Writer’s spot: Greetings Friends! Our first battle and some insight between the slightly twisted logic of the world!

SO, This chapter is on the bigger side (for Reinstall, not for insania), with 3k words of story. I must say that I’m quite satisfied with this one, since it came fairly quickly once I started to truly focus on it.

BESIDES, tomorrow is a very busy day for me since I have class from morning to the end of the afternoon, so there MIGHT not be a chapter. But I will try to write something even if short so that you don’t miss me too much. Same can be said to the day after tomorrow, but it might not be as bad.

BESIDES (II), The following weeks, I will start to have some extra classes, so update speed might drop a little, both here and Insania when I come back, so you have been warned. I’ll try to keep up the speed, though.

Beep, and enjoy your story!

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The group woke up even earlier this time, before the sun even rose up in the sky, which made the bored Gaz thank the elf from the depth of his subroutines that he made such a decision. Yllivia seemed determined to not let him try to run away again, so she used him as a pillow this time, much to his chagrin. How she wasn’t bothered by the hard metallic surface left him wondering, but he decided to not bother too much with it.

As soon as the trio were up, they started preparing their weapons for one last time. Yllivia seemed to open a slot on her brass knuckles and changed something within. The moment she closed them, sparks came whenever she touched each other. Nodding satisfied, she quickly took out the submachine gun on her waist and quickly checked it for anything wrong.

Ross dismantled his hand-cannon, took out the cylinder and the handle for a new larger set and put a custom double barrel with some hinges on the part where it linked with the handle. After reassembling his weapon, his oversized pistol became an oversized break-action shotgun with two barrels.

Finally, Sorius opened the thing he had packed on his back, revealing a long marksman rifle, with the barrel surrounded by a bulky armor casing with some strange blue grooves on the surface.

Gaz watched them in wonder as the trio quickly checked their weapons before looking back to the plains. He couldn’t quite see the leapers that the others mentioned yesterday, so he assumed they were probably sleeping, or inactive, for now.

[What did you say that those green things were again?] The goddess asked in his mind.

[What? The grass?] He asked while watching the plains.

[No, you explained that to me already. I mean those!] A marking appeared on his vision, marking the bushes he had seen the previous day.

[Oh, the bushes?]

[Yeah. What are they?] She asked curious, so Gaz sighed lightly before putting himself to explain all that he knew to her.

That was how he still hadn’t passed out of tediousness, since the Goddess kept asking him to explain this and that whenever he wasn’t too focused on one task in particular. Her impressed reactions were somewhat pleasant of hearing, so he couldn’t help but smile inwardly.

“Beepy…” Yllivia called him after some time. He spun himself back to her and looked at the girl crouching to somewhat his level. “!#^@$, no beep,!$&^#?”

She was probably reminding him to not beep, so he quickly moved his camera up and down, nodding. She smiled slightly and looked towards the others. They finished their preparations, and nodded back to her. After quickly throwing some dirt on the bonfire to extinguish it, they left the forest and walked towards the plains.

But different from the usual carefree walk, they walked with much more caution, taking deliberate steps and stopping every few minutes to scout. Beepy… Gaz started to feel a bit worried with all their precautions, and couldn’t help but also get tensed up, making extra sure that his motors weren’t making too much sound.

They walked around one hour without seeing one more of the dust clouds they saw the previous day, but the trio seemed a bit relieved instead of worried, which left Gaz confused, since they seemed eager to find these leapers.

They came to a stop when the cat-girl suddenly twitched one of her ears and redirected her gaze towards their side. Sorius looked inquisitively at her and she said.

“%&@$Leaper.#$!#” She said seriously. The elf blinked surprised for a moment before nodding.

Even the dwarf became clearly worried as he gulped down his saliva and crouching slightly. The elf quickly took a better grasp on his weapon and walked ahead of the group while crouching, making sure to not make too much noise. The other two also followed him in the same manner while he climbed a small hill.

Once they got up to the top and looked down, the trio smiled and sighed in relief.

A single strange robot was downwards the hill, to the side of a large lake.

Instead of cybernetic looking like the nestelope and the cyberfly, this one had a lot of gears and pipes exposed, with steam even leaking from some exposed pipes here and there.

[Steampunk?] He asked surprised.

[Steampunk? What’s that?] The goddess asked confused.

[Oh… It’s some kind of Victorian-style futuristic technology. Usually involving lots of gears, steam tanks and springs.] He quickly explained as he saw the robot moving around.

[Oh! Now I know why that steam and spark they said sounded familiar!] She suddenly said proudly. [The two races I initially created were moved by that!] She said.

[What? You also created races?] He asked surprised.

[Yep. One was moved by electricity, the others were moved by gears and powered by steam or springs!] She said cheerfully. [I thought the other gods would have destroyed them by now.] She said cheerfully.

[Wait… So you created both androids AND clockworks?] He asked confused.

[Androids? Clockworks?]

[Electrical robots, steampunky robots.] He quickly explained. [Well, not exactly, but close enough.]

He quickly stopped his talk to take notice of the steampunk robot in down the hill. It had a pair of treadmills for locomotion instead of legs like the antelope. Between the treadmill was a large metallic core, covered in some thin metal plating, from its back, two pipes sprouted sideways, as exhaust ports. Some kind of limb-like appendage with four hinges, one on the base, two in the middle and one in the top, where it linked with what looked a metallic head similar to that of a lizard.

Many pistons, gears and hoses were present on its neck, which were used to move it, but it showed surprisingly fluidic and flexible movements, as it bent the limb so that the head could reach the core and bite something within some kind of compartment. What he took out seemed to be a gear. Putting the gear on the ground in front of itself, it turned its head towards the treadmill, where a strange tool popped up from beneath its chin and started to dismantle the instrument.

[Is he… Repairing himself?] Gaz asked surprised.

[Of course! Why wouldn’t he do it?] She asked confused.

[No… I mean… I don’t know. That kind of got me by surprise…] He admitted. [But how comes he had the exact gear he needed? Does he carry a copy of everyone inside?]

[Hmm… If he is similar to the originals I made, nope.] She said in a teacher tone. [He can process the organic materials into metals, and then form the material he needs within his body. Most robots can do this.]

[Wait… He transforms organic materials… In metals?] He asked confused.

[Yup! Isn’t that how it works in your world? Robots creating metal within their bodies?] She asked with genuine confusion in her voice.

Gaz wanted to comment something about it, but gave up, since there were so many things wrong with it that he felt that it wouldn’t be worth it. But he did create an archive in his memory… I mean, made a mental note that he shouldn’t trust too much of his common sense in this world as he initially thought.

Taking his attention away from the leaper, he turned to the others, seeing that Sorius had laid on the ground besides him and started to take aim with his huge rifle, which started to make a slightly buzzing sound, while Yllivia and Ross were looking intently to the robot in front of them.

He felt a bit guilty, since only a few hundred meters away had another robot that he could hopefully talk to, yet they were about to kill it for some reason that he wasn’t quite sure why. On one side, they were now fairly similar, but on the other hand, it has been a very short time since he became a robot, so he wasn’t exactly feeling sympathy for the robot.

It was a strange feeling that he couldn’t quite put his sensor on it. As he started to decide what he was going to do, he noticed that a dust cloud was quickly approaching the group while they were distracted. After a quick glance to the trio, he slowly opened some distance between himself and then and turned towards the dust cloud.

Focusing his camera a bit, he managed to catch a glimpse of many leapers running in a tight group, which was raising the ruckus. They had folded their necks neatly so that the head laid right on top of the base, sticking forward only a little. But seeing once again their lack of legs, and how they simply ran around, he couldn’t wonder why they were called leapers in the first place.

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He thought of maybe signaling them to see if he would receive some kind of reaction, but it seemed that the herd of leapers noticed him and the group first, since they made a slight change in their direction.

Gaz became a bit excited at this, since it seemed that he would be capable of having some contact with other robots sooner than the expected.

But then, blades flung out from beneath the leapers’ body, sticking forward menacingly, and a spike appeared from their chins as they picked up speed.

A warning popped up in his vision.

\\\\\\WARNING//////THE SCAN TARGET SHOWS SIGNS OF AGGRESSION, EVASIVE MEASURES RECOMMENDED!

ETA: 53 seconds

[GODDAMIT!] He shouted in his mind as he turned towards the group.

He quickly approached the group and started to hit the elf’s leg, trying to take his attention.

“!@$!%shot@$###$@” He complained while waving the small robot away.

Seeing that the elf wasn’t going to help, he immediately went to Yllivia, but the moment he touched her, she looked at him angrily while making a sign to be quiet.

On his last attempt, he turned to the Dwarf. He tried to slam his leg, but it didn’t seem to get his attention, so he quickly put out his tool-cable and stabbed it between the joints of the dwarf’s armor with a screw-driver out. The dwarf yelped out lowly in pain and turned towards the small robot with some clear rage in his eyes.

Ignoring the threat, Gaz immediately pointed towards the dust cloud, and when the dwarf saw it, he paled.

“LEAPER SWARM INCOMING!” He shouted the first phrase that Gaz understood completely ever since he first got here.

The others quickly turned towards the dwarf, surprised with the sudden shout, before turning towards the incoming swarm. Sorius grimaced as he took his rifle and quickly aimed towards the leapers. Arcs of lightning forming on the surface of the metal as he pulled down the trigger.

A single red line formed between the rifle’s barrel and the incoming swarm, touching three of the robots and simply blowing them apart in one single shot. The last one of the robots even exploded in a ball of steam, taking another one with it. The blue grooves that Gaz had seen earlier popped up from the carcass of the rifle, now a burning red and smoking out.

[WAS THAT A FREAKING LASER?] He shouted surprised in his mind.

[No! That a was the heated air from a projectile!] The goddess said after a brief moment. [From the looks of it, it was accelerated magnetically within that weapon, getting to such speed that even the air started burning.]

[THEN IT WAS A FREAKING RAILGUN?] He shouted once again.

But that attack didn’t stop the swarm, as they kept rolling and soon were within reach of the others. His rifle still cooling down, Sorius threw it away and took a simple pistol from his overcoat, quickly removing the safety and shoving a magazine down on it.

Rolling his way behind Yllivia, Beepy hid himself while seeing Ross reach for the rectangular object on his back and pull it to the front with his left arm. After a quick shake, the object unfolded itself once in each direction, forming some kind of cross that curved inwardly. A humming sound came from the air as some kind of green field formed in front of the cross, taking the shape of a shield large enough to cover the whole dwarf behind it.

A quick move with his hand to his right hip and he opened up some kind of compartment on his armor, from which a pair of shotgun shells sprung out, being held in place by some strange mechanism. He quickly took his double-barrel shotgun and held it with one hand.

Yllivia didn’t even reach for the submachine gun and quickly put on the two brass knuckles that soon sparked to life, almost literally.

And then, the leapers… Leaped.

Gaz beeped in surprise as he saw a pair of skis pop up from beneath the robots with such a strength that they pushed them upwards a good two meters into the air before turning downwards with their blades aiming directly at their necks.

Scared beepless by the sudden act, he almost missed as Ross jumped in front of the other two and shoved his oversized shield in the face of the first robot, smashing it. The dwarf didn’t even flinch with the impact, his armor suddenly springing to life with the sound of pressure being released.

When another leaper approached him from the sides, he quickly pulled the shotgun and blasted it at point blank, blowing the whole clockwork base to smithereens, with the one behind soon following by another shot. His ammo finished, he quickly broke up the shotgun with a movement of his hand and swung it by the ammo on his hip, where it went in smoothly and he once again closed the weapon. The whole scene taking less than two seconds and a pair of slugs sliding in place of the last ones.

Meanwhile, Yllivia quickly ran towards the ones that somehow managed to avoid the rampaging dwarf and started to slam the electric knuckles on their bodies, leaving a clear dent on the metal surface and sometimes even stopping the clockworks entirely as a sudden steam explosion blasted all of its back.

Out of protection from the sudden dash of his newfound guardian, Gaz quickly ran towards Sorius, who was the only one who didn’t run too much and kept sniping the robots heads with his pistol and occasional lightning strike.

After the first wave of leapers ended, the trio had destroyed around ten or so leapers, while another forty still remained. The leapers quickly started running away from the group, so Gaz let out a beep of relief, but the trio didn’t seem as relieved as him.

He quickly understood why, as they swarm made a wide turn up ahead while picking up speed and coming back at them with the treadmills rumbling madly and steam escaping nonstop from their exhaust pipes.

The trio smiled wryly as they saw the swarm coming back to them. Ross seemed to make a snarky remark, as Sorius lightly shook his head. Yllivia only having a slight frown to her usual expressionless face.

Beepy simply trembled scared while holding close to the elf.

…

“!@$# small swarm! @$@%!@ Leapers!” Ross said after falling with his butt on the ground and panting heavily.

[That was a small swarm?] Gaz said surprised. [God help-me if we ever find a large one.] He said exasperated.

[I don’t think I could help much…] She answered almost immediately with a slightly awkward tone.

[That was just an expression…] He said wryly.

[Oh… Sorry…]

He beeped awkwardly once again while taking the scene around him. Ross had lost the left side of his shield during the swarm and the right barrel of his shotgun. His leg’s armor were full of indentation that looked like that they would need some serious repairs.

Yllivia lost one of her brass knuckles during the fight and started using the submachine gun, but compared to her punches, the weapon didn’t seem to have that much stopping power, since it was a fairly small caliber. Her clothes were tattered and she had a few cuts on her arms and legs, as well as a nasty looking wound on her right leg.

Sorius had passed out the moment the fight finished, sparks coming out from the ground towards his body every few seconds. At least his wounds weren’t all that nasty and it looked like he would get better soon.

Even Gaz now had a small indentation on his left armor, thanks to a stray leaper that landed besides him.

Individually, the leapers were fairly weak and easy to deal with, but the moment that they came together, they started to jump around as a group, which made it really difficult to dodge their attacks. And midway through the battle, another swarm of the same size as the first one came from the opposite side. Luckily Gaz managed to warn then earlier this time, but they still took some damage.

Now he understood why they were so happy to find a leaper alone earlier.

As a vestige from the battle, around a hundred of broken leapers laid on the field around them, making a small pile of wreckage around them.

Ross said something to Yllivia while pointing towards the wreckages. She nodded and started to raise herself from the ground, but she immediately winced in pain as the gash in her leg stung her. Ross made a snarky comment once again, which earned a nasty look from the girl and a pebble to the face.

Seeing as the two others were out of commission, Ross turned towards the wreckage and started to salvage it, seemingly unworried that another swarm would appear. Seeing that he had nothing to do, Gaz followed the dwarf around, since this would be a good time to get himself some upgrade.