The Chrono-Golems, the ancient, bronze-colored guardians of the Reality Loom, were very polite. They didn't shout any warnings. They didn't fire any warning shots. They just silently and efficiently began their work, which was to turn any and all visitors into scrap metal.

They moved with a silent, graceful, and deeply unnerving speed. One moment they were standing in perfect, still rows on the surface of the Loom. The next, they were swarming toward the "Odyssey," gliding through space as if it were water.

Ilsa Varkov, from her command center on the "Odyssey," was not impressed. She had fought pirates, cultists, and reality-bending AIs. A few shiny, oversized robots were not going to intimidate her.

"All hands, to battle stations!" her voice, a calm and steady growl, boomed over the ship's comms. "Target the constructs. Fire at will. Show them what the Iron Wolves are made of."

The "Odyssey's" weapon ports slid open, and a barrage of plasma cannons and torpedoes shot out, a beautiful and deadly display of firepower. The first wave of Chrono-Golems was hit head-on by the attack. Several of them were blown into a thousand pieces of molten, bronze shrapnel.

On the bridge, a small, triumphant cheer went up.

"Direct hits!" the weapons officer shouted. "Multiple targets destroyed!"

But their celebration was very, very short-lived.

As they watched, the clouds of shrapnel from the destroyed golems suddenly… stopped. Then, in a bizarre and deeply unfair-looking special effect, all the tiny pieces flew backwards, reassembling themselves in mid-air. In the blink of an eye, the destroyed Chrono-Golems were whole again, their bronze armor perfectly pristine, without a single scratch on them.

The cheer on the bridge died, replaced by a stunned, confused silence.

"What… what just happened?" a young ensign whispered, his voice full of a horrified disbelief.

"They're rewinding," Zara said, her eyes wide as she stared at her scanner readings. "They have some kind of localized, temporal-reversal ability. When they take damage, they just… rewind their own, personal timeline by a few seconds to a point before they were hit. It's… it's the ultimate undo button."

This was a whole new level of frustrating. They were fighting an enemy that was essentially using a cheat code. How do you defeat an enemy that can just say "nope, that didn't happen" every time you land a punch?

The battle turned into a deeply unsatisfying stalemate. The Iron Wolves would pour a devastating amount of firepower into the golems. The golems would explode in a very satisfying way. And then, a few seconds later, they would just un-explode and be perfectly fine, as if nothing had happened. It was like trying to punch a ghost that could also punch back. And the golems punched back hard, their own energy weapons searing lines of damage across the "Odyssey's" hull.

Ilsa Varkov was not a woman who got frustrated easily. But she was getting frustrated. Her soldiers were fighting with perfect discipline and courage, but it was all for nothing. They were just wasting ammunition on an enemy that was, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable.

Ryan stood on the bridge, watching the futile battle, his mind racing. They couldn't fight the golems' bodies. That was a losing game. So, they had to fight something else. They had to fight their timelines.

He turned to Ilsa, a new, wild plan forming in his head. "Ilsa," he said over the comms. "I have an idea. It's a bit weird, but I think it might work. I need you to focus all of your firepower on a single golem. Hit it with everything you've got. But don't fire until I give the word."

Ilsa didn't question him. She trusted him completely. "You heard the man!" she barked to her gunnery crews. "Target the big, ugly one in the middle. On his mark."

Ryan closed his eyes. He reached out with his own, personal time-bending powers, his Chrono-Manipulation. He wasn't a master of it like the golems were. He couldn't rewind his own timeline. But maybe he could affect theirs.

He focused all of his will on a single Chrono-Golem, the one Ilsa's gunners were now aiming at. He didn't try to attack it. He didn't try to push it or pull it. He did something much stranger.

He created a "bubble of linear time" around it.

It was like putting a small, invisible box around the golem. And inside that box, the normal, boring, one-way rules of time were strictly enforced. There was no rewinding. There was no fast-forwarding. There was just the steady, relentless march of cause and effect.

The Chrono-Golem, which had been gracefully dodging their attacks, suddenly found itself trapped in the present. It tried to activate its rewind ability, but it couldn't. It was stuck. For the first time, it was vulnerable.

Ryan could feel the strain. Holding the bubble of normal time in place against the golem's own temporal power was like trying to hold a door shut against a hurricane. But he could do it. For a few seconds.

"Now, Ilsa!" he yelled, the effort making his voice tight. "Hit it! Now!"

Ilsa didn't hesitate. "FIRE!" she roared.

A single, massive, concentrated blast of energy, the combined firepower of a dozen different cannons, shot out from the "Odyssey" and slammed into the trapped Chrono-Golem.

This time, when the golem exploded, it stayed exploded.

A real, heartfelt cheer went up from the bridge. They had found a way. It was a slow, difficult, and very tiring process. But it worked.

They began to work as a perfect, two-person team. Ryan, the cosmic god, would use his reality-bending powers to pin a single enemy in the present moment. And Ilsa, the perfect soldier, would use her martial, tactical genius to seize that single moment of weakness and deliver a devastating, final blow. His cosmic power and her military perfection, working together, was a beautiful and brutally effective combination.

One by one, they began to take the unbreakable guardians apart.

But as they were starting to make progress, their other problem decided to join the party.

Lord Malakor's shadowy, black ship, which had been hanging back and just watching the show, finally made its move. But it didn't attack them directly. Malakor was smarter than that.

A wave of pure, inky darkness washed out from his ship. It wasn't an attack. It was a cloak. The wave of shadows washed over the remaining Chrono-Golems.

And they all vanished.

They were still there, of course. They were just invisible now.

The battlefield, which had been a difficult but manageable fight, had just become a deadly, terrifying death trap. They were now fighting an army of invisible, time-rewinding, killer robots.

"Well," Scarlett muttered from the pilot's chair, as she dodged an energy blast that came from absolutely nowhere. "This just got a whole lot less fun."