Chapter 2A When The Robots are Attacking |Makori vs Biskit Dacrawler|

FOR THE SAKE OF MY SANITY,
PLEASE I BEG YOU TO STOP GOING FOR ME.
MY PRESENT SELF WANTED TO MOVE ON ALREADY,
WHY CAN'T YOU ROBOTS LET ME GO FREE?

Date: 15 March 2130; 00:03 (12:03 AM)
Population: 11,562

Makori regretted his decision to abandon Fillian, muttering, “Ah man, what the hell was I doing leaving Fillian alone with Hailey? I just didn’t want to involve myself further with her. I didn’t want her to hate me more. If that happened, she wouldn’t trust me to do this hero thing that people talked about. Although, I never said I would want to be one because I was the villain. I made that robot.”

Sighing at his own thoughts, he lamented, “I wish Miwa was here with me. She always knew how to calm me down.” For a brief moment, Makori thought of Fillian. “Or her... whom I just abandoned... again.”

At that moment, Makori wandered through the sewer, moving back and forth from sector to sector, ensuring there were no intruders while also searching for robot components that could be useful for their day-to-day survival.
“Okay, let’s see. Sectors A to B are clean. The robot disable-ator and CCTV are still in good shape, but no robot parts in any of those sectors. These robots are really getting good at recycling their body parts. It’s almost like, these past few days, there hasn’t been a single piece of junk thrown into the sewer. Oh well, let’s just move on.”

As Makori walked down a corridor to sector C, he heard a voice—a familiar voice.“Makori.”

“Huh?” He turned around, searching for the source of the sound. “Miwa? Is... is that you?”
“Makori,” the voice called again. He tried to follow it.
“Miwa, I... I’m sorry. Forgive me for abandoning you and our kids. I...” He ran toward the voice, tears streaming down his face. “I still love you. I don’t want us to end like this. I...”
But when he arrived at the source of the sound, he was met with a shocking sight. Robots were waiting for him.

“Oh Makori, I’ve been waiting for you,” said one of the robots, a dog-like machine. This type of robot was called a Dacrawler, or Nama D46, designed with a shape similar to a four-legged animal approximately 100 cm tall (about 3.2 feet) and 70 cm long (about 2.3 feet). Like all Namas, it came in various models, and the one Makori encountered was Biskit, or variation 6—a type typically operating in groups of four to twelve, always with a leader.

“Shit, this is not good,” Makori muttered, seeing the four Dacrawlers. He turned and ran back the way he had come, trying to figure out how to stop them.

“Okay, calm down, Makie. You got this. You know their weakness. Just shut down their leader, and the rest will stop.”
As he fled, Makori muttered, “Oh man, why did I even design the blueprint for that thing? Sama must’ve installed that feature on the Dacrawler. It sounded so good at the time.”

Makori referred to the mimic sound wave gadget. Over the years, he had created dozens of gadgets and machines, one of which was the Mimicry device. Unlike a certain detective series’ version that altered wavelengths to change a voice, these robots used AI to gather data from the internet and store it in their memory. This allowed them to mimic voices flawlessly, tricking people by making different individuals hear unique, tailored sounds.

After calming down, Makori thought, “I brought some gadgets with me. One of them is the Holo Physe. I can use this to create a hologram of myself, split it into four, and transfer my consciousness to the hologram the leader is chasing.”

Makori executed his plan. Fortunately, Dacrawlers weren’t advanced enough to differentiate between the real body and a Holo Physe projection—unlike later variations 7 to 10.

"Nice, now I can fight it alone", Makori thought.
Although agile, Dacrawlers weren’t particularly strong, relying on teamwork to hunt their prey. With this in mind, Makori positioned himself in a corner and taunted the leader. Sticking out his tongue, he sneered, “Come and get me, you b*tch.”
The taunt worked. The leader charged at him. Just before it struck, Makori grabbed its jaw and executed a wrestling move—lying down and tossing the robot over his back with his leg. The Dacrawler slammed into the brick wall behind him, breaking apart.

“Ah dang, that was a workout—and at midnight no less. I’m going to be worn out by the time I get back to Center Hall,” Makori complained, wiping his brow.
He inspected the dismantled robot. “This must be one of those police Dacrawlers. They must’ve sent them to search for Hailey and her daughter. Thank goodness they found me instead.”

As he scrapped the leader and the other three Dacrawlers scattered across Sector C, Makori discovered something unusual.

“Oh, what’s this?” He picked up a glowing gem resembling a ruby. “This looks like a Gem Projector. It might contain something important. I need to take this to Gerald’s van and use his Projection Box to see what’s inside.”

After salvaging the robots, Makori made sure to destroy their transmitter gadgets, ensuring nothing could track the scraps he carried back to the base.

Returning to the scene of the encounter, he found the disable-ator damaged by a shockwave and the CCTV offline. “Dang, they really evolved quickly. I need to make more advanced gadgets to stop these robots from getting through. Ugh, how did building machines to stop other machines become my main job? So annoying.”

After repairing the machines, Makori resumed his routine, muttering to himself about how much he hated the new responsibilities thrust upon him.

This chapter has been proofread by Spectrix0