Hardman's Bar

Chapter 35


“Vait… Hardman iz shtill viz you?” Wily’s voice asked us.

“Well, yeah,” I said with a moot shrug. “Where else would I be?”

“Er… nozing… no reason… no… no problem at all… heh, heh…” Wily’s voice petered out at the end in a neverous laugh. “ANYVAY! If you vish to save your friends, you vill proceed to ze teleporters und faze my challengez!”

With a click, the overhead speakers switched off. “That was odd,” Topman said.

“Yeah. Wonder what’s going on…” Magnetman said thoughtfully.

“We’ll find out,” I shrugged. “Let’s jus’ keep movin’.”

Before long, we arrived at the teleporters Wily had spoken of. There were four, each one labeled with one of our names. TOobe fair, I couldn’t even fit inside the others’ teleporters, which left me with the one on the end. It looked like a parking garage.

“Why isn’t there one for Gauntlet?” Magnetman asked.

Needlegal sighed. “You honestly think Wily expected him to stick with us and not go off on his own somewhere else?”

“Point,” Magnetman nodded, and then stepped into his teleporter.

“See you guys in a little bit,” Topman smiled before jumping into his.

“Good luck, Needlegal,” I said as she walked into hers. She gave me a nod as she vanished in a flash of light. With a deep breath, I stepped on the weight-sensitive panel and was enveloped in bright, white light.

Teleportation is a weird feeling. Let me try describing this… Okay, you know the feeling of jumping into a pool, right? And then there’s another feeling when you break the surface of the water? It’s like going through water 1 inch thick, with 1 inch of air on the other side before another inch of water, and onwards to infinity. At least until you stop, which I eventually did.

Due to the water metaphor, which I always used to describe the feeling, I always felt a little wet after coming out of a teleporter, so I shook myself a little before stepping into a vast, round dome. My arrival point was actually a black spot on the floor in the middle of the dome, which was well lit, and had the look and feel of an arena.

There was only one thing that decorated the floor of the arena.

“Wow…” I said, kicking Golemman’s remains with my foot. “I wonder what happened to you?”

I took another look around, and I noticed that the very edges of the floor near the dome walls had sunk down into a spiraling staircase. With a shrug, I made my way over to the stairs, which were wide enough for me to walk down without any problems, and started to descend.

Almost four floors worth of stairs passed underneath me before I came to a gate that led into a big square room. I barely had time to assess my surroundings before a voice from above caught my attention.

“Hey! Hardman! Good to see you!” Snakeman shouted. I looked up. The ceiling, which was about forty feet high, had a singular dressing in a central pillar that went down about eight feet, around which were lashed the missing members of the Mechanical Maniacs.

“Yo, guys, how’s it hangin’?” I asked with a grin.

“Oh, shut up, Hardman,” Geminiman shouted. “Just get us down.”

“How’d you guys get caught?” I asked.

If Geminiman’s arms hadn’t been tied down at every joint, I’m sure he’d have made a rude gesture at me. “Forget that! How’d you get here so fast? We heard the whole thing!”

I shrugged. “Golemman got killed by someone else today.”

“WHAT?” Snakeman shouted.

“I don’t know, but I’m not arguin’.”

“You SHOULD be arguing,” I heard Sparkchan’s voice.

Geminiman turned his head to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“Take a look.”

I couldn’t see Sparkchan very well, being on the other side of the pillar from her, but I followed the general direction of her voice, and laid eyes upon the one responsible for my literal walkthrough victory over Golemman.

It had to be my height. Maybe a little shorter, but not much. It was obviously robotic, Black with a bright orange trim, with a high neck and a head that reminded me of some kind of Neo Gothic statue. Cold, dead eyes stared at me, with a motionless mouth. The shoulders were broad, and the right arm was thick with a powerful, spike-knuckled hand on the end, while the left looked thin and anemic by comparison, and ended in a wicked point that looked like a cross between a spear and a sledge hammer. Powerful, cylindrical legs blossomed out into larger cylindrical boots obviously meant to reinforce balance, and there was something cylindrical sticking out of the back I couldn’t recognize.

“Okay…” I said, raising what could best be described as an eyebrow. “Who’re you?”

“Be careful, Hardman…” Sparkchan cautioned. “There something weird about this thing.”

“It can’t be one of Wily’s, so it must be one of Hakushaku’s,” I speculated. “That makes it even more dangerous.”

Almost as if on cue, the thing took a solid step forward and braced itself, raising its left arm. Only now could I make out the chain that fed from a large spool mounted on the back into the back of the left arm. There was a split second for realization that never came before a tremendous booming sound shook the chamber, and the spear head rocketed toward me.

“Dammit!” I swore, stepping to the side, but not quite fast enough. The tip of the point of the spear stitched a line on my armor that dug much deeper than it should have. The sudden hit did knock me off balance though, and before I could get my feet back under me, the spearhead shot by again, being dragged in by the chain back to this new foe.

I took another look at the line that traced all the way from the center of my chest to almost my right shoulder. There was something about the wound that felt weird, even through the other three inches of armor plating. It almost looked like cracks were beginning to spread from the borders of the wound.

“What the hell…” I whispered, watching my armor literally decay.

“What’s going on, you big lummox?” Geminiman shouted down at me. “MOVE!”

Another thunderous roar resounded through the room, but this time I knew what was coming, and stepped to the side enough to avoid that dangerous point, grabbing the chain that fed back to my enemy and fighting the powerful pull of the winch as it tried to retrieve the spearhead.

“Not this time, ugly,” I shouted, firing off a Hard Knuckle. The projectile slammed home in the thing’s chest, but left only the smallest of dents and barely a scratch. The hand returned to me, and a dull pain shot to life in my hand.

“What IS this thing?” I shouted as two panels in its midsection opened up. Two rotary guns that looked to small to be any good slid out and began to fire on me while I held my grip on the chain. At first, I figured it wouldn’t do any damage, but as the shells hit, I found them putting small pits in my armor, as well as a familiar sinking sensation.

With a sudden cry, I dropped the chain and leaped away from this new enemy, landing with a shuddering boom and dropping to my knees, shaking. I heard the spearhead click back into place.

“Hardman?” Snakeman asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Those damn bullets are magnetized!” I said with an uneven voice. It was like getting hit with four magnet missiles all at once. I shook myself to get the strange colors out of my vision and tried standing back up. An odd feeling in my chest and a small crunching sound alerted me to the fact that a piece of my armor had fallen off of my chest, leaving a cracked crater that was expanding slowly.

“Damn…” I gasped, turning slowly to take in my foe, who hadn’t moved except to turn to look at me straight on again. I narrowed my eyes. “WHO ARE YOU?” I shouted.

A calm, soft, feminine voice came back to me. “I am Seigema’am.”

“Siegema’am?” Sparkchan asked. “Another female robot master?”

“Correct,” the voice said tonelessly. “I am a follower of Master Hakushaku, with specific orders to destroy enemy designation Hardman.”

“Destroy me?” I asked. This thing seemed more than up to the task for it, which had me very worried. “Why?”

“It is nothing personal,” Siegema’am said with a voice that reinforced the sentiment. “but Master Hakushaku has studied your team, and determined that some members need to be eliminated by units designed specifically to do so.”

“I’m flattered,” I coughed as my head cleared. “But if you think you can win against me, yer gonna be really, really upset in th’ near future.”

“Bravado is useless,” she said with no feeling. “My Siege Spear is coated with a special acid designed to slowly eat away at the Titanium compounds your armor is made from, and will also work on any of your allies. As you’ve already determined, my Siege Vulcans are magnetically accelerated and affected to specifically damage you even more. I also have a Siege Buster which is more than capable of leveling a building, let alone you.”

“Well, at least now I know what I’m up against,” I sighed.

“And if you believe that information will aid you, you will also be very, very upset in the near future.”

“Wow,” I heard Gemini say with a low whistle. “Nice knowing you, Hardman.”

“Yer faith in me is comfertin’, Gem. I mean that.”

“Just calling it like I see it,” Gemini said with a shrug in his voice.

“You could, you know, try helping him,” Sparkchan muttered.

“Help him do what? Fall apart? He’s already doing a fine job of that.” Another piece of my armor fell with a sad crumble to the ground to emphasize his point.

“Then I guess I gotta kill ‘er before her acid does me in,” I said. “I’ve managed before, and I’ll do it again.”

“Very well then,” Siegema’am said in her monotone way, “if you believe you are a match for me, then bring it on.”

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