Wanted

By C.M. Rich (Magnetman)

Episode 6 - Motivation

May 31st, 20XX, 9:13 AM , PST

“I think…We lost ‘em, boss.”

“Good. One less distraction. For now, at least.”, Shadowman sighed. “Its time to head back anyways. We’ve got to-“

“…Boss?”, Hardman whispered, noticing his commander’s posture tense up immediately at some sound unheard by him.

Shadowman waved him off as an order of silence. Drawing his blade, he slinked towards one of the walls of the sewer pipe they had been wandering about to avoid detection by the Warriors.

Probably Bubbleman, Shadowman assumed inwardly. As the footsteps grew louder, Gauntlet waited at the junction in a predatory stance, his shinobigatana ready to strike true; he couldn’t risk Bubbleman alerting the others, even if he were an ally most of the time.

Besides…No hard feelings.

All at once, Shadowman whirled around and held his blade at the throat…of ClassiCal.

“…Sorry.”, he apologized. “Can’t be too careful.”

He noted SparkChan’s vacant expression, sadness overpowering her normally cheerful disposition.

“Spark? What’s wrong…?”, Hardman asked, noticing the look of sorrow at nearly the same time.

“…Oh. It’s…nothing…Just lost in thought, hun.”, she shrugged, forcing a small smile.

Shadowman looked over her shoulder behind her to watch Magnetman approach, his cloak spattered in blood. Come to think of it, there was some blood-like substance on Classi’s armor, though it was hastily wiped off.

“What the hell happened to you?”, Hardman asked the two of them simultaneously.

“Minor trouble. It’s fixed now.”, Eigen claimed, pausing his stride only momentarily to answer the question, his helmet grasped in his hand.

“Well, are you guys alright?”, Gauntlet asked, though with a bias more on Classi, given her sullen appearance.

“Yeah…We’re alright. It just got…a little rough. We’ll be okay…”, she responded, a little bit distant in her answer.

Gauntlet turned to face Hardman and read his expression for his take on the situation. Hardy himself was glaring at Magnetman’s back as he continued his journey through the pipes, which eventually broke to the surface.

“The hell was that all ‘bout?”, Hardman uttered, beginning to follow the tight-lipped newcomer out of the tunnel as he watched Kenta replace his helmet atop his head.

“We’ll find out later. We’re running late in rendezvousing with the others. But tell me, Classi…You sure you’ll be good to go?”, Shadowman asked once again.

“I’m…positive. Just in a little bit of shock. Ken-san…has a few…different methods in fighting.”, Classi explained.

“I’ll bet.”, Hardman surmised. “Anyway…Guess we should get going.”

“Right.”, the ninja android agreed. With that thought, Gauntlet switched frequencies on his communicator. “Snake…How’re you doing?”

Almost a full minute went by.

“…I’m doing.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Roger.”

Guantlet didn’t want to further distract his scaly comrade any more than he had to. It was something Raijin had grown to hate when he was taking aim.

“Okay guys…Let’s get a move on.”, he ordered the other Mechs into movement again.

May 31st, 20XX, 9:20 AM , PST

 As the others reconvened elsewhere, two other Maniacs were on their way back to the rendezvous point, one with the intention of showing off his most-useful payoff of the trip.

“Yeah…This is just what we needed, Top. Just what we needed to get the job done quicker-“

“’Easier and safer.’ Yeah, I’ve been hearing that for the last hour, Father Gemini. You can preach to Gauntlet, but for now, could you just, I don’t know…concentrate on actually finding real information on that thing? Like what they’re really after here?”, Topman chastised.

Lennon grunted in simple response, a little sour that his closest ally on the team was showing signs of genuine annoyance with him now.

“Well…That Pale Riders-thing is still bothering me…”, he uttered.

“…You knew they’d find a few of our old ‘pals’ to come after us. After all, they certainly would have the motivation from the start.”, SD replied, shrugging his shoulders casually, as if nothing about it bothered him.

“Motivation! For once, I agree with you, Mechanical Maniacs!”, a voice announced from…nowhere.

The two stopped dead in their tracks to look around for the source of the deep voice, but to no avail.

“Oh come now…I’m not that difficult to find. After all, I’m right…here!”

A swift blow to the face brought Topman to a shaky balance, yet the assailant remained unseen.

“Rrgh…Coward! Come out and fight like a man, Boomerang!”, Lennon challenged, recognizing the voice.

“Oh, very glad you haven’t forgotten me, Geminiman. As you would expect, I haven’t forgotten you.”, the Demon Ninja mentioned as he materialized a few feet before the pair of Maniacs.

“Sure we haven’t…We haven’t forgotten the massive beat down we laid on you and the other Quarter Knights, either.”, Geminiman sneered.

“You always were all about the cheap shots, ‘ninja’.”, Topman followed up, still rubbing his hand on his face. Had he been a human, SD would have a very apparent bruise to go along with a broken jaw. Luckily, robots were much sturdier by nature.

“Nay…I am ‘all about’ the fight. There are no cheap shots in a battle to the death, after all.”, Boomerang countered.

“Good. Then you won’t take another beating personally.”, Geminiman countered, splitting into two forms.

“Hoh! I see you believe you need sheer numbers to beat me. Unfortunately for you, I’ve learned from previous mistakes, robot heathens.”

Boomerang vanishes once again, leaving no trace of his location, even as the two Maniacs start switching visual frequencies to track him.

“Damn it! I can’t find him on infrared or ultraviolet! He’s not just using a cloaking device…”, Topman lamented.

“A device? You believe this skill to be the result of a mere technological trick? This is one those lessons I mentioned earlier…for your amusement.”, Boomerang’s voice replied.

Within seconds, both Geminimen found themselves being beaten with combination attacks, from high punches to low kicks, eventually ending with both cloned Robot Masters on the dry cement, looking a bit worse for the wear.

“Ergh! D-damn it!”, Lennon gritted his teeth.

“Len! Get- Augh!”

Topman’s advice was cut short by a viscous kick to the head, sending the Spinning Demon into a whirling dervish not of his choice, which ended with him laying further way from his compatriot.

“Augh…Boomerang…You cheap bastard! This isn’t skill…This is cowardice!”, Geminiman cringed as he watched Topman clutch his head in agony.

“What you claim to be ‘cowardice’ is simply me evening the odds against two opponents. But, if your pathetic cries threaten to spoil my victory, I’ll play this game your way…”, the otherworldly shinobi claimed as he once again materialized before Lennon. “Once again, I reiterate that I am not the same Boomerang your leader so easily tricked into defeat. I have trained for months to attain the power needed to crush you. All of you. I have even joined forces with your lowly government to gain access to secrets I needed to get the upper hand I now wield, Maniacs!”

“Guess you’ve also gained the secret of jibber-jabber, fool!”, a quickly recovered Topman yelled in the middle of a whirling kick of his own, which crackled with bright sunset-colored energy.

Boomerang countered the blow with his reinforced gauntlets, the energy dispersing throughout his arms. In an instant, Topman was using his Capoeira techniques to whirl in the opposite direction to deliver a follow up kick, which Boomerang countered with a kick of his own. The two faced each other in this awkward position, evenly matched

“Hmm…It would appear you haven’t been sitting idly by, either.”, the ninja proclaimed, commenting on Topman’s refined attack.

“Heh…”, the Spinning Demon smirked, whirling around backwards and engaging a Top Spin, shooting a cloud of dust around the area.

Geminiman was back in action, now reformed into one body, and proceeded to launch his Gemini Laser towards the mostly-obscured Demon Ninja. “Oh no…You’re not going to keep me down that easily, ninja-boy!”

Lennon watched his beam head straight for Boomerang, but watched it lose its form rapidly the deeper it got into the sudden dust storm.

“Wha-? Oh…Yeah…Lasers don’t work so well in dusty environments, naturally…I suppose I’ll have to once again try it the old fashioned way…”, Lennon shrugged, splitting into three copies this time. “Let’s see you blindly dodge a Gemini Collision AND a Top Spin! Hah!”

May 31st, 20XX, 11:49 AM , PST

“Guess we’re the first ones back…”, Classi observed, looking over the slightly-more familiar landscape of their initial arrival point in LA. Everything blurred together in the wake of destruction, however. It was hard to tell. She wouldn’t have even known this was the rendezvous point had she not marked it within her digital memory.

“Hope the others are doing alright.”, Shadowman remarked. “Well, until they get here…You guys ready to talk about what you saw out there?”

“…An enemy.”, Magnetman muttered.

“Obviously.”, Hardy chuckled. “Now, next question; who?”

“A man called ‘Viscous’.”, Classi followed up with. “He claimed to be a member of the government-backed team, named the ‘Pale Riders’, I think.”

“I see…Did he seem familiar at all?”, Gauntlet asked, intently listening.

“No…Not at all…But he was very powerful…He almost beat us before…”

“’Fore what?”, Hardman asked of the electric lady.

“Before…Ken-san stepped in and…saved me. ”, she said, a bit quieter.

“And by ‘saved’, I assume he killed this man?”, Gauntlet asked, knowing the obvious answer from the reaction on Classi’s face and the blood on Kenta’s uniform.

“…He…He had to…”, Classi defended. “There was no other way.”

Inwardly, a single image had burned itself into ClassiCal’s mind. The image of the quiet, shy man she had come to know in the past few weeks was now obscured behind the image of Kenta playing in Viscous’s blood after mercilessly crushing him to death.

And enjoying it.

For now, she opted to leave this bit of information out of the report to the ninja leader, out of fear of causing any more troubles for the stressed out team. She hoped it was simply Ken-san temporarily losing control…She hoped it wasn’t the true nature of this man…

Gauntlet looked over to Kenta, who looked back at him with those dull eyes of his, partially obscured by the blood-matted hair that lay messily atop his head, as he had opted to carry his helmet by hand.

“I see. Well, the important thing is that you two made it back in one piece. It would have been nice to have been a little more low key, but if it had to be, it had to be.”, Gauntlet surmised.

“We ran inta some trouble ourselves…”, Hardman chimed in, realizing a change of subject was in order.

“Ah yes…Dr Wily has sent the Warriors for us, with Bass as their commander”, Shadowman continued.

“Starnik?”, Classi perked up. “Maybe he’ll be able to help us?”

“Not friggin’ likely. Bass is doin’ the Stalin-thing and forcin’ them ta find an’ fight us. Sumthin’ ‘bout Wily wantin’ to gain power through us, or some crap.”, Hardman said, rubbing his eye wearily.

“The Pale Riders…and Dr Wily himself? It sounds as though we have more powerful enemies after us…”, Kenta finally spoke up.

“Whoa now…Th’ Warriors ain’t our enemies…We’re jus’ on opposite sides today. Trust me, they don’ wanna be here any more than us.”, Hardman reassured.

“Then…What are we to do? You cannot simply shrug them off as you did the Sinister Six. If they need to be vanquished…”, Eigen battled back.

“Let’s not go there.”, Gauntlet warned. “Just do your best to avoid fighting unless we really have to. We’re not here to kill anyone. I also believe that Starnik and the gang will do their best to lead Bass away from us. Its not like he actually wants to fight with old friends.”

“But there are people here to kill us…”, a newcomer countered.

“Ah…Needle. Where’s Snake?”, Shadowman quizzed.

“He’s…sorting out some issues with an old ‘friend’ of his.”, she answered, her vagueness easy to see through.

“Th’ Judge?”, Hardman guessed, thinking back to the scene from the chopper earlier in the day.

“Yeah…Snake wanted to settle it one on one…”, Needle said, quietly.

“Hmm…Well…He’s a master at search and destroy, and a brilliant sniper these days. I’m confident he’ll be able to beat The Judge again…”, Gauntlet commented. “But it might be awhile. Sniper battles are usually very long winded, but I’m hoping he finishes up soon. We need him.”

“So, I suppose we’ll have to wait for Gem and Toppy to get back and then go on without Raijy?”, Classi in quizzed.

“Or, we can have a chat with our new friend.”, Needle suddenly said, alerting everyone to another person’s presence.

About a hundred meters away stood a man they observed exiting the copter earlier in the day. A man with a long dark coat covering obvious military-grade clothing, and a riot cop-like face shield, it’s visor tinted so darkly as to completely obscure his face.

The man continued to look upon the Maniacs in uncomfortable silence before announcing his intentions…With a rifle.

Hardman scoffed, laughing as he stood in front of his comrades. A mere rifle against four tons of armor? Even a Sherman tank would have trouble putting even a shallow dent in his chest plate, let alone a little pea-shooter.

The visor-baring man simply took aim, ignoring Hardman’s deep chuckling.

Perhaps it was the actual sound of the gun that initially tipped off Hardy- it sure wasn’t standard fare. Maybe it was the sound of the bullet hitting him, which sounded more innocent than it felt- like a baseball smacking into a car door. Or perhaps it was the sudden hollow point that was now carved straight through Hardman’s torso, high on his right shoulder, but still through something crucial within his chest.

In either case, Hardman slumped to his knees, more out of shock than pain. He touched his massive hand to the new nook in his body, which trickled oily blood, despite all logic available to him.

The man across the wasteland simply ejected the spent round from his rifle, making way for another magnetized armor-piercing bullet.

“No! Hardy!”, SparkChan shrieked in horror beside her fallen comrade.

“Imma a’right…I’m alright….”, he gasped, lying just a little.

The man took aim once again, this time aiming towards the big man’s center of mass.

However, he didn’t quite pull the trigger again just yet.

“You’re out of your element, Maniacs. You have absolutely no idea how far deep this thing runs.”

“Go ta Hell!” Hardman sputtered in retaliation.

“What do you mean?”, Shadowman yelled in spite of his large friend’s command. “Who are you working for?”

The man shrugged. “It’s a long story. I don’t have the patience to relay it to you, but if you want, you can surrender and I’m sure they’d be glad to tell you all about it.”

“Surrender…?”, Needle repeated as if offended. “And admit we did this? No way.”

“Yeah.”, Gauntlet backed her up. “Not happening.”

“Didn’t think so.”, the man surmised. “I think…I owe you this much, though.

They’re gonna be running this country after this is seen through. If you give up and side with them, maybe they’ll pardon you. Or clear your name. But I know you ain’t going to get anywhere if you fight us. You’re gonna die. Don’t waste yourselves.”

“…Conspirators.”, Gauntlet whispered to himself. “…Can it be…?”

“Can it be who?”, Classi asked, sensing he knew more to the story. That part didn’t really surprise her all that much. In the years she had known Shadowman, he had proven to be a wellspring of knowledge when you least expected it from him.

“The Horsemen…?”, he muttered to himself. “I had guessed they were on the verge of something big…But this? No, its too much for them.”

“Whattya ramblin’ about?” the wounded two ton tank grumbled through gritted teeth.

“The United States has its share of enemies. Not all of them are public, as you can imagine. The Feds’ biggest enemies are some of its own, known as the Four Horsemen. I don’t know too much about them, but from what I’ve heard, they’re pretty well funded and apparently hold some offices in the Pentagon. Maybe even the White House.”, Gauntlet informed.

“So…”, Kenta interjected. “These ‘Horsemen’ appear to resemble an Illuminati-type organization. That’s…Not very encouraging.”

“No…No, it isn’t.” the cyber shinobi concurred. “I had a feeling something like this might happen, but I didn’t want to be directly involved in it. Too much of a mess.”

“And yet…Here we are.”, Classi sourly observed.

“Kinda sounds like we’re in some deep shit…”, Hardman further added.

“Agreed.”, Magnetman whispered as he slipped on his helmet yet again.

“Had enough of a huddle session, ladies?”, shouted the man, once again making his presence known. “If you’re not coming with me, you’re in for a hard time.”, he warned.

“Like my associate just said: ‘go to Hell.”, Shadowman answered back.

He pulled the trigger, and electricity sparked to life, caught the bullet in midair, and immediately tossed it aside to an unknown resting place. Anywhere, so long as it stayed far away from her friend’s body. SparkChan’s electric field successfully nullified the advantage of the magnetic bullet.

The man in the visor simply stood there for a few seconds, observing the scene. He then simply shouldered the gun and made a quick, ominous motion with his hand as he turned back.

“The hard way it is, then…”

Before the Mechs could launch a counterattack on the dark-clothed man, a few faces emerged from various points, all of whom the Mechs had seen leave the copter alongside the visor-wearing man.

It was clear as to their one and only mission here: violence.

The group of ex-Robot Cops braced themselves around the kneeling Hardman, knowing what was to come next.

May 31st, 20XX, 12:12 PM , PST

It had been a few hours since he reactivated Mambo, whom was still sitting idly in the dark basement of the anonymous structure below the city streets. Since then, Snakeman had crawled back to the surface, remaining hidden in the multiple mounds of crumbled mortar and oxidized steel. He was inching about at a snail’s pace now, trying his best to avoid detection from the Jury.

At one point, he had climbed to the highest location he could find- about twelve feet above the ground- to take a quick survey of the land. He was certainly putting one of Dr Light’s latest gadgets to the ultimate field test now. With the Transmetal Two upgrade, Snakeman received a new kind of mapping system, which worked by taking pictures of the land in conjunction with his own Search Snake’s movements. Though his serpent-like drones were long-since inactive, the info they had gathered was still within his memory bank. With the pictures he was taking as he inched about in his search for clues to the Judge’s location, he now had a decent map that projected itself within his mind’s eye.

The Jury was now spread out much further apart than before. The four that had been previously trapped in the sewer by Snakeman hours earlier were once again on the surface, and along with the other eight were slowly and meticulously surveying the area. With no sign of Snakeman for the past four hours, the Jury had spread itself out over a square mile to hunt him down.

Every now and then, the Judge himself would pop into Snakeman’s radio with some antagonizing words. Eerily enough, there was no hint of impatience in the serial killer’s voice. More than likely, the Judge was enjoying the possibility of Snakeman sweating it out.

And indeed, if he could sweat, Snakeman would be drenched in it by now. He now had a plan of action, but it was very dangerous. Everything was now in place, however, so all he needed was for one of the Jurors to pass by in one of its now-routine sweeps.

After another half hour, one of them finally did. It hovered along the ground, passing by at an agonizing two miles per hour. From his current hiding place beneath a discrete pile of debris alongside a crumbled wall, Snakeman could see the orb’s camera dart about within the deep-tinted plastic covering.

Wait for it.

It finally passed Snakeman’s hiding place. He had to be quick, and he had to time his movements against the camera’s. He couldn’t allow it to let off a single shot. He still wasn’t sure how well these things were networked with each other, or the Judge, for that matter. But, he had nothing else to work with.

Deftly, he emerged from the rock and leapt towards the orb when its camera was opposite of him. He had seven-eighths of a second at this point to do what he needed to do, and flawlessly. In mind flight, as time seemed to grind to an abrupt halt, he watched the camera whirl back towards him as the machine heard him erupt from his residence, along with the bottom-mounted gun.

In one fluid motion, Snakeman’s right hand palmed the front of the orb while his left took a vigorous hold on the gun muzzle, keeping it away from him. Just before they crashed to the ground, Snakeman was already in the motion of tearing the machine gun from it’s base before it even had the chance to fire off a stray shot.

As Snakeman’s body smashed into the ground, he tried to put as much weight as he could towards the Juror’s mass, smashing it down as hard as possible. He managed to shatter the lower half of the sphere as it’s copter blades ground into the floor, eventually digging too far into the Earth and burning up it’s small motor.

Snakeman lay there, his arms outstretched in front of him with the mutilated Juror in his grasp, for an eternity. He breathed heavily for several minutes while trying to control his breaths as he listened intently on the world around him. He focused on any sounds that were out of place. Anything but the wind may bring death at this point.

After five minutes of laying completely still, Snakeman dared to stand up very slowly, his grip still held fast on the destroyed drone. It seemed as though the Jury worked completely independent of one another, as they’d surely be flocking to this area by now if they knew one of their own was down.

Wearily, he sat against a wall as he looked over his catch. Hunting down each and every Juror like this would eventually lead him to death. No, he caught this one for a more specific reason. Prying his fingers into the remaining shell of the orb, he peeled that back to search for a specific component.

Ah…There it is.

After a few clicks, he had his prize- the Juror’s battery. After examining the EMP’s casing and studying the Jury as they flittered about, he noted how they were both built by the same manufacturer. Long ago, he found that even the biggest corporations saved money by using as many components as they could on as many of their products as possible, with the armaments industry being no different.

Discarding the Juror’s useless husk in a rubble pile, Snakeman took the burnt out EMP in his hand and opened it up, eventually finding the battery housing. EMP’s, after all, needed to be powered in some way. Taking out the used up cell from the electronic disruption device, he placed it on the ground, next to the Juror’s own cell for comparison.

Snakeman allowed himself another small smirk.