I lunged at them, rugby-tackling one and knocking the other off its feet.
They were soon lying broken and dented on the floor.
I noticed that trademark reinforced aluminium armor from the distance.
Oh, no, I whispered to myself in my head. Where do they get all these things? Do they clone them or something?
But there was no time to answer my own question.
Dianne grabbed her machine gun.
Jack cracked his knuckles - successfully, this time.
I felt my body become tense.
I knew - we all knew - this this was the one.
The final battle.
The one that would decide the fate of the world.
We sprang into action.
Dianne shot like crazy, but still carefully in order to avoid us.
Jack threw his magic snowballs.
I swiped and shot lasers.
For a moment it looked like we were winning - that is, before the reinforcements were sent in.
That was when I'd noticed that Jack was missing; again.
I heard the rumble of thunder in the distance.
Then I found Jack.
I stared up at a ledge that was probably higher than six two-story houses put on top of the other.
Dianne threw a karate kick at a robot that was much, much taller than her, which sent it crashing to the ground.566Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz8JSukiSFk
She looked up.
And gasped.
There he was, standing in the path of an old enemy, a determined look on his face.
His opponent?
The evil robot cowboy.
He was dented, scratched, and overall in a bad shape from our last face-off, but his eyes were still red and glowing more fiercely than ever.
And he was armed as well.
Jack started to form his snowballs.
He launched them at top speed; but, just at the last second, the dark cowboy unleashed a photon shield.
That sent the ice flying straight back.
Jack found himself stuck in his own ice.
He couldn't move.
The dark cowboy revealed a photon gun.
He loaded it up.
Dianne looked on in horror.
I couldn't move.
Jack got a small purplish ball out of his pocket - the mini-bombs that Dianne had made earlier - and threw it.
Instead of blowing up, however, it seemed to implode in on itself.
A dud.
This was really not the time for this.
The dark cowboy pulled the trigger.
There was an explosion of light and for a brief moment I stopped breathing.
"No," I whispered. "NO!"
A boy with grey-ish white hair toppled over from the side of the ledge and plummeted down.
Dianne rushed over to the spot where he'd landed, but I didn't bother.
There was no point in saving a dead man.
I could see Dianne searching for a pulse.
She looked up at me with tears beginning to form in her eyes.
"Nothing."
She whispered it so faintly, as if she didn't want it to be true.
We didn't want it to be true; and yet it was.
I felt some new-found rage fill my body.
And I knew just what to do with it.
I looked back at Dianne, who was still cradling Jack's head in her arms.
I shot her a look that said, Get up and get fighting. There's no point in dying over an already dead person.
She was up in an instant, and fighting just like she used to.
We heard another, louder rumble of thunder.
We knew there was going to be a rainstorm - perfect timing for a big robot battle.
I left Dianne fighting on her own and ran inside, past all the now-deserted corridors.
I'd completely memorized the passage.
To the nuclear core.
Which I was going to blow up.
I reached the room, picked the very old-fashioned lock, and pushed the door open.
There, in front of me, was... a strange, luminescent, green... thing.
It was stored inside a thin glass capsule, attached to numerous pipes and tubes, which I easily removed.
The Nuclear Core, I guessed. The one that supplies power to millions of labs like this worldwide. If I blow it up, then... all those labs will have no power. They will all shut down. All these robots will run out of power, or eventually wear out with nothing to replace them.
This thing could save the world - or destroy it.
All that power... it could potentially blow up Earth.
But would that be better than an Earth populated with a perfect, robotic human race?
I thought of Jack and the sacrifice he'd made.
Why not?
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