Chapter 18

Everyone froze.

Alley most of all as she saw the condition Metal Bat was in. "What… what the hell happened to him!?" she demanded of her uncle.

He shook his head. "Despite appearing 'brainwashed' the last time I saw Bad in action was a few weeks ago. He was against a demon level monster and merely had an arm injury. This… I don't know what they did to him…"

If Alley had to guess, Bad was over 75% cyborg. His face was relatively human, except for the lower jaw. "They melded his mouth shut… It's like that villain's mask Bane from the batman movie…" said Boros.

"What the hell is Batman?" asked Knuckle.

"Who is Bane?" asked Alley.

"Ah, sorry other Earth stuff. However I cannot get a good look at him connected to Knuckle."

"He's on a damn life support system, they disconnected him so I hooked up so he wouldn't die!"

Alley froze. "Shit, they were pushing him too far… they did it on purpose didn't they!"

"Probably," muttered Boros. He paused for a moment before he looked to his communicator on his wrist. "Prodigy. Bring me that please." And ended the conversation.

"Prodigy?" Alley asked.

"Just you wait," Boros said with a grin.

There was a burst of light, and a rather short person appeared before them. He carried an oddly dense ball with him and gave it to Boros. However he froze at the sight of Knuckle and Bad. "Whoa, whose shoddy work?" he demanded and pointed to Bad.

"Not now, I assure you. You will have your chance to look him over, for now…" Boros dropped the odd ball down between Knuckle and Bad. Alley watched on as it severed the wires that connected the two, and then, cover Bad up from the chest.

"Wait, is this a slime!?" Alley demanded.

"Yep, made it myself, this here is a techno slime. It absorbs technology and can replicate and fill in missing parts. Right now it is assessing the situation, and now it realized its purpose. Watch," Prodigy explained.

Bad began to disconnect from Knuckle. Boros caught him before he hit the ground and got him onto a bed. From there, they saw the damage done.

"Oh God… Bad…" she whispered.

His chest was all machine, his waistline wires. "His whole lower body is metal… shit man, can something be done?" Knuckle asked.

Suddenly, Bad's eyes opened!

"BAD!" cheered Alley.

But there was a problem. They took away his ability to speak, his eyes bared no emotion nor could he move them to emote anything! His brow paralyzed, face, frozen. He tried to move on his own, yet the moment he saw his arms. He turned to Alley. She connected to him telepathically.

'AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!'

The scream she heard in her head, erupted out of herself. She had to sever the connection. "Oh God!" she wept. Somehow she expressed everything Bad was feeling. Her body trembled and shook from shock, the tears flowed from her eyes as she screamed aloud in pain. "Why… why did this happen… how could I not fight it? What did they do to me? Oh God, is Zenko okay?!"

She began to tremble as her uncle caught her. "Easy there, you just unleashed his whole emotional state." He said with great care. Knuckle looked down at Bad. "Short Stack, you need to calm your head or we ain't going to get far. Okay. I'm gonna help you…"

"Wait, he just needs something to speak out of? Easy, he just has to think of it and the slime will do the rest!" Prodigy explained.

Knuckle decided to move things along as he connected with the slime. It made a small speaker at the base of Bad' throat. "Oh God… someone, please tell me this ain't real… please… please…"

"Oh Bad…" whispered Alley.

Boros however was thinking. "It's not impossible to reverse this, however it's not a simple matter either. We have little human anatomy to work with, most of him is already replaced…"

"We can turn him into a more functional cyborg." Said Prodigy.

"No, I don't want to be not tin man... no offence Knuckle."

"None take short stack."

Alley tried to think of something. "I think the only thing we can do is clone him a new body, but that in itself is a challenge since we have to take his mind and put it in the new body." She said aloud.

"Indeed, but we have powerful espers to do that for us, a simple mind transfusion will due." Boros explained.

"Ooo, can I get the shell when you're done?" Prodigy asked.

"Could you ask that AFTER we get through this!" demanded Alley.

Prodigy sneered. "I just wanted to dibs it…" he muttered.

"We need to call Genus here. He's the expert at cloning…"

"Well, he was," Boros said with a grin. Once more he got to his communicator. "Gene, we need you please."

Instantly he appeared.

Gene said nothing as he looked over Bad and nodded at the damage done to him. "We cannot deconstruct him that's for certain, we can make him a new body. I can do that, but I need genetic material that's been unhindered by this cyborgification…"

Alley tried to think over where to get a sample, until Boros abruptly cleared his throat. "Uh, Gene, did you forget?" he asked offhandedly.

Suddenly Gene rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah. Duh!" he laughed. "I can make him a body, the problem is making everything else… too bad his heart wasn't in there. It would cut the time in half."

"Hearts take the longest to form?" asked Alley.

Gene nodded. "Unless we want to do an embryo clone, that will take nine months to form then the acceleration method will add nearly another month… OR we do it by a tissue. The heart is usually the one I go for, it takes the longest and it's the first to form to connect everything. The heart alone can take a while, nearly the same amount of time as the embryo cloning. But if the heart was there, it cuts the process and we can do it all in far less time."

Knuckle however appeared to have an idea. "Can you alter a heart to match his?"

"Of course I can, I can infuse it with his blood and the heart will alter to his type, why?"

Knuckle tapped his chest, the small compartment in his left side opened as the cylinder popped out. He revealed his human heart to Gene and Bad. "What do you say short stack? Wanna Brawler's heart?"

"Dude…" he whispered.

"Take it, I don't need it." He insisted.

Gene was more than willing to grab the organ. "I'll get started, I can make him a body in three weeks with this!"

"Why three weeks?" asked Alley.

"I am going to be certain everything goes accordingly. Also the brain I have to keep an eye on since we want it to be clear, we got to transfer this Bad into that body, right?"

"If not, you can have conflicting personalities," Boros explained.

"I don't think we want that to say the least…" muttered Alley.

"I'll get to work right away" with that, Gene teleported out of the room. However, Alley had some questioned.

"Boros… how do you have Bad's blood?" she asked.

"Oh that, well… it's a funny story mother…"

"Really? I could use a laugh," she said as her lower arms went on her hips and her main arms were crossed…