Bill and Phil made their way through the blood and guts and laser guns and metal fragments and severed limbs and more guts and more metal fragments until they found Quetzalcoatl.
“Quinn,” said Phil, “we…”
“One second, girls,” said Quetzalcoatl, pinned against one murder-drone by another murder-drone. “I’m a little busy.”
Quetzalcoatl was immediately, and violently, beset by three more murder-drones.
Bill and Phil waited patiently.
“Fucking… ball sacks, man,” said Quetzalcoatl, punching the metal head casing of the nearest robot repeatedly. The robot didn’t seem to notice.
A few minutes passed and two more homicidal automatons joined the fray.
Bill and Phil continued to wait.
Quetzalcoatl said some undoubtedly profane thing, but Bill and Phil couldn’t hear it over the sound of the seven mechanical assassins attempting to eviscerate, behead, stab, burn and quarter him.
A small stream of blood spurted from the fracas and landed on Bill’s loafer.
“We… should probably help him,” said Phil turning to Bill.
“What the… blazes are you talking about, Phil?” replied Bill. “Maybe you’ve… found a way to channel your… inner barbarian, but the only thing I know how to do is think… and that’s nearly gotten me killed twelve times… in the last hour alone.”
“Well, we have to do… something,” countered Phil. “He’s being…”
Six of the robots surrounding Quetzalcoatl were hurled into the air with tremendous force. Some were intact. Most were not.
“… murdered?”
Phil’s question was not uncalled for. The man he had known as Quinn was now hovering above the battlefield, breathing heavily but otherwise seemingly unfazed by the fact that he had just hurled six tons of angry metal across a half mile of robot-on-human bloodshed.
He also appeared undaunted by the fact that he had grown wings and a tail.
In actuality, Quetzalcoatl was marginally surprised to have reverted to his feathered serpent form, even if he didn’t show it. Mostly, though, he was pissed. That part he made pretty evident.
Quetzalcoatl tilted his head and looked down at the lone robot still clinging to his torso.
“Error,” said the remaining, and clearly most tenacious, murder-drone. “Impossibility made manifest.”
“Not exactly, my metallic nemesis. Religion was disproved. Not faith, not philosophy.”
“Does not compute.”
“No, of course it doesn’t. You’re a robot. You can’t think. You can’t believe. You’re just numbers and programs. At the end of the day you have no idea how much power faith can give you.”
Quetzalcoatl lifted the robot with one hand.
“No, Mr. Murder-Drone, you understand about as well as a lobotomized garden gnome might. I’m not a god because the Aztecs thought I was, or because these pedantic layabouts believed in me, or because anyone else thought anything at any point.
“I am a god,” continued Quetzalcoatl, putting his fist through the murder-drone’s face, “because I think I am.”