When XJ-V heard the sounds of commotion nearby, he did what he had been doing for the past month: nothing at all.
 
Then an impact on the back of his head brought him out of his meditation. He looked at the ground to see a pebble shatter beside him. A pebble which must have been thrown with some force.
 
“Cog!” someone shouted behind him.
 
XJ-V was going to tentatively assume they meant him.
 
But he didn’t turn to face his interloper. His memory banks told him that many Disicples were often tested and taunted by spirits of the Wastes – distractions meant to lure them out of their silent Cultivation and take them down an evil path. He smiled to himself at the thought. If dark spirits had come upon him trying to meddle in his training, then that meant he had a soul worth meddling with, surely!
 
“You will answer me this time, machine!” the voice roared.
 
XJ-V’s auditory sensors picked up more voices approaching from the end of the courtyard. But in the flurry of fireworks and excitement from the festival that was ongoing, their words were lost.
 
What wasn’t lost was the sensation of fury billowing up in the boy that came within XJ-V’s field of view. Even with his eyes closed, the Cog could feel the youth’s anger.
 
Anger at what? The weather? The celebration? XJ-V had assumed all humans enjoyed this so-called Dragonbo-
 
“Open the evil lights you call eyes, wretched thing!” the boy demanded. “I command you!”
 
XJ-V heaved a heavy sigh before he did as he was big, fixing his eyes now on one of the boys who had come upon him two weeks ago and decided to leave him be. This one had a puffed out chest like a rooster baying for combat, and the rain had matted his embroidered gi that bore the symbol of a tiger poised to strike.
 
XJ-V looked him up and down.
 
“You are not Master Longua,” he said.
 
For whatever reason, this only seemed to antagonize the boy further.

“Of course not! I am Fai-Deng of the Waiting Tiger, Second Rank Body Temporer and Master of the Tiger Sect’s Earth Grade Martial Techniques! You will address me with the proper respect!”
 
XJ-V blinked up at him.
 
“Bow, machine!” the youth’s voice boomed. “Bow!”
 
“You are not Master Longua,” the Cog repeated. “He is to be my Master. It is to him I must bow, and no one else.”
 
The boy practically shook with rage, now, and XJ-V simply returned to his mediations.
 
Feng-Lung and Kai-Thai had by this point caught up to the commotion, and through panting breath Feng cried out to his brother of the Tiger.
 
“Fai! Think what it is you do!”
 
“QUIET!” the enraged beast spat, pointing a steady claw at XJ-V’s nonchalant face. “I will have satisfaction from this one. He mocks me – us – with his silence! Does he not see that Longua will never take him as a pupil?”
 
XJ-V shifted slightly. “Master Longua,” he corrected.
 
The three looked at the rusted, dulled metal of the machine-man’s limbs as though he had just unleashed a spell of havoc, and then Fai-Deng’s face took on a shade of rogue that Feng-Lung had never seen before. He began to move to halt Fai-Deng before this business got any worse.
 
“I say, Feng-Lung,” Kai whispered beside him. “Is this what they call ‘foreplay’?”
 
Fai rolled up the sleeves of his Gi and jumped on the spot, balancing on the soles of his naked feet.
 
“I challenge you, Cog,” he said. “Argi’Mona – my tiger claws against your metal hands. Do you accept my challenge?”
 
Feng-Lung staggered back. His worst fear had just been realized: Fai had called for a duel of honor between him and the Cog. Argi’Mona was a practice as old as the old empire itself. A sacred tradition passed down from generations before the Wasteland was born. It was a compact between warriors – a sign of mutual respect that precipitated hostilities. A fight which would be sanctioned by the spirits of the land.
 
Feng-Lung felt the Qi gather between the two warriors. Fai’s swirled round his fists and his heart, telling Feng all he needed to know about his motivations and desires in this moment.
 
But the Cog? Well, there was nothing that could be seen at all. Not even a speck of the Divine energy shone in him. Feng didn’t know what he was thinking in the moment.
 
Then the robot rose his head to meet Fai’s eyes, and made his response:
 
“No.”
 
Kai burst into raucous laughter.
 
“W…what did you say to me?” Fai barked.
 
“My heartrate detector suggests that you heard my reply.”
 
“Hah!” Kai shouted. “It looks like a rejection to me, Brother! A sad thing to see on Dragonboat, but, alas! The heart of the metal-man does not yearn for you!”
 
Feng-Lung saw the fury bubbling beneath Fai’s eyes. By now, there was a sizeable group of villagers and Disciples that had gathered around the courtyard. Feng even spotted one of the grand Masters of the Tiger clan, wise Yoma-dur, looking on the proceedings with curious eyes.
 
Feng-Lung gulped. It was obvious Fai wasn’t going to let this go.
 
“Come, come brother!” Kai shouted as he took a step towards the youth. “Let’s away to the Tiger commune for some baiju. They say the answer to a broken heart lies at the bottom of a bot-“
 
Kai’s sentence was interrupted by the gale of force that broke through the air, coming down on XJ-V’s rusted torso.
 
“Haaa-YUH!”
 
With a stab of lightning coursing through the veins of his bulging arm muscles, Fai sent the robot flying across the courtyard, pieces of his metal chest shattering and leaving a trail of glass and rust in his wake.
 
“You will fight me, Cog!” Fai then roared, crouching into the Tiger stance. “Or you will die!”
 
As a crowd now gathered to watch the spectacle unfold, Feng-Lung stood in horror as he looked at XJ-V’s body – thin whisps of smoke had begun to steam from his wounded chest, and his limbs twitched with simulated pain.
 
Then the moment passed, and with a roar of thunder from the weeping heavens above, XJ-V calmly placed his skeletal palms on the ground and rose.
 
He staggered, fell forwards, and then straightened up, the crowd murmuring stuttered oooohs and aaahs! With the Cog’s every labored movement.
 
His eyes sought out their opponent, and when they found him, Feng-Lung could swear the Fai’s firm feet trembled for a fleeting instant.
 
“Come on then, you husk of bolts!” he spat, all saliva and rage and madness. “Strike at me!”
 
The Cog swayed, as though he was buffeted by the winds that were whipping up around all of them. The dark clouds of the wasteland gathered, snuffing out all promise of light from the fires of the festival. Now, the only lights were XJ-V’s blazing, neon eyes. They were the eyes, Feng-Lung thought, of a spirit locked within a cage.
 
“I will not fight you,” the Cog said. “The rock does not bend for the raging storm. It remains firm.”
 
The crowd sent up a cheer of ‘Kampai!’ at the robot’s statement, taken from the prophet Ai-Lee of the Eternal Dragon Sect himself. How the Cog knew of the wise prophet’s words, Feng-Lung could not discern.
 
But more surprising were the churning of the Cog’s chest servos that had started twitching with life. From the hole punched through his chest, the crowd saw an otherworldly light blaze and flame, like an eternal fire burning within an infernal engine, and the Cog’s metal flesh began to knit itself back together as though it had not just been punctured by the Lightning Claw strike.
 
“Ho-ho!” Kai muttered beside Feng. “Look you, Feng-Lung – he shows our brother that his lashing out has done nothing at all!”
 
Fai looked on with tensed up fists, his legs beginning to shake with anticipation.
 
“Guess I must simply break all of you then!” he roared.
 
In an instant he stormed towards the Cog, practically flying, trailing an arc of lightning behind him as he channeled the Thundrous Charge – another Earth Grade Technique that put him right in the face of the Cog in a split second. His feet landed before their target, formed a crater in the earth, and his fist reeled back to deliver a Lightning Claw right at the Cog’s face.
 
Then, with a distinct fizzle of dying energy, the light vanished in the courtyard.
 
Feng-Lung and Kai-Thai looked with disbelieving eyes at their Brother’s hand caught within the Cog’s skeletal fingers. The power that once flowed through his mighty veins was instantly nullified, and the crowd reeled back to see the Tiger thrash around like an injured fish while the Cog merely looked at him, unblinking.
 
“Wh-what have you do-!”
 
A rush of air, a flash of steel, and Fai-Deng’s chest was punctured by the Cog’s left jab. He doubled over and would have fallen had it not been for the Cog’s metal kneecap which met his descending chin.
 
“OW!” Kai-Thai shouted like a gleeful child. “A sound blow!”
 
“This is not a tournament match!” Feng-Lung chastised him.
 
Fai-Deng was sent reeling back, touching his bloodied jaw in disbelief as he looked back at the straight-backed Cog.
 
“You – you dare draw the blood of a Disciple of the Tiger Sect?” he asked the metal man’s nonchalant features. “You dare draw my blood?”
 
Both his hands balled into lightning coated fists which flew towards the Cog’s cheeks. The robot simply shot out his arms and grabbed both fists, extinguishing their fire like a candle being snuffed out, and administered a swift headbut to their owner’s already busted face.
 
CRACK.
 
“Another good strike!” Kai-Thai cheered, his fist pumping in the dead air of the courtyard. “What a bloody kiss our brother has been given!”
 
“Brother,” Feng-Lung protested. “I do not believe you are taking this serious-“
 
“ENOUGH!” Fai bellowed, turning now to the crowd and screaming at those who cheered to see him battered and brusied. “I WILL KILL HIM!”
 
He came at the Cog again and again, his fists two glowing pools of sparks dancing through the night sky only to be rebuffed again, and again, and again.
 
By the point of his fourth assault against the Cog, the latter needed only to swipe his fist away and twist his arm.
 
“AH!”
 
“Yield,” XJ-V told his prey.
 
Feng-Lung watched as Fai spun the Cog round and managed to get his foot behind his ankle, throwing them both to the ground and slamming his fist into XJ-V’s jaw.
 
“I. WILL. KILL. HIM!”
 
He raised his fist in the air and brought it down on the robot with the fury of a thousand stampeding oxen, only to find his fist had been enveloped by the Cog’s hand again. His technique – completely nullified.
 
“How…” he whispered to the twitching, jawless machine. “HOW!?”
 
In response, a stab of light pierced through the courtyard, sending both combatants spinning out of control. XJ-V landed in the crowd’s right flank, while Fai ended up at the feet of both Feng-Lung and his brother on the left.
 
Where both combatants had once stood, a shadowy figure garbed in flowing white robes floated down to touch the ground.
 
“This contest is over,” Master Yoma-Dur of the Tiger said.
 
The crowd bowed their heads as the Master made his will manifest, raising a single finger to repair the broken brickwork of the monastery courtyard. The ground knit itself back together like a wound being stitched up by an expert surgeon.
 
“N-no!” Fai-Deng shouted. “Master, I will have my satisfaction! I will have that metal monster’s head! I will -!”
 
A swift kick from Master Yoma’s sandaled feet winded the boy, and he collapsed into his Master’s arms like a child tired from too much play.
 
“Mewling kitten,” the great Master sighed. “You have been chasing your tail tonight.”
 
His eyes then flit towards the innocent looking form of Kai-Thai, who hid his baiju behind his back.
 
“You had a hand in this, I am sure.”
 
“Good Master, please,” Kai protested. “This tiger is nothing but his brother’s keeper.”
 
“And his brother’s tormentor,” Yoma chided. “But enough of this. Come. We shall retire to our Sect commune and speak no more of this nonsense. Let the Brothers of the Eternal Dragon have their courtyard back.”
 
And with a respectful bow to Feng-Lung, the Master led his students and the crowd away. The young Feng was left speechless, trying to understand the madness that had just gone on. No doubt the villagers around him were feeling even more puzzled than he.
 
But there was no sight more puzzling than what next occurred before Feng-Lung’s eyes. He watched as XJ-V moved, refusing any help from the crowd, and limped back to the exact same position before Longua’s chamber doors where he had sat before. His form seemed heavy. Haggard. As though the combat was finally catching up to him, but more surprising was the face of Master Longua himself as he moved past the metal man to enter his chambers.

Feng-Lung had not even known the Master was in the courtyard on this night, nevermind that he must have watched the fight take place.
 
But far from seeming impressed, the old Master of the Eternal Dragon simply opened the door to his chambers, took one look back at the supplicant Cog he was forced to see every morning, and sighed.
 
“An engine made for destruction,” he said. “Nothing more.”
 
With that he closed shut his doors, leaving the Cog shrouded in darkness and rain again.