Hardman's Bar

By Hadrian Howell (Hardman)

Chapter 39

“Oh, I found this too!” Topman smiled, skating off again and coming back with my right Hard Knuckle. “You should probably hang onto this.”

“Yeah, I’ll carry it,” I said, taking it from him and tucking it under my arm. With that, we made haste to catch up with the others.

A stray thought made me look at my left hand. I’d sent it rocketing through Siegema’am’s own spear head, and managed to shatter it, with no ill effects at all. How was it that my Hard Knuckles were immune to that special acid she had? I never really thought about the kind of invulnerability my hands had when they weren’t attached to me, but this was a weird new development. And my right arm was perfectly fine too. Was there something about the acid that couldn’t eat through the minimal force fields my knuckles projected when fired?

Well, at least that made sense.

We arrived at a large gate with a W on it, and while the others were trying to figure out the best way to get through, I simply kept walking, crushing the gate aside like so much tinfoil. The rest of the team followed after me, into Wily’s personal lab, where Wily himself had prepared for our arrival. Poorly.

He aimed the pistol at us. “Shtay back!”

The Shadow Blade beat the flying needle there by only a fraction of a second, and the gun flew out of Wily’s hand. The old German backed up a little, trying to hide his abject terror.

I, on the other hand, was through playing around. My left hand shot out across the lab and grabbed the scientist by his lab coat and dragged him, kicking and screaming, back to us. As my hand clicked back into place, I held him high, looking at him.

“Listen,” I grunted, “You will do everything in your power for her, or your lab gets repainted with a nice, deep red. Get it?”

“Got it,” he squeaked.

“Good,” I growled, dropping him to the floor. Needlegal and Shadowman were already putting Cassandra’s fragile frame on the table. Wily skittered over to the table and started to survey the damage.

“Mien Gott… Vaz… Who did zis?” he managed in something like disgusted awe.

“Hakushaku,” Shadowman said simply.

“Ai yi yi… Zis vill be a difficult procedure.”

Shadowman nodded, and looked at Magnetman and Topman and myself. “You guys guard the exits of this room. The rest of us will help Wily out. We have a life to save, people, let’s move.”

I took up position by the gate I’d crashed through and sat down heavily. My energy was spent, both from the fight and from the shock, and I don’t remember much aside from drifting in and out of sleep as I covered the hole I’d made in the gate. I occasionally woke up to Sparkchan shouting “Clear!” or Wily telling a very focused Geminiman where to point his laser, but it wasn’t until Topman shook me awake that I actually looked at what was going on.

“Hey, buddy, you should see this,” Top was saying.

I got to my feet, feeling no kind of rested, and looked at the table. A pile of cords, drenched in grease and blood, lay next to her head, which had a patch over her missing eye and numerous bandages, which also covered the bulk of her body. Only then did it occur to me she wasn’t wearing any cloths, although the bandaging had helped her modest a little. Her body, what I could see of it, was a mess of bruises and cuts, probably from being banged around inside Siegema’am from both me and Golemman, but her face had a kind of serene smile on it.

“That was impressive,” Snakeman nodded.

“I didn’t know you knew how to do that kind of thing, Wily,” Needlegal told him.

“It vas nozing, really,” the German shrugged, basking his ego in the glow of the praise. “Vunce I figured out vat vas done to her, I merely reversed ze process. She’ll be veak for a few days vhile her body regenerates her normal blud supply, und it vill take a vhile for her hair to grow back, but she’ll pull through.”

Shadowman nodded. “Thanks, Doc, we owe you one.”

“You vant to repay me?” Wily asked, his tone turning nasty. “Go kill zat wretched Hakushaku! He’s crossed a line not even I vanted to touch.”

“Someone who offends Wily? We’re dealing with a real sick-o here,” Geminiman said with a smile.

The rest of the team chuckled, but Wily turned to look at me. “You. You vill need some repairs, no? Ze rest of your team doesn’t get beat up nearly as often as you do, it seems.”

“Yeah, I wanna see what Hakushaku makes specifically ta kill Geminiman er somethin’. See how well HE fares.” I grumbled as the German Scientist began attacking me with tools.

“Ach… Who’s been doing your repairs lately? Dr. Light? Zat pazifiztic fool… Let me get you back into REAL vorking order.” Wily was saying as I shut down for the repairs. It wasn’t like he could do anything bad to me with the other Maniacs standing RIGHT THERE.

And you have to say one thing for Wily, that while he may be a psychopathic head case, he has one psychological condition that overrides all the others. He’s an obsessive compulsive roboticist to his core, and he loves fixing broken machines. I think its one of the few things that makes the old coot happy anymore.

Sometimes, when you see him like this, it’s easy to forget how bad he can be. It almost makes me wonder how we’d be doing if we actually WERE working for him again. Wily’s Warriors had done it, and they seemed fine…

I woke back up, feeling great. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Not ein problem,” Wily grinned. “Now vill you all please chust leave me alone and go save ze day or somezink? Honestly, I have some evil geniusing to do.”

“We appreciate the help again, Wily,” Shadowman said. “So much, in fact, we’re not going to take you to jail.”

“Ah, gud,” Wily sighed happily.

“We’ll let Megaman do that.”

“VAZ?” Wily screeched as the rest of the Maniacs ran out of the lab. I started after them as Wily turned to look at his monitors to confirm that Megaman was, in fact, in the fortress, arriving at the weight sensitive teleports. It only now occurred to me that the two hour time limit the blue bomber had given us had passed a while ago. I scooped up Cassandra and ran for the door.

Gauntlet led us to a fast escape route, and soon we were breathing the night air again, rain splashing down on us as we all shared a laugh.

It was good to be back with everyone again, even though we all knew a greater challenge lay over the horizon, and its name was Hakushaku.