The world of humans is no more. What was once a technological utopia that humans created from their bloodshed has crumbled. Their ignorance and infidelity has spun out of control, destroying their own power. Their testaments of advancement are nothing but old relics of the past, memories of their sins. The only invention left active of the humans is lifeless metal, killers smelted into metallic forms.

In the ruins of the humans’ monument of prosper, a figure jumps through the scenery, blending itself into the surroundings. More beings enter through the wreckage, aware of the first presence. As each step onto each building occur, cracks appear, the stability of the structure losing itself. Eventually the first shadow reveals itself...
“Looks like I lost them…” A young man frowns as he stands at his threshold. His cobalt tunic with long auburn sleeves, his dusty pants, both lightly torn as he treads through the ruins of a forgotten city. The young man's face is free of dirt, his wild brown hair covering both his forehead and part of his neck. His dark eyes, void of sadness, scan the ground in front of him. He punches his hands in determination. The area around him starts to crumble and a loud buzzing noise echoes. In spite of this, the young man wanders about. “This noise…seems like I‘ve taken those security bots too lightly.” The man ponders as he swats through the dust. He moves a number of yards before stopping. “D*mn, I really should have thought this through…C’mon; you have to think here, Amon. They’re closing in on me. These things are really a pain.” He respires deeply as he takes a glimpse at his surroundings. But then again, if I have nothing on hand, then I guess I’ll improvise.” Amon runs through a crevice to rest in. He wipes his face and sits down. The chill from the cold rubble flows up in his body. He continues to respire heavily; the immediate environment starts to take its toll him. The buzzing noise grows louder, the presence Amon felt creeps closer to him. Amon closes his eyes as he waits.
“Five…four…three…two….one.” Three robots surround the crevice where Amon lies in wait. The robots move, the spherical bodies’ whir, their claws clanking as the inch forward. Their blaring lights shine pierced through.

“HUMAN NUMBER #321229315, WE DEMAND YOU GO OUT NOW, AND YOUR PUNISHMENT WILL BE TAKEN LIGHTLY,” stated the robots. “COME OUT IN PEACE OR YOU SHALL BE TERMINATED.

“A light punishment or be terminated you say,” questioned Amon. “To me, they’re both one and the same!” He rushes out and wrestles with one of the robots. The other two start transforming their claws into weapons. The blades that appeared are stain with blood, the humans they have killed color the weapons with crimson.

“THE PUNISHMENT FOR RESISTANCE IS DEATH.”

Amon reaches the automaton’s control panel and tinkers through it, taking control of it for himself. He makes his own transform as well.

“Two against one and a human, seems fair enough.”

The two robots charge through, straight at Amon. He quickly pushes his own robot into them, their weapons crashing into each other’s bodies. Amon’s robot starts a self-sequence.

“I hope this can kill them off before they repair!” Amon starts running away from the scene. As he runs off, he hears a faint explosion in the distance. Amon does not look back, pacing himself as he runs back to the place he calls home. As he reaches his homeland, he lays down on a nearby cliff, gazing at the sky. The darkened clouds and gray sky loomed over him.

“Looks like I’m not the only one sad,” Amon sighs. He slowly closes his eyes, his body follows suit.

The skies darken as Amon rested. Eventually later, an old man approached where Amon’s body lay. The old man had a weak demeanor; the tattered robes completely enveloped his deteriorating body. The wind moves the elder's gray, magnificent beard. His head on the other hand, has cleared itself of any hair. The old man sets aside his cane and slowly kneels down next to Amon. He reaches Amon with his pale, weak arms and smacks Amon awake.

“Ow! What the-?” Amon turns his vision to the old man. “Oh it’s you, Jakob.”

“Still at it with the names eh, boy?” Jakob rasped.

“Well it is your name.”

“Was. It was my name, boy. We humans don’t deserve to keep such folly.”

“Still on about that, eh? Whatever, what do you need?” Amon gets up and stretches his arms.

“Where the h*ll have you been?”

“Well you know, killer robots, had to go split town for a while, the normal life.”

“Things like that will get you killed eventually.”

“I rather die like a hero rather than a dog.”

“There are no heroes anymore. We don’t have a right to survive anymore. The age of man is gone-”

“No!” Amon shouted. “Thinking like that is why we’re enslaved now. So your world is gone, so what? We’re just going to lie down and die against these robots without a fight?”

“Our creations have always emulated us. Our apathy put into form; an extension of our bloodlust. Yet we didn’t think of the consequences.”

“Well what happened is all in the past. There’s no need to think like failures now.”

Jakob’s eyes widen, the gray skies reflect off his irises. “Failures you say?” His voice attempts to rise up. “Don’t you understand that ignorance like that is why we died out!? I may have taught you everything you know, but you’re still a selfish child. You may think you’re a hero, but you’re not different from the idiots before this world went all to h*ll. We humans… we have lost. We lost ourselves in the chain of evolution. We don’t even know how this all happened and yet…” Jakob breaks down in tears. He starts to cough, his body starting to fail on him.

“Jakob…” Amon pulls Jakob up. “Look, let’s just go to the village. Everyone is going to get worried if both of us are gone.” Amon puts Jakob’s arm around his shoulder and walks him down the hill. They reached the village, as desolate and run-down as a slum. The broken down huts, the number of rusted barrels used for sleep, the sand trailing everywhere. The air mixed with smog; the stale feeling ridicules the complexion on Amon and Jakob. Some villagers walked out of their steel homes to look at the pair. Their clothing was in no better condition than Jakob's. The children among the onlookers give Amon a smile as they pass by. Amon returns one in kind. Amon reaches the hut where Jakob himself lived; Amon remembers the brownish glow it gives off. To Amon, this hut is his own home. The cold flat steel from a barrel became a makeshift bed. Amon puts Jakob on the bed and heads outside. One of the children went up to Amon.

“Amon!” The child grinned. His robes covered the dirty body as he wiggles. “I’m happy you were able to fend off those robots.”

“Well I was taught well.” Amon looks back inside Jakob’s hut.

“I wanna fight too, Amon!”

“Sorry kid, but you’re still too young.”

“Aw, but I want you to teach me how to be a hero.”

“A hero huh…” Amon looks at the kid. He sees himself as a child; his own voice echoes the same words. “All right then, someday I’ll teach you to be a hero.”

“Yay!” The kid starts spinning around. “I can’t wait to become a hero!”

“Look now can you go play off somewhere else for a bit,” Amon asked. “The old man here needs some rest.

“Oh okay then.” The kid runs off into the rings of huts where the other children were.

“A hero...” Amon mused. “I…I know that I can still be one.” Amon yawns as he goes back inside. He rested his back against a wall. “I guess that heroes need a rest once in a while…” His head starts nodding off as he loses his vision. The next thing Amon saw was apparitions of past memories. He can see himself as a kid, crying on the ground, beaten and morally crushed as he sees his parents dragged off, nearly killed by their robotic captives. A younger Jakob stands next to the child Amon, he solemnly whispers in Amon’s ear, “Do you wish to never experience such despair again?” The child Amon stops bawling. He looks up at Jakob and nods. Jakob smiles at the boy while Amon stares fiercely as the horrors in front of him. Amon’s dreams suddenly switch to parts of his life after that event. He sees himself training with Jakob, driving off robots each time they have come to capture the villagers. The flashes stop at one scene.

“Hey Jakob?” The vision Amon asked.

“Yes boy?” Jakob mulls.

“Will there ever be an end to all of this? I mean the life that’s tormenting everyone.”

“Well to be honest, I don’t think it’ll ever end. This is the consequence of our ancestors’ twisted rule. It all led to such despair.”

“I see…” Amon looks down.

“But do not worry yourself, my boy. Not even the robots are infinite. We humans may have such folly, but we did know what would happen if we relied on our creations too much. Eventually they will run out of their own kind.”

“That…makes me feel slightly better. Um… Jakob?”

“Yes?”

“Why is the sky gray? It looks like it’s going to cry soon.”

“The sky wasn’t always like that.”

“What was is it like before?”

“It was blue, like if it was constantly calm.”

“Blue… what is blue?”

“Hmm… I guess I can make you something with the color blue.”

“Yeah… the blue chest plate of this tunic…it always reminds me of this moment, the feeling that someday the sky will be blue again,” thought the present Amon. He continues to get lost in his memories as time went on. It was suddenly silenced when screams woke him up from his sleep.

“What?” Amon stands up properly. “This intense heat…no, don’t tell me…Wait, Jakob?” Amon looks around, with Jakob nowhere in sight. Amon runs outside and sees the village on fire. “No…No!” He runs around to find any villagers, only to find them either missing, or dead. The heat continues to burn the ground, limiting Amon’s movement. “Those robotic b****rds! They must be responsible for this! How am I going to find them?” Amon notices a robot trapping some villagers and captures them with metallic collars. Amon tries to hold back both his body and his sadness. “I have to follow them.”
The robot drags the villagers away as Amon pursues them.

The group of prisoners eventually reached a factory, despite looking run down, was functioning properly. Amon didn’t stop to look as he followed them into the metal building. Amon notices the machinery in front of him. Claws, conveyer belts, and steel drums. Amon didn’t want to imagine what the robots wanted to use these items for. Amon quickly cut off from the prisoners and their technological captor. Amon sneaks around the factory, blindingly run from one place to another, while the machines whirred and wheezed. He heard the noise the crane made as it moved, going to a large, metallic container and reached inside to take a villager. Amon gasped as he looks at the villager being lift up and dragged onto the conveyer belt. The belt moved the weak villager into another container, one that’s smaller and full of blades, ready to slice. Amon quickly closes his eyes as the villager screams in pain while he’s being diced. Amon sheds a tear as he runs from the room.

“Just how… how am I going to fight all of this,” Amon thought. He quickly runs off, but to be quickly seen by a security robot. This one was different from the ones Amon was used to. The automaton was more humanoid, more horrifying. It starts to alarm the entire factory until Amon runs up and smashes it. The robot gets up from the attack and starts to switch itself into its combat form. Amon was not one to wait and quickly assassinates the robot. Before running off again, Amon takes the weapon the robot was going to use on him. The blade was sharp, and the extension it had was its handle. Amon looked around. The doors looked the same, the dark steel preventing any vision to look ahead. Amon tries to run through the factory again, running into rooms and areas he was unfamiliar with, almost clumsily running across more robots. He continued to assassinate any robots, not wanting them on full alert. He rests between each kill, still afraid they might catch him off-guard. It feels like an eternity to him as he reached the biggest door.

“This must it, the main control room to all this madness. Maybe I can finally end this.” He approaches the door. He was bracing himself for what could be the most threatening being in there. The door opens as he readies his weapon. The thing he saw was the control room, empty. He was astonished to find nothing there but the panels and machines working, the screen outlining all of the actions for the robots. Amon almost breaks down at the revelation. It was that the robots were merely following orders of a lunatic the entire time. They were unknowingly used as an extension of all the madness. Amon quickly reached to the main computer. “I just need to find something to stop all of this.” He skims through all the options there are, still wary of any threat that may attack from behind. He taps through all the buttons on the computer, unaware of which one did. Miraculously he found out how to navigate through the computer, he was able to shut off the cranes and conveyor belts. He also released the captive villagers from the control panel. Unfortunately, this tripped an alarm; the blaring lights enveloped the room Amon remained. “It looks like they finally caught onto me. I better hurry up.” Amon sorted through more files, reaching the options on controlling the robots. He knew what he wanted to be done; he knew that most of the robots that were terrorizing his village for so long stayed inside the factory. He wanted them to be permanently deactivated, forever. However, as he attempts to shut them down, the computer locks up, unable to go through the process. “What!?” Amon became scared; he knew he did not have time left before the robots would kill him. If he died know, the robots would win; they’ll be able to systematically kill off the villagers again. Amon instead made the computer go through a different route of files. If he couldn’t shut off the robots, Amon came to the next best conclusion; an emergency self-destruct option the factory had. He quickly started the self-destruction. The timer occurs in front of the screen: 10 minutes. Amon was ready for the worst. He was able to remember most of the layout of the factory, he was sure that he would be able to flee from there in time. As Amon ran out, he locked the room from the inside so the robots cannot stop the timer. Unfortunately, he had to deal with swarms of robots as he ran. Each one attempted a quick stab to the body as they charge through him. Amon was unfazed as the blades slip by his body. However, as the attacks went on, Amon was losing stamina, his dodges were ineffective. The wounds on his body multiply as he reached the entrance. The entryway had no door left and the robots closing in on him. Amon left himself no choice but hold onto the doorway, his body ready to take any wound. The blades continue to pierce his flesh as the timer went down. At the last second, Amon’s body fell and the factory exploded. His mission accomplished, the villagers see the explosion off in the distance. The once stoic and depressed demeanor they had broken out into tears as their hero was nowhere to be seen. The one child especially cried the loudest. They knew that their battle was over, but they still have yet to overcome with survival of this harsh world.