Hardman's Bar

Chapter 45


Sparkchan put herself between me and the struggling Juno as my hands came back. “You okay, Hardy?”

“I’ll live,” I said, rubbing my cheek. That haymaker he had HURT, and I didn’t mind admitting it.

Topman skated over to us as Magnetman and Snakeman made their way across a field of shattered glass and the others caught up with us. Geminiman merged all six of him back into one and nearly collapsed, his energy spent. He coughed fitfully for a few moments before standing back up shakily again.

“Everyone in one piece?” Gauntlet rasped, a nasty-looking cut tracing from his left shoulder across part of his neck.

“More or less,” Snakeman nodded, looking worse for the wear.

“It isn’t over yet,” Magnetman said, nodding at Juno, who was picking himself up now. The white machine rose into the air like a vengeful angel and leveled a hateful stare at us.

“NO!” he shouted at the top of his voice, “We’re not DONE yet! I’ll kill you all no matter WHAT it takes!”

None of us replied as we let loose with everything we had. Magnet Missiles, thrown Top Bombs, Shadow Blades, a massive Spark Shot, a swarm of Search Snakes, my own two Knuckles and a barrage of needles and Gemini Lasers slammed into the raging machine, knocking him back and down to the ground again. For some reason, this only intensified his roar of anger.

“ENOUGH!” he bellowed, slamming his fist on the ground and sending out a shockwave that threw razor-like shards of glass in every direction. I shoved to the front of the group to cover them from the bulk of the storm, most of the pieces actually bounding off me now I was so full of glass myself. One of the larger pieces hit me in the shin, but that was the worst I sustained from the attack.

What Juno had really done, however, was buy himself time and distance, and we all watched as he raised his hand, revealing the fraction of Unicron’s Spark he possessed and slammed it into his own chest.

“That’s bad!” Shadowman shouted as Juno began to laugh out loud, his madness growing and echoing off the walls.

“This is the end!” Juno cried to the ceiling as an orange coloration to his armor started to spread like a virus. His skin became pal and grey, and two massive, curved horns tore out of his head like some demonic looking crown. He actually began to grow, his body expanding at an alarming rate to contain the power he’d just forced into his body, and his eyes became red and his teeth became fangs. Two armored, mouth-like shutters slammed closed over the fraction of the spark of the embodiment of chaos embedded in his chest , and his hand became claws, spikes blossoming all over his arms.

“I WANNA GO HOME!” Topman cried out as Juno kept expanding, eventually bursting out of the stained-glass dome. The air inside started to rush out of the room and into space, taking the lighter pieces of debris with it, including the glass, the organ bits, the various pieces of us that had been cut off, and Topman. Pretty much everyone else latched onto me instantly, and I dug one hand into the wall and held on for dear life, my other hand flying out and grabbing our smallest team mate.

He was screaming his head off as he came back to me and I tucked him under my arm, feeling my feet leave the ground as the atmosphere inside the space-borne castle was sucked into the vastness of space.

It occurred to me that, even without an atmosphere, we’d be okay since we were robots. Juno would be okay as well, which was less comforting to me. Apparently, though, there was an artificial gravity system at work, because we were able to keep our footing.

Eventually, Juno grew large enough that half the room tore away from the rest of the construction, leaving us with a massive semicircle to move around as Juno began to focus his attention on us. His expansion seemed to stop when he reached what I estimated to be about 80 feet tall, and about 60 feet wide. He simply… floated out there, in space, looking at us with hatred in his eyes that wasn’t entirely his own anymore.

Juno’s voice was larger, deeper, and carried a strange harmonic to it that sent an evil kind of chill down the spine. “And now,” he rumbled, his voice shaking the station as the others let go of me, no longer needing an anchor to stop from being sucked out into space, “you will all die, and I shall consume the planet below before continuing my reign of destruction!”

“Consume…? I thought he just wanted to kill all the humans,” Magnetman said over the team comm. link. With no air, there was no other way for us to communicate.

“That isn’t Juno anymore!” Gauntlet’s voice came into my head. “The piece of Unicron’s Spark he forced into himself took over… He’s more like Junocron…”

“Maybe a Unijuno?” Topman suggested.

“Oh, wait, I’ve got it!” Magnetman broke in, “Unicron J!”

“What about Unijunocron?” Geminiman put in helpfully.

“Not helping!” Needlegal admonished.

For the sake of the narrative, Junocron will suffice, and I’ll move on now.

“How do we stop this thing?” Snakeman asked hastily as Junocron started to draw back a massive, clawed hand.

“We’ve got to crush that Spark,” Shadowman told us.

“How?” Magnetman asked. “It’s behind more armor than Hardman’s got on his whole body!”

Shadowman didn’t get a chance to answer as the immense hand came forward, slamming into the room and sinking his claws in, making sure the whole thing didn’t spiral into space. He wanted to destroy us, not give us a chance to retreat.

Although how we were going to get safely out of space was really anyone’s guess at this point, but hey…

Shadowman moved with lightning speed, grabbing onto one of the spikes sprouting from Junocron’s arm and pulling himself up the arm. He threw Shadow Blades to draw Juno’s attention, and I could hear him in my head between gasping breaths. “I’ll distract him, you guys find a way to kill that Spark!”

Needlegal wordlessly took off after her brother, taking a powerful leap that landed her on the same arm ahead of her brother and taking a second to steady herself before unleashing a storm of needles, making Juno’s face writhe in anger. His gaze turned toward them as Magnetman and Topman clustered around me.

“I hate to do this to you, big guy!” Magnetman said.

“Do what?” I asked, confused. The words barely left my mouth before I felt something in my gut drop and an icy cold feeling take hold of me. My mind processed the idea before it really knew what was going to happen. Magnetman was going to throw ME at the two massive shutters using magnetic force.

I couldn’t respond, my voice taken away by the increasing pain of the magnetic force, but Topman’s voice came through the pain. “Hey, you’ll be okay! Just pry the shutters open and we can blow him away! We’re counting on you, big guy!”

“Break a leg!” Geminiman shouted, firing Gemini Lasers at Junocron’s other arm that was already drawing back.

“Do your best!” Sparkchan came through, charging up a Spark Shot to blind Junocron with.

“And whatever you do,” Snakeman said as he stuffed Search Snakes into Junocron’s knuckle joints, “don’t die!”

And with that, I was hurled through space. The spots in my vision cleared just before I slammed into the smooth shutters, which met at an almost seamless, jagged middle. I started to drift away from him, but I reached out and dug my fingers into the shutter enough not to float away. So secured, I took stock of the situation at hand while over my head, explosions raged and missiles rained.

Magnetman’s shot had been on target, I’d hit about the center of the shutters, but he’d been too exact, and had hit the center of the whole thing, causing me to hit the seam between the two shutters. Because of my impact, the two had dented into each other, which would make them that much harder to pry apart. Mentally swearing, I decided to try tearing through instead.

I dug in with my other hand and started trying to tear off smaller chunks of the two massive shutters, but Junocron had noticed me now. All over his body, several hatches opened, and writhing cords with claw-like snappers on the end shot out and turned toward me. I tried to work faster, but it was difficult to deal the damage I needed to and not float away at the same time. As the first cords whipped out to latch onto me, a well placed Shadow Blade sliced it apart, and I silently thanked the Boss for his aim.

Magnetman and Geminiman started to blow away the rest of the anti-body-like cords as I continued working on the shutters, and then I thought of something. I dug in with both hands and placed my feet on Junocron as well for added stability, and activated my chest cannon. The pitted and cracked pieces of my chest plate split apart and opened, with the stout cannon barrel extending out just enough for me to see, and then the thing fired.

Affiliates

Blyka's Door
E-Can Factory
MMAyla
MM BN Chrono X
MM PC Website
Protodude's RM Corner
Reploid Research Lavatory
RM AMV Station
RM EXE Online
RM EXE Zone
RM:Perfect Memories
Sprites INC