The sounds of swords clashing, shields breaking, spells tearing through the air, and explosions sending things flying filled my auditory sensors. Oddly, what was missing was the sound of voices. Not a single enemy Automata made even a warcry or grunt of effort. The former Knight Watch bots, Remi, Prowl, and Rebecca were calling out targets and directions in a very methodical sort of way while the former Royal Swords and Royal Ballista bots were watching each other’s flanks.

Other than those commands, the battle raged in voiceless silence. It was kinda creepy. I tried a quip or two but with the lack of enemy vocal response I abandoned the thought. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were capable of speech or if the feature had been removed or left out in the name of mass-production efficiency. Maybe they were communicating by some other means like my proxies were?

Jhiax’s valkyries seemed to be the company commanders, maybe they had an ability to issue commands wirelessly or through their control curse programs. I’d have to ask Rebecca about it later.

The Convoy armor was performing admirably. I shot between the legs of a titan, slashing at its knee joint, spun and machine gunned steel rounds into its back causing it to wobble. The titans didn’t have proper arms. Instead they had what looked more like the magic cannons that had been mounted on the destroyer class airships. I never liked that style of mech. The titan wobbled in a half circle and fired its cannons at me, sending a wave of magic missiles.

I dodged most of them, but managed to deflect a couple. One missile took out one of the cannon-type soldiers I’d seen mashed up at the village, while another hit the titan in the thigh, further damaging its leg. I converted my arms to machine gun mode and focused my attack on the damaged leg until it couldn’t support the titan’s weight any more and it fell over.

I burst forward and slammed my arm blades into the front hatch of the mech and ripped it off at the hinges. Inside was a little human girl that looked like she was, at best, 13 or 14 years old. What was it with sending literal children out to war in walking tanks?

“You’re sooo lucky that I’m not one of those death to all humans sort of robots,” I joked, though it didn’t look like she found it funny.

She fumbled with a fancy looking, jewel encrusted dagger and started mumbling something, presumably an attack spell. I hit her in the forehead with a clay round and she slumped in her harness, unconscious. I couldn’t exactly take any prisoners and it wasn’t like I could leave her laying around offline like the Automata until we could come back to collect and unlock them.

Thanks to the view from Solus, I saw three heavy assault, cannon-type Automata charging up and sending massive fireballs my way. I had just enough time to burst upwards to avoid the attack, but the titan and its pilot were engulfed in the explosion. The fact that they killed and destroyed their own teammate made me think that these Automata soldiers were probably only getting basic commands. They weren’t working together so much as all having orders to attack the nearest enemy and then doing so.

I felt bad for the little girl and refused to look in the direction of the cockpit. That said, I also tried to console myself that one doesn’t invade another country without a realistic expectation of getting killed yourself. I shook my head to try and dispel thoughts of brainwashing or fanaticism that would lead a child to the battlefield. Nothing could be done for the little girl now and I needed to focus on making sure that this entire force was stopped cold while my team survived.

As I dropped from my upward burst I took out two of the heavies with machine gun fire, hit the ground and burst forward, converting my arms, and scissored off the head of the third one. Alongside me, Sentinel calmly walked amidst the battle as if he was taking a stroll in the park.

Sentinel had both of his arms converted into shotgun mode and casually flailed his arms in seemingly random directions while firing off rounds. Each time he shot, the head of an enemy Automata exploded though. More often than not, he didn’t even bother to look in the direction of his shots thanks to having his drone deployed to give him a full 360 view around him.

A quick melee-type of striker Automata rushed at Sentinel from behind, coming in low. Sentinel crossed his arms, tucking a gunarm under his armpit and fired backwards, blasting off the striker’s leg at the knee. Sentinel spun, converting his arm to blade mode as the striker fell forward, impaling its head on Sentinel’s blade.

Sentinel kicked the striker in the chest, pushing it off of his blade, and converted back to shotgun mode, ducking under cannon blast and sending another striker flying back with a head shot. His deputies, the former Knight Watch bots, were calling their targets as Remi unleashed flurries of arrows. The guy was an amazing sniper, easily shooting cannon fire out of the air and sending enemies to the ground looking like porcupines.

While they were normally a lax and joking sort of group, a switch had been flipped and they were clearly in work mode like when I’d seen them take on those shadow beast things in the forest.

Prowl was engaging with multiple basic soldier units. Thanks to her experience and slightly better specs as a Knight Watch unit, she was doing okay but she was a little too eager to jump into the fray, leaving Remi and Rebecca to constantly have to take out units that were sneaking up behind her.

I didn’t know what sort of combat Rebecca had been reprogrammed for when she was converted into a valkyrie by Jhaix, but she seemed to prefer the ballista she’d used in the Knight Watch. Maybe because she had more years of experience with it rather than a bunch of programmed skills that she wasn’t familiar with?

The same could probably be said of most of the enemy units. None of them seemed to be using their skills to full advantage and felt like they were simply going through a programmed routine of attack patterns. All the better for us, I supposed.

Thanks to her valkyrie conversion, Rebecca could sorta fly for a bit. It seemed like an upgrade from the valkyries that I’d seen back at the Factory that could only glide with wings that appeared to be mostly for show. She’d launch herself high into the air and rain down ballista bolts into crowds of enemy soldiers. Multiple times she managed to pin soldiers to the ground or to each other, three or four bots thick.

At ground level, Rebecca loosed a ballista bolt into a dense crowd of soldiers at close range. The force of the blow punctured completely through the chest of one of the soldiers and lodged in another that was behind it, though the momentum plowed the poor bot through the crowd and sent others tumbling.

The shredded remains of the original skewered bot as well as a couple of ripped off parts from others that had gotten in the way came to rest at Solus’ feet. Casually, she stopped the gruesome kebab with a foot. She reached down and picked up the ballista bolt, flinging off the remains of the Automata that it had punctured.

She took a few steps and hurled the bolt like a javelin, spearing a heavy unit through the abdomen and causing it to fire off its cannon ball at its own feet. The explosion blew its upper half off, flipping end over end. It hit the ground and feebly tried to crawl, pulling its body along with its arms but was crushed by a titan that had targeted Solus and was moving in closer.

Solus summoned her massive hammer from [Storage] and threw herself at the titan, charging up a plasma attack. She slammed the hammer into the knee of the titan, obliterating the joint and sweeping the legs out from under the mech. She spun around and smashed the hammer into the front of the mech with an uppercut attack that forced the mech body up and over, rolling several times before coming to a rest in a heap.

A fireball crashed into Solus' shoulder from behind, then another, sending her tumbling forward. She rolled with the attack, dropping her hammer, and lunged for the fallen titan, ripping the front hatch off at the hinges. She pivoted, using the hatch as a shield to block incoming fireballs. The explosive force shook her, pinning her to the crumpled titan. Its pilot, another teenage human, screamed and took off running somewhere.

Channeling a certain shield throwing hero, Solus flung the hatch door at the nearest cannon-type, caving its chest in. A bold striker unit rushed at her as she snatched her hammer back up. The hammer collided with the striker in something like a golf swing that sent the bot high into the air and flying backward at least 15 meters.

Solus rushed forward, using a cannon-type as a springboard to leap high into the air. She arched back with both hands on her hammer, charging it with plasma and lining up for a massive slam attack in the middle of their cluster. She couldn’t help but think of the norse god of thunder and I regretted not giving her a lightning attack for a moment.

She brought the hammer down, smashing it into the ground and igniting the plasma sending a concussive explosion through the group. Enemy Automata flew in all directions, hitting the ground like rag dolls, pitted and charred from the spray of burning plasma.

Slowly, they got back to their feet, fumbling for their weapons and shields only to find a wakizashi blade protruding from their throat or an arm suddenly flying off at the shoulder.

Carnivac was little more than a blur or a wraith on the battlefield. Even with the magical flare providing light from above, clad in his shadows and [Blink]ing from enemy to enemy, he could barely be tracked let alone attacked. From Victoria’s perspective, he must have been further solidifying her belief that he was truly the god of death from the stories she’d grown up with. He was everywhere and nowhere, dropping anything he touched. He’d even managed to take down a titan on his own.

Half of his focus was on taking down as many enemies as possible but the other half was on trying to keep Victoria and Reinhart alive. Reinhart had plenty of combat experience but his specs weren’t much better than the basic soldier units. Victoria, being an organic, was doing great all things considered as she made openings for Reinhart or exploited openings he made.

Carnivac knew about her fire breath jutsu from personal experience but it was still neat to see it in action. She didn’t chant at all, though it did require a complex combination of hand gestures. Maybe it was like signing the magiCode rather than speaking it. It would be interesting to research that further. She also had some sort of wind spell that would create a small tornado at the tip of her blade and a short-range teleport ability. The different means for interacting with the magiCode fascinated me. Were there other methods?

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The enemy forces were decidedly thinning out, the highway— turned battlefield— was littered with mechanical corpses and wounded. Given the power difference between these mass-production Automata soldiers and my team, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was what it was like for organic soldiers going up against an Automata combatant. It was little wonder that they would want the Automata to be shackled and firmly under their thumbs.

Explosions erupted around Carnivac as a titan unleashed a salvo of magic missiles at the ninja siblings. Carnivac flung an [Ice] charged kunai at the mech, triggering the spell when it hit the chest hatch. The ice spell materialized a one meter sphere of extreme cold space, using the impact as the origin point. Half of the sphere was inside of the mech and Carnivac could hear the pilot inside screaming. The mech stumbled around as the pilot inside panicked.

A second kunai, this time charged with a six centimeter [Blink], hit the mech in the chest. The resulting explosive force took the titan off its feet, knocking it flat on its back. The screaming stopped, he noticed. Hopefully the pilot was just knocked out. I knew we were at war, but I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of intentionally killing anyone. Even as Carnivac, I’d still try to avoid it if possible.

A flash of purple movement caught Carnivac’s eye and he saw Koji in his full Royal Sword armor with purple cloak, sailing through the air. It looked like he’d used Mazin’s blades as a springboard for an attack. The heavy sword user came down with a heavy chunk, blade first, into the fallen titan, ending any thoughts I’d had about the pilot surviving Carnivac’s attack.

Koji looked up at Carnivac and gave him a friendly nod of his head before leaping off to go cleve someone else. Carnivac could see that Deen and Asterr had taken down another titan. This one had 11 ballista bolts punched through the chest. These guys, clearly, had no problems with taking lives. Was this something that I’d have to adopt and get used to?

Initially, I was worried that the mini-bot insecticons wouldn’t last long on the battlefield due to their diminished attack ability and comparative fragility. As Swarm, they remained a small and nimble target that could fly, making them hard to hit from a distance. The aura shield provided by BombShell protected them from close range attacks. All in all, they did pretty well for themselves.

Swarm flew up, latching onto the back of a soldier unit, grabbing onto the back collar of the soldier’s back plate. Earlier in the battle, the technique resulted in a lot of enemy on enemy attacks as they tried to get Swarm but they had been able to avoid taking any damage thus far. Their kill count was far below any of the others, but they added to the chaos and so felt proud of that.

Now that the enemy was dwindling, the poor soldier didn’t have anyone around to kill it as others tried to get Swarm. Swarm would have to take care of things themselves. With their lower set of arms, they held tight onto the collar ridge, with the upper set of arms, they fired off 10 flaming shuriken that they controlled with KickBack’s pseudo telekinesis abilities.

Faster and faster they spun the shuriken around the throat of their victim drawing the circle ever smaller. Frantically, the soldier flailed around, trying to get Swarm but its fate was sealed. Abruptly, it stopped flailing and let it’s arms hang limply as its head teetered forward and then fell off.

The remaining soldiers looked confused and uncertain of how to deal with Swarm. The headless soldier toppled forward and Swarm buzzed onto the face of the next victim. The soldier tried to bash Swarm with their own shield but Swarm’s aura shield was stronger. Swarm repeatedly punched the soldier in the eye until the optic stone shattered.

The soldier screamed and dropped their weapons and shield. They tried to grab Swarm with their hands but couldn’t get past Swarm’s shield. Swarm was cozy and safe. Swarm learned that the enemy soldiers had voices after all and could still feel fear.

Swarm pushed an arm inside of the shattered optical socket and triggered Shrapnel’s flame thrower ability. The remaining eye dimmed then started glowing orange from within until it ruptured and thick black smoke poured out. The soldier dropped like a stone, leaving Swarm hovering in the air.

The remaining soldiers started backing away, some turned and ran. That wouldn’t do. What was this feeling? Swarm was enjoying this. Swarm caught one of those cannon-type enemies and it spun around trying to get Swarm off. Swarm felt like a cowboy riding a bull. Swarm was having fun.

One of the striker types tried to smash Swarm with a nasty looking sword but Swarm decided to play a trick on them. Swarm split back into the individual mini-bots and scattered, crawling out of the way. The attack from the striker hit the cannon-type, opening up a large gash in its back. The cannon-type stumbled forward and turned to see its attacker. Was it apologetic? It was hard to tell.

The insecticons, in their bug forms, all crawled into the gash in the cannon-type’s back and started working their way around inside of it, breaking things and tearing their way through and around its systems.

The cannon-type and the striker both looked helpless and terrified. One of the cannon-type’s arms fell off at the shoulder joint, then the other. It looked up and uttered the word “help” before its chest cannon charged up and blasted the striker with a fireball that knocked it for a loop. The explosion from the fireball also sent the cannon-type flying back. It hit the ground and rocked back and forth uselessly, screaming until everything cut off.

Its faceplate turned orange in the middle before flying off and the insecticons came crawling out of the gaping and smoking hole. They reformed Swarm and looked for their next target but all they could see was a few units running away. Silly soldiers. They were running the wrong way if they wanted to live. They were headed for—

A heavily battered titan fell from the sky, crushing the few soldiers that were trying to get away from Swarm. IronHide grabbed the leg of the fallen titan, swinging it around and around like an olympic hammer thrower. He released the titan, sending it sailing at an airborne valkyrie. It was a good thing that he didn’t get dizzy.

The titan flew true, but the valkyrie easily dodged it. It crashed into some trees somewhere. There were still a handful of those bee-harpie-bot things flying around. They didn’t seem to be able to do much more than scratch IronHide’s paint but they were still annoying. He’d swipe at them but they’d just dodge back.

He needed something with reach and the Mk II body didn’t have any ranged attacks. Oh! There were trees and IronHide had flaming axes! IronHide was like a regular lumberjack or something. Wait, a giant lumberjack, he was a mechanized Paul Bunion! He just needed a big ol’ robot ox to hangout with.

IronHide felled several trees with a single swipe and stowed his axes away. He grabbed one around the trunk and flung it at the nearest bee-harpy-thing. They tried to pull back but got a facefull of tree branches to get tangled in. It went down somewhere that IronHide didn’t care about. He flung the next tree into the air and it spun as it sailed through space, smashing into a harpie-bee and broke it in half. Oops. Well, whatever, it’d try to break him in half if it could.

The valkyrie had some sort of sword on a stick kind of spear thingy and would take diving swipes at him. Again it wasn’t able to do much of anything against his iron turtle shell, but it was pissing him off. A handful of dull explosions gently pushed against his back and he turned to see a titan charging up another salvo of magic missiles.

“Heh, you guys are easy. I can take you chumps all day long!” he shouted as ran a couple of steps and jumped up.

He pulled his axes from their back mounts, ignited them, and crashed down in front of the titan with both axes slashing off its cannon arms. He stood up, planting a giant foot into the titan’s chest and shoved it back yelling “This! Is! Automata!”

I chuckled to myself at the joke but Sentinel stopped what he was doing and looked at IronHide.

“Really? That’s what you went with? You’re lucky Cyc isn’t here,” he jabbed at the giant.

“Oh shut up,” IronHide retorted, getting distracted.

The valkyrie swooped for his head, but suddenly sprouted a ballista bolt in her chest before she could follow through with the attack. The weight of the attack pulled her out of the air and pinned her to the trunk of a tree, where she hung lifelessly.

Rebecca gently landed on IronHide’s shoulder.

“This is Automata!” she yelled with a raised fist and a smirk to her voice. “Shouldn’t it be we are Automata? But then, so are they...”

“No it’s... nevermind. Yeah, it’s dumb,” IronHide admitted.

“I don’t believe we’ve met big guy,” she said, giving him a pat.

“Uh... no, not as such, no. I’m IronHide.”

“Becca. You’re one of Prime’s eh? No way I would have missed seeing you on the airship.”

“Yup... We have special seats, I guess,” he said lamely.

“I’ve met some of the others. Sentinel wouldn’t tell us how many of you guys there are when we met him. Still, seeing you is quite the surprise. I met Alfred and those two girl-types. The girls are fun to tease, they remind me of my own girls. Hold that thought, there’s one left.”

She brought her ballista up and launched a bolt in a fluid movement that caught a valkyrie by surprise. The bolt punched through the valkyrie’s stomach and pinned it to the body of a fallen titan.

“Just me, or does that titan look fancier than the others?” he asked.

“Now that you mention it... it also doesn’t look like it was knocked down. The hatch is clearly open so the human inside took off running somewhere... Where did you go, little human? Mama Becca will take care of you,” she teased.

Everything else looked to be winding up. All that was left of the invasion force was dead or wounded, though we’d have to tear open the titans to check on the pilots.

A huge, flaming rock smashed into IronHide and he was nearly knocked over. He stumbled to the side, sending Becca tumbling from his shoulder. He managed to catch her, and huddled over as a second massive magma boulder slammed into his turtle shell.

“The hell was that?!” he asked incredulously.

I turned in the direction of the attack to see an incredibly huge golem crashing through the trees. Unlike the other golems I’d seen and fought against, this one looked like it was made of charcoal that was floating in the air and held together by bright orange flames. It was also somewhere around the 22 foot mark and could form these magma boulders and hurl them at will.

IronHide set Becca on the ground and grabbed the fallen titan, flinging it at the golem. The empty mech smashed into the golem knocking it back a few steps.

“Where in the hells were they hiding that thing?!” Remi yelled out, probing it with arrow fire in hopes of finding a weak spot.

“They must have had a summoner with them,” Koji said grimly.

“Summoning takes a bunch of sacrifices though and complicated rituals, how could they pull that off?” Mazin chastised.

“Not if they did all that ahead of time and baked it into a summoning stone,” Deen argued. “Then someone with the summoning skill just has to smash the stone and away they go. Only works for non-living things though.”

“What about undead?” Mazin wondered.

Deen shrugged.

“If they had this, why didn’t they do that earlier?” Koji refuted.

“Cause you can’t control elemental golems. This must be a last resort sorta thing,” Deen answered.

“Guys? Seriously? Can we take this thing down first and postulate on where it came from after?!” I yelled at them.

IronHide had taken a couple more blows while the Royal squad had argued about the origins of the golem. He got in a solid kick to its hip, forcing it to bend forward, right into a waiting uppercut that lifted it up off its feet. It would have crashed to the ground if it hadn’t been caught by a second elemental golem. There was a flash of light from the edging forest and a third golem stood up.

“Ah crap...” I moaned. “You guys go find that summoner, ‘Hide and I will deal with our new buddies.”