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Location: Old Arpeggio Ruins.

Time: 00:25am.

Year: 2180, March 11th.

I looked at Elise, who had her teeth clenched together, holding her large rifle in both hands. She didn't look at me; she didn't look anywhere, really. She was just gritting her teeth and breathing hard, tightening her grip. I felt frightened; not of Elise, but of the situation; we were both exhausted, and wouldn't be able to take on Rosie this way. I groaned and pulled out my pistol, loading a magazine into it quickly.

"Should we do this now?" I asked quietly; "Didn't the recordings say that Rosie is an actual person?"

"It doesn't matter now." Elise growled with fierce but teary eyes. "This Fox said that he wanted to put Rosie out of his misery; I say we do it for him. It's not being cruel, really. It's for the greater good, right?"

I nodded slowly, getting up and helping Elise up too. Once we were both up and ready, we darted out of the room, heading for the large courtyard outside. The air was very still; so still that I couldn't even feel it brush against me. Elise handed my her extra pistol; now I had two, and Elise had her giant rifle. All we had to do was wait for Rosie to arrive.

The place must have been echoing, since it had taken quite a while for Rosie to actually come into view. We both saw him appear out in the open, carrying his huge gun, even larger then Elise's, in his left hand. His right hand was replaced by his drill, which was soaked in a mixture of red and dark green blood. I wondered if he had ever washed that drill of his. I gritted my teeth and breathed hard, just like Elise. This would be a stand up fight to the death. No running away, no exceptions.

"Don't shoot." I whispered to Elise, slowly walking forwards to meet Rosie; "I just need to find something out."

Elise hissed at me to get back to where she was, but I ignored her; instead, I walked slowly forwards towards Rosie, who had stopped by the entrance to the dead courtyard. I listened to the sound of the dead and rotten grass cracking underneath my feet as I walked further up. So far, Rosie hadn't shot me or tried to drill me, so I felt reasonably safe as I kept advancing towards him.

I ended up face to face with the large diving suit which towered above me like a monster. I stared into the dark glass frame that was his helmet, and kept perfectly still and calm. I had a perfect view of his body. It was actually covered with small tiles of metal, which explained how he could take so many shots and stay that durable. It was like wearing a jumpsuit of bulletproof armor that was perfectly flexible. I also noticed that the helmet had some kind of electrical grid attached to it, emanating a few small sparks every few seconds. It looked badly damaged from what I could tell.

Just as I reached up to touch it, I heard a drill start to rev up. I took a small step back and watched Rosie start to lift his drill up as high as my chest. Rosie pulled his arm back and was about to drive the drill forwards into my chest. I just waited for the right time to strike; the right time to twist past the drill and shoot him. I didn't know where, or if it would hurt him, but it wouldn't hurt to try. At least, that was what I thought at the time.

As Rosie drove his drill forwards, I bent back and twisted underneath it, just narrowly missing my chest be an inch; I continued twisting around until I had reached his back, where I pulled out my small pistol, as well as Elise's bulky pistol, and unleashed a few shots into what I thought was a soft spot on Rosie's body. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more pliable metal. I backed away; still unleashing my rounds at any thought-to-be soft parts on his body, which only aggravated him more.

I was about to ready myself to dodge his drill again, but Elise had already unleashed a flurry of shots at Rosie, who dropped to his knees whilst Elise kept shooting at him, not wasting a single shot. I backed up and returned to Elise's side, where we both unleashed short bursts of shots to keep Rosie suppressed.

"Damn it." Elsie growled, reloading her rifle; "We're not making much of an impact here."

"Aim for his head." I growled back, unleashing another burst of shots. "See if we can blind or cripple him."

We both stopped firing and let Rosie get up slowly whilst we were aiming for his helmet. We unleashed another small burst of shots each, only to make contact with Rosie's drill arm, which he held to his face to protect himself. His spare arm was used to hold up his large monster-of-a-rifle, which rested on his shoulder comfortably, as if it was made for such a purpose. We both started to panic as the gun started to hum loudly and start up; Rosie was about to fire blindly!

"Find cover!" Elise shouted at me. I quickly obeyed and jumped behind a large block of concrete to my right. Elise had found a similar piece of cover to the left.

I stayed there and listened to Rosie's gun start to roar and unleash a hail of bullets all over the courtyard, sending dry soil into the air and creating small wisps of smoke which left me and Elise blinded; even when the gun started to ease down, the wisps had turned to thin clouds and still blocked us from Rosie. Elise must've had the same idea as me, because the next thing we knew, we were both running side by side back into the building, closing the door behind us.

"This isn't exactly going according to plan." I groaned loudly, reloading my small pistol and handing the bulky one back to Elise. "We need to get a good headshot. There's some kind of small grid on the side of his head. Aim for that."

We immediately kept on running; we didn't even need to listen in order to tell if Rosie was moving or not. We felt a few rapid and short vibrations in the ground, telling us that Rosie was running towards us; and fast! As we went back through the corridor leading to the staircase, I turned back and saw Rosie drill straight through the door like it was made of paper, which only made me want to run faster before the same thing happened to me.

My body was burning in pain, but I was still determined to carry on up the stairs. I had been through worse times when I was a Seeker -especially in bed. I just focused on that thought as I kept running up the steps with Elise. I occasionally looked back to see Rosie slowly catching up with us, tearing apart the railings and denting the metal steps with his boots. I just kept running until I found the right floor. I had the perfect plan to destroy him.

At last me and Elise both arrived on floor thirteen, where the bridge was connected to the building. Elise must have had the same idea again, because she didn't question me or speak up at all. We simply kept on running through the empty corridors, keeping our guns up incase we ran into any mutants along the way. Luckily, nothing lied in wait for us down the couple of corridors that we sprinted down. The next few times I looked back, I couldn't see Rosie at all; maybe he had given up the chase.

We both came out on the short bridge again, and kept our guns pointed at the double doors we came from. Elise fired a short burst down the corridor that we came from to make sure that Rosie wasn't still following us. Unfortunately, he wasn't there at all; I started to worry. Something like that wouldn't give up so...easily. He was like a predator; and predators never give up chasing their food. I was about to say that we should take this advantage and get back to ground level; but before I could, two things happened at once.

Firstly, Elise aimed her rifle up to the next level, where a large window overlooked the bridge. In that window was a large diving suit that completely broke the window frame apart, as well as the concrete, and jumped down onto the bridge, causing it to shudder slightly. Rosie weighed too much for the bridge to stay stable. I was afraid that it'd break apart and we'd all fall to our deaths; then none of us would find the money that waited for us.

Elise unleashed a whole clip of shots against Rosie, who hadn't been able to bring his arms up to guard his head in time. The shots had kept ricocheting and denting the helmet, creating a cloud of smoke that blinded Rosie. Elise kept on firing until she was completely out of ammo, by which time the smoke had cleared, and Rosie's helmet was revealed again; it looked like it had been bashed in by hundreds of miniature hammers. The grid on the side of his head had been broken, and he stayed perfectly still.

Rosie lifted his hands to his face, and started to make a different noise than the ones he had previously made. It was a mixture of deep sobbing and groaning in pain. Rosie constantly thrashed around, as if it was trying to swat something invisible; he continued on until it got so close to the edge of the bridge that he was just about to fall off.

I jumped forwards and made a grab for the three keys that were tied onto the front of his suit; quickly pulling them off of a small chain and pushing Rosie all the way off the edge. I muttered one more thing before letting him fall all the way down.

"I'm not sorry." I said sadly, watching Rosie fall all the way down to the ground, which had erupted into a large cloud of dust that surrounded his corpse.

I walked back over to Elise, whose entire body was shaking from the guns vibrations; she just lay there on her knees, looking up and smiling sadly. She gave me a look that said 'You did what had to be done'. I simply nodded to her; she nodded back as I walked forwards and picked her up, returning to the double doors and re-tracing our steps back to the overturned building.

Now we had eight keys, and there were two more to go.

Location: Old Arpeggio, Outskirts.

Time: 03:05am.

Year: 2180, March 11th.

I looked back at the ruins of Old Arpeggio, wearing just my grey shirt and a loose pair of grey trousers, covered up by a brown woolen coat. My Seeker outfit needed to be washed before we headed out to find the other two keys. I just stood at the stern with Elise, looking back at how the interior was so different to the exterior. From outside, it looked completely wrecked; but inside, the city looked in rather good shape, considering what had happened to it.

Now the city was abandoned; Rosie was dead, or as dead as it could be. Now there was no one to live there; only mutants and monsters. It was too much to bear when I thought about what we had done. The Fox from the recordings said that Rosie was in the process of rebuilding the city; now, because of us, the city was going right back to dying. I wondered why Rosie was rebuilding the city in the first place; what was that electrical circuit on his helmet? We'd never find out; I hated when things like this happened...

"Hey, Kobalt?" Elise asked quietly, turning to me. "Do you think we did the right thing? What do you think will happen to Old Arpeggio?"

"I thing Arpeggio will just...die." I answered quietly, turning to her with sad eyes. "We didn't to the wrong thing, Elise. You know that; Rosie was just a husk in a diving suit. We did the right thing in putting it out of its misery."

"It's odd." Elise said, wrapping her arms around my waist and hugging my chest; "It didn't look like it was in pain until we shot that grid on his helmet. Maybe that was what dulled his pain..."

"Yeah..."I said quietly, hugging her back. "That's probably what it was..."

We both turned and looked one more time at the ruins. It was about to come to life before we arrived...

When we did...We had put an end to that...