(Excerpt from the story “Ego Trap”)

Robert nodded. “I’ll have what she’s having, please and thank you in advance.” But the scooper did not fill his order right away. “Uh, hey, is there something wrong? Are you fresh out of Cookie Dough? I can get some cream from the cattle farms in Whitecrown and…”

A chilly detachment overcame the scooper’s disposition, his face now inexplicably devoid of expression and his body standing as still as an idle nonplayer character in a retro video game. The knight in interwoven buckypaper armor and his friends had no trouble picking up the cues to indicate that something was off. “I cannot serve you,” he mumbled.

“Um, excuse me, but could you please speak up?”

The three humans, one half-Naiad, and one phoenix all crept backwards and watched in awe as the scooper’s skin turned gray, his eyes changed to empty black circles, his ears shrunk into his head, his nose grew pointy like a perfect right triangle, his mouth became minimalist black line, and his clothes shrunk into his androgynous body. Now more clearly but mechanically, he repeated, “I cannot serve you. You are a person with faith in a religion and forms principles around that religion.”

“So what? A lot of my friends do, and so does my family.”

“By the power of our master Rowena Oaks, you are not permitted under any circumstances to vocalize your religion, as she has observed you doing in the past.”

[…]

Sparks flew from the automaton’s head, which began to spin at increasing speeds. “Prayer detected! CODE RED! CODE RED! CODE RED!” And the automaton’s head flew off and rocketed around the room, ricocheting off of a freezer, a menu, a table, a lamp hanging from the ceiling, a chair, and a promotional poster, among other obstacles before crashing and burning out at Robert’s feet.

[…]

In the ensuing rampage, Team Colonel Knight Rider held up well against the automaton army, making their heads explode with every slash, smash, and shot. Not seeing an end to their numbers any time soon, Robert tried radioing COLT to bring in backup, but this time, COLT did not answer. As soon as he turned his attention away from his radio and back to the battlefield, his pupils shrank at the sight of three automatons using their bare fists to phase through Elsie, Fionna, and Max. Sure enough, they all shook as they painfully morphed into automaton versions of themselves, chanting, “Prayer detected! CODE RED! CODE RED! CODE RED!”

(Later in the fight, CKR gets captured. Rowena Oaks, who is clearly based on CKR’s perception of JustAlongForTheRide, is a mad scientist/atheist cultist who uses “Indoctrination gas” to turn CKR’s mother into a straw leftist feminist automaton who tries to behead his father for not believing that “orange man bad”. She is easily incapicitated and cured by the power of prayer. Despite this, no one ever thinks of all the other automata they’ve killed, and indeed, CKR later brutally kills another automaton with no comment. In the end, Rowena commits suicide out of fear of having failed her master, Mordred.)