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#5

starring

The Metal Men

By Ed Ainsworth

 

Most people don't understand us, the Metal Men. We get invited to all the big super hero shebang's, but when there's something small scale going on? We don't get a second thought. Mostly we're not even around. The other heroes don't want us there. We remind them to much of bad things, I think. Mercury says they're scared of our abilities, and that we can be rebuilt, so we're going to surpass them one day anyway.

I don't believe him.

Most people don't even know what goes on behind closed doors.hell, most people don't even know our origin. How we were once people. Once we knew how to love, how to eat, how to use the toilet (You wouldn't believe how disorientating that is at first).

Sure originally we didn't have our memories, but in one of Will's slightly less psychotic episodes, he let us remember who we were. That's when Platinum left us. She said she couldn't handle the way Will treated her as a robot when she regained her memories. She left us. She left me.

After that, the group wasn't really the same. I tried my best, but nobody wanted to really admit that the only unifying factor in our lives was her. When we were given the choice to leave, most of the Metal Men left. Gold was never the same after Will rebuilt him without a responsometer, and I stayed behind because whilst Iron, Mercury and Lead could go out and lead productive lives, Tin lost its market value some time ago.

The only decent thing I've done with my life was giving part of me away to create "The Engine". But this isn't about me anymore. This is about all of us. How we brought the Metal Men back together, how Will Magnus and I solved the problem of our lives. How we rebuilt ourselves in this time of heroes and crises, how we made the world need us again.

It all started after Platinum left. Will stopped taking his anti-psychotics and spent weeks trapped in his labs, smoking that pipe of his, and not even letting me in. We wondered what he was doing, even Gold who didn't even have a personality anymore. About two weeks into the year after the Crisis he let us into his Labs. He'd built new Metal Men; in fact he'd made himself a veritable army of Metal Men. He told us that we're always being watched, that the world needed people to watch the watchers. He wasn't making much sense, sat in a corner, soiled and dirty, unshaven and emaciated.

Cobalt, Potassium, Barium, Silver and Nth, these were the new Metal Men. The field team, he told us. He told us that the world was changing for the worst, and we needed to protect science the only way we could, Cobalt followed the commands of Will and opened a hanger bay, Tesseract Technology stolen from the JLA. Thousands of Metal Men, he'd been using robotic, completely automated versions of Iron, Lead and Gold to replicate themselves a thousand fold.

"The World's changed. Science is no longer safe; we must protect everything and everyone. We need to gather information; we must make the world what it needs to be. Logical and scientific and powerful and safe."

Shortly after the muddled sentence he burst into tears and latched onto me. He spent three days calling me mother, before we eventually got him to take his anti-psychotics and his anti-depressants. Another three days to get him back to the point where he could walk on his own.

He took me aside one day and sat us both down, as the rest of the New Metal Men worked around us.

"Tin, did you know that Alchemy has gone through hundreds of changes since its initial inception? It started off as a Philosophical means to change one's view on the world, and better one's self, but it turned into the modern forebear of Chemistry and Science."

"I Know. When you heat Tin, it screams. It's supposed to be the sound of Spirits escaping."

"Tin, I'm changing the science of Robotics. Morrow and Sivana, they're all hacks compared to what I have done. People have said I'm insane but I just love science and want to better the world. Imagine a world where we don't need superheroes, we're policed by Super-Robot Enforcers."

"Will." I had started to call him Will at this point, since I gave part of myself to the Engine; I've been more in control, more confident. "You're not thinking straight. We had that. We had the OMACs; you saw how well that worked out."

"But.Tin, I am better than Brother I."

"Isn't that what Brother I thought about itself?"

He looked downtrodden again, and I placed my cold hand against his shoulder.

"The idea is there, Will. We just need to change its focus. Will, since my encounter with that monstrous entity called Enginehead, I've been thinking about things, from a different angle, through different eyes."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took another few months to convince Will of my plan, but I needed the Metal Men together again. I need Lead, and Mercury and Iron. Platinum, we may never hear from her again, and I can survive with the knowledge that she knew we all loved her; dearly, and strongly.

Will made us a star-cruiser similar to the one we used to have, he and I took a cruise into the upper levels of Orbit, away from the moon, to the opposite side of the planet.

"We're going to be computerized satellites, Will."

I smile at him. With my new smile, my confident smile. The Metal Men were always outcasts, they were always pushed to one side because the world didn't understand or want us. Even Will pushed us aside, he was my creator, but now, it was time for me to create something. To move past my role, and move out of his shadow.

"Do you remember the first Crisis, Will? Where all the worlds collided; when the JSA and the Freedom Fighters, and everyone else came to our world?"

"I.Vaguely remember, yes."

"Someone was always watching, Will. Someone always needs to watch, the sky and the earth, and dimensions and space and time. We have separate heroes for all of these factors, but nobody takes all this information and collates it, looks for trends, looks for information in the data."

"Tin, what about the Harbinger, and Rip Hunter, and the Linear Men, and Oracle?"

"Will, they are small time. Oracle is street level, Rip Hunter and the Linear Men right time along with Waverider, the Harbinger records and looks after history. Besides, Harbinger is dead."

I pause, and morph my hands, an ability I'm using with increasing complications. I morph it into a Satellite, a large inter-orbit construct, where the Linear Men can all live and further science.

"Will, I'm proposing we take over the role of the Monitor. We watch the world, we keep track of the history, we take dangerous artifacts and we keep track of them. We can monitor and compute and store everything. We now have the power to store Metal Men outside of time, to record chronal problems. We have the ability to send Metal Men into new dimensions, to further science and information collection."

I pause and morph my appendages back into hands, and place them on Will's increasingly fragile palms.

"We can revolutionize Science, Will. We can do what you wanted to do all along. As Metal Men we can save the world, and progress science by making it our business. Not as super heroes, not another team of robots, but as a team of scientists."

"Tin..."

Will didn't know what to say, and so he wept. He wept and I held him, whilst I dreamt of my plans.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a further seven weeks before the Satellite was completed. All the Metal Men helped, we even located Lead. He was helping the clean up effort in Bludhaven. He came back to help us, once I gave him my general plan. He likes to help, plus he was invigorated to find out my new place in the world, more confident and powerful. I think he prefers me this way. He's not much of a thinker, but he is perhaps the strongest and most loyal of all the Metal Men.

"You've changed, Tin."

Mercury was always getting on at me. I thought he hated me for the longest of times. He was always taking little plugs at me. The only thing that ever stopped him was Platinum, but now she was gone. I needed to stick up for myself.

"Yes, Mercury, I have. For the better, I'd like to think."

"Depends on your definition of better. What's this silly little idea you have, then? Lead tells me you're 're-inventing the Metal Men'".

"Yes, Mercury. I am."

I stand up to him, and push my small body up to his long, semi-liquid frame, and stare him dead in the eyes.

"I want you to be a part of it, is that a problem?"

Mercury is slightly taken aback. He paused for a moment, shock written on his features, which gave me a moment of pleasure. Something I don't often get when Mercury is around.

"Okay, Tin. I'll do it."

It takes a final 18 weeks to get everything set up. I've laid out the Infra-structure, with some help from Mercury as the Commanding officer of our "ship", Will and I at the forefront of the investigation and Lead as our go between. Iron wanted to work on the engineering aspect, and Gold, well, he plots our courses now.

We set up sections within the satellite, we have a temporal chamber, where a group of Metal Men, mostly duplicate Automatons live outside of Space and time, watching the Alternate worlds and keeping track of alternate activities, occasionally having Liaisons with the Linear Men.

We have a group of Metal Men, Cobalt, Barium and Potassium, gathering information and documenting the various adventures, of the super humans around the earth. From the ground level heroes, such as the Blue Beetle, to the more Cosmic identities of Superman and the Manhunters.

Finally, we have Nickel as our gallery director. All artifacts, foreign and native are checked, analyzed and documented thoroughly before being categorized in the Tesseract space where the other prototype Metal Men are being developed.

Will occasionally dips out with Nth, to experiment on new Metal Men. I hear he's created robotic gaseous life forms now. How long will it be before the Metal Men is a scientific army of every element? Only time will tell.

Until then, I make it my mission to record, and watch the events of every superhero across the world, through into space, through dimensions, and even on Elseworlds, past and present.

I guess you could finally say that I worked out what the Metal Men do for the Universe.

We Monitor.