CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE PROTOTYPE
The murderbots seemed to spawn in triples whenever one of them got destroyed. No sooner had Wombat just blown a hole through one of them that three more emerged from the ground, guns blazing. The intense layer of heat that coated him nullified much of their projectile attacks since they either melted or combusted once they got close enough to him, but then the heat offered him no protection against their energy beams and pulse blasts, both of which seemed a lot more painful than Dang, Daedalus and Dante had said they were.
He remembered what Dante had mentioned while they were training at the high school.
“There’s really no way to prepare for Bellum’s bots,” he’d said, before blowing a hole into one of the training dummies. “They’re quick, they’re strong, they’re lethal…and perhaps even more frightening, they know how to adapt. A bot comes after you today, you destroy it easily. Another one comes after you tomorrow and it’s almost like they know exactly how to beat you. You ask me, I think they collect data on encounters and adapt to specific combat instances.”
“What’s that mean?” Daniel had asked.
“It’s simple,” Dante had shrugged. “When the time comes and you’re up against one, ten, a hundred or even a thousand murderbots, don’t try to do things by the book. Don’t try to recreate whatever it is you’ve learned in training because chances are they’re prepared for that. When the time comes, you need to go all out. And you need to adapt.”
Now, staring down at the murderbot horde that had him surrounded, he wondered how he was supposed to adapt. Just how much hotter did he need to burn for him to put an end to the murderbot rampage?
And it didn’t help that from where he stood, he could feel the vibrations in the air no doubt emanating from whatever battle the others were involved in. Whichever monster they were up against must have been really strong and he felt a little annoyed at himself that a bunch of pesky little robots had him occupied when his friends needed his help.
He thought about Tiger, who had been radio silent for some time now. He’d thought to call in on the comms but he couldn’t risk getting distracted during his fight. If anything had happened to Tiger, he preferred not to find out about it until after all of this was over.
He drew a deep breath and slid his feet across the ground, holding his left hand up, the other just over his waist. When he exhaled, flames spurted from his nostrils and mouth, and gently-burning flames engulfed both his hands.
"Adapt," he said to himself. “Come on, Daniel, you can do this. No big deal, you’ve been adapting your entire life. It’s just like Donkey Kong and Mario Kart all over again. If the other guy’s playing better than you, just play harder.”
His flames burned even brighter, and then he attacked. He dashed forward and sent a murderbot’s head flying with a powerful kick. He lifted the murderbot high over his head, coating its metal body in flame and then launched it at a group of bots.
The murderbot crashed into its comrades and exploded, sending bits of flaming metal flying in every direction. Wombat aimed a hand at the flaming metal scraps, focusing on the flame that coated them.
He willed the flames to bend to his power, and they did. He levitated high into the air, arm still outstretched, the flaming metal parts rising up with him, heeding his command. A simple gesture of his hand sent the metal parts raining down on the other bots like projectiles, metal pelting against metal, burning through the bots and causing a few more to explode.
He summoned a fireball in his hand and had been about to hurl it downward when a murderbot flew into him from behind, an excruciating jolt of electricity coursing through him upon impact, causing him to yell in agony.
The bot made screeching sounds as it clawed at Wombat furiously, the both of them rapidly descending from the air. Once Wombat had regained his bearing and had managed to push past the aftermath of the jolt, he placed a hand on the murderbot’s face, gripping it rather firmly.
“Burn,” he hissed, and a powerful jet of flame exploded from his hands, burning the murderbot’s head off entirely, molten bits dripping down the rest of the murderbot’s body.
Wombat hit the ground hard and kicked the headless murderbot’s body aside. He hurried to his feet, just to find that he’d already been completely surrounded by murderbots. He did a quick scan, hoping to find out how many had surrounded him but there were too many reflective chrome heads around and just scanning made him feel a little queasy.
So, he held up his fists and drew a deep breath. He cracked a grin at the surrounding murderbots, eyes glowing orange with his power. “You wanna get nuts?” He cracked his neck. “Alright, then. Let’s get nuts.”
The murderbots all simultaneously made screeching sounds, and then they attacked. The first one attempted to stab Wombat with a blade but Wombat was quick enough to backstep, before slamming a hand down against the blunt of the blade and shattering it with ease. He blasted the bot backward with flames and spun around in time to parry three simultaneous attacks.
A whirring sound from behind indicated a bot was charging up a blast, and Wombat propelled himself into the air just in time to avoid getting hit. Instead, the blast hit the three bots whose attacks he’d just parried and he watched from above as it blew them to smithereens.
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He snorted. “Damn, looks like you lot forgot to turn off friendly fire.”
The other bots stared up at him, and then one after the other, they started to rise into the air, going right at him; menacingly showing off their weapons of lobotomy and mass destruction as they approached.
Wombat moved his head out of the way to avoid a blade that had been launched at him. He spun to avoid a beam of energy. He dropped his altitude suddenly to avoid a pulse blast. He crossed his arms in front of him to shield from a blow he saw coming far too late.
Murderbot after murderbot came at him, and he relied on his natural instincts to avoid their attacks and when the moments of opportunity presented themselves, rare as they were, he countered. A stream of fire here, a flaming punch there.
Each time one murderbot went down, the others seemed to grow far more frenzied, far more aggressive. Soon, the entire battle devolved into a flurry of quick flashes and spurts of flame, with shockwaves flying out every few seconds. Wombat continued to parry attack after attack, nimbly spinning out of the way to avoid blasts while also countering with devastating blows of his own. But he was severely outnumbered and it wasn’t long until he started to struggle to keep up with all of the murderbots.
A blade slashed across his back and pain flashed through him. A beam hit him in the chest and sent an agonizing burning sensation throughout his body which was ironic considering burning was his entire specialty.
Another slash to the back. A stab to the shoulder. A punch to the face that sent a tooth flying out of his mouth. Another beam to the stomach.
He fell out of the air, flipped as he fell and made a clumsy landing on his feet, stumbling to one knee almost immediately. He stared up at the circling murderbots, all of their eyes now glowing with satisfaction at their perceived victory. The murderbots didn’t have faces in the same way people did but he was certain that if they did, those faces would have smug smiles on them right now.
That angered him greatly.
He drew a breath and wiped away the blood that was trickling down the side of his face. He spat blood from his mouth and straightened to both feet, wincing as he did so, the mere effort sending pain rippling through him. The slashes and stab wounds burned intensely but he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists through the pain.
He rubbed the back of his neck, took a slow step forward.
“I can’t stand you freaking things,” he said irritably, let out a sigh of exhaustion. “You think you’ve won, haven’t you? Wait, hang on a minute, you can’t even think. You’re pieces of metal glued and screwed together, with some stupid chipset in you that’s giving the impression that you’re special or scary.”
“But you’re not scary. And you’re not special. And I know right now, there’s someone behind a screen seeing this, watching, probably having a good laugh. Bellum maybe? Or maybe one of his silly little lapdogs. Whichever it is, whoever it is, if you think you’ve won, that you’ve beat me, then I hate to break it to you but you’re goddamn wrong.”
Wombat’s hands went ablaze, his flames blue with a hint of gold now. His eyes turned the same shade, and an aura of flame engulfed him.
Beneath his feet, cracks started to spread through the ground.
“It doesn’t matter how much you adapt. You’re not going to win because you’re not special. What you have isn’t real power. You’re just a patchwork of lines of code and algorithms and fancy scrap metal. Me? I’m the real deal. I’m Wombat.”
“Flaming Fury,” he growled, raising his hand slowly. “Maximum Burnout!”
He waved his hand and at once, a flaming vortex exploded into existence, a vortex the blue-and-gold that his flames currently were. Circling the vortex wall were flaming wombat creatures. The glow from the vortex was intense, but even more so was the heat emanating from it, heat that caused all nearby vehicles and pieces of metal to begin melting.
The vortex lasted only twenty seconds but by the time it evaporated, there were no murderbots left. No pieces of metal, nothing. Not a single trace of them.
Wombat panted, each breath releasing mist into the air. Beads of sweat trickled down his face and through the darkness, his eyes continued to glow, the blue-gold aura around him remaining there.
He stared upward, and had been about to take flight to go rejoin the others when he heard what sounded a lot like a fighter jet breaking the sonic barrier. The explosive sound slowed his heart to a crawl, and sent shivers down his spine.
He glanced upward in the direction the sound had come from. At first, he saw nothing. And then he saw a cloud suddenly part through the middle like a donut, and then another.
Something was moving up there, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. He needed altitude.
Flames exploded from his feet, launching him high into the air, straight into the clouds. He hovered there, right in the path of whatever was moving.
He saw a streak of silver and blue shooting straight through the clouds. He thought it might be a missile at first but then it got closer and the metallic, chromium body became visible, along with the six-eyed face and a head that had cable-like tentacles for hair.
It was another bot.
All six of the robot’s eyes flashed red and a mechanic voice said: “Target Acquired. Commencing Obliteration.”
And then the robot surged forward with even more speed, blurring out of view.
Wombat’s eyes widened and he crossed his arms instinctively. He was just in time too, since within the immediate next moment, something fiercely powerful struck him and sent him hurtling through the air. A feeling of intense pain shot throughout his hands, indicating that something had been broken. As he hurtled uncontrollably, the world devolved into a blur around him.
And then he saw the robot’s red eyes appear just over him. He shielded himself once more. Another impact followed, this one launching him downward. The pain that came with this blow caused his eyes to sting and his entire body to numb.
He was certain that he would die the moment he hit the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut as he plummeted, seeking to acclimatize to the darkness before it became his fate. But then, inexplicably, he stopped falling, almost like the wind was a platform keeping him afloat.
He opened his eyes, saw the new robot still flying at him, eyes still red. The robot got closer and closer, and then the wind blasted into it from the side, knocking it several hundred feet away from Wombat.
A hand grabbed Wombat and a vortex engulfed him, the world vanishing from view for a moment. When the world returned into focus, his feet were back on solid ground and Tiger was standing next to him.
“Need a hand?” Tiger asked.
Wombat stared at his own hands, both of which were trembling. His left hand ached and burned horribly and he knew without a semblance of doubt that it was broken. The right hand hurt too, but he could still fight with it.
He gritted his teeth and stared at the new robot which was now hovering in the air, staring at the both of them, its eyes now blue. He got the sense that the robot was scanning the both of them.
He drew a deep breath and held up the only fist he could still form. Blue-gold flames burned into life around it.
“Tiger,” he said.
“Uh-huh?”
“Get ready.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the robot’s eyes turned red once more. Again, more ominously this time, it made the same declaration: “Commencing Obliteration.”
And then it flew right at them.