I managed to dodge to the side and grabbed at the cloak pulling the thing back and slammed it to the ground. The thing didn’t seem to register the attack at all and fluidly ripped off the cloak to spring back up again. It came at me again and this time I could see that one of its arms ended in a massive spike with some additional prongs coming out of it and hoses leading around to its back. It was quick but this thing really wasn’t trained to fight. Its attacks were obvious and telegraphing so I was easily able to avoid it again. This time I was able to grab a hose and pulled it back toward me while burying my sword through a rear canister and into its back. The thing continued to flail a bit so I wrenched the sword free, sideways, nearly cutting it in half. It fell to the ground and didn’t get back up, the red light of its eyes fading. My sensors detected a rush of something that had escaped from the torn canister, and then nothing.

[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a4841759-4534-4306-bf12-0d6b15789e9a/de65pep-5e772281-dbcd-4c54-b1dc-d7b2a7ddf347.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYTQ4NDE3NTktNDUzNC00MzA2LWJmMTItMGQ2YjE1Nzg5ZTlhXC9kZTY1cGVwLTVlNzcyMjgxLWRiY2QtNGM1NC1iMWRjLWQ3YjJhN2RkZjM0Ny5wbmcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.6nRyDmCaExXYS6oBhk9RAn7AieADyGb4xlso9IZ-8sk]

I rolled it over, this thing was an Automata. It was about the same size as my main body and had a similar head design. No wonder Matty was terrified of me if he’d seen this thing. Matty! Maybe there were more. I raced out the door and saw another one that had been cut from shoulder to navel laying in the dirt. Elita was likely ahead of me here. I pulled Cyclone out of storage to give us a hand in searching and fighting and hopped out of Carnivac. We split up and started searching houses, starting with ones with kicked open doors. In some cases we were too late to help the people in the houses, these guys worked efficiently to say the least. In some ways they were a little too efficient for their own good and we were able to take out another five of them while they were busy murdering people.

We met up in the street to find another eight of them rushing for us. Once we’d started making noises the other murder bots must have stopped what they were doing to investigate. I imagine that us being an open threat would hamper whatever it was they were doing. I was sure that my shells would be able to take out this group of murder bots so I ran ahead to the Church, I could hear fighting inside and hoped I wasn’t too late. The heavy door was hanging by a hinge, was this the work of the murder bots or of Elita? Focus Prime! Now’s not the time! I saw a dead murder bot in the narthex and two more in the sanctuary with Elita holding back another five on her own. They seemed determined to get to the orphanage residency, why were they sending this many and so determined to get the kids? I sometimes forget that Elita was a Valkyrie Class Automata Soldier, it was a joy to watch her fight. These murder bots weren’t soldiers but holding back five certainly kept her hands full.

“PRIME! FOCUS!” she yelled at me.

Damn. I seem to be getting worse at that. I shot one of the murder bots in the back with my RockMortar, using the one and a half inch steel rounds I’d crafted for this trip. They were similar to the bullets from my world in shape but had thin spiraling fins on them for stability. It wouldn’t be as good as rifling in the barrel but I hoped it would do the trick. I got the idea from a Nerf football I had as a kid. It improved the range by about double. I was miffed when a rock wasn’t good enough in my last couple battles.

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The shot went through the murder bot, wizzed past Elita’s thigh and smashed into the altar blowing a huge chunk out of it. Elita and the murder bots all froze and turned to look at me, the look on her face was basically “Are you freaking kidding me?” and without breaking eye contact or changing her expression her sword whipped around and took the heads off two of the murder bots, which woke the remaining two out of their incredulous shock. I gave her a little wave with my sword arm and ran forward to help.

I didn’t get far though as I got knocked down from behind by another murderbot that we must have missed. I rolled over and it was right on top of me, trying to pin me with that fat spike it had for a hand while its open hand held my gun arm down. I’d had to transform my blade arm back to a hand in order to keep the thing from impaling me. It looked like it was going to be able to muscle its way down on me but I started laughing.

“Not today, murder bot,” I said via Cyclone and lifted the thing, one handed, into the air by the canister on its back. I then had Cyclone hold its spike arm down while it thrashed around. I put a hand on its chest and uploaded freedom.exe to it, and forcibly executed the program. These things had no concept of a firewall or any sort of security, which was lucky for me. It thrashed harder and let out a mechanical, grinding, sort of scream then went limp and the lights went out from its eyes. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I opened up the [Console] and inspected the logs. Whoever built these things didn’t think about any sort of security to prevent external access to their systems but instead had put an extra Curse on them so that if anyone tried to tamper with the control and punishment curses, this one would kill the subject.

Looks like I wasn’t going to get any information talking to these guys after all, but at least now I could tailor my freedom.exe program to watch out for that other curse and dismantle it first. I took a quick look to see that Elita had killed the other two murder bots that she was dealing with and had gone to search the rest of the building. I then froze for a second and threw down the murder bot I had been inspecting and rushed out the door with Cyclone, Carnivac had spotted something.

At the far edge of town stood five more figures in cloaks. Three were short but they were all of different heights, and four of them were giving off heat signatures. Carnivac, Cyclone, and I ran full speed at them, but it looked like they were turning to run away. One of the shorter ones lifted a cane or a staff and purple lightning shot into the air, split, and came down all around us. Cyclone transformed into bike mode and raced ahead, he couldn’t use [blink] if I wasn’t inside though but he was still a lot faster than we were on foot or than they were expecting. He grabbed the caster by the cloak. She shrieked and fell back, blasting Cyclone in the face with a bolt of lightning. When the blinding light and dust cleared, they were gone.