Then, for lack of a better word, Jody activated.

He turned, eyes glowing in multiple sensor streams. Then he began to fire bolts from alternating eyes, all of them in my direction.

I guessed that I owed my continued survival to the fact that he'd had less than a day to get used to his transformation. That, and the designer's choice to use many small shots instead of fewer, higher-powered shots.

Many shots worked for Jody's strength, but also for my suit's ability to repair and general resistance to damage.

All the same, he hit a lot, and I'd already been hit by Dr. Mind. Even with the repairs, it felt bad to watch my armor's protection rating go down even a little bit at a time.

My speed of thought adjustments didn't trouble him as much. He adjusted his aim faster than I dodged. If he started thinking and hammered one spot before my armor adjusted, he'd get through, and I might not survive it.

On the bright side, if you could say that, he spent the entire time grinning and laughing. It was a good thing because whatever went on in his head, it wasn't analysis. He darted forward, continuing to aim at me.

That's when the situation changed, again.

As it turned out, a hopeless, depressed, and tired version of Sean turned out to be a smarter fighter than a full-strength version who was rushing to save a friend.

Starting with the molten metal, he'd worked the cooling liquid into the joints and crevices of the nearest minions. Those minions became immobile. They tried to move, but fell over. One shot off its leg before Sean got the arms' joints, but he still got the arms. It fell over, too.

He didn't take out all the minions with that, maybe a third. The others began to move, running to join Rook and Jody as they both fired at me. Except they had another problem. Small pieces of metal shot across the concrete floor in a wave, picking them up like a spatula might, if spatulas were made from small, metallic objects held in the air with magnets.

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Then he took them and moved them into a corner, suspending them between the floor and the ceiling, a ball made of crawling robots, all of them trying to get out, held in the air with metal. Then he began to spin them.

Not that he got everyone, or that they gave up and let him. Rook dodged the wave of metal, opening his wings to fly over it, and then hitting the other side of the wave and dodging the straggling metal bits.

As for Jody, my implant tracked him as he dodged, a blurry figure who might have forgotten how to float through walls, but still fast enough to run across the wave of metal bits.

All the same, it gave me a moment of respite if not rest.

With all of that happening, I had a few seconds to either get to the portal or, if I were lucky, take out Rook. The guy wasn't going to let Dayton and Sean take Jody. Plus, as I looked over the room, I realized Sean had missed three minions. Those had to go.

I released ten killbots. Was that overkill for the situation? Maybe, but maybe not. Rook and Jody might be able to outrun them.

The remaining minions, though, weren't going easy. In fact, they'd targeted me, the most obvious member of the opposition, firing blasts from their arms.

I did what I could to dodge, avoiding the first three shots, but the fourth grazed the back of my thighs, not damaging me, but generating an alert from my armor that repairs were in process and that spots were at as low as 23% protection.

Also, it was hot enough that it hurt.

Any doubts I might have had about destroying Rook's minions, however, they'd been manipulated into choosing to be transformed into robots, would have ended then, but I didn't have any doubts about that.

Six of the killbots flew straight for them, two per minion. The other four went into standby, waiting for the chance to kill Rook.

The minions didn't see the killbots until it was too late, but they did see them. The bots shot across the ground, staying low, but with several feet between them. Less than ten feet away, the minions started firing their arms at the bots, and the one on the far right destroyed one of the two targeting him.

The other shot up from the floor, the monomolecular blades at the tip cutting through its armor and into the central cavity, which wasn't much of a cavity. The insides were almost solid with Abominator/Artificer-style circuitry.

Its blades worn into ineffectiveness, the killbot stopped and exploded.

The minion fell to the ground, smoking, but still in one piece. The other two fell as well.

Rook stared up at me from where he'd landed, "It's the two of us then. Let's go."

Out of paranoia, I checked my HUD for Jody and my implant pointed him out. Dayton had stepped out from behind the shelves and run into the front of the room.

Jody faced him, still grinning.

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