A robot charged him with its hammer-arm raised. Rex met it head on.
He caught the hammer in both hands.
The force drove his feet deep into the floor.
For a few seconds the two stayed locked together.
Then Rex snarled, muscles bulging out of his arms and chest, and shoved upward. The robot's hammer-arm shot over his shoulder with a screech of tearing metal. Rex had a monstrous headbutt to its faceplate.
Nico shot in at the same time.
He planted one foot on Rex's shoulder, went up, and launched his flying kick directly into the robot's damaged head.
The machine crashed down.
Its core was exposed.
Nico punched through it.
The robot exploded.
"One down!" he shouted.
Dr. E's expression tightened.
"Interesting."
Two shadow wolves lunged from behind at Nico.
He spun and caught one by the throat and threw it into the other. They fell apart in a cloud of black smoke.
Rex engaged with another fighting unit, both arms cradling the cannon arm while the barrel stuck to his face.
"Nico!"
"On it!"
Nico ran forward, but one of the other robots suddenly stabbed its blade-arm into the floor.
The metal beneath Nico's feet blackened.
Shadow spikes erupted from the ground.
He twisted away from the first few, but one grazed his shoulder and spun him off balance. Another robot knocked him in the side with a cannon blast and sent him skidding across the room.
"Nico!" Rex shouted.
Dr. E's lips curled.
"There it is. The flaw in speed. One mistake."
Nico pushed himself up slowly, one hand gripping his side.
"Then good thing I'm not the only one here."
Rex let out a roar and ripped the cannon arm clean off the robot he was wrestling. Sparks exploded from the socket. He jammed the torn cannon straight through the unit's chest core.
BOOM.
The blast threw Rex backward, but the robot was gone.
Four left.
Dr. E looked upward.
"Enough."
The ceiling opened.
A larger machine descended from above on mechanical rails.
Nico stared.
"You're kidding."
This one was not a combat unit.
It was a full-body exosuit nearly twice as tall as the others, built for Dr. E himself. Its armor was dark chrome over a thick inner frame. Its chest held a huge synthetic shadow reactor. Its shoulders mounted rotating disc launchers. Its arms ended in massive variable weapons that shifted shape every few seconds like the suit couldn't decide what it wanted to kill people with first. On its back sat six thruster wings made from segmented metal blades.
Dr. E stepped backward into the open cockpit.
The suit closed around him.
His voice came through the external speakers now, deeper and louder.
"Let's conclude this personally."
The thrusters ignited.
The suit shot into the air.
The remaining four robots charged at the same time.
Everything happened at once.
Nico sprinted through incoming cannon fire, jumping over shadow spikes and ducking under disc blades that sliced through the air. Rex grabbed a fallen cage door and used it as a shield while a robot hammered at him. Dr. E swooped overhead and fired a rain of explosive shadow bolts that burst into more wolf-like constructs upon impact.
The room became a war zone.
Nico ran up one robot's chest and smashed both fists into its face. It grabbed for him. He flipped over its head, landed on another machine's shoulder, and stomped down on the neck joint until it cracked. A third unit blindsided him with a cannon blast that sent him crashing through a control console.
Rex tore a robot's arm off and used it like a club, battering another unit across the room, but Dr. E's exosuit dropped from above and smashed him into the floor with both feet.
Rex coughed hard as the exosuit pinned him.
Dr. E aimed a cannon straight at his face.
"You are durable," he said. "But not enough."
Nico was there in a red blur.
He slammed shoulder-first into the exosuit and knocked it off Rex. The two rolled across the metal floor in a shower of sparks. Nico punched at the cockpit, but the armor held.
A disc launcher on the exosuit's shoulder unfolded and fired three razor-sharp shadow discs point blank.
Nico jerked away.
One sliced a line across his cheek.
Another cut through a pipe behind him, filling the room with steam.
The third came back around like a boomerang.
Rex caught it with both hands.
It burned into his palms, but he snarled and bent it in half before flinging it aside.
The remaining four robots regrouped around Dr. E like bodyguards.
Nico wiped blood from his cheek.
"Alright."
He looked at Rex.
"I've got a dumb idea."
Rex grinned.
"My favorite kind."
Nico pointed upward.
"Get me high enough, I can hit that reactor on the suit."
Rex looked at the flying exosuit, then at the four robots guarding it.
"You'll have to get through those first."
Nico smirked.
"That's your part."
Rex slammed his fists together.
"Good."
The goat charged.
He hit the first robot hard enough to lift it off the floor, then kept running and used its body as a battering ram into the second. Nico shot past him, weaving through cannon blasts. A third robot swung a blade. Nico planted a hand on the flat side of it, vaulted over, and drove a kick into its chest slit.
The core flickered.
Not enough.
Rex grabbed that same robot from behind, braced his feet, and ripped it in half at the waist.
"Now!"
Nico accelerated even harder.
Dr. E's exosuit locked onto him from above.
"Predictable."
The shoulder launchers opened. Dozens of small black darts rained down, each one crackling with synthetic shadow energy.
Nico zigzagged through them at impossible speed, but the darts tracked his movement, curving through the air after him.
"Rex!"
Rex scooped up an entire broken support beam and hurled it like a spear. Nico stepped onto the flying beam, then onto a robot's head, then onto Rex's shoulder.
Rex roared and launched him skyward with both hands.
Nico became a red streak.
Dr. E's eyes widened inside the cockpit.
The exosuit tried to bank away.
Too late.
Nico smashed into the reactor on its chest with a spinning kick so hard the entire suit folded around the impact point.
CRACK.
The reactor casing shattered.
Synthetic shadow energy erupted outward in wild black arcs.
The exosuit spiraled down and slammed into the floor.
Nico hit the ground hard too, rolling several times before coming to a stop.
The remaining robots froze.
Their cores flickered.
Rex didn't hesitate.
He tore through them one by one while they glitched, crushing heads, ripping off limbs, and smashing cores before the machines could recover.
Then silence.