Chapter Text
Kravitz’s target is not hard to keep track of, with that robe flying like a signal flag down these city streets. Every street light and glowing sign under the black sky catches the vivid red cloth. The man has a head start, but he’s on foot. Kravitz has a motorbike.
The target ducks around a corner, into a wide alley. It’s the most he can do with what little head start he has. Kravitz’s foot clicks into the right pedal, and the bike comes to life, lines of red glowing down its sides. He can feel the road under him as he accelerates.
He swerves hard to avoid pedestrians, and their discontent does not go unvocalized. He’s one of few people licensed to drive a vehicle that isn’t fully automated, and it’s capable of getting a lot closer to organic people than anything else allowed on the road.
Despite how close he gets, though, there’s no chance of anyone getting hit. He’s quick, he can feel the tires on the road, and he maneuvers with more precision than any non-augmented organics. There’s no delay between his thoughts and the bike’s actions.
Upon turning in to the alley, he immediately has to skid to a halt. The target is standing still, smack-dab in the middle of the alley street, staring him down.
Except… no, that’s not the target. It’s wearing that same robe, but its face glints silver in the headlights. It’s just abstract enough to look uncanny, but the longer Kravitz looks, there’s a quality to its face that’s almost… skull-like. Like a mirror to the mask Kravitz wears.
So this is the anomaly.
“Barry Bluejeans,” Kravitz shouts, pulling a short rod out of a holster. It telescopes into a long baton, and then a light extends from the end: a scythe blade, projected in deadly red light. “You’ve got a hell of a bounty on your head.”
“Kravitz…?” The robot’s response is to startled, too genuine, too knowing Kravitz’s name. He straightens the hood of its ragged, patched jacket. “I can’t--Wow, I can’t believe you’re a cop this time. Shit. Okay.”
Barry doesn’t seem to be making any attempt to run. More than likely, he’s stalling so his accomplice, that human from earlier, can make a run for it. That’s fine, though; Barry is a much bigger target, and he probably knows it.
It’s lucky that he isn’t running off just yet. A tiny detail is gripping Kravitz around the chest with a cold, existential dread. “This time?”
“Uh, nothin’. What’s the bounty for?”
“Don’t play dumb.” The scythe is raised.
Barry doesn’t flinch. “No, really! I’ve done a couple’a different things in my life. I’m--I wanna know what I’m in for.”
He may as well know, at the end of his line. Kravitz can’t resist putting a crescendo into the conviction. “For body augmentation with unauthorized weapons. And for the highly illegal act of time travel, to an extent that may have majorly diverged the timeline,” Kravitz swings the scythe, and the blade is flung off the end, into a ball of plasmic energy. “You, my friend, are in for death.”
Barry actually moves when he sees the blast coming at him, but he’s not fast enough. It slams him into the wall and splatters across his torso. It corrodes the metal he’s made of, crushing him into the wall.
He slumps onto the ground, and Kravitz waits warily for a moment. But it’s easy to tell that the robot is more than destroyed. There’s no way some vital processes weren’t stored in that hole that now resides in his chest. He doesn’t ask any more questions, doesn’t even struggle as sparks splay out of his crumpled form.
Kravitz starts looking for something to put out the fire that’s starting on that awful, ancient robe. And then--
And then, as if pulled upwards by a string, the robot is dragged back up the wall, into a standing position. And then he jumps back into the center of the alley, but jumps isn’t quite the right word. He just… goes. Back into the position he started in. He rewinds.
And then he starts patting the fire off his jacket. Underneath it, Kravitz can see that the metal of his torso is in perfect condition, unlike moments ago.
“So, time crimes,” Barry says, looking again at Kravitz with that unreadable, haunting face. “Heh! Who’d’a thunk.”