He took a step back and looked at a small pedestrial moving up from the ground, on it a pair of shoes and a short sword. -TAKE THEM- A loud voice echoed, and so he did. -PUT THEM ON- it demanded, and he hesitantly did. -THESE SHOES ARE EQUIPPED WITH A BOOST, ENHANCING YOUR SPEED GREATLY- -TO ACTIVATE THEM SIMPLY RUN, THEY BOOST YOU ONCE YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR OWN LIMIT-
The voice went silent again and nothing seemed to happen. He just stood there, wearing thee odd shoes and staring at the sword on the pedestrial. Was he supposed to take it? Should he try the shoes first and just run now? He reached for the sword and lifted it carefully. It was lighter than he had expected and lay unbelievably good in is hand. He swung it a few times and then looked around again. Nothing as far as he could see, only the white floor and ceiling. He began walking, finding the shoes to be comfortable. He wondered how fast he could go with these on, but just as he began to pick up the pace, the voice filled the room again.
-PREPARATION COMPLETE. INITIALIZING: PROTOCOL T1SEQUENCE 1-
The ground suddenly became covered with black squares and the hissing sound was back, only this time with many of them to be heard at once. He stared at white robots coming out of the ground but found them to be dormant. Slowly approaching the closest robot to him, he risked taking a closer look. The robot was black with only the white sockets for arms and legs being an exception. The head was a small cube, making it look very out of place on the human-like structure the body had.
Suddenly, a white line appeared on the cube, with one dot on it. After going left and right a few times, it fixed just in front of the hedgehog, who took two steps back. But nothing else seemed to happen. Next, he noticed that every robot now had the line with the dot on the head, and all were looking at him. At least he thought that the dot was what they were seeing with since there was no indication of anything else that would resemble eyes.
Just as he relaxed a little and wanted to observe the robots a little more, they all raised an arm which opened in the process, revealing a short barrel inside. He stared at the arm, then at the robots face, just to see the line turn red. He turned around and started running. The guns went off, the bullets raced next to and above him. The shoes activated, and he fell to the ground immediately. He jumped back on his feet, amazed that he hadn't been hit yet. The loud gunshots continued, and he ran again until the shoes activated. This time he paid attention to them, seeing why he fell before but the short moment of euphoria from this mental success was cut short when his other foot was boosted forward, making his entire leg fly up and sending him falling on his back. He screamed in pain, got back up and tried a third time. The bullets around him and the robot squad that was closing in on him didn't seem to matter. This time, he concentrated on keeping his balance and when the boost was activated, he started to do a skating move with his feet, moving faster every second. Only when he had put miles between himself and the robots he remembered that he had been chased by robots and wondered about just how bad their aim had to be since he was still alive after what had just happened.
He looked down at the white shoes, then back into the distance where he could see the robots closing in. Should he run again? He figured that there had to be an ending to this white desolation. Or should he fight? He raised the sword, loosened his grip on it to admire the fine work that was put into it. The blade, slightly curved and pointy at the top, was only three quarters the length of his arm, but still felt light in his hand, just as it had when he had first taken it. He looked over his shoulder, but the room just seemed to continue. The stomping noise from the robots got louder as he clutched his fist around the hilt of the sword. Then, he sprinted towards them, gaining speed with every step. Soon, they turned into skating on the shoes, and the robots began to shoot at him again.
He threw himself down, sliding on the ground feetfirst into the first robot. As he got close enough, the sword slashed through the robot's torso, cutting it in half. Still on the ground, he looked back and smiled, but then his sword was shot out of his hand. The other robots had targeted him now that he had slowed down a little bit and tried to surround him. Quickly rolling sideways, he grabbed his sword again and got back on his feet. He lashed out at another robot, damaging it in the process. The next one had its arm sliced off, a third was cut in half. He even began to enjoy this fight, until he finally got hit by one.
The pain surged through his body and he could feel the blood on his back. He stumbled forward, tried to hit another bot, but he just collapsed when he tried to swing the sword. He lay there, all he could see were the robot feet until he saw a big black square about ten meters in front of him.
–SUBJECT: JW44 FAILED. ACTIVATE: PROTOCOL 3. ENTER: SUBROUTINE CLEANSING 1. REBOOT IN PROGRESS. INITIALIZING: CASE 45-
Next thing he knew was that he was carried through a dark hallway. He quickly realized that the ones carrying him were robots, but these were red and black, but the same shape as the white ones he had just encountered. He could also hear a roaring noise but didn't know what it was. The robots carried him through a door and the noise became unbearably loud. Then, he saw what it was. Two rolls of steel with spikes and edges on them were rotating in a large box, stained with a red fluid and drenched with a horrible smell. He knew it had to be blood, and there was no doubt that soon it would be his blood. His inner eye showed him how his flesh was torn apart by the spikes and edges as his bones got crushed in the machine. His organs would be pressed out to whichever side of him was last to be sucked into this thing, only to be shredded a mere second later.
Terrified, he started to move and was dropped by the robots. Apparently, they had thought he was dead, given how startled they were and how easy this escape was. He rolled on the floor to escape their grasp before he got up, finding himself in the hallway. With no time to think, he just ran and slammed the first door wide open that gave him a lesser bad feeling in his gut.
This room was pitch black, only slightly illuminated a few meters in by the dim light from the hallway but he still went in. After a few steps, he stopped dead. Wind! He followed the sensation until he saw a small line of light in front of him. As he got close, he fell to the ground, having stumbled over a few stairs leading up to what was hopefully a door. But when the door to the hallway fell shut, the light disappeared, but free red dots had appeared on the door, along with his own reflection. Then, he heard a humming noise getting closer and when he turned around he was hit by what had to be another robot. It crashed with him through the window that he had mistaken for a door, with glass cutting and stabbing him in the back. Now out in the dark of the night, he could at least see something thanks for the moonlight.
This something was, in fact, a bunch of trees far below him and the flying robot, that had him on top of it. They turned around, and he had to make a decision. He jumped off of the robot, which was irritated by the unsuspected action its captive took. It flew down, catching him by his feet with a pair of claws to prevent this from happening again. But he didn't give up that easily. He pushed his upper body up and punched the robot multiple times on one of its wings, causing it to lose height. Just before they would crash, he punched it on what he identified as its circuit panel which destroyed the bot, making the claws release his legs. He pushed the robot away from himself and braced for the impact. The robot fell into pieces while he simply rolled a few meters. He came to a halt, face to the sky when he saw about five black dots coming from a huge facility on a mountain. Obviously, these were more robots to catch him, so he began to run again.
He came to a stop on a hilltop, revealing a large city in front of him. No lights were visible, but he had no time to wonder about it as he was grabbed again by a robot. He immediately punched the circuit panel, but unlike last time, the robot just malfunctioned, carrying him down the hill to the city. Afraid of falling now, he stopped moving and hoped he would have a safe landing. It was one thing to jump from high up into some trees and hope for the best, but another to jump to certain death. The other robots seemed to have taken notice of his daring and rather unintentional way of fleeing the scene and started to pursue them, while his robot flew across the first smaller buildings, heading straight for the taller ones and skyscrapers downtown. The first shots were fired, as he finally crashed through a big window. This time the robot protected him from the glass, but he bumped into several things before hitting a couch which was knocked over. He then hit the wall and fell unconscious, entirely exhausted from the escape and the injuries, but the other robots were closing in, ready to catch him.