| The being got up, despite having been slammed into the ground. Sparks flew from his armor, but he just casually regained his previous pose.
"OH NO, LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO MY MARVELOUS FACE."
He looked at Snake, revealing his freakish, mad 70's vacuum salesman visage. Already heavily scarred by past battles, Snake's little fisticuff incident had added another set of bruises and breakage. Oddly, the face seemed almost like a puppet's--not fully alive, not truly there.
In other words, Snake had been punching something other than this thing's true core. Unlike a normal, sane person, Metal Man continued moving as if Snake had scratched his elbow or something. He slotted in the last SUPER ULTRA AA BATTERY OF DOOM as his left wrist caught on fire from the renewed energy.
He then reached at the back of his head, where millions of mostly inefficient shotgun bits had gotten stuck in his armor. He scratched a couple tens of them off, then hurled 'em in his mouth and chewed on them.
"BLECH. YOUR SHOTGUN AMMUNITION TASTES OF CHEAP FILLER. DIDN'T YOU MAKE SURE TO BUY THE PREMIUM BRAND? THIS IS DISGUSTING."
Snake would do the smart thing and try to blow out Metal Man's face with his sawed off shotgun. After all, unlike thick, steel armor, Metal Man's face couldn't repel shotgun bits.
Of course, he was in for another nasty surprise, as Metal Man reflexively raised his left wrist and drank some strange red LED juice out of his left arm. He then rinsed it about his mouth and pressed a button--all in the time it took Snake to pull the trigger once. What kind of trickery was he using?
All Snake knew is one minute he shot something, and the next, a cloud of blue time-fire-engulfed shotgun pellets and broken metal teeth pieces were flying at HIS face instead. His lone shotgun shot went off too early, with the majority of the shot bouncing off of Metal Man's chest.
Of course, this damaged the madman's badge, which led him to frown while wiping flaming time juice from his mouth.
"I PAID MORE FOR THAT THAN YOU ARE WORTH. JUST FOR THAT, I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY... IN PENNIES... OVER THE COURSE OF MULTIPLE YEARS."
Snake was too busy trying to get glowing, flaming metal shrapnel out of his face. It burned much stranger than anything else, and even worse, he felt older just by being touched by it. Clearly, the man had bewitched the metal fragments with aging nanites.
Whatever Metal Man had done, Snake wasn't having it, and went for a grenade.
"OH THAT IS SO CLICH-"
The sentence was uncompleted, as Metal Man fell backwards, burning, sitting on the ground in a crater of concrete. His mysterious ultra-reflexes had failed him that time, giving Snake a well needed break.
Or did it?
Snake would begin to wonder why he saw another Metal Man approaching him from behind... having only moments to figure out what in the world just happened. |