The Liberty Punks garage is nearly abandoned with only a few punks around. Cass and Smiley walk up to Sock’s garage and see him sitting on his bike waiting for him.

They find him at one of his tables, working on a circular device. “Hey Sock. Where is everyone?” 

“Huh?” Sock said as he put his tools down and turned to Cass. “Oh. Yeah, you came at a meet up time. It’s usually pretty quiet around here. Everyone is off doing jobs or whatever they want.”

Sock points behind himself to a bike, “There she is. Don’t bang her up too bad.”

“Before I head out,” Cass takes out the cheetah cassette from his pocket, “I’d love it if you could take a look at something while I was gone.”

Sock takes the cassette. “This is ancient stuff. I remember reading about these in school.”

Cass feels the years weigh on his brain. “Yeah, I need to see what you can pull from it. It may look like an ordinary cassette but it is supposed to contain crazy code if you can figure out how to read it.”

Sock takes the cassette and places it on a circular plate that appears to be connected to his computer setup. “Give me sometime and I’ll see what I can do.” The circular device starts glowing and the cassette begins to float in suspended space.

“People around here seem to love those things.”

Sock looks at him confused. “A stasis field has a multitude of uses like three dimensional scanning which is what I’m doing.”

“I guess I’ve just been out of the loop for a while.” Cass says as he chuckles lightly and grabs the bike.

Sock turns back to the computer, “It’s been a pretty dominant thing for a decade or so. I know cyberware can make you younger but how old are you?”

Cass hops on the bike and flips the few switches and the engine kicks on. “Older than I look, I can assure you.”

Cass starts to ride off toward the gate. Smiley’s voice perks up in his head. ‘Are you sure that was smart?’

‘I told you, we need to be smarter and I need to know how they work so I can account for them. Maybe even use them somehow, down the line.’

Cass speeds off toward the bar as a small squirrel sized robot with a camera lens for a face watches them. 

“They are on the way. It’s a solid plan, I’ll give you that.”

Deep in cyberspace a meeting is held. Within a massive stone castle on the top of a mountain, holds twelve stone thrones. Each throne is empty, all except three.

“I still think it’s a foolish idea. We should just imprison him again.” Said by a man in deep blue robes. His skin is just as blue with three eyes that all cry deeper blue tears. Resting on his head is a crown fused to his bald head.

A tall and robust, purple skinned woman wearing a purple pantsuit with small honeycomb designs across her skirt and blazer. Her hair bounces as she speaks, “Now, now, Ruler, that clearly didn’t work. He will always escape so we’ll just have to get him on our side. So, unless you can think of something better, shush.” 

“Queen, you know he is too dangerous to be left free but fine. I’ll figure out something better.” Ruler says as he flickers out and vanishes.

Queen sighs, “Your plan is risky though.”

A man in forest green pants, boots, shirt, and trench coat. With green skin and hair like branches, slicked back with small paper charms hanging off like beads. “Risky? Sure. Worth the risk? One hundred percent.” 

He stands up, “Just keep an eye on them and bring them in. the jaws will sink their teeth in before he even knows it’s happening.”

Queen glares at him, “Ten years we have been planning this. Getting every duck in a row to finally end everything so don’t screw around, Toxin. I sided with you because you said he’d fall for it so don’t make me regret it.” She said as she flickered out.

Standing in the middle of the open throne room with his arms outstretched, “Let’s see what you’ll do, old man! Finally, Some good f**kin’ entertainment!” He said as he laughed and flickered out.

At an abandoned suburban neighborhood, Cass pulls off into a circular deadend. “This should be good.”

Smiley flickers in. “This is it?”

Cass pulls the bike up onto the sidewalk and goes back to the center of the circle. “No, the bar is still a couple miles up the road but I need to practice a few things. I highly suspect this ending with blood and hopefully not mine.”

Cass focuses and his body shifts into his cheetah form then after a beat, he reverts back. Smiley looks at him a bit confused, “bit of a waste.”

“I’m trying to get the activation and back faster. Each transformation is different with varying mental triggers so I need to get them faster. Make it a muscle memory.”

Cass begins to cycle through his cheetah form, faster and faster until it is so seamless that it’s in a blink of an eye. “Now the clown.” He transforms into his bell clown form but has growing trouble.

“That is what I was worried about. I can speed up the beginning and end but the actual creation of cyberware is the same.”

Smiley pokes the bell clown hat, “and with the big head tentacles.”

“Hat”

“Right, ‘hat’, it takes longer, unlike the cheetah form which has semi minimal alterations.”

“It’s not just the hat but the clothes and stuff too. Let’s move on to the next.” Cass said as he flips in and out of the sonic scream form like nothing. “Yeah, that tracks.”

“Now the knight.” He closes his eyes and feels the searing hot liquid flow over his skin and when he opens his eyes, the knight has returned. “This test will be a bit different.”

He walks over to a rusted over old car. He places one hand under it and lifts with all his might. His hand slices through the rusted wreck, leaving a redhot mold of his hand like a hot knife through butter. “Not what I expected but still cool.”

He goes to the next car but holds back his strength. The car creaks and groans as the back tires lift off the ground. Pieces begin falling off as he places his other hand in the center of the bottom of the car and lifts it above his head. “Holy crap!” He said with genuine excitement. Cass takes a few steps and tosses the car. The rusted heap tumbles and bounces until it slams into a nearby house.

Smiley floats there and claps with a face of genuine surprise, “Very nice!”

“Now that is a superpower! Haha!” Cass goes back into the center of the road and reverts back. He tries it a few times before stopping. “Okay, it’s somewhere in between the clown and cheetah but the overwhelming power puts it even with the cheetah power, for sure.”

Smiley speaks up, “aren’t you missing one? The skeleton hand.”

Cass smiles wide, “Saving the best for last.” he says as he pulls out the gun. “This thing was useless in battle. I had no time to pull it out so I think it has a better use.”

Cass grips the barrel and focuses. He begins to flow the bullet transformation while assimilating the gun. The two merge in a violent reaction. Cass drops to his knees as liquid light begins pouring out of his mouth but stops as the two transformations merge into one. 

Cass, on his knees, begins to laugh. “It worked. That hurt like hell but it worked.” he said as he lifted to his feet. Cass raises his arm, which is now transformed.

Starting from his elbow, two metal pipes stick out in place of his lower arm. Skeleton hands wrap each barrel and at the end, the same skeleton hand as before. The bones of the hand, merging into the barrels, forming two holes through the palm.

“I think this should work.” Cass said as he extended his arm, aiming at a nearby car. With no trigger to pull, Cass focuses on the feeling and the barrels fire. Two perfect silver rounds explode from him and hit the car door. The metal tears and melts the metal as a gaping hole the size of his arm is left behind.

“Now that is useful.” he says as he reverts back and forth a few times.

Smiley just stares at him confused. “Explain yourself. What was that?!”

“Since I combined cyberware, I had a theory. If two different cyberware can run at once, what if I ran the transformation process at the same time? I thought it might combine them and I was right.” Cass said with a grin that displayed all his pride.

“I thought you said you never wanted to feel that again?”

“I didn’t but I need to get stronger. Also, I didn’t think it would hurt like that. You live and you learn.”

Smiley floats up to Cass’ face, “you gotta live to learn from it. Do not take any more unnecessary risks.”

“This whole thing is risky but I’ll take that under advisement.”  Cass says as he hops back on the bike. “Let’s go free some little mushrooms.”

“Forgetting something?”

Cass looks at Smiley who floats over and gestures to the piles of cassettes. “Right.”

Cass quickly hops off his bike, gathers up all the cassettes and hides them in a room within a nearby house. Then he hops back on his bike and takes off.