Paul screams in agony as neon green electricity shoots through his body. Jackie can see his skeleton as the shock courses through him. Phineas looks at his machine in awe as it begins spinning and whirring.

"You're going to kill him!" Shouts Jackie. Phineas waves his hand at her in dismissal. The arc spins and a purple sheen envelops the circular structure. Phineas walks up until he is inches away from the portal.

"Hello!" He shouts. "Are you in there? It's me! Follow my voice!" The wife and daughter of Phineas, however, do not emerge. Instead, an object is ejected out of the portal at speeds so high Jackie can hardly see it and hits Phineas square in the chest. He is slammed against the wall and groans in pain.

Jackie and the guards run over to him. "Sir! Are you alright!?" One asks. Phineas picks up the object now sitting in his lap: A dark-purple glove of some kind.

"What the fuck is this!? Where is my family?" Phineas asks with despair. Suddenly, the power to the facility is cut, and emergency lights kick in. The machine powers down and Paul stops his screaming, breathing heavily in the small chamber. "Get him out of there," says Phineas. "Secure the perimeter of this room. Send an engineer to check on the transformers." The guards nod and scatter about the room.

"They're here," says Jackie.

"I'm... I'm so sorry," says Phineas. "I never meant for this to happen."

One of the guards helps a limping Paul over to Phineas and Jackie. "What do we do with him?" Asks the guard.

"Let them go," says Phineas. "I've put them through enough." He turns his head to Jackie. "I'm so sorry. I was blinded by grief. I'll hold them off for as long as I can."

"We're... not leaving," says Paul. "You can't stop them alone." Jackie nods in agreement. Paul reaches out his hand to help Phineas up. "I know how you're feeling. Grief can make us do insane things. It's only human." Phineas grabs his hand and stands up with him as gunshots and screaming get closer to them. He quickly removes both of their collars.

"Alright, here's what you need to know..."

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A large purple fist punches through the door, puncturing the torso of a guard as it goes through. The robot rips the door apart and the armored man enters, now staring down Phineas, Jackie, and Paul, who are all facing him on a lower elevation than the staircase leading to the door.

"This is fantastic!" He shouts. "I've got you both in one place!"

"Fuck you," says Paul.

"Not you. These two." He points to Phineas and Jackie.

"What do you want with me? I've never even seen you in my life!" Says Phineas.

The armored man adjusts a pair of goggles on his helmet. "You two are irrevocably connected, through no fault of your own. I will capture you both here before your lifeforce has a chance to escape to another body." The armored man snaps his fingers and the large robot starts to approach them.

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"This is your only warning," says Jackie. "Leave us alone and crawl back to whatever hole you crawled out of, and we won't be forced to kill you."

The robot stops moving towards them and the armored man starts breathing heavily. His fingers tremble. "You think... you can kill me? Kill him? A creation of the almighty Thaumaturge? You are a fool! I am Leviticus! You dare disrespect him by suggesting his construct is so flawed that it would lose to the likes of you!?" He screams in anger, a scream so terrible it feels like it attacks the souls of Jackie, Paul, and Phineas. He snaps again and this time the robot runs at them at full speed.

Jackie sidesteps the purple beast and pushes it back with a stream of fire, slightly softening its metal skin. It holds its hand up towards Jackie's flames and moves to punch her. As its mechanical fist rushes towards her, Paul opens a portal leading to its back and causes it to punch itself, making a massive hole in itself due to the softened metal. It turns around to face Paul and kicks off of the ground, launching itself rapidly towards him. Paul strafes through a portal and the robot slams into Phineas's machine. The robot now turns around, its self-inflicted wound now leaking some sort of foreign liquid. It rushes at Phineas now, who runs and distracts it. It runs past Jackie. Now with its back towards her, she shoots a massive burst of fire into its open wound, causing it to make a high-pitched screeching sound as it falls to its side and its internal mechanisms grind to a halt.

Leviticus clenches his fists. "Your fire must be supernaturally hot. Usually, even magical fire couldn't pierce his armor, but over the course of 10 millennia, I had to make repairs myself." He chuckles to himself. "Don't think you've won. I haven't had to do this yet. With this I channel a fraction of my master's power!" Leviticus releases a guttural scream, and Paul and Jackie grasp their heads in pain. Phineas, however, pushes back. Leviticus is physically pushed backwards by their mental skirmish.

"Ahaha! It looks like my theory was correct! You inherited the mental might of my master! Just as the skeleton inherited his affinity for magic and the samurai inherited his physical esoterica. If I had doubts about the goggles, they are stomped now. Luckily I prepared for this." Leviticus reaches behind him and takes an object from his hip, swapping it out with his helmet. The new helm dons a black mask. "His genius magical engineering protects me from your measly telepathic attacks!" Leviticus grasps a black spear that he had sheathed and throws its butt end at Phineas. It knocks him out cold.

Jackie and Paul look at each other. "He doesn't have his goon protecting him anymore," says Jackie. "He's vulnerable."

Paul opens a portal above Leviticus and Jackie shoots fire through its near end. Leviticus dodges out of the way. "I know your every move, fools. Submit now."

Jackie flings balls of fire at him, but he dodges away before each one hits him and explodes behind him. Leviticus throws his spear once again, this time at Paul and with the sharp end facing him. Paul opens a portal behind Leviticus and the spear pierces his chest, causing him to scream in agony and spurt blood from his wound.

Paul and Jackie breathe a sigh of relief until they see Leviticus pulls the spear out of his chest and jumps upon them, wounding Paul critically and knocking out Jackie, seemingly separated from the pain.

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Leviticus has the barely-functioning Winter grab Jackie, Paul, and Phineas and explores the room a bit. "Well I'll be damned," he says as he picks up the casting gauntlet from the floor.

"You are," replies Winter with a malfunctioning voice, "as am I.'