The door swished aside, announcing his arrival.
Gunmax swaggered in with his usual self-assured strut, stopping in the middle of the room and glancing around. The day had been lethargic and slow for its duration, following an evening of excitement and celebration after solving another case. Deckerd may not have celebrated himself, but that did not excuse him from writing his report to Yuuta, the boy in question drowning in his own special hell, paperwork.
The teal mech stood there for a few seconds, expectant, before huffing and turning his attention to his favourite victim: Deckerd himself.
"Well?" He asked.
"No crushing embraces today? Did someone die?"
Power Joe lifted his helm from the desk, dimmed optics narrowing threateningly.
"Do you ever shut up?" He glowered.
The two mechs had a feud blazing between them; it had started before Gunmax had even been officially incorporated into the Brave Police. Deckerd had put down many an argument between them, and he was sure the entire precinct could hear it when he failed.
Gunmax pursed his lips, glaring at the offending mech. For a treacherous second, Deckerd feared he'd have to crush another shouting match. However, the visored mech relented, spinning on his heels and making for the door. "Fine," he spat. "Have it your way."
And just as dramatically as he had entered, he left again, the door punctuating the end of his sentence.
Deckerd sighed quietly, a tired concoction of resignation, relief and frustration.
"You don't have to be so rude. He was joking, you know." The Kung Fu detective struck his leader with an unimpressed stare, but Deckerd didn't back down, returning the deadpan gaze.
Beratement was on the tip of his tongue, and his lips parted decidedly, but he was interrupted from beginning his scolding by the main screen of the office crackling to life.
"Brave police, your presence is requested at Hiroshima bay. A man named Shukka Hejimemashou is terrorising the harbour, destroying shipping containers and oil tankers in an unidentified mech. Human casualty is minimal so far, but it is unsure if he will not move on to destroying houses and office buildings next." Saejimo appeared before them, face stoic, live video feeds cropping up around him.
Yuuta stood up, slamming his fist determinedly onto his desk, the coffee cup placed on it rattling and spilling over the side of the table onto the floor beneath.
He seemed to pay no mind.
"Well it's decided then. Brave police, to Hiroshima!" His rallying cry worked, and the present mechs stood up, saluting. The air was filled with a chorus of 'Yes sir!', and the room cleared out.
Deckerd frowned. Something was missing.
The brave police raced along the highway, sirens blaring. Hiroshima remained only kilometres away, and the city's skyline was beginning to peak out above the mountains. To his left and right, the build team and Duke drove on at their highest gear. Above him, Shadowmaru and Drill Boy flew alongside each other.
His frown deepened. someone was missing.
Gunmax!
Deckerd swerved into the opposite lane of traffic, skidded, then stopped. Cars veered around him, honking furiously.
"Deckerd!" Yuuta exclaimed, fearful. "Deckerd, what is it?!"
Regaining his composure and weaving through oncoming traffic back into the correct lanes, he replied.
"Gunmax isn't here! I need- I mean- He should be with us!" Deckerd stumbled through the sentence in a panic, worried. No one had ever accused Gunmax of being careful, and with his luck he was likely on fire in a ditch at this point.
Yuuta seemed confused at first, before realisation dawned on him.
"You're right!" He produced the communicator from his pocket. "Gunmax!"
"Yo, boss. What's up?" At least he wasn't sulking anymore.
"There's an emergency at Hiroshima; we need you here, now!"
There was a pause.
"You're at Hiroshima? That's three hours from Nanamagari!"
Yuuta had the decency to look embarrassed.
"Well, we kinda forgot you weren't in the room, we all rushed out so quickly. But we need you here, now!"
The line grew silent, before a muttered "coming." broke it, and the call cut.
"Huh. Is he acting weird to you?" Yuuta asked.
Deckerd stayed silent, contemplating. Gunmax's moods varied, switching back and forth upon the slightest provocation. A small part of him found it… interesting. His processor nagged him; there was a better word he could use, of course, but he would sooner wash his CPU with hydrochloric acid than use it now. The rest of him just found it gave him a headache. The worst part was, he never knew why. And they switched most often around him.
Gunmax appeared in his rear view mirrors, donning his armour. The turbines were roaring with effort, and he was thundering forward. Suddenly, upon reaching Deckerd's location, he changed form, landing on his bike's wheels.
"Hey, baby." The accent slurred his words, but the English was still comprehensible.
"Gunmax." Deckerd acknowledged.
In the distance, a storm rumbled, promising nothing short of carnage and misery. The humidity was rising, too; it would seem the inevitable battle would not be a dry one.
The brave police team drove — or in Drill Boy and Shadowmaru's cases, flew — the remainder of the distance in relative silence, piercing it only in times necessity.
When they arrived, the police were already at the scene, attempting to suppress the mech from causing further property damage. The sky was an ominous black, a thick layer of cloud obstructed view of the sun beyond. The port was temporarily shut down, and shipping traffic could be seen loitering at the edge of the horizon, riding the choppy sea precariously. Some cranes had been thrown into the harbour, and the resulting waves had sent cargo ships capsizing. In the sea, hordes of containers floated just barely above the jagged waterline, and many more under it sunk to the harbour floor. Nearby office buildings were collapsing, and others looked seconds away from following suit in the perilous combination of flying shipping containers and hurricane-esque winds.
Sirens blared, and, Deckerd noticed, not all of them were police. Ambulances crowded around the mounds of rubble, and every so often a team would load a stretcher onto the vehicle. Duke seemed perturbed, and his digits twitched in frustration. Deckerd took pity on him. His thirst to help must have been unbearable, but a lifetime of strict disciplinary measures kept him from abandoning his company.
And taking centre stage, a mech several times larger than himself sent a crane crashing into a neatly organised stack of containers. The resulting domino effect hit a warehouse and caved in its roof.
"Yuuta, the unification command!" Deckerd cried, fearing an early getaway by the criminal.
"Oh, right!"
The signal sent out by the communicator reached all his compatriots, and those capable of combining did. He could feel it, the urge, the need to combine, and he could hear it too. Distantly, the J-roader neared, speeding through any and all barriers and launching itself at its partner. Deckerd closed his optics, acting on instinct, sending himself flying into the primed docker, and retracting into the J-decker frame. The mouthguard shut against his face, and his vision transferred to that of his combined form.
Gunmax still had his armour on, and around him Duke Fire and Super Build Tiger looked as ready to fight as ever.
Gunmax glanced his way.
He nodded.
All at once, the scene burst into a flurry of activity. Duke Fire dashed forward, sword at the ready. Shadowmaru swooped down elegantly and proceeded to unload an entire barrage of missiles into the mech's optics. The glass cracked, and it stumbled back a few paces. The build team were charging the tiger beam, and the barrel was getting threateningly hot. Duke Fire was nearing the mech, rocketing forward at a speed nye unbelievable. However, the driver noticed it just in time to raise his arms in defence. The sword sliced through half of the right arm, but the resulting explosion knocked Duke several paces backwards. Recovering, he had little time to notice the priming laser on the mech's shoulder.
Gunmax did.
His oversized revolver sent an explosive round directly into the barrel, completely disabling the weapon in a sparking, crackling mess.
He gave Deckerd a sidelong glance. Deckerd looked back, attempting to decode it before it went away.
His desire, however, was cut short when the tiger beam finally unleashed itself directly into the chest of the robot, sending billowing clouds of smoke into the air. It was clear Shukka was nearing defeat, and Deckerd knew a losing man was a desperate one. They had to finish the fight, quick, before the criminal does something even rasher than his crimes.
He unholstered his J-buster, steadying it with both arms and taking aim.
Location: cockpit.
Fire.
A streak of gaseous heat flew to the desired position, combusting upon impact. The mech lost its footing and fell backwards, hitting an electricity pole and bringing it down with him. The robot's frame was seized by sparks and arcs of electricity, the ongoing fire inside the engines spreading at an exponential rate.
Then, movement ceased, and the pistons locked up.
They had won.
Gunmax flew to him, a smirk playing on his lips as he took front-and-centre in Deckerd's vision.
That self-assured, lovely, idiotic smirk.
"Enjoying the show?" He asked. It was rhetorical, this Deckerd knew, but in all honesty, he quite truly was, in a morbid way. The flashing lights, rising smoke and burning flames worked in beautiful harmony to frame the sculpted frame before him.
"Yes." He replied simply.
The expression on the other detective's faceplate sparked something inside him, something warm.
They touched down on the concrete floor, the ground underfoot quaking slightly at the impact. The build team had disassembled, and Dumpson was in the process of threatening the law-breaker inside. To any observer, it was clear Shukka was defeated, but he still had one last chance. And as Deckerd knew: a losing man was a desperate one.
So why hadn't he seen the missile coming?
It was laughable, really. It wasn't quite that subtle, and every one of the build team members noticed it. Gunmax did, too, shoving Deckerd with all the force he could muster. But Deckerd didn't know why, and, with the unhelpful aid of the J-decker frame, he resisted, barely moving an inch. In no plane of existence would that extra inch bypass the oncoming threat.
And the look that spread across Gunmax's features as he, too, realised this would haunt him forever.
The impact sent him reeling, the j-decker frame taking the brunt of the damage. The electromagnets disengaged from the momentary power outage, and his frame was thrown backwards, away from safety and into the crashing waves below.
His life flashed before his eyes — meeting Yuuta, the build team, Shadowmaru, Duke-
Meeting Gunmax was perhaps simultaneously the single best and worst thing that had ever happened to him, in hindsight.
His battered frame splashed gracelessly into the furious harbour, and the air was punched out of his vents. This was bad. He knew how to swim; popular media allowed a faint grasp on the activity, and an even fainter grasp on the execution, but with enough effort he knew he would eventually resurface. However, it would not stop most unprotected electronically based systems from short-circuiting.
Water and light didn't mix well, he knew. Refraction and splitting and distortion could all attest to this statement. The sun's rays pierced the twisting water above in curious ways, but Deckerd knew that the thrashing teal object that had just followed him in was not a trick of the light.
Gunmax was in here with him.
And it mattered not how little of a grasp Deckerd may have had on the aquatic sport, because Gunmax was in here with him.
And he didn't know how to swim.
The waves were brutal in their mission — Gunmax felt the tumble and crash of another above him meeting its demise at the wall of the quay.
Their mission: Assassinate Gunmax of the Brave Police
Status: Ongoing…
His arms flailed, pushing and pulling against a slimy, resisting substance that felt suffocatingly dense.
He tried to scream, but could only watch in horror as his only source of buoyancy floated away in large, wobbling bubbles. The terrible liquid filled his oral cavity and slipped through his vents, making him shudder in disgust.
The joviality of it all only made his impending death ache that much more.
No, this couldn't be, he still had things to do! He still had people he wanted to talk to, to see, it couldn't end like this! He needed his happy ending, Damn it! He needed it. He…
He was going to die, wasn't he?
He would never get to see his friends again. Deckerd would likely never see him again, or news would broadcast his dead corpse lying on the ocean floor nationwide, and Kirrisaki would be on the ground, rolling, laughing. Then Deckerd would see him. Then Deckerd would see him.
Then Deckerd would care.
Arms curled around his midsection, squeezing tightly. The light was nearing, he was rising.
The touch was angelic, almost. Supporting and sure, yet gentle and kind. They brought him skywards, towards heaven beyond.
Gunmax was pliant in his servos, a worrying symptom of losing consciousness. It wouldn't make any sense for a mech of their capacity to drown, but Deckerd wouldn't put it past any of them to lose focus in shock. The petrifyingly cold waters of April Hiroshima bay would surprise anybody, let alone one afraid of the ocean and incapable of swimming.
It was no use to try to speak to him while beneath the waterline, so Deckerd tried his best to squeeze life back into the frame he was rescuing.
They breached the surface, both gasping and wheezing.
"Gunmax! Gunmax, stay with me, hold on tight!"
The biker regained a hold on reality, turning around.
"Dekkado! For a second there, I thought I was-" A wave slammed into them both, nearly knocking Gunmax away from him, but Deckerd persisted, keeping his grip on the other detective firm and unyielding, kicking them back up to wonderful air and the ability to converse.
"-Dead!" Gunmax finished, gulping air and some saline, too.
"Gunmax, no matter what happens you stay with me and hold on tight, got it?"
The mech in question nodded seriously.
"I trust you."
And when the next batch of water dumped itself on their heads, Gunmax held tightly to his lifeline.