Chapter 5
"Not a fucking chance!" Tron shouted from the loading ramp, perched inside of her jet-black mech. She kept her artillery aimed at Gutsman's head, "Scott, step away from the psychotic megalomaniac and cover your face." She added slowly as Rush snarled beside her.
"Tron, wait..." Scott began to say, putting a hand up.
"She won't do it." Guts interrupted in a flat tone, hands back in his pockets.
Scott turned his head to him, "Dude, you really don't wanna test that theory." He said before looking back to Tracy. "Tron, we need him alive same as he needs us. There is a bigger threat than him right now."
"Bullshit!" Tracy yelled, "He's gonna kill us the second we drop our guard!"
Scott was exasperated, "He's not gonna kill us..."
"I am going to kill you." Guts corrected, catching their attention. "Just not until our common enemy is taken care of."
Scott leaned forward to Guts, "You're not helping." He whispered.
"So who is this 'mystery threat' then?" Tracy asked sarcastically. "We aren't going to take you at your word, for obvious reasons."
Guts smirked, "If I told you that, I would lose the comfort of my current working form." He answered. "Just know that if I intended to kill you, we wouldn't be standing here right now." He tossed Protoman a wired data chip, "I'll be in touch. Just remember, if I die, Wily and his officers discover that the two of you are still alive. You'll be hunted down like dogs." He shuttered a little, clenching his jaw, "If either of you die, the same happens to me. So do be safe." He added sarcastically, before walking back to his ship.
Proto joined his sister on the platform, watching their enemy fly away. "What do we do now?" Tracy asked.
"Kill ourselves and inconvenience him." Protoman said, removing his helmet.
The hatch began to close as the chest of the mech opened and Tracy stepped out. "This is serious, Scott." She said, clicking a button prompting the mech to walk itself away. "Shit like this isn't something to laugh about."
He turned around, stopping as she almost bumped into him, "What would you have me do? He's evil to the core, yes, but he wasn't lying." Scott tossed his helmet on the worktable along with Dustman's head, removing his gauntlets, "Pass the fucking saw."
Tracy nodded, realizing he was right, they were stuck with this. "Ok." She said, passing him the die cutter, "We go along with this for now, but we stay our course too. So we go with your plan." She added smiling, "Let's go get ourselves killed."
Aboard The Accolade
Guts paced in his command center, the eyes of Quickman followed via holo communication. "So, General." Quick said impatiently, "Your ship arrives on the scene four minutes and forty-two seconds after Dusty goes offline. No Bonnes."
Guts, now in his white tank top, raised an eyebrow, "I told you, Dust had filled that room so much I could barely find his body."
"You did say that." Quick replied condescendingly.
"What are you implying, Lieutenant?" Guts snapped.
"That you killed my subjects!" Quickman shouted back.
Gutsman was infuriated, "You will check your fucking tone with me!" He scolded, "I am still your superior!"
"Tell yourself that android." Quick replied in the rawest form of disrespect possible. "But if I don't hear a peep out of the Bonnes in the next three days, I'll be sure to have a new superior."
The holo flickered away as Guts went into a blind rage, smashing equipment as he roared obscenities. After taking a moment to gather himself, he retrieved the small wired data chip from his pocket, linking it into his control hub.
"Wow. Needy much?" The irritating android replied from the other end of the line.
"I need you to kill someone." Guts replied dryly.
Cathedral of Saint Paul-St. Paul, Minnesota
Protoman and Tron stood outside of The Phantom, gearing up for the assassination to come. "So why have us come kill this guy, but not the guy?" Tron asked as she pulled her long black hair into a bun and fastened her goggles.
"He says "the" guy is expecting that, and would know before we even got the chance." Scott answered, helping her fasten her black, fire-retardant vest.
"Did he happen to say anything else, besides what we already know?" She questioned, slinging her fusion rifle over her shoulder and putting on her gloves.
Scott nodded, "Yeah, he said 'Don't die.'"
Willis Tower-Chicago, Illinois
Over sixty-thousand feeds broadcasting throughout Megatropolis, all to one place, the Mega-hub of Lieutenant Quickman. His ability to transmute nitro-active fusion throughout his body was not the only use for his talents. His processor core worked four hundred times faster than any other android of his kind, he could receive, comprehend and relay information from any one of the tens of thousands of feeds in the blink of an eye. But at this moment, it was one feed in particular that he was interested in. Inside the front gate of Heatman's headquarters, a slender female dressed in all black combat gear opened a small backpack, placing a cylinder-shaped device on the ground. When the bright red flares rocketed into the sky Quick knew it was a trap, but the beta class patrol drones weren't capable of seeing that. He could only watch on as dozens of feeds were drawn to the source of the distraction, all revealing the unmistakable smirk of Tracy Bonne before thirty-seven feeds cut to blackness and flickered away.
Cathedral of Saint Paul
"You guys are so fucking stupid." Tron hummed under her breath, watching the swarm of drones descended upon the flares' source. She dropped to the ground clicking the small key on her wrist, sending a small orb skyward from the center of the cylinder. The detonation sent yellow embers cascading around her as she continued to mutter to herself, "Alarms in three, two..."
The blaring screeches rudely interrupted Heatman's vigorous task of melting down human remains for fusion additives. His setup in the cathedral's hollowed cellar consisted of crates of corpses to be placed in a mounted cage, over a massive vat. He stood donning his thick, orange, steel chest armor over a yellow nanosuit. He was a pale, red-eyed, bald android, as ugly as they came. But that was hardly a problem considering his cubed, form-fitting helmet hinged from the back of his armor, covering his entire head, save for his ferocious eyes.
Heat strolled down the ramp from the vat, flipping his zippo lighter-like helmet back. After ten minutes of trying to get his drones and gearbots to report, he frustratedly called out for his personal security droid. "Axion!" He shouted, awaiting a response.
"We're sorry, Axion is currently unavailable at this moment. Please leave a message after the beep." A voice said from the corridor. Protoman emerged from the shadows dragging a crumpled pile of security droid. He hurled it through the air toward the android, as he mimicked a high pitched beep.
Heat quickly dropped his head gear back over his face as his attacker raised his left arm, firing a downpour of hyper-focussed fusion. Putting up his own arms, his orange gauntlets twisted open at the wrist, spraying waves of sizzling magma. The lava both absorbed the bolts and put his assailant on the defensive.
Protoman deployed his shield and ran head first toward his target. He slammed the android in the chest, but that only slightly threw Heat off his balance. While the magma had ceased for a split second, Scott took the opportunity to arch his staff low, connecting behind the left leg of the officer, and sending him airborne, to his back. In the same motion, he brought the other end around, crashing against Heatman's helmet. The armor was durable, Proto would give him that. The sudden reverberation shook him to the core, as he activated his EMP to buy him a couple seconds to fall back and regroup.
Ten Minutes Earlier
Tracy stalked down the aisle, toward what used to be the large alter. Now in its place was the machinery controls, used to operate cranes that loaded and transferred the massive crates of bloated corpses throughout the compound. Heatman's security droid, Axion, stood continuing to operate the controls, while the gearbots swarmed her way. The eyes of their skulls were bright red and their guns raised. She dropped to one knee, rolling multiple canisters down the aisle as they neared into range. When the devices exploded they coated the floor in a clear, thick silicon, clogging the tank-like tracks of the machines, and rendering them immobile. Tron slung the rifle from her back and opened fire on the helpless bots before they even had a chance to register an error.
Axion lifted his flame-shaped skull, eying the intruder. He raised his arms and fired on his target, but she remained unharmed. The bolts seemed to veer as she calmly walked around the pile of gearbots. The droid was trying to process the reason for failure when he was gripped from behind by an unseen force. Tracy Bonne was the last thing he saw as he was crushed instantly.
"Took you long enough." Tron said, playfully, "A few more bolts and my absorber would have been toast." She clicked her thumb and the invisible field rippled and deactivated.
"You know how many 'roller skulls' there were between me and the drone hatches?" Proto asked, stepping from behind a large pillar. "A lot." He added, picking up Axion's remains.
"Give me a few minutes to get into the interface." Tracy said, opening the machinery holo. "You can stay alive that long, right?"
Scott shrugged, "Guts demanded it, so I kinda have to." He replied, entering the cellar.
Heatman slowly scanned the room through his dented helmet. The android had scrambled his systems and disappeared amongst the crates. This angered him even more. A huge cloud of thick, grey dust began to fill the room, making it hard to get a read on his surroundings.
Protoman made a leap over the crate, driving both feet into the head of his foe, snapping the latch on his protective lid. He circled the blind android, throwing heavy baton strikes into the weak areas of his armor, as he waited for Tron to bring the machinery online. Heat sprayed a wild stream of magma in Scott's direction, melting the side of one of the containers and spilling rotted bodies onto the floor. Avoiding the mess, Protoman hooked the arm of the officer and spun him spine-first against the hard steel.
Besides leaving a big dent, Heat bounced back on the offensive, rebounding with a hard right cross. Protoman fell back onto the pile of humans, quickly holding his baton in front of him and ejecting the staff, driving it under the chin of the android, knocking his head back by force. Enraged, Heat advanced faster this time, only to be met by a swinging shipping container from his right.
"Took you long enough." Protoman said, over comms, watching his opponent struggle to his feet.
"You got this?" Tron replied, "I'm gonna start my contribution."
Before Proto could give her a quirky comeback the equipment was already destroying itself. He looked on in awe of the disaster scene, then over at Heatman who wasn't taking it so well. The officer was screaming in rage as he tried spraying the cranes with lava to make them fall, but was only half successful in his attempts. A stream caught the crux of one of the arms, causing the swinging container to drop slightly, Protoman's eyes grew wide as he could foresee the trajectory.
"N-n-no-no-no..." He began saying as the container slammed the side of the vat, turning it over and dumping it's contents directly onto the officer. Protoman quickly climbed atop one of the crates to avoid the molten river, "Shit!" He yelled, slamming his fist down onto the steel. He watched the small pieces of Heatman's armor float by and shook his head, looking into the camera of a passing crane, Scott put his hands up. "Guess I won't be shooting fire anytime soon!" He shouted in disappointment. But "Hey," he thought, "at least we didn't die."