Max leaned hard into his 'hang ten' surfer stance on the roof of the Porsche, treating the sleek widebody frame like a high-speed cosmic surfboard.
'Norrin Radd, Norrin Radd, Silver-Surfer-shit makes me happy, little Shura bitches sad...'
Max was making up jingles in his head while waiting for the song to change on the Beast Soul speaker attached to his armor. The vibrations and music it pumped into his back were the best surround sound he had ever experienced.
"Ooh, yeah
M-m-m-m-m-m-mow
Yeah!"
"When I get high, I get high on speed
Top Fuel funny car's a drug for me
My heart, my heart
Kickstart my heart!"
'Ha! Perfect!' Max laughed to himself as a Mötley Crüe track from the old Earth playlist started blasting.
With his feet magnetically locked to the metallic-silver Porsche, he twisted his torso and sent the car into a violent, tight barrel roll through a storm of emerald plasma fire and red lasers. As the car spun through the vacuum, Max didn't stop shooting.
He fired his Twin Talons hand cannons in a blinding, 360-degree rhythm, sending streaks of kinetic devastation through the surrounding Shura interceptors. Directly ahead, a massive Shura cruiser loomed like a jagged black mountain.
Max rocketed straight toward its heavily armored flank. At the very last microsecond, he dismissed the Porsche back into his sea of soul once again, letting his own momentum carry him forward. He slammed boots-first onto the hull, his electromagnetic powers instantly locking him to the metal plating.
'Time for my first Nagakin impression...'
Without breaking stride, Max threw a hand forward. He grabbed the magnetic fields of the multi-layered alloy hull and violently ripped it apart, tearing open a gaping hole like wet cardboard.
He slipped inside the dark breach and vanished.
From the outside, the Shura cruiser looked like it was being eaten alive from the inside out. A rapid, violent chain of internal explosions ripped along the length of the ship, bright orange fireballs ballooning out of the hull windows in a perfect, linear path as Max tore through the interior corridors.
Max's trail through the ship was obvious, even without glimpsing him in person; you only had to watch the exterior explosions to know where he'd been.
Moments later, the huge ship shook violently before exploding into pieces. Max burst from the blazing wreckage, still unleashing the Kamehameha-style electromagnetic blast that had just finished off the Shura ship.
He floated backward into the debris field, looking over the wreckage of the ship he had just dismantled. A strange, playful smirk crept onto his face beneath his helmet.
'Alright, I ain't a mechanic, but...'
Max extended both arms, unleashing a massive, sweeping electromagnetic wave across the entire battlefield. Tons upon tons of shattered Shura and Alliance hull plating, jagged girders, and ruined engine components violently wrenched free from the floating wreckage, screaming through the vacuum as they converged on his position.
The scrap metal began to warp, compress, and meld itself together around his armored frame under his absolute magnetic command, forming a massive, chaotic, and heavily armored mechanical construct.
Max chuckled over the thumping bass of his background music as the metal locked into place. "Yeah, yeah... it isn't up to snuff when compared to Han Xiao's and Mansion's 'Mechanical Deities' by any stretch, but the MC from the cartoon 'Megas XLR' would definitely approve."
A towering 'robot' without a head was floating in the void now. All Alliance and Shura onlookers were gob-smacked at the sight of it!
A flash of light appeared on its neck and the Porsche materialized once again, now acting as the head of Max's new toy.
'Ya know what? I kinda want to hear the theme song from Megas, it was kinda sick if I remember right...'
Three Shura interceptors dove down like hungry birds of prey, and their plasma cannons flashed a lethal, blinding emerald once more.
Inside the metallic sanctuary of the human-shaped machine, Max didn't bother evading at all. He just cracked his knuckles and formed a thick electromagnetic shield along the body of the mech he had just cooked up, a manic, nostalgic grin breaking across his face as the theme song from Megas XLR started kicking in.
"Living here in Jersey
Fighting villains from afar
You gotta find first gear
In your giant robot car!
You dig giant robots!
I dig giant robots!
We dig giant robots!
Chicks dig giant robots!
Nice!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
All of the Shura plasma fire and several accompanying missiles landed on Max's position while he was vibing to the theme music, and for a moment, the Shura all cheered inside their ships... until the smoke cleared that is.
Nothing had happened to Max or his machine at all; causing his smile to grow even larger.
'Stress test more than passed... Time for a couple childhood classics to come together... this next little number is some definite 'Pacific Rim' shit'
Max extended his magnetic senses out over the wreckage and debris, sweeping the entire battlefield again. He didn't just grab onto the Shura ships and squash them like he could have however.
Max was too busy playing to be that efficient right now.
He locked onto a massive, drifting chunk of an Alliance destroyer's wreckage floating directly behind them—a literal fifty-ton slab of solid super-alloy Z-Steel plating. With a sharp mental command, he seized what was going to become his new rides melee weapon.
The Shura pilots locked onto the stationary silver humanoid robot once again, their target indicators screaming a guaranteed lock on, not realizing a huge, makeshift sword was heading towards them at Mach-chicken speeds.
"Chicks dig giant robots, and I dig classic German engineering, I hope they can dig this next move... doubt any of the Shura have seen Megas XLR or Pacific Rim though..." Max muttered to himself, while rotating his magnetic power.
As the three ships continued desperately firing their plasma volleys, Max caused the machine's arm to raise and then hang there with its huge metal hand reaching out like a Jedi summoning a knocked-away lightsaber back.
Miles away in the void, the fifty-ton slab of space debris violently answered that massive alloy arms movement. It swung through the vacuum like a titanic boomerang, moving at an insane pace. The lead Shura interceptor didn't even have time to swerve before the massive metal plate violently smacked into it, flattening the alien fighter ship like a bug on a windshield, before it exploded into nothingness.
Max laughed, and then his 'mech' started moving, accelerating to insane levels of speed almost instantly via Max's Electromagnetic control. The massive slab of debris swung backwards in a devastating arc, obliterating the second interceptor into a cloud of sparking cosmic dust before beelining toward Max's position.
The final Shura pilot completely broke formation, panicked by this strange, indestructible Alliance machine. Max casually reached out with [Electromagnetism] once more. The giant slab of starship hull turned broadsword flipped end-over-end through space, smashing the fleeing Shura interceptor right out of the sky before exploding into a beautiful fireworks display of burning fuel. Max scanned the wreckage with childish excitement as the makeshift weapon landed firmly in the hand of his mech.
"Hahaha! Got you good you fuckers! Man, Coop would be so proud..."
Without a moment's delay, Max blasted forward, smashing his way through the rest of the now retreating Shura fleet, looking like a giant metal battlemage as his huge sword and electromagnetic blast wreaked havoc, while the Alliance ships picked off the stragglers.
...
Ten minutes later, aside from one remaining command ship, the only Shura still alive were down on the ground, still fighting fiercely with the Alliance citizens and military personnel.
"Machine Burst! Metal Hell-zone Grenade!"
Max shouted the name of a powerful new super move, inspired by Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z, and moments later the Porsche retreated into his sea of soul. The alloy shell encasing him shattered into countless tiny fragments, which instantly surged toward the command ship with unstoppable force.
They surrounded the spaceship from all sides, and hung there for a moment.
Max hung there with his arms outstretched too before closing them in exactly the same fashion as the aforementioned Namekian did when he fought Android 17.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Without even waiting for the smoke to clear so he could see the results of his efforts, Max slowly rotated his body and became a streak of red and purple as he raced back towards the planet surface.
Max wasn't quite done with his Shura kill spree.
"What the hell was that!?"
In one of the surviving Alliance ships, the stranger that had come to help and the impossible scene of the huge metal humanoid was on everyone's lips.
"Bring up the ships recordings! We need to report this immediately!"
The equally shocked and happy captain ordered his men to bring up images and video of the extreme oddity that had just occurred.
"Uh, we're trying to Captain, the recordings are all just blurry static for some reason..."
A puzzled expression appeared on the captains face before he chalked it up to some sort of malfunction caused by the moderate damage their ship had taken during the battle.
"Okay, well ask one of the other captains for theirs then, someone must have something."
"About that..." The soldier in charge of communications had a strange look on his face while responding to his boss. "... The same thing is happening with all of the other ships' recorded data as well, it seems..."
"What!?"
Max had activated [Blank] right from the start, during his free fall from the hotel suite balcony, ensuring there'd be no physical evidence of what happened.
Only incredible rumors and legends were left to tell.