Better Judgment:
The Dr. Wily Story

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 16

199X

This, and everything that came before to lead me here, was my fault. It was mine to bear, and mine to fix. I knew that now.

I was sweating, I know, when I approached the building. I just knew that on the outside, I LOOKED suspicious. I HAD to have looked like I was up to something. Have you ever been doing something you know is a terrible idea and felt like you had a big neon sign above your head that alerted every authority figure for miles around that you were doing something criminal? I was surprised, honestly, when Alan smiled as I approached.

“Ah, Mr. Wily,” the security guard nodded. “Here to see Mr. Gibbs?”

“Um, Mr. Kintobor, actually,” I said with a nervous tremor. I offered a briefcase to Alan. “Please don't X-ray this. There's some sensitive material in there.”

Alan raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

“It's a circuit board, for a project he wanted my help on. It's very delicate. I can show you if you need?”

He nodded, and I set the briefcase on a nearby cinder block planter that held some rather fake looking ferns. I snapped the case open and leaned it gently toward Alan, who gave it the appraising look of a man who wasn't quite sure what he was looking at.

In reality, the briefcase held a piece of junk board with some hastily added wiring to make it look important, in an equally hastily made foam backing that also held the Beretta underneath. I was smuggling a firearm into a secured building, believe it or not. Hopefully, Alan wouldn't.

“Man, this stuff all looks the same to me,” Alan grumbled. “Can't you geeks make this out of sterner stuff? You really game the security protocols when you bring this crap around.”

I shrugged nervously. “Technological advances are always delicate to begin with. We toughen them up with time.”

“I guess. I still have to search you though,” the security guard sighed.

After a quick pat down and a wave of the wand (which thankfully didn't get anywhere near my briefcase) I passed through the door and into the building proper. I walked quickly to the elevator and hit the 'up' button, my heartbeat filling my head with noise.

The doors opened, and Alfred Gibbs looked shocked for the first time I had ever seen.

“Al? What're you doing here?”

I stammered for a moment, “I... I came to see Julius. Uh... I reconsidered.”

He looked puzzled, and cocked his head to the side. “That... doesn't sound like you, Al. Not at all.”

My brain scrambled for a viable excuse. “I can't let Julius just stomp all over Tom's future. He had nothing to do with this, and he's suffering just as much as I am, and that's wrong, so I'm going to do what Julius wants and get him off Tom's back.”

Gibbs's eyes crossed as he tried to make sense of what I was saying. I had said it pretty fast, and even I had to replay it in my head to fully get it. It was a pretty good excuse, if not a little muddled by my nerves. “Oh... kay,” Gibbs said eventually, motioning for me to get in. I stepped inside and he looked at the briefcase. “Got something for him, then?”

“Er... yes.” The first honest thing I had actually said so far.

Gibbs was still looking at me critically when he took out his key and put it into the console, hitting the button for the 46th floor. I had forgotten that detail, in my panic, and found myself oddly grateful that Gibbs had been here. Without him, I never would have made it to Julius.

“Well, have fun,” Gibbs said slowly, stepping out of the elevator. I had to wonder briefly if he had guessed my intentions. “Don't get carried away.” The barest hints of a smile crossed his face as the doors closed. He knew I was going to do something. Maybe he wanted to see what it was. Maybe he wondered if I was actually going to do it.

In truth, I was wondering that as well.

The elevator seemed to take forever to reach the 46th floor, and when the doors finally opened, I had already discarded my ruse of a briefcase and held the Beretta in my hands, holding tightly to keep the shaking of my arms from being apparent.

I stepped into the penthouse loft to a face I had not expected.

“Professor Cain?”

“Albert Wily?” Gary Cain, my Computer Engineering teacher, spun around, his face a mix of shock and confusion. His eyes widened as they saw the weapon in my hand. He was standing over Julius Kintobor, who was sitting rather languidly in a chair. “What are YOU doing here?”

“I could ask YOU the same question!” I replied, raising the Beretta carefully as I clicked off the safety, my finger still off the trigger. “How are you connected to Julius Kintobor?”

“Oh hell,” Julius muttered.

Cain's confusion only deepened. “Kintobor? I only know him as Mr. X...”

“It doesn't matter right now, Gary,” Julius snapped. “Just finish your work!”

“No!” I shouted almost involuntarily. “Whatever he's having you do, don't you even think about it!”

“I'm going to have to listen to my student with the gun on this one,” Cain said, raising his hands and backing away slowly.

“You coward,” Julius coughed. He looked much worse for the wear than the last time I had seen him. More pale and sickly, like he'd played at being before. He turned his glassy eyes on me. “So you have me at your mercy, Al. Now what?”

I took a deep breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth. “You had your own son murdered! My friend!”

“So, you're here for revenge?” He wheezed a laugh. “Oh that's just rich.”

“You killed your son?” Professor Cain obviously did not belong in this conversation, but he was here anyway.

“I arranged for his little side project to go poorly,” Julius confirmed. “Dr. Cooper pressed the actual button for me. I suspect he's not dead so much as... well, in several places. Almost all of them, actually.”

“You sick bastard,” I hissed.

“Oh please. Isaac was hardly innocent of all this,” Julius's voice was like oil, black and messy. His breathing was ragged as he tried to stand up. “He was next in line and he knew it. He was just waiting for me to die of his damn virus so he could take over.”

“Virus?”

“He was a bioengineering student, you idiot. He made a virus only he knew how to cure, and he doped me up with it. The perfect crime, really. I have to applaud the initiative, if not the actual execution.” He finally managed to reach his full, unimpressive height.

“So you were trying to beat the clock by uploading yourself into a computer.”

Julius hissed for air. “And a robotic duplicate body that you were supposed to provide for me eventually, yes.”

“That seems to have worked out for you,” Cain said wryly.

“Shut up, Gary.”

“I have to say that I'm probably not going to help you anymore, Mr. X. Consider this my resignation.”

“Imagine my shock,” Julius grumbled. With a speed that betrayed his condition, he produced a small pistol and shot Cain in the head. Blood spattered the window and floor behind him and he looked mildly shocked before he slumped to the ground. Julius smirked. “Resignation accepted,” he quipped, turning to me.

A part of my brain, operating on instinct, took aim and fired the M9. The kick threw me off, unprepared for it as I was, and I ended up hitting the elder Kintobor in his prosthetic shoulder, the impact nonetheless enough to knock him back into the chair, which broke under his weight and sent him sprawling to the floor, his own weapon skittering away. The shot had mostly been a knee-jerk reaction, like jumping at a sudden clown face in a fun house, but the fact burned itself into my heads that I had just shot a man. Not fatally, but still.

Julius seemed just as surprised as I was. “Holy shit!” he coughed, trying to roll over. “You ACTUALLY shot me?”

My wrist was throbbing and my ears hurt, but I could hear him start to laugh again. “Amazing,” he wheezed. “Just amazing. I'm totally at your mercy now, Albert Wily. What will you do?”

I looked over at Professor Cain, his blood pooling around him now, and his face frozen into that look of mild shock. “Why was he here?”

“You're so damn smart,” Julius giggled. “YOU figure it out.”

My mind was racing. “He... he was your lead? The guy designing the system to put your mind into a computer?”

Julius chuckled. “He was the best. He had a working process, or so he claimed. I was just about to go through it, too. I was THIS close to my immortality, damn it all.” Blood flecked his lips now, possibly a symptom of the virus he claimed Isaac had infected him with. His breathing and pallor... he wasn't going to live much longer. A few minutes, maybe. He knew it to. He wasn't even struggling to get up now.

“You know?” he gasped a few times, “they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die... I can't say I'm looking forward to mine.”

I approached him slowly, just in case he had some other trick to try. “Are you regretting your life of crime?”

He coughed again, this time a gout of blood staining his face. “No,” he gurgled. “not at all. Just kinda pissed that it's ending. The rest of it was great...”

“You were a monster.” I told him.

“Hah... something... you haven't learned yet...”

“Oh?”

“World... NEEDS monsters...” Julius was going now. I could see it. His eyes probably weren't seeing anything anymore, despite being wide open. They looked like the blood vessels in them had burst. They were almost black now. “People... need... something... to unite... against... to... be united... at... all...”

“That's pretty stupid.”

He smiled, the visual marred by his blood and the fact that he looked almost zombie-like now. “You'll... see...”

...and Julius Kintobor died.

I don't know why I stayed. I don't know how long I stood there before the elevators opened again. I don't know what the look of Alfred Gibbs face was as he approached me from behind, putting a hand on my back and putting a hand on the Beretta to engage the safety on it. I was in a daze, completely unaware of my surrounding, my brain working overtime on a single thought.

Now what?

20XX

“NOW WHAT?” I shouted after slamming another flashing button on my control pad.

“Um... sir, we brought the lady?”

Nitro Man's voice startled me. Not a scant second ago, I had been screaming at the top of my lungs, venting almost 40 years of pent up frustration at the man I held responsible for all of the wrong in my life, and now one of my minions was reporting on a successful kidnapping. It's astounding the things that seem normal after a while.

I forced myself to regain my composure before answering. “Bring her down to my location. We're going to be here a while. Make sure she doesn't catch a bullet or anything on the way down.”

I hovered the Combat Pod into the large room, seeing exactly what I had expected: Eight capsules, short range teleportation pads, built to transport a single entity into a nearby chamber for a showdown with a waiting Robot Master before they would be allowed out again. Once all eight pads were disabled by defeating the Robot Masters they led to, a new gate would open leading to the mastermind. I had used this trick so many times, I found myself appraising the layout and mentally noting a need to kick Mr. X for his lack of originality in the layout.

Even as I arrived, one of the pads flashed and Forte came out, looking a little worse for the wear. “Fricken' Centaur Man,” he frowned.

“You only managed one?” Dark Man asked incredulously. “That's pretty weak for you, Forte.”

“Shut up,” the black robot replied.

“Split up, and get this done,” I ordered. The assembled Mega Man Killers looked at each other and seemed to be trying to decide who should take on who. After realizing the pads had no distinguishing marks and it was really just luck of the draw, the six of them each took a separate pad and vanished in a flash of light.

One pad remained. Dammit. I would have to wait for one of the Mega Man Killers to finish their target, or wait for the series VII Robot Masters to arrive. I wasn't about to go in there myself. I had no idea what Mr. X had waiting for me, and I wasn't about to take any more damage than was absolutely necessary before then.

Besides, I wanted to be here when Noele arrived.

I turned up the chatter from my teams and checked on a few things, not really worried about anything aside from a case of nerves. My second wave had hit now, the various teams I had dispatched now being back up by my larger, re-tasked fortress guardians. The Presidential Manor in Jakarta, which had now been converted from a prize to be taken to a strong point to defend as the Indonesian military (such as it was) attempted to retake it. Their progress was hampered by the efforts of not one, but TWO Yellow Devils, the MK 1 and MK 2 versions specifically. Their limited capabilities compared to my much later MK 3 and Green Devil series were more than capable of taking out contemporary tanks and small arms equipped soldiers, and the two models worked quite well together.

The MK 3 Yellow Devil, which I had used during that ridiculous power battle in the aftermath of the fall of my Wily Tower, was aiding the series IIs in Argentina against the BoR sponsored drug cartel, but from the sounds of it the idea of being under siege had driven most of their hired thugs into the jungle and surrounding wilderness, leaving the Robot Masters and the Yellow Devil to pursue and destroy. I bet Snake Man was enjoying that more than anyone.

The Green Devil and Green Devil Lite were supplementing my manpower in Africa, and the Guts Dozer was in Latin America, crushing everything in front of it. The Mecha Dragon was the only larger robot I had that I felt could operate in the colder climates of Russia for an extended period of time, since it, y'know, breathes fire, and it was aiding Cossack's Robot Masters in their hunt for the wayward General.

“Let go of me!” a feminine voice drew my attention back to a more local level.

“Lady, would you just keep your damn head down?” Solar Man grunted. “This is an active war zone, and my master will dismantle me if you get hurt.”

“Ah, hello Dr. Lalinde,' I said through the Combat Pods outboard speakers. “SO glad you could join me here.”

Her face took on a look of shock and anger. “Dr. Wily! Where are you?”

Confusion swept through my mind briefly. “Where... Oh, right.” I de-cloaked the Combat Pod and opened the top, standing up and leaning on the edge of the hatch. “Sorry, forgot about the cloak.”

“What do you want from me?” she demanded.

I heaved a sigh. “The worst part about being me is that nobody calls anymore. I dropped in on Mikhail, he called me names and tried to blow me up. I invite you here for a little chat, and all you want to do is go home. Where's the love, Noele?”

Her anger was plain to see in her body language, even with Solar Man's firm grip on her arms. I looked at the rest of the series VII Robot Masters, mentally wincing when I saw Sheep Man, and gave Blade Man a look. “Do me a favor, will you? Go take care of the last one,” I said, motioning to the as-of-yet unused pad. Blade Man silently saluted and went to work, and I brought the Combat Pod down closer to the floor so I didn't have to shout to be heard by my literally captive audience.

“Do you know where we are?” I grinned.

“No,” she said.

There was a brief silence. “Good lord, Noele, you used to be MUCH more talkative. We are in the hardened compound in the Italian Alps that is the home of one Mr. X, and I am here to kill him.”

“So? It's just another excuse for you to do terrible things? Why involve me?”

“Oh, I didn't, actually,” I smiled. “You involved yourself.”

“How?”

I reached down into the Pod and brought up a folder, filled with papers that I had printed off for just this reason. “I've always found that the most reliable records of any organization, especially one so hellbent on control, are financial records. I'm genuinely curious, Noele, why your name appears on the Book of Revelations ledgers for the past 20 years.”

“The... what?”

“I know that's a different name than you know them by, but the fact remains that one of the worlds more deranged secret societies has been engaging your services, whatever they may be, for quite some time now. And unless you really hit rock bottom and started turning tricks for sailors, I need to know what you've done for them.”

Her glare could have burned a hole through titanium, but I waved the folder at her. “I have the proof right here, Dr. Lalinde. Don't try and deny anything in this folder. I'm just trying to get past the frustrating vagueness in this paperwork and find out what, specifically, you've done for Mr. X and his crazy ass cult.”

She spat at me before she spoke, the gesture falling quite short of the mark. “After you, and all you've done, do you have any idea how difficult it is to get steady work as a roboticist? There are two names in the world for robots of any real quality, according to popular opinion, and those names are Light and Wily. The rest of us? We might as well have studied something else in college. When someone asks me for something, I do it, because I need the money and because I have bills to pay.”

“I'm not judging,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Please, I'm sure whatever you did pales next to my rather well-known resume, but the fact remains that I need to know WHY the Book felt the need to go to someone else when they already had me on the payroll.”

She smirked now. “Maybe because I can do things you can't?”

“Yeah, not possible.” I scoffed. And it wasn't. I was familiar with Noele's work, and it was mostly derivative of what Tom and I had began. “It must have been something they didn't want me, specifically, to know about.”

“God, can your ego BE any bigger?”

“It's only ego if its unjustified, otherwise is Id,” I smiled. “But back to the matter at hand-”

“Done!” Ballade shouted as he reappeared. He looked around. “FIRST! YES! EAT IT FORTE!”

Forte himself appeared a moment later. “Done!” Then he saw Ballade. “OH COME ON.” He stormed over to Ballade. “Who the hell did you fight?”

Ballade shrugged. “Just Yamato Man. Why, who'd you fight?”

Forte growled and walked away as Enker reappeared. “Knight Man is terminated,” Enker said, stepping forward. “How's everyone else doing?”

Ballade grinned. “I think Forte is feeling sort of embarrassed. I beat him out here.”

“Mission accomplished,” Doc Robot intoned as he came back. “Blizzard Man has ceased all functions.”

“Wind Man has also been dealt with,” Blade Man reported.

“When the hell did you get here?” Forte demanded.

“They arrived about a minute and a half ago,” I shouted over my shoulder.

“YEARGHABIBBLE!”

“I didn't think our faces could change color,” Enker commented.

“He's going to blow a fuse if he keeps that up,” Ballade nodded.

“It's funny to watch, though.” They both looked at Doc Robot, who was doing his level best to look innocent, despite his somewhat garish features.

“Flame Man is toast,” Dark Man said, stalking back into the room.

“That only leaves Plant Man and Tomahawk Man unaccounted for,” Enker said.

“AAAAARRGH!”

“And Forte fought one of them, he just can't tell us which one.”

I couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes my Robot Masters can be quite entertaining. Punk returned in a flash of light seconds later. “I'll admit,” he grumbled, pulling a Silver Tomahawk out of his shoulder, “that hurt.”

Ballade's smile threatened to rupture something in his face if it grew anymore. “So Forte fought Plant Man? And I still beat him out here?”

“RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHH!”

“If I had friends that weren't you guys, I'd tell them all about this.”

“Stop antagonizing him, Ballade,” I said, trying to contain my laughter.

A door on the far end of the room slid open. Now that the eight Robot Masters were destroyed, the path to the inner chamber was open, where Mr. X would be waiting. I turned to the assembled series VII Robot Masters. “Hold position here. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out without my say so.” I looked at Dark Man. “Bring Dr. Lalinde along with us, would you? I wouldn't want her to miss this.”

Solar Man handed Noele off to Dark Man, and the Mega Man Killers and I made out way to the inner chamber. After having stolen so many pages out of my personal playbook, I have to admit I was expecting Mr. X to have some sort of battle machine ready, but what I found was much different. The room was a circular audience room, with a long table ringed by chairs like you'd find in a board room. A relic of the previous Mr. X, actually.

The current Mr. X sat, smiling that damnable smile, at the head of the table.

“Al, Dr. Lalinde.” Alfred Gibbs said with a grin. “So glad you could make it. Won't you have a seat?”