In the flickering blue light of the laboratory, the Vile Engineer slowly raised a heavy metal hand. His voice boomed, thick with the cold, mechanical weight of a dying machine.
"I'll let you... live," he rumbled, "but I will give you a condition. I must borrow your creations. The Avatar, and the Golem."
Dr. Xenon looked up at the twelve-meter-tall monstrosity, her expression unreadable. "What if I say no?"
The Vile Engineer's optic lens clicked as he narrowed his gaze. "Then I'll kill you—"
Before the threat could even settle in the air, Xenon's lips curled into a sharp, mocking smirk. "If you were to kill me, these robots would lose their minds. They have no host, no owner. Without me, they are nothing but hollow shells. No host, no life!"
The Engineer let out a long, metallic sigh, the sound of pressurized steam escaping a rusted valve. "Fine. What condition do you want?"
"I want you to destroy Forge Industry," Xenon said, her eyes gleaming with a decades-old malice. "If you fail... then I might as well trigger the self-destruct on the ones you borrow."
The Vile Engineer narrowed his single eye. "Fine."
Reality tore open in the center of the Forge Industry complex, a massive purple magic circle erupting like a bruise on the earth. The Vile Engineer stepped out, ready to lay waste to the facility—and then he froze.
Towering over the base was the Mech G.U.N. It was a colossal titan of silver and steel, standing over sixty meters tall. Its weaponry hummed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled the Engineer's own mechanical bones, a machine designed to level mountain ranges in a single volley. The Vile Engineer looked up, and up, and up.
"Yep, hell no," he muttered, his voice flat in the sudden silence of the courtyard. "I'm not fighting that shit."
His form instantly disintegrated into a swirling cloud of purple mist, retreating before a single shot could be fired.
The mist reformed in front of Dr. Xenon, who didn't even bother to look up from her console. "I already know you didn't fight Forge Industry," she said dryly.
The Vile Engineer blinked, his mechanical pride clearly wounded. "No shit! That huge-ass gun is literally five times my size! I'm only twelve meters tall!"
Xenon sighed, waving a hand dismissively as if shooing a fly. "Fine. I'll let you borrow my Predators... except my Apex Predator."
The Vile Engineer didn't argue, but he didn't listen either. He marched past her, his heavy footsteps echoing through the high-security containment wing. He reached the reinforced blast doors labeled APEX PREDATOR and wrenched them open with a screech of protesting metal.
The room beyond was bathed in a rhythmic, neon-red pulse, like the heartbeat of a demon.
Standing in the center was the Apex Predator. He was a terrifying evolution of the war machine, encased entirely in a sleek, obsidian-black material. His arms, waist, and lower legs were reinforced with blood-red armor plates that looked as though they had been dipped in gore. He wore a sharp, gray helmet with red accents, housing a single, piercing neon-red eye with a focused, predatory pupil.
Mounted to his right arm was a black quad-barreled rocket launcher, marked with yellow caution tape and glowing orange indicators. A light gray sickle blade was fused to the rear of the launcher, built for close-quarters butchery. His lower left arm housed a devastating flamethrower, fed by a gas tank emblazoned with a black fire symbol.
Both his eye and his left arm began to hum, a high-pitched whine of red laser energy building up, ready to erase anything in his path