Hardman's Bar
By Hadrian Howell (Hardman)
Chapter 34
It wasn’t long before Magnetman, Shadowman, Needlegal, Topman and I were approaching Skull Castle. We all knew we were expected, but we’d been here before. Wily’s fortresses were always open and inviting, because he loved to watch your efforts on his almost endless array of cameras. The front door, a massive garage-like gate under his ever-present skull motif was wide open like the gaping maw at the gates of hell.
“THIS makes me a little uneasy,” Needlegal said.
“Eh, he doesn’t have anything in these walls we can’t handle,” Magnetman smiled.
“I don’t much like th’ idea o’ fightin’ more than one member o’ th’ Evil Eight,” I told him. “Golemman’s enough o’ a pain, let alone Artilleryman or Warman.”
“True enough,” Magnetman nodded. “Okay, so do we have a plan?”
“Well, normally,” Shadowman began, “I’d suggest we go in and cause mayhem until Gemini fabricates some fantastic escape plan that fails, but distracts Wily long enough for us to get in there and save the day…”
“But…?” Topman prompted.
“Well, if we win here, the day still isn’t saved, because then we have to turn around and find this Hakushaku guy.”
“Has it occurred to anyone else Hakushaku’s using us?” Needlegal broke in. “I mean, if we disable Wily, aren’t we just helping him, too?”
“Good point,” I put in.
“Yeah, but I’m not about to leave our team mates in there,” Gauntlet said. “I’m going in, so I hope you guys are with me.”
“As always, Boss,” I nodded.
“No problemo,” Magnetman said, stretching out.
“We’ll just take care of Hakushaku later,” Topman smiled.
“Okay, fine, one problem at a time,” Needlegal shrugged.
And so we walked into Skull Fortress, bold as brass, like we owned the place. It wasn’t long before we noticed…
“Where IS everyone?” Topman shouted at the top of his voice.
“Forget the people, where are the traps?” Magnetman wondered.
“I’d ask where my brother got to,” Needlegal said, “but that seems pointless.”
“I’da thought we’da run inta the Eight by now,” I said.
“I know, this is weird,” Topman said thoughtfully. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Skull Fortress that wasn’t riddled with moving platforms and spikes and crap.”
“Maybe he was on a budget?” Magnetman suggested.
“Budgets do limit creativity,” I nodded, speaking from experience.
“But… the SIZE of this place! And since when was Wily ever on a budget?” Top demanded.
“Maybe with all our efforts to stop him, not to mention the other Megaman teams, he’s started running out of money?” Needlegal speculated.
“Sounds reasonable,” Mags nodded.
“It still doesn’t seem like it makes sense…” Top said slowly.
We continued on for a while, in a bland, featureless hallway that seemed to go on forever. It was like Wily was running out of ideas. There weren’t even any of his normal small robot minions kicking around. In a way, this was creepier than Mesmerman’s altered reality.
“Anybody else bored?” Magnetman asked after a bit.
“Yep,” I answered without hesitation.
“Completely,” Topman sighed.
“Stay on your toes, you three,” Needlegal hissed.
“Oh, come on! We haven’t even gotten an obligatory ‘Welcome to your doom’ speech yet!” Topman groaned. “I was all ready to throw down and stuff, and now I’m just BORED.”
“Then let ME fix that!” came a voice from further down the hallway.
Magnetman stopped. “Wait… Spinman?”
Wily’s disc-headed robot master shot into our field of vision. “That is correct, you bumbling morons! You’ll ALL fall to my might!”
“Weren’t you, like, the weakest member of the Evil Eight?” Topman asked nonchalantly. “Isn’t that why Chimeraman kind of… replaced you?”
“Silence, you wretched pretender to the throne of spin!”
“Throne of Spin?” Magnetman asked, barely able to contain his amusement. “Oh, someone, please, shut him up before I lose it…”
“INFIDELS!” Spinman cried, charging at us in one of the most blatantly stupid maneuvers I’d ever seen.
Needlegal, Magnetman and I didn’t even break our stride as Topman spun around, surrounding himself with enough kinetic energy to make an elephant explode, and rocketed forward, slamming into Spinman with the force of a freight train. The other robot master cried out and was caught in the hurricane of force, eventually being thrown to one of the walls of the hallways like a rag doll. He slid down to the floor with all of his joints bending the wrong way and a strange gurgling noise.
“Still bored,” Topman assured us as he caught up to him at a leisurely pace.
“That had to be the strangest thing I’ve seen all day,” Needlegal told us as we walked on.
A momentary stab of static brought all of our attention to our team communicators. There were garbled words at the other end, but then it was just consumed by a sea of static.
“We must be close to the jamming device,” Magnetman commented.
“Good thing, too,” Topman said. “I was getting sick of all that noise.”
“Vell, it vill only get vorse!” came Wily’s insane cackle.
“About time you decided to have a laugh at us!” Topman shouted at the roof.
“So sue me, I vas busy.” Wily muttered. He cleared his throat. “Anyvay, ahead of you you vill find some of my patented teleport hatches! Each hatch has ein special weight sensitive plate, so only zose of you vis ze proper weight can accezz ze proper teleporter!”
“That seems… wait…” Neeldegal slowly looked up at the ceiling. “You have all of our individual weights? Like, down to the milligram?”
“Of course,” Wily said with a smirk in his voice. “Und you should be vorried, Needle vench.”
“I will KILL YOU!” She screamed at the top of her voice.
“What’s the big deal?” Magnetman asked.
Needlegal recomposed herself. “Nothing, nothing, I’m just very… Never ask a girl’s weight, Mags.”
“Yeah,” I said with a nod, “Bad plan.”
