Everyone was surprised when the robot stopped moving completely. About ten seconds had gone by and he still didn't move at all.
When everyone was about to open fire, the robot said "So I'm not mistaken after all. It is you. I didn't think you would be here of all places Jason."
"What?" A lot of the high school students asked in unison.
Jason began shaking with fear when the robot recognized him.
"I can barely see your face, but I know it's you. I know you're all wondering how I know him. I never met him personally, but I did see him on one of Krackus's computers. But if you really want to know the story, why don't you ask him?" the robot asked.
One of the soldiers pointed his rifle at Jason and asked "What the hell did you do?"
"Nothing!" Jason yelled as he jumped up as fast he could and started running.
A few seconds later, a laser zipped past Jason's head barely missing his face, and hit a nearby tree to his left. This made Jason stop completely.
"Where do you think you're going? They haven't heard about how you helped us yet," the robot said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Jason yelled.
"Oh really, so what you're telling me is, that you had nothing to do with XJ9's decline? You're telling me that you didn't make that fantastic little speech in the school cafeteria? You're telling me that you didn't make her storm out of the cafeteria in anger? I seem to recall all of that happening. I also seem to recall Lord Smytus putting you up to it, or is my memory chip malfunctioning? Maybe you can clarify any details I might have overlooked; because that's the way I remember it happening," the robot said.
By this time, several people were pointing their weapons at Jason.
"It's just as…I thought. Why would…you help them?" Grace asked while she pointed her shotgun at him.
"I wasn't helping the cluster. I was helping Mr. Green. I didn't know he was Smytus in disguise," Jason explained.
"Nevertheless, you played a part in increasing their chances of losing. With XJ9 out of the picture, it would've been easy to wipe you all out. I wonder what hurts more right now. Is it the fact that they might kill you, or is it the fact that you won't be getting paid that one hundred thousand you were promised?" the robot asked.
"Holy shit! I can't believe you would take part in ending a life for money," a middle school student said.
"I was going to use a lot of that money to help my sick grandmother. She needs an operation, and it's really expensive. I didn't do that simply out of greed, and I didn't know ahead of time the world would be attacked," Jason explained.
"Why should we believe any of that?" a young woman asked.
"Yes, why should you? I'll leave that up to you to decide. Oh, and Jason, where is all that confidence you had before? I actually had some amount of respect when I saw you in those recordings. Now you look like a frightened animal, just like the rest of them," the robot said.
Jason stopped trembling and held his head down in shame for a moment.
He turned around facing the direction that the robot's voice was coming from, looked straight forward with a confident expression, and then said "You're right, I was just like a scared animal for a while. That's not the kind of person I usually am though. I'm not going to let any of this change the way I am. All of you can believe what you want, and you can shoot me to death if you want to as well. I say to you now that I was telling the truth. I'm sorry if I put you in danger, so kill me now if it'll make you feel any better."
Krackus started heading for Jenny directly. Smytus waited a moment before he started heading for her as well.
"I can see now that I'm going to have use up most of my power to beat them should the first plan fail," Jenny thought to herself.
She started firing hundreds of the small white energy balls at them. They both were able to swat them all away. Jenny stopped when she realized that attack wasn't working anymore. Both Smytus and Krackus fired powerful lasers from their hands. Jenny moved out of the way at the last moment and started flying away from them. They followed after her.
XJ3 watched the explosion from the connecting lasers and thought to herself "That's just crazy. There's no way I would survive in a fight with them. Just three of those explosions would be enough to kill me."
Jenny wasn't foolish enough to lead them directly to the factory, so she brought the chase to a much lower altitude. She knew the layout of the city, so she could fly around between the buildings until she reached the factory.
"What the hell are you planning XJ9?" Smytus asked as he fired another laser at her.
He didn't care that buildings were in the way because the laser would tear right through steel and concrete for about a quarter of a mile before exploding. Jenny caught on to that fact and was forced to speed up dramatically in order to dodge and maneuver through the buildings at the same time. The sound from the explosions was very loud. The fact she could sense every time that sound would bounce off of an object or wall was also very distracting. Her pursuers split up and started trying to find ways to intercept her from two different directions at once.
After several attempts to hit her failed, Krackus thought to himself "Hmm…maybe attacking directly isn't the best solution."
He began firing several lasers and rotating shockwaves in different directions. With all the distractions from the random explosions, Jenny started becoming really confused. She had difficulty figuring out which direction to go next. Before she had time to refocus her sensors, she heard a very loud metal clanging noise and found herself heading towards the ground at high speed. Just before she crashed into the ground, she realized that Krackus elbowed her on the top of her head.
Still a little disoriented, she struggled to crawl out of the small crater in the ground that was made with her body. She barely had any time to think before she had to put a huge amount of effort into dodging two more lasers that came from above. Even though she wasn't hit by the lasers directly, she was caught in the shockwave produced by the explosion. The force of the explosion pushed her into a small restaurant on the first floor of the fifteen story building.
"Only two more miles to go. I hope I can survive until then," Jenny said before the entire interior of the restaurant lit up a bright green.
Both Smytus and Krackus fired another laser directly at the building focusing on its base. As they watched the building collapse, they laughed as it seemed as though they might actually have been victorious.
"Is this really the end of the great global defender? Let's just wait and see," Smytus said.