Chapter 12

Venixion Corps Pt 1

Stealth and Sneakery

Wily and his robots had been pleased with the multiple successes but good feelings never lasted long around Skull Fortress as evidenced by the shouting match between Proto and Wily that morning.

"You thing I wanted to leab him dere?" Wily snarled through his congestion.

"Well you sure as hell coulda tried doc! And not left the poor bastard to offline in a fiery explosion!"

Crash cringed a little and Snake shot a jealous glare at the Red Raider. Neither of them would have dared to speak to Wily that way and they never understood why Proto Man was allowed too.

"He was already disassembled! What were dey supposed to do? We were on a time limit!"

"So? You coulda made extra time!" Proto snapped back. "I mean you're the freakin genius around here! We're just your lowly grunts."

His eyes narrowed behind his visor. "Unless that's what you were planning the whole time? It's a pretty convenient way to get rid of him isn't it? You were always complaining that Hard Man couldn't cut it in battle."

Wily was furious.

"Why would I hab dose idiots steal by own robots just so I can get rid of one? Use dose processing chips I gave you, you fool! You know I need as bany of by robots as I can to achieve world domination! It's the reason I keep repairing you ungrateful scrap heaps!"

Shadow relaxed, the thought had crossed his mind, but it was too elaborate a plan just to get rid of Hard Man and Wily made compelling points. Robots of their kind were not cheap to make.

Proto put his hand on his hip and sneered.

"Really? What if it was me down there old man? Or Shadow? Or one of your higher ranking robots? Would you just leave us to too?"

He hesitated. Proto had neatly backed him into a corner and whatever he said would only make the situation worse, especially with five very volatile robot masters in such close quarters, so he turned to offended anger to try and save himself potential problems down the road.

"Get out of my face! Get out of my office and Never Ever accuse me of such things again! Do you hear me? Out! Out! Out!"

Crash and Snake Man practically fled the room, while Wave and Shadow followed at a more sedate pace. Wily shoved the door shut on Proto.

It was sunset the next day when Roll and Ice Man pulled up to the factory. Both were on raw nerves. Particularly Ice Man, he was considered one of the weakest of Wily's bots, while his Ice Slasher was powerful he was not strong physically. He had originally been commissioned for the Zero Refrigeration Company to replace the machines that caused too much pollution, the prototype of a whole team before he'd been stolen and recruited into Wily's merry little band.

"What are we gonna do?" Roll whispered. "We're just here to "unload" stuff, it's not like we've got high level clearance and they've got cameras everywhere."

"We'll unload the boxes and…uhh…we'll…we'll find someone who's got high level clearance and…uhh"

Ice Man was clearly at a loss.

Roll sighed. "I told you we needed a plan."

She scanned the plans again, ok when her eyes caught sight of the ventilation shafts.

"Ok here's what we're gonna do. We'll deliver our cargo and leave, then hijack another van, you'll hafta keep this one hidden close by and we'll head into the ventilation shafts," she stopped to point out one that was close by and out of sight of traffic "until we can grab someone else's uniforms and id. We'll try and see if we can find someone with better clearance codes in the shafts then we'll grab the bot, take it back through the shafts and book it."

Ice Man considered. It seemed like a decent plan especially on such short notice, he was sure there were flaws but they didn't have time to pick them out, since staying in the van too long would look suspicious.

So they pulled up and started to unload their cargo, taking it inside. While Roll was discreetly checking out the interior, Ice was nervously watching the sleek, well-armored robot guards in Venixion's entrance. They didn't look like the general clunkers most people purchased. Instead the armor was form fitting, flexible titanium, to give them better agility. That could be a problem.

When they had finished they got back in the van and drove up the road. Ice dropped Roll off in the thick underbrush, she slipped quietly inside the last van of the day knocked out the drivers and hid their bodies in a bush.

It disconcerted Roll to know how easily she could hurt humans now that that particular piece of code had been removed and while there had been several she would have liked to hurt in the past, the dire consequences had kept her from ever doing it.

Ice Man had found a favorable spot and the two again unloaded their cargo, and slipped into the ventilation shafts. So far so good. Now it was a waiting game.

In the room next to theirs a guard pressed the communicator on his wrist.

"Sir, Wily's bots have infiltrated the building, should I call for back-up now?"

"Not yet." Came an amused voice, let's see what they're after first, and then we'll deal with them.

The guard suspected they were after VC-00.

They had crawled around quietly, not an easy feat for two titanium bots and finally found someone with high clearance, when the coast was clear they ambushed him and took his card and that was when all hell broke loose.

Guards swarmed the area.

"They knew!" Roll hissed.

Together they barely managed to get out of the room and took off towards the elevator that would lead them to the lowest basement.

Ice Man turned around and coated the floor in ice, causing several of the pursuing guards to slip and tripping up others. It didn't stop them all though, several hugged the wall and tiptoed their way across the slippery ice. These guards were smart. He thought grimly and shot off another ice slasher freezing them solid. It would buy them some time but not much. More were coming. She took to the air and began blasting them with gusts of wind and that was when she saw the guard getting ready to throw a bomb at Ice Man, the kind that could shred Titanium.

She should just let him do it, there'd be one less Wily bot in the world and it would be better for everyone…but hadn't Dr. Light and Dr. Wily both had a hand in the original six? Didn't that make him family too? Even Wily didn't abandon his bots just like that and she felt fury and disgust that she would even think about acting lower then Wily. Besides she couldn't do this mission without him.

She felt the rush of hot wind as she jetted off and plucked him like a hawk would pluck a mouse from the sky and took a shot, not even realizing that the guard she'd just wasted was human, not a robot. But she'd also hit the bomb and it exploded, shredding her wing and damaging her arm.

She let out a shocked cry and plummeted back to the ground, turning her body so that Ice Man was on top of her.

Ice Man was stunned.

"You…you did that for me? Why?" He asked.

Roll shook her head and grabbed her arm, the little revelation she'd just had was too personal.

"No time! We gotta go!"

The elevator as luck would have it wasn't on their floor but they blasted the doors open and leapt down.

It was a long drop and Roll didn't land so gracefully, she grimaced as the wire in her arm kept sparking. At least it wasn't her buster arm.

"C'mon we're almost there." Ice said.

The two robots ran into the room and the burly guard stopped his partner.

"Shouldn't we go after them?" He asked, confused.

"Nah. The beast'll take care of em." He grinned.

If Roll hadn't been wearing her visor, she would have missed the lava colored hump, that was as thick as Guts Man's chest sliding smoothly into the pool and she grabbed his arm and shoved them behind the meager protection of the metal staircase.

Ice Man peered out cautiously. He would have laughed at Roll's initial fear, if he hadn't seen a head that looked big enough to bite a 6 foot human in half raise itself out of the molten pool. Wily had built big, freaky bots before, but it was different when you didn't have control of it.

He scanned the area. There were only four steps from the door to the pool and the ring thinned out in the middle, leaving only one or two steps from the wall to the pool. They couldn't figure out a plan with the monster right there, cause the place echoed. He was now positive that Wily really had sent them to die on this fool's errand.

Beside him, Roll was considering their options. There wasn't a lot of room to maneuver. She'd been expecting a bot like Fire Man, but not this! What were they gonna do? And what the hell was Venixion planning to do with this metal monster?!

They sat there, racking there brains for about ten minutes, and the only sound was the bubbling molten metal, which was soothing, almost hypnotic in its own weird way.

Maybe they could sneak away and figure out a plan outside the door. She put her finger to her nose and they moved almost silently to the door.

Suddenly one of the robot guards she thought she'd given the slip to appeared in the small glass window and lifted up his visor. Only it was no robot! But a man! If the guards weren't robots than the one she'd shot…

The man had a big jaw and was nearly bald, he flashed them a smile and waved cheerfully, the one behind him pressed something and a loud horn blared in the room.

Both robots whipped around, with identical horrified expressions as the Mag-Viper VC-00 rose from the molten pool.

Roll did a quick scan. The beast was 10 feet long, with a 5 foot head and very thick, it opened it's mouth and both robots dived in opposite directions, as a spray of lava barely missed them.

Author's Note:

I was trying to make the mission go as awkwardly as possible,

I just hope that it didn't screw up the quality of the writing itself.

writing stealth is harder then I thought