Hotguy and Poultry Man [Hermitcraft AU]

Prologue

The threat of searing red lasers lancing by made Hotguy stumble to a halt and then dive behind the nearest wall, sighing as he heard the laughter of his nemesis somewhere further into the lab.

"Where'd you go? Ah come out, Hotguy. Don't hide that pretty face."

Hotguy smirked and checked over his bow, then reached back to count how many arrows were left in his quiver. Then he glanced back around the corner, calling, "Then stop hiding your pretty face. Fair is fair, after all."

More lasers forced him back into hiding. "Fair? Have you forgotten who you're dealing with here?" The voice was coming closer, and Hotguy began to pick up on a mechanized whirring, along with heavy steps that vibrated through the floor.

"Oh I'm quite familiar, Mumbo Jumbo!" Hotguy nocked an arrow as the villain approached. "You're doing the mech thing again? Yeah that was impressive the first hundred times."

"The mech thing is cool," Mumbo declared.

Hotguy nodded to himself. It was kinda cool. But it was overdone, and he never had much trouble dealing with them. There was always a weak point, usually several in fact, and his aim has never failed him.

"And you had to come all the way out here, to this random lab, and bother these poor people who are just trying to make a living?" Hotguy knew that Mumbo would be coming around the corner soon, but the other liked to take his time, being really into the theatrics of it all. Hotguy could appreciate that. Besides, they've been enemies for so long that they've fallen into a routine, and he often enjoyed these fights. As long as he kept Mumbo distracted, repeatedly defeating him and sending him away in disgrace, the other didn't really cause problems for anyone else. He was far too focused on trying to get the upper hand over Hotguy and perfecting his powers and his technology.

"It's not just a random lab. Do you know what they do here?"

"Uhh." Hotguy had seen the signs but hadn't paid much more attention than it took to verify he was in the right place. Which, the lasers and screaming had pretty much confirmed that when he showed up anyway. "I don't know. Are they developing time travel or something? Velcro 2.0? The signs around here are not very dyslexia friendly."

"That's true, they aren't. Well! They don't really advertise it anyway, but this lab has a section dedicated to cutting-edge defense research. Backed by the Department of Defense of course, they've been looking into better ways to protect troops and vehicles going into combat zones. And I suppose NASA could also benefit from the shields they're developing."

"So... you came here to steal some fancy shields?" Hotguy asked.

"You could say that. I was able to gain access to their technology and repurpose some of it for my own needs. Would you like to see my fancy new mech upgrade?"

"Sure, show me what you got!" Hotguy jumped around the corner and faced the mech. It was around ten feet tall and strongly armored, but didn't look too different from the last model. Within the cockpit he could see Mumbo, his dastardly mustache trimmed and neat, not a single hair out of place. The other smirked at him through the glass, his dark red eyes gleaming. Hotguy was blessed to have been born with enhanced reflexes, and when he focused, he was able to process his surroundings far faster than the average human, allowing him to analyze a situation and decide how to react in milliseconds. So in the time it took for Mumbo to raise an arm of the mech and aim its laser gun at him, he had already seen the gaps in the mech's plating at the knees. It would take his sharpest arrows to get through the underlying mesh that covered the electronics, but still, if he hit those sweet spots it would take out the mech's ability to walk and bring it to the ground, where Hotguy could stick arrows through other gaps in the armor until it was rendered useless.