The Unnamed: A Mechanical Maniacs Mini-Novel
By Gauntlet (Shadowman)
Hardman Side Story: Inside the Gamma
By Hadrian Hardman Howell
This chapter was made after chapter 16 by Hardman. He wanted to tell a story of Hardman trying to get out of the Gamma programming without affecting my own story. It's pretty good, but Hard didn't know what happens in the story, so even though it's written by a team member, it's out of continuity. Still worth a read.
-Gauntlet
I Am.
And sometimes, that's all the reassurance you need.
Hadrian opened his eyes to darkness. Total darkness.
This wasn't new to him. There had been several occasions that he'd woken up to total darkness, and round about none of them had been pleasant.
Memories swam to the surface of his mind. He'd been inside the Hardman Armor, passing himself off successfully as one of the Mechanical Maniacs, keeping an eye open for some of his own enemies from other places within the Multiverse. He figured Reno would travel here and wreak havoc, and he knew Unicron had been by at least once as well...
There had been that tremendous heat. Torchman... that little... He'd taken advantage of the rather damp situation back at the hospital, where Spark-Chan had been unable to use her weapons safely. He'd been between a rock and a hot place, and when you're made out of two solid tons of Armor, you can only take so much heat... He'd passed out from the internal temperature, and since the Armor was nuero-link to his mind, Hardman had probably shut down due to both heat and a lack of input...
"Damn," Hadrian said aloud, "So where the hell am I now?"
He tried to move, but found his body unresponsive. His eyes FELT like they were working, but in the total darkness, he couldn't be sure. It dawned on him that he couldn't FEEL anything... no heat, no cold, not even the synthetic-fiber seat behind him in the confines of the Armor. He could move his mouth... produce sound... but...
Another voice in the darkness caught his attention.
"Where am I? What's going on?"
Spark-Chan...? No... that was Needlegal!
"Needle?" Hadrian managed to call out.
"Who's there?"
"It's Hardman! Are you okay?"
There was a hesitation before the answer, probably because when they last saw each other, they had not parted on the happiest of terms. "I can't feel my legs. Or my arms. Or even..."
"Yeah," Hadrian replied, cutting her off, "Same here. Is there anyone else here? Where ever here is..." he added, mostly to himself.
"I don't know," her voice came back, shaking a little both from fatigue and fear.
"I feel like the floor of a taxi cab," a new, rather rough voice cut in.
"You feel?" Needlegal called out to the new voice.
"GAH! Who's there?"
"This is Needlegal," she responded.
"A Maniac? What have you done to me?" The voice cried out, terrified and desperate.
"We didn't do anything," Hadrian shot back, slightly annoyed at being accused of any wrongdoing. "Who ARE you?"
"If you don't recognize my voice, I'm not tellin' you!" it sneered venomously.
There was another groan in the darkness. Someone else was joining in the happy conversation.
Needlegal spoke up first. "Mags? Is that you?"
"Huh... Needle? Wh... where are you?" the distinct voice of Magentman answered her.
"You're alive?" Hadrian asked, amazed that the crimson robot had survived the Gom Jabbar.
"Hard...? Yeah... My... my head's all fuzzy... wh... wow... what's going on?"
"That question has a remarkable resemblance to one I asked earlier," the sneering voice cut in.
"Sharkman?" Magnet replied with surprise in his voice.
"Oh, that's who that is," Hadrian said.
"Oops," Sharkman managed. "Well, it doesn't matter! You'll never take me alive!"
"I don't think we ARE alive..." Magnet said absently.
Hadrian paused for a minute and considered that while Needlegal and Sharkman began to harass each other. Could they be dead? Theoretically, they MIGHT be dead, since nobody knew what death was like... but why would they still be able to talk? Why not just a telepathic communication? And... What WAS going on?
"Well... shit. They got me."
"Bro!" Needlegal almost squealed.
"Sis?" Gauntlet replied.
"Hey boss. Welcome to the party," Hadrian said, and he would have shrugged if he could figure out how.
"Some party."
"Any idea what's going on?" Magnet asked.
"Hiya Magnet," Gauntlet said before launching into the explaination. It was kind of long and a little complicated, but if you've been reading the main story, you can guess what happened.
"Wait, wait, HOLD everything," Needlegal interrupted Gauntlet near the end of his tale. "I'm some big fat robot Gamma thing wandering around doing WHOES bidding?"
"Near as I can figure, Either CJ or Artilleryman are running the show." Gauntlet said with a sigh.
"CJ?" Magnet asked.
"The first Topman," Needle and Shadow told him in unison.
"So, wait... if our bodies are inside of these Gamma things..." Hadrian said thoughtfully, "What are our minds doing in here? Wherever the hell HERE is..."
"It's the Gamma-Net," Bitman's voice butted into the conversation this time. "This is a networked part of the Gamma's programming where they're stuffing our real minds so we can't interefere with their plan."
"So we can't do an override-from-within force-of-will thing?" Magnet asked.
"Pretty much," Bit replied.
"That sucks."
There was a long silence.
"So, what do we do, boss?" Hadrian asked.
"For the first time in a long time, Hardman, I don't think ANY of my tricks are going to help."
"Ah."
Bitman gave a frustrated sigh. "I've tried almost everything I can think of for getting the bloody hell out of this rat cage program, and I've come up short. What about you, Shark?"
"Are you kidding?" Sharkman snorted. "If I got out, THEY might get out."
"This is no time for sel-fish-ness Sharky," Magnet replied, trying to to chuckle.
"You're only making puns because I can't hurt you here," Needle growled. Magnetman outright laughed.
"Well, I don't see any of YOU working to hard!" Sharkman shouted over the silly laughing.
Gauntlet made an unhappy noise. "Some of us HAVE been putting effort into cracking this thing, Fish Face. Hey, Hardman, do you have anything?"
Hadrian was stratled by Gauntlet's voice. "Er... what?"
"This program? Have you found any way out of it?"
"Uh... no?" Hadrian couldn't figure out for the life of him what they were talking about... unless...
Oh. Oh swear words.
If he could slap his own forehead, he would have. Inside this... Gamma space, there was a program locking them in. As a human being, he couldn't even begin to TRY and decode anything on the same digital level as the other Maniacs or Sinister Six. He couldn't even see it... and if they realized he wasn't in the Program... that he wasn't a robot at all...
Cover. Blown. Swearing. A Lot!
"Check the breakers for faults, Hardman. If one of them is screwed up a little, we might be able to crash the program," Needlegal told him matter-of-factly.
"Er... Sure. I was just going to take a look at the... er... Light... Solar... thingy... first."
There was another long, uncomfortable silence. Hadrian wanted to cry.
"Hardman?" Gauntlet asked simply.
"Er... yes?"
"Can you see the program?"
"Uh... no?"
"Which would explain the fictional Solar... thingy, you were talking about. Care to let us in on WHY you can't see the program?"
"Er... I failed that class?"
"Every robot, when they close the optical receptors, can immediately acces their own programming for debugging and optimization purposes," Magnetman said in a monotone voice. "It's a standard feature of all robots."
"And if you can't see the program which is, currently the program we're all trapped in, that has some very serious connotations," Needlegal said suspisciously.
"Er... like?" Hadrian managed weakly.
"Well, you're not a robot," Gauntlet said curtly.
"Hey, I just thought of something..." Magnet said thoughtfully. "Isn't Hardman's voice... er, deeper? Bigger or something? The guy's HUGE!"
"Big enough for a human to fit inside..." Needlegal said, letting the idea hang there in the darkness Hadrian found himself wrapped in.
"Fess up, 'Hardman'!" Sharkman jeered.
"Er..."
I Am.
In Serious Trouble.
And that's NEVER a very reassuring thought
