Chapter 2: Max and Jack
O.C. Credits:
*All O.C.s belong to Maximunex on DeviantArt (Max, Jack, & ATP SS)*
"Jack."
A young man with a bandaged head and a simple gray outfit with gray sneakers turned to the other side of the couch he slept on away from the disturbing voice.
"Jack."
The man had groaned, once again trying to continue his well-needed slumber. He merely shooed away his partner, who was doing a fantastic job annoying him.
"Wake up you dumbass!"
A sudden yank on his shirt was enough to cause the resting fighter to fall on his side onto the cold wooden floor. He rubbed his head, too tired to yell a string of curses at the person who dared cut off his sleep.
"Fucking Hell...I don't know which is more annoying; mosquitoes in a hot summer day, or you." Jack muttered under his breath.
Although obviously annoyed by this, Jack's partner had helped him back on his feet with a simple tug of the arm. Jack made a few long blinks momentarily as his vision returned back to normal. Sure enough, he was met face-to-face with his brown-haired partner; Max, who was wearing a simple gray shirt under a black trenchcoat with white dirtied sneakers.
"Yeah, well, I didn't wake you up just so we can go off and play games. We have another goddamn mission to handle." Max informed him as he pulled out a wrinkled folded paper from his pocket.
As the nausea of being forcefully woken up quickly passed, Jack took whatever his comrade had in his hands, unfolding the paper sloppily as he still didn't feel fully-functional at the very moment. "Jebus...already Max? Why the Hell can't they get some other goddamn agent to do this job? Hank seems fine to me."
Max rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. "Hey, don't think this is my fault. I don't know what the Hell the Higher-Ups are doing either. Either way though, I still bet you Agent Wimbleton has his own shit to do in Nevada. The guy's been going to the Improbability Zone way too many times now, and he ain't complaining. So suck it up and let's get this shit over with."
Sighing, Jack merely put the paper in his pockets without another word. Turning around and going to the shelves nearby him, he pulled out the hat that would cover his bandages around his cranium, and his utility vest. Grinning, he fastened the fingerless-gloves on his hands and rolled his head around his neck with a satisfying crack.
"Let's roll."
The drive to their location took only a half-hour or so to make. The facility they were meant to take down was large, meaning that there would certainly be a lot of bodies to hit the floor by the time the area was cleared.
"This the place?" Max questioned as Jack looked over the secret address.
"A-yep." Jack replied with a nod; throwing away the paper he just held like a piece of litter.
Driving a bit further but not too close to raise any suspicion, Jack stopped the car, turning to Max.
"The briefing said this place is heavily guarded. That means we aren't getting in without some special access like a keycard or something. Well then compadre; how do you propose we get into that little A.A.H.W. toy-factory?"
Chuckling, Max turned away from Jack as he stared at the entraceway of the facility, seemingly waiting for something to happen. "Simple; we just kill whoever decides to come out of the building first, and just steal whatever the Hell we need to crash that party."
As if on cue, an unfortunate 1337 agent had suddenly stepped out to the darkness of the night; taking out a cigarrette and a lighter to smoke. With their headlights off, Max and Jack were practically unsuspectable from such a faraway distance.
With a sly smirk on his face, Max pulled out his signature rifle, along with a crucial element to make things a bit easier for the two: a silencer. Twisting the silencer into place, he looked carefully into the scope, wanting to make the kill as clean and quick as possible.
"And looks like Lucky Fucker number one has just left the building." Max whispered with his eyes locked onto the target. Firing a silent round, he watched as the cigarrette flew out of the 1337 agent's mouth; falling into a puddle of blood made by the bullet puncturing the skull.
Placing the rifle on his back, Max quickly collected a few weapons along with him and dashed off to the fresh corpse for anything useful. Jack followed suite, as he took a Glock with a silencer of its own with him and his trusty mallet on his back.
By the time he reached his teammate, Max had already found what he was looking for. Sure enough, as Jack had said before, it was a keycard. Flipping the piece of plastic in his hand, he swiped it down on the mechanical slot besides him and simply walked in with Jack.
The first room they entered was cleared quickly, as the duo had fired their weapons simultaneously at enemy forces. By the time it was over, there were three 1337 agents along with four ATP engineers down on the floor. There wasn't much of a bang involved in the shooting thanks to the silencers they installed into their guns, but it was best left that way, since such a huge building could cause problems for the two.
The mission continued as the two calmly walked down the hallway; shoes stepping over more dead bodies and puddles of blood. The next room had given a bit more of an alternate route however, as the hallway had continued with an elevator leading to the basement on the side. After eliminating three more 1337 agents, the two had gone to the elevator without hesitation, simply because interesting stuff would usually lie in the basement of any high-tech establishment.
While they took down more and more bodies, Max had decided starting a conversation with his partner.
"Be careful about this place. Corey didn't give much to the Agency regarding this facility, probably because it's so goddamn large. No telling what they may be hiding here."
Jack frowned as some more blood decorated the walls and floor. "Come on, don't get your balls twisted in a knot. Nothing we can't handle."
"Still..."
"Listen, we'll maul down these fuckers, and you don't have to be so damn insecure 'bout yourself. Jebus Christ...why do ya gotta be so negative about the situation all the time?" Jack pushed on.
"Well, I'm so sorry to burst your bubble, but I ain't so outgoing with shit like this. Getting killed doesn't hold much benefits for your information, and I certainly don't plan dying anytime soon." Max responded.
Feeling the irritation from his partner's voice, Jack just decided to lay off the conversation with a shrug. "Whatever. It's not like worrying will make a difference anyways."
Silence reigned a bit more afterwards. Room after room, the two of them would easily dispatch of any enemies thanks to the ambush tactic they had so successfully worked with over the years. However, with every kill, the both of them began to feel a bit uneasy.
Not being able to take the itching feeling anymore, Jack finally decided to bring the disturbing idea to the table.
"You've realized it too, haven't you?"
Saying nothing as he kicked away the body of yet another engineer blocking the way, Max nodded.
"Yeah, I have."
With this, Max and Jack had momentarily stopped their killing spree for a short, important chat.
"These bodies..." Max continued, "They're all ATP engineers."
Jack twisted the corner of his lip as he saw all the yellow blood scattered all over the place. This mission...it was almost too easy. All of these guys were unarmed, meaning that it may have been possible they were working on something else rather than the usual A.A.H.W. business that goes about Nevada.
And if their suspicions were correct, their easy mission would reach a whole new level of Holy Shit in a matter of minutes by the time they reached the final room.
"Yeah. Do you think there's something in here? Like, something we certainly haven't seen before, in this place?" Jack ensued the conversation with.
Max sighed, unsure himself. It was very rare to find anything out-of-the-blue like this, and it was certainly something the two of them hadn't experienced until now. All their missions were simple ones that regarded blowing up shipping convoys, communication towers, etcetera.
This was different. There was never a circumstance that seemed to have led up with such obvious clues like these.
Finally cutting off his train of thought, Max reloaded the weapon he kept in his hands and stared at the door in front of him. It was labeled: [DO NOT ENTER-HIGH RANKING OFFICIALS ONLY]
After checking everything was ready, Max narrowed his eyes.
"Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"
Nothing could have possibly prepared the engineers inside the Testing Room for the attack that would decimate them all. Even in their group of ten, there was absolutely no possible way they could have fended off the trained agents that had so suddenly barged in.
Max was quick with his modded rifle, as six engineers went down before they could even pull out their weapons for some kind of method of defense, while Jack had simply smacked any nearby opponents with his melee weapon and killed the remaining targets far from him with his firearm.
Once the final engineer had been hit hard enough by Jack's weapon-of-choice to the head with a nasty crack in his skull, the two of them had began inspecting the room more closely. It was a large testing area with super-computers of some sorts in organized sections of 3 by 3. Aside from that, there was one last thing though that really caught both their eyes:
The other half of the room was seeming cut off by some kind of chamber that was sealed up with a sturdy type of glass. Unfortunately, that part of the room was too dark to see inside, so whatever laid there would not be visible without some sort of method of lighting.
Even as Max closed in on the chamber and pressed his face against the glass, it was still too pitch-black to see anything. There was a doorway nearby that seemed to lead inside, but a looming feeling inside of him told himself to avoid that unless it served as a last resort.
Turning to his partner with a frustrated expression visibly etched on his face, he began to explain the situation. "Well, shit. I can't see a damn thing in there. Judging from how large this chamber is though, I have a feeling we might've just found what we're looking for. But there's no way in Hell I'm going in there to get a closer look. Might as well kill me now if I'm going to go in blind."
Nodding, Jack decided to check the computers around him for any clues. Shoving away one engineer with a bullet in his head and chest, he began reading the lines of code. As Max walked up to see what exactly he found, Jack merely scratched the back of his head.
"Judging from all this code, we've crashed into an on-going experiment, obviously. Every line though seems to repeat the same phrase though. Something called: 'ATP SS'. We must've came in just before they were able to activate whatever the fuck this thing is in there." Jack informed, referring to the chamber Max had tried to inspect just earlier.
"Well, is there any way we can at least make things a bit more visible in there?" Max questioned.
"Hmm, hang on. I think I found just the thing for that."
Flipping up a switch on the panel-board, a sudden low hum could be heard vibrating through the walls. Slowly, one by one, the lights in the closed chamber began turning on. By the time all of the lights were on and it was practically impossible to not see what was inside the closed space, the two agents had seen what exactly the A.A.H.W. was hiding.
A few seconds of shocked silence was all that could be heard between the two, until Max had finally made a large gulp to break it.
"Wh...what is that thing!?" Max shouted as he fell back.
Jack had to blink to believe what he was seeing. Once he realized his eyes were telling the truth, he began to slowly analyze the creature before them. This...thing...was huge. Almost five times the size of an adult male. It wore a black shirt much like the ATP soldats, only instead of a yellow spec, its left eye was replaced with a yellow robotic one. Veins visibly popped out of the back of his head as blood was seemingly being pumped into a tube implanted in its back.
Neither of them had seen anything like this. Sure, there were the stories of MAG Agents and such, but none of the descriptions matched the giant that stood before them now.
Finally regaining his composure, Jack sighed. "I think we may have just found ATP SS..."
Max continued to stare at SS. He closed his mouth when he realized he was gaping this whole time and calmed down when he noticed this monster was seemingly asleep.
"It's not moving..." Max said optimistically.
Jack sighed in relief. "You're right. We're just getting worked up over this meat-puppet. Let's chop its head off while its still inactive and get out of here."
Nodding, Max began walking towards the door to enter the chamber.
But he only got two steps in before a sudden slam of a switch was heard behind him.
At first, he turned to Jack, who seemed to be confused as well. But then, they realized that someone else had overheard their conversation.
The ATP engineer with the cracked skull had somehow found the strength to press the single switch that may cost the duo's lives.
With widened eyes, Jack fired into the agent's skull and watched as his brains splattered over the monitor of his computer. He quickly ran towards the machine to see what exactly the engineer had done. To his dismay, the screen had suddenly gone red thanks to some type of lockdown code, as alarms had began flaring in the room. A metal doorway had now replaced the one they had just blasted through; trapping the two of them.
"Aw fuck! We're stuck in here!" Jack angrily yelled.
Hearing no response from his partner, he turned around as he heard some type of hissing sound behind him. Jack's eyes widened when he finally realized what exactly was going on.
"That's not our only problem!" Max hollered as he pulled the rifle from his back.
ATP SS had suddenly shot its head upwards as its robotic eye lit up a bright shade of yellow. The wires constraining it to the wall slowly began to snap one-by-one as he stood up.
The second this activation sequence was done, SS quickly looked down to the two agents in front of him. A sudden need for spilling blood had began coursing through his head, and these two puny humans may seem to hold the key to satisfying that.
Max and Jack's eyes locked with ATP SS's. Adrenaline had been flowing through their veins as there was no means of running away from this fight. And then, the unexpected happened:
ATP SS had begun charging straight at them, squashing the ATP engineer bodies and destroying all the computers in his way.
It wasn't until ATP SS had crashed straight through the concrete and bullet-proof glass that Max and Jack had finally reacted.
Jack took the closest weapon at his disposal from one of the corpses: a 1911A1 Custom and began firing as many shots as he could at the beast while running back. "Holy shit! It's running straight for us!"
Max did the same, however, for a mammoth being, SS was surprisingly fast. Eventually, he realized that their tactic of retreat-and-fire won't work for long as they were losing space to move back behind them.
"Scatter!" Max merely yelled before jumping and rolling away from an incoming giant fist. Jack went the other direction in order to confuse the behemoth.
SS made the quick decision to go for Max first. Yanking out his fist from the concrete floor, he left the crater and quickly used his other hand to make another one. Unfortunately for him, Max was too fast to be squashed so easily as he dodged every attack and implanted more bullets into SS's head. It seemed though that SS wouldn't be going down so easily either though after emptying almost a whole clip into his skull.
Once Max had run on empty, he slung the rifle onto his back and pulled out a Bowie Knife he kept in his sock. SS pumped his fist once more at Max, but this time, Max had jumped on and ran up his arm. When he was close enough to his face, he jabbed the knife into his robotic eye; twisting and turning to make it as painful as possible.
SS roared in pain, but quickly grabbed onto Max and threw him into the wall. Max fell to the ground; unconscious.
"Max!" Jack yelled in shock and worry.
Eventually, SS turned around to go for his next target: Jack. This whole time, Jack had been firing at the back of SS's head while he was distracted, but he didn't expect the giant fighter to make so sudden of a turn. Just like Max, he was able to jump to the side and dodge being crushed. But, he was suddenly grabbed by SS's other hand as he was in mid-air.
Jack dropped his pistol in shock and began beating at the large hand that held him captive. "Let me go, you big oaf!"
Unfortunately, that wasn't an option for SS as he began tightening his hand; squeezing the life out of the fighter. Jack gasped as he felt his ribs almost ready to give in.
"Gah! Stop it!" he yelled in a futile attempt to stop the pain. Instead, SS continued this style of torture that had somehow amused him.
As if it wasn't possible, the intensity of the pain had continued to increase slowly and gradually. At one point, Jack suddenly coughed up blood and began screaming. He was going to be squeezed like a rubber toy at this rate.
Meanwhile, Max had finally woken up from the hollering of his partner. Once his brain had finally processed the situation, his eyes widened.
"Jack! No!" he shouted.
Although ATP SS heard this, he took no heed of the agent he just slammed into the wall. This was too much fun for him; this was what they had made him into. A machine for torture.
In desperation, Max looked around, flinching as he continued hearing Jack's yells of pain. Nothing seemed to work on that thing; it was almost as if all bullets were practically pellets to SS.
In a last desperate attempt, he saw a locker nearby him. Opening the first locker, his heart rose in hope.
Pulling out what he found, he put his fingers to his mouth to make a loud whistle.
"Hey, dickhead! Over here you dumbfuck!"
This finally made ATP SS stop as he angrily turned to the person who dared interrupt his fun. The second he did so, he saw with his single working eye, Max holding something large in his hands.
An M203.
Aiming the missle straight at his head, Max grinned.
"Say chesse, motherfucker."
Once the missle had been fired, it lodged itself into ATP SS's brain. This caused the giant to drop Jack, who was slowly crawling away from certain death. ATP SS began holding its head in agony, feeling the projectile ready to burst.
And it did.
Whatever that once was ATP SS's head was now nothing but a mixture of yellow blood and chunks of his skull and brain. The whole room was literally covered in the mess, including Max and Jack themselves.
Lying on his back after falling from the explosive impact, Max quickly stood up and ran with what little energy he had left in his body towards Jack. He leaned over and began shaking his partner.
"Jack! Jack! Hey, speak to me! Tell me you're fucking all right!" Max desperately began to yell.
His pleas were heard as Jack shook his head and wiped off some of SS's blood off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Max sighed in relief when he saw Jack was okay. He was hurt, but he would certainly live.
"Ugh...ya couldn't have made the end result of this a bit less messier Max?" Jack muttered as he sat up.
Max twitched when he heard this. "Hey, don't talk smack to me! If it wasn't for me, you'd be a squashed corpse by now! Besides, nothing else was working on that fucker, so what did you expect!?"
Jack stared at his partner for a few seconds, realizing that he was technically right. Then, he fell to his back and began (to Max's shock), laughing.
"The Hell is so funny?" Max asked, not sure where humor really played a role in all of this.
Once he calmed himself down, Jack looked at Max back in the eyes. "Naw, it's just that...it was really funny watching you flip out like that. I never knew you cared that much about me, Mom."
Max twisted the corner of his lip as he turned a light shade of red. "J-just shut up. You're my goddamn partner, all right? What the Hell did you expect me to do? Shrug it off and just walk away like I didn't give a damn?"
Jack grinned. "Never said that. Thought you hated my guts until now."
"Yeah, well, you're dead wrong about that." Max muttered as he helped Jack up.
When Jack had returned to his feet, the grin on his face suddenly vanished as he flinched in pain.
"Guh...damn, that really hurt like a bitch."
A flicker of concern went across Max's eyes. "You all right?"
"Yeah. Just a few broken ribs here and there."
"Well in that case, walk it off. There's tons of Medics in the Agency; just ask one to take care of that shit."
"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya."
"You can still drive though, right? Cause I don't really feel like it at the moment."
"Mmhmm. Didn't say I won't."
"Right. So how do we get out of here again?"
"I can probably hack into the mainframe and get that door open."
"Or..."
Max suddenly picked up the M203 he used to blast SS's head to bits. Reloading it with a second missle he found in the locker, he fired at the door. All that was left of it afterwards was just a bunch of smoke and a really big, gaping hole in the wall. He smirked.
Jack rolled his eyes. It seemed his hacking skills wouldn't really serve a purpose at this moment. "...we could do that."
After finding some painkillers in the car, Jack was good to go. Max had bandaged his own head as well, after realizing SS had managed to cause a crack into his skull. It seemed as though they may not be gone for a while...
"Well, that was one Hell of a mission, won't you agree?" Jack began while driving over the speed-limit. After all, nobody really gave a shit how fast you were going in Nevada.
"Uh-huh." Max only said. He was just so tired and his head was really ringing.
"Yeah, gonna take a shower and just sleep the rest of the night away..." Jack continued. He would have to be patient for now though, after getting home and getting his wounds checked up.
"Uh-huh." Max repeated once more. He really wasn't in the mood to talk at the moment, and just hoped Jack would stop talking just for a little while.
Getting the idea that he was annoying his partner, Jack stopped. However, ten minutes later, he finally decided to say what was really on his mind after their mission.
"...Thanks."
Max opened his eyes only slightly at this. This was actually one of the very few times he had ever heard his partner appreciate something he had done. However, he was a bit confused.
"...Hm? What for...?" He said sleepily.
"Jeez, do I have to really spell something obvious like that for ya? I mean, thanks for saving my life you dumbass. I definitely would've been dead if I was all alone back there." Jack explained.
After slowly realizing what he said, Max merely nodded and laid his head back towards the sky. It was morning, but there was no beautiful dawn or sunset.
The sky...it was all red. And it would stay that way until the dark night. God...what a depressing world to live in.
"Yeah...don't mention it."
As Max tried to sleep once more, he was interrupted by Jack yet again. He was starting to lose his patience very quickly, and was going to shout at his comrade, had he not have brought up a such a strange question.
"...Hey...Max?"
"Ugh, goddamnit...what do you want?"
"...You said back there that you saved my life just 'cause we were partners, right?"
"...Yeah...what's your point?"
"...Well...I was actually kinda wondering...are we...only just that?"
"Huh?"
"Like, do you stick up with me just because we're...partners?"
Max raised an eyebrow to this question. It was really odd hearing this from someone who was always cracking jokes and making things so much more lighter than they actually were.
"Sorry Jack, I don't flow that way."
It took the driver a few seconds to assess what exactly what his partner had said. He then turned a deep shade of red when he finally realized the meaning behind those words.
"Damn it Max; I don't mean it like THAT! I mean...are we...like...friends?"
Max stared at Jack for a few minutes at this. He rested his head back slowly on his seat in order to avoid spurring any pain from his damaged skull. He chuckled.
Jack had a soft spot to him...huh? He supposed he was being a bit too serious and hard on him lately, so there was obvious reason for doubt on their relationship.
"...Yeah dude. We're cool man..."
Jack stared at the road in front of him, smiling at this answer. It wasn't one of those cocky, "I'm-So-Freaking-Amazing" smiles.
It was one of those down-to-the-heart, honest smiles. Something he hadn't made for a really long time.
"...Thanks..."
Jack turned his head when he didn't hear a response from Max, only to see him sound asleep. He made a small laugh, deciding that it would be best to leave him at peace for now...at least until they reached back to the Agency.
As he looked back to the long, unwinding road, he sighed. Friendship was only so little of the things you could have in a world like this. How long has it been anyways, ever since he had become a part of this War? Two to three years, at most? Wow...he wasn't even keeping track anymore. But he supposed it didn't matter. All he cared about was when this War would end. When he could finally not worry about popping a cap into someone's head everyday and just relax.
Rumors had it, that Hank J. Wimbleton was going on a string of missions to take down The Auditor, along with some help of two more talented agents: Sanford and Deimos. They were only rumors, but if they were true, it could mean the end of this horrible war and this nightmarish world.
Blinking, he saw the secret facility in the distance. Only a few more minutes remained to their drive.
They were almost there.
FILE CODE: MAX [629-83773]
ALIAS: [NONE]
BLOOD TYPE: [UNSPECIFIED/UNKNOWN]
STAND: [ANTI-AAHW, JUNIOR AGENT]
FILE CODE: JACK [5225-6567]
ALIAS: [NONE]
BLOOD TYPE: [UNSPECIFIED/UNKNOWN]
STAND: [ANTI-AAHW, JUNIOR AGENT]
FILE CODE: ATP SS [287-77-2249]
ALIAS: [NONE]
BLOOD TYPE: [C-] (YELLOW)
STAND: [AAHW, EXPERIMENT]
Reviewers' Credits:
DodgeStreaker: Thanks for reminding me Dodge; that certainly would've been a dumb factor to leave out. ^^;
The Dark Madness Dragon: Hey dude, thanks! And keep those ideas coming! :)
[END OF CHAPTER 2: MAX AND JACK]
