I had been a little wary when the pale man with the golden eyes who introduced himself as Data had showed up at our doorstep. Now I was grumbling, because Holmes had waived his usual fee for this case and I was traipsing across the countryside without the hope of remuneration to cover travel expenses or a week's lost wages.

My leg burned as I attempted to catch up with my longtime friend and his new companion who were racing across the grounds of the isolated Manor in which the perpetrator of the rather unusual crime we had been hired to solve dwelled.

The man in question raced from his abode wielding a great broadsword which he used to hack off the head of Holmes' pale companion before he was subdued.

Holmes didn't seem half as surprised as I was when I noticed that our beheaded companion was still standing. Having seen a man lose his head in Afghanistan, I knew that there should be a lot of blood and a corpse on the ground.

"Watson, if you could just...Er, pop his head back on..." Holmes said, gesturing helplessly to the headless body, that against all reason was still standing.

Still in shock, and confused by the fact that there wasn't any blood I moved closer to the standing "corpse". Instead of flesh, I saw metal and some strange colorful material I couldn't identify covering a bunch of thin copper wires. Whatever this thing was, it was far out of my area of expertise.

"Holmes, I'm a doctor, not a mechanic." I cried.