Shard rolled out of the way of a large metal fist that had attempted to stroke him. He got back to his feet, jumped onto the metal arm, ran up the length of it and kicked the head of the huge machine that was ten times his size. You'd think that kicking a plate of metal would hurt or damage his feet, but Shard had experienced something like that in the past and had modified his shoes to have cushioning on the inside that absorbed the force of impact and and put metal plates in the soles of the shoes, allowing him to kick harder and be weighed down during his training sessions to push himself.

He landed on the smooth white floor of the room and looked back up at the huge robot before him.

"You know, for a company that claims to do peaceful research, you sure do make some fuckin heavy duty killing machines!" Shard yelled as he dodged incoming gunfire and deflected stray bullets with his sword.

"Oh come on Shard, we wouldn't put you up against anything that could actually kill you." A voice spoke from the intercom.

"That is a bald faced lie Reginald!" Shard countered as he struggled to stop the large robot hand that was the size of his body from crushing him.

"Now don't be like that, this is all just a simulation...well, most of it...the gunfire and rockets are real."

"The day I snap you're the first to go."

The robot threw Shard to the side and charged him. Shard got to his feet in time to slip through the robots legs while cutting so,e wires with his sword. As the robot crashed into the wall it staggered, giving Shard enough time to jump into the air and furiously slice away at the armour on the back. The metal was too thick to cut in large pieces with the swords he had brought with him, he could easily chop this thing to pieces with one of his stronger swords, but they were expensive to replace.

As the robot turned around and attempted to hit Shard with its huge arm cannon, Shard shot his now dubbed 'Swingshot' at the opposite wall which quickly took him to safety. He reached the wall and dug one of his two places into the wall to stay up there. The robot turned around and shot a trio of rockets at the orange haired swordsman who jumped from his perch.

His foot landed on one of the rockets allowing him to jump again. He jumped towards the robot with his sword pulled back. Time seemed to stop around Shard as he quickly sliced the robot in a hexagon shape before appearing behind it. The robot remained still while shard started slowly sheathing his sword while on one knee. "Shattered Hex." With that he fully sheathed the sword and the robot fell into pieces, the torso now a metal hexagon on the ground while the top of the robot and its limbs lay around it.

Shard used his Swingshot to grab the sword that was stuck in the wall and moved onto the next room.

"Is he actually going to face me now?" Shard asked.

"I'm not sure, it will either be him or some kind of secret experiment of his." Reginald said through the intercom.

"Figures..."

"So, what did you think of our facility?" Plas Proto asked Ditzy after their tour.

"It's...interesting, to say the least...um, was that really a monkey/donkey hybrid back in that last room?" Ditzy asked with worry.

"Yep, fun fact, you can't come up with a hybrid name for them because it will just be the same as one of the two names before hand."

"Don't you think you're playing God merging two species like that?" Rayleigh asked with a slightly hostile tone, fun fact, Shard programmed Ray with morals as well, one of those morals was the sanctity of creation and did not like seeing that kind if tampering with nature.

Plas shrugged. "Hey I'm not involved in the project, I'm with robotics." The scientist then walked towards a door. "I take it you want to see what your friend is up to?"

Ditzy and Rayleigh looked to each other in question before nodding. They walked into a room with a large screen with the words 'Testing Chamber 5' at the top which showed what room the camera was monitoring. They watched as Shard was attempting to fight a swarm of tiny robots with a robot that was uncomfortable with fighting.

"Oh for the love of Kami! Listen! Sometimes, you just need to accept the fact that you need to kill things, to survive!" Shard shouted to the robot. "Here! I'll show you!" He held both if his blades and proceeded to cut down the drones rapidly. "There! It's over! We're saf-Oh son of a bitch!" He yelled as another robot like the one he faced earlier dropped from the ceiling.

Ditzy and Rayleigh watched as Shard proceeded to cut down the huge robot with burning fury, his orange hair and the orange fur on his jacket seeming to burn like fire. "What's happening to him?" Ditzy asked as she watched her boyfriend start to change.

"A little thing passed down from his ancestors, I know it's hard to believe but there is a little curse on Shards family, although it's more if a blessing if you think about it." They all heard a voice come from the door, looking back they saw the boy with the long white hair and open purple shirt standing in the doorway. "Hello there."

"Who're you?" Ditzy asked.

"My name is Symbol Shattered, pleasure to meet you." He walked up to the desk and placed his hands on the table while he watched the screen. "And if you're gonna ask how I know something like that, Shard and I were good friends a few years ago."

"Well I don't know about you Miss Doo but I'm wanting some answers." Rayleigh said sternly while floating up to Symbol. "Would you kindly tell us about this curse that has befallen my master?"

Shard smiled and opened his mouth to speak. "You see-"

Sorry outta time for this chapter, I'm just gonna leave you with that little cliffhanger right up there.

Author's Notes:

I love tortuing you people, I get a sick pleasure out of doing it

There are references to Final Fantasy 7 Machinabridged and Code Ment in this chapter, see if you can find em!

Also, to make up for this I will give you all early access to my new Fallout story, and guess who's in it, Symbol from this chapter

Push the button

Also, if you would like to check out Symbols original story you can find it here

And another thing! If you haven't already you should check out Cut Above The Rest, it's basically my own version of the PoME stories and as some of my commenters may tell you it's worth a read while waiting got the next chapter of this story

Hooray for advertising! I regret nothing!