Mechanical Maniacs: Back on the Beat
Plus 'Maniac Mechanica!'

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Still the Vacation Job (When will it end??)

Riffman, Topman, Needlegal, and big ol' me managed to find a small hole-in-the-wall pub somewhere where I could get a drink and everyone else could sit and barely hear themselves think. Before you ask, oh yeah, that was my idea.

It turns out that a man named Valter (no given last name apparently) had been hired on by the top board members of the MGM Grand to reinvent the image of the casino to bring it a fresh new face in the technologically advanced age we just happened to find ourselves in these days. Riff didn't have all the details, but he knew that the 'damage' he'd caused while defending the city from a batch of Siege Joes (yeah, the SA troops got bigger and tougher every time he told the story. I wasn't really buying it.) was an impediment to this project, somehow. So after I got back to normal, drinking to make the pain go away, we wandered out for a little scouting mission.

On the way, the subject of Valter, who had been described to us as a sleezebucket of the slimiest caliber, came up again.

"I vote we beat 'im senseless."

"You ALWAYS vote that."

"Works most o' th' time, don't it?"

"Hard, it barely EVER works anymore."

"Well, yeah, but tha's more 'cause o' advanced tech an' intangibil'ty an' other lil' godmoddy junk. Beatin' thin's senseless 's still effectively wha' we do best."

"No, it's what YOU do best."

"Okay, fine. Stabbin' thin's ta death. Tha's wha' YOU do."

"... I do like poking holes in people from a distance."

"An' Top, yer like th' spin cycle o' pain."

"That makes absolutely NO sense."

"... S' a washin' machine joke."

"NO SENSE."

"Yeah, I'm not getting it either, Hard."

"Sorry. I gotta save th' 'A' material fer th' inner monologues an' th' descriptive junk."

"Would you three be quiet?" Riffman half-shouted at us. His voice carried and echoed in the alleyway we found ourselves in between the MGM Grand and the amusement park built behind it.

"Riff, there's nobody 'ere." I told him.

"And you don't find that odd?"

"Well, the gate we broke down DID say 'employees only', so I can't imagine this would be a very crowded spot," Topman shrugged.

Riffman sighed in frustration. I admit, I was doing this mostly to annoy him, and I think Top and Needle were as well. He was just so fun to antagonize, especially when he was close enough that if he decided to try and electrocute us again, we could pretty much just bash him to death.

"So how's th' door comin' along?"

"Don't rush the guy. He's had a rough day," Topman admonished, grinning.

"Well, that's what he gets for attacking a lady out of the blue like that."

"I apologized for that," Riff reminded us.

"Yes, you did. Did you want a cookie or something?"

Riff growled ineffectually. "Y'know wha' I hope?" I asked no one in particular.

"What's that, Hard?" Top responded.

"I'm really hopin' tha' th' bad guy turns out ta be one o' th' lame bad guys we ain't seen 'n a while. Like... Galvatron 'r somethin'."

"The Decepticons? Wow... we haven't seen them since... what, Series 5?"

"What are you guys talking about?" Riffman asked as the door opened with a reluctant click.

"Eh, business stuff," I grunted, letting Riff and the other two enter the darkened stairwell beyond the door before I moved. I tend to take up a lot of space, which makes cautious movement down stairs something of a problem.

"So what's down here?" Topman wondered aloud.

"Not sure," Riffman admitted. "Whatever is down here is pretty expensive, though."

"How do you know?"

"Well, these stairs go down to the sublevel I smashed one of those Scissor Army Siege Joes into when all that damage got caused. You know, the damage that put me IN this mess to begin with."

"So's debt th' reason yer so grumpy taday?" I asked.

"Look who's talking," I heard Needlegal mutter.

Riffman was a bit louder, though. "Look, I don't know WHO you are, really. I've never met you before and I can't say I much like you, so stop acting like you know me."

Something in my head went click, and Topman's voice came in clear. "Okay, I am curious about that myself. How DO you know this guy?"

"Cass an' I ran into him on a weeken' getaway ta Vegas she won fer bein' on Wheel o' Fortune. He was playin' Caesar's Palace," I said over the team comm.

"Was he any good?"

"Eh, so so."

"One of these days, Hardman," Needlegal sighed in my head, "you'll actually tell us a complete story about your life instead of just alluding to it."

"Yeah, you're almost as bad as Cyros."

"Tha' was a low blow, Tops," I grunted.

Riffman made a noise as he encountered another door in the darkness, this one swinging open easily. There was an echo to the door's opening creak.

"Well... this is... unexpected," Topman admitted. His voice echoed in the vast expanse of space we now found before us.

We stood on surprisingly sturdy scaffolding, some ten stories above the floor of... well, it would have been an aircraft hangar if I could have thought of any sort of aircraft that big. Maybe an aircraft CARRIER hangar. If those flew. Or needed a hangar. I know I'm rambling, but this place was just mind blowingly huge. It easily existed below the entire hotel and casino, and maybe even a little beyond it.

And once we all remembered we were robots and turned on our own visial filters for pitch blackness, we noticed the space wasn't empty, either. They could have been pillars, but they didn't reach all the way down to the floor from the ceiling. They were massive, maybe hundreds of feet around, and there were a LOT of them. Not enough to make it crowded, but still. That's when we (okay, Topman) noticed something.

"Are those... are those propellers?"

Sure enough, down near the bottom of each not-pillar, there was a set of rotors, long and wide.

"You have GOTTA be goddamn kiddin' me."

"They CAN'T be serious!" Needlegal exclaimed at the same time.

"They can't seriously be considering... airlifting the casino?" Riffman breathed out.

"Close, but not QUITE the plan I penned out for the board of directors." The voice was... well, it was a marketing voice. Sleezy, underhanded, that sort of thing. I mean, by this point, it was obvious who was speaking. Top, Needle and Riff are just lucky I don't scare TOO easy, because he was right behind me and I'm sure that if I jumped I'd have knocked them all off the scaffolding.

That said, I still swore out loud. "How does EVERYBODY sneak up on me?" I shouted.

"It's pretty easy," Topman covered his own surprise. "You don't pay much attention to anything."

"Fair 'nuff," I grunted as we all shuffled around on the scaffold to make room for Valter.

"So what ARE you planning?" Riffman demanded before he got uncerimoniously shoved down a step to make room for Topman.

"Why, I plan to make the MGM Grand the first Sky Resort, of course."

There was a brief, contemplative pause before Needlegal gave voice to our thoughts. "Isn't that pretty much airlifitng the casino? Like Riffman said?"

"Well, yes," Valter admitted, "but I spent a large amount of my week coming up for just the right way to pitch the words 'Sky Resort,' so I feel I need to get as much mileage out of it as I can."

"Fair 'nuff," I shrugged. I knew a little about advertising, and after a recent battle with the Yellow Pages for getting word out about my bar, I understood how hard it could be to make the whole thing work at all, let alone right. Not that I had that problem at the moment, given I have a patch of concrete to my name and not much else.

"Why wasn't I informed about this?" Riffman asked. "Nothing illegal has happened here, so why the cloak and dagger nonsense?"

Valter grinned an oily grin. "Well, you don't JUST answer to the board of directors of the MGM. You answer to ALL of the major business owners on the Strip, and the Grand wished to keep this project a fairly well kept secret from their competition. I mean, if word got around, EVERYONE would be doing this by now."

"Wait, so nothing BAD has actually happened?" Needlegal asked. "Why are we HERE then?"

Riffman sighed. "Well, I couldn't be sure that Valter wasn't covering for some sort of illegal activity going on down here, but everything seems to be legitimate..."

"Precisely," Valter smiled in a way that made me want to hit him until it stopped being funny, "so I suggest you all run along now and go back to playing heroes for the public eye."

"Playing hero?" Needlegal hissed. "You can't even BEGIN to imagine the year we've been through."

"I can't say I particularly care what kind of a year you've had, you silly machine. All of the Shutdown Code legislation may have been repealed, but that far from means you have any right to be treated like a human being, any of you. Now get out of my sight before I start lawsuits for trepassing."

I'd like to say at this point that I had an idea. I didn't. I was just angry. "Tha's it."

"Hardman! NO!"

"Nope, sorry, Needles," I growled, reaching out and easily wrapping my large hand around Valter's head. "I'm done. I'm not listenin' ta this kinda crap anymore. Not with Cass still 'n a coma, not with th' world still cocked sideways 'cause some arrogant orange prick decided he wanted ta ruin our lives, an' certa'nly not with robot hatin' garbage like this walkin' 'round free 'cause good people, humans an' robots both, laid down their lives so guys like this c'n have th' freedom ta say this crap."

And with that, despite the protests behind me, I fired the Hard Knuckle holding Valter out into the open air.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?" was the first thing Needlegal shouted that made sense or was a coherent sentence. I think Riffman was laughing by this point, but I couldn't be too sure. Topman, on the other hand, was watching my now flying hand.

"What?" I asked innocently as the Knuckle came back, still holding a now visibly pale Valter. He was also shaking.

"I'll... sue..." he was still managing to say as my hand clicked back into place. I grunted and shot him out into the blackness again.

"Stop that!" Needlegal demanded.

"Why? I ain't hurtin' 'im."

"Do you know how much trouble we could get in for this?"

"I'll take m' chances." I grunted.

Valter returned to me, still defiant. "I'll have you metalheads shut down so fast-" And off he went again.

"He sounds angry," Riffman commented.

There was a shrill scream in the darkness and Topman gasped. "You dropped him!" I barely paid attention as I shot the other Hard Knuckle at a downward angle.

"On purpose?" Needlegal shrieked at me.

"Well, yeah," I grinned. "So?"

"Oh, wait, he's got him again," Topman reported, sounding almost disappointed.

Valter came back a different man. A wet (in more disgusting ways than one) whimpering shattered man. One that was hoarsly whispering "I'll give you anything you want!"

"I wan' Riff off th' hook an' three plane tickets back ta Monsteropolis."

"Done!" Valter shouted, his voice meeting the echo of his girlish screams. "Done! Just put me down!"

I gave the man a critical look in the dim light of the open door. "Eh... nah," I said after some consideration, firing him out into the abyss again. I ignored Needlegal's only slightly disapproving glare as he screamed again, and Topman let out a contented sigh.

"Exploiting the filthy rich," he smiled. "Is there ANYTHING it can't do?"

=== === === ===
The end! (Finally!)
=== === === ===

What? You were expecting to escape it this time? You fool...

Maniac Machanica!

Hardman: Whew! THAT's done with, at least.

Topman: I liked it better when you wrote cool fight scenes.

Shadowman: Snake and I are still doing the math to see if that Sky Resort thing is actually plausible.

Topman: Why?

Snakeman: Umm... because we want to own a business like that?

Topman: Oh come on! How would you get customers up to the hotel?

Shadowman: Teleportation.

Topman: Supplies and fuel?

Shadowman: See above.

Topman: But...

Snakeman: Well, it's PLAUSIBLE, but the venture capital we'd need to start...

Shadowman: Yeah?

Snakeman: There's NO WAY we could get that kind of cash with our credit scores.

Needlegal: Yeah, I've been meaning to ask, how DID our credit scores get so bad?

Shadowman: I blame the economic crash that resulted from the War.

Hardman: I don't think that has anything to do with individual credit scores...

Shadowman: Regardless, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Topman: You should probably get a ghost writer.

Snakeman: Ah well, it was a nice thought.

Needlegal: Hey, we learned something, too.

Hardman: Wait, something I wrote taught us something?

Needlegal: No, of course not, Hard.

Hardman: Oh, I see what you did there. With the sarcasm.

Needlegal: Was it too forced?

Hardman: No, no, it was good. A little vicious, but.. you know, I can take it.

Needlegal: Good.

Topman: Well, until Hardman starts writing educational material, we are... the Mechanical Maniacs!