“It’s you! Psykter lied to me!” yelled Claw Machine.

  Non tossed his badge into the air and summoned Icosian.

  Non jumped atop the serpentine metal rails of a zigzag animal queue, stepping from rail to rail. Years of odd jobs in stockyards paid off. Claw Machine tried to plow through fences designed for multiton animals, then bent and broke them with his claws. Though the top iron rails yielded to the robot’s strength and ego, it realized the non-optimality of cattle panel mutilation.

  “Come back!” yelled Claw Machine. The winds picked up as Claw clambered over the panels.

  Near Non, a bakery’s windows turned white as flour clouds filled the building. Church bells rang wrong. Rails sang in harmonic frequencies. Non vaulted a wooden beam sweeping under him, then stopped at a cart loaded with bricks.

  Non put his feedbag over his muzzle, then tossed Icosian behind himself for the robot to catch as the storm escalated.

  Claw Machine paused there, holding the black staff, watching the equitaur warily. “Are you–”

  Non snatched a croissant from the air, cramming halves into his ears. He leaped to the side of a brick wagon as the bakery exploded. He backed away as his staff pulled the fire-engulfed robot into the red zone. Tons of brick hit Claw as Icosian vanished. Non followed a green zone flow by spinning with the eddy currents in the turbulence prediction map. Leaping atop a spinning cart seemed safe. Standing again, Claw Machine ran towards the rolling equitaur.

  To assess his predictive timing, Non gestured to the double doors of a brewery, which blasted inward as he barrel-rolled off the cart. Then his entire local area went to elevated risk. The taur timed a series of jumps and steps atop fallen beams.

  “Help!” someone yelled above, flung from a compromised apartment.

  Non ran towards the crumbling building with two objectives: first, to catch the falling person and second, to not get crushed. He sped up and slammed Icosian down with a Stay command, holding on and swinging about it. A Free command let him slide backward, but he added an acceleration vector in the direction opposite his slide, adjusting to catch the falling man in his arms as he stopped. He fluidly galloped away from the building collapse as bricks and debris slammed down behind him.

  “Thank you,” yelled his passenger, looking back over Non’s shoulder. “I’m the super, was trying a last check. That archway has a storm shelter.”

  Non set the man down near the shelter door as it opened. “Get in and get that closed.”

  The taur then raced towards a meeting with Claw Machine as a waterspout tornado and a good part of the harbor came their direction. He waved to Claw Machine just before a 12 meter fishing boat slammed down on the robot, but kept moving as his map turned red again. He jumped atop Claw’s new ruined boat, keeping an eye on a large airborne, reinforced part of the shipyard.

  Non landed atop the sudden wharf effect, which slanted from the boat to a cathedral at a 30° angle. High winds pushed Non backward and upslope, part of his safe zone choreography. As the sturdy pier rolled atop the collapsing roof, Non sidestepped from the top to side to bottom of the structure. As Non dégagéd, a battered Claw Machine stormed up the rolling dock.

  Non’s skin tingled. As his mane stood on end, he tossed Icosian to the robot and vaulted through the open roof at a stained glass window of the Galactic Core. A lightning bolt struck the staff and robot.

  Non hit the lovely SBH image, then slid down a mesh of lead and colored glass, blowing out much of it. His two left hooves found purchase on the window’s base ledge while his hand grabbed the leaden mesh.

  With his free hand, Non aimed a finger gun. The robot scoffed, staying in the path of the falling steeple. As Here snatched Icosian away, a five-ton bronze bell smashed the robot into the altar while Non made a vector-assisted wall slide to the church floor near the narthex. All the organ pipes sounded.

  Non opened the church entrance door anyways. Above the organ mourn, Claw Machine heaved the bronze bell off itself. While the tornado tore through the reredos behind the altar, Non tried to run past the surprised mechanical bird, but it wing-slapped him to the ground. The two minions moved to get flanking positions. Through angry, violet eyes, the bird glared at Non, yelling something, then gesturing with its wings before winds caught them. Another flanker got sucked away into the vortex.

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  Non rolled onto a sign for SOFAS just before it went airborne, rolled off it as it reached a rooftop, dodged a shredded sofa and parkoured off a wall, moving as quickly as he could to the nearest safe zone. One of the combat gear guys, Donovan by the nametag, looked back and forth between Non and the tornado. Out from the ruined cathedral, a badly pew-pew-pewed Claw Machine limped into sight. Donovan shot at the robot. When Non ran past a gray metal dome, it opened up. The dome became the wings for the 3 meter robobird, violet eyes focusing on Non amidst the violence.

  In front of a smithy, the map marked a bus-sized nickel–iron anvil as safe, so Non hopped atop it to plan out his next ten seconds as his maps refreshed. A large automatic vice built into the anvil looked like an appropriate Terminator-type solution for Claw Machine. Or maybe the array of brick-size magnets with interstitial wooden beams proclaiming Danger: Supermagnets! Non used Icosian to fling a cast iron pot at the bird, but it wing-slapped the pot away.

  Donovan lost the assault rifle to Claw Machine. A laser dot soon lit between Non’s eyes. The airborne badge bent bullet paths away as the clip emptied three shots at a time. Claw seemed surprised Non wasn’t dead, then pointed to Non’s badge before flinging the gun at the bird, who wing-swatted it away just as it reached the anvil near the bank of supermagnets.

  Clank! Clank! The metal wing slammed into the magnets, followed by a talon. The other wing reached for the automatic vice, which helpfully tightened around the wing automatically.

  The wind finally lessened enough that Donovan’s screams could be heard.

  “How are you doing this? You’re a filthy fantasy creature!”

  “I’m using Tollmien and Gollub, not Tolkien and Gollum,” said Non, taking a book from the sash of the momentarily trapped bird. As Claw Machine limped closer, Non slid the book into his feedbag and flipped off the slab before dressaging to the new safe zone, leading the robot on.

  A chain and anchor shop had a giant magnet crane on the roof. Non slowed his lope to plan his next action as the now three-clawed robot followed.

  The equitaur taunted Claw Machine with slow moves, dodging a flurry of attacks. He kicked the robot back and walloped it with Icosian. One jab disabled another robot arm. When the zone turned unsafe due to airborne sailcraft, Non backed into a toystore and up the stairs to a free play zone, then over to a shelf of boardgames near more stairs.

  Non held the game Yahtzee and gestured upward. To his surprise, the robot retreated.

  The luxury yacht Mirror Mansion slammed upside-down on the street and building, missing Claw Machine by a meter and Non by four. The whole store now a danger zone, Non raced up the stairs to the roof, looking for safety. The returning tornado, damaged building and killer robot limited his options. Non backed into the hull-torn yacht, walking on the ceiling between mirror-polished steel walls that reflected to the light limit. Claw Machine followed. Non’s staff dented the robot and parried claw hits while the areal tracked screen within Claw’s visor fed the robot’s eyes faulty info on Non’s position.

  As the robot noticed the disparity between reflections and unreflected vision, a claw clamped down on Non’s left forearm. The mirrored elevator door dinged and opened next to Non, so he flung Claw machine into it and pressed the Up button while parrying the other claw. Just before the door closed, he summoned Icosian alongside his forearm and pushed, levering the claw open so he could pull his arm away.

  The upside-down elevator dropped away without the counterweight. The whole yacht moved on the street before the interior lights went out, but an ⊥IX? sign lit up on the floor.

  Non managed the smooth slopes of the upside-down staircase as the whole structure vibrated. He landed on the bottom/top, hoping to open the door, but his weight tore through the floor/ceiling, dropping him down into a half meter of water. Across a tempest, a waterspout twirled in the remains of the dock as the yacht groaned, vibrated and fell apart above him. Claw Machine peered through Non’s exit. ‘Time to make like a hippopotamus.’

  As Claw Machine dropped, Non torpedoed through the water with a series of leaps, then rappelled up onto a low roof with vector assistance, keeping his broken arm to his chest. He turned to see his pursuer kicking at the resilient door of a weapon shop, then leaped back down to get closer.

  A weapon blasted Claw Machine backward from the shop door. It landed on its back, both right arms gone. As the door shut, Non slammed Icosian down on the protective plates for the mechanical neck, using his unbroken arm. He got the shoulder plate off with the next two hits.

  Large splinters drilled into Non’s side just as Claw Machine started getting back up. Non vaulted back to see beams whiz through his former location. Then the building next to him started collapsing, a heavy fa?ade with just a few small windows. Non tried to figure out the hinge, circular arcs and safe spots.

  Claw Machine stood up, ignoring splinters. It snatched a beam out of the air, then advanced towards Non, who had reared up on his hind legs to fit his body through a narrow window.

  Icosian pulled out of Non’s hand, affixing in space as the fa?ade slammed onto it. Non would have missed the window by a left upper shoulder and most of his left lower body.

  “Missed me by that much,” said Non, his words lost in the storm. Claw limped forward as Non got clear. He then summoned Icosian to his good hand, dropping the fa?ade and crushing the android under it.

  Claw ripped up through the debris before falling again. Then got back up, smoking and sparking. Non brought his badge to his hand.

  “Claw Machine, you’re under arrest. Please, stay down.”

  Claw hopped menacingly, so Non kicked the robot’s unprotected right side. Non sighed as Claw tried to get back up, so he followed up with fifteen neck hits until the head separated from the body, skidding towards rubble. Non leaned on his staff as he ensured the robot had stopped moving.

  The polycarbonate plate of the head popped off. A smoke-coughing hamster covered with electronics and blood looked out from the head at Non for a moment, then scurried into the pile of rubble. Non recalled Swee telling him that Claw Machine was a hamster in a mecha.

  “Dammit!”