"What is this creature? Is it man and machine?!"
Leela's confusion was justified. Until then, she hadn't seen a Terminator up close. Neither had Al-Lee, for that matter. Her first encounter with one was in that steel mill, a couple of weeks ago. From what she had seen of it, she knew to run away if she encountered it again.
Only she wasn't running this time.
The Terminator they found in the truck had not moved since the moment they uncovered it. Al-Lee cautiously inched close to its face, seeing that its exposed robotic eye was not flickering red as it did before.
"It's been switched off," she indicated.
"But what is it?" Leela repeated her earlier inquiry.
"A Terminator – at least, that's what Neas called it," Al-Lee explained. "It's an enemy from his past... or maybe his future – it's a little difficult to say."
"And it does not react to our movements?"
Al-Lee shook her head. "No...which is good for us. We have to warn Neas about this."
They sealed the Terminator up in the crate and turned to sneak back out of the truck. Unfortunately, waiting for them outside were the deliverymen, who returned with assault rifles, aimed directly at Al-Lee and Leela.
-------------------------
Neas almost couldn't believe how far he, his father, and the Doctor had come with the RoboCop project. In a mere couple of weeks, they transformed a battered police officer on the brink of death into a superhuman cyborg law enforcer. K-9, Major, and especially Officer Lewis kept them company the entire time, anxious to witness the full completion.
"I have to confess something," the Doctor stated. "I've never converted a man into a machine before. Leela was right – it's a lot like cyber-conversion." He earnestly pondered for a second and asked, "Does that make us Cybermen?"
"If this works, it'll make us legends," Neas answered with a breath of confidence.
Just as he and the Doctor were about to proceed with the maiden activation of the Robocop, they were interrupted by a maiden of a different variety when Rania stepped out of Neas's TARDIS, her heels clacking on the sleek, metallic floor. The Tinkerer had the damnedest time walking in them, almost stumbling over herself as she walked towards Neas, the Doctor, K-9, Major, and Officer Lewis.
She was adorned in a very classy, form-fitting, short-skirted evening dress. Neas recognized it as one of the dresses he once wore when he was Mandy – one of the more fashionable regenerations of his past. "You look lovely," he told Rania.
By her peeved expression, she was in no mood for his compliments. "This dress doesn't stop ridin' up!" she griped, tugging on the back of the skirt. "God, it's like I'm wearing Scarlet's pants again!" She then pointed her furious finger at Neas and declared, "Once I'm through with this joke of a date, you and I are gonna have a very long talk about being on the same page with our plans!"
"Duly noted," Neas said. "Now, do you want to witness the birth of Robocop?"
Rania's face lit with joy, wiping away the frustration that had been masked upon it. "He's finished? Hell yeah, I want to witness it! The perfect thing to take my mind off what I'm wearing right now!"
Neas and the Doctor proceeded to simultaneously direct their sonic screwdrivers toward the RoboCop and activate him. For the first time in his cybernetic resurrection, Murphy opened his eyes. The world around him looked somewhat pixelated, but his systems managed to identify the people standing in front of him, from his creators to his partner, Anne Lewis.
"Happy Birthday!" the Doctor exuberantly shouted to him.
Neas took the matter more seriously by conducting auditory and visual tests to assure Murphy was functioning properly. Afterward, he asked the RoboCop, "What are your prime directives?"
The directives themselves appeared in Murphy's new digitized vision, overlapping his view of the satisfied faces of his three creators. A fourth directive, labeled as nothing else but "Classified," flashed beneath the other three. Within the human side of his consciousness, Murphy questioned what it meant; yet the computerized half of his consciousness kept him from doing so.
Suddenly, a small window appeared at the lower right corner of Murphy's field of vision, displaying live surveillance footage of two women being held at gunpoint by a couple of deliverymen.
"Hostage situation in process," he automatically alerted.
The Doctor stood amused at Murphy's sudden first act as a RoboCop. "First day on the job, and he's already picked up a case!"
"Where's the crisis taking place, Murphy?" Lewis inquired.
"Back alley of the O.C.P. headquarters," Murphy informed. "Two hostages. Female. Caucasian. One standing at five-foot-four with brown hair, blue eyes, and twenty years of age. One standing at five-foot-twelve with black hair, blue eyes, and thirty years of age. Twenty-year-old female dressed in unidentifiable clothing, armed with a knife holstered at her left hip."
"That sounds like Al-Lee and Leela!" Rania exclaimed in alarm.
Neas and the Doctor shared the shock with her, realizing their companions had failed to return to the lab within the last half hour.
"I have identified the make and license plate of the suspects' getaway vehicle and its intended destination," Murphy notified. This prompted Neas to download the information from RoboCop's systems to his sonic screwdriver, subsequently uploading it into the onboard computer of his TARDIS.
"Let's go find them," he beckoned to the group. As they headed for his TARDIS, he noticed Rania taking off her heels for better maneuverability. "What're you doing?" he asked her. "What about your date with Morton?"
"Are you serious?! Screw that asshole!" Rania retorted. "Al-Lee's in trouble! And God help whoever's taken her hostage, 'cause when I find them, I'm gonna take out all the agony brought on from this dress on their hide!" Neas smirked as he watched her storm into his TARDIS, heels in hand. To Rania, Al-Lee was just as much as her child as Neas himself was.
While the rescue team dematerialized out of the O.C.P. headquarters, down in the building's sublevels – currently suited as a Cyberman fortress – the Cyber-Controller was electronically warned of Neas and the Doctor's upstanding achievement.
"The RoboCop has been activated! Cyber-Force, initiate launch!"
------------------------
D.S.P. ("Director of Special Projects") Miles Dyson picked the wrong day to come to work at Cyberdyne Systems. Out of nowhere, the facility was overrun with a vicious gang of criminals, led by the notorious Clarence Boddicker, a man Dyson had seen on television but never hoped to see in person. Luck just wasn't on his side that day.
Boddicker and his gang killed most of security and held Dyson and the other technicians hostage. "You the man in charge, right?" Boddicker asked Dyson with a shotgun shoved in his face.
"Y-Yes, I am," Dyson stammered. "J-Ju-Just...please...don't kill me."
"Now why would we want to go and do a dumbass thing like that?" Boddicker mockingly queried. "You're our special friend. We need your big brain for an operation...and your patient's gonna be arriving real soon."
Another group arrived shortly thereafter.
Two women, who themselves were being held at gunpoint, walked in with some deliverymen that carted in a human-sized crate. "Clarence," one of the deliverymen addressed the psychopath. "We caught these chicks pokin' around in the truck. The big one looks familiar."
Boddicker approached the tall, dark-haired woman, his scarred face uncomfortably close to her beautiful visage. "You're right, Emil," he told the deliveryman, who was a member of his gang. "She was at the steel mill when we iced that cop." He rested his shotgun on one of her broad shoulders and coldly whispered in her ear, "Your ass just keeps showin' at the wrong place at the wrong time, sweetheart." He then stepped back, putting enough space between him and the woman to aim his shotgun straight at her face.
"NO!" shrieked the woman's accomplice (the shorter, younger brunette in a crazy outfit), as she drew a knife holstered at her left hip and cut off the hand Boddicker's held the shotgun with. "You will not harm her!"
Angered and in agony, Boddicker roared to his men, "Kill these bitches!!!"
His men were about to follow through with the order until all the windows and walls around them exploded in a hail of glass and mortar. A legion of Cybermen rocketed in and fired bolts of lasers at Boddicker's gang, wiping each man out of existence right in front of Boddicker.
"What the fuck are you tin-canned morons doing?!" he yelled. "We're supposed to be on the same side!"
"We are the Cyber-Force," the Cybermen collectively declared. "And we serve to no one but our own!" At this, one of the Cybermen gripped Boddicker's head and emitted an overwhelming electro-magnetic pulse through his body, killing him. With the gang leader and his cronies dead, the hostages were left at the mercy of the Cyber-Force.