"I knew you smelled like chocolate soaked in motor oil—" Venom grinned, his tone a weird mix of realization, disgust, and excitement. "No, it's motor oil soaked in chocolate! God, did you plagiarize this look from The Terminator? Did you pay the royalties?"
The Plague Doctor—or rather, the Mecha-Doctor—felt the muscles twitch on the half of his face that still retained human skin. The pupil of his remaining good, human eye contracted slightly.
He raised his hand, his movements still terrifyingly steady, and tore off the other half of the crumbling beak mask, tossing it onto the dirt at his feet with a soft plap.
Exposed to the air were more structures gleaming with cold metallic luster and complex, precise wiring. Tiny electric sparks occasionally popped from the fractured edges with a crack-fizz sound.
"Attacks not within the preset algorithms. The illogical, whimsical ideas that flesh-and-blood creatures occasionally burst forth with... do indeed possess some... unpleasant... merits."
His voice seemed to lose some of the roundness provided by the filter, gaining a more obvious, rasping quality like grinding metal.
He raised his still-human hand, fingertips gently stroking the exposed metal skull with a precision bordering on pity.
"Furthermore," his human eye turned to Venom, the gaze cold, "please do not conflate me with those crude mechanical creations from fantasy fiction. That is an insult to precision engineering."
"How rare." A cold voice cut in.
Wednesday walked out slowly, her black dress brushing silently over the broken branches and leaves on the ground.
Her pale face held no expression, but her eyes, deep as pools, locked sharply onto the Mecha-Doctor's half-human, half-machine face.
"In your intonation, which attempts to mimic human cadence, I actually captured a trace of... genuine anger." She tilted her head slightly, her tone full of probing mockery.
"What? Has having your lack of original design exposed triggered a low-level emotion known as 'humiliated fury'?"
Although Wednesday knew nothing about The Terminator—her movie preferences were strictly limited to black-and-white horror classics—that didn't stop her from seizing the perfect moment for a psychological strike.
"Hey, seriously though," Venom's voice rang out again, full of childlike curiosity, as if the life-and-death struggle just now had never happened.
"Can you transform? Like, click-clack, fingers turning into gun barrels? or a chainsaw popping out of your arm? That's how they do it in the movies!"
Victor let out a hearty laugh from inside Venom:
"Impossible! Stupid Venom! In the movies, those iron guys show up naked and steal other people's clothes and weapons! They can't transform things out of themselves! They're cheap as hell!"
The corner of the Mecha-Doctor's human eye seemed to twitch ever so slightly.
His exposed metal jaw opened and closed, emitting a faint click. The crimson electronic eye flashed rapidly, as if the system were processing some extremely nonsensical, off-the-charts garbage data.
"My design philosophy," he finally spoke, the metallic grinding in his voice heavier, sounding almost like gnashing teeth, "does not include... such ridiculous performance functions that lack practical value and waste energy."
"Oh—" Victor and Venom drew out the syllable in sync, their tone filled with undisguised disappointment.
"Boring," Victor concluded.
Venom nodded his massive head. "Agreed. Not even a decent special effect."
"C-136," the Mecha-Doctor's slow voice sounded. The half-human lips curved into a cold arc, mixed with a metallic rasp.
"I heard that old fool Dr. 062 personally used the thickest catgut to sew that chattering, broken mouth of yours shut on the operating table back then."
A light of near-pleasurable cruelty flashed in his human eye.
"In my opinion, that was probably the most correct decision he ever made in his life, and the most regrettable that it failed to remain permanent."
Before his voice faded, his human hand raised, producing an object from somewhere—
It was a cylindrical alloy sword hilt. The design was minimalist yet radiated a cold, high-tech aura. A perfectly cut ruby sat on it like a drop of congealed blood, refracting ominous light in the dim forest.
"Uh, Venom," Victor's voice carried a trace of hesitation, "why does that thing look so familiar? A sense of déjà vu from a galaxy far, far away..."
Venom's giant white eyes narrowed, revealing an effort to recall.
"Me too. That looks like... something that old man who makes movies dreamt up to scam money..."
Whoosh—!
A beam of scorching light suddenly extended from one end of the hilt!
It wasn't a perfectly straight column of light. Its core was blindingly bright like the center of a star, but the edges wavered and blurred slightly due to terrifying energy overflow, radiating searing heat waves and a halo that distorted the air around it.
The light illuminated the Mecha-Doctor's half-human face like an envoy from hell.
"Holy shit! Lightsaber!" Victor and Venom exclaimed in unison, the massive soundwave shaking the leaves.
Venom looked at the Mecha-Doctor with an extremely weird expression, his massive head tilting to the side, his tone filled with incredulous disdain:
"No... did your lab spend all its funding on copyrights? First you plagiarize The Terminator, now you're doing Star Wars?! Does Lucasfilm know you're playing like this? You're gonna get a cease and desist, bro!"
"SHUT UP!!!"
The Mecha-Doctor seemed like a powder keg instantly ignited. His half-human face flushed and twisted with extreme rage. From beneath the exposed metal structure, there was even a faint fizzing sound like a processor overloading!
His crimson electronic eye flashed madly. For the first time, his voice lost all calm and disguise, turning into a pure, hysterical metallic shriek:
"This is a MUTHERFUCKING PLASMA SWORD! It is a single-soldier high-frequency cutting weapon I designed independently! I invented it BEFORE that damn, stupid, scientifically baseless broken movie came out!"
"Do you understand?! It was ME! BEFORE George Lucas, that damn hippie, put his childish space opera on the screen! I! INVENTED! IT!"
"You idiots poisoned by pop culture!!! Physics! Engineering! THIS is the truth! Not that Hollywood dogshit fantasy!!"
Total meltdown!
He no longer performed any elegant dodges or data reviews. Instead, gripping the hilt with both hands, holding the "Plasma Sword" that radiated terrifying heat and energy high above his head, he roared and charged at Venom with the most primal, violent posture!
The scorching blade tore through the air, carrying the momentum to destroy everything, and slashed down viciously!