Read H.E.R.O. - Horde for Free Online Page B

other mechanisms to yet.  I'd found that I could lift about twelve hundred pounds with my own body the last few days, but this metal frame allowed me to lift far more.
    I'd spent the prior week's Tuesday playing with that exoskeleton.  After I got out of the unit, I found that I could do the same thing with my small toy robots in the house.  When I held one, I could feel through it and make the parts all move as I wished, even when they had no parts to do so.
    Last Wednesday was the great discovery - while playing with a toy robot I somehow shifted my entire point of view to be from that robot.  I had even turned around and looked at my own body - which had promptly slumped down against the table.  After a few minutes of freaking out I figured out how to touch my body and shift back into it.  After some paranoia - and making sure everything worked right on my own body - I played with the toy robot again until I was able to shift into it again.
    I spent a while wandering around my own apartment as a toy robot.  I was much stronger than I expected as a toy as well - it wasn't hard to leap several times my own body length, for example.  I'd grabbed the camera and taken some photos in a mirror as the robot just for humor and posted them to my social website.  My friends thought it was just a clever thing to have a toy take such pictures - they had no idea the robot really did do it on its own.
    I spent Wednesday and Thursday playing around as the various robots in my house.  Even those without engines or mechanized joints were controllable.  It made no sense, but somehow it worked.  Then I found I could attach other robot parts to a robot and cause them to reshape and attach to the current robot I was 'in.'  It was great, because it allowed me to take the bigger ones that had solid hands and add some fine-control limbs to the body, as well as a tentacle from another toy.
    While the little ones were fun, I realized that my big unit would be a lot better if I could add even more heavy duty steel to it.  I needed to visit a junkyard.
    I'd spent the last Friday through Tuesday bringing the big robot in my large transport van I used to bring the units to the movie sets to landfills.  I couldn't drive while standing in the enclosed back of the truck, and the first time ended up walking back to my body - which had been lying on the floor, picking up my own body and carrying it into the back of the truck, and then shifting back into my own body.
    I'd been to most of the junkyards in town numerous times in the past while searching for parts that would look interesting on robots.  I went to the first one, had a conversation with the owner, and meandered until I found some good parts.  Being able to lift over half a ton on my own became very useful as I brought some heavy beams and other parts from old construction machinery and who knows what else back to the truck.
    At one point, I realized that with the right parts, I could make an even larger and more powerful robot than the one in my truck, but the parts were too large and heavy.  I'd gone back to my truck, shifted into the machine and walked out to pick up more parts.  It was far stronger than my own body, and I quickly grabbed enough parts to make something a good fifteen feet tall - perhaps something like a mecha.
    It was fun at times wandering around, touching a piece of equipment, and moving the joints and such.  I took to carrying a tiny robot in each pocket so I could easily take one over and get into the hard to reach parts of the later junkyards to find items that were buried out of sight.  I found several great parts that would make some extremely strong arm and leg supports for a larger mecha, as well as a cage structure for the chest.  I figured I'd either make a spot for my own body to be in or perhaps to hold something else if I wandered around just as a mecha.
     
    I was finally back in my warehouse.  I organized the various parts I'd collected into