Pythona hit me with her gravity magic and I could feel the pressure pushing down on me as the ground around me sank. It was as if a massive, invisible weight was smashing in the road, in a perfect circle around me. Thanks to my magic resistance it didn’t have any effect, though. I actually stepped down from a small plinth where my feet had protected the ground beneath me and took a step towards her, then another.

She looked panicked and backed away while trying to increase the amount of weight, judging by how deep the ground around me was being impacted.

“What are you??” she screamed. “Why isn’t this working??”

“[HammerTime],” I said, invoking the spell keyword that would assemble this armor’s weapon.

I launched myself, despite the gravity well, at the snake woman, ready to smash the hammer into her. A little less than a foot away from her, my hammer bounced off of a green force field. She wasn’t casting anything so she must have an Aura Shield device on her. I should investigate how those things work, would be a handy thing to have installed.

I spun around, intending to deliver a hammer smash to Pythona’s side, thinking that if I could overwhelm the device it might fail. This time, I wasn’t deflected by the Aura Shield so much as a wave of cutting light hit me from the side.

I was pitched up into the air and hit the ground with a tumble but I managed to keep a hold of my hammer. I looked up to see that swordsman Adventurer from back in Urd. This time he had one of those big, oversized magic swords you always see in fantasy games.

I appreciated the aesthetic and wanted to [Inspect] it to figure out how he’d done the attack, but from Cyclone’s perspective I saw the swordsman’s ranger partner fire an arrow at me. The arrow burst into flames and seemed to take on the shape of some kind of bird.

These were some top level fantasy attacks and I would have loved to geek out over them, if they weren’t directed at me. Thanks to the alternate views from my proxies, I easily saw the attack coming and rolled out of the way, dodging it.

I converted my cannon arm to give me some ranged options and took aim at the archer. I fired one of my clay rounds at her and she nimbly dodged. Before I could get another shot off, the ground below me suddenly shot upwards.

It would seem that Pythona was adept at Earth Magic as well as Gravity. I wondered if they were related schools like ice and water. The sudden wall sent me flying high into the air, and below me the ground shifted from the wall to a bed of earthen spikes. Nasty.

“[HotSwap(CloudBurst)]!”

The LandMine armor vanished into my [Inventory] at the same time that the CloudBurst armor wrapped around me. I converted into jet mode and kicked in the wind turbines, saving me from being impaled.

I shot off into the air and came back around with my hand cannon ready. I banked and strafed as the archer took shots at me but I was moving too fast for her to get a shot to connect. I sent four steel rounds in the direction of Pythona to wear down that shield of hers.

I came around for another attack run and was locked on the swordsman when I had to [Blink] to avoid getting shot by one of those flaming bird arrows.

“Aye! Thass no fair,” the ranger yelled at me. She was clearly good at what she did, but I knew I was breaking all the common sense rules for her.

In avoiding the arrow, I put myself a little too close to the swordsman and he grabbed my wing as I shot past him. I did a barrel roll, trying to dislodge him but he held on fast so I pulled hard on the nose, taking us high above the trees.

The swordsman held tight and had managed to get a hand on both wings and was stuck to me like some kind of an action hero. It wouldn’t have surprised me if this guy was some hero, destined to fight the demon lord or something. Did this world have a demon lord? I was pretty sure that the royals were demons with their dark red skin, was the king the demon lord and I just happened to get reborn into demon country? Maybe there were heroes being summoned or reborn in other countries in order to come and defeat him.

“[WarpFactor(1)],” I said, taking us even further into the sky for just a couple of seconds. I recalled the potential for vertigo that I’d gotten without any stomach or inner ear so maybe it would have that effect on this hero.

“Whaa! Ugh, what was that?” the swordsman called out, I could feel his grip slip.

I cut my turbines and our upward momentum came to a stop and we hung for a moment before falling back downwards. I angled my ailerons to pitch backwards as we fell and flipped over into a nosedive.

The move succeeded in loosening the swordsman and he screamed as he scrambled trying to find something to grip on me. For a moment I was free of him as he freefell but the guy was either crazy good or crazy lucky and in just that short time managed to stab me in one of my turbines with a dagger.

The turbine locked up, holding the dagger in place and the swordsman with it. I cut the power to the other turbine and tried to glide in as best I could with the massive drag of a man hanging from my right tail fin.

I aimed us for Pythona, we were coming in REALLY fast and the experience of the last time I tried landing at this speed flashed through my mind.

“Sorry buddy,” I called out to my passenger. “I’ve only done this once before and I ended up spread across a field and offline for three days... You’re probably not going to like this.”

The poor guy just screamed, I was sure that later when I inspected the damage to this armor I would find grip marks gouged into the magisteel.

As we got closer, Pythona looked absolutely terror stricken and was frantically trying to run away. I was all lined up for impact with that shield and the poor sap under it that had underestimated me.

“[HotSwap(LandMine)]! [HammerTime]! [Vibe()]!” I invoked in succession.

The CloudBurst armor pixelated away and was replaced by Landmine with the hammer in hand and charging up the high-speed vibration attack. With the CloudBurst armor gone, so was anything that the swordsman was hanging on to and he flailed around like he was trying to swim, trailing behind me.

The vibrating spike end of my hammer smashed into the Aura Shield, shattering it. Pythona threw herself to the ground, just ducking me as I sailed over her and shattered the other side of her shield before it completely disintegrated.

Thankfully, for me, smashing through the shield slowed me down enough that when I hit the ground, I just tumbled onto my side and slid for a bit before getting back up. The swordsman, who was right behind me in the air, slammed into Pythona as she pushed up from ducking under me. The two of them went flying in a jumble of armored hero and snake into the woods, crashing through branches and deep into the undergrowth.

A sword slash hit me in the back as I tried to determine how the swordsman and snake lady had fared. I stumbled forward and dodged the follow up attack from the ranger, rolling out of the way. The ranger was too close to use her bow, but she also appeared to have some skills with a short sword.

I could hear her chanting under her breath as she ran a finger along the length of her blade, charging it with some sort of magical effect. I decided to take a pass on receiving that one if given the option. I converted into bike mode and charged forward surprising her. I aimed between her legs and tried bowling her over, but she planted a hand on my back and vaulted over me.

These guys were actually pretty impressive, I guess it was just bad luck that I only got to see them fight Elita before. I supposed that Elita wasn’t a good baseline measurement for average fighting abilities.

I converted back into armor mode as soon as she cleared me, swinging my hammer as she landed. Her spatial awareness was pretty great as she managed to get her arms up to block the attack, but she wasn’t fast enough to avoid it. The hammer crunched through her bracers and sent her flying. She hit the ground and tried to roll back up but hit the ground again with a cry.

Pain and frustration distorted her features, I could see tears forming as she lay on the ground breathing hard. Both of her arms looked to be broken. When it came to less-than-lethal options all I had were clay rounds, maybe I should start researching how to enchant them with status effects.

I stood over her and converted my cannon arm. The least I could do was knock her out until her people could patch her up.

“This how mi die? From some outa control auto?” she asked through gritted teeth, closing her eyes and taking quick breaths. Her accent reminded me of the caribbean and my mind wandered to thinking about reddish skinned people with pointy ears and reptilian scales on their faces in the Bahamas. With her hood knocked back, I could see a kid that couldn't be any more than 14 or 15 years old. She had ears like an elf, a kind of cherry-chocolate skin dotted with ruby like scales across her face and pink hair tied in locs. Pink hair meant she was a main character, right? Or at least the primary love interest? Did sword guy have a harem of girls fawning over him?

“What kind of hero would I be if I killed pretty girls that can’t fight back?” I said, attempting something charming, though I doubted it came across given that I’d just broken her arms.

Her cheeks flushed and she opened her eyes, glancing at me. “He... Hero?”

“Well—” I started, but was rudely cut off when I got hit by a blast of ice in the back. I really needed to work on paying more attention to my surroundings. I was grateful that I’d taken the time to make the armors. I didn’t have any sort of health status for the armor, but it had taken quite a bit of damage in my stead. The bike parts had frozen up on my back and I couldn’t transform. When I hit the ground, I felt parts of the armor fall off leaving my back exposed.

I pushed up to a crawling position in time to take a kick to the gut that cracked my chest armor. I was getting tired of finding myself involuntarily airborne. This time, I didn’t even hit the ground when that swordsman adventurer was already on me. He seemed to be using some sort of body enhancing magic and was surrounded by a soft blue energy.

I was getting pushed through the air by the force of his punches alone. So far I was getting my blocks up but the LandMine armor on my forearms was taking a beating with chunks of it breaking off. I extended my arm blade and slashed at him, but the guy snapped my blade with a bare-handed chop; followed up by a heavy cross strike that shattered my helmet.

The force of the blow slammed me into the ground, but I used the “bounce” to roll backward into a handstand. I split my legs to the sides and rotated my lower half several revolutions. I had to metaphorically bite my tongue to keep from yelling “Spinning Bird Kick” since the move was inspired by an old fighting game.

The move caught the swordsman off guard since normal people can’t move like that and I managed to land several kicks on him, battering away his blocks and connecting with the side of his head. He stumbled, dazed for a moment so I planted a foot in his chest, knocking him off balance before following up with the other foot in a flip kick under his chin.

He came down hard on his back and laid still, breathing heavily. The sound of chanting was getting louder and I turned to see Pythona with a large ball of energy over her head that was continuing to grow like a small sun.

“[Pause()],” I said, pointing a weary arm in her direction.

I’d written up a keyword command that would automatically [Inspect] the target, search for any magiCode running through a loop cycle and toss a [Pause Break] into it. The energy ball froze in the air like some sort of bad special effect, no longer drawing in any energy or pulsating.

Pythona was still chanting but abruptly stopped, looking shocked. She looked up at her energy ball with an unmistakable “what the hell??” look on her face. I wondered if she got some sort of mental error message or if that was an Automata thing, or maybe it was a me thing since I had [Console].

“[Resume()],” I directed at the ball.

Without Pythona chanting to restrain and control the ball, all of the energy released at once in an explosion that crushed her into the ground. She didn’t look like she was getting back up anytime soon.

I looked around to see that most of the fighting around me had died down. The Automata that had stuck with us had subdued the organic soldiers. I could see a number of bodies laying around but I didn’t know if they were alive or dead. I was sure that the soldier Automata probably had plenty of aggression they wanted to take out on their handlers.

Cyclone was talking with Elita. Had the time come? Was she too far gone now? My heart sank at the thought of losing my friend. I made a promise to her and the thought of fulfilling it was tearing me apart. I raised my arm cannon and took aim with a steel vortex round loaded. She was confused, but this might be the only chance I have to set her free. I knew that I didn’t stand a chance against her in a straight fight.

I locked on, aimed for her soul core, and fired. A flash of light crossed my face and I saw Elita screech like some sort of animal before flying off in her dragonoid form. That was odd, what happened to my shot? I looked at my cannon, or would have, to see it was gone. My arm had been severed cleanly at the elbow and the cannon was laying on the ground. No... NO! ELITA!

“Ah crud... I missed...” came a labored male voice to my right.

I turned to see the swordsman breathing heavily, obviously spent for mana, and holding his oversized fantasy hero sword with the end embedded in the dirt.

“Do you... have... ANY idea what you’ve just done??” I growled, turning on him.

His face went slack and for the first time I saw fear in his eyes. He took a step back but that blue glow engulfed him again and I saw the ranger laying on her side and chanting. Was she buffing him? It didn’t matter, I needed to catch Elita.

“[HotSwap(CloudBurst)]!” I could still catch up to her, I could use the Blink Engine. The Blink Cannon was my best shot now. Wait! Could I do it with one arm??

I only had one working wind turbine but I could get there! I charged it up and braced to vault myself into the sky when I heard a woman scream. I turned in the direction of the scream to see the princess with one of those large automata swords stuck in her torso, having cleaved her from shoulder to sternum.

She collapsed to the ground and the prince fell on her with a wail as his captain pulled the Automata sword free and raised it for another attack. I turned to see Elita getting away, then back to the royals. I couldn’t let Elita get away but I couldn’t let the royals die here either.

I threw my head back and let out an inhumanly loud and distorted curse which was synced with all my active proxies. Everyone in the area, friends and foes alike stopped in surprise and alarm. The vision of all my proxies went distorted and staticy and all the Automata in the area as well as those back in the village covered their heads and cowered as the curse rang out across every frequency I was capable of.

The captain looked agog with eyes as wide as saucers. I wound up a punch and [Blink]ed to the captain, ramming my fist into his gut. He doubled over as all the air rushed out of him but still had the discipline to swing the sword at me. The blade halted, caught by Cyclone. He dropped the sword and went for a knife at his belt but his head snapped back as Carnivac grabbed him by the skull and slammed him to the ground. Before he could get back up, IronHide’s hand crashed down on top of him, pinning him to the ground without crushing him.

I turned to see the prince, soaked in blood with tears and snot streaming down his face as he cradled his little sister. She was taking short raspy breaths but it was clear she only had seconds left. I knelt down next to her and gently held my hand out to her. Her eyes flickered in my direction, though her brother didn’t seem to be aware of anything as he buried his face into her good shoulder.

“Do you want to live?” I asked, “even if it would mean becoming an Automata?”