Escaping the desert heat

The Imperator apparently never had this trouble with residual heat after deploying their inferno beam - but the Imperator was considerably less than 65 metres tall. It hadn't been a problem in the Titan's testing phase either, but that had been under ideal conditions. The evening desert heat had been... less so. (The Titan was grateful it was only evening and not high noon.)

The Titan's back-spikes helped a little to radiate excess heat, but not enough. Normally the Titan's internal cooling systems kept its insides nice and chilled, but the coolant in its tubes right now was showing its age and needed replacing. The Titan disliked having its coolant replaced and tried to duck out of the process when it could. It was certainly regretting that now. If it had fresh coolant in its pipes, if the battleground wasn't in such a hot area, if the Titan hadn't had to deploy its incendiary power with such intensity to defeat its opponent, perhaps if it hadn't donated that big packet of core energy to the Camera Titan... if just one of those things hadn't been there, it would probably have been fine, but the combination of all of them was causing the TV Titan to overheat.

There was always its emergency capsule of liquid nitrogen, but deploying that would damage its internal systems as much as it would help, so it was only for the direst of emergencies. Time to deploy the rods... the Titan protracted the cooling rods from its wrists, in the same place its tiny comrades kept their blades. Such blades would have been redundant on the Titan with its spiked dorsal arms (and now its gorgeous purple plasma sword), so the mechanisms in its wrists had been put to another purpose. Instantly the Titan felt a little better, the rods' seething heat escaping as a rising haze into the night. Taking its coat off would have helped, but that was impossible with all of its battle gear in place, and taking its gear off in the field would be unwise. The Titan instead loosened its coat as best it could manage, shrugging the neck of the garment back over its shoulders to expose as much metal as possible. The Titan opened the aperture of its core chamber as wide as it would go to better allow a breeze to enter, and gently spun the reciprocating arms around its core entrance in the hope of getting a bit of breeze over them too.

Was there a way to speed this up? The heat loss was taking its time... Sticking the cooling rods in one of those water towers over there might do the trick. The Titan walked slowly to the water tower, swinging its arms as it went to get what breeze it could on its cooling rods, trying to strike a balance between getting a nice breeze going and avoiding moving too fast and overheating again. The Titan sliced off the roof of the water tower with its sword and was pleased to discover that there was water in there. The Titan dunked both of its wrist-mounted cooling rods into the water, creating an almighty hiss and clouds of steam.

As the contents of the water tower escaped as vapour, the Titan's on-board diagnostics were warning it that it still needed to vent excess heat. ...Nothing for it. Time to deploy that rod. The Titan briefly withdrew its rods from the steaming tower, full of rapidly-warming water, and unzipped the fly of its trousers and protracted its 'cock'. On the one hand, it was a perfectly sensible place to install an emergency cooling rod - it was out of the way, and it wasn't as though techfolk had anything else in that area. On the other hand, it was undeniably in the same region as a meatbag's dangly fuck-parts, hence the stupid nickname it had inevitably acquired. The Titan was grateful that there apparently weren't any Camera-units in the area (and nor was Polycephaly).

The evening breeze, slight as it was, did feel nice on the Titan's three cooling rods. The Titan dipped its wrist rods into the water tower again and pondered its next move as the breeze helped to draw heat off its cock. It would probably be fine now... but it ought to speed things up so it could get to the next set of co-ordinates that the Base was transmitting to it. Maybe it should teleport somewhere nice and cold before moving on? That would certainly work, but a TV the size of the Titan needed a lot of teleport energy to move itself, and at this stage of the mission it couldn't afford to spend that much energy on an unscheduled trip to somewhere that far away. Time to give the next water tower along a try; this one was probably spent.

The Titan walked over to the next water tower and grasped the roof in its hands, before thrusting its colossal hips and smashing its cock through the water tower's walls. Ah, some proper relief. The cool wetness lapping over the Titan's hilariously-placed cooling rod, as the Titan gently thrust its hips, was really helping to dissipate its excess heat. The Titan's cock-rod split apart into segments like the chuck of a drill, further increasing its surface area. This was actually getting to be rather enjoyable. Time to move to maximum cooling... Each cock-segment split apart further, unfurling into a string of radiating panels, like a time-lapse of a plant growing longer stems and then blooming into flowers. The Titan's temperature continued to fall, making the Titan feel deliciously cool. It buzzed its speakers with relief, as if sighing, as its radiating panels snaked all inside the water tower like a pond-weed. The Titan dunked its wrist-rods into the tower as well, lifting them out to enjoy the cooling breeze that was now properly picking up with nightfall. The Titan's cock continued to unfurl and unspool like metallic bunting, until the total volume of the radiating panels was too great for the poor water tower, which burst apart with an almighty splash.

At last, the Titan's temperature was within comfortable levels - and the night temperature would be getting low enough that it could safely deploy its inferno beam again if it needed to. (Though it would absolutely have to get its coolant flushed and replaced at its next visit to its hangar, dammit.) The Titan retracted the cooling rods in its wrists. There was no way it would be able to retract all the mess of panels that was once its 'cock' back inside its frame though. But that was fine. It was all part of the design. The Titan jettisoned its spent cock from its frame, the whole morass falling from the socket (which closed behind it) and crashing to the ground - knocking the remains of the water tower down in the process. Oh fucking well. Within the Titan's body, its spare cock dropped down and clunked into place behind the socket, ready to be deployed if need be. The Titan re-did its trouser zip and shrugged its coat back into place, ready to move on to its next target.

Later, the cleanup crew did a final sweep of the area to retrieve any supplies. One of them jetpacked down to the ground to investigate an unfamiliar object - clearly of Alliance rather than Skibidi make, but what was it? It looked like the aftermath of a steam boiler explosion more than anything else. Was it the remains of an experimental prototype weapon? Whatever it was, it was too big to load into the retrival van. The crew member tagged it for pickup by Polycephaly.