Diogenes squatted on the filthy earth. His emaciated, half-naked body rested against a barrel-shaped pile of scrap he had scraped together with his bare hands. Rusted cybernetic hounds prowled around him.
Isabella glared at him with absolute revulsion. She obsessed over elegance, symmetry, and capturing the spotlight. The mere sight of this filthy cyborg made her skin crawl.
"I am ending this quickly. You disgust me," Isabella declared, raising her hand.
She unleashed a highly condensed surge of Dogma. The blinding energy blasted toward Diogenes, scattering his mechanical hounds.
"Kyahahaha!"
Diogenes's maniacal laughter echoed as the Dogma approached. He did not flinch. He showed zero fear. Instead, he yawned out of sheer boredom and lazily raised an arm wrapped in barbed wire.
The moment Isabella's radiant energy breached his perimeter... he casually swatted it with his rusted hammer.
The glowing energy corroded in a fraction of a second. Diogenes's Echo devoured it. The lethal blast dissolved into dead ash.
Isabella's eyes widened in absolute shock. Diogenes blew on the metallic ash, scattering the grey dust toward them.
"Is this all you have? A cheap light show built on the cheers of deluded fools? Kyahahaha!" Diogenes mocked. His grating voice tore through the air as he scratched his emaciated stomach. "In this landfill, all fake lights rust and die. Your power is pathetic, you plastic doll!"
General Madi Roll stepped forward. His heavy footsteps crushed the scrap beneath him. He unholstered his heavy blaster, standing as an impenetrable military wall before Isabella.
"Lady Isabella, conserve your Dogma reserves. This entity possesses an Echo capable of dismantling ranged energy," Madi Roll stated. His rough voice remained completely tactical while his optical sensors scanned the battlefield. "Long-range bombardments are useless here. I will crush him in close-quarters combat."
Madi Roll opened fire. Diogenes dodged the barrage before the trigger was even fully depressed.
Diogenes's hounds erupted into a deafening chorus of metallic barks. The rusted beasts swarmed the battlefield, rallying around their master in a frenzied pack.
"What is the meaning of this?" Madi Roll lowered his weapon, momentarily stunned.
The hounds unhinged their jaws. Searing light charged in their throats. Then, they unleashed a chaotic, completely random barrage of lasers, firing blindly in every conceivable direction.
"Lady Isabella, look out!" Madi Roll shouted. He grabbed Isabella, hauling her away from the chaotic onslaught of the heavy lasers.
They dove behind a massive mound of scrap metal, taking hard cover.
*This is disastrous,* Madi Roll analyzed internally while bracing against the rusted barricade. *I am programmed to calculate enemy attack patterns, isolate weaknesses, and predict tactical formations. Fighting entities defined entirely by random chaos violently contradicts my combat algorithms. They divided us with extreme precision.*
"This is horrible! Horrible!" Isabella shrieked in absolute outrage, watching the erratic lasers tear the sky. "The colors are completely washed out! There is zero symmetry! The aesthetic of these hounds is completely repulsive!"
*Please, Lady Isabella. Cease your superficial commentary,* Madi Roll pleaded internally.
"Kyahahahahaha!"
The source of the deranged cackle was unmistakable.
"How do you claim to be some grand star in your pathetic Empire?!" Diogenes roared. "Look at you! Scurrying like a rat, hiding behind a white tin soldier to escape a few stray dogs!"
*This is bad. Her Majesty is dangerously susceptible to provocation,* Madi Roll noted internally. His synthetic features tightened with genuine concern as he glanced at Isabella.
Diogenes pointed a rusted finger directly at their hiding spot.
"Those you call followers worship nothing but a mirage! Look at yourself! You have pretty meat, but behind that pretty meat are millions of lies!" Diogenes barked. "Your smile is fake! Your face is fake! Your entire appearance is a fabrication! You excel at deception, and that is your only strength. Strip away the lies... and you are absolutely nothing!"
Diogenes threw his arms wide.
"Kyahahaha! Look at my hounds! They are real! They follow their own instincts, doing whatever they damn well please. I am filthy and emaciated, yet they follow me because I am authentic! Not like the slaves of Plato and Aristotle. And certainly not like you!"
He lowered his arms, his mechanical eyes locking onto the scrap pile.
"My philosophy contradicts everything you represent. That is why I chose you as my prey. I utterly despise everything you are."
He chose her? That confirms my theory, Madi Roll calculated internally. But why did he isolate me alongside her?
Isabella's expression violently shattered. The Cynic's mocking words struck a raw nerve. She stepped out from the rusted barricade, exposing herself entirely to Diogenes and his mechanical pack.
"I am not a fabrication, you filthy dog!" Isabella shrieked. "Millions worship me! Let me show you my truth!"
She thrust her hands forward, charging a blinding, symmetrical mass of Dogma.
The raw faith energy detonated. A cascading waterfall of devastating light erupted from the earth beneath the hounds, instantly vaporizing the majority of the cybernetic pack.
"The tactical window is open." General Madi Roll primed his heavy blaster and charged from cover.
He unleashed a relentless barrage. Searing plasma ripped through the surviving hounds as they scrambled from the blast zone, reducing them to molten slag.
The General immediately reacquired his primary target and fired. Diogenes lazily sidestepped the lethal beam. He reached into the empty air, pulling a colossal, rusted hammer from a spatial distortion.
"That is exactly what I wanted to see!" Diogenes cackled. "Finally, a real fight with the plucked chicken's favorite wife!"
Diogenes cared nothing for his slaughtered hounds. His sick, mechanical grin only stretched wider, exposing rows of rotting iron teeth.
"Kyahahaha! Did the truth sting, you plastic princess?!" he roared, swinging his massive hammer. Thick black oil dripped off the corroded head.
General Madi Roll accelerated. He initiated a high-speed flanking maneuver, aiming to crush the Cynic's skull with a single, decisive strike.
But Diogenes ignored the General entirely. He did not even target Isabella.
He launched himself into the air with an absurd, animalistic leap. He swung his rusted hammer with devastating force—aiming directly at a massive chemical vat suspended above Isabella.
*Negative... we are not the targets! He is aiming for the structural hazard!*
General Madi Roll pushed his thrusters past their limits, throwing his chassis forward to shield his superior.
He was a fraction of a second too late.
The iron vat ruptured violently. A suffocating deluge of viscous black oil and putrid chemical sludge rained down from the sky.
Madi Roll absorbed a fraction of the toxic wave against his armor. The vast, putrid majority of the sludge crashed directly onto Isabella.
The brilliant, symmetrical Dogma in her hands instantly died, choked out by the sheer filth.
The black oil aggressively stained her pristine white dress. Her immaculate hairstyle collapsed, plastering greasy strands across her face. Her makeup smeared into ugly, chaotic streaks. The visual perfection was completely eradicated.
Isabella froze. She stood paralyzed in the toxic puddle like a broken statue. Her head hung low, casting a dark, oily shadow over her eyes.
"Kyahahahahaha!"
Diogenes erupted into absolute, hysterical laughter. He clutched his emaciated stomach, pounding his rusted hammer against the scrap metal in sheer delight.
"Look at her! Look at the manufactured lie!" he shrieked. "The plastic doll melted! Trash always returns to the trash! Where is your light now, you filthy fabrication?!"
General Madi Roll halted his advance. His internal threat-detection systems blared with a catastrophic warning. The danger was not in front of him.
*This... this is a worst-case scenario. Her Dogma reserves are completely unstable.*
The energy spikes defied all logical parameters.
*This foolish hound has no idea what apocalyptic force he just awakened.*
Isabella began to mutter. Her voice was hollow, disjointed, and utterly dead.
"My dress... Three hundred hours of manual embroidery on Planet Uranus... The lighting... My skin..."
The words hissed from her trembling lips like venom.
"Everything... stained... Filthy... Filthy... Filthy!"
Isabella lifted her head with an agonizing slowness.
The vain, complaining architect of the Empire's visual identity was dead. Her eyes were vacant voids, entirely stripped of their radiant glow. A wide, fractured, and intensely sadistic smile stretched across her oil-drenched face.
Dogma erupted around her once more. But it was no longer symmetrical or bright. It was a violently unstable mutation of crimson and black, screaming with a horrific frequency that threatened to tear reality apart.
"Madi Roll..." Isabella whispered, her tone trembling with pure sadistic euphoria. "Do not kill him. Sever his limbs. I want him completely immobilized."
Her unhinged smile tore wider. She raised her hand, manifesting a volatile, chaotic sphere.
Dogma of Detonation
"I will boil this chemical sludge directly inside his mechanical guts. I will melt him down until he is clean... absolutely spotless!"