunk of city built in perverse homage to the lavish excess to World’s Fairs of old- a project undertaken by the rich because they could . Parked off the coast of Seattle, it was built to the size of several blocks of a city’s downtown, skyscrapers and infrastructure included. The immense heft was kept in the air by six unbelievably large engines, all powered from a surprisingly small central fusion reactor.
From the day the project had been announced, Tanuki Man had smelled disaster. How could it be anything but? It had a single point of failure- its reactor. If the reactor failed for any reason, it had the potential to cause immense destruction to the populated areas below. It would have been a bad idea if the project was meant to float in the middle of nowhere, let alone right next to one of the larger remaining cities on the West Coast.
After a few years of construction, sped along by the relentless efficiency of construction robots, the project was completed, taking flight for the first time. It was reachable from the ground by an endless parade of sky ferries. Though the city boasted no permanent residential structures, several enterprising companies had moved office space onto it, a vain attempt to “Get Ahead Of The Future,” as the project’s tagline went. With a foreboding feeling, Tanuki Man decided that he had to see the Sky Lagoon for himself. He wanted to gauge in person how much of an imminent disaster it was going to be.
Accompanied by a few companions, he had set out. They drove up the shattered remains of the West Coast until they hit the end of the exclusion zones, and eventually, entered Seattle. One ferry ride later, they were in the Sky Lagoon, a small group surrounded by droves of tourists and local rubberneckers. There were surprisingly few red flags, though it stood out to Tanuki Man that all the concrete used already looked worn, superficial cracks forming in the surface.
And then, it happened. A group of well-equipped Mavericks attacked the flying city, overwhelming the security forces in minutes. Tanuki Man had been near the reactor building when its security checkpoint was assaulted. From a hiding place, he saw the Mavericks leaving just as quickly as they had arrived. Despite his better judgement, he decided he had to check on the reactor, and in short order, he had found that one of the Mavericks had burned through the conduits that connected the reactor to the city.
Presently, the repair wasn’t going well. The robot had used his Cyberspace interface to hack into a backup control system for the city’s engines, but they were refusing to respond to his commands to initiate a landing. At the very least, he was able to receive telemetry about their remaining power reserves, seeing exactly how fast they were dwindling. The city didn’t have much time. Still logged into the central computer of the city, Tanuki Man diverted all the reserve power he could find to the engines, adding mere seconds to the clock as lamps and traffic signals in the streets outside went dark.
The reactor room was reasonably large, its ceiling being a good forty feet from the floor. In the center of the room was the reactor, a thick and greebled pillar that reached to the ceiling. Its sensitive machinery was encased in layers of outer metal and indicator lights. Part of the case was melted, but the unit was overall still functional. However, the central conduit bundle- a tangled mess of heavy-gauge wiring- was utterly severed and messily melted into slag, and Tanuki Man only managed to reconnect a few of the cables. It was nowhere near enough to outpace the consumption of the engines.
Tanuki Man had conducted some of the earliest studies into the mysterious realm of Cyberspace, the digital reality overlaid onto the real. In the course of his investigations, he had modified his left eye- it was no longer the simple green optic he’d been designed with, but a boxy protrusion from his face that could simultaneously see the real world and peer into Cyberspace. It read all kinds of data with the same ease by which an ordinary eye could read text.
With this modified eye, he was scanning around the room, desperately looking for some kind of backup system that he had missed, a spare hookup, even just extra lengths of the thick cabling. He noticed two figures standing in the observation room up in one corner of the room, their silhouettes visible through the glass. Tanuki Man initially only noticed them by their respective data nodes floating in Cyberspace. It looked like they were having a tense conversation. He didn’t have time to peek at their nodes to identify them.
No solution was presenting itself, physically or digitally. The seconds ticked by. One engine gave out early. There was a lurch as the other engines automatically compensated. The timer grew shorter as the other engines increased their thrust. This was that much-touted redundancy the investors had gushed over- and it was going to kill everyone still aboard even faster. Tanuki Man couldn’t help but marvel at the ghoulish calculus that had went into the cost cutting. One single reactor, with no backup and seemingly one connection to the entire grid. He felt his panic rising.
“Come on, come on!”
Finally, after another frantic moment of searching, the robot found some cables stashed in a toolkit in the corner. They were nowhere near the correct gauge, but it was all he could think to try. With a sharp snap, he lopped off the connectors on either end of the cables, rolling up their insulation to reveal the copper beneath. Cautiously, he approached the still-sparking remains of the conduit. Trying his best not to fry himself, he placed one end on the inert side. Then, with the other hand, he reached the bundle of cords towards the live end- the reactor end.
As soon as the pieces of copper made contact, the exposed ends of the thinner wire glowed white hot. They flash welded into place. For a brief moment, Tanuki Man felt hope- the timer was running backwards! And then the wires started to melt their own insulation and drip molten copper and plastic everywhere.
In the back of his head, he knew it had been a ridiculous notion. Those wires were never going to be able to handle that much energy. He felt a sinking despair. “No!”
The timer was running down again. Dimly, he noticed the two people in the observation room were now gone.
The timer ran out. Sky Lagoon’s power grid had bled dry its last drop of reserve power. The city began to list as the turbines started to slow. And then, things got worse. A loud, rhythmic banging started to reverberate from one of the walls of the room. Tanuki Man froze. A crack formed, and then a hole was punched by a large, clawed hand. One of the giant dragon robots that had assaulted Sky Lagoon with the Mavericks tore the wall open and stepped through.
A protective visor slid down over Tanuki Man’s eyes. He drew his buster, aiming at the green terror. He knew he couldn’t defeat it. His arsenal was quite weak. Fighting was not the little robot’s specialty. He considered his options. Maybe the beast would be fooled by holographic decoys? It was certainly Tanuki Man’s most reliable trick.
The dragon noticed the small robot leveling his buster, and it raised a clawed hand in a “stop” motion. A familiar voice came from its throat.
“Tanuki, it’s me! Copy Man!”
Instant relief washed over the small robot. Copy Man was a robot that could, per the name, scan the forms of other robots and shift into them, imitating at will their capabilities. Evidently, he had run across one of the dragons and taken its form. He was a sophisticated marvel of Wily tech that had yet to be reproduced by the UN, and he was Tanuki Man’s lover.
“Come on, we’ve got to go!”
“But, Copy! The reactor!”
“I know, it’s down! We need to go, there’s no time left!”
Tanuki Man started to feel physically lighter , as if gravity was losing its potency. No, that wasn’t right- the city was descending. The listing started to become noticeable, scrap metal and damaged tools sliding across the ground.
Copy Man grabbed Tanuki Man, holding him gingerly in the large hands of the dragon robot. He’d already morphed the claws out of existence. The robot squirmed in his hands. Copy Man’s voice dripped with regret. “I’m sorry, there’s just nothing we can do!”
The larger robot sprinted back outside. The world of the Sky Lagoon was tinted an eerie red, fires and emergency lights casting a glow on both the city and the undersides of the clouds above in the overcast evening. Copy Man flapped his immense wings as he sprinted, leaping into the air. Again and again he flapped, building speed. The ground started to lazily recede beneath them.
Copy Man bellowed over the winds. “Shit, I don’t know what the minimum safe distance is… Hold on, I’m gonna go as fast as I can!”
As the pair reached the edge of the city, he nosed down into an aggressive dive, sweeping back his wings. They immediately gained speed. The ground flew at them for a moment until he pulled out of the dive, unfurling the wings to their full span. Their momentum converted and carried them forward, far away from the Sky Lagoon, approaching the far edge of Seattle. In less than a minute, they were outside the city limits.
Copy Man set down on a hilltop, releasing Tanuki Man and morphing back to his base form- humanoid, dull blue armor, androgynous but vaguely boyish features, spiky indigo hair, eyeshadow, and a purple scarf. Once, he resembled a famous hero, and once, it had been his job to serve as a dark reflection. That didn’t matter now.
Getting their bearings, the pair looked back. Sky Lagoon was still gliding on the spin of its dead engines, but it was picking up speed. It was headed inexorably for the heart of the city below.
“I tried to fix it, Copy. They did it specifically so it’d crash. If they had just hit the reactor, it might have blown up in the air. That would have been bad, but they- they wanted to make sure it’d be as bad as possible!”
“You did your best. I- this is so fucked up.”
“Did anyone make it off?”
“Several ferries came back for a final pass after the Mavericks showed up. I stayed to look for you. I think there were also some emergency escape pods… Not enough, but I think they went, too. I don’t know if the Hunters were on scene, they might have gotten a few people out. But I don’t know how many are left.”
Sky Lagoon was racing for Earth.
“Copy, I can still see them. My Cyberspace interface. I can see the nodes of the Reploids that are still aboard the city. There’s a lot that didn’t- oh my God. I could count them all if I had time.”
“Just… look away.”
The pair held each other.