“The time for words is over! Kill him, now!” Nōne cried from under the bookcase.

Shock and I raised our guns and pulled the trigger. Lavil scrambled to his feet and followed suit, but Magnus had already raised his hammer towards us with its shield active.

“HA! You'll need to do better than that!”

“Surround him!” Lavil shouted, sliding over to the right side of the room.

I ran to the left, lowering my gun for a moment; aiming while moving with a damaged arm wasn't feasible. I took cover behind a nearby bookcase, preparing to aim again.

As I peeked out from my cover, the bookcase exploded into shrapnel and debris, with books and paper flying everywhere. I was forced to the ground, but caught the floor with my hand, somewhat keeping my balance.

I looked back. Magnus was standing there, looking at me, recovering from smashing through the bookcase. I pushed myself back up to my feet.

Before I could prepare to shoot, he swung his hammer down at me in a huge arc. I jumped back just in time, but I tripped backwards over something – a pile of books – and fell down on my rear end.

Sledgehammer in hand, Magnus lunged forward, shoving me to the ground with a foot firmly planted on my chest, smashing some of my speakers. The sudden impact caused me to lose grip on my rifle, bouncing it across the floor.

“Can't get Tangent to kill you? I'll just do it myself.”

From Magnus's midsection, those tentacle-like limbs grew out, each with a sharp blade at the end.

My gun was too far away. I couldn't fight back.

“Shoot him!” I heard Shock yell out, followed by rifle shots barely buzzing past us.

Just behind Magnus, Nōne ran towards us, scythe at the ready. He swung down and slashed through some of those black tentacles, cutting them off, forcing Magnus to lose balance.

The foot on my chest was gone. I rolled to the side and crawled away, trying to escape both Magnus and the oncoming crossfire.

“Move, Nōne!” Shock yelled again.

Scrambling to my feet while picking up my rifle, I spun around to see Magnus's remaining appendages gripping Nōne's scythe, trying to pry it away from him.

“A prime idea, my dear,” Nōne growled back at Shock, stuck in a deadlock with Magnus, “but I'm a tad occupied at the moment!”

I didn't want to risk shooting Nōne, especially with my bad arm. Shock was ready to fire, and Lavil – far across the room from us – was also aiming at our foe.

“You don't stand a chance against me anymore.”

Magnus raised a leg up and kicked Nōne in the gut with such force that it sent him sliding across the floor with a pained yelp.

We all opened fire the moment Nōne was no longer in melee range with Magnus. Several of our shots missed, punching holes in the glass wall encompassing the room, but several shots connected as well, ripping through Magnus's body before he could spin his hammer around and protect himself with his shield.

Yet he didn't show any signs of weakness or injury, despite our clear hits.

Magnus's tentacles raised Nōne's scythe in the air above him. I gasped, realizing our TV-head was completely disarmed.

I stopped firing while Magnus's shield was up. Shock also stopped, but Lavil continued, only to pause moments later to begin reloading.

“This... isn't off to a great start,” Shock commented. She ran to the right, looking for an opening to get past Magnus's shield.

“Ahaha! You've yet to realize how futile your struggle is. How screwed you all truly are,” Magnus boasted. Keeping his shield pointed towards us – ignoring Lavil's wild gunfire – he jumped over to the holes we'd shot in the glass walls.

More of that black fluid was gushing out from the holes in the wall. As Magnus stepped into it, he... seemingly... absorbed it into himself. The tentacles emerging from his back grew in size, and the limbs Nōne cut off were quickly regenerated into an equally large form.

“Uh, this isn't good, here..!” I quivered, taking careful steps to the left, mirroring Shock's movements. What the hell was he?!

“What are you guys doing?! KILL HIM!” Lavil screamed at us, continuing his barrage against Magnus. He was the only one of us who had a clear shot at him – we were still stuck with a shield in front of us.

Magnus continued his grotesque transformation, his vile appendages growing in size – large enough to be vulnerable above his shield. I took aim once again, quickly yet carefully, looking at those bladed tentacles...

BANG. I took a shot. The recoil was hard to control with my weak arm, but it just barely hit my target.

But it didn't matter. The instant after the shot connected, the wound healed over with more of that black fluid.

“I-it's not working!” I shouted.

“She's finally starting to understand.”

Nōne, finally back up on his feet, started running over between Shock and I. “The choice of the coward is ours for the moment; we must flee! We cannot stop him!”

With several of those huge limbs – each now easily a dozen feet in length – Magnus effortlessly lifted a full size bookcase into the air, spilling out books everywhere.

As I lowered my weapon and prepared to run, Magnus catapulted the bookcase across the room, straight towards Nōne.

“Nōne! Look out!!” Shock screamed.

He had no time to dodge. The bookcase slammed down on him, crushing him against the floor.

I screamed his name out in disbelief.

“Shock! Wh-what do we do?!” I shouted to my friend, my cowardice winning me over upon seeing Nōne defeated.

“Kill him!!” Lavil yelled back, relentlessly firing at Magnus from the other side of the room.

Shock flicked her gaze between Lavil and me with gritted teeth. “I-I'll support Lavil!” She turned to him and started sprinting.

“I'll distract!” I stammered, an idea coming together in my mind.

As Shock ran over to Lavil on the far right side of the room, Magnus's attention was squarely on them as he stepped towards Lavil. I ran around the outskirts of the room's left wall, taking cover behind the remaining bookcases.

“Hey, bitch!” I said aloud – recording my voice. While running, I picked up a hardcover book along the way.

When I emerged from my cover, Magnus's back was to me – no more than ten feet away – and Shock and Lavil were opposite him.

“HEY, BITCH!” I belted my recorded message out as loud as I could with my remaining speakers. I raised my book in the air and threw it at Magnus.

He turned to me as the book bounced off one of his tentacles. With Nōne's scythe raised in the air, gripped by those black tendrils, he swung out and slashed through my abdomen, cutting me open. Light blue liquid streaked out from the wound.

That... backfired...

I fell backwards onto the ground. I looked down at myself only to see more blue liquid pouring from my midsection. I couldn't lift myself up. My legs wouldn't move. I couldn't move.

“Aural!!” I heard Shock call out to me.

Magnus turned his attention back to Lavil and Shock. With a pissed off roar, he lunged at them and swung his hammer sideways. Shock's head met the end of his hammer, sending her sailing into the glass wall. Lavil dodged out of the way, skating towards me.

“Sh... Shock!” I yelped.

She wasn't moving after the impact against the wall.

“Lavil II...” Magnus growled, turning to face him.

“Fuck! You!” Lavil took a moment to reload his gun after skating out of melee range.

“Tch.” Magnus's tendrils whipped Nōne's scythe at him, spinning through the air with unexpected speed as he began charging at Lavil.

The blade slashed through Lavil's right arm, lopping it clean off in a shower of sparks.

“Shit!” he cried out, trying to hold on to his rifle well enough to aim with just one hand.

Too late. Magnus brought his sledgehammer down on Lavil in a massive arc, smashing him to the ground.

Lavil exploded into countless pieces as his body was utterly destroyed beneath Magnus's hammer.

I... I couldn't do anything to save him.

“No! Th... n-no...!” was all I could mutter in my crippled state, overwhelmed with despair.

I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. Magnus floored us all with ease. Lavil was dead. Shock wasn't moving. Nōne was still crushed underneath that bookcase.

Just like that? My friends were dead...? All of this... was for nothing? My life was over?

Was this real? It couldn't be. No way.

“You're still alive? My mistake.” Magnus walked over to me, picking up Nōne's scythe along the way. He hovered just above my face. “Let's quiet down, now, shall we?”

Magnus plunged the blade into my viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Critical state report

Optics offline - critical failure

Optics damaged or missing

“Aural Automaton” sight disabled

Seek repair

Nervous system - critical failure

Nerve loop damaged or missing

“Aural Automaton” nervous system disabled: Head, Left Arm, Speaker Deck

Seek repair

Sound system - major failure

Speakers damaged or missing

“Aural Automaton” audio disabled: s_visor01, s_visor02, s_visor03, s_visor04, s_visor05, s_visor06, s_lshoulder, s_chest02, s_chest03, s_chest04, s_chest05

Seek repair

Motor control - critical failure

Nerve loop damaged or missing

“Aural Automaton” motor control disabled: Head, Left Arm, Speaker Deck

“Aural Automaton” motor control shutdown: repair nerve loop before booting

Processor deck damaged or missing

“Aural Automaton” shutdown

Seek repair immediately

“Haha. My first fight in my own body... how exhilarating.” Magnus took a moment to stretch his limbs out, perusing the carnage around him.

“Ahh... knowledge, he craved,” he muttered to himself among the ruined shelves, books, and incapacitated robots. He picked up the book Aural Automaton had thrown at him earlier, looking down at the cover – Mathematics, Division 7. “Knowledge I craved once upon a time.”

He looked up at the walls around him – the Catastrophe Manipulator – as it continued draining black fluid onto the floor.

“Hahaha... this freedom is incredible.” He looked back down at his own hands – Historical's skeletal hands – feeling his fingers, his palms, marvelling at his own body. Not to be shared with anyone else. Not anymore.

With several of his tendrils, he smashed the glass surrounding the Catastrophe Manipulator, causing a powerful surge of black fluid to gush out from the broken pane. As it poured over him, he incorporated it into his own body, growing the massive tentacles on his back to incredible sizes. They became too large to remain connected to his midsection; instead, they merged into his body completely: Historical's warped visage, along with the rest of his tattered body, was attached firmly to the writhing mass of enormous tentacles.

“HAHAHAHA!”

Magnus lifted himself off the ground with his extra limbs, hovering higher and higher in the air as the walls continued to drain. The spindly tendrils that were once six feet long had at least quintupled in size, allowing him to hover several dozen feet in the air, connected to the ground via his grotesque tentacles.

...

tip-tap-tip-tap.

...

tip-tap. tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap.

...

...

...

tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap!

“Hrrh?” Magnus faced the room's entrance.

The first door to Grilith Tower's base hummed open.

tip-tap-tip-tap!

The second door to Grilith Tower's base hummed open.

In the open doorway to the ruined room where Magnus reigned above all else, where heroic machines lay defeated, was Trivo.

“You,” Magnus growled. “Ha. The key to purity herself. Hahaha!”

“I'm not afraid of you anymore.” Trivo stepped forward, pointing at Magnus with her only remaining arm. “I'm not afraid!”

“Cute, but stupid. Look around! Your adorably pathetic friends are DEAD. What do you think you can do that they couldn't?”

“What did you do to them?!”

“I showed them their place in this world. Now that you've so utterly betrayed me, I think it would be prudent of you to join them.”

“I was never on your side!”

An enormous, black appendage flew down from the air, crashing down on Trivo. It bounced back up with a flash of electricity, leaving Trivo completely unharmed.

A dim forcefield was surrounding her. Her eyes and lights were red.

“Lethal mode engaged!” Trivo blared in a voice native to all Vesky models. “All citizens, evacuate the area! Active threats are present! Lethal mode engaged! All citizens, evacuate the area! Active threats are present!”

“Grrh! You learned!” Magnus screeched in anger.

Panels opened up on Trivo's wrist and thighs, revealing small pulse laser cannons.

“80% capacity! Opening fire!”

Blue beams of energy rapidly flew towards one of the vile appendages waving through the air, searing a line of holes straight through it. The massive limb fell from Magnus's body and flopped onto the ground, writhing into a shrivelled puddle of darkness.

Another pitch black arm fell down towards Trivo. She ran and leapt out of the way, jumping up onto one of the bookcases as the tentacle crashed onto the ground, sending chunks of debris everywhere.

She opened fire again, unleashing a barrage of bright, blue projectiles at the tendril, dismembering the majority of its length. Upon impacting the floor, it shrivelled up just like the last.

With a fell roar, Magnus threw down another appendage onto the bookcase Trivo stood on.

She jumped off the bookcase the moment before it was smashed into countless pieces, landing on top of the tentacle.

She prepared to leap off, but couldn't. Several dark, malformed hands emerging from the slimy limb had already grabbed onto her legs, rooting her in place.

“ONCE MINE, ALWAYS MINE!” Magnus yelled.

Trivo aimed her cannons down, shooting down at the hands. With a sharp hiss, the hands were quickly burned through as the energy projectiles pierced the alien flesh.

She fell to the floor, easily landing on her feet.

Something grabbed her from behind. One of the appendages she'd shot off earlier had morphed into a vaguely humanoid shape with two cross eyes on the front, wrenching her backwards, trying to drag her into its pitch black mass.

With a bright flash of her forcefield, the harrowing entity split in half vertically, collapsing to the ground once again.

Trivo set her sights on Magnus himself. She opened fire directly at his suspended body.

Without time to react to Trivo's onslaught, Magnus was quickly filled with holes as the blue energy projectiles burned countless holes into his body.

Magnus's – or, Historical's – head was shot off.

A dark mass slithered out from his neck, forming another head with the same bright crosses for eyes. The holes in Magnus's body quickly filled themselves in with eerie blackness.

“HAHAHA! YOU CAN'T KILL ME, LITTLE GIRL!”

Trivo kept firing without relent. The lasers pierced through Magnus's body, shredding off chunks of Historical's hull piece by piece. Each wound kept filling in with otherworldly flesh before Trivo could make any finishing shots.

She was smashed to the side, unaware that another tentacle was swinging her way. As she flew towards the wall, she engaged her forcefield, rebounding herself off the wall in a huge arc of electricity. She landed on her feet, stumbling through the wreckage of a ruined bookcase.

Historical's discarded hull was completely shaken off by Magnus, whose true form appeared similar to Historical, but as a writhing mass of darkness rather than his original body of metal and electricity.

“40% capacity! Opening fire!”

Trivo aimed at the remaining tentacles waving around. She could only spot four more. She unleashed another flurry of energy bolts as she started running around the edges of the room.

Magnus roared, sending two more of his limbs down on Trivo. With ample time to see it coming, she activated her forcefield again, ricocheting the freakish tendrils off her in a bright flash.

With her accurate laser fire, Trivo blasted through yet another of Magnus's tentacles, dropping it to the floor.

Magnus himself was running out of limbs – out of mass – to use. He dropped himself to the ground, splitting his three remaining appendages into smaller versions.

“29% capacity, Vesky. Try to disengage.”

Without so much mass to weigh him down, he charged at Trivo with his bladed tentacles ready to strike.

Magnus swung them down at her. Trivo jumped to the left, her right leg barely grazing the blade in the air, scraping her hull.

Just before she landed, Magnus swung at her again with a loud grunt. Raising her right arm in the air, she blocked the blade with her forcefield.

“20% capacity; forcefield disabled.”

The Vesky's automated warnings prompted a hearty laugh from Magnus.

He ran straight at Trivo, tendrils spread wide, jumping in the air to tackle her. Trivo jumped backwards a moment too late.

“Eyaah!” she cried out as she was smacked down to the floor.

Magnus crawled on top of her, straddling her chest, pinning her arm down. “Hahaha. The key to purity. Whatever would happen if the little beacon of light was dragged down into the unending darkness?”

Magnus's tendrils were all raised in the air, pointing down at Trivo's face.

“You're still too incompetent to defeat me. Maybe less so than those other failures, but still pathetic. It took five of you to fight me, and you all still FAILED. What now, key to purity? What will happen to all the robots up above when you're tossed to the scrapyard, 100% corrupt?”

Trivo didn't say a thing.

“ANSWER ME, LITTLE GIR–”

Black liquid splattered across Trivo's face as a curved blade – lined with blue fluid – emerged through Magnus's chest.

He looked down at the blade.

“I waited for years to kill you. That was my vow,” Nōne said from behind Magnus. “Slapping me around isn't going to change that vow.” He yanked his scythe out from Magnus's body.

Magnus turned around with a growl, seemingly unaffected by the surprise attack. He slashed at Nōne with his tendrils.

Nōne blocked some with his scythe, but the remaining limbs tore across his face, cutting his screen.

He hardly flinched.

Trivo took the opportunity to struggle away from the distracted Magnus. His grip on her hand was weak; she wrenched it away and pointed her wrist at Magnus's head.

“Opening fire!”

Nōne ducked.

Trivo shot out another barrage of blue projectiles, tearing Magnus's head apart into nothing more than a stump. With a hefty roll, she tossed Magnus's body off herself. She took the precious moment to get back to her feet.

Magnus's head reformed, as before.

“Haha! Hahaha!” He struggled back to his feet. The hole in his chest remained unhealed. “Hahahaha!”

Nōne stood next to Trivo, both their gazes on Magnus.

“HAHAHAHA!!”

“I grow tired of this incessant noise. Let us end this, Vesky,” Nōne said.

Trivo aimed her weapons. “Opening fire!”

One final barrage of blue lasers flew through Magnus's body, punching countless holes through it.

Magnus fell to his knees, his maniacal laughter only increasing in intensity.

Trivo ceased fire.

Nōne walked up to Magnus.

“Be no more.” He slashed through Magnus's chest, splitting his body in two.

Magnus's laughter finally stopped as his dismembered body began deteriorating into the same shrivelled puddles of darkness as his lost limbs did prior.

Standing in place, staring at what was once Magnus, Trivo's lights faded from red to green.

“I... I-I...” she stammered.

“Welcome back, Trivo,” Nōne hummed.

“D-d-did... I-I...”

“Indeed. Congratulations.”