Mechanical Maniacs: Life After Life

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

CHAPTER 12: Return

"The whole thing's a setup! He knew who were were the whole time!" Rajin was shouting into the radio.

"Been plannin' this fer months, prolly years. Kenta ain't safe, and niether's Classi."

"I have my hands too full to worry about that right now!" Needlegal cursed. I heard the barking report of machinegun fire through the radio. "SD, how close are you to the park?"

"Not close enough," SD reported, sounding out of breath.

"Kick it 'n gear, Tops," I said, approaching the window and looking out over the street. There, below me, the edge of the cordon. If I could draw enough attention, the Middleman was sure to make an appearance, just to gloat. I knew his type, I'd fought it before. But there wasn't enough time.

Not enough for me to just run down there, anyway.

"I'll make a show," I said. "Stall fer time."

"Don't do anything stupid, Hard!" Needlegal shouted.

"Too late," I said, tossing the radio on the bed next to the now useless suitcase. It continued to issue noise that I was all but deaf to now as I aimed the gun in my hand at the window. I emptied the clip into it, breaking out huge portions of the glass and raining shards of sharp transparency on the street below me. I heard the commotion rise up as the people below reacted to the repeated sound of gunfire.

I activated the last flashbang and threw it down to the street below, and then took a few steps back.

I had to be crazy to try this. Insane.

I pulled the black box out of my back pocket and took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

In four bounding steps I was at the window, and then I leapt through. A collective gasp from the crowd below stopped the various law-enforcement guys enforcing the cordon from shooting me. The flashbang detonated, startling them all away and making a neat hole in the crowd directly below me. I swore a word that was lost to the rush of air and hit the button on the box.

Light enveloped me as technology that I'd been told 'was magic' went to work. The reconfiguration matrix was a very, very confusing subject to me. Gauntlet had understood it perfectly, but he couldnt explain anything well. The short and the long of it was this: I leapt out of an eight story building a spry old man.

I landed as a four ton engine of mass destruction.

There was a ring of gaping faces around me as I stood up. The pain in my joints didn't exist anymore. The throbbing of my broken nose was gone. The stitch in my side had been erased. I was no longer a old man. I was ten feet tall, six feet wide, and sporting a pearlescent blue paint job on armor that could, would, and has stopped tank shells in the past, and would probably be called upon for an encore before the day was done.

"Holy crap," a guy in his twenties breathed, "it's Hardman."

I grinned as I stepped out of the divot I'd dug into the street and stepped toward the cordon. The crowd parted and looked from me to the police expectantly. The one who seemed to be in charge remembered himself and fumbled with his megaphone.

"Uh... Surrender!" Not bad, given the circumstances.

I pretended to think about it for a second as I strode forward. Long, distance devouring strides that sounded like cars slamming together. "Yeah," I intoned in a voice like lead slabs falling into a well, "good luck wi' that."

He stammered for a moment before he ordered his men to open fire. They looked at him like he was crazy. They were equipped with riot gear, which was very effective against rioting humans. It was like a foot-high fence to an armed (literally) and dangerous ten foot robot.

"Look, guys," I sighed, stopping at the edge of the concrete barriers that sectioned the street off from the Memorial Park. "I'd like ta help ya. I really would. But ta do that, I'm gonna need ya ta, y'know, move."

Reality seemed to snap back into focuse for the crowd and there was a mixed swell of cheers and screams. Beyond the cordon, the press began to take notice of me. A few older members of the MPD pulled the younger ones aside, clearing a gap for me and all but ignoring their CO. I shoved the concrete barriers aside with ease and waded into the news crews.

"Mr. Hardman, does your return signal the return of the Mechanical-"

"Are you here to speak at the conference?"

"Are you part of a terroist organiza-"

"Why are you here?"

I growled and stepped carefully through them, taking joy in hearing the officer in charge behind me lose his tiny mind through incomprehension. As soon as there was clear space ahead of me, I picked up my pace, leaving them behind. I made really good time to the steps of the Memorial Park.

But I didn't like what I saw.

There were more officers in riot gear, and some more that were heavily armed, but they were all down. The pools of blood that spread outward from them told me they were dead. Beyond the park in the water it overlooked was a group of seven battleships, probably there for show, but nothing on them seemed to be moving, either. Standing in the middle of the carnage at the foot of the steps, like some macabre symphony conductor, stood the Middleman. He turned and smiled as I approached.

"Ah, you're here!" He clapped his hands and then seemed to notice something that made him unhappy. "Well? Where are the rest of them?"

I shrugged. "Sorry, crazy. I guess you'll just hafta settle fer me."

"Oh, come now! They probably won't be long. We can wait for them, can't we?" He chuckled.

I was less willing to beat around the bush. "You set us up. Th' whole thin'."

"Of course."

"So yer not really a middleman," I growled. "Who ARE ya?"

He giggled and spread his arms. "Why, I'm THE Middleman. A mere step away from my ascension to godhood. I'm the unrealized potential."

"Okay, yer not makin' sense."

"You were warned I was coming. All those years ago."

"What're ya talkin' about?"

"I'm the devil you didn't know."

Realization set in. Memory flared to life. A white, jigsaw puzzle of a villain, posing us a question. The devil we knew or the devil we didn't? The devil we knew needed humanity to survive, lived off of their very evil, and understood that. The devil we knew actually sabotaged an entirely different devil to save humanity from certain death, only to try and embroil it in a neverending war to glut itself on the dark emotions that would result.

A devil I couldn't allow to live again.

The Hard Knuckle was flying before I even realized I'd fired it. The fist was the size of most actual people, and travelling faster than a dragster. It would smear a more frail robot like the Middleman across the pavement in the barest hints of a second.

But it didn't. It hit SOMETHING, of that I'm sure, but not him. It sailed back to me and clamped onto my vacant elbow, and I flexed my fingers.

"Oh, please. Like I'd even think about facing you all without some protection," the Middleman chuckled. I watched carefully, and caught sight of a purple flicker in the air. Some sort of bubble around him.

"Evil energy." It was a statement, not a question.

"Very good! I suppose you're not as dumb as you look," he laughed. "I acquired a means to harvest it some years ago. That's when my plans really moved into high gear! To think, there's a boundless, limitless supply of the stuff just lying around. I'm surprised no one's gathered it all up before!"

I felt my eye twitch. Someone HAD gathered it all up before, and when his satellite home exploded, it was scattered across the globe. Invisible, mostly harmless, but still there. Just under the surface of reality, waiting for some psychopath to come along and pick it up.

That bastard's last gift to us all. A follower.

"So yer just gonna slaughter th' leaders o' th' world and harvest the energy generated by the mass panic an' confusion?" I said, barking a mirthless laugh. "That's strictly freshman villain stuff there, kid."

"Ah, yes, I'm the new guy, aren't I?" the Middleman sneered. "Easily defeated, I suppose? Just because I'm new to the rouge's gallery doesn't mean I'm stupid. No, I have a brood of willing followers who will leap into action as soon as I give the word."

"The Sterling Sentinels?" I ventured. It was only a guess, but it would explain how they knew how to follow us. How to try and pick us off. Hell, knowing what the Middleman knew, it might explain why certain members of the new Megaman Team went after select targets. Concreteman versus Hardman. Well, at least now, when that happened, the scales would be a little more even.

"Of course," the Middleman laughed, bowing. "Ah, I see we have more guests!"

I turned to see Topman. Not SD, Topman, with his orange armor and long, black coat. He sped up to me and screeched to a halt. "Sorry I'm late!"

"Good ta see ya," I told him. "I was goin' nuts jus' havin' this idiot ta listen ta."

I turned back to the Middleman to see if my comment had at least annoyed him, but he was looking away, towards something else. I turned to see Magnetman, his dull, dark red armor covered mostly by that cliche brown cloak of his. I also spotted another person behind him. For some reason, the bright green hair never seemed to clash with her orange and white color scheme. It just sort of seemed to cement her position as the most optimistic of us all.

"Hey guys," Sparkchan smiled. "Good to see you all again."

"D'ya have any trouble findin' th' place?" I asked.

"Oh, no, you made quite the commotion," Magnetman said. "Were I blind and deaf, I still would have been able to point you out to a passerby."

"Good to see everyone made it!" Needlegal called, running up, back in her full battle gear. "The three goons who were attacking me just up and left."

"Yes," the Middleman smiled. "I called them off as soon as our large friend here arrived."

"Good," came a voice from a nearby manhole cover. It slid aside and Snakeman poked his head out. "I swear to god, the next time I see that Hornetman, I'm going to kill him in ways that'd make Hannibal Lector scream like a little girl," he growled, pulling himself out of the sewer.

"Wonderful!" the Middleman sang, clapping his hands. "The six surviving Mechanical Maniacs! Now we can get this party started!"

"Don't count on it, smiley," I grinned.

"Yeah, you're pretty much small time stuff, especially without your minions to back you up," Topman smiled.

"Beatin' time?" I asked the group in general, and recieved a round of affirmative answers.

"Oh, not so fast," he protested, holding up a hand. "I have one more guest I'd like to invite to the party." He adopted a smirk and snapped his fingers.

There was a tremendous roar, and a cascade of water as the battleships beyond the park literally stood up. The center ship rose first, with the next two slamming together and twisting in way they were never meant to, forming into some kind of body as the thing continued to rise out of the ocean. The next two ships in the group flew up impossibly and attatched to the body like arms and the last two sank only to reappear a moment later under the body, bent and torn into makeshift legs.

There was an unholy sound of tearing metal as a, for lack of a better word, mought formed along the bow the the 'head' ship and it let out a massive, window shattering cry. Thick cables lanced through the battleship hulls and connected the monstrosity together, and there entire assembly looked down a long, gun-studded nose at us.

"Aw, fuck," I heard Topman shout. "Cityman."