54 Governor Armstrong
"Senator Armstrong?" I gasped in true unbridled shock and awe.
"That's Governor Armstrong after the last election cycle." The man said as he adjusted his yellow silk tie then lifted his leg sideways into the air as his bulging muscles stretched his dress pants to the limit and stomped down like a bodybuilder sumo, "I don't have time for this."
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" I growled as the fucking gigacomplex Arms Fort shook under the weight of his stomp and the lights in the area began to flutter as electrical cables tore from the walls like pythons stretching towards the maximum swole man.
The electricity in the lines passed to him while blaring a supernatural green light as he screamed like an animal charging up before unleashing an almighty roar that tore apart the massive hallway.
"Let's go!" the man shouted and charged at speeds that triggered the automatic response of my Sandevistan.
The world slowed to a crawl but the man did not, instead we met in a clash that generated a shockwave that cleared away all the smoke in the area.
"Good form." I grit my teeth as I sprawled to prevent his tackle, the two of us locked in a contest of strength I was slowly losing as he pushed me back.
"Played colledge ball, ya know." he grunted as we strained against one another.
"Let me guess, University of Texas?" I growled as I twisted my hips and tossed him away against the far off wreckage of the wall.
The man caught the flying knee in his blackened hands and wrapped an arm around my leg but failed to bring me to the ground, instead trying to pound me while I was caught in the vice grip of his arm.
"Could of gone pro if I didn't join the Rangers." he yelled before I slammed a fist against his jaw that threw him off of me and yanked out my chainsaw sword for an attack that sent up sparks and caught as it chewed through his skin.
"Damn, ese! That's some next level Damage Threshold!" I shouted as I pulled back.
Governor Armstrong tore off his shirt, revealing a bulbous tendriling growth across his pumped up chest.
"Nanomachines, son." he menaced as he dragged his hand across his chest which blackened following his motion, "They harden in response to physical trauma."
"How in the -" I managed before he interrupted me by slamming his fist on the metal floor and deforming it around his meaty mallot.
"You can't hurt me, Juan." he declared with a smirk.
"Homes, I just saw it cutting you." I grinned back and charged him but he caught the guide bar of my chainsaw sword between his massive blackened hands, "Oh, hell no! I love this-"
"Nice knife!" he chuckled and snapped my sword.
I punched him back in vengeance, digging my fist into his ribs and causing him to gasp. He rallied and punched me back and we traded blows to the chest, neither stepping an inch as our huge fist tried to punch though our chests. The sheer manliness on display would have confused an audience as very blow rang out like thunder, but we men care not for their lacking capacity to understand us.
"What's wrong? I can feel your punches getting weaker!" the governor yelled as he delivered another hammering blow.
He'd managed to degrade the integrity of my MK IV armor enough to drop me a point of Strength. A noticeable drop in power, but not essential to my victory.
"Then I guess I better stop holding back." I informed him and his face became one of shock.
"What!" he grunted as I landed two punches on him in rapid succession and then kept the pressure up as he tried and failed to raise up to my speed despite his incredible quickness.
At the end of my combo an uppercut sent the man flying onto his back.
"Don't… fuck… with this… GOVENOR!" Armstrong roared out his title and burst back into action with a blood red aura surrounding him.
Where before the man failed to keep up with my hands, his visually cued power up brought his handspeed up to mine, not a problem when I'm not fucking around and bringing the pain of a grandmaster martial artist with the bad intentions of a 20th century gypsy bare knuckle boxer. It is a problem when his already greater strength shoots from through the roof to somewhere in the stratosphere.
"Fuck!" I shouted as his blazing fist ran into my chest and I slid back, unable to be knocked down due to Stonewall and that alone.
"I have a dream!" Govenor Armstrong shouted as he blitzed me with a barrage of punches that slowly broke down my magically reinforced armor but the man underneath survived.
Mostly because I'm like movie verse wolverine at this point with my regen and my redonc bones… but the pain was deep.
"That one day every person in this world will control their OWN destiny." he growled as I defended myself with all possible skill against his furious onslaught, " Were power and justice are back where they belong: in the hands of the people! Fuck all these limp dick governments! And toxic corporations! Fuck the 24/7 flow of worthless consumerism. Fuck all of it! This world is diseased, rotten to the core. There's no saving it. We need to pull it out by the roots. Wipe the slate clean. BURN IT DOWN! From the ashes a new world will be born! Evolved but untamed! Where every man will fight for what he believes in!"
When the red aura finally puttered out the Governor - huffing and puffing with his hands on his knees - backed away from a broken suit of armor with a blood soaked man underneath, a pool of red spreading under his feet with more splattered across the swollen man and the wreckage around them.
But that man in the broken suit was me as my body finished pulling itself back together. The pain faded away and I rolled my neck as my shattered helmet slipped off.
"If that was your best shot… it was damn good." I spat out a wad of congealed blood from my throat.
"How?" Armstrong cried out in shock.
"You can hurt me, Steve." I laughed at his over-expressive face, "But it just don't stick. And you can talk from the heart, but the whole burn it all Anarchism thing… born in Night City, ese. Been there and done that. Moved on to better things. Now I'm going to beat your ass like a Cherokee drum."
Even with my empowering suit broken, beating on a man with nothing left in the tank was far more one sided than his brief burst of sheer awesome. I hit Armstrong with so many rights his soul begged me for a left, and I obliged. I beat that ass like a Cherokee drum and when the man collapsed flat on his back I walked over and said, "Time to end this."
Dropping to my knees straddling his waist I began to rain down punches on his blackened chest, no individual blow strong enough to break his incredible hide, but the death of a thousand punches wore him down for the final strike. I drove my hand into the center of that bulbous tendriling wound and wrapped my fingers around his tech heart and pulled it up out of his chest while screaming, "YOUR TECH IS MINE!"
The still beating synthetic organ that housed the core of his magic nanomachines beat in my hand as the still connecting bioplastic veins and arteries continued circulating the lifeblood of the battered man beneath me. From my left hand, my fingers pulled out my wire jack, which I slotted into his heart.
In that moment as I hacked the man's very heart we were pulled into a white digital void where only he and I existed as we floated naked facing each other.
"The way you've chosen to convey your final words is like three bottles too intimate." I informed the dying Governor.
"I may have lost, but I found a worthy successor." Armstrong smirked, "You won't bow down, you won't play by their rules. You, Juan, will continue to rise to the top of this world, and will remake it in your own image. That's all I wanted out of this. Even if it isn't me, at least someone will rise up and establish a new world order."
"Cool story, bro. I'm gonna go now. Enjoy your trip to hell, and tell the Devil, 'Juan says thanks'." I told the man as I attempted to end this awkward cutscene… "Where the fuck is the skip button…"
"Hey, Juan." Armstrong grinned, "Good luck stopping, The Big One. A thermonuclear device set to launch from the heart of The Spirit of Motherwill should I die or the Arms Fort cease function. It'll finally sink all you Pinko Commiee Californians into the Pacific."
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" I shouted as the cutscene ended and I had control of the nanomachines.
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I have Armstrong and two other characters who are omni-verse doppel gangers for this plot. Mostly because rule of three, mostly because its hard to decide what to cross over with. The first is obviously someone from BFF in Armored Core, but since we never get any specific names he'll just be a OC industrialist from Texas that helped Armstrong become the Govenor and built him the Arms Fort. The third will be a more specific character from the Mecha genre, and I will confirm if anyone guesses it before its revealed.
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