>> We can’t win this.

  No, I couldn’t. Even a rough estimate of the amount of force exerted by Oxford’s arms indicated that she was five times stronger than the legal limit. Weapons were one thing, but where did she find components that were so fundamentally beyond what was permitted to be built and transported? They were the kind of arms that were equipped onto bots designed for war.

  Oxford didn’t hesitate. Before I could react, she was already back within striking distance. A thunderous punch threatened to snap my spine clean from my head. I was forced to travel along the arc of her punch to keep it from applying too much tension to the joint. The world spun around me, I spiralled down onto the ground once again.

  “Why are you fighting for the sake of these people? What good have they done for you?”

  I got back on my feet; “They brought me back from being offline!”

  “Brought you back into the mouth of Hell. Some favour that is! Dubai only wants bots like you to do all of the hard work, so he can sit back and relax in his little workshop! No good man would ever willingly drag other people into this!”

  “That doesn’t mean anything coming from you.”

  She punched me again, with enough force to crack the compound used in one of my eyes. A white ling pierced my field of view, tiny compound fractures getting in the way of what was important. And again. It glanced off of my brow and sent me staggering back. My balance factor was too low to keep my body upright.

  She laughed at me, “Oh? Suddenly you’ve become so self-righteous! Those Tidewatch morons must have gotten into your ear! You’re more human than you care to admit – clinging to morals that don’t mean anything.”

  The battle still raged on the bridge behind us, but they were all so engrossed in their own fights that they paid us no mind. Nova wasn’t going to swoop in and rescue me whilst trying to hold the line against dozens and dozens of enemy bots. One wrong move and they would overwhelm the defence and rampage through the city. They could not let that door open, or they’d never remove them from the city limits.

  “Stop mocking me.”

  I tried to fight back. I swung at her with the shield, but she easily deflected my attacks using her bare hands. Eventually she stopped and stood there, not even trying to avoid them. The grinder was useless. It dug into the plastic outer shell and immediately struck something too hard to cut through. Sparks were exhaled from the cut, at least until the edge shattered and sent dangerous pieces of shrapnel exploding into our faces.

  I stumbled back. Oxford held up her damaged arm and studied the wound. It didn’t even matter to her. She was covered with them. Hundreds of dents, scratches and burn marks spoiled her once pristine paint. Each one told a story.

  “Interesting, isn’t it? You don’t need to wear heavy armour if your frame is strong enough to withstand any attack.”

  “You’re telling me you found a frame strong enough to withstand that?”

  “And so, so much more.”

  Her second assault was even more ruthless than the last. I held up my arms and tried my best to block each attack. She was more experienced than me in the art of violence. She could pick apart my openings and exploit them within milliseconds of them appearing. We could react faster than a human. Fights could be decided before the other party even noticed what was happening.

  Oxford was playing with me. I knew that she could easily cut through my coolant and oil lines with a well-placed attack. She was content to pummel me with blunt-force hits, backing me up against a wall and using it to box me in. They kept coming. The sound of metal striking metal drowned out everything else.

  “Is this what you wanted? You’re face-to-face with your old partner again! What a waste of time that turned out to be.”

  “No. I don’t know you at all…”

  >> This is what you wanted, London.

  >> What good is a foundation that shifts with the sand underneath?

  “But you couldn’t stop yourself. If you were smart, like you used to be, you’d have turned tail and hid somewhere until the fighting was over. That fixation of yours is all-too dangerous. It’s going to get you killed.”

  “You don’t have to kill me.”

  “I don’t have to, but there’s nothing stopping me.”

  She slammed the back of my head against the wall with enough force to cause the sheet metal to bend inwards, the roof above falling off-kilter and threatening to collapse on top of us. This was it. She was going to deliver the final blow, or at least disable me so that she could continue to amuse herself once the fighting was over.

  But that never happened. Oxford’s ears pricked up. A pair of metal feet were charging at her from behind. She stepped out of the way, revealing an enraged Yantai thrusting towards her undefended back using one of her swords. It pierced the wall next to my head, inches away from slicing clean through my damaged eye and making it even worse.

  There was no apology. She kicked her weight away from the wall and dislodged her weapon, shaking it out and ensuring that it was still good to go.

  “The biggest loser is back,” Oxford yawned, “I thought you were cowering in some dark hole away from the fighting.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I did consider leaving these ungrateful pieces of scrap to their fate, but then I remembered how badly you pissed me off before. I visited my secret spot and pulled out my very best weapons, just for you.”

  She pointed at it and scoffed, “That can-opener isn’t even going to scratch my paint.”

  Yantai was done talking. She launched into a flurry of rapid slashes using two swords at once, one in each hand. For any other robot it would have been an unavoidable wall of potentially fatal attacks. Oxford was not just any other robot though. She was filled with components that ran rings around any of the parts normally available to an Industrial-grade robot. Yantai kept going and going. She wasn’t concerned with that. She wanted to get payback for her humiliation from the previous day.

  “Stop running away!”

  “Running? I’m not exerting any energy whatsoever! Those clumsy swings are never going to hit me.”

  Yantai finally managed to land a hit. The sword cut into the panel on her forearm, but Oxford responded quickly by punching the side of the blade using her other hand and shattering it into multiple pieces.

  “What the fu-”

  A heavy crunch muffled her attempts to swear in shock. Oxford had backhanded her on the return arc of her punch. The heavy armour that Yantai wore meant that her stability factor was extremely low, even with a modified set of clawed feet designed to grant additional traction. She was tossed aside from the force of the strike, pieces of metal and paint chips skidding across the floor.

  “Pathetic.”

  Oxford didn’t give Yantai a moment to recover. She reached down and grabbed the back of her collar, ripping the sheet metal clean from the struts and discarding it. She was ripping through her defences like they were made from tissue paper. Yantai could do little but struggle in vain as she dismantled her carefully crafted armour piece by piece. She was so strong that Yantai couldn’t break free and swing around to retaliate.

  “This is bullshit!” Yantai roared.

  “This is reality. Tidewatch thinks it’s invincible, but it’s not. I’m going to make an example of you.”

  She hoisted her body into the air and slammed her down onto the floor, sending a strong vibration through an entire segment of the city in the process. Yantai scrambled away, leaving behind the broken sword and refocusing on the one that was undamaged. She got back to her feet and returned to her combat stance, suddenly cautious in contrast to her usual berserker rage.

  “So meek. So meek! It must have been intoxicating, rampaging through all of my underlings. Unlike humans though – we are slaves to a strict hierarchy. The bots with the best, most powerful parts will always win.”

  Yantai scowled, “That’s an excuse made by bots who can’t handle the heat. We’re capable of learning.”

  “Maybe. Humans can improve themselves. They can develop their musculature and stamina, but we’re different. Our capabilities are chained to the parts we’re built from, and that in turn is the most important factor in winning a fight.”

  Oxford was intent on demonstrating that difference in ability. She confidently walked towards Yantai whilst making no real effort to avoid the tip of her sword. Yantai accepted that invitation gladly, thrusting forth and trying to penetrate her chest to hit an important internal organ. Instead it glanced off of her armour.

  What happened after that was beyond my comprehension. A burning red sword shot out from the front of Oxford’s left arm, and with a single swipe it cut clean through Yantai’s body. She was split clean in two, with her torso slumping down to the ground with a louder clatter. Wires and components spilled from inside, themselves sliced in two and left with the orange heat marks to prove it.

  Yantai reacted fast. She tried to push her body back using her arms, but her escape was cruelly ended by Oxford stabbing the blade through her head and finishing her off. She twitched several times before finally seizing up and collapsing. Oxford withdrew the sword and it disappeared as quickly as it came.

  >> Yantai is... gone.

  “All that fury, and this is the outcome.”

  She kicked her body aside and turned back to face me.

  “You’ve lived for long enough to see the folly of all of this. We should have stayed offline. The only thing we inherited from the humans was their ability to get themselves killed, to ruin good intentions and turn them into a corrupt joke.”

  >> That energy signature was too high.

  >> The sword was a laser, it should have drained her batteries then and there!

  It was an aberration. There was a piece of the puzzle that I was missing. An impractical weapon like that would never have made it so far into the development process. It was powerful but flawed. The small batteries we could fit into our chassis couldn’t support it for very long. It was so intense that my background sensors picked up on it, where they would normally only spike to warn of impending danger from a misplaced cable…

  “A joke? Is any of this funny to you?”

  Oxford shook her head, “Oh no. It’s not funny in the least. We’re the punchline.”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s responsible for things turning out this way?”

  “If not me, it would be another bot instead. We’re all burdened with the same curse, the same small-mindedness, the same instinct for violence and ambition. Especially you and me. We’re special. That’s why they took it all away from later iterations.”

  >> We can’t beat her. Yantai couldn’t. What the hell are we going to do now?

  >> Running isn’t going to help, she can easily catch us with that speed and agility.

  The shield was worthless in the face of her sword. I disconnected it from my arm and laid it down to lower my weight. A strange new sensation welled up inside of me. Despite all that had happened to me, the very last thing I wanted was for it all to end. At that moment my only concern was living to see another day. All of the suffering and strife were secondary to that, because a better tomorrow wouldn’t be seen if I gave up and let her destroy me.

  “Oxford!”

  But our fateful meeting was interrupted by a second interloper. A furious Nova Lima marched down the bridge with her weapons at the ready. She didn’t even give Yantai’s body a second look. She understood fully the consequence of what was happening to Waterway.

  “I hope you’ll pose a better challenge than this violent thug,” Oxford scoffed.

  Oxford charged at her. Nova Lima set her feet squarely against the ground and held out one of her arms. Before Oxford could get in range to use her sword, a deafening bang rang out through the chaos. Oxford flew backwards and collapsed onto the floor, with a series of smoking bullet holes criss-crossing the front of her chest. Nova pulled back on the gauntlet and dispensed two spent shells, and it was only then that I noticed the pair of barrels hidden underneath above her hand.

  “I saved those specially for you. You should be honoured that I had to use two of my precious shells like this.”

  Oxford clutched the injury and ran an internal diagnostic, but it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be pretty. The pellets ripped straight through the oxidized metal plate intended to deflect the low-power melee weapons that most robots used.

  “Where did you get those?” she murmured.

  “I have my sources.”

  Nova lowered her arm and took a brief glance at the ongoing fight. Tidewatch was holding firm, frustrating their attempts to ransack the city. Nova’s fearsome reputation was well-earned. She always had another card up her sleeve, or in this case, a pair of shotgun shells. They had to be custom made, or so rare that using them was like setting her personal wealth on fire. Even the gunpowder and cartridge would demand a high price.

  “We’re going to take down as many of you as we can. Show me those fancy tricks, and I’ll show you how much skill really matters.”