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Still no Sermung, though. Frankly, a part of him was disappointed. All the preparations he'd made to face the Crystal Titan--they were a bit wasted, now. And moreover, it made him wonder where the ol' Sermy actually was, right now. Surely, there couldn't have been many things that demanded his attention more than the Mad Demon knocking on the door to Intar.

Oh well. Iceheart and the Star of the West would make for suitable replacements.

Unfortunately, these fellows were not like Parson Miles. They weren't going to just fly up to him and have a nice chat before everything went down.

No, these guys were the surly sort. Too serious by a half. Iceheart especially, though Jackson wasn't much better. Morgunov knew well in advance that they were just going to attack him without so much as a howdy-do.

Sermung wouldn't have been so rude. Unless he was in a bad mood, maybe. Which, come to think of it, he usually was whenever Morgunov met up with him.

Hmm.

Eh, that was probably a correlation not causation thing, right? Yeah.

Anyway, the first task would be to deal with the light-wielders. Those guys always tried to get a few cheap shots in before anyone else could. It was like they thought that just because they could attack at the speed of light--or near to it, at least--they were somehow entitled to drawing first blood.

The Roberts would be ruining their fun, however. That was one of the earliest tricks that he'd worked into their design: reversible mirrors. Their black frames could turn inside out, revealing a shiny inner coating.

They weren't all identical, though. Different wavelengths of light required different materials to be reflected. Glass for infrared, aluminum for UV, iridium for X-rays, and so on.

The best thing, though? Every Robert knew what to look for. They all tracked their opponents and singled out the ones they were strongest against, for maximum obnoxiousness. And efficiency, of course. But mostly obnoxiousness.