Dean Lichman and the Dean of the Zeus-Stephanides Academy, a man named Pete Wight, sat together in the Dean’s office and watched the proceedings from the school’s network of cameras. Pete was, to say the least, slightly unnerved by most of what he saw.

“I thought you didn’t allow dinosaurs on your campus?”

Pete pointed to one of the screens, which displayed several Einstein-Odinson attendees riding dinosaurs, gunning down his own students from atop their prehistoric mounts.

“Oh, yes, well, those are actually robotic dinosaurs,” Dean Lichman said. “They only look real because of a very convincing illusion.”

“Ah, I see,” Pete said. “So the giant sea snake, that was also some kind of animatronic?”

“Oh, no, that was entirely real,” Dean Lichman said. “A growth spell, I think.”

Pete glared at the camera for a moment before turning his attention back to his fellow dean.

“Why is that allowed?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? It’s not a dinosaur.”

Dean Lichman sipped at his coffee while Pete stared at the robotic dinosaurs currently routing his students.

“I’m sorry,” Dean Lichman said. “I haven’t offered you anything to drink. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

“I’m fine,” Pete said.

On the other end of the camera, Kanya took aim at a few more Zeus-Stephanides students and shot them with a paintball rifle. Further below, Himiko took cover behind the plates of a stegosaurus, and then returned fire with the paintball cannon she’d built into her prosthetic. Lee kept her gun at the ready as she approached the dinobots and their masters, but they seemed to have combat well in hand.

“And here I thought you got rid of all these old things,” Lee said, patting the armored hide of one of the robotic dinosaurs.

“Yeah, we thought so too,” Himiko said. “Apparently Sarah had other ideas.”

“One sometimes has a necessity for a Utahraptor,” Sarah said, as she sipped a mai tai from atop said dinosaur. “I avoid the waste of resources.”

“Well, it seems to be working out, so I can’t exactly scold you,” Harley said. “Not that you’d care if I did. What I really want to know is where you’re storing all this shit.”

Sarah continued to sip her mai tai and not answer questions, as automated paintball cannons did all the work of combat for her. Harley shook her head and moved on.

“You all seem to have this area well under control,” Lee said. “We’ll be moving on, then.”

“Have fun,” Kanya said. “The apatosaurus can give you cover for a bit, but you’ll be on your own once you get near the geology lab.”

Lee kept that in mind as she moved, and used their brief window of safety to get in touch with some of their friends.

“Kim, we just passed the dinosaurs at the island’s center,” Lee said. “What’s your situation?”

“Oh, I, uh, I don’t know,” Kim admitted. “I got eliminated like thirty minutes ago.”

“Kim, the fighting only started thirty-five minutes ago!”

“I know! I’m still not very good with weapons other than my fists,” Kim said. “And you can’t just fucking punch people in a paintball fight.”

“Well-”

“Harley, no,” Lee said. “Just for practical reasons. If you punched someone with paint you’d get it on yourself too.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Harley said. “Thanks for whatever you accomplished, Kim.”

“I did absolutely nothing.”

“Thanks anyway,” Harley said. “Hawke, patch us through to Cane.”

Cane and his girlfriend Hanifa, along with all of her cosplayer friends, had been dispatched on a special assignment. Freddy had come up with the idea of deploying the cosplayer’s anime-based arsenal against the samurai, and see which Japanese cultural touchstone won out. Acting in his preferred role as the group’s communication expert, Hawke connected them to Cane so they could check in how the plan had gone.

“Yo, Cane-Brain, how’d the ninja assassination mission go?”

“Not well, bud, not well,” Cane said. “We made some good progress through their defenses, but then this swarm of little robots showed up. We thought they were yours, so we let our guard down. Should’ve known better. We’re all out.”

“Holly,” Harley said. Her ZS counterpart was also a robotics expert.

“Cane, dear, were these robots cobalt blue and about knee high?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Guess.”

“Oh.”

A horde of knee high, cobalt blue robots were marching in Lee and Harley’s direction.

“Got to go, Cane, TTYL.”

Lee hung up and ran for cover. The robot army got within firing range, and started shooting at Lee’s forces. A few more of her senior followers were picked off, leaving Lee with fewer and fewer troops to work with. She shepherded what troops remained deeper into the laboratory and took cover. Once she had some security, her thoughts turned to strategy.

“Any chance for robot army versus robot army, Harley?”

“The dinobots aren’t exactly going to be helpful,” Harley said. They were now out of range of the even the apatosaur’s towering height, and the robotic dinosaurs weren’t very mobile. They were tanks, not cavalry, and right now they needed help fast. Harley pulled out her phone and called up Hawke. “Hawke, we got a robot army pinning us down in the seismology lab, and all my tech’s busy defending our secret weapon in my dorm. Send anyone our way to help?”

“I’ll see what I can put together,” Hawke said. “I’ve been having some comms hiccups, I think the Zeus-Stephanides guys might be messing with my tech.”

“Yeah, they’re apparently very competent. Speaking of- Duck!”

Harley grabbed Lee by the shoulders and pushed her down just in time for a paintball to sail overhead. The senior sitting next to her was not so lucky. Lee retaliated with a quick bolt of magic, and the robot that had managed to sneak into the laboratory fell apart in an instant. While physical or magical assault was against the rules when used against human paintballers, drones were not so protected. Not protected by the rules, at least. The drone Lee blasted started to reassemble itself seconds later.

“Ooh, electromagnetically linked components,” Harley said. “Holly’s good.”

“Admire later, problem solve now,” Lee said. She disassembled the robot again, this time using a quick wave of water which she then froze solid to keep the parts permanently separated. Similar blasts of ice on the doors and windows kept more robots from creeping through any small openings.

“Okay, okay, I’m on it,” Harley said. “If I were her, and I sort of am, I’d have these things on a local network.”

Harley grabbed her phone again and started digging through her apps, finding the one she used to remotely access her own robots when necessary.

“Alright, fuck that, fuck you, and with a little bit of this, I- Fuck!”

Harley was halfway through coding when her phone started to slow to a crawl and inevitably freeze. She mashed on the touchscreen to no avail.

“That bitch really is clever,” Harley said. “She databombed me when I tried to access her network. My phone’s basically a brick for the next twenty minutes or so.”

“Damn it. Is there anything else you can do?”

“I think so,” Harley said. She grabbed the ice block Lee had frozen the lone robot in and examined the separate components. “These bots are too small to contain the kind of hardware needed to overload my phone like that. She’s got to have her own computer somewhere nearby.”

“And be operating it herself,” Lee said. “Eliminate her, eliminate the robots.”

As per the rules, once Holly herself was eliminated, all the robots under her command would be useless as well.

“That leaves us the problem of eliminating her, however,” Lee said. The robot army under her command was starting to chip away at the icy barriers Lee had erected. The seismology lab was not exactly a water-rich environment, and she could only keep the walls refreshed for so long.

“Get in touch with Hawke and Freddy and see if they’ve got anything weird,” Harley said. “I’ll handle locating Holly.”

“Don’t do anything reckless, darling,” Lee said. “I need you in the game.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Harley said. “There’s still one bot I got.”

Harley focused for a moment, making Botley appear in a puff of smoke, and he immediately rolled on to his back. He’d been keeping Vell company, and had been right in the middle of getting his head scratched when Harley summoned him. As soon as Botley regained his bearings, the tiny bot turned his golfball-sized head to glare at his master.

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“Sorry bud, I know how you love those scritches,” Harley said. “But you know what else you love?”

Botley held two hands near his head and lowered them, slightly, mimicking the action of putting on a hat.

“You do love wearing hats, but no. You also love top secret missions.”

Botley clapped his hands together excitedly. He did love secret missions. Harley leaned in close and started whispering, to add to the conspiratorial air. She also liked secret missions.

“Alright Bottles, what you need to do is get out of here, sneak past the army of bad guy robots, and find a girl who looks a lot like me.”

After a moment of contemplation, Botley pointed at Harley.

“A girl who looks like me but isn’t me,” Harley said. “Come on man, you’ve seen the clones, you know how this works.”

Botley nodded in understanding, or at least pretend understanding. He wasn’t very bright.

“Just get up to the roof and see if she’s chilling somewhere nearby,” Harley said. “She’s got to be somewhere with a good vantage on the lab to control all these bots at once. Got it?”

Botley gave a thumps up, which Harley returned.

“Get on it, little dude,” Harley said.

“Good luck, Botley,” Lee said. “If you do well, I’ll buy you a new hat.”

Had he been able to yelp with delight, Botley would have. Instead he hopped to his tiny metal feet and scampered off towards the nearest air vent, climbing into it and up towards the roof. As her familiar got further and further away, Harley looked to Lee.

“You’re going to buy him a new hat either way.”

“Of course I am,” Lee said. “Did you see him in the little santa hat at the Christmas party?”

While the two reminisced on Botley’s adorable outfits, the tiny robot continued to climb through air vents, using magnetic grippers to Die-Hard his way through the laboratory. Over years of being used to prevent apocalypses, Botley had wormed his way through dozens of vents, and he easily worked his way to the top and removed a vent cover from the inside. He hopped onto the rooftop, did a flip in midair, and struck a triumphant pose to an audience of zero.

After kicking his foot in frustration that no one had seen his cool flip, Botley ran to the edge of the rooftop and looked around. He didn’t have to look long. The rooftop across from him was swarmed with ZS students, defensive turrets, and heavily armed robots. At the center of it all, overlooking her swarm of attacking robots from above, was Holly, manning three laptops and a phone all at the same time to keep her robotic troops coordinated. Botley tapped himself on the head, engaged his psychic connection with Harley, and then pointed to the other rooftop.

“Ho shit that is a lot of dudes,” Harley said. She borrowed Lee’s phone for a moment to connect to Botley and get some screenshots -and more importantly, some telemetry data. Then she used the phone for its intended purpose and called up Hawke, who in turn connected them to the rest of their remaining commanders.

“I’m afraid we’re directly adjacent to what appears to be an enemy command center,” Lee said. “For various reasons, I think it’s best we eliminate it.”

“I routed some cavalry headed your way, but -oh wow, that is a lot,” Hawke said. “Maybe I should tell them to pull back.”

“I’ve got something that could help, but it’s single-use only,” Freddy said. “Now might not be the best time.”

Harley tried to focus on the call, but a bit of psychic pestering from Botley pulled her attention away. She looked through his eyes for a moment and saw that Holly was assembling some new device. Even Harley didn’t know what it was, but it was big, scary looking, and aimed at them.

“Uh, Freddy, maybe do that thing you’re talking about,” Harley said. She’d missed the specifics while focusing on Botley. “My clone is building some weird thingamajig and I don’t want to be here when the majig does its thinga.”

“Okay, okay,” Freddy said. “Keep your heads down, though. This might get messy.”

After hearing that, Harley’s morbid curiosity compelled her to watch whatever it was Freddy was about to do. She could’ve just asked him, but that was a lot less fun. She tapped into Botley’s vision and kept an eye on things from the rooftop.

On the adjacent rooftop, Holly was staring right back at Botley. He waved hello.

“Should we do something about that, Miss Holly?”

KIM, Holly’s pet project and Kim’s counterpart on the ZS side, was also keeping an eye on Botley. Holly made sure the tiny robot wasn’t armed and then lost interest.

“In about thirty seconds, that robot will be useless anyway,” Holly said. “Just let me finish the E-”

Holly stopped herself as the sky started to turn green. She rolled her eyes and looked upwards at a flickering ball of green energy hovering overhead.

“What is it now, you psychopaths,” she said to the universe at large. After the sea serpent, she was prepared for anything. Or so she thought. “You going to make it rain paint now?”

The green anomaly split into dozens of smaller balls of energy that surrounded Holly and her forces in a sparking dome. Each separate orb started to spin and turn into a disk-shaped spiral of energy. As interesting as the light show was, Holly took cover anyway. They were up to something.

The instinct to hide served her well, as the first paintball flew out of one of the spirals and through the air where her head had just been. Holly chuckled to herself -right up until the very same paintball whizzed through the air and eliminated someone standing next to her. Another paintball shot out of another portal, missed, and entered a portal on the other side of the dome before being spat back out in a completely different direction.

After the first few practice shots to make sure the system worked, Freddy started to focus on quantity over quality. He and his helpers fired a torrent of paintballs into the portal network, filling the air with a hail of colorful spheres. It might have been a beautiful technicolor display if not for the fact it was battering the ZS students from all sides, eliminating dozens of them in a matter of seconds. Every paintball that missed its target re-entered the portal network and kept buzzing through the air until it finally hit something.

“Okay, come on, fire back,” Holly said. They were probably doomed anyway, but they could at least eliminate some enemies on their way out. “Portals are two way!”

A statement she aimed to prove as she aimed her gun towards one of the portals and fired. The storm of paintballs parted for a moment, giving Holly a clear view of the portal, and what was on the other side of it. She briefly saw a tangled mass of red hair before the portal sparked, shifted, and displayed a new image -her own face.

“Oh, of course.”

The very same paintball she’d just fired cycled through the portal network and smacked right into the middle of her forehead, tagging Holly out.

“Well that’s just embarass-”

Insult got added to injury when a large potato flew out of the portals and also smacked Holly in the head.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, that was an accident,” Goldie said. She stuck her head through a portal to profusely apologize. “The portals are starting to pick up random shit in our lab.”

Proving her point, a small notebook flew through the air and landed next to Holly.

“We’re trying to shut it down now, sorry, our bad.”

“Why do you keep raw potatoes in your lab?”

“I like potatoes.”

Across the way, on another rooftop, Botley put his feet up and watched the portal-based chaos unfold, until the last of the green gateways snapped shut and silence fell. He kept an eye on the rooftop for any untoward surprises, and then retreated back down the air vent once the coast was clear. As soon as he was back in the lab, he hopped into Lee’s hands and impatiently tapped his head.

“I don’t have your hat already, dear, it takes time to get hats for your tiny little head.”

Botley crossed his arms defiantly and jumped over to Harley instead.

“Guess the coast is clear,” Harley said. “Let’s see what’s up.”

The barricades came down, and Lee and Harley led their troops outside. The robots that had been laying siege to them were now sullenly creeping back to their mistress for cleaning and repairs. They gathered at the base of the lab building, and a few moments later, Holly joined them, with a red paint stain and a potato-shaped bruise on her forehead.

“Hey guys. Good work.”

“Don’t give us any credit, we mostly hid under a desk,” Harley said. “This ass-whooping came courtesy of Freddy Frizzle and Goldie Falkenberg.”

“Oh, so you guys have your own Frankie and Jolie too.”

“Yep, but let’s not linger on that,” Harley said. The doppelganger situation was already complex enough without introducing tertiary characters.

“Right. Is any of this dripping towards my eye?” Holly said. She touched the red stain on her forehead cautiously. “I’m having a bad enough day without getting some gunk in my eyes.”

“If it does, it’s entirely non-toxic. Nothing to worry about.”

“Its also edible,” Harley said. “And flavored.”

Holly wiped a bit of paint off her forehead and then stared at her fingertip cautiously.

“You aren’t fucking with me, are you?”

“No, seriously, it’s strawberry flavored,” Harley said.

Since she had nothing to lose, Holly cautiously licked her fingertip, and was pleasantly surprised to find the paint actually was strawberry flavored.

“Damn. Tastes like candy.”

“It basically is,” Harley said.

“Back in our first year of paintballing there was a fellow who made it almost to the end of the day by eating every bullet fired at him.”

Holly stared at Lee with her mouth agape.

“Of course we changed the rules afterwards, but back then it only specified that you were out if you got paint ‘on’ you, not ‘in’ you.”

For the past few years, Holly had felt some regret that her application to the Einstein-Odinson had been denied. She no longer felt that regret. The Zeus-Stephanides school might have been “worse” in an academic sense, but it was also much more sane. She’d trade prestige for her sanity any day.

“Good seeing you, Holly, but we got to get a move on,” Harley said. “More of your friends and classmates to shoot, you know how it is.”

“Hey wait,” Holly said. “About your little robot dude.”

“We can compare notes later if you want, but you might not find anything out,” Harley said.

“I’d appreciate that, but short term, you might want to shove him in a microwave or something real quick.”

“Why would we microwave Botley?”

While Lee was just confused, Botley himself seemed offended by the suggestion. Harley knew a little bit more about technology, so she followed the suggestion through to its logical conclusion. Microwaves were built to act as partial Faraday Cages -to block electromagnetic radiation.

“You’re going to set off an EMP?”

“EMMP, specifically,” Holly said. “Electromagnetic Mana Pulse. Shuts down electronic devices and disrupts magical energy.”

“Shit.”

“Got to level the playing field somehow,” Holly said. “Can’t do anything weird if you can’t do anything at all.”

The basic paintball guns operated on basic pneumatics, with no electronics involved, but as far as Holly knew, almost all of the Einstein-Odinson’s strange gimmicks and odd monsters involved electronics or magic. With those factors out of the way, the ZS students hoped they would stand a much better chance.

“When are you going to- Ow!”

Botley went stiff and rolled off of Harley’s shoulder, and Lee clutched at her temples. She’d been subjected to an EMMP before, and knew it was harmless in the long term, but in the short term it gave her a ringing headache. Having all the ambient mana blasted out of existence was enough to give any experienced mage a headache. While Lee took a deep breath to clear her head, Harley picked Botley up and started fiddling with some circuitry to get his brain back to normal.

“That should last about half an hour, if we did everything right,” Holly said. “Plenty of time for us to take out whatever you’re hiding in your dorm.”

“What? How do you know about that?”

“Oh, yeah, our guy Jay hacked your comms for a bit there,” Holly said. Harley cursed their own carelessness. That hacking must have been the interference Hawke had mentioned. She also cursed her own dependence on technology for defenses. The EMMP would have all the security on her dorm disabled, and Vell would be completely exposed to a samurai attack.

“You’re being surprisingly forthcoming,” Lee said.

“Well I’m feeling pretty confident. I think we got this,” Holly said. “Wouldn’t be the first time hubris has been my downfall, though. Have fun!”

Holly waved goodbye, licked a bit more strawberry-flavored paint off her face, and then walked away. Lee waited until she was out of sight to pull out her phone and make a call to Hawke. The loopers safeguarded their devices against things like EMMP’s, for obvious reasons, but Lee didn’t want Holly to know that. Apparently she was quite talkative.

“Hawke, is everything still working?”

“Everything here, yeah,” Hawke replied. “But you guys and Samson are the only people I can connect to.”

“Well then connect us to him,” Lee demanded. They were nearly on the far side of the island now, too far from Harley’s dorm to protect Vell in any reasonable timeframe. They had to hope Samson was in position to respond in time. Hawke got in touch and hoped for the best.

“What’s up? You guys still in trouble?”

“We’re fine, but the ZS guys might be attacking Vell,” Harley said. “Get to my dorm ASAP.”

“No problem,” Samson said. “I was already with the cavalry coming to you guys, I’ll just make a turn.”

“Is the cavalry even still moving after the EMMP?”

“Well, the thing is,” Samson said. “Some of these guys are weird.”