No warning. No sound. No negotiation. Just the sudden, metallic whirrr of something unnatural: and then, a blur of movement that shattered the quiet like a bone snapped clean. It leapt from the treeline like a phantom with weight. A massive mass of mechanical menace: sleek, jet-black plating, bristling sensors, and claws sharp enough to tear steel like fruit rind.
A Robo-Dog. A war-grade predator designed for pure pursuit.
Chidi didn't scream. He didn't have the luxury. He simply obeyed Lù-Qímiào's razor-sharp warning when she screamed: "RUN!"
They bolted toward the open terrain: a clearing that led to the academy's open-field training grounds. The wind tore past their ears as tree branches whipped by. Behind them, the unrelenting thump-thump-thump of the Robo-Dog's pursuit shook the soil.
Lù-Qímiào spared a glance back and cursed under her breath. Not because it was chasing them: but because of how it moved. A hulking force of brutal grace. Effortless. Unbothered. Beautifully horrifying.
It wasn't here to scare. It was here to acquire. And it wanted Chidi. Only Chidi.
She knew because she noticed as she had glanced back that the Robo-Dog's attention was locked on Chidi's direction.
What did he do? She thought in mid-stride. What secret does he hide to attract the attention of an unstoppable war machine built for mass-termination?
She had seen a Robo-Dog before. A glimpse from a view-comm video recording of the Siege of Yānzǔng, a raid that went viral on the Globanet less than a year ago. It leveled an entire platoon in forty seconds. Pure AI aggression. No remorse. No hesitation. One mission: retrieve.
But what was it here to retrieve?
Lù-Qímiào stole another glance at Chidi while she fled; her extra-brilliant mind switching to Deductive-Reasoning mode as she quickly profiled him. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt.
Coming to think of it, it occurred to her that he always wore long sleeves. Always. Even on the hottest days. And now, as the metal beast's glowing sensor locked entirely on Chidi, bypassing her with brutal disinterest, she felt Chidi was hiding something under his long sleeve: but what?
These super-advanced lethal weapons were never wasted on individuals. They were used to level a whole legion. Why him alone?
Incidentally, from the Robo-Dog's point of view, its optics glowed blood-red. Its internal tracking system had latched onto a single target signature: a faint, anomalous frequency resonating from Chidi's wrist: masked, always hidden beneath his long sleeves.
It was whatever Chidi hid under his sleeve that the Robo-Dog was programmed to retrieve. Something no one could imagine existed. A secret which even Chidi didn't fully understand.
"How do we get rid of this thing?" Chidi asked Lù-Qímiào desperately in mid-run.
"This thing is hundred percent bulletproof," Lù-Qímiào replied, breath sharp. "We don't fight it: we keep running!"
And keep running they did.
The school fortress loomed beyond the training fields. Ahead, Master-Bender Splendor-Bullor drilled a line of students in formation combat.
A chorus of shouts ensued. "Palm strikes!" "Dust in the air!" "Discipline in motion!..." Until the noise of the Robo-Dog split the dusky sky.
"CONTACT!" Lù-Qímiào yelled, firing backward as she sprinted.
She didn't expect to slow it down: but she had to try. Her pistol barked sharp bursts, echoing through the field. She dove, twisted midair, and landed in a crouch: firing upward into its flank. The bullets ricocheted like hail off a storm shelter.
Still, it chased him. Ignoring her.
Chidi screamed as the beast lunged: only narrowly missing his back with a mechanical swipe that could have sheared him in half.
The students scattered. A few brave ones tried to intercept, forming an impromptu wall with stun staves and synchronized blocks. One unleashed a pressure wave from a kinetic gauntlet. Another hurled a chain-blade.
The Robo-Dog didn't flinch. It moved like programmed death that it was: steadily swift, untouchable and unstoppable. One swipe and three students flew like dolls tossed in a hurricane.
Some fled. Others maneuvered, but stayed.
Master-Bender Splendor-Bullor didn't do either. The seasoned warrior's eyes narrowed as he turned, sprinting toward the gunnery booth not far away, where the academy's biometric armored suit hung like a sleeping titan. He smashed his palm against the panel. The suit hydraulically hissed, unfolding in response.
He stepped in. Armor locked. Biometric sync engaged. Neural signature confirmed. His body surged with augmented strength. As the helmet sealed with a hiss, a soft HUD flickered across his vision: ACTIVE.
Master-Bender roared as he launched himself forward, the ground cratering beneath his feet.
A student whispered, "He's mechaminding."
They all knew what that meant: he wasn't just armored now, he was war incarnate.
He engaged the Robo-Dog at full tilt, shoulder cannon spooling up, auto-rifles blazing. Metal clashed against metal in an inferno of sparks. The Robo-Dog staggered, momentarily distracted. That's all they needed.
"Go!" Splendor-Bullor bellowed.
Chidi and Lù-Qímiào didn't wait. They turned and dashed up the trail toward the school fortress hill.
The Robo-Dog swiveled with inhuman speed and launched itself toward the Master-Bender. It moved like thunder with teeth. The Master-Bender countered with a palm-mounted energy burst that lit up the field like lightning. Still, it wasn't enough.
But Master-Bender Splendor-Bullor didn't let up. The moment the beast staggered, he seized the momentum.
He pivoted low and slid beneath its throat, dragging his knee into a pivot-spin and unleashing a short-range kinetic burst from his forearm unit—point-blank into its underbelly. The Robo-Dog recoiled, snarling in digitized static.
With fluid precision that belied his massive suit, Bullor kipped up and slammed both armored fists into the machine's flank, sending it tumbling sideways. He was fast. Faster than anyone expected for someone so bulked in mech-armor.
He moved like thunder taught to dance.
The students watched in awe as their Master-Bender twisted mid-leap, landing a flying knee into the Robo-Dog's side, then using the recoil to launch himself off its chassis and backflip onto his feet. His gauntlets lit with plasma-heat. His boots magnetized for traction.
He wasn't just fighting. He was performing a war-ballet.
Every strike was calculated, powered by armor-augmented dexterity and years of lethal mastery. The Robo-Dog's attempts to predict his movements were thrown off by feints, decoys, and sudden shifts in velocity that only a trained mechamind could achieve.
But even with all that, the beast adapted. Quickly.
It swerved under Bullor's next strike, countered with a mid-air twist, and drove its knee-sized claw into his shoulder plate. Sparks flew. Bullor staggered but stayed upright. He drove a reinforced elbow into its head, and for a heartbeat, it looked like he might win.
But then the Robo-Dog's core expanded with a sudden pulse. A feedback surge blasted outward—an EMP ripple laced with sheer kinetic force.
Bullor flew backward and landed several feet across the training field, rolling awkwardly on the ground. His HUD blinked. His balance recalibrated. Systems staggered.
Then, the Robo-Dog lunged—at full charge.
With warrior's Instinct, the Master-Bender quickly adjusted, scrambled up, and charged as well.
They collided. The crash was seismic. The sound traveled for miles. Dust exploded skyward. Students screamed and dropped to the ground.
When it cleared… One stood. The other shattered. The Robo-Dog shook off fragments of scorched armor, largely intact. The fallen fragments were instantly replaced by new ones that grew from inside its mechanical skin. Nanotechnology. Its optics scanned briefly, then locked back onto Chidi.
The Master-Bender's suit, twisted and torn, lay smoking. But he wasn't inside it anymore. He was encased within a translucent crash-balloon, cocooned and alive, having been ejected mid-impact by an emergency bio-launch system. The giant orb bounced once, then twice, rolling down the slope like a drifting meteor before coming to a soft halt in the grass.
"Alive," one student whispered. Others clapped and cheered. But the rest didn't care: they kept running.
The Robo-Dog resumed the chase, its back legs locking into a new sprint mode that made it even faster.
Lù-Qímiào turned to Chidi mid-run. "That thing doesn't stop."
Chidi didn't answer. His breath hitched with panic. Sweat soaked his collar. His sleeve was torn slightly now, and the edge of something glistened faintly on his right arm.
A brace. A hidden relic.
Lù-Qímiào's eyes flicked toward the brace as she stole another glance to check if Chidi was still keeping up. Normally, Chidi would have since collapsed due to sheer exhaustion. But under the life-and-death circumstances he found himself in, he had better keep up. Or die!
He and Lù-Qímiào had made it past the field, legs pumping as the hill loomed closer. But so did the metal beast. It vaulted, blades unsheathing from its shoulders, claws unsheathing with surgical precision.
Chidi nearly tripped. Lù-Qímiào yanked him up. They resumed running.
"What did you do to piss it off?!" she shouted, breath ragged; though she now suspected it had to do with the brace he was hiding.
"I don't even know what that thing is!" Chidi gasped, running like hell.
"Then why the hell is it chasing ONLY you?" she pressed.
Chidi glanced back. The Robo-Dog was gaining. Fast. He doubled his pace and yelled: "Good question!"