I wasn't going to let a giant robot psych me out. Installing some shutters that made the thing look like it was glowering at me wasn't going to stop me. Especially when that was yet another idea Dr. Lana stole from me, damn it.

Okay. Maybe she technically stole that idea from CORVAC and his stupid giant robot, but still. I ate giant robots for breakfast and shit out the metal bits later.

Ew. Gross mental image there. The point was I wasn't going to fear this thing. Fear was the mind killer and all that. I was going to beat the shit out of it until it finally went down and stayed down, damn it.

The robot pulled a fist back and looked like it was getting ready to hit me with one hell of a sucker punch. The kind of sucker punch I'd expect from Fialux. Not from a giant robot.

I poured all my energy into my forward shields and prepared to be knocked back. That was the nice thing about floating through the air while these things were stuck firmly on the ground. I could trade a little bit of airspace for kinetic energy when the robot hit me, but the robot had nowhere to go but down into the pavement.

The only problem? Right at the moment I was about to absorb all of that kinetic energy from the robot's fist Fialux appeared in front of me. Flying erratically, of course.

She jerked back and forth, and she held something in her fist. Clutched at it in a white knuckled grip, is more like it.

She had to be clutching whatever the hell it was in a white knuckled grip. Otherwise she'd very quickly lose it with the way she was jerking around.

"I think this might be…"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off as she was hit by the robot fist that had been meant for me. Luckily for her, the shields went up in the proper direction this time. Mostly because I took remote control of her suit at the last moment and told her shields to go up in the proper direction.

The computer running the automated suit controls hadn't even realized a punch was coming her way. Not for the first time, I really missed CORVAC and his ability to monitor a situation.

She flew through the air and I manipulated her shields again so they went up between her and the building she slammed into. I could see from the readout on her suit's display that the inertial dampeners also kicked in, which was good.

But it wasn't enough to stop her from sliding to the ground in a daze. She looked a little woozy, but amazingly she was still conscious.

Maybe that was some of the resilience she used to show off when she was a hero, or maybe it was just that her body refused to admit it didn't have the invulnerability it once had. Maybe she was hanging on through sheer stubbornness.

Whatever it was, she was going to have to keep for a moment. There was a clattering below me as whatever she'd been holding fell to the ground, and I realized it looked like a hardened control panel of the variety I occasionally used on some of my toys.

Like the thing Dr. Lana had been waving at the robot earlier. Suddenly everything clicked.

The panel would be hardened against all sorts of nasty surprises like electromagnetic pulses. The sort of wear and tear you see when you're fighting super powered creatures and people.

I dove for it, but at the last moment something metallic appeared between me and the ground. The robot hand slammed down on top of the control panel. When it came back up the pavement was cracked in the shape of a robotic hand but the control panel was still there awaiting input.

Maybe Dr. Lana had made the damned thing out of the same materials used to create the robots. Or maybe in this case my old design was holding up.

Whatever the reason, I needed to get to that thing. It might be the key to bringing this fight to an end without firing off more weapons or getting in more melee fights with a giant robot.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The only problem was there was still that very pissed off giant robot between me and that control panel, and it didn't seem to have any reservations about getting into a fight. Damn it.

I fired off a couple of plasma bolts at the thing. They hit the robot right in the face and it stumbled back. There was some blackened metal on the thing's face where the plasma bolts hit, but otherwise it didn't look like I was getting through to the things soft innards.

I really wished I'd had the time to put together more matter dispersal bombs, but I'd been busy. Not to mention there was the ever present worry that if I used one of those in front of Dr. Lana one too many times she'd get the wrong idea and build one herself.

Not when she had a pesky habit of being able to see anything used once and then show up with it in her own arsenal the next time we fought. It was almost enough to make me wonder if she did have a superpower that allowed her to mimic someone else's tech perfectly without coming up with anything new or innovative.

"Damn it," I growled.

The last thing I needed was matter dispersal technology in the hands of one of my worst enemies. I'd live in perpetual fear that any step I took could be my last since all it would take was her figuring out where my lab was to teleport one of those in and give me a very bad day. The real bitch was I wouldn't even realize I was having that bad day because my entire body would be atomized before I knew what was going on.

I looked down at the control panel, and cursed at what I saw there. Fialux was crawling along the ground. Dragging herself, is more like it, though she was half crawling as well. And not because she was injured. No, it was pretty obvious she was doing an army crawl in an attempt to get to the control panel without being noticed.

The robot didn't seem to notice her for the moment. It only had angry robot eyes for me. Still, all it would take is looking down and she'd be in deep shit.

"Get out of here!" I shouted. "You're only making this more difficult for…"

The robot noticed her just as she reached the panel and grabbed it. Maybe it was me screaming at her like an idiot. Maybe it was that it had better situational awareness than I gave it credit for. Maybe it instinctively knew when someone was holding its panel and it wanted to avoid that.

I cut off with another curse. I was swearing like a sailor today. I dove and once more I found myself in between Fialux and a giant robot hand.

She looked up in surprise as her world went from bright and sunny to very shaded. Shade that was being provided by that aforementioned giant robot hand trying to slam down on her. I held my arms up and poured all the power into my suit's strength.

My teeth rattled and my bones jarred as I was hit. The strength augments and inertial dampeners in my suit were enough to handle the hit, but just barely. I was holding the hand up with all the strength my suit could muster, and even that obviously wasn't going to be enough.

My arms started to move down. Slowly, but I knew that slow speed would pick up bit by bit as my suit gradually gave out. I needed Fialux out of here so I could work, damn it.

"You need to get out of here," I said. "You're a liability. You don't know what you're doing and you don't…"

My griping was cut off again. I hated that my bitching at Fialux kept getting cut off. This time by a streak that flew in and grabbed the control panel out of her hands.

Though I suppose it would be more accurate to say the streak tried to grab the control panel out of her hands. Dr. Lana swooped in, obviously in better control of the antigrav tech she'd stolen from me than Fialux.

Fialux was lifted in the air looking like a small creature being carried off by a large bird of prey. She let out a surprised cry as Dr. Lana shook at the control panel and tried to get her to let go, but she was tenacious.

Maybe the automatic setting on the suit was finally giving her a bit of an assist in that department. Meanwhile I was still stuck under this stupid robot arm and unable to help Fialux.

Again.

"Motherfucker," I growled.

This time there was a method to my potty mouth. I used the extra oomph I got from letting out a well timed swear word to throw the robot. It was trying so hard to smash me where I stood that the thing obviously wasn't prepared for me to fight back.

Sure I was pushing my suit dangerously close to failure. I was risking either the strength augments giving out or my reactor going critical which would've ruined a lot more days than my own, but I needed to do something.

So I did some good old fashioned judo and used the thing's strength against it. I suddenly pivoted so that I was rolling in the direction it was moving, which allowed me to use the momentum and its surprise at the sudden change of direction to send it flying.

Besides, I wasn't that close to the redline. Yet.

The robot moved with a metal creak. It was good to know I still had enough strength that I could manhandle the damn thing, at least. Sure I had to use some of its strength against it, but whatever.

I slammed it into a building. Then turned to check my six. Make sure I didn't have to worry about the other giant robot coming up behind me and giving me one hell of a headache.

That had been happening often enough that I figured it wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.

The other one was trying to get up, but it was down for the count for the moment.

I'd take it. It was time to save my hero in distress. Again.

I really hoped this didn't become a regular thing, because it was worrying to the black depths of my villainous heart how much I was enjoying this whole knight in carbon fiber armor routine.

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