Join me, Master Albert, and I will make your science the greatest in the entire world—or else you will be a lot more frustrated with your predicament! *awkward toothy smile*
"Like I said before," Prometheus commented, "you have no idea how to design fair challenges for the players of your Game. It's at least kind of amusing to watch them spend hours getting a Model W unstuck from a ruined underwater turbine, but this isn't fun for anyone involved."
"Welcome to the new order of things I didn't want to create," Albert snorted in response. Besides, I can attest that the noxious odor of this Bio Lab isn't even an annoyance by Game of Destiny standards. The subterranean Lab in question, once used for research by Albert himself, had been abandoned for several months after it was no longer needed. Many of the vats of chemicals had broken, and sizable puddles of their foul-smelling contents could be found all over the floors, but a few guard and maintenance Mechaniloids still remained to keep the place from total collapse and decay. "The transerver to the Undersea Volcano should be right through here," he continued, gesturing to a standard-looking steel gate on his left.
"Remember, we're tracking your A-Trans system's energy signature," Prometheus reminded Albert as the trio stepped through the gate into a vacant vehicle hangar. "We'll know if you try to pull anything on us, and don't expect any forgiveness afterwards."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Albert unconvincingly replied. He walked up to the inactive golden-hued transerver in the center of the hangar.
"CURRENTLY IN STANDBY MODE," the transerver's computer reported, detecting Albert's close proximity. "INSERT INITIALIZATION KEY TO RESUME."
"Override initialization key check," Albert commanded, "code 235206."
"OVERRIDE CODE ACCEPTED," the transerver answered, the green lights on its sides beginning to flash. "COORDINATE DATA VERIFIED. STEP ON CENTRAL PAD TO INITIATE TRANSPORT." Albert glanced over his shoulder at Prometheus and Pandora. Having nothing more to say, Pandora simply folded her arms. Her brother narrowed his eyes and planted his activated scythe on the ground, evoking the Grim Reaper and well aware of it.
They've been ready to go on their vengeful rampage for centuries now, haven't they? Albert mused as he climbed onto the transerver pad and became veiled in a whirlwind of energy. Now that I think about it, I'm impressed they've been able to hold themselves together this long.
A few seconds after Albert had completely faded from view, Prometheus flicked the switch on the handle of his scythe. Without even noticing that its laser blade had flickered out, he stowed the weapon in the holster on his back. "Part of me never thought this day would come," he said, shaking his head.
"It had to," Pandora reassured him. "It's only fair."
A pair of shrimp-like guard Mechaniloids lurched through the water towards Albert, alerting him to their presence with their luminescent red antennae. Unconcerned, he built up power in his halberd and released an Ice Dragon homing drone. The Dragon sliced effortlessly through its robotic opposition, its jagged icicle spikes rupturing their hulls and exposing their fragile circuit boards to the high-pressure waters of the deep ocean. One of the Mechaniloids managed to fire off a spread of plasma bullets before it was torn apart, but Albert simply deflected the shots with a swing of his halberd.
If this is what Prometheus and Pandora consider formidable security, Albert chuckled to himself, they clearly haven't seen what I put Grey through in my own timeline. Embarrassing as it may have been, Thetis' form was excellently equipped for underwater combat, and Albert's counterpart's poorly thought-out defense tactics didn't exactly hurt his chances. Now, now, let's not make too many assumptions here, Albert caught himself as he water-dashed out of the path of a falling boulder launched from a nearby volcanic vent. The alternate Albert was likely just expecting an assault from large, bulky Prometheus and slow, methodical Pandora, not someone with a body as small and maneuverable as Thetis'.
Noticing a wide tunnel bored in the sea floor about a hundred feet from him and recognizing it as a side entrance to the Undersea Volcano base, Albert began to make his way over to it. He had barely traveled a quarter of that distance, however, when a large, heavily armored shape burst up from the depths of a trench right in front of him. Interpreting it as a threat upon first glance, Albert leveled his charged-up halberd at it and was about to unleash another Ice Dragon when he heard the figure speak.
"Whoa, there, boss," Chronoforce the Xiphosuroid addressed. "Don't you recognize your old favorite servant?"
"Chronoforce!" Albert exclaimed. "You're…"
"Alive, and the one from your timeline, yes," Chronoforce confirmed. "I barely recognized you at first with your A-Trans system active, but Model W fragment scans don't lie."
"I know I should be demanding that you explain how you survived that airship crash right now," Albert acknowledged, failing to suppress his idiotic grin of relief, "but I'm honestly just grateful to finally be free from this infernal timeline." Clearing his throat and regaining control of his facial features, he continued, "How long will it be before you've charged up enough to perform a Time Bomb temporal reversal? You must have established a connection to Model W by now, since this dimension's Chronoforce isn't around to get in the way."
"Oh, I've been building up spare energy for a while," Chronoforce answered, "so I should be ready whenever you are. Just let me know when our next destination is and I'll—"
"He won't be the one to make that decision," a voice spoke from within the obscuring white aura of a teleport as it finished on top of Chronoforce's shell. As the glow faded, it revealed the voice's source to be the none other than the alternate Master Albert in his DAN-000 form. Two more figures teleported in after Albert on the opposite side of the trench: Aeolus and Atlas, both Megamerged and prepared for battle.
"Why are you so worked up over him of all Mega Men, anyway?" Atlas frustratedly questioned Master Albert. "Anyone whose idea of self-preservation involves pretending to be a little girl isn't worth fighting if you ask me." Master Albert, having heard these complaints several times before, didn't bother to reply.
I should pay more attention to that little voice in my head that warns me when things are too good to be true, Albert noted. "And how exactly are you going to stop me, Albert?" he demanded out loud. I hope the answer isn't what I suspect it is…
"As a precaution, all of my creations with connections to Model W are programmed to take orders from it, and by extension me," Master Albert responded. "After I noticed Chronoforce's apparently inexplicable regeneration in a heavily damaged state mere minutes after you destroyed him, I instructed Model W to gather data from him to explain the situation. Thus, Chronoforce had no choice but to reveal everything he knew about your timeline, the alterations you made to history, and how to use the Time Bomb to travel years into the past or future."
"Sorry, sir," Chronoforce apologized. "It was either give Model W access to my obedience programming or drop dead on the floor of that lake."
"I concede that you weren't trying to deceive me during our first encounter," Master Albert admitted, "but now that the power to alter the past and present is in my hands, I have no desire to give it up to someone I still can't entirely trust."
"At least you're willing to admit to your own closed-mindedness," Albert remarked. Glancing at Aeolus and Atlas, he continued, "And what about them? Even I never resorted to using lesser Mega Men to fight my battles."
"They were easy enough to persuade," Master Albert replied. "All it took were promises of wealth and power, respectively, in the world we shall now return to and claim as our own. Chronoforce?"
"Destination date set for April 28, 25XX," Chronoforce grudgingly reported. "Activating Time Bomb." Aeolus and Atlas leapt up and grabbed hold of two of Chronoforce's fins as his ice tail began spinning. Albert, with no other options, made a mad water-dash for the azure Pseudoroid himself, managing to contact Chronoforce's domed shell just in time.
"Next time," Albert remarked to Master Albert as they vanished from the Undersea Volcano, "I suppose you'll know not to pause to gloat."
Vent, to say the least, was not having fun. Sure, he'd fought plenty of humanoid Mavericks before, but a killer cargo plane? That was different. Even the Biometal he'd recently acquired, the legendary Model X, wasn't doing him much good against the renegade aircraft's machine guns and the laser-shooting metal crates it released from its armored underbelly.
"Why won't you just die?" Vent growled as he dodged a surface-crawling projectile launched by a nearby crate tower. Aiming his X-Buster skyward, he charged up for a second or two and fired a bolt of emerald-green plasma directly at one of the plane's propeller engines. Just like all of his previous attacks, the shot rebounded off of the whirling steel blades without leaving so much as a dent. Vent had known that airborne targets were most vulnerable to damage to their propulsion systems since before he could pronounce the word 'vulnerable', but that approach was doing him no good at all now.
Glancing frantically around, Vent noticed a red warning icon on one of the crates that the plane had dropped. From a distance of about ten feet, he could barely make out the words 'CONTAINS INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE. DANGER: EXPLOSIVE FUELS.' on a label beneath the icon. Could that thing be generating power for the laser crates around it? he wondered. Either way, it gives me an idea. Drawing the attention of the plane's AI with a few warning shots, Vent lured it towards him until it was directly above the explosive crate. He dashed to the right to avoid a spray of gunfire, then charged up both of his busters and fired one, then another blue-hot plasma sphere directly at the crate.
Just as he had hoped, the shots hit their mark and ignited the volatile chemicals inside the crate, propelling it upwards into the plane's underside. The Maverick aircraft was sent reeling, its fuselage charred and torn open at the bottom by the impact and resulting explosion. It stabilized itself in a matter of seconds, however, and was ready to swoop down and unload on Vent again when its left wing was abruptly torn off by a green crescent of energy. Moments later, the source of that attack dropped onto the ground next to Vent as the plane plummeted into the side of a mountain behind him.
"Glad to see you're alright, Giro," Vent said, immediately recognizing the figure who had just downed the plane.
"I'm sorry I went missing for a little while there," Giro apologized as he turned to face Vent. "A squad of Mavericks ambushed me while I was delivering Model X to Prairie in Area A, but it looks like it wound up reaching you safe and sound." He stowed his Z-Saber in the scabbard on his hip and de-Megamerged, his scarlet armor disintegrating and exposing the red jacket and khakis he wore underneath. "Congrats on being the Model X Biomatch, by the way. I told you you were bound to Megamerge someday, what with surviving a Maverick raid and all."
"And to think I never believed you," Vent laughed. Girouette, or Giro for short, was a tall Reploid man in his early twenties, with square-framed glasses and thick blond hair that probably hadn't been cut in several months. He was also one of the more well-known members of the Guardians, thanks to both his ability to merge with Biometal Model Z and his almost comically high degree of moral fortitude. When the guy wasn't heroically protecting civilians from hordes of evil robots, he was rescuing and caring for orphaned children—and that was in his spare time. After Vent's father died and he and his mother relocated permanently to the Grand Nuage base, Giro had been kind enough to take Vent under his wing and train him as a Guardian, becoming a sort of honorary big brother to him over the years.
"It doesn't look like there's anything left to sort out here, so we should probably head back to HQ," Giro pointed out. "If you haven't noticed already, there's a transerver a short ways down the road to the left."
"I noticed," Vent responded. "Prairie also said she wanted to analyze a couple of computer chips I found, so I'll need to give—" He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a bluish-gray sphere of light between him and Giro, out of which emerged one of the most unusual collections of beings he had ever seen: three Mega Men, a horseshoe-crab-like Mutos Reploid with a tail made of ice, and a short, angry-looking man with a lab coat and a monocle-esque cybernetic eye. The Mega Men were locked in combat from the moment they came into view, with the Mutos Reploid laying motionless on the ground and the fourth man observing the fight from on top of its back.
"Did you even mean to send us here?" Albert interrogated Master Albert as he examined his surroundings and tried to deflect a barrage of Knuckle Buster shots at the same time.
"I assure you, we arrived exactly when I intended us to," Master Albert replied. He then turned his attention to Aeolus and Atlas. "I will engage the Model Z Mega Man, as he will likely present the most formidable challenge," he stated.
"I'll handle the Model X kid," Atlas added, immediately starting to dash over to where Vent stood in a state of incomprehension.
"In that case," Aeolus disappointedly sighed as he parried Albert's halberd with one of Model H's energy blades, "I suppose I will keep your counterpart occupied." He began slashing at Albert more aggressively, pushing him back toward the edge of the mountain road and the cliffside just behind it.
"Excellent," Master Albert smiled, anticipating an approaching victory. "If everything goes as planned, all six of Ciel's Biometals will soon be in our possession, and neither the Guardians nor the Hunters will have any hope of repelling the ever-more-frequent Maverick raids, let alone bringing down Slither Inc." Stepping down from Chronoforce's back, he began to stride menacingly toward Giro, who re-merged into Model Z form and raised his saber defensively.
"Vent," Giro called, "be careful! If she's too much for you to handle, make a break for the transerver. Don't worry about me."
"Y-you got it, boss," Vent responded, shaking off his confusion and building up a charge in his buster.
"So that's what you're planning, is it, Albert?" Albert demanded as he sidestepped a Plasma Cyclone and counterattacked with a spray of airborne icicles. "Honestly, I'm not sure someone with as little combat experience as you would have a chance against a veteran Mega Man in the first place."
"Don't be so quick to judge, my foolish counterpart," Master Albert smirked, his body beginning to pulse with the cyan aura of A-Trans. "Unlike you, I came prepared to fight."
Author's Note: Next time on Where Even Time Freezes, prepare for some aptly alliterative Atlas-on-alternate-Albert action (and yes, we mean that kind of action). Here at Giro Express, we can ship anyone - illegal or not! :D
...actually, please disregard everything I just said. The next chapter's action will be 3 vs. 3 and entirely combat-related, I swear. Please don't savage me in the reviews for this.