Wanted

By C.M. Rich (Magnetman)

Episode 19 - Flight School

May 31st, 20XX, 5:22 PM , PST

Within a few minutes, it was almost all set.

Lennon had split into four clones, all working together to level Hardman’s extended arms, both pointing in the same direction over the seemingly bottomless crater. The measurements had to be fairly accurate, as undershooting would land the Mechs in the crater with the huge problem of attempting to scale the steep, clay-soft walls. Overshooting the target would be less severe, but would cost them even more time.

“Needle…I want you to stay here.”, Shadowman ordered his wounded sibling.

“Gauntlet, don’t be ridiculous. I’m going.”

“Needle…Things are going to be very ugly over there. We’re likely going to be facing whoever is leading the Riders, like that man in the trench coat earlier.”

Kenta looked down from his perch on Hardman’s shoulders wordlessly.

“I’m sure there’s some very nasty people over there waiting for us. They’re not going to give us Alicia and her dad without a fight.”, Shadowman continued.

“That’s why you need me! I- Ngggh!”

NeedleGal clutched her sides once again.

“Needle…Please understand. Also…Kenta and Hardy are going to need some help afterwards. I’m worried about them.”, he elaborated.

“I…I see…”, she agreed, somewhat defeated.

“Thank you, Needle. We won’t let you down.”,

“Same here.”, she said, drawing him in for a good-luck hug.

“Gauntlet, everything’s all set.”, Lennon interrupted.

“Okay…Take care of them, Needle.”

“I will.”

Gauntlet took a few steps over to Hardman’s position, his arms still pointing over the sheer drop of the crater, with Eigen still perched atop his shoulders.

“Ready?”, he asked of them.

Both nodded, obviously nervous. They both had their doubts as to whether or not this really could work.

“After take-off,”, Hardman started, “I doubt I’ll have much control over my hands. You guys’ll have to make due.”

“Lennon, could you be in two places at once?”, Gauntlet asked of his mirrored accomplice.

“Hey…Look who you’re talking to.”, he grinned.

Gauntlet took his spot on the back of Hardman’s right arm, along with Classi and one of the Geminimen. Topman, Snakeman, and the other Geminiman stationed themselves atop his left Hard Knuckle.

“Okay…Let’s go.”, he commanded, nodding to the pair of Magnetman and Hardman.

Kenta crouched down behind Hardman’s massive head, touching his palms down on the ridge of his barrel chest.

“Hadrian-san…I’m afraid this may hurt.”

“You do what you gotta do, kid.”

The atmosphere suddenly felt very dense, and a force besides the ever-blowing wind could be felt against the bodies of the Mechanical Maniacs. A distinct hum filled their ears as Magnetman synchronized the magnetic frequencies in the area to do his bidding, then concentrated them upon Hardman.

Classi, very concerned over the pair, watched her large friend’s face contort with pain, fighting to keep his arms locked in place. She attempted to reach out, instinctively, but one of the Geminimen held her back, shaking his head as his only explanation.

The hum grew louder, moving to deep within Hardman as blow off ports around his body evacuated some of the pressure automatically. The group could hear Hardman’s internal engines, which were usually amazingly quiet for their size, whir at a much faster pace than ever before, more than likely already exceeding the limit Dr Light wanted them to churn at.

After a full minute of steady build up, Kenta braced himself, hunkering down while holding his arms closer to Hardman’s core. His own limbs started to unravel, with plates of metal breaking loose and instantly attached to Hardman’s massive body. His face was hidden behind Hardman’s head from the others, but Needle peaked over at him from her position on the ground, worried about the obvious pain he was in.

“H-Hadrian…san…It's-s...h-here…”

The pressure in the area increased dramatically, the Mechs fighting just to keep upright against the growing field building up around their comrades.

And then…They were skyward. Nearly weightless, fighting the assault of wind and airborne debris, the five Mechs plus one clone were granted a view of the crater, still barely able to see the bottom, but amazed by just how wide it was.

Classi’s eyes were not on the crater, but her friends. She watched both of them become consumed by fire, Kenta falling off as his arms disassembled themselves, Hardman slumping to his knees lifeless, and Needle running over to the both of them.

And then, they were out of sight.

“H-Hardy! Ken-san!”

“There’s nothing you can do! Just…Hope they’ll be alright!”, Lennon tried to comfort as he attempted to make a mid-flight correction to the Hard Knuckle’s path.

And then, the awesome wind took one of them, taking their stance from them.

“Gauntlet!”, Topman could be heard shouting as soon as it happened.

The cyber shinobi tumbled in mid air for a few seconds, but it was far from a joyous feeling. It was a very real, frightening feeling. Then, he felt a sudden jerk.

He look back at the pair of Hard Knuckles, now a few yards away. He was being connected to them by a rather impromptu rescue line from an unlikely force, as Geminiman split into his maximum six copies, forming a “human” chain to capture the leader.

Fighting the tremendous wind, Gauntlet forced himself to climb the chain of Geminiman, coming face to face with the last one in line.

“You owe me.”

“Agreed.”, he smirked.

He made his way up the chain with only seconds to spare, the other Mechs having little time to welcome him back and thank Geminiman for his quick thinking, as the Earth was coming up fast to greet them.

And soon, there as a crash.

They were a few hundred yards away from the Riders’ location. Smashing nastily into the Earth, it certainly didn’t seem as soft as they remembered it being. The pair of Hard Knuckles plowed into the ground like meteorites from a bad science fiction movie, and the ensemble of Maniacs were tossed forward with a tremendous pitch as soon as they touched ground.

They were like ants being washed away by the force of a cascade of water, tumbling helplessly for several dozen meters before mercifully coming to a stop.

If they weren’t feeling roughed up before, they were beyond exhausted and worn now.

It took the collective of heroes a few minutes to collect themselves after the landing before finally trying to regain their footing.

“Man…*cough*…We didn’t even get any peanuts on that flight…And the movie sucked!”, Topman quipped, eliciting little reaction from the other Mechs.

“No kidding.”, Snakeman said, brushing himself off.

“Is everyone alright?”, Shadowman piped in.

“Just peachy.”, Lennon answered back.

Shadowman looked over his remaining teammates, coming to the conclusion that they had survived their flight from Hell in as good a shape as anyone could expect.

“Let’s go.”, he said, plainly, to which the other Mechs followed wordlessly towards the figures in the distance.

May 31st, 20XX, 5:33 PM , PST

“Well, ain’t that a sight for sore eyes.”, remarked War, watching the massive black transport helicopter’s arrival. “Bout time we got out of this hellhole.”

“Hold it. Company.”, Death halted, turning his crew’s attention to the distance, with five visitors approaching.

“Figures…”, Famine sighed. “It’s always when the damn EVAC chopper arrives. Every single time!”

“Quit your bitchin’. This isn’t going to take long at all.”, Victory claimed, stepping forward to meet the remaining Mechs as he motioned for his small battalion of grey-garbed troops to load the hostages into the helicopter.

The Mechs, collectively, resembled the walking dead after a day of just trying to survive, not to mention having landed from the worst flight imaginable, coupled with the roughest landing.

“Hand her over.”, Gauntlet demanded, short on temper.

Victory stood his ground, then began a slow ovation that picked up. He nodded to his brethren to do as he did.

“Heh heh…The Mechanical Maniacs! It’s a pleasure to meet the people who destroyed Los Angeles ! You did us a favor, after all- we were going to raze it once we were in control of this down-spiraling country.”, the white armored former black ops soldier claimed.

“We’re not in the mood.”, Gauntlet warned.

“Oh, come now! Now, I must admit, it was unfair to dump all of this on you, but there are bigger things going on here than just you and this city.”

“…You. You’re responsible for all of this.”, Gauntlet affirmed.

“Perception is reality…Shadowman, is it? Yes, we’re the one’s who ordered…this. But to the rest of the world, you’ll go down as the real culprits. Unless…You play along.”, Victory smugly explained.

“Play along…You want us to follow your orders after your goons have been trying to kill us?”, Geminiman refuted. “Go to hell.”

“Think about it. You really don’t have any options left. Let’s say, and this is all wildly hypothetical, you beat us, take the girl, her father, and go home. Do you really think that will simply…solve everything?”, Victory continued.

“Why don’t you let us worry about that.”, Snakeman hissed.

“Don’t be stupid!”, Famine demanded. “You can’t beat us, and even if you could, there’s no hope for you. Instead, you could join us!”

War stepped up, his rifle across his shoulder casually. “Come with us. You can help us make this country mean something again.”

“Join the government? Not really my style.”, Gauntlet muttered.

The Horsemen let out a collective laugh, with Victory picking up the conversation.

“Hm hm hm…That’s exactly the kind of talk we want to hear, Shadowman. I think some explanation is in order. I figure we owe you that much, and maybe it’ll help change your mind.

We are the Four Horsemen. We are all that remains of an elite group of U.S. government-backed mercenaries from the eighties called the Pale Riders. See, we were the ones the government called when they needed some rather…illegal activities performed when they couldn’t get UN approval. It was a very lucrative business, I’ve got to say.

Until, that is, we were directly involved in a high profile disaster during an espionage mission. You may have heard of it…”

“April 26th, 1986.”, War hinted at.

“April 26th…the Chernobyl disaster in Russia ?”, Gauntlet came up with, accessing his memory bank for a moment. You were involved in that?”

“Calling shenanigans.”, Topman whispered to Lennon.

“Yes, Chernobyl.”, Victory confirmed. “The Reagan administration was very worried that Soviet nuclear power plants would give them too much leverage in the Cold War, so an…accident was arranged. We lost five men that day when we found the government gave us faulty plans. On purpose.”

Victory continued.

“They set us up to fail. We had become a liability by then, knowing too many secrets. They wanted to kill two birds with one stone by throwing a wrench into the Soviets’ plans, as well as ridding themselves of us. Since we weren’t officially employed by the U.S. government, they could easily claim we were independent terrorists.”

“Which they did”, War claimed. “We were captured when we became sickened by radiation poisoning and sent to the Gulags. You know what a Gulag is? It’s the worst kind of prison you could imagine.”

“We were there until the fall of the Berlin Wall. By then, the U.S. had a change of heart concerning us, and sent in another black ops team to rescue us during the Soviet’s fall. But…The damage had already been done.”

Victory removed his helmet.

Gauntlet immediately recognized the face of the blonde-haired man beneath. “Victor Ryder? The Secretary of Defense?”

“And he’s Warren Ryder, the Chief of the FBI.” SD also noticed, pointing to the red-decked War as he too removed his helmet.

“I get it. The government thought they could buy your silence with high profile jobs and lots of money.”, Snakeman concluded.

Victory pulled a piece of his cheek off- a prosthetic replacement covered up by make up. Behind that was a hole where flesh and bone should have been. “We were lucky. The other Pale Riders…The original Pale Riders, they died awful deaths in that power plant that day, being scalded to death by nuclear hot, boiling water.”, he recounted, his eyes closed.

“In the Gulags, we had a lot of time to think for ourselves.”, Famine spoke up. “It was in there our hatred for all things American came to exist. When we were rescued and whisked back ‘home’, we played along…We got what we wanted.”

“Power.”, Victory exclaimed. “They gave us power. More than they knew they had. We’ve sworn to change this wretched country and its secretive ways…We wanted to change it from within, using their own secrets to eat away at it like cancer. Like the radiation that had eaten away at us.

We have resources beyond what you expect. We are no mere revolutionaries; we are a FORCE. The thing that destroyed LA was one of our toys…But we never wanted to use it on American soil. That’s the truth.”

Gauntlet stared at the four men, measuring up their honesty, their words. He believed they were telling the truth, and meant what they said. But…

“I agree…that the U.S. government can be corrupt. But every government is corrupt in some way. That’s a given. I understand why you’d want to change it, but once you start making weapons like this…You must realize who’s really corrupt in the end.”

Victory looked back at the beat up shinobi android before him and heaved a small, short smile.

“Wise words. Very wise words. You’re a lot like myself…like us when we were employed by the United States . I’d like to say that someday you’d come to see our point, but leaving you alive and not in our ranks is a danger we cannot afford when we’re so close to winning our private little war. I’m afraid the Mechanical Maniacs must…end.”

The Horsemen replaced their helmets atop their heads and clicked the safeties off of their prototypical rifles.

“I’m sorry, Shadowman. Someone has to give a damn.”

Shadowman reached for his shinobigatana once more, slowly pulling it free as the other Mechs assumed a similar battle stance.

Shadowman was right earlier. They weren’t going to give up without a fight.