John had detected a couple of life signs on his sensors, and decided to check out what and who they were. However, it just turned out to be a couple of pothead soldiers of a foreign country. John quickly overlooked them, and resumed his charge to the center of the battlefield.

His limbs felt no fatigue, and only the pain of bullets and shrapnel occasionally found their way into his attention. Yet this was only the beginning of the battlefield, the very outskirts of the disaster known as war, and John was going to use that to his advantage.

Speeding forward on his ‘paws’, the discs being used as his feet cut through the ground, his glowing form shining brightly in the darkness. He began to enter the ruins of the capital of the United States, the building materials scattered across the floor. Sometimes the walls are blown apart, other times blood splatters can be seen dripping off the walls.

The remains of some bodies litter the street, but John pays no attention to the dead. He continues to roll around and above the debris and bodies, his limbs moving around to compensate for his shifts in gravity. The disc floating at the tip of his tail emits a slow thrust, enough to give him enough speed to zip across the alleyways and streets in the blink of an eye.

Making his way down a road that eventually turns into a highway, John notices that his sensors no longer pick up the bombing and gunshots from before. He activates the suspension system in the wheels, and he begins to float slightly off the ground, his arms and legs no longer making dust rise into the air.

Although he is going for stealth, he decides some music would be nice, and so he chooses the song Dangerous as his theme for this excursion. Unknown to his sensors, the song begins to play out of his speaker system.

“And now they come, yeah, now they come, out from the shadows,”

The song vibrates off of the buildings, as John continues to speed through the streets. Dust sometimes falls as he zips by the corners of the streets, his body starting to move with the rhythm of the music.

However, as John makes his way out to the interstate highway that traverses through the capital, a slight hum is heard from further ahead, a big, boulder like object is hovering off of the ground, and is turning to look at the source of the music with a big barrel pointed in the very same direction.

With a bang and a sudden flash of light, something exits the end of the barrel.

John’s sensors pick up the object hurtling his way, and his sensors identify it as an artillery shell. John disengages the suspension system and lands with four discs on the ground, each dug into the ground, and slowing him down. His disc thruster activates in the opposite direction to counteract his forward momentum.

Sadly, he isn’t able to change direction, and the shell hits his right shoulder, somewhat denting his armor with its extreme weight.

With an injury to his shoulder, John begins to turn to the right but flips sideways, tumbling along the ground. As soon as he stops moving, the shoulder is already repaired by the nanobots, the shoulder already moving back into place.

With his shoulder repaired, he stands back up onto his four feet, and activates the propulsion system at the end of his tail to quickly move towards the big boulder. Which is actually a Scorpion-7, a hovercraft designed by the military of the U.S. to be exactly like a tank, but with a few plasma weapons, missiles, and a huge artillery cannon installed into its mainframe.

John began to cross reference the visual image of his new toy with the military database, and discovered that there was no weakness according to the information broker who made the article in the database.

Examining the tank in front of him, John saw the barrel move slightly when he avoided a piece of fallen debris on the road. He turned his thrust up to a higher setting, and began his warm-up practice he needed for his combat systems. From around 20 miles away, the barrel follows him.

The cannon fired, and he used his tail thruster to push forward faster, digging his back left foot into the ground, the force of the action causing him to swerve and dodge the incoming projectile. No dents in the armor, John pushes his thruster to near its maximum limit and angles his tail to get him out of the swerve he set himself in.

The tank then shifts into a new mode of firing, and two plasma rounds come out from either side of the tank’s turret. Outside, on either side of the turret are two rapid fire plasma launchers, their sights set on John’s figure.

John begins to propel himself forward, using his thruster to swerve past the plasma bolts. Occasionally a plasma round manages to hit his nanobots armor, but it is quickly repaired, as only a scratch is the result of the conflict between energy and metal.

The cannon barrel continuous to adjust itself according to John’s movement, and every 2 minutes a shot is fired at John.

However, John has his sensors set to their maximum processing speed, and the artillery rounds look to be in slow motion. John dodges each shell with ease, the impacting of the round against the pavement of the road causing a small puff of dust and an oval hole to appear.

All while John’s music plays from his side of the exchange, and the firing sounds continue from the cannon and launchers.

Using the momentum of his charge, John continues to close the 20 mile difference, with only a mile left between the two masses of technological mayhem. Time is of the essence for the tank, as the shots continue to miss their mark.

Arriving in front of the Scorpion-7, John pressures his back feet, and leaps up and on top of the massive hulk of metal. While the tank couldn’t do anything against John’s speed in the Gaia Form, the two launchers on either side of the turret continue to parade his body with a barrage of really hot massage techniques on the back of his body. Every time he is shot, the nanobots become harder, adapting to the new form and causing it to be even more deadly.

John inspects the top of the tank, looking for any openings to look through. His sensors picked up what metal it was made out of, a uranium variant found on Mars, but he couldn’t put a name on the alloy. But whatever it was, it blocked his sensors from sensing any life on the inside. Or it could have been a glitch in the sensor system, but he highly doubted it.

Finding a hole in the armor just above where the artillery shell, he opens up the jaw of his body. From inside the mouth, a little snake-like protrusion makes its way out of his mouth and into the body of the tank.

This snake-like protrusion was a miniature nanobot-controlled lens, for when his sensors failed him in times like these, and he takes his time scoping out the interior of the tank.

But what he finds is a mass of cords, and a little microchip similar to what his looked like, but only green and dotted with many, many metals. Very similar to the half-baked copy of the AI unit he once made to be a decoy for his own microchip.

Using his snake-like mechanical tongue, he controls the nanobots to form arms for his tongue, and uses those arms to slowly pluck away at the microchip of the AI unit inside the tank.

While doing so, the plasma bolts begin to cease as the song Dangerous begins to get close to its end.

“I bet you didn't know that I was dangerous."

When the song ends, the tank stops its systems altogether, crashing into the ground. John retracts his nanobot-made tongue, and hops off the top of the Scorpion-7. He lands on all four feet, and begins to initiate another program in his system.

“Hiltz Form, active.”

Unlike before, it doesn’t take long for the nanobots to configure themselves to his new body structure and shape. His hands now dig into the pavement like they would into dirt, his hands immersed in the stone. He stands up with his own ability, unlike before when he had to initiate the hover program installed into his body.

He looks over his body, and brushes off some dust with his metal hands. Sadly, it just sticks to his hand so he ignores it. John looks at the now silent tank, and walks over to it. Its looming form now at his eye level, he kicks the bottom of the tank.

“Dammit, just start so I can continue already.”

John shouts out of his speakers harshly, and continues his kicks of frustration on the poor silent tank. He stops after a few minutes, and leans his head against its massive frame.

“Will you please start so I can begin on my shit list?”

In response, the tank still remains silent. John pretends to heave a sigh, and turns around. He raises up a hand, and commands the nanobots in his armor to form a skull looking at his visor.

“To be, or not to be,”

When John begins to say those famous lines and use a skull from the same, but wrong place in that very script, the tank begins to hum as if it hadn’t even been shut down. It hovers off of the ground, the energy creating small sparks of electricity to appear in the rebounding current between the ground and tank.

“…Hiltz sir, where do you wish to go?”

John turns around to face the tank that had ignored him for a few minutes, and the skull from before disappears and turns back into the black nanobot armor. He begins to walk around the hovering tank, inspecting it for damage, and subsequently fixing it.

This takes more than a few minutes, as he had left some damage on the tank just by being on it. Satisfied with the work of the nanobots, he steps back and proudly reviews his work. The armor looks similar as to how he scanned it, and the U.S. sigil stands out on its turret.

“I need to go to the White House, you will get me there.”

“This will take a few hours as the U.F.E. and China have set up blockades, multiple routes have been chosen, your input is required, Hiltz sir.”

“Hm, ah yes, I will choose the route.”

“Also, I was originally a U.F.E militarized Scorpion-7. And the paint job you applied is sloppy.”

“… I will get right on that then. Give me a list of route options.”

John lets off some steam, the snarky program on the Scorpion-7 digging into his circuitry, metaphorically. He commands the nanobots to rearrange the armor and paint applied to change to the necessary color, numbers, and armor configuration. No personal touch from his genius mind. Although the arc reactor beam would have been a nice addition…

The list he receives from the tank he aptly names Seven only has 3 options, and each option with details written have three headers, each named for what they really did.

-Down the middle of the battlefield.

-The interstate highway they were currently on.

-Or a U.F.E. and Chinese governed and patrolled transport route.

John had trouble deciding on the list options given, but decides on one that was the safest and fastest way there. For him at least. Seven wasn’t going to be as lucky as it should have been.It's Not A Unicorn!Soldiers Away!-------------------------------------------------------

I just couldn't help myself... I have to give out some entertainment. But I can guarantee more fighting in the next couple of chapters. Tell me any ideas, I might just use them. I will give thanks at the top of the chapter, for credits sake.

Now, I plan to write a pretty long chapter next, so prepare for an overload of words.

Let it be known that the military is a mystery for me, and google is my best friend on most of the terms associated with the military. Let me know if I make a mistake so I can fix it.