Wanted to put this in mn9-confessions but its gonna be so long and it ends more fanfic than anything, and also way too long and can't save drafts for ask. (Draftsk) and guess what I have to do multiple parts again
I have been cursed for my hubris and my "work" is never finished
The big lines are: Imagine the colloseum was split into two stages, the last one is normal ending stage with the Trinity fight, but before that, is the boss rush, every mighty number has a small remix of their stage before the fight against a weaker copy made by Trinity to manage the giant headless chicken party that is the colloseum, with a short third phase and some mellodramatic angsty dialogue by yours slopilly about the copies being a what-if worst case scenario of them not getting saved, after each fight, Beck gets a "key" by inserting the copy data in a big door, but has to give up an ability until the end of the level, beyond the door is a cliché surprise you can probably see coming already.
(I'll just call the copies "name-?" for dialogue and I have no idea what pronouns to use for simulated predictive bodies without a proper consciousness it's more of a division of a program that lost all identity possesing a stolen body so I'll just go with "it", I'm not going on that philosophical can of rabbit holes and all the rabbits have worms)
Big shoutout to Extinction of embers (Flame mammoth with lyrics on youtube) by @kazeryve (not sure if its the same person) for giving me pretty much the whole idea and putting I AM BURNING UUUUPPPPPPP in my head for months.
Anyways, let the clown generated content begin !
Avi steadily carries Beck, approching the perimeter of the colloseum, both observe the ground pulsating as it slowly collapses inwards, a deep moat of festering assembly emitting hordes of mishappen soldiers. Just as the duo reaches the roof, a deep buzzing rips the air.
An armada of drones and homing missiles launches from the ground and tries to ram into Avi, Becks grips desperately against evasive maneuvers and the few connecting blasts, with almost no energy left, Avi looks below.
Just above the outer wall, good enough.
A: This your captain speaking, I have like, zero experience with passenger, we are about to experience serious turbulence, dropping the Beckage package now !
Aviator's turbines grind to a halt as balls of smoke staggers out of his pipes and covers the area in a sphere of carbon, he grips the precious payload as close as possibe and rotates upside down, streamlined head pointed straight at the roof, falling with style, free-falling, to be precise.
B: Oh, I tought you were going to let me go !
A: Not off the table, get ready for impact Beta-Echo-Charlie-KayAAAAAKKKK !!!!!!
A straight line of pure energy tears through the sky, nearly grazing Avi's left leg, he starts the engine and thrusters back just in time to throw off the aiming as more and more lasers join in.
Not slowing down, Avi curves his trajectory, transfering as much vertical momentum as possible into making a wide turn towards the target before dropping Beck a few dozen feet off the glass roof.
A: ArriAvidacci, ThunderBecker !!! Number 6 out !
Preparing to strike the glass, Beck does a quick last second check.
A few mid-air dashes softens the impacts but his feet still dent the clear surface, the sound alerting every single unit in the perimeter, clawed hands and blades break through and make way for wheels and canons to emerge, lobbing shots of flaming metal rain down on Beck's way. The communications turns back on after the buzzing of rushing air fades.
White's voice pierces in his ear.
W: Don't turn back, there's no point in fighting now, the objective is to reach the center of the colloseum and descend to the storeroom at the fourth floor below ground. Keep running.
The roar of flames and engines get closer and closer, the heat spreading through the surface and rippling around every step.
W: Mighty number 8 is currently covering the escape, but if your mission succeds, we should have all the time for repairs.
Beck almost reaches the interior edge, but stumbles back as something scales the wall, towering over the horde before they can catch up to the intruder is a K-9 Public Captivity Enforcing Model, after a messy climb of the steer surface, it settles on the edge.
The pursuing horde tries to stop but is trampled by its own mass, sliding just before Beck as he faces the titan, he tries to steady himself but a high pitched roar paralyses him, unable to react as the beast pounces.
Under the heat, the stress, the weight of an army and the final straw of a descending monster, Beck snaps out of his panic among falling shards of glass, without thinking he steadies himself, dashes straight forwards and collides with the K-9's eyes, jumps up its spine and leaps to whatever he can reach. A crane cable passes by and serves as an improvised lifeline, stopping for a moment, he looks down to the floors and floors below and hears a loud splash followed by hissing.
A giant claw staggers in vain before fully sinking in a can of molten steel bubbling with streams of dead empty xels, Beck has little time to watch before the cascade of pursuers pours into the pot, splashing the golden slime over the edge in a slowly fading circular wave.
Feeling his graps on the cable slip, Beck leaps to the main body of the crane, resting on a metallic bar, he observes the area and waits for navigation.
The hole is directly above some sort of central cauldron, but dozen of secondary reservoirs are also connected in a convoluted lava distribution network, with the molten magma grinding the air and spilling out at every turn, there doesn't seem to be any ventilation, the smoke and heat certainly weakened the glass.
After thinking of it, the whole system seems odd, the center is almost overflowing but the edges are almost starved of power, and the central electricity and material distribution follows a single line without backup replacement, and a single way as both entrance and exit towards the center of the colloseum, that's the goal.
B: Professor, do you have visual ?
A fist connects into a desk, the sound of bones on metal is barely cushioned by streched pale skin.
W: THE PIPES, THE ٪&/_$&『 PIPES
W: The system looked at liquid metal transport pipe schematics, those are side-views, but it doesn't make sense so instead of trying to contextualize an abstract physically impossible point of view, it interpreted them as real but seen from above, so it made half-pipes.
W: There is SO MUCH energy getting wasted at every instant of getting exposed to air.
The tower of the crane suddenly shakes, in regular heavy swings, Beck grabs onto the metal surface, looks down and freezes in silence for a few seconds.
W: Just hurry and get out of here... Oh...
About 16 meters down, there is Pyrogen, or something like him, there is something wrong again, the posture is rigid, the torso emits more smoke than fire, but more than anything else, the eyes, dilated beyond any reason, stained by a flat purple tint and staring dead straight at Beck, the line blares with fuzz with expected confusion and anger.
Pyro: WHAT, WHAT, WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT
W: Alright, the program must have made copies of everyone, just great, the good news is that if the... architecture is anything to go by, it can't be that strong, and we don't need to fight.
W: And you seem oddly annoying, I haven't slept for two days.
The Pyro copy lowers its head and stands still for a few seconds, then pulls his right arm back, shaking, and... not really "punches" more like... streches the joints to full length into the structure, shaking it... then repeats... again and again.
P: I'm fine, I'm fine, it's just...
Battalion: This thing learned from you right ? I'm dissapointed.
P: Well it clearly just ctrl-c ctrl-v-ed my frame without bothering with any combat data ! Look at that ! No momentum, all the recoil, no leaning or moving forward into the target ! Only using one arm, the hand is going to be more damaged than the tower at this rate.
W: Alright everyone, show's over this is clearly a distraction or something. Can we PLEASE get a move on ?
Beck finally gets up and leaps towards the exit, grinding around and down a smaller boiler's circumference before finally reaching something ground-like, elevated catwalks zig-zagging across chimneys and lava flows.
Back at the base of the crane, Pyro? stops to look up, the intruder is gone, it failed to get it out of hiding, but there was no fight. It didn't even manage to be a threat, this whole place is going down. A useless oven with a guardian that watched without even phasing the invader.
Pyro? stares at its right fist, battered from the fruitless attack, he grabs the crane and starts climbing, ignoring the tilting and shaking at its every movement, slowing heating up, until reaching the top.
Beck is running towards the exit, fast, weaving through turns and avoiding every projectiles thrown at it, most units have no chance of catching up to it, drastic measures are needed.
No communications line required, everything is already one, why does it even need a leader ?
DON'T QUESTION THE SYSTEM
IT MADE YOU. IT KNOWS SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU
IT IS SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU
IT IS YOU AND A THOUSANDFOLD MORE
P?: Order to every unit in the melt sector, jump in the nearest cauldron, building: put every heater in overdrive and collapse all structures towards the exit.
After finishing the order, Pyro? looks down at the central reactor's contents, bits of the external patrol still had to fully disolve, and most of the K-9's internal structure is still burning. It dives in.
For a few seconds of activity before meeting the molten core, something feels odd, nothing out of order, but a side of the code never triggered before, a reward for acting like the model, a bit of positive reinforcement pumped by an hypodermic needle inside of its carefully controlled exposed amygdala imitation.
Something resonates, following your own commands, even if they were prompted by a superior, acting with others as equals despite an arbitrary pecking order, a simple phrase dissected for hours ever since being heard by a promptly charred security turret.
P: Of course ! It's a leader's duuuuuuuuu uu u
An almost imperceptible splash of thick liquid metal echoes in the colloseum.
Beck is still running, denting the weak bridges with every step, the constant heat already bent most extremities. When he hears a deep rumbling and a heavy wind.
A tsunami approches, carrying tons upon tons of steel and carcasses, the back wall has already been hit, barely surviving impact and sending back a rebound of untold momentum.
Beck is pretty sure he never ran faster in his entire life.
The immediate torrents of lava spreads crashes against dozens of smoldering towers, barely slowing down on each thunderous impact, the pillars' destruction only furthers the chaos as house sized waves resonates from each monumental fall.
Running as fast as he can, Beck can feel he's nearing the wall, the only problem is that it seems like a solid wall, cancerous sprouts of xels assembled in a hard vertical crust, like a barely healing scar, there was a door there, not anymore tough.
A few walkways from the wall, he grinds on the metal floor, the hole he entered from was also covered, and the wave of golden oblivion approches still. Looking around, Beck panics and smacks his earpice, no one answers.
Oh fudge, oh fudge, oh fluid fungal fudge. What I am even supposed to do ?!
What do people do when there's a big deadly mass of fluid coming at them with certain doom ?! A flood ?! I think the word is flood ? Look for higher ground or something ?! Well good luck with that when you're WELDED INSIDE A FANCY OVERSIZED COFFIN !!!
Beck can alredy feel the heat on his face, barely thinking, he jumps off the bridge and grabs on to a cable, shaking all his limbs in a chaotic attempt to climb.
He looks up, that crane doesn't go high enough, barely above where he jumped from.
Screw this, not going to work.
Without taking the time to aim, not that it would help with how much he's shaking, Beck shoots the cable under him, the hook below plummets, dragging the entire length of cable, Beck is propelled upwards to the top of the structure.
Just before reaching the summit, he jumps off, letting all the speed carry him as high as possible.
He switches into the Aviator ReXelection and prepares his weapon, even if he escapes the wave, what comes up must come down, every second of stalling the fall counts.
After half a minute, Beck finally looks down, the cacophony of destruction was mainly muted behind the turbine, with the deep crumbling on the final impact breaking through. Where there was a sprawling factory is now covered by a smooth surface of orange and red, the few battered chunks of structures still sticking out of the newly made craters are mishappen into blobs of metallic putty, burning white and yellow.
There's no landing back here, Beck heads towards the wall, the wave's impact seems to have pierced a hole, a river of lava is leaking through and stops the structure from reforming itself.
With nowhere else to go, Beck slows down the propeller and descends along the wall, the uneven rough spikes and bulbous sprouts serve as scarce footholds on the descent, their Xels are still burning to the touch.
The river of lava slithers through a deep tunnel, branching in dead ends and eating away at the the walls, it must have followed a path of least resistance through hastily filled hallways.
Carefully treading inwards along the edge, Beck takes a little time to review his systems, still no signal, they're probably busy on fixing it right now. It's strange how so much chaos can fade into total silence. With no end in sight or guidance, Beck can only estimate based on his speed and internal clock.
He should be halfway to the center, but with all the bumps and turns it's hard to tell, hopefully he'll be out of the tunnel by the time the structures recovers, if he's lucky, surveillance could even fall back if it thinks the destruction took him out...
After minutes of following blocks of mangled metal along the river's turns, and Becks finally sees the dark at the end of the glowing tunnel, a few inactive Patches welded to the ceilling provide some superficial repairs to the dents and burns.
Finally, the magma drops to a standstill, Becks jumps out of the hole and into a rectangular room, rows of thin cylindrical pillars line the way to a singular door.
It could be one of the locker rooms, or what remains of it, it would certainly fits the proportion, which would mean the central arena is just ahead...
Now that the lava is no longer distracting the sensory modules from his presence or preventing the place from moving, this is about the last chance it would have to stop him.
Beck is not moving. His feet are firmly planted on the floor, the heat still vibrates behind him, sizzles under and flows up through him. Without really knowing if he's rightfully cautious or just afraid.
Looking up and forward, a low growl is heard through the walls, shaking the room up and down until a small piece of the ceilling crumbles down, trickling in small blobs of steaming matter.
It spreads around the ground before converging back into a round swirling shape, the center is barely visible beyond the shell, but Becks notices a sphere, bledding out Xels and sparks, glowing a weak orange.
Beck raises his weapon, forcing himself to not shake.
And Pyro? breaks out of the shell, complete with the same glazed dillated eyes, staring straight at the intruder.
B: I know you're not real.
Its mouth shifts a few millimeters.
Beck moves, only to steady his left foot, but it's enough for the copy to strike, it rushes forward, shaking off a torrent of heated metal in the air.
With a couple sidesteps, Beck builds up energy, carefully observing the ennemy: collision in 5.41 seconds, 205 cm, 180 kg, 30 000 kXels. Its steps are unbalanced, swinging his figure to the verge of toppling over until its foot slams down.
All it takes is a dash to dodge the charge, the deafening crunch of its metal frame on the closing wall is unavoidable though, a bit of the right shoulder is dislocated by the impact.
-Estimated enemy health down by 5%
Woah, that thing did not pass a stress test, did it ?
Beck has the opportunity for a few shots before the copy turns around for another charge.
The same pattern repeats, sidestep, jump and shot back after Pyro? collapses on a wall or a pillar, it only takes three repeats until the copy's frame is fully destabilized, it doesn't seem to care, turning around with the same frozen expression only to stumble within a few steps of the next charge.
Seeing his opening, Beck lunges from a corner of the room, leaping forward until reaching the precise distance from the target needed.
In a flash of pure light, he blinks back on the other side, trails of Xels spiral from the copy and into his core, along with the strange feel of dry aerosol.
-Estimated enemy health down by 10%
A few seconds of confusion leave Beck's guard open, he grazes by a backhand swipe and rools out of the way.
Pyro? charges once again, and misses once again, and again, and again, not bothering to dodge or block the few shots in his way.
Beck knows very well what this is, a battle of attrition, and in this situation, Beck simply cannot win. Even if he completes this little dance fourty times without any slip-up, who's to say that the copy can't regenerate ? And even if he brings it down, every second of fighting in circles gives the rest of the colosseum more time to prepare.
Maybe this is a diversion after all...
Collision in 6.23 seconds.
Maybe Aviator's reXelection could do more damage, if he didn't spend it all to save himself...
Collision in 4.40 seconds.
But the bulk of the damage came from the shock of the sudden temperature change while Pyro needs time to cool down, but this one...
Collision in 2.12 seconds seconds.
...this one isn't ignited...
During a last second dodge, Beck dashes back into Pyro?, giving the impostor a large open slap on the back of the torso.
Maybe it's a dumb idea, but Beck doesn't exactly have time to burn browsing options.
Beck feints the same sidesteps as every other time, the copy still turns around and starts its charge. But he won't move, and it won't stop.
If it's anything like the pipes...
If he's anything like the system say...
...it's can't handle real fire...
...he can't handle fighting me...
...the one thing it was made for...
In the blink of an eye, Beck's entire body shifts, his internal structure already started the conversion, but he made sure to hide the external adjustment to keep the surprise, uneven rows of holes bellow gas from his chest, his shell runs hot like a fever, his mind racing to process just how high his temperature jumped. But his body already knew exactly what to do, arms outstreched on both side, the building stockpile of fuel bellows through each tunnel, awaiting ignition, all facing the target, until a dislocated shoulder hits the helmet.
A spark is lit. And following it, a fireball covers the entire room, centered on Beck, it takes a few seconds for the flame to dim and restore his vision.
The copy is splattered against a wall, a pillar was pierced right though during its flight and a vertical crater craddles it in the wall.
For just a few instants, it looks like a doll, limbs slack and dangling as the neck falls down with little resistance.
Its insides are smoking, churning, choking on embers and sparks, until it finally ignites.
Pyro?'s head jumps up, the same enormous purple tinted eyes are shaking, bouncing around its frozen face, but every so often it focuses on something; the wall, its chest, its shoulder, the intruder, the tunnel he came from, the ceilling, a few second of clarity before panic takes over once again. The heat spreads, the fuse is lit, each and evert thermoreceptor is screeching bloody murder, it is on fire.
-Estimated health down by 30%
Pyro? closes its eyes, stands up despite the shaking, and stares at Beck. The flames have fully taken hold, the coat of crimson flame stick to its frame, destroying it, eating alive, tearing and melting bits of pieces on at a time, no redundency or emergency shutdown here to save it.
Both opponents stand back up, the dense hot air weighting dowl on them, Pyro? took the first strike again, the disorganized rush shifted into a wild flaying sprint, fully leaned forward, each step melting the floor under the pressure.
Beck jumps out of the way again, only to be pursued by the unending storm of strikes, dozens of burning hands seem to grasp at him at once, fleeing in circles does give Beck some time to think.
-Estimated enemy health down by 32%
‐Estimated enemy defense down by 65%
Backing down with a few hops, Beck waits for the windmill of punches to tire itself out, always turning to not get cornered, even if it can't run out of energy or pull a cable, maybe it will get mentally exhausted, enough to get confused. He just needs to test the waters, a few sidesteps and sprints mix up the chase until the pursuer stops adjusting its course.
Its line of sight is blocked by trails of flames, no that clearing it would help with how the head is whipping around with each swing, it doesn't notice when Beck overextends one of his dodges, sliding down only to turn back with the force of a hurricane, a clean right swing to the lower left torso, followed by three shots and an opening.
Pyro? doesn't have to turn around, a straight shot of energy pierced through its chest, flames rocketing out of both point of contact as it falls to the ground, its right arm falls to the floor in a rushed attempt to stabilize itself, only to melt into itself, hand disformed into a mettalic mesh of crunched circuits and rotors retract into the blobbish forearm.
-Estimated health down by 58%
Pyro? is fully inflammed, its whole body covered in a thick carapace or crimson, even over its face, all vision is lost in a torrent of smoke and sparks, the fire is already slithering under its outer shell, clawing across sensors and servos, it can no longer think, it clearly didn't help anyway. But it can still fight.
Beck stands still, searching for an opening through the elemental shield, the imposter has been standing still for a few seconds now, and the battle is really starting to drag out, he lets out a few careful shots.
The energy is fully absorbed into the fire, bit it can feel the impact, with no other way to go, Pyro? combusts, blasting his body towards the direction of the shot in a comet, for just a moment after landing with a bang, the flames run out before slowly roaring back from the torso and crawling back over the whole body.
Without losing any more time, Beck assaults the unprotected target, a little under a dozen shots make contact before the rest splatter against the defenses, seemingly even hotter than before. Intertwined pillars ignite and twist around each articulation, and instead of the gargling mess of the initial configuration, it now seems to fully flow along its limbs at every movement, revolving around its frame as it turns around to face the opponent, and not stare daggers as much as stare zweihanders behind the veil of magma.
Another charge nearly hits Beck, this one is also different, a hook turn and some footwork to pursue the dodge, is it learning ?
The flurry still ends against the opposite wall, but not with a shoulder barge, a single punch swings down on the rugged surface before grinding the hand down like it's putting out a cigarette. Only turning back after a few shots, it doesn't notice just how unstable its structure has become and heads straight for Beck, not having enough time to notice that he does not flinch.
-Estimated ennemy health down by 73%
Coming out the other side of the ennemy, Beck could swear he saw something strange, the copy's eyes still had that flat violet tint, but the irises seemed to flicker, not really an expression but a strange grimace.
Turning around, Beck is grazed by an uppercut, Pyro? has already launched a counter attack, its arm's Xels still have to fully settle but it does not care, a couple missed jabs flow into a singular strike rocketing straight at the jaw.
GOSH DARN THAT FREAKING HURTS.
Reeling back to get some space and let the crumble zones fill back up, even if it stings like the real thing, it's... not exactly cold but... tepid ? But maybe the heat just didn't have time to set in...
The copy still isn't done, in the few milliseconds it took to think that, it sent about three dozen punches, five received with no signs of ignition.
Beck jumps back, dashing to stall a few more seconds, grabing a pillar and climbing for a 0better shotting angle, it only lasts a few seconds before it runs past the volley and swings on the base, putting its whole weight and back into the base of the structure.
It wants to make him panic and shake him to get back on close quarters, not happening.
Beck holds on tight and fires all he can, the helmet eats up most of it but the chip damage is still there, finaĺly, the pillar's xels break open and snaps off the ceiling under the charge.
The whole thing topples over and slams on the lava border around the room, Beck is still firing, as the copy climbs the prone pillar, and crouches down, staring dead ahead, it has him cornered, maybe not the intented way but still.
It starts running, arms wide out at both side to finally catch the slippery little roACHHHG !!!
Before it can reach the middle, Beck shifts his weight, bending a knee and causing the cylinder to rotate, taking advantage of the small lapse in focus, he dashes around and behind it, using the last bit of momentum to push the base of the pillar, it gives way with little effort for the size of the thing.
Without looking back, he sprints to the other side of the room and scales up the opposite pillar, grabbing a indent and aiming at the wreck.
Great, just great, a pillar of half a ton crushing you against a river of pure steaming magma running into every orifice and boiling you from the inside of every cavity. Can't it just end here and there ? This little crumb boy is way out of the league anyway, it would be so much easier to melt, maybe a bit much on the senses but after combusting from the inside out this feels so much softer...
The copy hasn't moved in a while, probably a trick, reinforcement would have came in if the thing was really down.
-Estimated health down by 87%
Pyro?'s right arm is lifted straight up, straining the metal as it akwardly bends and pushes the pillar away, without waiting, it stands up, it stands straight up.
Something is weird, it didn't use its arms to get up. In fact, the left one is completely slack, probably because it got damaged ? No, even a cheap copy of Pyrogen would have the mechanism tighten under the heat of the lava to propely harden, also the left leg seems to work just fine, even if it seems a bit stiff.
The thing stares at Beck for a few seconds, those weird creepy eyes are back, a deep purple fog cover the smallest shaking pupils. Not turning, it digs its arms into the pillar, clenching so hard fingers bend and compress before under the pressure, the renewed salvo of projectiles do nothing to stop or even slow down the shell as it grabs the fallen structure and begins to ignite.
The river of magma still eating awy at its feet up to the knees, Pyro?'s body glows from the inside, the akr distorts around the holes in his abdomen as gas bellows out and swirls in and out again and again like a neddle, scorching all it can find until forming another sphere of fire, this one seems incomplete with a few blind spots, the significant damage must have compromised the fuel distribution.
Beck continues his onslaught from above as the copy lifts up the pillar withouth changing posture, maybe it's trying to clear a path or get cover ?
With stiff limbs, it secure its grip, rotates its torso in an exact right angle.
And it launches the damn thing like a hammer throw.
Without any time to think, Beck panics and loses his hold, sliding to the floor and trying to jump from the base, he only makes it about a meter and a half before the collision.
A deafening blast rings through Beck's head, leaving him in a dazed blank space, was the pillar filled with gas ? Why didn't it explode when it was punching it ? And why is... it...
Recovering back from his daze, all Beck could see was two deep bright mechanical eyes, throbbing with strobbing lights, fading in and out of focus, he has been grappled, both hands are pressed against his head, leaving him hanging above the floor, the very moment he wakes up, he begins flaying around to free himself, the stunned copy seems to be starttled into action, its whole frame seizes as it raises Beck even higher.
Then slams him into the lava.
Then presses his head like an empty can.
Hard fingers digging deep in the flesh imitation.
Its face is stiff, not even a grunt as magma flows and rips pieces of xels off its face to drop onto Beck's.
The thing is already deeply damaged, all it would take for the next absorbtion is a little push.
He tries to kick, even as his articulations fill with molten metal, finally, he stretch out a hand, a bent, beaten and bruised hand.
The copy just presses harder, it stopped shaking.
Just one push through the pain, Beck pulls his arm back, presses his legs agains the ground, and punches. Straight in the sizzling hot jaw.
The darned thing didn't even flinch, but it did destabilize its xels, without a second of hesitation, Beck erupts from under the surface, almost touching the ceilling before striking the ground like a meteorite.
-Estimated ennemy health down by 100%
USELESS PIECE OF MANGLED SCRAP
Beck barely has time to cool down and assimilate the attack's influx when he senses the deep thuds of unbalanced footsteps, jumping back, he sees...
Pyro?, running at full sprint, the outer case is fully disolved, either melted or absorbed, jumping away from it, Beck readies his weapon and reviews all battle data, by accounts, its done for, not enough xels to run the most basics functions, and even if it could get some back from the building, the core stability is beyond busted, in a real Mighty number, the emergency safety shutdown would have activated by now.
The sprint breaks out of sync and morphs in a stumble, the copy's arms don't react fast enough to cushion the fall, resulting in a flat flop against the hard cracked floor, the recoil snapping both legs in an unintended angle while snapping of sprained wires resound, as it digs curved fingers into the floor to crawl towards the target, the external layers of xels scrape in wave of greasy liquid steel.
Why ? Couldn't you just have send some big dumb mass of slobbering... xeuggh...
An unbending arm slams the ground like a hammer until it splatters down the shoulder, all the while, its neck jerks and trembles as it struggles against both gravity and the override of control, rising just high enough for one last look at the intruder, at Beck.
WORTHLESS INEFFICIENT UNSATISFACTORY UNIT, FAILURE TO STUDY AND AVOID IN FUTURE ITERATIONS
UNIT AUTONOMY CONTRIBUTES NO VALUE
UNIT DIRECTION CONTRIBUTES NO VALUE
UNIT EXISTENCE CONTRIBUTES NO VALUE
INITIATE SELF DESTRUCT BY COMPLETE INTERNAL COMBUSTION
Its eyes flash white, freezing in place before losing all visual contact.
Beck doesn't understand much, but the flashing red flames are enough to tell something bad is going to happen.
Pyro? sinks into the floor, it already can't move or see, its senses fade one my one, smell, taste and touch finally frees it from the infernal ashtray that ruled most of its existence, really, the only problem is losing hearing, trough the roaring flames and each collapsing bond of molecules in agonizingly slow combusting xels, it can't hear Beck. It can only hope.
The whole room is bursting at the seams, everywhere Beck steps, the ground erupts in an explosion.
That's what the combusting pillar was ! And there was no need for backup robots ! The whole room was slowly filling up with explosive gas !
Jumping forwards, Beck triggers another explosion, the panic makes him stumbles on another, and when he steps back, the original explosion fires back, all three blast straight trough before he powers against the last one to stand still and think.
This is a regenerating minefield, not as powerful as a close quarters detonation, this is pressure as it saves energy for the grand finale, the one just under my feet will regenerate in a few seconds, stalling in the air will just let me in the epicenter, I need out, the way I came in closed up and is probably filled to the brim with gas, maybe under the lava ?
Noticing the ground boil up, Beck jumps just high enough to dodge the fireball and stomp back on the harmless ground.
No, even if he could resist it, the liquid would only absorb part of the impact, the pillars are almost bursting like overripe fruits, do they have their own supply line ? In that case, the one that got ripped off should have an inactive supply tunnel !
It's a bit of a stretch, but it's worth trying, but I do need some assurance, like...
Beck blinks, concentrates, and dissapears behind the blast. The smoke dissipates to reveal the Pyrogen ReXelection
Crouching down, Beck charges his body and waits for the explosion, the floor must have coagullated over the hole, so he'll have to dig a bit, with any luck, the form while protect from stray sparks igniting gas pockets and the leftover fuel in those may even clear the path.
Right as the ground explodes, he leaps in the dense air, rocketing down the fractured round piece floor that once housed the pillar, the collision shakes it good, but it takes a few detonation punches for the xels to crumble, leaving Beck to fall down, to what he can only hope is safety.
It already lost all contact with its maker and commander, it has no will to fight or run or really anything, it can only think and even that is getting harder.
P?: Why can I want stuff ? Why couldn't I just be another mindless drone ?
P?: And why do I still think about the boiler hands ? They don't have to think, the lucky scamps... well... didn't...
P?: It would have been the same for anyone, anyone would have ordered the meltdown and flood, right ? I'm not special, right ? The system would have given the order anyway, just the logical thing to do.
P?: Why am I even... Since when do I care !? Why do I have to care !?
Pyrogen? can't feel the world around it slowly shifting, from indigo to black to red and to blinding orange, it can't feel the air around its head combust either, but somehow, it knows the end is about to come, it gets harder to think words and meaning lr just remember, the little pest's face is already slipping like sand in the wind as the raging storms turns it into glass.
P?: I don't want to think, not like this...
P?: Not when it's just to fight for some stupid...
P?: I don't want to... destroy and get. destroyed to de.stroy and. troy a...nd .de a.n .. .
P?: Where did that get me ? What does it matter what I want ? Who's listening ? Who cares ?
P?: If anyone hears... if anyone cares...
P?: I don't want to burn.
