The interior of the underground shelter was a riot of sounds. Power tools, the squeal of metal being cut, twisted and shaped into lethal purpose and music, loud and violent sounding being played over the internal speaker system. All of this punctuated by the occasional mad cackling laughter of a scientist letting loose.

Thomas stood, arching his shoulders back and feeling the satisfying snap, crackle, pop of his back. Wiping the sweat from his face he took in his latest creation.

This time he would win. That stupid raccoon with his stupid tricks would finally be defeated.

Several days earlier…

The creature lay flat, tucked under a section of metal that had been folded over by some event in the past. It kept a wary eye on the metal pole that had suddenly risen from the roof. It had blinded the metal eye, with its strange glowing dot with mud that had been stuck to the bottom of its cloak.

It had done it again and again on the other metal eyes that had sprung up. They reminded it of the metal humans that would occasionally wander through. Shuddering at the thought, those were always bad times for the tribes. The metal ones were much worse than any of the others. They had a feeling that it was the human that they had tracked to this burrow that was responsible for the eyes.

So it waited, and it watched. It knew it had been seen, so they suspected that the human would respond. They were proven correct within a few hands of time. Its pointed ears twitched as it heard the grinding of metal, and then it saw the outer doors to the burrow entrance open slightly and a tiny metal human walked out.

The creature scratched at its head, it felt that the tiny metal human, about the same size as itself, was familiar looking. Ah ha, it thought, it knew why it looked so familiar. It looked like one of the drawings in the thin, fragile books it had found when exploring the ruins, just much smaller.

It cocked its head to the side, was the Human trying to frighten it with a metal man, because this one would not do. It was too small, nor did it appear to have any of the weapons the full sized ones had, unless this one was more like the one in the books than it appeared to be.

Slowly, carefully the creature reached into a pouch tied to its belt and withdrew a pebble and tossed it toward the big opening in the wall. Its eyes snapped back to the metal man as the pebble clattered on the rocks outside. The head of the metal man turned and appeared to be looking at where the pebble had hit, and it slowly began to walk towards the opening.

The creature fished out another pebble and reached its furred arm over the lip of the roof and tossed the stone into the building, back towards the big metal boxes. As it predicted, the tiny metal human turned around and began creeping towards the metal boxes where the pebble had hit.

After checking the outer doors to the burrow and confirming they were closed, it moved as quickly and quietly as it could, crawling out of the lip and using the vines growing out of a hole in the metal roof to enter the building. It slid down, its cloth wrapped feet hitting the floor silently. Its eyes had stayed locked on the metal man the entire time, watching as it searched around the metal boxes for the source of the noise it had heard.

Slipping through the shadowy interior of the surface burrow, the creature flung another pebble, aiming it to fly into one of the metal boxes, and it took up a hidden position nearby where it could continue watching.

The metal human turned at that noise, and suddenly its eyes lit up with bright light. The creature covered its eyes at the brightness, it knew that would have surely blinded it had it been caught directly in the beams of light. Blinking rapidly to clear its vision, it noted that the metal man had moved closer to the giant metal box and was peering inside. Moving quickly, caring more about speed than stealth, the creature threw itself at the metal man's back, knocking it forward and off balance.

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The Metal human stumbled forward into the metal box and the creature slammed the heavy door shut on it and wedged it shut. Panting from the exertion, it moved back towards the shadows, listening to the metal man strike the inside of the box a few times before it fell silent.

Using the vines growing into the building, the creature climbed up into the metal rafters above the room and ducked into a hiding spot beside some ancient machinery.

Inside the Shelter at the same time…

Thomas was shocked, he didn't really know fully what to expect when he sent the mini-giant up to look around, but the way the raccoon had let it into a trap was not it. He wondered if it could speak, it was obviously intelligent enough to craft clothing and trick a crude AI into walking into a walk-in freezer. He hoped it was, maybe it could tell him about any human survivors or anything really. But it would be on his terms, it had stabbed him and tried to kill him the day he arrived.

He tipped an imaginary hat to the creature. The first round goes to you, but I will capture you and learn your secrets. Back to the lab Thomas went, mind whirling with ideas

Without the radio transceiver, which according to the central console was offline with a physical connection error, remote control was out, unless he wanted the robot to drag a cable running to the entrance, which would have to be kept open a crack. Thankfully he could still receive signals, and thus be able to see through the cameras attached to the robots, and from what he saw of the creatures movement, he would not be opening the door more than necessary.

The second contact was basically a Roomba with a lift kit and tank-like tracks. It had rolled out the door just hours after the first robot. Thomas, through the multiple cameras this time, could see that the sun was starting to set. The robot was programmed to drive itself into the center of the room and just sit and wait.

Watching through the cameras, Thomas waited and watched the shadows begin to grow longer. A green box appeared on the screen as motion was detected and the bright LED strip lights located all over the robot turned on flooding the room in bright light. Thomas cursed himself as the blinding light also blinded his cameras, all he could see was the green box rapidly moving as the cameras’ sensors tracked the creatures’ movement.

He saw the light suddenly cut out and the cameras go dark just before he lost signal.

It was the next day before he released the third robot and learned the fate of the second. One of those large birds had apparently come crashing down on it, crushing the robot. With how the bird appeared to be carved up, it looked like the creature had taken advantage of the situation and helped itself to some easy food.

The third robot met its end when it chased the creature across the mess halls’ dining area floor and ended up stuck in place by some tar-like substance.

And it continued, this game of cat and mouse, or raccoon and human/robots. Thomas would try to trap it, or render it unconscious so that he could safely bring it into the bunker, while the creature would evade and disable or destroy each one, using traps, the environment or even nature against them.

Again and again they clashed, each participant becoming more fixated on their opponent. It was almost a competition to see who would give in first and throw their hands or paws up in surrender.

Present day…

It was on the eighth day, cackling with glee that Thomas swore this one would be the last, and it would succeed. Despite losing each encounter, he was very observant, at least to the outside world and he had noticed the creature rarely left the area of the mess hall. It was starting to look thinner, its reaction times were slower and it tired more quickly.

Hunger, Thomas realized when his own stomach began protesting that he had been neglecting it to match his creations against a creature that was born into a blighted wasteland. That would be his key to victory, he thought as he led the robot up the ramp and opened the sealed door to let it out. He imagined he could see the creature, lurking in the shadows. The outer doors to the closet had been damaged and you could now see through sections of it.

The robot rolled on its tracks to the center of the room. A simple design, basically a quad tracked wagon with a metal dome on top. As the robot reached the center of the room it stopped, and with a hissing sound, the top of the dome split across the middle and both sides retracted into the base.

The creature fell off the rafter it had been hiding on, in shocked disbelief at the sight of the food piled high on the robot.