Mechanical Maniacs: Life After Life

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

CHAPTER 16: Faith

"Okay," I said, looking down the street at certain crushing doom. "How do we kill 'im?"

"How'd we kill him last time?" Topman asked.

"I think we burned him down," Snakeman told us. "Although that will be much more difficult this time, considering our lack of fire-based weapons."

Shadowman smirked. "Almost makes me wish I hadn't offed Magmaman as fast as I did."

"All jokin' aside, boss, we're gonna need a plan."

Shadowman broke into an outright smile. "Oh, what, where's the faith you always used to have in me?"

There was a series of sharp, loud cracking noises, and I looked back at the monster of Cityman as fire blossomed on his frame. Chunks of building cascaded off his body, adding more piles to the rubble on the streets.

I turned to see a group of A-3M-4 'Abigail' Main Battle Tanks speeding down the street toward us, their turrets shifting and aiming before unleashing another salvo. Cityman roared and reared up, coming down hard in an earth shaking way before unleashing the fury of his own cannons. His barrage proved ineffective as the Abigails boosted sideways with their emergency relocation systems and returned fire.

I watched the exchange with an amount of awe I hadn't been forced to muster in a very long time.

"I've gotta know," Snakeman said finally as the tanks trundled past us and slammed Cityman again with another burst of cannonfire, "how in hell did you set THIS up?"

Shadowman laughed. "Well... THAT's a secret. But those tanks won't be able to destroy Cityman all by themselves. We're going to have to get inside while he's distracted and destroy him the old fashion way."

"You'll never destroy him," the Middleman coughed from under Shadowman's foot. "I've improved him, made him even stronger! He'll kill you all before he starts to tear the rest of this city to pieces. You can't win, you relics!"

"I am gettin' SO tired o' bein' called old," I grumbled. "I mean, yeah, I AM, but th' world can stop rubbin' it 'n my face just about any time now."

There was a quick movement as Shadowman literally sliced the Middleman's legs from his body, kicking the now ownerless limbs aside. "Okay, HE'S not going anywhere," he said over the other robot's screaming, "but he's still mostly alive for questioning."

"AND he's not insultin' us anymore."

"Bonus," Topman nodded, giving me a thumbs up.

The following conversation didn't actually take place, such as it's represented here. It was a lot faster and a lot less exposition-filled, but narratively speaking, I figured this would be the best place for you, the reader, to come to grips with a few facts that we, as the Mechanical Maniacs, were already well aware of.

"If memory serves," Snakeman said, "Cityman is a collective of macrobots. So he has no central control system and no generator to focus on, so those options are gone."

"His collective worm-things do feel pain when one is destroyed though," Topman said, "Maybe we could overload them all by dealing a lot of damage to a big group of them?"

"How d' we do that?" I asked, hoping someone had a plan.

"The battleships," Shadowman said thoughtfully. "They're the first things he took over, so they're the closest to the center. They probably have fuel tanks and ammunition stores, so we could probably set one or two of them off and hope that shakes him to pieces."

'O' course, that means th' best point o' entry is his HEAD," I pointed out, already beginning to see my role in this propesctive plan and not liking it. "An' his head's got all those guns." To punctuate my point, there was a thunderous report of cannonfire, and one of the Abigails exploded for its failure to react fast enough. The remaining tanks opened fire again, but Cityman plodded forward ponderously, obviously thinking to crush them under his 'feet'.

"We'll need Sparkchan. Her electricity can set off anything explosive we might find," Snakeman said. "We're also going to need to get Hard in there, to protect her from the resulting explosion. And Magnet, of course, to get Hard in there in the first place."

"I wanna say, right now, I do NOT like this plan," I said. Nobody really listened to me.

"We have a plan?" Needlegal asked as she approached, Geminiman and Sparkchan behind her. "That's good."

"The rest of us can distract that antibody system of his by going after his legs. The more we divide the attention of the Macrobots, the more likely it is that the explosion can destabilize the bunch of them," Shadowman finished.

"When did ANY of us become experts on Macrobots?" Geminiman wondered aloud.

Topman smiled. "What, you don't meticulously study EVERY enemy we've ever come across?"

"No," Geminiman snorted, "I have a LIFE."

"Says th' guy who's been widely reported 's dead until very recen'ly," I remarked.

"I did NOT miss your sass," he said, shooting me a sideways glare.

Shadowman explained the plan to the other three quickly, adding on to the end "and for this to work, we'll need Magnetman. Er... anyone seen him?"

"Not that I'm endorsin' this idea 'r anythin', but I saw him chasin' Galaxyman through holes 'n the sky."

Everyone stopped and looked at me. "Hard..." Top said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, "... have you been drinking?"

The world warped around a single point in the air and split open, and through the hole, screaming, came Galaxyman, pierced through the body with a long spike of angry metal, sailing right toward Shadowman. The ninja-esque robot master leapt out of the way, leaving the legless Middleman to get impaled instead in his still-good shoulder as the lance slammed into the ground. The Middleman resumed screamming in tandem with his run-through lackey as Magnetman leapt through the closing gap, landing heavily on the metal spike's back end and driving it deeper into the ground.

He landed gracefully after back-flipping of what must have been a ten foot steel spike and stood, scoffing as he did so. "That took embarassingly long."

"Tol' ya," I grunted.

"All right. The gang's all here. Let's do this," Shadowman nodded, starting to sprint after the tanks.

We all began to follow him as Magnetman asked "What are we doing?"

"We'll explain on the way," Topman told him, "but the short version is this: You get to chuck Hardman into Cityman's head."

"Excellent."