I followed Lena out through the hangar and onto the landing. With only the briefest of glances back, she vaulted over the railing. Three seconds later I heard her impact the ground below. It was pretty amazing how quickly she mentally adapted to being an Automata. At least, I didn’t imagine that she did a lot of freefall sudden stops when she was organic.

Behind me, Ram and Rom had followed along accompanied by the Professor and all of the students. Even Lena’s Captain Sunni and her escort had come to watch.

“Come my dimenutive knight in shining magisteel! Don’t floofsnek out on me!” Lena taunted from below.

I shook my head at the jab and climbed the railing.

“Nur, light our darkest hour,” I called back to the engineering student.

“I’m sorry, what? Darkest hour?” Nur asked, confused.

“A [flare] if you please,” Rom suggested, translating dork to common for me.

“Oh, of course!” she said excitedly, casting the magic to light up the area below.

I hopped off the rail, pulsing my foot jets twice to slow my descent before hitting the ground. Sand exploded to my left followed by another explosion just behind me as Ram and Rom touched down. IronHide, in his funsized body, led a group of kids down the stairs to get a closer look while the Professor and others leaned over the railing to watch from above.

“Whatya say, Mister Hide? Care to bet on the winner?” Long’er asked, as she took a seat on the sand near the steps and pulled ‘Hide into her lap.

“Nope. I wouldn’t touch that bet with an eleven foot pole,” IronHide responded, casually.

“Yeah I guess not. Master Prime is nice and all but he’s so small. I mean, most dwarves are bigger than he is.”

“Maybe I will take that bet then...” he said, mulling it over.

“Wait, why?”

“You’ve never seen him fight in the Convoy armor,” IronHide said, smugly.

Long’er’s thoughts played across her face for a few seconds before deciding “Fine, but when I win I want you to be my personal ride for a week.”

“A day,” IronHide countered.

“Five.”

“Three.”

“Two days but you also have to be my servant in this mode.”

“Fine, but when I win I want a deluxe car wash. Wax, buff and polish, undercarriage, vacuum the floor mats, the works.”

“I have no idea what any of that is but you’re on!” she agreed, taking one of his hands between the tips of her claws.

“Now Prime,” Lena spoke up from the far side of the cleared area. “Just to be clear, I’m challenging you to this fight and only you. Not... Aaaaallll of you.” She emphasized her point by making vague circular gestures in my direction. “No offense ladies, but if you would be so kind.”

She swept her arm from pointing to me, to indicate where the crowd had gathered. Ram and Rom took the meaning and settled in amongst the students.

“I know full well that if given free reign you could make sweet chub pie of me, my dear swain, but a girl deserves a fighting chance,” she said in a slightly condescending tone.

As she spoke, her eyes flared green for a moment and the color replaced any blue body lights that were left exposed. She teasingly crossed one arm and tapped at her lips with the opposing hand.

“Don’t think poorly of me for limiting you like this but I’m not giving you the choice,” she goaded. “Feel free to attack at any time my li--”

Before she could finish, my right arm converted to cannon mode and fired off a three round burst of steel shot, aimed for her pouting lips. She squeaked like a small animal and stumbled back as she threw her hands forward and cast several layers of [AuraShield]. The first round shattered her first shield and cracked the second, thicker one. The second round finished the job but by then she was falling backward and ducked under the remaining steel slugs.

She hit the ground and rolled back into a kneeling fire position, taking aim as her lights switched to red.

“[FireBolt]!” she cried, sending two missiles of arcane energy my way.

I angled my body slightly and the first bolt ricocheted off of me and out over the water. I caught the second bolt and examined it as it crackled and shook with the promise of violence. The first bolt made it halfway across the underground river before exploding against the surface.

“What?! How?!” Lena yelled, steeped in incredulity.

I turned the bolt over and glanced at her, pointing at the thing.

“Magic doesn’t work on me. As far as this spell is concerned, it hasn’t run into anything yet so it doesn’t know it should explode,” I explained.

“How does that even work?!” she barked back, her shoulders slumping.

I shrugged and threw the bolt back at her. Again, she screamed. This time her lights flared orange and she slapped the ground. A wall of dirt sprung up in front of her, blocking the FireBolt. It exploded in grand fashion and chunks of dirt and rock were sent flying in all directions.

Lena burst out of the dust plume using her jump jets to send her high into the air. She came down screaming, her lights glowing a pale cyan color. A massive fist of solid ice wrapped around her own and aimed for my head. I pulsed my foot jets enough to push me out of the way, hitting the ground with a roll.

Lena clapped her hands together and frost energy began accumulating in front of her, forming a glowing ball that would instantly drop the temperature of anything it touched.

“[Spencer],” I called, shifting my gun arm to a grappling claw.

I threw out the claw on the end of a long chain, grabbing around her ankle. The instant it connected, I reeled it back in, yanking her off her feet. The frost ball she’d been forming flung into the air as she yelped. It hit the ground and iced everything within a three meter radius, just missing the students.

I pulled in my chain at full speed, drawing Lena feet first towards me. Just before she reached me, I let go with my claw, pushed off my back foot, and caught her in the side with a spinning hook kick. The blow sent her into a spin like a lopsided whirligig before hitting the ground at the water’s edge and tumbling into the river.

I ran for her and jumped high into the air, engaging my foot jets to hover above her. I converted my arm back to cannon mode and started charging up a high power shot with an explosive round.

She popped up out of the water, thrashing and looking around, scanning the shore for me. Just before I released the shot, she glanced up and spotted me. Her eyes flashed a greenish blue and a wall of water rushed up at me, intercepting my shot. The explosive punched deep into the column of water before igniting.

The shockwave from the explosion propelled water in all directions, spraying me and sending Lena tumbling up onto the shoreline. I throttled my jets to push me towards her and cut them, allowing gravity and momentum to carry me the rest of the way. My right arm converted into folded clever mode, then snapped out to full blade.

Lena rolled onto her back, shrieked, and deployed her own arm blades, catching mine in an X block. The weight of my blow embedded her into the wet sand, but she shifted to one side, parrying the strike. My sword pulled me forward and into the ground as she rolled with the momentum following up with a back swing. Her slash glanced off of my shoulder, throwing sparks into the air.

Her attack didn’t do any damage but it did send me sprawling onto my back. She kept rolling and slashed down, attempting to catch me in the middle. I pulsed my foot jets, throwing me head first across the sand on my back.

I tucked my legs and rolled until I was back on my feet and hit the jets again, throwing me at the recovering Lena with a jet-assisted flying knee. Lena stumbled back and threw up a hasty [AuraShield] that I smashed through. Using my jets for added power and to keep me in the air, I assaulted her with a flurry of kicks and sword slashes.

Her shield barriers got smaller and thicker with each blow as she learned to be more precise when generating them. I somersaulted in the air, bringing a heel axe kick down above her head. As expected, she crossed her arms and generated the shield above her to block my kick. As my leg connected with her shield, my gun arm converted to Spencer mode and I shot the grapple claw at short range capturing both of her wrists.

I kicked off of her shield and yanked her forward, pulling her to her knees. She cursed at me in words I didn’t recognize and scrambled to get her footing. I pulled again, roaring with the effort and twisted my body around and around until she was sailing through the air like a ball on a string.

Heedless of her cries I spun her around, releasing her on a collision course with the cliff face. To her credit she managed to use her boost jets to slow her velocity enough to plant her feet on the rock wall and springboard off of it.

Her lights shifted to a magenta color and she threw a hand at me. A gravity well formed around me and the rocks and sand started to shift under the spell’s effect.

“Magic doesn’t work on me, remember?” I shouted.

On cue, a rock smacked me in the back of the head. I stumbled forward and another hit me from the side, then another and another. Soon all the sand around me was flying up at me along with larger rocks. I could barely see anything thanks to all the debris and things flying at my face.

At the edge of my vision I saw Lena jump into the area of effect for her spell, the gravity yanking her off her feet and flinging her towards me. Two robot Princess feet slammed into my face and sent me tumbling across the ground. It was then that I realized that she hadn’t cast the spell on me but on a fixed point that happened to overlap with my head.

The gravity well continued to pull sand and rocks toward that fixed point, which now had Lena in the middle of it. Rocks the size of grapefruits began pelting her, followed by cantaloupes. I noticed watermelon sized boulders begin wiggling and rolling in her direction.

“Aaaah!” she screamed as she took a hit to the face. “Prime! Help! I can’t shut it off!”

“Oh for the love of Primus,” I grumbled.

If I could narrow my eyes, I would have. I converted my arms back to normal mode and stepped into the gravity well. I caught a large rock headed for her and threw it outside of the spell’s range. Once I was close enough to affect her with my [Console], I reached a hand in her direction.

“[Pause],” I said, feeling exacerbated, and freezing the effect of the gravity spell.

Her lighting switched from magenta to orange and everything caught in the spell dropped. Ah crap.

A wall of dirt erupted beneath me sending me flying into the air. Ice shards formed around my legs and rammed into my jets, blocking them. When I saw Lena, she was already in the air with her boost jets on full burn and slamming into me. The ground and the cavern walls and ceiling swapped places several times and she flung me around.

The trip ended with me slamming into the dirt wall that had shot me into the air and shattering it. When the dust settled, Lena was straddling me and had her arm blades crossed at my throat.

“It’s done my sweet Prime. You have been bested,” she declared.

The muzzle of my arm cannon was nestled just under her armpit. Since I’d primed it but hadn’t fired, it had charged up a mega blast and was still loaded with explosive rounds. I would take some damage at this range, but that shot would absolutely kill her.

“Tch... fine...” I grumbled, looking away from her and powering down the shot.

Her arm blades retracted and she collapsed on top of me, her body shutting down from mana depletion. In the distance I heard IronHide yelling “No, my Deluxe Carwash!!”