"Why am I surrounded by these dumb animals!" The old man complained as he balled his hand into a fist.

He shook his head, and then spread his hands across a keyboard. he started to type incredibly fast. "I hope you don't think you've come anywhere close to stopping me."

A pulse of energy spread down the giant machine's leg. It crashed into Nugget like a massive tsunami. The wave carried her down towards the ground, and the force kept her from really moving around.

WHAM!

The wave slammed into the ground. Nugget and scores of the spider-like bots flew out away from the leg. She spun head over tail over and over again.

But, while she was still in the air, she held her wings out and managed to balance herself. She held herself up and flapped her wings.

Her burned and missing feathers threw her off balance. But, she managed to keep herself fairly stable despite it.

She landed gracefully, as a plume of dirt spread out from her talon. Slowly she turned her head around and looked back at the machine.

Many of the spider drones were completely smashed. A few were almost completely smashed, but managed to pull themselves back up. Others were in much better condition, and they all turned towards Nugget.

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She had her back to them, but her head was turned towards them. She turned her gaze from the tiny machines, and to the leg she had been thrown off of. Along the leg was still the tiny holes punctured by the hundreds of robotic legs.

Neither side moved. The surviving robots stood with their taser mouths pointed at Nugget. She stood and looked at the legs.

Then, she turned her gaze to them, and a few of them backed up slightly. Nugget took a step forward, and the crack in the standoff had completely shattered.

Click! Click. Click! Click. Click! Click. Click!

The robots rushed forward. As a singular swarm, they headed towards Nugget. But, after her first step, Nugget didn't move again, she just stood firm with her one foot forward.

She pulled her head back abruptly, and blinked. Her eyes were focused up on the glass dome. Immediately, she spun around and sprinted in the opposite direction.

"That's right, run." The old man whispered to himself as he stared on a console that showed Nugget running away.

"All I need," he continued, "is just a little bit of time."

----------------------------------------

"Well, that's weird," Ted said. "Do you think it's supposed to do that?"

No way, bro. Somethings definitely wrong. Death nodded.

"We are unaware of the way things operate down here," Sid explained. "With what little knowledge we have, this could very well be normal."

The three of them were looking up at a large orb that was connected to the ground by a pillar that held the house sized orb firmly, but came down to the size of a pin as it connected to the ground.

It shouldn't have been able to hold itself up, but there it was. Standing firm, and seemingly unbothered by the spit in the face to physics it was.

Death walked up to the orb and tilted his head towards the sky. Huh, can't even see it from this close.

"Wait! We do not know what will..." Sid held out a hand to stop Death, as the skeleton poked the almost invisibly small base of the pillar.

"Well, lucky it didn't move, huh?" Ted chuckled. "That could've been pretty awkward, huh?"

CRACK!

"Uh, might want to step back there." Ted said as he took a step back himself.

Why would...oh...

The orb on top split open and thousands of small, bat-like creatures spewed out.

Run?

"Run?" added Ted.

"Run." Sid agreed.