Submisions: Big robots, Bigger mistakes

It’s been a bit of a journey to get this far, totally fine. Totally normal and expected even, maybe he just got cocky today, or maybe this is karma for the incident with the slime in the jar? Did Aza get cursed for life by an upset slime that didn’t enjoy being shoved in a jar and made into a decorative gumdrop? Probably.

 

Either way, as he had approached the entrance of this lab, problems started. One minute everything is fine, the next the ground has started.. Shaking? This… isn’t normal, is it?

 

One, two, three…. F-four? That’s… Quite a few big snake robots- are they snakes? Spines? They cracked and twisted and froze, and their heads don’t look, right? What is that? Portals? ..Aza, takes a step back, he’s not entirely sure what these things are but he bolts to the nearest tree he can hide behind. He needs to collect himself, the cracking sound happens again, movement nearby can be heard past the sounds of his own breathing. Heavy and sharp, the world is both too fast and too slow.

 

Gods only know where those things will send him if they get him, maybe they won’t send him anywhere. They’re big enough to crush him after all, that’s a question he considers for just a moment. “Would I rather be crushed to death or boiled alive in a volcano somewhere or something?”

 

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, now’s not the time to be thinking about what those things can or cannot do. Fact is whether they’re robots, organic, or something else, they still have weak points, right?

 

They seem to be spine like, that’s the cracking sound. Yes, it has to be it. A human spine is made up of bones, and with these things being built in a similar way to a human spine, the segments rub against each other and crack like a human spine would.

 

Granted, they are quite a lot bigger- like, a lot a lot bigger. Still, Aza’s studied human anatomy back in his homeworld long enough to understand if he strikes hard enough where the segments connect, he could disconnect them. Maybe even disable these creatures, though the most difficult thing to do would be avoiding the portals.

 

Just as he’s thinking about what he could do, there is a scraping sound, a god awful scraping sound. Like chalk being dragged on a blackboard, or a dog whistle, if you were a dog, whatever you’d prefer to imagine.

 

The creatures scraped against each other as one suddenly had turned sharply and started snaking its way over to the tree Aza was behind, had it heard him? No, it couldn’t have, right? He becomes aware of his own breathing, his own shaking… Right, deep breaths. It’s not the first time he’d have fought something large, though the last time it was organic and had almost eaten him, maybe that did do a tad bit of mental damage. He calms himself, if this one really has separated from the group he can take it out fast and charge the other three.

 

The snake-like machine had started to wrap around the tree as Aza had run out, he circled around it, aiming for a segment connection closest to the creatures ‘head’. He raises his leg up, and kicks down full force, using his elements abilities of sky and channeling it into wind, used to augment his own physical strength and soften the damage done to his own body,  severing the segments connection.

 

The portal that was the creature's head lands, before shutting down entirely upon disconnection. “...Well, I was right.” Aza’s cocky shark toothed grin returns, before the cracking sound ensues again. There were, of course, three more robots.

 

They rushed him as he had used his own abilities to try and augment his speed the same way he did to his strength, it worked as well as you’d think. He managed to avoid being pummeled, although while he had grabbed onto the edges of the portal it didn’t stop him from being almost entirely pulled in for a moment, into a world of snow and ice near inhabitable, the roaring of something large heard in the distance, a blizzard that damn near caused him to lose his grip to the robot, only to be launched back out when the robot had shook its head hard enough to fling him back out into the correct world.

 

No time to collect yourself Aza, you have robots to evade. Not actually a simple task like he assumed it would be considering there are three of them. He tries the same trick as before, missing what would be considered the ‘neck’ segment this time. Though he had managed to cut one in half, which is still an improvement from having a full robot after him.

 

Unfortunately, having only one eye he had missed his blindspot, and was hit in the side by the ‘tail’ end of one of the two full robots. After eating a face full of dirt he had scrambled to stand up and started running, maybe, just maybe he’d be able to fight them off one by one if he could just confuse them for long enough.

 

And so, that was how he spent the next three hours. Picking off robots, climbing trees in order to escape, running, ducking, dodging, fighting back whenever he acquired the chance to take a breath. A moment even, any split second could have him dead if he wasn’t careful, it’s surprising it took a face full of dirt to get that through his thick skull, isn’t it? Jokes aside, there was only one left.

 

It was almost over, Aza sits in a tree branch, crouched above this one as it twists and moves below, searching. He stands up in the tree, and catches his balance, taking his sweet time to wait for the perfect moment.

 

There, it twists with a loud crack and starts turning around, it moves directly under the tree branch. Perfect, he jumps down and finishes the job, that should be all of them.

 

He takes another deep breath, same as before, and sits on the ground to recover mentally from that encounter. He is exhausted, though he can’t really stay on the ground for long can he? He chose to wake up today and stop crime, it was funny at first but now he’s just annoyed.

 

He has some choice words for this scientist lady, he stands up, and heads back to the lab he had found. Time to actually get this done.

 

Word count: 1102