Wanted

By C.M. Rich (Magnetman)

Episode 14 - Round Two ...

May 31st, 20XX, 4:16 PM , PST

“And so, we meet again, outlaws!”

Torchman stood before the roughed-up androids, his arms folded confidently over his chest.

“Cut th’ bullshit, Torch.”, Hardman said menacingly. “We already had our daily dose o’ PC ass kickin’. Our doctor told us not ta overdose on it.”

“Idiots! Once again, you’ve underestimated us! “, Torchman hissed.

“It’s kind of easy to do that after beating you guys for the hundredth time or so.”, Lennon spat back.

“Well, we’re no where near as weak as we were earlier, when you jumped us like the cowards that you are! And besides, we have much more important things to do, rather than show you the true extent of our awesome might.”, the red android raved, spewing fire from his Torch Arm.

“So I see…”, Gauntlet finally interjected. “Who’s the little girl, Torch?”

“That’s of no concern to you, Mech!”, Oilman claimed.

“Yeah! You don’t need to know anything about Alicia!”, Waveman also chimed in, eliciting a sideways glare from the rest of the PC team.

“Enough of this.”, Magnetman growled, having lost the last bit of his patience by now. “We haven’t time for such stupidity. I’ll crush the lot of you right here and now, as I should have done earlier today.”

It seemed as though the rest of the Mechs agreed to this, recognizing that “Alicia” was an important piece of the puzzle, and that the bothersome gnats that called themselves the “true” Sinister Six would never willingly surrender her to their bitter enemies.

True to his nature, Eigen started the new battle with a charge, wanting revenge on Sharkman for his earlier inflictions upon him, as the other Mechs all picked a fight with their most common sparring partners.

Throughout the years, as the Mechanical Maniacs and Sinister Six PC Robot Masters have bitterly laid claim to the real culprits of the aptly named Third Robot Rebellion, the two opposing teams have settled into a series of rituals, including fighting their “favorite” opponents at any given opportunity.

This time, however, the Mechanical Maniacs were in for a surprise.

May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

“Time to settle this fraud!”, Bitman’s overly masculine, Brooklyn-accented voice proclaimed.

“For once, I think yer right.”, Hardman agreed, plunging a massive, three-quarter-ton Hard Knuckle squarely into Bitman’s jaw.

Simultaneously, the giant, shocking yellow Robot Master launched a Bit Cannon into Hardman’s midsection as he took the punch, which sent him stumbling backwards, but not flat on his back.

Immediately, something told Hardman that something was decidedly different about this particular Bit Cannon. He had felt the weapon’s bite and impact several dozen times by now, and each time in the past, he managed to shrug it off, thanks to his incredibly thick hide.

He looked down at his chest, and confirmed it- the lance-like projectile had somehow made it’s way into his armor.

With a massive hand, he took hold of the large, five-foot-long spike while taking a second to scowl at Bitman, whom despite his bruised mandible, sneered.

In an instant, Hardman lit up with fifty million volts, causing arcs of electricity to pour out of his chest cavity and lash out at the surrounding environment. After a few minutes of agony, the deep blue battle tank managed to force his hands to act against the pain, and pull the giant spike out of its anchored position in his chest.

As the lance-like weapon pulled itself back into Bitman’s forearm, Hardman once again found himself in an unfamiliar position on his knees, clutching his chest as though he were having a heart attack.

“Huh…So the Doc was right…”, Hardman heard the gangster-like Bitman say to himself. “Hey Hardy! This ain’t like old times anymore!”

Delivering a vicious kick to Hardman’s jaw, the electrically charged mammoth man seemed to display more confidence. True confidence.

In the past few years, Hardman had noticed it. He noticed how his classic foe, Bitman, had lost confidence with each crushing defeat, masking it with a bravado that usually seemed dead-on, unlike Torchman’s ever-so-theatrical ranting.

Even when they fought each other earlier in the day, Hardman could see in his eyes, and knew that Bitman felt he had no chance of winning that fight. And his punches relayed the message, landing a little softer than he knew they were capable of. Somehow, Hardman never felt sorry for the giant yellow lug or his fellow cronies- it was hard to feel sorry for thugs that insisted on being beat up, having long ago been proven ineffective.

But now…It was different. That old fire was back. A sense of purpose in his attacks and battle banter. A sense of…

Confidence.

For the first time in possibly years, Bitman felt as though he could actually win a one-on-one fight with his counterpart. And it felt good.

“Get up!” Bitman demanded, smashing his forearm into a kneeling Hardman’s cheek.

Hardman took another nasty shot to the cheek before finally catching Bitman’s arm as he wound up for another elbow, making sure to keep the point of the crippling Bit Cannon away from him entirely. Thinking he had his foe at a disadvantage, Hardman reared back his free fist for a sure-fire fight ender.

But Bitman had other ideas. Pulling out yet another trick, Bitman met the Hard Knuckle in mid flight with his own hands.

“Wait a second! You have…hands?!”, Hardman shouted, almost insinuating an unfairness in his old foe suddenly possessing common equipment for most every other Robot Master.

“Yeah…I do!”, the hulking neon giant grinned, pushing the Hard Knuckle aside just enough to avoid being pounded. "I've always had them, ya jerk."

“But…I though…bein’ a handless freak was yer whole gimmick.”

“Huh huh huh…You didn’t really think I’ve made it this far without a decent set of hands now, did ya? And, do you really think I wouldn’t have asked someone at some point ta make me some hands?”

“Well…Yeah. Yer pretty stupid, after all.”

“That may be so…But I’m beating you.”, Bitman countered with, smashing his own fist into Hardman’s left eye.

Bitman had a speed advantage over his larger Mechanical Maniacs counterpart. His body was almost the same build, but with two different schools of thought applied to attack methods. Hardman was definitely a defense-oriented being, with his thick armor plating bulking him up and adding four times his original weight to his frame. Bitman’s armor was far lighter in comparison, and his creator placed greater stress on offensive power with his electrical capabilities.

It used to be that Hardman’s armor easily dealt with the Bit Cannon, deflecting the metal conductor before it even had the chance to shock him from the inside- Bitman’s preferred method of torture. But, his battle with Akoustolith apparently widened gaps between his plates, leaving many prying points for Bitman to send jolts of painful lightning into, be it via his oversized, deadly conductors, or his hands..

Either way, Hardman was in a bad way.

“Huh huh…What do ya say, Hardy? How’s it feel to be on the wrong side of the beating for a change?”

“I’m…I almost feel bad fer ya, Bit. Cept for th’ fact ya deserved every beat down we threw yer way…”, Hardman sputtered as he lay on his back.

“Pay back’s a bitch, Hard.”

Bitman took his position atop Hardman’s barrel-shaped chest, one arm pointed under his nemesis’s chin, the other bringing a “toothpick” to his mouth in victory. It should be noted that a man of Bitman’s size can call a chair leg a toothpick and get away with it.

As he brought his victory vice to his lips, Bitman could only surmise one thing:

This just feels right.

May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

“Blademan…You know, I’m really starting to get pissed off with you morons.”, Needle hissed.

“Like we give a damn! We’ve got the upper hand this time, so we’re gonna hack you clowns to pieces!”

“You’ve been spending way too much time around Torch, you know…”, Needle chuckled to herself, unleashing a flurry of Needle Cannon fire in mid sentence.

Blademan sneered with his sharp, saw-like teeth as he used a few projectiles of his own to counter the swarm of pin rain mid-air. Needle, expecting such a counter, used the distraction to get in close, where her cactus-like armor could protect her and tear Blademan apart in no time.

Using her robotic speed to its utmost potential, she leapt into the air and extended her foot, ready to deliver a deadly flying kick, topped off with needle-like protrusions from her armor to add even more pain.

Foolishly, it seemed, Blademan didn’t even try to avoid the kick, and instead braced himself to meet it head on. With uncharacteristic precision and confidence, Blademan managed to grab NeedleGal’s foot without touching the plethora of spikes that covered a lion’s share of her armor, and use her own momentum to toss her into the ground behind him.

NeedleGal rolled with the force of the throw and managed to end up in a slightly unstable standing position, ready for a follow up attack by the brash pollution control android.

“Nice armor!”, he grinned. “But I can do that too!”

Needle raised an eyebrow as Blademan folded his arms over his chest and began grunting in stress as several, large menacing blades erupted from his body. It was a new trick from an old foe.

Immediately, Needle recognized a problem with this latest development:

“Damn…His blades are longer than mine. He’s got the advantage in close combat…I’ll have to stick to cannon fire. I hope they didn’t bother to fix his eyes with those upgrades…”, she thought to herself.

Needle rolled to the side, strafing Blademan with spike-like machine gun fire, which did little more than hit him in a few random places. The magenta android launched several of his own cutters from his Blade Launcher, all of which seemed far more accurate than what Needle was used to.

“Damn it…”

His speed also seemed to have improved by many fold, as well. Within micro seconds, he was directly in front of NeedleGal with a single leap, with a nasty surprise ready for her.

“Glahh!!”, she screamed as a sword-like blade found its way into her stomach, exiting out of her back. Blade had used one of his forearm-mounted protrusions to impale Needle, and her own armor was woefully short of providing her with much protection.

“Game over, Mechanical Moron !”

May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

“Man…Do you ever get tired of being so pathetic?”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything about me!”, Waveman answered the Twin Terror.

“Yeah…I do. You’ve pretty much written your own autobiography on MySpace. I know more about you than I want to, actually.”, Lennon remarked.

“Oh yeah? Well, what’s my pet peeve, then?!”

“Hmm.”, Geminiman pondered. “I’d have to say…pain!”

“Hey, you’re riaaughhh!”

The emotionally unbalanced android wailed in pain as Geminiman unleashed a white-hot laser beam into Waveman’s chest once again.

“Wave, do you really want to go through this yet again? It’s really tiresome by now.”

Waveman stayed on his knees, cradling his chest with his arms as his torso still smoked. Until, that is, he erupted.

“I’ll make…you…understand my pain!”

It came at Geminiman so fast. It was massive- at least twenty feet tall by the time it swept him into its current, crushing him and smashing all of the air from his cybernetic lungs. The noise it made was tremendous, like a wrecking ball bring down a building.

Finally, it dropped him off…Fifty feet away from where it originally swept him up, and it kept going long after it had deposited him so roughly. Lennon’s body immediately initiated a coughing spasm to remove the massive amount of foreign material from his lungs.

“*Kha*…*Koff*…Glagh! Wh-what the hell?! Dirt?!”

He looked up, his eyes irritated by the dust that was forced into them, towards Waveman, who seemed just as puzzled as he did.

“I…I didn’t know I could do that…Could it have been…?”

The black and pink PC robot looked upon the gagging Geminiman, deciding to test this new ability out once again.

He swept an arm out in dramatic fashion, his fingers pointed towards the ground. Below them, the ground obeyed, forming the beginnings of another tsunami wave from the soft, crushed landscape, started a journey towards the still-coughing Twin Terror, who barely managed to dodge the wave this time.

“Ha…Ha ha…Y-yes! It’s really…It’s really true! He really did make me stronger! Hahahahahaha!”

“What are you going on about?! Who?!”, Geminiman demanded.

“You have no right to know…You…weakling!”, Waveman screamed in joy, using both arms in rapid succession to send volley after volley of dirt tsunamis towards his long time foe. “That’s right! I’M going to win this one!”

Geminiman began shooting towards the waves with his Gemini Laser, attempting to shoot through them and hopefully hit Waveman in the process. Though he couldn’t see Waveman through the increasingly growing waves of debris, he surmised that he hadn’t hit him yet, since the waves kept coming.

That, or his beams just couldn’t make it through the thick onslaught.

“When did he get so strong? Just a few hours ago, he was defenseless and useless without any water…What is this?”, Lennon wondered as he split form, using his clone as a jumping point to try and clear the waves just long enough to shoot Waveman from the air.

As he leapt skyward and apparently cleared a twenty-five foot wave, he wound up face first in an even larger wave that was lurking behind the one he had just cleared. Too far up to dodge, Lennon was helpless against the might of the giant wave, and was once again engulfed by the dirty mass.

From there, everything was grey and brown. Then black.

May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

“You…I should have killed you earlier today…”

“But you didn’t. So now, YOU get to be deleted!”

From his back, Sharkman’s fin released itself and formed the massive tri-armed Shark Boomerang he now carried with him since his upgrade. With a hefty toss, the razor-toothed robot sent his monstrous projectile to meet Magnetman yet again.

Not in a very playful mood after the day’s events so far, Kenta stayed his ground and stopped the huge weapon in mid-air before him instantly without moving an inch.

“This toy…Let’s see how you’ll like it when I use it to make you bleed…”

The cloak-wearing android tapped the floating Shark Boomerang with his index finger, which it reacted to by launching itself back towards Sharkman with even greater velocity than he had flung it with.

Sharkman had a simple solution to this problem: he dove beneath the surface of the broken earth at their feet.

Suddenly, Kenta felt Sharkman take remote control over the Shark Boomerang from him, and the deadly disc-like apparatus swept high into the air before descending upon him once again. Opting to simply retake control over the weapon once again, Kenta braced himself, but felt the ground tremble beneath him as Sharkman erupted from the earth, attempting to chomp away at the magnet master’s leg.

Barely avoiding Sharkman’s amputating bite, Kenta momentarily forgot about the Shark Boomerang still looming closer to him at about seventy miles an hour. In the nick of time, he dodged the weapon, but not before it claimed a sizable chunk from his left shoulder.

Sharkman wouldn’t even give him the time feel the pain of the cut, as he chased after him, still waist deep in the earth, using his arms to try and grab at his feet for a steady grasp for his mouth to clamp down on.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder for an instant, Magnetman called his magnetic dust from its hiding place in his body, using it to sting the frenzied great white’s eyes and getting a few good hops away before finally clenching the gaping wound on his shoulder with his fingerless hand.

“Glah!...He’s…Far more cunning than before…”

Magnetman noticed at this point something strange.

“I can’t ‘feel’ him. He’s using the Earth to shield himself from my magnetism…He’s…got the advantage here…”

May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

"You know…I’ve never been really fond of cleaning up after fighting you, Slick.”, Topman lamented before Oilman.

“Deal with it, jerk.”

“Would it kill you guys to lighten up every so often?”

“It might. Speaking of killing…”

Topman sighed. “Yeah…About that…”

“Eat this!”

Oilman shot forth his infamously lackluster weapon, the Oil Stream, towards Topman, who simply spun out of the way with relative ease as the slippery substance trailed behind him like a weak fire hose.

“Jeez, this is sad…”, a very bored Spinning Demon heaved as he back flipped over the stream and let a few miniature top bombs loose towards Oilman. “Why is it that every time I fight you, I get the ominous feeling of déjà vu?”

“So sorry to bore you…Let’s see if I can change things up a bit.”

Oilman immediately stopped his ineffective Oil Stream and pointed his arm skywards. Producing a rather humorous looking effect akin to a lawn sprinkler, the oil sprayed out of his cannon in a pattern-like way as it sputtered skywards before raining down.

Topman may have laughed if this didn’t mean he’d be covered in a light coating of the noxious lubricant, further giving his dry cleaner another reason to hate him. A very annoyed orange android started to make a beeline straight for the soured Oilman.

Then he noticed it. A strange feeling. Something was out of place.

Topman looked down, immediately noticing his feet were moving in a more erratic fashion than he wanted them to. They were moving back and forth as well as side to side, and soon, his arms were also moving in the same fashion.

Helplessly, Topman crashed into a pile of wreckage far off his intended target of Oilman.

“Hmm…Interesting…”, Oilman muttered as he examined his arm cannon.

From within the pile, the oil-slicked Spinning Demon attempted to push himself upright, fighting his own limbs' desire to do anything but what he wanted them to.

“What the hell? My joints keep…slipping!”

Oilman finally let loose an uncharacteristic chuckle. “Heheh…I see what he did. He changed the composition of my oil. Simple, but very effective…”

Realizing what this meant for him, the slightly sneering former pollution controller marched towards the out of control, stranded Topman.

 May 31st, 20XX, 4:11 PM , PST

“Who’s the girl, Torchman?”, Gauntlet demanded.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, my one-eyed nemesis?”

“Just tell us, Torch. We don’t want to fight anyone!”, Classi pleaded with the eccentric PC leader.

“Hah! Ha ha! The hell with you!”, he cackled as he got to business, blazing his Torch Arm and igniting the ground before SparkChan and Shadowman, both of whom scattered to avoid the horrendous heat.

“Classi…”, Gauntlet uttered just loud enough for her to hear. “I’ll distract him. See if you can reach the girl and hide out with her until we’re done.”

“Right!”

“Wrong!”

Torchman erupted from his own inferno, catching both of them by surprise. Apparently, his hearing was much better than anyone gave him credit for, especially with that thick helmet he wore.

Quickly, he grabbed hold of the Electric Lady, almost choking her with his hand-equipped arm.

Gauntlet moved quickly, about to run his sword straight through his madman nemesis, but was stopped suddenly.

“Ah ah ah…Not so fast, Shadowman! One move-“ he explained while holding his Torch Arm dangerously close to SparkChan’s cheek- “and I’ll cook her pretty little face off. You wouldn’t want to force me to do something like that, would you?”

“Torch, you bastard…”

Gauntlet held his position, then began inching backwards. Keen to his old adversary’s tricks, Torchman took another precaution.

“No shadow warping this time, you belligerent little pajama-wearer!”, he growled as he used his Torch Arm to ignite the ground around Classi and himself, encircling the both of them.

“Damn…Fire’s too close…”, Gauntlet noted to himself. It would be too close to use his shadow warp.

“Call off your dogs! This fight is ours!”, Torchman demanded.

“Torch! Listen to us!”, Classi pleaded once again, her neck bent awkwardly by the larger android’s grip. “We just need to know who she is! The government is here looking for her too!”

“I know! Don’t you think I already know that?!”, the blazing madman shot back to his captive. “Hah! Face it Mechs, you’re out of the loop!”

“You’re right.”, Gauntlet relented.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re right. You’ve finally gotten the upper hand. So…Now what? What are you going to do with it?”

“None of your damn business, Mech!”

“C’mon…I’m pretty interested in what you’ve got planned. I mean, here you’ve got this girl that everyone’s after, but what can you possibly do with her?”, Shadowman observed. “You guys aren’t smart enough to do much of anything with anyone. I doubt you could hold her for much ransom.”

“Ransom?! What do you take us for? Low life criminals?!””

“Well…Yeah.”

Torchman’s voice suddenly became calmer, but not by much. Both Classi and Gauntlet could tell he was talking through gritted teeth: “For your information, this little girl happens to be a very important piece to the puzzle. After all…

She knows what happened here!”

Shadowman narrowed his eye. “Bullshit.”

"You wish! Alicia is the daughter of a top weapons developer in the US government. He asked us, the Sinister Six, to protect he and his daughter, and we will do so until our last breath!”

“Um…Question.”, SparkChan managed to choke out. “Where’s her dad?”

“Well…Uh…He was…None of your business!”

“…You idiots let him get captured by the government, didn’t you?”, Gauntlet sighed.

“How’d you-…No! He wasn’t! He’s…hiding! But before he left, of his own free will mind you, he fixed us up after you and that invisible army of super-powered gladiators ruthlessly jumped us for no good reason this morning. He even reworked some of our systems on the spot, granting us even more control over our better-than-yours armor!  Like the ability to actually use it!  Our diminutive red friend gave us these upgrades just a little while ago and now, thanks to our benefactor’s skill in augmenting technology, they are finally compatible with our advanced technology!”

“Torch”, Gauntlet said, halfway chuckling by this point. “You’ve got a hell of an imagination. Well, I think we’ve heard all we need to. Classi?”

The mango-loving android nodded understandingly, and shocked Torchman in the leg ever so gently, prompting him to release his grip on her just enough to allow her escape. Using her electric shield, she cleared the flames and took her spot close to Gauntlet’s side.

“You…You tricked me! Evil…Evil thug!”, Torchman accused, rubbing his thigh. “You’ll regret that! Now, you’ll finally feel the true, unfiltered power of Torchman at long last! Ha ha…Ah hahaha!”

Shadowman casually drew his blade once again.

After all…How tough could he be?