"I only have a regeneration factor of Rank Two and a strength factor of Three. Right now I'm pretty much just as strong as a bodybuilding adult, and only a bit more durable. I hope I figure out more soon though. Or I'll be trapped on the sidelines."
That's probably why it looks like she got her equipment waiver approved. I put a hand on her shoulder in solidarity. "Hey, not everything is about brawn. You're a mechanic-type, right? Between you and me, I think we can build something that makes the best use of your talents." I gesture at my bots and she just now notices them. "You hacked them?"
"Apart, yes. Then I hacked them. With their antennae snipped they probably only work to about twenty meters or so."
A distant boom sounds off from the center of the space, along with more shouts and screams.
"How fast can you move?" I ask.
"Plenty fast with my hoverboard, but I didn't think I'd need it."
"Always keep a mobility option." I hope into one of my robots arms and gesture for her to do the same. After bringing the control board around, I mix a few wires and push a button, and away we go! Princess-carried on a straight line towards-
BOOM!
A massive foot stomps between the buildings as one of the kaiju bots slowly chases a band of fleeing students. I estimate fifteen of them right before they all break up and scatter in different directions.
"Clearly they're playing for themselves," I scoff.
"We don't get any points if we take that thing down," Naomi argues as she dismounts, probably sensing my resolve.
"Who cares? I want to test this baby out," I slap my backpack before taking the board in hand once more, putting my robots into attack mode against the kaiju.
"Fancy a little flying?" I offer Naomi my arm and she accepts, holding tight as I grapnel my way up the nearest skyscraper, just as kaijubot notices the fleas crawling up its leg.
I'll say this for Starry High, they have the foresight to program their bots to go for the knees against anything larger than a standard human.
Unfortunately, whoever programmed these bots sucks at their job, and without the time for a thorough reprogramming, their standard combat protocols amount to lasting just barely long enough for me to finish my ascent with Naomi before they become a smear on a massive ball joint, swatted by a massive hand.
"Well, that sucked," I hitch the tablet down from my right arm before tossing it past the big boy's forward sensors. It takes a step back to process the obstacle as Naomi and I land on its big, flat head.
"Now let's see where your power supply is..." I tap my glasses and the flow of energy and heat inside the bot glow as the tiny electrical pulse I'm putting out from my feet starts to flow through.
"What should I do?" Naomi asks as the kaijubot starts to move again, jumbling us both. I manage to stay standing because of my metal inserts, which happen to be magnetic and definitely not on the list of approved items for me. Anyway, fuck the list.
"I need you to put a hole right there!" I point at a circular spot with a square patch that's been riveted in.
Naomi rushes up as soon as she's able and swings her giant wrench down, crumpling the square hole and popping rivets on each side. Then she reaches back and stows her wrench before grabbing a crowbar and prying it up.
"Only one inch of plate steel? Who the hell do they think I am?" I scowl as I assess the insides. There's a micro fusion core that looks suspiciously like the ones I built for my lairs, but given the need for fusion power, there are so many design constraints it's likely whoever built this one just got lucky in copying me.
Focusing on five seconds into the future, I fully intend to shoot the core with my railgun, and with my precognition, I see a massive ball of light melting the kaijubot into slag before it collapses into a skyscraper. As the seconds pass, one skyscraper falls against another and another, ruining the battlefield for almost a kilometer... "We need to wait for it to get to the crossroads," I say. "Feel free to jump off and I'll join you in a bit."
"How about we try my plan?" Naomi grins, and instead of jumping off, she jumps into the air casting her long crowbard down like a javelin towards what seems to be a servo junction.
It hits true, and I hear one of kaijubot's arms go limp. But that only makes it notice us.
In short order, small cameras swivel towards us from the front, and I stare at the massive hand rising and rotating to flatten us.
"Scram!" I shout, diving for the hole as Naomi jumps away from the bot in a direction I can't decipher from inside.
An emergency siren sounds from the bot and I watch in annoyance as what looks like a very thick blast door closes around the core.
As the seconds pass, the one saving grace from this teamwork disaster is that kaijubot is moving slow enough that I can figure my way around.
There are no moving parts in the hammer-shaped "head" of the thing, so I immediately notice the door with flashing hazard lights.
One quick grapnel later, and I short out the security lock before entering what looks like...
"Oh, ho ho ho ho..." my inner anti-villain tells me to rub my hands together as I behold what looks to be an empty pilot seat, complete with a large screen that says "Autopilot" in angry red letters.
A diagnostic panel shows that the right arm is toast, but I pay more attention to the seat as I strap in and start pushing buttons, only to arrive at a password screen.
"Ugh, what is this? Fenestra '95?" I pry up the radio control panel and spot a bog-standard silicon-to-crystal board. Same with the other three panels. A few adjustments later, and...
There's a low whine as the bot powers down instead of doing what I need it to.
"Dammit you rusty piece of SHIT!" I kick the panel and things hum back to life, right as Naomi clatters into the space behind me.
"Oh thank god! You're alive," she says. "What did you do?"
As kaijubot rumbles back into its stance, I cast her a wicked grin.
I grab the throttle and joystick, feeling the locked-down right-arm buttons before focusing on the feeling of the left-arm controls under the throttle handle. "Buckle in. I'm bringing a mecha to a knife fight."