🚀 go-pugleaf

    The launch doors opened, the foot-brace dropped, and the four
armor suits slid clear of the M.E.C.H.A. jet into the sky, falling
over a Springfield that cast long shadows in the late-afternoon sun.
    "You sure you're okay with this, Summer?" Phobos asked over the
comlink from the cockpit.  "We don't know _what's_ going on down
there--maybe it would be safer for you to stay in reserve."
    Summer shook her hardsuit helmet.  "Sorry, Phob...this is
something I've gotta do."
    Phobos sighed.  "I knew you'd say that.  Well...at least hold up
'til I get there, will you?  I'm not letting you go in alone."
    "Well, you know where we're going...why don't you meet us there?"
    "Right.  Will do."
    Beside Summer, two Cyclones and one Bahamode battloid also flew.
Adam and Sarah had been ready to go from the start, and Mike had
joined them as soon as he'd seen what they were going into.  It was
probably for the best that he had; the Bahamode X.N.'s was still the
most advanced version of Dr. Science's sensor suite, save for the one
in the M.E.C.H.A. jet.  It would be very useful once they were at
closer range.
    The power armor flew toward the big, black edifice of Hammons
Tower.  The 26-floor skyscraper loomed ominously overhead, more now
than at any other time they'd seen it.  Summer couldn't help but
wonder for just a moment whether this should be taken as some sort of
portent of impending doom.
    Summer's contemplation was interrupted by a comlink message from
Mike.  "Summer?  I'm picking up something weird, here..."
    "What is it?"
    "Hang on, I'm transmitting the data now."  In the X.N.'s cockpit,
Mike punched the "data uplink" key, and a scan grid overlay resolved
itself in Summer's field of view.
    Summer blinked, or would have if she'd had eyes at the moment.
"What's happening?  It looks like the nanomachine-infested area
is...shrinking in on itself."
    "Your guess is as good as mine...but whatever it is, even odds
that it's not a good thing."
    "No bet, Mike.  No bet."  Summer reached out with her own
senses...and was just a bit startled when something reached back.  Click.
"Gah!"
    "Summer?  What is it?"
    "I...just made contact of some kind.  I don't know how to describe
it...it's like...like I just dialed with a modem, and _something_ gave
me a carrier signal."  Summer sent a query over the tenuous link.  The
intensity and rapidity of the response staggered her.  "Gaaaaah!
I...don't know what it is, but...I think it...wants _me_."


      T    E    A    M                                        #95

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                         A SUMMER TO REMEMBER

                             Part Eleven

       A Story of High Technology and High Cranial Temperatures

           (Eh, SW melts brains _much_ better than you do.)

                  Written by Christopher E. Meadows
                         aka Robotech_Master

Continuity Note: This header takes place in the same continuity as the
                             story does.


    Pedestrian Man sat in the driver's seat of Adam's 4x4 Bronco,
Paint, with Lorrie Thomas in the passenger seat.  They were parked
just south of the warehouse where the scientists were (reportedly)
located, and had been there for the last hour or so, getting ready.
P-Man leaned back in the seat and relaxed, once again mentally
thanking Adam Douglas for the loan of the Bronco.  It was kind of
ironic for a pedestrian, but he had always liked vehicles, and this
was certainly a good one since Dr. Science had adjusted its
programming.  Now, all that remained was one last scouting report from
Unnoticeable Man...presuming, of course, he could make himself noticed
to give it...
    Lorrie, for one, couldn't wait.  This was going to be the payback
she'd looked forward to for a long, long, time, and she was so intent
on it that even riding in the very vehicle that had tried to make
parking lot pizza out of her a couple of months before didn't bother
her.  Her harness was polished, loaded, checked and rechecked enough
times to start an account.  She was staring into the warehouse as if
she could somehow by sheer intensity see through those walls.  P-Man
could tell she was impatient, but to give her credit, she hadn't yet
shown it.  She had, however, admitted that she couldn't be entirely
rational about this mission and handed command of it over to him, and
he had to admit that took some major trust.
    Amana Man ran up to the side of the Bronco, clanking like two
washing machines being banged together.  "Preliminary scout reports
from Unnoticeable Man indicate very little opposition!" he noted.  "I
don't think they know we're coming."
    P-Man nodded.  "I think we're just about ready, then, don't you?"
    "I hope so," Lorrie muttered.  "Sooner we get this show on the
road, the better."
    "Ready to give us the green light?" Amana Man asked.
    "Are you poking fun at my powers again?" Pedestrian Man glowered.
    Not far away, Alex Meadows was waiting, suited up in CVR armor and
straddling a Cyclone cycle.  A similarly-attired Joe Moore was
standing next to him, advising him on the finer points of Cyclone
operation.  "It's not as easy as it looks on TV," Joe said sagely.
"If you aren't careful, you could go out of control and crash."
    "Uh-huh," Alex said.
    "And transformation was really hard, but I finally mastered it,"
Joe said proudly.  "Now that I'm an expert, I can switch modes just
like _this!_" Joe punched the switch.  "Huh?  Er, just like _this_!"
He punched it again.  "Wha?"  He pressed the switch again and again,
quite oblivious to the fact that his bike's headlights were blinking
on and off.
    "I'll take your word for it," Alex said.

    Within the building they were watching, Dr. Peter Mercer and Dr.
Maurice Zenger were continuing about their mad scientist business,
monitoring their subject, making observations and notations, and doing
other madly scientific things.  Mercer was _convinced_ that his work
would, sooner or later, earn him a Nobel Prize or some other important
form of recognition.  Yes, there were other empowerment processes--the
Ubermachine and Nubermachines, the Cadre process, the Tribe of Behn
symbiotes--but those were all purely scientific means, and generally
required the individual to have powers of _some_ sort already.
Mercer's method took a slightly different tack...
    "How is the final stage proceeding, Dr. Zenger?" Mercer asked, as
his colleague stepped out of the laboratory.
    "Quite well," Zenger said.  "The imprintation process is nearing
completion.  Before long, we'll know if we were successful."
    "Good.  Goooood.  Has the subject been kept unconscious throughout
the procedure?"
    Zenger nodded.  "As per your recommendation.  We won't have any
problems with the subject escaping this ti--"  Zenger broke off.
"What's that?"
    "Hmm?"  Mercer looked over his shoulder, to where Zenger was
staring.  A patch of wall was lightening, then darkening, lightening,
then darkening.  "Hmm."  He crossed to the window, and peered out
between two slats of the ratty venetian blind.  "Hmm."
    "What is it?  What's out there?"  Zenger was at Mercer's side a
few moments later.  "Oh, no."  Through the window they could see two
Cyclone motorcycles, an armored figure astride each, and the one on
the left was flashing its light at them.  "It must be a signal to
attack!  They'll be on us momentarily!"
    "Remain calm, Zenger.  Remember, we have a hostage.  And..."  He
produced a walkie talkie from one of the pockets of his lab coat.
"...we aren't undefended ourselves, you must realize."
    "I...think maybe I better go now...I think I left the stove on..."
Zenger headed for the door, but Mercer grabbed him by the back of his
collar.
    "We swore to hang together, remember?" Mercer reminded him.
    "I changed my mind!  I don't wanna hang at all!  Or get injected,
or electrocuted, or shot..."
    "Sometimes science demands sacrifice, Zenger.  Besides...I believe
we have a better than even chance of coming through this with our
skins intact."  Mercer raised the radio to his lips and muttered into
it.  "Now, then...shall we see how it goes?"

    "Move in!" Pedestrian Man called out.  "Lorrie, go for it!"
    "You bet."  Lorrie hopped out the door of the Bronco and fired her
support pack's thrusters, while Amana Man fired his armor's snap-on
blowdrier jumpjets.  Joe and Alex started their Cyclones, and Argon
moved stoically toward the door.  Unnoticeable Man also readied
himself, but of course no-one noticed.
    And then the pavement of the parking lot shattered and two Bubble
Gum Smasher battlemovers rose from underneath.  "Oh, crap, giant
robots," Lorrie muttered.  "I hate when this happens."


    "I've got...whatever it is...on my sensors now," Mike reported.
    "I see it," Summer murmured.  The sole location of Summerian
nanomachines now, other than Summer herself, was a humanoid figure,
standing just in front of the Hammons Tower.  The figure gleamed
brightly in the display, indicating an extremely concentrated
nanopresence within.  Summer was really beginning to worry now.
    She was trying to sort through the impressions that were coming
over the sensory link, but it was hard to do.  The transmission was
mostly on an emotional, empathic level that was difficult to deal
with...it kept trying to vanish from view, to influence her
subconscious mind.  It was tempting to break the link, but Summer
didn't want to do that--it could be her sole source of information
about what it was they faced.
    "You okay, Summer?" Sarah Conner asked.
    "I'm...fine, Sarah.  Just a little busy," Summer said.  "C'mon,
we're almost there."
    "Maybe we can talk to it," Mike said.
    "Maybe," Summer agreed.  But she wasn't closing her air intakes.
    The four mecha touched down in front of the Hammons Tower a few
minutes later, landing ten yards or so away from the figure who was
standing there.  As they touched down, Summer gasped.
"It...she...looks like me!"
    "Except you don't have dark skin or white hair," Adam pointed out.
    Summer reverted to human form.  "Who--who are you?" she asked.
    Eris watched the four armor suits land in front of her,
classifying them in her mind.  Two were completely irrelevant; one
circulated a form of nanomachines within its systems, somewhat similar
to her own but otherwise unimportant.  And the fourth, the one that
had reverted to human...it was her counterpart, the one she'd been
reaching out to.  The one she needed to make her whole...
    "I am Eris."  She began to walk forward.  If she could approach
close enough, before the others suspected...
    Summer stepped back.  "She--I can feel it!  She absorbed the other
nanomachines in the sewer, and now she wants _me_!"  The link in her
head was all but screaming at her in its intensity now, and she
couldn't close it off.
    "Get out of here!" Mike said.  "We'll handle her!"
    Summer shifted to hardsuit and took off.  "I--okay, if you say so.
But watch out--I think she's as powerful as I am!"
    Eris began to run forward, all pretenses dropped.  Her eyes were
cold, her expression grim--she _would_ have Summer, she _had to_ have
Summer, and these meddlesome humans wouldn't stand in her way.
    "Hold it right there, bitch!"  Adam raised his arm, and the .50
caliber armor-piercing machine gun ratcheted into place.  He pulled
the trigger, and the barrels spun up and blazed.  BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!
    Eris continued to move forward, letting the bullets pass through
her and blow up a car in the parking lot beyond.  Her eyes were still
on Summer.
    "Stay back!"  Sarah Conner fired rocket after rocket at Eris.
    Eris caught them and threw them off in random directions,
detonating cars and lampposts and the side of the Hammons Tower,
sending shattered glass flying all over.  "Stay out of my way!"
    Mike leaped the Bahamode forward, body-slamming Eris to the
ground.  "You're not getting my sister!  Not this time!"
    Eris formed one of her arms into a knife and stabbed it forward
into the Bahamode.  Not at Mike...but into the nanomachine repair
conduits.  She dissolved herself and flowed up into it, then took it
over.
    "Wha--?!" Mike gasped, as the Bahamode ceased responding to his
controls.  "No!"  The Bahamode raised its gunpod and fired on Sarah
and Adam, who hurriedly dodged.  "She's in the Bahamode!"
    "Oh, hell," Adam muttered, dodging a stream of shells that
shattered more windows on the tower.  "Hope nobody's hurt..."
    "Mike, can you eject?" Sarah asked.
    "I'm trying!  But she's overridden the ejection key!"  The
Bahamode fired an EMP blast at Sarah Conner.
    "Use the manual backup!" Summer called.
    "Right!"  Mike reached down and yanked the handle, and the
explosive bolts blew the canopy off and fired the seat away.  Summer
swooped in to catch him in midair.
    "Looks like you guys're having some trouble!" Phobos called
jauntily over the radio as the M.E.C.H.A. jet swung into view over the
tower.
    "Nothing we can't--URGH!--handle!" Adam replied, dodging another
EMP blast.  "I take it back!  Phobos, take out X.N.!  It's possessed!"
    "Then I think we should repossess it!"  Phobos slammed his fist
down on the firing key and a dozen beams of laser light lanced out of
various points on the jet, putting a rather large crater in the
concrete where Bahamode X.N. had been a few moments ago.  "Dang, that
thing's fast!"
    "Of course it is!  I built it, didn't I?" Dr. Science said.
    "Whoa!"  Phobos shoved the stick over as a row of shellholes
stitched their way along the jet's fuselage.  "It doesn't like us
anymore, does it?"
    "Damn you piece of shit machine..." Adam growled, opening up with
his gatling gun.
    "Let's take it apart!"  Sarah fired more blasts from her missile
gun.

    The Irregulars and the two battlemovers faced off for just a
moment in the parking lot, before all hell broke loose.  "Paint, let's
transform and kick a little tail, whaddayasay?"  An electronic neigh
was the response as the Bronco folded around and shifted modes,
elevating Pedestrian Man to the saddle.  The CVR armor locked into
place, holding him securely aboard, and then the cannons and rocket
launchers deployed.  "Yeah!  Let's do it!"
    Alex pressed the transformation switch, and the Cyclone smoothly
molded itself to his armor.  "Hoo-wah!"
    Joe followed suit, finally having remembered that the
transformation switch was the next one over.  "Okay, now just follow
my lead.  You jump to take off, and lean in the direction you want to
move--yipe!"  Joe dodged to the side as a battlemover fired a barrage
of micromissiles at him.
    "I think I get the idea."  Alex jumped into the air, firing the
EP-37 gunpod he'd been given.  It took some getting used to, but after
just a few shots he was able to fire with a pretty good accuracy rate.
Not that it did very much good against the heavily-armored
battlemovers.
    Then Alex noticed Lorrie Thomas, with her flight-capable support
harness, had managed to slip past the battlemovers and into the
warehouse.  "Joe, cover me!"
    "Wha?  Right!"  Joe opened up with his EP-40 gunpod, firing
somewhat haphazardly.  "But--where're you going?"
    "Tell ya later!"  Alex took off, a bit unsteadily but getting
better, and headed around to the warehouse.
    Joe watched him go for just a moment.  "Damn!  Why couldn't _I_
fly like that when _I_ just started out?"

    Lorrie touched down on top of the warehouse, sparing just a glance
to the fighting going on behind her.  The others could take care of it
themselves; the Bronco was a good match for a Smasher, as it had
proven before.  Right now, she had to find the people behind all this
and stop them, so it wouldn't happen again.
    "Hey, wait for me!"  Alex touched down beside Lorrie.  "Not
thinking of going in there all by yourself, were you?"
    "What're you doing here?" Lorrie growled.
    "Same's you, rescuing my brother.  Got a problem with that?"
    Lorrie shrugged.  "Just stay out of my way, that's all.  Those
bastards are gonna get every bit of what they have coming to them."
    Alex shrugged.  "You're the boss.  Let's go."


    Summer carried Mike up toward the safety of the M.E.C.H.A. jet.
"Looks like you're a noncombatant now," she noted.
    "Just 'til I get a Cyclone or something," Mike said.  "No way I'm
letting that _thing_ go."
    Summer concentrated on shutting out the signals that were coming
over the link to Eris.  "I'm not real happy about the prospect of that
either."  She swooped through one of the landing hatches into the
launch bay and set Mike down on the catwalk.  "I've gotta get back out
there...I have to join the fight, or do _something_...Adam and Sarah
can't keep her distracted for long."
    "I'm coming too!"  Phobos burst into the room, panting slightly
from the exertion of running down there.  "No way you're keeping me
out of this!"
    "In that case let's _go_!"  Summer jumped back down one of the
launch tubes and slid into empty space again.
    "Right!"  Phobos followed.
    Down below, Adam and Sarah were taking turns firing at Bahamode
X.N.  Despite its speed, it was still taking quite a pounding.  But
that didn't seem to be slowing it down.
    "Phobos!  Darken the area around its head!" Summer yelled.  "I'm
gonna try to blast it!"
    "Okay, I'll try!"  Phobos reached out and stole the light from
around X.N.'s optical sensors, while Summer drew out hyperspatial
energy, converted it to plasma, and let it go.  The beam of heat
lanced through the armor suit, which exploded in a ball of flame.
    "Is she...gone?" Phobos asked.
    "I wouldn't be..." Summer murmured.  "Oh, hell!"  Eris flew out of
the fireball, rocketing straight toward her.  Summer fired energy
blasts from both arms.  "Stay back, you!"
    "Keep away!"  Phobos fired beams of light of his own at Eris, but
they didn't seem to slow her down.
    Eris hovered in midair in front of Summer and Phobos, and gazed at
Summer with silvery liquid eyes.  "We need each other." she hissed.
"Join me.  Merge with me.  We're separate halves of a greater whole!"
    "No!" Summer yelled.  "You're not half of anything!  You're a
computer virus that ate my friends!  Yaaaa!"  Summer produced her
sword and swung it at Eris.
    "Ah, why so scared?  Are you afraid that it's true?" Eris asked,
dodging the blade and moving closer.  "Come to me.  You know you want
to..."
    "KEEP AWAY FROM HER!!!"  Phobos rocketed toward her, body-blocking
her away from Summer.  This did move her farther away...but
unfortunately, it also allowed her to grab Phobos around the throat
with her arm, reaching through his forcefield as though it weren't
even there.  "Gah!"
    "Now!" Eris called out, shaping her other hand into a knife blade.
"Would you like to reconsider?"
    "Mason!" Summer gasped.  "Don't hurt him!"
    "Then join with me," Eris hissed.  "Come to me, and I'll let him
go."
    Summer looked at the two for a long time.  "All right," she said.
"I'll do it.  Just let him go."
    "Excellent!"  Eris slowly descended to the ground, still holding
her bladed hand at Phobos's throat.  Summer followed, a respectable
distance away.
    "Okay, I'm here," Summer said, stepping forward.  "Let him go."
    Eris nodded.  "As you wish."  She slowly removed her hand from
Phobos's throat, then released him.  The instant her arms left him,
Phobos turned to try to blast Eris again--but Summer put her hand on
his arm, stopping him.
    "Summer, I--!" Phobos began.
    "No, Mason, it's all right," Summer said, looking at Eris.  "I
think I understand what I have to do now."  She closed her eyes and
stepped forward, then dissolved and melded into Eris.


                                WHOA!

                         WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

                      WILL SUMMER BE ALL RIGHT?

    WHAT ABOUT JENNY, AND LITA, AND CHET, AND PENUMBRALPERSON (TM)
                        AND ALL THOSE OTHERS?

         WILL THE WAREHOUSE ASSAULT SUCCEED IN FREEING AARON?

                  WHAT ABOUT THE MASTER OF THE NET?


        YOU'RE GOING TO KEEP ON READING SUPERGUY.  YOU MUST BE
        HOOKED BEYOND ALL POSSIBLE HOPE OF REDEMPTION BY NOW.
--
Chris Meadows aka  | Author, Team M.E.C.H.A., Crapshoot & Co.
Robotech_Master    | on the Superguy Listserv (bit.listserv.superguy)
robotech@jurai.net | With a World Wide Web homepage located at
robotech@eyrie.org | http://www.jurai.net/~robotech/index.html