"What is he up to?" Akilah thought to herself as the sound of machinery only got louder.
The whizzing and whirring began to come together in the center of the room. The scattered noises all converged into one massive wall of noise directly behind Milo.
"I've been saving this one for a while." Milo slicked his hair back with his fingers and smiled. Two red dots of light began to glow from behind Milo's silhouette.
"Lights!" Milo clapped his hands together, triggering the lights of the floor to turn on. The fluorescent bars of light flashed the group. It was even more surprising that a building this old had electricity at all.
"What the fuck is that, man?!" Taro pointed at a massive silhouette behind Milo. As the kids' vision adjusted, they laid their eyes on what could only be described as a robotic supervillain, straight from the comic books.
Milo had built the robot with two arms and two legs. The screen-face did not cover the whole head, so Hendrix doubted that they could use the same tactic as on the boxing robot.
"It amazes me that you guys could have found the off switch on the boxing robot. I hid it inside the boxing glove to-" Milo's techy speech was interrupted by Kai.
"Off switch?" Kai asked in confusion.
Milo's eyes widened.
"Did… Did you destroy my robot?" Milo put his hands on the top of his head as the kids just looked at each other, silently asking each other "Who's gonna tell him?".
"Alright. That's it. I'm done. Vanguard, attack targets." Milo clapped his hands as he shook his head, reminiscing on how long the boxing robot took to build.
"Target acquired." The robot, who Milo called Vanguard, turned on his screen-face, showing the five silhouettes of Spirit on his face. A red target appeared on all five of the heads of the Spirit silhouettes. The room dimmed as the vanguard's systems surged; the sound of machinery grew louder than their screams.
The robot took a step forward with a loud boom and the whizzing of gears.
"Oh shit." Akilah tried to think through the panic.
Ten floors below, Chase and Amora had just finished the walk from the compound to the training tower.
"Do you see them?" Amora whispered to Chase as they got to the base of the tower.
"See who?" Chase looked around.
"Bloom and Alex!" Amora yelled while still whispering.
Chase peaked around the side of the building, where he saw Bloom and Alex looking up at the commotion on the tenth floor. The couple heard thuds and clanking coming from above.
"What's going on up there?" Amora asked.
"Let's go see." Chase grabbed Amora's hand and snuck through one of the broken windows, trying to keep low so as to not catch the attention of Bloom and Alex.
They got past the first floor, then the second, then the third. On the fourth floor, they witnessed the oily mess that the group left behind when they defeated the boxing robot. Chase accidentally stepped in some of the oil puddle.
"Ew. Do you think they could really pull all of this off?" Chase asked Amora.
"They really are amazing. C'mon, let's catch up to them." Amora started speedwalking again while still holding Chase's hand. Chase dragged along, trying not to slip on his oil covered shoe.
The two got to the vertical drop, where Chase looked up in horror.
"I wish I was Hendrix right now. He could've just swung up like a spider." Chase scratched the back of his head, trying to figure out if it was even possible for him and Amora to climb it.
"Ugh. Then let's get started." Chase grabbed one of the ladders.
Back on the tenth floor, Vanguard had taken the first swing, striking through the middle of the group.
Kai was able to run out of the trajectory, while Hendrix grabbed Akilah by the collar and tossed her out of the way.
Akilah rolled on the carpet for a bit, but quickly got up. She shook out of her frozen panic.
"Thanks." Akilah nodded to Hendrix. She had been so busy trying to think of a solution that she hadn't even registered the metallic fist coming for her and her friends.
"Keep on your toes." Hendrix nodded back to Akilah.
"Just evade for now, I'll try to think of something." Akilah tried to direct the group.
"No can do babe, this'll be easy." Kai smiled at Akilah as he zoomed around to the back of the robot.
The vanguard had four circular screens on its head, each detecting Spirit from the screen's assigned cardinal direction. Kai thought that if he got in between one of the screens, he could land a hit from its blind spot.
Kai zoomed towards the robot's back left shoulder, jumping up to hit the head of the robot.
"Oh shit." Kai thought mid-air. He noticed his Spirit silhouette was just split between two of the screens.
"I'm already committed." Kai continued his kick attack towards the vanguard.
To the surprise of nobody, Kai bounced off the metallic dome of the robot, hurting himself more than the vanguard.
"You fucking idiot!" Akilah groaned as she tried to think up a weakness that the group might be able to exploit.
"Vida." Akilah looked to Vida.
"Got it." Vida knew exactly what she needed to do. She manifested three mushrooms around the vanguard, which immediately bursted with spores. Her friends immediately put their shirts over the bottom half of their faces.
"What the hell?" Milo yelled from behind the vanguard. He looked around at the yellow cloud, looking down at the kids covering their mouths and noses as he realized what he needed to do, but too late. Before Vida could warn him to cover his mouth, she saw his eyes glaze over.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Taro asked Vida.
"Yeah, I only manifested drowsiness as an effect. He'll be back up in about five minutes, I can control the duration now too-" Vida's explanation was interrupted by the vanguard's foot coming down on the group. The stomp was way more violent than any other strike the robot had taken before. The stomp was directed right at Hendrix's head.
Hendrix jumped out of the way of the stomp just in time.
The robot turned towards Hendrix, who was now on the other side of the floor, as it began to stomp towards him.
"How the hell is it seeing us?" Hendrix asked Akilah.
"Host incapacitated. Emergency mode activated." The vanguard's robotic voice spoke without emotion, but the kids began to panic. The screen of the robot showed a blur of Spirit signatures, but the kids' silhouettes could still be made out.
"Why did it go for Hendrix? He was on the side of the group!" This question was an important one for Akilah, she felt she could crack the code if she figured out the answer.
She looked at the screen once again, then she noticed it.
"Now that I think about it…" Akilah thought back to the fight with the boxing robot. She had noticed that Hendrix's silhouette was noticeably brighter than the others, but thought nothing of it. Now she noticed how the vanguard followed Hendrix with its screen.
"Hendrix, it's going for you!" Akilah yelled at Hendrix from across the floor.
"What?" Hendrix said in confusion. Suddenly, Hendrix was kicked across the room by the vanguard's foot, crashing into a wall.
The group froze in shock.