The moment X arrived on his building's rooftop, internal warning systems blared to life in his central processing unit. Instinct told him to make a dashing leap off of the roof as his systems told him what the danger was; hundreds of hand-sized demolitions charges had been set up all over the top of the building.
The force of the explosion threw him a score of yards farther than his jump, already boosted by the short-burst thrusters in his feet. Scalding concrete and metal smacked and pattered against him, several bits scoring deep into his armor plating. As he fell toward the street, though, X thanked Light that nothing had punched through. Only a 3% life force loss, easily recovered when he had the chance.
Several yards above the street, he kicked on the boot thrusters, burning the concrete but otherwise leaving it unharmed. As he touched down, large sections of the building came crashing down behind him. Spinning around, X caught sight of a slab of concrete landing with a scrunch atop a swerving hovercar.
He had time to see the woman inside scream and reach out toward the windshield before the impact crushed her. Blood came shooting out of the driver's side window as the sedan flattened under the wreckage. Elsewhere up and down the street, the few humans and bots out at this hour screamed and fled for cover.
It was utter mayhem, and X stood in the middle of it.
Looking up, he saw another large section of the building falling toward the street. He quickly charged his cannon and fired a Mega Buster Shot, vaporizing the debris mid-fall. More shots, standard energy bursts, reduced several more chunks to dust as he ran along the street.
Sirens blared nearby, emergency response and demolitions bots and humans rushing to the scene. The explosion's force, he thought, should have done a lot more damage. His internal systems quickly calculated the power of the blast, and left him confused. He could only surmise that the charges hadn't all gone off.
On that score, he would soon be proven wrong.
"Poseidon has completed his objective," Paladin said to the holographic display of Hephaestus standing in the center of his private quarters. "The detonation went off as planned, but X was somehow able to avoid it almost entirely, sire."
"No matter, my friend," Hephaestus replied, waving one hand in dismissal. "The intent was not to blow him up, just to shock and rattle him. Caretaker's task here is nearly complete. We shall return at daybreak tomorrow. Phase two shall begin shortly thereafter."
Paladin nodded, pausing to consider his next inquiry.
"Sire, I do not believe Titan is ready for his part in phase two. He is too eager for a fight with X."
"Oh? Do not hesitate, my friend. I am open to suggestions. I'm no Dr. Wily. I'll hear you out." Paladin heaved a sigh, and continued.
"Sire, I believe Titan will be badly damaged, if not destroyed outright, in a direct confrontation. We don't have zones like we once did, with hundreds of bot minions to weaken X before facing him. I fear X will have the upper hand."
"Ah, yes, I understand your trepidation," said Hephaestus. "However, I assure you, all is well. Titan's go-code will not be activated until after the first part of phase two has commenced. Remember, my Paladin, we are not here just to destroy X. Remember the plan, and do not deviate unless it's to save yourself. I need you and Caretaker to survive what is to come."
Paladin thought long and hard in silence, optics cast down. He did not doubt his master, nor his genius. But he worried that his colleagues would be too swift to want vengeance for the past, for what had been taken from them. Titan and Thrash were both hot-headed, rash bots whose original designs made them both vicious killers. He doubted they had the self-control to stay in line with the master's plans.
"I shall hold faithful, sire," he said after five minutes of dead silence.
"Excellent. I shall see you and your brethren on the morrow, Paladin." The hologram disappeared then, the connection severed. Paladin sat down at his command console and put his head in his hands.
"The plan," he mused. "I must remember the plan."
X sat on the back of a reploid maintenance vehicle, letting Patch work on his scorched plating and filling his energy tanks back to maximum capacity. As he worked on X, the medical reploid, sculpted with a chassis that reminded one of a human ambulance, narrowed his eyes up at the building.
"Hell of a thing," he commented.
"You're telling me," X replied. "I didn't know you were on night duty."
"I'm not," said Patch. He detached the charger cable from X's main life force unit and closed his back plate. "I was awakened when your name came on the network as an injury. You're my main priority, you and Zero and Axl. Everyone else gets other bots to work on them."
"Command decision?"
"Yeah. We got six destroyed worker bots and one damaged enforcement patrol bot, other side of the block. Sixteen human casualties outside. No telling yet what the damage is like up there, though." X followed Patch's gaze skyward. He hopped off of the vehicle and started toward the building.
On his way to the entrance, he spotted once more the old manual sedan. Detective Marlow was back at his building. X spotted the detective in the lobby through the doors, talking to several humans in bomb squad gear. They were quite animated, and when X entered, they looked up and quickly shuffled away, out onto the street.
Marlow looked like hell warmed over. Dressed in a ratty pair of jeans and a yellow button shirt that had likely been pulled from a hamper, his eyes stood out of shadow-pocked features. When he met X's eyes, a new sharpness stole over him.
"X, would you please step over here with me," he asked gently, guiding X toward the eastern stairwell. They stepped through the door, Marlow keeping it open only an inch or two to keep an eye on the lobby. He looked hard at X, who frowned impatiently at him. "Someone wants you dead, X, and they don't give a shit how much blood they have to shed to do it."
"I'm guessing you know something I don't yet," X said evenly. He bore no more grudge against Marlow; clearly the man was impassioned to his job, to his duty. X could respect that, despite the man's obvious belligerence, or perhaps because of it.
"My bomb squad guys just got done explaining to me what happened up there. All of the charges were shaped to concentrate a single blast point, that teleporter pad on your roof," Marlow said quietly. "They were keyed in to detonate whenever you came back."
"I'm not the only Hunter in the building who used that pad," X said.
"Maybe not, but one of your programming bots discovered a link program in the pad's black box. Someone programmed it to send a signal to the charges only if you, specifically, returned to the pad." X swore under his breath. He had indeed been targeted, it seemed. "The bot tells me any demolitions specialist reploid could rig that kind of program."
"It's right about that," X said. "There's obviously a Maverick right here in Central City, then. The question now is, who?"
"I don't know," said Marlow with a huff. "I'm not familiar enough with your outfit to even have a guess, but my boss wants me and a couple of my guys to follow through. Humans have been killed here, and something tells me it's only going to get worse."
X nodded, thinking, doesn't it always?
It was one in the morning when captain Swing came to the doorway of X's office at Hunter HQ. The huge gorilla-like reploid held a datapad in his hands, looking ridiculous. This man, X thought, needs a war to look natural. "Come in," X said, pushing his central console to one side. Swing entered, quickly seating himself across from X and placing the datapad on the desktop.
"I just got the first five reports back, like you asked. We've got Hunters checking into each and every one of those restricted zones, and these ones finished their inspections first."
"Okay," X said, taking the datapad and rapidly scanning the reports. On the third one, he stopped, looking gravely up at captain Swing. "Hunter Pyrock says here he can't find any trace at all of the old Robot Master that was operating the zone. Has the chassis been accounted for?"
"No, sir," said Swing. "I already checked with the archives division and the DOD. Nobody knows where the remains are."
"So, Gemini Man is unaccounted for," said X, looking off into the middle distance at nothing. "Well, thank you, Swing. Have the rest of the reports mailed to my secure inbox, I'll review them when I can."
"Sir?"
"I have to pay another visit to my predecessor," said X, rising from his seat. "Keep everyone at arm's length for me for now, captain. That's all I ask." Swing nodded, leaving X to depart in studied silence.
Master Hephaestus would be much pleased, oh yes. Caretaker had done an excellent job with this last project, most amazing and marvelous! Perhaps master would be kind, and let Caretaker have a treat, yes, let him play a game. He so loved his games, yes he did!
Caretaker didn't know anything about malignant sparks or corrupted souls, or any number of other things the master muttered about to himself most of the time. No, Caretaker just knew he enjoyed playing with broken things, making them work again in all kinds of interesting ways. He liked to scare people, especially the soft, pathetic humans.
One of his most favorite games since being given his new body by the master involved taking the humans his master had gathered in secret places, and making them hurt in all kinds of fascinating ways. There were drills, blades, torches, all sorts of tools to make them squirm and scream and leak fluids. Oh, that was a lot of fun.
And when he was finished, why, the master let him keep the bits that were left! He could then take the soft bits and mix them with pieces of bots, make them into his favored playthings! Yes, master had told Caretaker to make lots of plaything puppets like that, and a really, really big one for master to control.
Soon, in a couple of hours, when master woke up from his charging pod, he and Caretaker would go back home. Master would control his enormous machine with the help of Caretaker's really big plaything, using a remote control that was much fancier than any of the ones Caretaker used.
Yes, in just a few hours, oh, what a game they would play!
X tapped the side of his head, the triangular orange plate lighting up and projecting a still image he'd recorded of the Skull Man head unit. On the monitor display, the simulated Megaman frowned. "Care to explain this, Rock?" There was nothing forthcoming right away from the Blue Bomber. Instead, the screen flickered, and suddenly Megaman was standing in an empty white paneled room.
"There wasn't any other choice," Megaman said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "My cannon was doing minimal damage. A blast from a drone only minutes earlier had severely reduced power output to the cannon."
"So you ripped his head off?"
"Don't take that tone with me," Megaman snapped, baring his teeth at X. "I've seen your solution to bots who go rogue! You're no better, X! At least I never got around to enjoying what I did!"
"He wasn't the only discrepancy, was he," X asked, folding his arms over his chest. "The records aren't squeaky clean because you were, but because Dr. Light didn't want the world to know what you were capable of."
"Okay, yes. There were times when I, lost control of myself," Megaman admitted. The scene changed again on the monitor to a Victorian study, replete with fireplace. Megaman took a seat before the fire. "There weren't many. And yes, some of the fighting got vicious. I confess. Are you happy now?"
But X realized he wasn't, not really. He hadn't been happy since last fighting Sigma. He took a seat of his own, head down between slouched shoulders. "No, I'm not happy. If I'm not fighting, I'm not happy."
"It's your spark," said Megaman softly. "Your spirit itself. Your spark belongs to a warrior, not an administrator. That's the heart of your problem. You're not a defender, X. You're an attacker. Only right now, you don't know who to attack."
X stiffened. Rock sounded too convincing to be wrong about his assessment. The human murdered in his building, the killing of Torque, and the bombing, all of them attacks on him that had no option for an immediate counter-strike.
"What do I do? I wasn't built just for combat. I've got the necessary intellectual skills to figure this out."
"Skills, but not the patience," Megaman said. "And your deductive reasoning and learning aren't on par with reploids built for investigative work. Your spark isn't that of a sleuth. Yes, you have the intelligence, but it's not what you're cut out for."
X glared at the monitor. "Again, what do I do right now?"
"Right now? I'd recommend you load up some of your best or most useful secondary weapons programs from the HQ database," Megaman suggested. "Run through a few simulations against enemies who might exhibit some of the behaviors that you've come across. Make yourself ready to move as soon as HQ learns something more."
X planted his hands on his hips as he stood, looking down at the floor. Simulation or not, the spark in this system that now called itself Megaman was wiser than X could have guessed before meeting it.
"I'll do just that," X said. "Thank you." X left then, watched by the cameras of the compound's internal monitoring system. When silence reigned once again in the room, the monitor went dark, and the original Blue Bomber's spark plunged back into the vast network of information available to it with glee.
Paladin entered the war room to find that Titan and Orbous were already present and seated to his right. Thrash stood off to the left, all angles and edges, looking like a walking bladed weapon.
"Any word of our sire, Orbous," Paladin inquired.
"He is speaking with Shinobi right now," the green mechanoid hissed. "They will be with us shortly, sir." Thrash chuckled derisively opposite the former Crystal Man. "Is there something amusing to you, Thrash?"
"You, calling him 'sir', that's what's so funny," Thrash said in his rapid, harsh voice. "He was Knight Man, for Wily's sake! He came after us! We shouldn't have to address him as sir!"
Titan slammed a powerful, blocky fist onto the table, shaking the whole room.
"By your logic, then, you should address me as sir, Thrash! I am the only one here originally created by Dr. Light! No!" This last he barked as Thrash started to retort. "The master has named Paladin as our second in command! Do not question this, or I will rip you limb from limb!"
Strained silence filled the room as Thrash sneered angrily at Titan. He muttered something under his breath. "What was that," Paladin asked. Thrash whipped his head around faster than Paladin could visually track.
"I said if he could catch me first," Thrash shouted. In the next moment, Thrash yelped as the central table was heaved into his stomach, then pushed further to pin him against the wall. Titan stood on the opposite end, gripping the table with enormous, gray metal hands.
"Enough," Paladin cried out, unsheathing his mace. Titan immediately pulled the table away, letting Thrash slide down against the wall, holding his torso. "Thrash, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," the angular mechanoid groaned.
"Titan?"
"Forgive me, sir. His disrespect demanded punishment."
"I agree," said Paladin coldly, his optics slit flashing crimson at Thrash. "However, in the future, I will determine suitable punishments in the master's absence. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Titan said morosely. It was as Thrash was seating himself that the doors opened behind Paladin, letting Hephaestus, Shinobi, Twim, Poseidon and Caretaker into the room. Paladin saluted his master after sheathing his weapon, and seated himself at Hephaestus's right hand near the head of the table.
"Ah, my friends, a glorious day lies before us," Hephaestus began, spreading his arms wide like a preacher at service. "The first phase of my campaign is complete, and today, while our nemesis is still reeling, we shall begin the second phase of this momentous and audacious plan!
"I know that a few of you have raised questions," he continued, rising slowly from his seat, hands clasped behind his back. "What the endgame is, what I intend to do going forward. You want to know what my ambition is, at the last. I cannot yet tell you that, my friends, but for now, our goal is simple. We wreak havok upon the humans, and corner our foe, X, until the moment when we may cripple or destroy him."
"I like all of that," Twim said quietly. Formerly Gemini Man, the silvery mechanoid was the most human-looking of the collective, styled as an athletic humanoid. His split-minded nature had carried over, an essential part of his spark. When Paladin had set down to speak with him, he occasionally got two responses to a single question, often in two very different tones of voice.
Twim was, in essence, a mechanoid with dissociative identity disorder. In his case, his primary personality and his alter were more than aware of one another; they colluded to present a whole persona. As part of his programming, Twim could project an illusory duplicate of himself, which his alter controlled. This served to ease his symptoms, and make him a more efficient speed-type combatant.
Twim muttered a second response quietly, but Paladin's audio receptors, second only to Hephaestus and Orbous, picked it up; "I do too."
"Titan," Hephaestus said, continuing. "The first part of phase two has had an alteration. A minor one, I assure you," he said, pushing down Titan's objection before the enormous mechanoid could give it voice. "You will be going to New York City, and will remain hidden until X engages the Man Drone."
Titan raised a hand patiently, and Hephaestus nodded. Titan said, "Why did this change? I was looking forward to fighting X on his home turf."
"The decision came to me as a necessary precaution," Hephaestus replied easily. "Central City is home to the Hunters Headquarters. I won't send only one of you into that nest. No, it is best for now to keep Central City out of the picture. We proceed as planned from New York onward. Do you object?" Titan's brow furrowed as he considered the facts. He shook his head silently. He hadn't considered the other Hunters.
"Are there many Hunters in New York City," Poseidon asked, his voice a booming bass timbre.
" Three, that we know of," said Orbous. "Two of them are D Class, commanded by a C Class. They are no threat to Titan, or the Man Drone. Caretaker's work is most impressive," the green, semi-arachnid mechanoid hissed.
"Sire, mayhap we should send additional combat bots with the Man Drone," Paladin suggested.
"No need. I've already seen to that," Hephaestus replied. "For now, gentlemen, we are in a good place. Titan? Prepare for your departure. You leave in four hours." Titan stood, saluted awkwardly, ambled out of the war room. His receding footfalls echoed for nearly a full minute. Of all of the new mechanoids' frames, his had been built to best suit a head-on, one-on-one battle. Paladin hoped he would not get overconfident, though, and expose himself to the threat of destruction.
"If there are any questions, gentlemen, I shall be in my quarters," Hephaestus said, dismissing the meeting. Everyone filed out except for Paladin and Orbous, who remained seated, looking to one another.
"How much of the plan do you know, Paladin," Orbous hissed quietly, leaning over the table. Paladin moved several seats down to be closer to his comrade.
"I know the next three phases," he whispered, "but not the fifth and final phase. And I tell you this, Orbous, because you more than the others will listen; there are contingencies. The master has already planned around any of our deaths, with two exceptions."
"Those being?"
"Myself and Caretaker. I don't understand that at all. Either one of us could be killed, but our own roles are distanced, minimal."
"I'm not surprised," said Orbous evenly. "You're the second-in-command, he needs you. Caretaker, though, he's addled. There's something very, very wrong with him." Paladin did not offer a rebuttal, as there wasn't one to be made, in this instance. He knew, as did Orbous, and likely everybody else, that the mechanoid who had been Junk Man was more than just damaged goods. Within the almost child-like behaviors lurked an unpleasant and unwholesome streak a mile long.
Orbous didn't know about Caretaker's 'playthings', though. Paladin shuddered to think of the imprisoned humans, many of them fated for death, some for a place even worse than the grave. What Caretaker did to those prisoners was beyond the veil of simple cruelty; it was pure psychosis.
Paladin knew that of them all, Orbous was clearly the most observant, the deepest thinker. The surveillance and systems expert knew the technical specifications of the Man Drone. If he'd seen a picture of the machine itself, though, as Paladin had, Orbous would easily surmise the full extent of Caretaker's activities.
"I know something of what ails Caretaker," Paladin said, looking away from Orbous. "His spark, the master informed me, was weak, tainted. Of us all, he was the closest to death. As Junk Man, he had already been derided and cast aside by his fellow Robot Masters. It's likely that whatever scars he bore from that time became further twisted by so much time teetering on the brink of annihilation."
Silence settled over the two mechanoids then, each privately wondering if all of their collective flaws could be overcome, and thus, victory achieved.
No comments:
Post a Comment