Silash stared at the glowing dots pointed at his chest while the automated sentries reeled and hummed an awful noise. Then, one after another, they fired their lasers in rapid succession.
[Bot Reflex activated]
Silash noticed that he could actually perceive the lasers as they traveled through space, as if time was slowing down in front of him. Even better, his strange, mechanical body was able to quickly move out of each laser's path without much stress. Once he was assuredly outside of their range, time automatically appeared to speed back up. The lasers immediately shot across the room and vaporized the wall behind him, leaving behind insulation and metal scrapings.
The sentries didn't miss a beat, they were firing up their lasers all over again, but Silash had to escape this somehow. He wouldn't let a bunch of robots kill him! Especially now that he was a robot, apparently. For a passing moment, Silash wondered if the sentries felt conflicted over trying to kill him, after all he was a robot as they were, but that only lasted a moment before time slowed down again and Silash was stuck dodging those silly lasers. This time, when he was done with his evasive maneuvers, the lasers vaporized a flourescent light overhead and sent the room into darkness.
And this was when Silash got to use his new [Night Vision]. Everything was green, which was kind of annoying - why did his robot vision always seem to force-tint things? Regardless, he could still see all the sentries firing up their lasers yet again. It was at this point that Silash figured he ought to go ahead and try and attack them - they weren't going to suddenly grow consciences and stop attacking a fellow bot. So, Silash pulled up one of his robo-claws and thought about fighting, and apparently that was enough to prompt that claw to transform quickly into a large, circular saw that was running at a vicious speed.
Not one to argue with a development in his favor, Silash lurched forward and slashed his spinning blade at the nearest sentry's laser attachment. He was happy to watch as his saw perfectly severed the weapon from the sentry, which immediately started beeping and fussing with all sorts of weapon not found errors. Silash then thought about fighting with his other claw, and watched as it transformed into a large, steel cannon. He pointed this cannon at another sentry and watched as it charged up with power. A glowing orange light emanated from his cannon as it charged up, and then with a wild blast it fired and knocked the sentry back, quickly sending it reeling and then falling into bits.
There were two armed sentries left, and they had both just fired at Silash. Of course at this point he was well ready for it, and with a nod and a slide across the floor he quickly evaded their laser blasts thanks to his [Bot Reflex].
"Excellent job, Silash," echoed Tim's dreadful voice as it crackled over the loudspeaker. "You're making quick work of them. You'll have your [skills] mastered in no time, just as I designed your new body to be able to. Your mechanical form is fast leveling due to something I call instinctual system use. It's something that only automatons can tap into, although the reason for that isn't necessarily clear. Then again, you're a smart guy, Silash. Maybe you'll figure that out yourself after a few years in a bot body, and then you can tell me."
Silash suddenly felt like a shrimp, that is to say, he felt like if he was made of flesh instead of metal at the moment he would've been brimming with red coloration, because Tim sounded so smug about everything. And, really, he was right. Silash was a brilliant scientist, he was not some sort of weird, robotic freak! He'd never even liked robots. In fact, in many ways, Silash - despite his scientific leanings - was harshly anti-robot. He hated the idea of transtaumanism, as it was called.
Transtaumanists believed that taumanity was something to be overcome more than it was something to be celebrated. This was, in many ways, in harsh contrast not only to Silash's personal beliefs but indeed also many tenets of science as a whole. Certainly, science as a discipline in Nomachiato benefitted in ways from transtaumanism - in trying to overcome their own taumanity, transtaumanists inevitably ended up discovering the limits of tauman bodies, and were constantly pushing the enveliope on what was acceptable via constantly modifying their bodies to be more machinated and less taumanistic. Silash figured that Tim must've been an extreme transtaumanist, or at least, he had an idea that Tim might've been one. Of course, to sensibly be a transtaumanist Tim himself should've at least had a robotic arm. but then again, if Tim was so into putting other people in robotic bodies, then maybe Tim wanted to test out transtaumanism on other people in order to perfect it. Silash had heard rumors about rich people doing disturbing things like this, but he'd always thought of them as just that - rumors. Sure, there was this nastiness - but it wasn't something that Silash thought of seriously happening. And, yet, here he was - locked in a robot's body, forced into combat, presently dancing around sentries that would fire super powerful lasers at wherever he stood, with his only repsite being that his [skills] allowed him to easily evade the lasers by machinations of his perception of time.
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And, suddenly, Silash had an idea. Suddenly, Silash stopped thinking about the lasers as something to evade and started thinking about them as something to use to his advantage. If they really were powerful enough to vaportize walls, maybe Silash could use them to escape this... Well, maybe he could use the sentry lasers to escape wherever the hell he was.
Still, it wasn't necessarily fun to have to dodge them over and over. Silash spotted the laser gun he'd severed off the first sentry with his saw hand. He dashed over to it and quickly transformed his canon hand back into a claw. He picked up the laser gun and analyzed it.
[Equip Laser Rifle?]
Silash's suspiocions were confirmed! He'd be able to use this laser as if he, too, were a sentry. With that, there was no reason to keep the other enemies standing. He quickly evaded some laser blasts and then cut both of the remaining sentry's guns off.
"Very impressive, Silash, very impress-"
Silash fired the live sentry gun at the loudspeaker, vaporizing it to ash. Then, he sighed and looked at the scrap metal around him. His life might've not been in present danger, but Silash was feeling deathly uncomfortable. He had absolutely no idea how he was going to get out of this mess!
But, he did have the sentry gun. So, Silash did the only thing he could think of doing. He started firing. He fired at every wall he saw, and then when he hit the metal behind the wall, he fired again! Disappointingly, it did seem that each laser fire seemed to bounce off of the metal behind each wall, however, it also dented the metal - so, with that, Silash kept on firing, noticing that imprints in the metal were getting larger and larger. He knew that if he continued to stress the same area, regardless of how strong the metal was, his lasers would eventually cause it to break. And so on he did - the only issue was, as Silash did this, he didn't notice what was going on behind him. And this was unfortunate, especially considering that he was such a science-minded fellow. See, each time Silash fired a laser from the severed sentry rifle at the same spot of metal that he'd been firing at the whole time, it bounced. That is to say that, whereas when it vaporized something it was absorbed, the laser instead would bounce off of the metal and then be sent spinning around the room to find something else to vaporize. It was this constant laser richochet that quickly made work of the entire surroundings of Silash, for he was firing quite a barrage of lasers.
And so it was that, sooner rather than later, Silash found himself firing laser after laser at the metal, watching it bend and warp but never fully break, and with each firing, time seemed to start slowing. Now, Silash was initially confused by the changing speeds of time - however, eventually he became aware due to a laser's impact with his robot form that what was truly happening was that he'd vaporized everything in his surroundings unwittingly, so that he was essentially standing in a room that was nothing but metal and ash. So, with each laser he fired, another laser bounced around the room, never once finding a point in space with which to vaporize something and therefore get absorbed. And, of course, when each laser was created, with never even one of them getting absorbed, time would slow further and further on account of Silash's [Bot Reflex]. The problem was, while Silash's system may not have had any obvious, hard limits, his robotic body surely did - so, eventually, time was slowing to a pace where even his body was becoming slowly but surely out of synchronization with his mind. At first, this was imperceptible, but quicker and quicker now it was becoming an obvious problem. Silash was becoming concerned that he might get trapped in an endless time freeze if he wasn't careful.
With this in consideration, Silash arrested himself from firing any more lasers and instead raised his circular saw hand. Activating its power, he threw it to the metal wall and watched as sparks flew. At first, it felt hopeless, however Silash noted that his lasers had greatly weakened, thinned, and heated up the section of metal before him, and quickly enough he was indeed cutting through the metal as if it were butter.
And now it was time to act. As his saw hand cut through the metal, Silash watched as more of his unabsorbed lasers bounced his way - further slowing his mind-body time gap. However, it wasn't enough to stop him, thankfully. Silash smashed his body through the opening he'd cut in the metal and stepped into what appeared to be a dark hall. Time sped up as the lasers rushed out through the opening and vaporized random things in the hall, briefly illuminating it.
And that was when Silash would've gasped, if he had still been tauman. For Silash saw a behemoth of a robot standing before him, with a large, electrified hammer. And it looked prepared to smash him to bits.
"Shit," said Silash under his robo-breath.