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7. So, What Am I Good At?

The sun was setting over the blue forest, its last rays refracting and reflecting into the icicles on the branches of tall trees. It was the perfect time to sneak outside and grab some resources.

Hilarion pushed the lid off the rock pile of the hideout and stepped onto the snow outside, crackling being heard from under the soles of his gray boots. He was dressed in a white, hooded jacket with multiple patches on the chest and back. His legs were protected by white cargo pants. His shotgun was on his back, holding on to him with a light gray strap.

Nargirata was next to come out. She wore a white, fluffy, hooded coat and matching tights. Her feet were inside white shoes.

Corby found her tights dressing choice unusual for the extremely cold weather. He had the hooded jacket and the thick sports pants on along with white boots. Yet mild chills still reached his skin.

All three of them wore their bandannas covering their faces' lower sides, and white gloves covered their hands.

Ora stuck out like a sore thumb, being dark blue and zipping around above the snow. Fortunately for the team, she did her best to fly under the branches of trees and didn't shine the lights of her eyes and fake mouth, keeping herself hidden as much as possible.

"We're going to mine for the ore, right?" Corby asked.

"Yeah," Hilarion said.

"Shouldn't we have pickaxes or something?"

"We will have. We've left two of them hidden at the base of the volcano so we don't have to carry them all the time."

"Volcano?!"

"Yeah, don't worry. This little volcano's been inactive for over ten thousand years according to geological studies. It probably won't be erupting any time soon."

"Hopefully," Corby said.

After walking for about an hour, they reached the edge of the forest. Up ahead there was just snow, rocks, and the volcano towering at the center.

Corby squinted at it. " 'Little' volcano?"

"Dude, have you been paying attention to geography classes?" Hilarion said. "This one's the Red Dwarf. The biggest volcano this planet has is the very active Big Yowler, and it's on the other end of Hades."

"I've never been absent during geography classes. I guess the stress made me forget some things."

"Heh, too bad we don't have any walnuts. Might have helped your memory a bit."

Once they reached an area where red rocks were piled up, Nargirata dug into the pile and brought out both of the pickaxes. She held one out to Hilarion. "One for me and one for you."

He took the pickaxe and said, "Thanks."

Corby raised his right hand. "What about me? I want to mine too!"

"You're in no shape to mine, bro," Hilarion said. "When you'll put some muscle on those bones, then you'll get to swing one of these."

"Not fair! What am I here for then?"

"You're here for what you're good at."

Corby stared at Hilarion in confusion. "So, what am I good at?"

"Cooperating with Ora. Tell her to look into the future, so that we can know for how long we'll be safe here."

"Fine. How long is the mining going to take?"

"About fifteen minutes. We don't need too much ore for now, but it's great that you're here with us so you can help us carry more than usual."

"Okay. Ora? Predict what will happen to us within the next fifteen minutes!"

"Right away, Corby," Ora said, landing next to him and folding her wings. She spread her glowanade strings, reaching all the way to the city.

Corby checked his papyrus device and saw the video Ora had sent. "Any important events?"

Ora sped up the video while a timecode appeared on the top right of the screen. "Yes. Triumvirate forces patrolling the area will reach us after approximately five minutes."

Corby saw how the minotaurs in the video came and shot him and his team. Then the drones arrived and flew all over the place, searching the area in case they missed other fugitives. Focusing on the present, he folded the device and put it into his jacket's pocket. "We need to move fast."

Hilarion and Nargirata proceeded to smash a three meter tall wall of red and gray rock with their pickaxes. They continued to chip away at it until Hilarion found two cubic-shaped silvery metals.

"Magnetite!" he said, pulling out the cubes with pieces of gray and red rock still hanging on to them.

"I found three here!" Nargirata said, collecting the ores.

Hilarion resumed smashing the wall. "Keep mining. We still have a few more minutes. Good thing our modifications allow us to somewhat see in the dark. Portable light sources would be too risky to have here."

"Guys, I think we should pack up," Corby said, keeping his voice low. "I hear drone buzzing."

Indeed, the buzzing grew louder. The enemy was approaching fast.

Hilarion and Nargirata grabbed a few small pieces of magnetite they could see inside the cracks of the wall and pocketed them before hiding their pickaxes in the rock piles.

"Corby! I see a minotaur!" Ora said.

"Shh! You're giving away our position!" Corby whispered. He grabbed and pulled her behind the rock wall. "Guys, we need to lay low and hide behind rock piles and stuff until we can get back to the forest."

Hilarion held his shotgun in his hands. "I'm gonna blow those minotaurs' heads off if they get too close." A loud buzzing caught his attention. "Drone!" He pointed the weapon at the black, cross-shaped thing that almost blended into the night sky, then he pulled the trigger.

The drone exploded in the air, and pieces rained down onto the snow.

Hilarion saw an opportunity there. "Nargi! Pick those up! Gramps might need them!"

Nargirata shoved all of the drone pieces into her pockets and joined him and Corby in hiding behind the wall.

"They might have seen where the drone fell," Corby said. "They'll be here in no time if they did."

A choir of buzzing could be heard coming from the forest. Even worse, a minotaur was already at the edge of the forest, scanning its surroundings while holding its miniguns ahead of itself.

"Nargi, be prepared to throw a grenade if the minotaur gets too close," Hilarion whispered.

Nargirata nodded while lifting the bottom of her coat, showing him the four grenades she had on her belt.

Hiding behind a rock and still holding Ora in his arms, Corby peeked to see the enemy robot. Keeping his voice down, he said, "Ora, I've got an idea."

"I'm listening," she said out loud.

The minotaur heard her and shot at the rock, blasting pieces off it.

"Damn it, Ora!" Corby said. "Drain it! Drain it before it kills us!"

"Will do."

The minotaur found itself covered in the blue extensions Ora had sent out. All of its energy got drained, letting its body go limp and crash heavily on the ground.

Two more minotaurs showed up and noticed their fallen squadmate.

"Ora, I'm about to do something crazy. I need you to slowly drain my glow while I take control of that inactive minotaur. Do it!"

"Understood!" She connected a blue glowing extension from each of her claws to the back of his head.

Corby's eyes glowed bright violet as he brought out an extension of the violet glow out of each of his fingers. The round ends of the wires seeped into the fallen minotaur and made it get up.

"I'm in complete control of it!" Corby said. "I … I can even see through it!"

As he puppeteered the husk, he used it to aim at the active minotaurs who did nothing in reaction to seeing their squadmate point its right gun at them. They all got shot until their armor was penetrated by the bullets and their important interior parts were destroyed.

"Yeaaaaaaaaah!" Corby yelled. He made the minotaur shoot at two drones that showed up above it. "This is fun!"

Another minotaur showed up. It didn't find it strange that the puppet's eyes glowed violet, nor that there was violet circuitry connecting the ground to its feet. All it cared about was to find the fugitive who made the noise.

Corby grinned. "Ora, drain that one too! I want to see if I can multitask."

Ora extended a third circuit line of her glowanade and connected it to the enemy minotaur, fully draining it. "It has been drained."

After retracting his left hand's glowanade wires, Corby sent them into the other minotaur and ended up controlling two husks at the same time. "Whoa! This is … surreal! I'm seeing from three places at once! H-how is my brain even able to process all of this information?"

"It is pre-processed by the minotaurs' visual chips. Your brain is taking this no differently than having two semitransparent, hallucinated screens in your visual field."

"You can control the police robots?!" Hilarion said as Corby made the two minotaurs dance.

Ora said, "Glowanade allows for proxying through anything that contains processing units relying on the organic paste Cereconnect produced by Kimiatronica. This paste is similar to cerebrospinal fluid and blood plasma according to the study published by Anthony Bohral."

Hilarion laughed. "For a guy who used to be an infomercial salesman and who named glowanade in the vein of a cleaning product because it looked like glowing lemonade to him, Bohr sure takes his new job as lead scientist seriously."

Corby made the minotaur puppets shoot the enemy minotaurs as soon as they came into sight. When two drones arrived to shoot at him, Corby hid behind his puppets and made them fire at the drones.

Three more drones showed up. This time they aimed at Ora.

"Ora! Get behind my minotaurs!" Corby said.

Ora did as told, and was shielded by the bulky bodies of the puppets.

After shooting down two of the drones, Corby had an idea. "Ora! Drain that last drone!"

Ora launched a glowanade extension at it and absorbed the drone's energy. The drone was about to crash, but Corby gave up controlling a minotaur and grabbed the flying machine with his left hand's violet wires, keeping it airborne. He received video feedback from the drone's view. "Awesome! Night vision in bird's eye view!" he said. Curious to find out what else the drone could do, he stumbled upon another of its vision modes. It made everything be seen in purple, red, orange, and yellow – the latter three colors being present on him and the others of his crew. "Oh, crap! They're equipped with thermal vision! We're as bright as suns to them!"

"I guess the forest can't help us hide from these," Hilarion said.

"We need to get out of here right now!" Corby told him. He focused on the drone and tried to get a better view of his surroundings, but lost connection to the machine after hearing a few shots come from above. He saw the pieces of his drone crash a few meters away from him, exactly over the inactive minotaur's head, which got crushed upon impact. "There goes our sentry."

Two more drones arrived and aimed at him. He hid behind the minotaur over which he still had control, then used it to shoot the enemies down.

"Let's get back to the hideout before they bring a whole fleet of those!" Hilarion said.

Corby pouted. "But I'm having so much fun!"

"Corby, do you want the Triumvirate to carpet bomb the whole forest?" Ora asked.

"Damn. I forgot about their hydrogen bombs. Okay, heading back sounds like a good idea. I'm taking the minotaur with us, as it might prove useful."

"It might be useful if taken apart and having its components modified to no longer rely on chips that have the Cereconnect paste," Ora said. "Otherwise, the enemy can just take over it since your glowanade gets absorbed by theirs."

"If they do that, then you can take over it and absorb theirs."

"Proxying takes too much energy. My glowanade cannot be used that way for too long."

"I could keep recharging you," Corby said, still connected to her and the minotaur while going into the forest.

"The enemy would just absorb your glowanade, so you wouldn't be able to do that," she said.

"If they do that, you can absorb their glow and recharge yourself."

"I would lose control over the proxies while I'd aim to absorb the glowanade. If they come in great numbers, the enemies would then easily dispose of the proxies."

Frowning, Corby said, "Then how are we going to make use of this thing's weapons? I doubt we have the tools to make chips that don't require the use of that paste thing, so how are we going to control them?"

Hilarion butted in. "Gramps can turn the weapons into mostly manual ones. He just has to replace the chips with a switch and hook a battery to it."

"Good to know I'm not 'driving' this thing all the way there for nothing."

With a bit of luck, the scavenging team didn't run into any more of the Triumvirate's forces. They made it to the hideout's rock pile and prepared to get in.

"Corby, throw the minotaur in first," Hilarion said while moving the entrance rocks away.

Corby made the minotaur run into the hole and allowed it to go down tumbling until it landed loudly at the bottom of the pit. "It's in."

There was a big grin on Hilarion's face. "Gramps is gonna love this!"

"Great capture, Corby!" Samuel said, inspecting the robot that lay on the ground near his house. "This is going to provide lots of metal and two really good guns."

"Glad I could help." Corby said, then grinned.

"I wish the journey would have lasted longer," Ora said. "I liked being connected to you."

He did his best to ignore that last comment, even though it unnerved him how much Ora liked doing that to him. At least he didn't have to deal with the headaches when he used his glowanade while she drained some of it.

"Well, Gramps, it's time for Nargi and I to go home so we can kick back and relax for the night," Hilarion said before winking at Nargirata.

She smiled and winked back at him while taking off her hood and unwrapping her twintails from the bun she had behind her head. Then she grabbed him by the right hand with her left, and they both turned to leave.

"Good night, you two!" Corby said, waving at the couple.

"Good night!" they cheerfully said together.

Samuel patted Corby on the left shoulder while facing him. "You should recover some energy after all the trouble you've been through. I've made you some vegetable soup. I hope you'll like it."

Corby grinned. "Thanks! I sure am hungry!"

It was almost time for bed, and Corby prepared the pajamas and his boxer briefs by putting them on his bed. "Nice of Vanessa to wash my old clothes for me. I didn't expect her to be such a caring person."

Ora, who sat on the bed and stared at him, spread out her wings for half a second before hiding them.

Corby noticed the sudden movement and looked at her. "Did something startle you?"

"No," she said, lowering her head. She jumped on the ground and dragged herself away from the bed. "You can change your clothes now. I won't look."

"I'm glad you actually took note of my preference." He proceeded to change clothes, and once he was done, he said, "You can turn around now."

She turned around and stared at him as he took his day clothes and put them on the chair, where his wooden ladle rested. Just when he was about to get into bed, she said, "Corby?"

He looked at her. "Yeah?"

She crawled a bit closer. "I have something to tell you."

He raised his eyebrows. "Go ahead." The next second, he wished he hadn't said that.

Ora spread out her elytra and wings as her eyes glowed brightly. She used her glowanade to turn off the lights, leaving only her blue glow. She wanted to make sure Corby could only see her as she used her extensions to form an angular, circuitry-themed heart outline on the floor. "I love you."

Corby stared at her for a moment, his face illuminated blue. When the room's lights came back on, he let out a nervous laugh, then said, "That's … cute. Well, good night, Ora." He turned off the lights, got in bed, and wrapped himself in the blanket.

She stood there, her wings still out and stiff. "That's it? You're going to bed, just like that?"

He shrugged. "What did you expect me to do? Marry you? You're a robot, Ora. You can't love. Good night."

Her right wing twitched a few times as she sat in utter silence for five seconds, processing what had just happened. Seeing that Corby continued to ignore her, she made her lights fade out and allowed the darkness to set in.