With a yell from their captain, the prince’s soldiers rushed at us and the unlocked Automata met them steel for steel. A deep roar bellowed from the command group and with a terrific leap, the Guild Master came flying over the heads of the royals and the officers. He landed with a heavy thud, already growing in size and swinging a fist the size of a frozen turkey in my direction.

Elita sent a bolt of lightning into the oni’s back. The electrical shock hit him and he convulsed, dropping to a knee, but not out.

“I have business with you, Guild Master,” she spat with sword and needle gun at the ready.

“Fine! Don’t worry, this won’t take long!” he growled.

With nails the length of knives, Guild Master Ryoma slashed his massive, clawed hand at me. I glared at him as best I could but didn’t need to move a muscle— or mana fiber in this case. Cyclone’s mana steel fist closed around Ryoma’s wrist just inches before he made contact with my head.

“Yeah... it might take a little longer than you think,” Cyclone said with a wink.

Ryoma looked shocked and looked around, uncertain of where this giant Automata just appeared from. Cyclone spun him around and shoved him in the back toward Elita.

“I believe you called dibs?” Cyclone asked playfully.

Elita screamed and rushed at Ryoma, peppering him with her quill gun, though the oni’s skin appeared too thick to penetrate easily. Still, he brought his hands up to protect his face, which Elita exploited with a sword slash across his middle.

Ryoma looked down at his shirt, now sliced open, and just laughed. A low and sinister laugh, the kind that usually indicates that the one laughing has nothing to fear.

Rather than retreat or try again, Elita stabbed her sword into the toe of Ryoma’s boot and leaned hard into a big hay-maker punch to the inside of Ryoma’s right knee. The ten-foot giant called out in pain, stumbling as his foot was pinned by his boot to the ground via Elita’s sword.

Before he could recover, Elita thrust out a fully chambered side-kick to the inside of his left knee. Ryoma roared as his legs wobbled and he grasped his knees. With his head lowered, Elita struck hard, putting all her strength into an uppercut to Ryoma’s throat.

Ryoma dropped to his knees clutching at his throat with one hand and swiping out his other. Elita wasn’t fast enough, that close to him and was caught in his meaty grip. He lifted her up with a single hand around her throat and slammed her into the ground.

A loud crunching sound came from around the caravan coaches as the golems smashed their way through the trees edging the road. I returned Sentinel to my [Inventory] and pulled out IronHide and sent him to intercept them.

“Time to give these Decepti-creeps a nickel knuckle sandwich!” he yelled, I couldn’t help myself.

Cyclone pounded a heavy metal punch into Ryoma’s kidney, followed by another. The giant roared again and reeled from the blow before collapsing to his elbow.

Elita wrapped her legs around the oni’s arm as it held a vice-like grip around her neck and began punching repeatedly between the muscle fibers on the inside of Ryoma’s forearm. Reflexively from the painful blows to his pressure points, Ryoma’s hand opened up a bit but then he clamped back down and swung Elita around like a rag doll at Cyclone.

Cyclone pulled back to avoid the collision and extended both of his arm blades. He went in for a counter attack but was instead pushed to his knees by a sudden wave of intense gravity.

“Not today, lady! [Power Extreme]! [LandMine]!” I yelled, summoning the Centurion armor around me. I shifted into my motorcycle form and raced for Pythona, the guild’s gravity mage.

The gravity lifted instantly and Cyclone felt worlds lighter but his relief was short lived as he caught a fat, meaty punch to the chest as soon as he was back on his feet. The blow lifted him and sent him flying back into a pair of royal soldiers and the former soldier Automata that was fighting them.

Cyclone quickly got back onto his feet and looked back at the dazed fighters that he’d landed on.

“Uh, sorry... carry on.” he said with an apologetic wave and stalked back into the fight with Ryoma.

Around him, the royal soldiers and the former royal soldier Automata were clashing. For now, the organics still had numbers and were attacking the Automata in groups, while most of the Automata were fighting on their own, rather than in teams.

Remi found himself a place to perch and would take shots of opportunity with his bow whenever an Automata looked like they might be in trouble.

Giants clashed around them. Near the coaches, IronHide took on the golems and the warbling, throaty roar of the ogres could be heard approaching. Carnivac wasn’t able to stop them, but he’d slowed them down enough so that IronHide wouldn’t get overwhelmed.

Elita had broken free of Ryoma’s grip and Ryoma had gained a new dagger, it was conveniently stowed away in the meaty bit between his wrist bones— should he need it. Elita can be very generous that way. No wait, she took it back and Ryoma didn’t look happy about it.

Cyclone converted his blade arms to gun arms and opened fire on Ryoma with the few steel rounds he had loaded. Without my main body inside, he didn’t have access to my [Inventory] to reload, but there was still a shot in each gun. The steel slugs hit Ryoma like cannon balls but the big red muscle guy just tanked them. The first hit him in the back at the shoulder, turning him around, and the second smashed into his ribs. I was fairly certain that he had broken bones but he wasn’t letting something so trivial bother him.

Elita screamed like something primal and launched herself onto his back and wrapped her legs around his neck as she repeatedly smashed her fist into the side of his head.

Ryoma was bleeding heavily from his arm and now the black ichor was flowing down the side of his face. With a roar, he reached up and pulled Elita off by her gear and smashed her into the ground. His massive fists smashed into her torso, embedding her into the ground, then again.

Cyclone’s arms were back to blades as he threw himself at Ryoma and stabbed into the oni’s back. That massive fist swung around, connecting with Cyclone’s head; nearly taking it clean off. Cyclone stumbled back, holding his head in place, something had come loose from that hit and his HUD was flickering. Another shot like that would take him offline. If Cyclone had been a real boy then his own internal systems would work to repair the damage, but as a proxy shell there was no such luck.

Cyclone converted into motorcycle form and bowled into Ryoma, knocking him over. Elita seized the opportunity and grabbed the handle bars as he passed and mounted Cyclone.

“My sword!” she yelled, directing Cyclone to where it had fallen.

Spacing was tight amid all of the fighting and melee going on, but Cyclone managed to dodge around combatants and shocked onlookers, swerving hard and leaning so that Elita could snatch up her weapon.

“Charge!” she yelled again.

Cyclone did as bidden and poured on as much speed as he could muster without my main body providing power; aimed directly for Ryoma. Elita built up the electrical charge in her sword as they got closer and pummeled Ryoma with her quills to keep his guard up.

At the last moment, she launched herself from atop Cyclone and thrust her sword deep between his fractured ribs and loosed the contained lightning. Cyclone transformed and hit Ryoma at full speed with a shoulder check to his midsection that knocked him flat on his back.

Ryoma’s body was smoking and looked badly burned all over as he began shrinking down to his natural size. Elita wrenched her sword free, letting it fall to the ground and fell onto Ryoma like some feral beast, looking to finish off her prey.

“Your soul! Give it to me!” she growled as she clamped his head between her hands.

“Elita!” Cyclone called out.

She whipped around to glare at him with eyes that burned like white hot coals, the usual blue light from within her black crystal eyes, gone.

“Elita, this isn’t you. You don’t want to do this,” Cyclone said in soothing tones, trying to calm her.

Elita saw her reflection in the motorcycle windscreen on Cyclone’s chest and paused. She looked around, confused and scared before looking up at Cyclone with a look of horror.

“Prime?” she asked before shaking her head violently and screeching like some sort of animal. She vaulted off of Ryoma and summoned her wings and tail, launching herself into the sky. With several beats of her wings, she was over the tree tops and out of sight.

“Yeah... you better run you coward...” Ryoma groaned from his heap on the ground. He blindly fumbled around at a pouch on his belt and pulled out a vial of glowing red liquid.

“Oh no you don’t,” Cyclone said, gingerly stepping on Ryoma’s hand, crushing the health potion along with a couple of fingers. He then returned his gaze to where he’d last seen Elita disappear.

My thoughts of Elita were cut off by a sudden and abrupt cry followed by unintelligible wailing.