Chapter 42: Predatory Consummation

PREVIOUSLY-

"What was that you were saying, Redd?"

That voice. It was familiar but different. The sounds were the same, but the tone had changed. The voice hadn't changed, but it was certainly a different person saying them. Redd couldn't even tell what had happened themselves, but the missiles had been intercepted by something.

"Hark! More evildoers?"

"It was something about someone always coming to save the good guys? Or them getting a powerup or something? Yeah, I hate that shit too."

"Dire… Is that you?" Redd inquired.

"Who else?"

Redd looked up at where the voice was coming from. Dire was standing on the school's roof, silhouetted by the moon.

"Did… did you stop those missiles...?"

"Yup."

"From all the way over there?"

Redd thought about what that meant. Dire had been blessed. Now they were something else entirely. A monster in their own right. Powers beyond comprehension were in their grasp, just waiting to be shown off. The boy's body was splattered with black slime and crisscrossed with rows of teeth.

"I presume that the meeting went well."

"The meeting went fine. I just came to make a report… Although it's starting to look like you could use a hand," Dylan snarled from all over their body. Hungering anticipation of future violence.

"Well, what is it? What's the report?"

"Oh, right… It's pretty short actually. Here: 'Mission Accomplished'."

AND NOW-

Rory drew in a short breath, his lip trembling angrily. The devilish looking teen on the rooftop, two or three years older than Rory at most, had said something deeply disturbing. This group of villains had marched an army into their school without anyone noticing and tried in earnest to murder as many people as possible, and now they claim that their mission is complete?

Just what in the hell did they mean by that? The implication was obvious. Rory feared for the rest of the school, not just the other students but the faculty aswell. He got a sudden headache. He was remembering too much.

There was no time for unpleasant recollections. Rory was forced to swallow those visions back down into his mental vault, at least until the fighting was done.

That older kid. He was glaring at him.

"So, Redd, you can take the big one, and I'll take the little one. How about that?" Dylan chittered gleefully. "Or I can take 'em both if you'd rather..."

"Do as you like, I'm eager for a demonstration of your new abilities. Though, I trust that you don't leave me out of proceedings, hmm?"

They were dialoguing. This was Rory's chance.

He crouched down, and the complex web of technology covering his body glowed faintly blue. He surged into action, repulsors firing. He leapt off of the PenDragon's shoulder fast enough to leave behind a cloud of dust. He was going to hit this 'Dire' with everything he had, right away. Before he could even react. That would take him out before he had the chance to unleash his so called 'new abilities'.

"Rory!" Laddie cried. Rory ignored the grating sound that blasted its way into his brain through his earpiece. "What the hell are you doing? Aren't we supposed to clear our plans with each other first?"

"No time," Rory replied.

Laddie wanted to protest some more, but his attention was suddenly diverted. Hammer was back up and swinging. The humongous mutant tackled the PenDragon, sending it flying. The mech took out a chunk of architecture as it fell. Licks of flame from the rook's still burning body clung to the chassis. Laddie activated the boosters, charging the flaming hulk shield first.

Rory continued flying straight. A moment longer and he would be within range of Dire, who had yet to look up or even take his hands out of his pockets. He prepared to engage his tesla staff, aiming to strike the head. He swung, and an arc of electricity fizzled out in the empty air.

He missed. No, Dire dodged.

Rory had been out-manoeuvred. Even with the enhanced speed and dexterity afforded to him by his upgraded repulsors, his opponent had danced right past him. Rory turned his gaze up and saw the villain silhouetted against the moon. The light was so stark that the boy appeared as nothing but a shadow, and so Rory was too blind to comprehend fully what happened next.

Something slithered down and grabbed him by the arms.

The next thing he knew, he was spinning. Twirling and rolling in the air like he was in a crashing helicopter. He was dizzied instantly to the point that his body became as dextrous as a ragdoll. Then, Dire dunked Rory like a basketball onto the burnt up courtyard.

It took a second for the pillar of dirt to settle. Rory was being pressed into an exo-suit shaped hole in the ground by two powerful, muscular… tentacles? He barely knew where he was, only that he was under attack.

He opened his hand, and his Voltblaster came to him. The new MK-2. It sported an enhanced, longer barrel for more accurate firing and better armour penetration. But that wasn't all. Rory dug the pistol barrel into the first bit of his enemy's tentacle' that he could get a solid grip on, and he unloaded into it.

Electricity travelled into the barrel, projecting the bolt outward and electrifying the metallic surface, turning the barrel into something akin to a taser bayonet. That was all before the projectile even got up to speed.

A coursing, searing pule of electricity burned through it. Then, a metal bolt tore a hole into it. The tentacle spasmed and relinquished Rory, its surface rippling with heat. He got one hand free. That was all he needed. Immediately, he turned it on the other tentacle, digging in the barrels of both of his blasters and giving it twice as much as he gave to the last one.

Dylan wobbled in the air and came to the earth. Those fleshy extrusions were his stilts. Rory rolled forward and out of his hole, coming to a stop on his knees. He stood up slowly, steadying himself as he recovered from dizziness. Dire was level with him now. They met eye to eye.

Dire stepped into the light. What Rory had taken at first for a tentacle was nothing of the sort. Only in function did it resemble one. The twin things that were snaking out of those gigantic mouths which wrapped around the villain's waist were not tentacles. They were tongues.

Rory felt something hot and acrid touch his skin. He cringed in pain. A nasty, chemical burning overtook the area of his bicep and shoulder, on both arms. It felt like it was going all the way down to muscle and bone. He dropped to his knees, his teeth grit so hard that they might burst.

Contracting inwards, Rory looked at his wounds. He saw his exosuit destroyed from the outside in. Where he had been grabbed, some kind of black substance had burned right through the metal and machinery. Now he was lugging around dead weight in the form of a sleeve of non-functioning support gear over either arm. It was all riddled with that nasty dark stuff that was now wreaking havoc on his flesh.

Rory, shivering from toxic shock, looked at the villain. Those tongues. It had come from them. They were dripping with the black stuff. It was their saliva. Rory's wobbling arm extended forward. Fighting through the agony, Rory pressed his finger up against the trigger of his voltblaster, pointing it down the middle of Dire's centre of mass.

"Predatory Consummation: Chameleon Tongue."

Rory heard a bang like a gun going off. With a blast of wind and a spray of acid, Rory's voltblasters were ripped from his hands. Something faster than he could comprehend had torn it away from him. He reached out and tried to pull it back, exercising all of his mental fortitude in the effort. He managed to equal the strength of Dire's tongue, and it stopped in its tracks. The tongue was bulbous at the end, covering in sticky slime and grabbing folds. The length of the tongue was veiny and elastic, unlike the rough-surfaced, vaguely human-like muscular tongues which flanked him, this one resembled an animals tongue. The force at which it could be launched was clearly extreme, perhaps even capable of breaking the sound barrier. The force with which it could retract, on the other hand, was clearly weaker. Rory could match it with his quirk by pulling his voltblaster back to him.

A tug of war was initiated. But Rory was immobile. His skin melted like wax and ran down his arm. Dire, on the other hand, wasn't injured in the slightest. He dashed forward, pulling his tongue back in turn so that he did not let up in his pulling. He ran up and took a bite out of Rory's guns. With the mouth of his own face. He ripped metal to shreds and spat out the waste. Rory gave up pulling. He was down a weapon, and down two arms.

-XXXXX-

Name: Dylan Adonis

Villain Alias: Dire

Rank: Trustee

Quirk: Evolved Maw

In its base form, Maw allowed Dylan to create mouths on any area on his body. They function identically to any normal mouth. They can vocalise, consume food, and possess a bite whose strength is proportional to the size of the mouth. With conscious effort, Dylan can change the shape and size of the teeth to mimic any naturally occurring type of tooth that he is familiar with, such as an alligator's tooth or a warthog's tusk. As a byproduct, the mouths all produce black slime which is inert but revolting.

In it's evolved form, Maw acquires the property of creating extremely physically enhanced tongues, whose size and power is exponentially proportional to the size of the mouth they inhabit, and whose shape is determined in the same way as the teeth, capable of copying any naturally occurring type of tongue. These tongues can be strong enough to rip down buildings, can move faster than the eye can see, and no hard upward limit exists on their size. Dylan can use them as weapons, shields or to locomote. Additionally, the previously harmless black slime produced by Dylan's quirk is now acutely acidic, capable of melting through stone, metal and flesh with ease.

-XXXXX-

"This shit..." Dire moaned between crunchy bites of Rory's weaponry. "Is fucking nifty. What do you think, you little pissant?" He asked of Rory. The boy snarled and spat at the ground in Dire's way. The villain laughed.

"Petty. I like it. Reminds me of me. Unfortunately, I have to kill you. It's nothing personal, we're just two soldiers on opposite sides of a war, ya get me?"

"Fuck you," Rory growled.

"Defiant to the end. I respect that."

-MOMENTS AGO-

The PenDragon charged at the flaming visage of Hammer lance first. Hammer, faster than it's size would lead you to believe, sidestepped the charge and threw one of its enormous chitinous fists into the waist joint of the mecha. Laddie was thrown around, bouncing up and down and side to side in the too-large cockpit. Disoriented but uninjured, he recovered the mech and entered a solid, defensive stance.

The interior of the mech had been designed with someone much larger than Laddie in mind. It was a struggle for him to use some of the controls, but he would manage. When Hammer came in, arms swinging, Laddie was ready to block each one.

...

"They aren't much of a fighter, are they?" Redd thought, watching the mech's flailing, inefficient movements as they scrambled to block Hammer's wrecking ball fists with their high tech shield-topped arm. Hammer made another gargantuan swing, shifting around their titanic weight and pushing the robot back. Laddie barely blocked the punch, with it glancing off of the shield and only causing the PenDragon to stumble a bit.

This was a tight spot he was in. All of the technology in the world couldn't make up for the simple fact that Laddie was no fighter. He was greener than the students, in that regard. And sure, plenty of functions of the suit were designed with a kind of autopilot in mind (targeting, self-repair), but if a plane can more or less fly itself that doesn't mean you fire the pilot.

Laddie grit his teeth. Complaining about not knowing how to fight rather than figuring it out would get him killed. It would get Rory killed. It would probably get everybody killed. He had people depending on him, whether he knew what he was doing or not. With a burst of steely resolve, Laddie thrust forward on the controls. The PenDragon lifted its lance and rammed it straight and true toward Hammer's centre of mass.

Redd's colossus blocked the attack with the palm of its armoured hand. Laddie smirked, gripped his controls and made repetitive quarter turns, like revving the engine of a motorcycle. With a screeching mechanical whirr, the lance began to spin. It reached extreme RPM at a surprising speed. The lance became a drill, and it was starting to crack Hammer's shell. The giant's hand was pushed back just as a fissure appeared all the way down to the wrist. A thin break like a crack in the surface of ice.

Redd grumbled and made the giant grab. It wrapped its hand around the lance, pushing the point away from its body. It was a contest of Laddie's torque against Hammer's grip strength and friction. It looked about even at first, but then Hammer heaved and doubled down, applying an even greater crushing force. The lance started to lock up, and the motor crunched and smoked.

"Great... Now what?" Laddie's mind raced. He was an intellectual, but he didn't usually come up with his best ideas under pressure. He scrambled to activate the eye laser.

Outside of the cockpit, Redd observed the PenDragon's visor light up radiantly. A pair of thin, knife life beams of energy cut into Hammer's abdomen and slowly travelled up as the PenDragon bucked its head. The beams sliced all the way up through Hammer's head, tracing over the beast's eyes and breaking them asunder. The giant was blind. Laddie saw an opportunity and swung the shield arm heftily.

Hammer threw a cross counter and sent the PenDragon reeling.

"You may blind one of us," Redd said. "But we have eyes everywhere."

Laddie shook as the cockpit was rumbled. The PenDragon slipped out of Hammer's grasp, or they let it go. Either way, the mech sailed through the air and blew through the walls and floors of Regency academy. Laddie hoped that he wasn't liable for all this wreckage as he shook off the elaborately carved stone from the PenDragon's hull.

Hammer was thrown off balance by the weight of its own punch. Something that threw as much heft around as the giant insect mutant would naturally take a while to recover from a particularly committed blow. And so, Hammer took a moment to stumble around a bit and find its footing. This gave Laddie the briefest of reprieves. He could have taken that time to think of a way to win the fight he was in, but he couldn't help but use it to look to Rory.

It wasn't looking good. He was in danger.

Rory was a good while across from Dire, on his knees. Dire was enshrined in a wreath of dripping tongues, and slowly advancing on him. Rory was disarmed, injured, and looking tense. If Laddie couldn't break off from fighting the giant and lend some help quickly, then Rory could...

No. That didn't even bear thinking about. Laddie would not have any more deaths on his conscience. They would simply have to come up with something. And fast.

Hammer had recovered.

With a running leap, Redd's rook brought two fists down at once onto the machine. The PenDragon was able to block such a telegraphed attack, but that was cold comfort in the face of such sheer power. The vibration alone was enough to make the PenDragon start to shake apart, and the mecha was pushed down deeper into the heap of rubble that was once one of the school's wards with each strike.

"C'mon, Laddie. Why the hell did you even put so many weapons in this thing?" Laddie diverted the task of predicted and defending against Hammer's repetitive thrashing to several autopilot routines while the man diverted all of his mental energy to thinking of a way out. He gripped the sides of his head and slammed his face into the controls before him out of frustration.

He'd tried the lasers. Those were barely effective at all in the end. The lance had proved easy for Hammer to counteract. Laddie had a feeling that even trying the suit's many low yield explosives on this enemy would be like trying to break into a bank vault with firecrackers. The shield moved automatically to where Hammer's fist was coming down. Again and again. Each time there was a sound within the cockpit like a bell being struck, and a blast of sparks appeared both on the monitor and from the many cracks and crevices that lead to technological components.

Laddie was losing hope, but then he received a helpful reminder.

"Reciprocal bearings at maximum capacity. Kinetic blast at one hundred per cent charge."

Laddie had forgotten that he'd programmed that.

A little warning so that whoever piloted the suit would recall a certain component.

Laddie smiled as he took back controls from the computer. Hammer, and Redd by extension, looked perplexed when their opponent didn't move to block or even avoid Hammer's next punch. It crashed into the face of the robot, doing severe damage to half before glancing off and burying itself in the stone. Laddie took it to the chin and kept going, placing the surface of the PenDragon's shield right against Hammer's chest.

The 'reciprocal bearing', otherwise referred to as the 'kinetic charge engine' by Laddie was a sort of kinetic battery. It used motion, in this case, motion in the form of impacts, to charge itself. With the addition of magnetic, zero-friction bearings, the transference between impact and charge became incredibly efficient. That charge could then be used to power a weapon. The attack itself was a simple 'shunt' of force. A return to sender. Laddie had described it to Rory as a kind of 'redirection' of opposing force. It was designed to operate effectively at only thirty per cent capacity, but Laddie had allowed it to reach maximum. In that state, even releasing it could prove dangerous.

Laddie wasn't in the position to exercise that kind of discretion though. He threw caution to the wind. The advanced core of the shield, the complex arrangement of components within it, began to glow as the many interlocking parts which made up the shock-absorbing shield began to vibrate. They took the force that was given to them, and they remembered it. They absorbed it. And now, it would be released back.

"Buckler Buster: One Hundred Percent Kinetic Engine Burst!"

For the second time that night, and the second time ever, Redd felt Hammer's feet as they left the ground, and was overcome by an overpowering sense of vertigo as the giant's perception was thrown into chaos by the mighty upheaval. The blast of kinetic force that erupted from the shield struck Hammer dead in the chest. An impact crater formed in the creature's exoskeleton and the power of the blow was such that even the shell of the monster's back was cracked from the energy leaving through its other side. Hammer's armour had been compromised. They were thrown high into the sky. The insectoid giant cleared the Regency Academy roof and came down far away, in the trees surrounding the estate. The earth quaked when they fell, almost knocking Redd's queen onto their ass.

"How bothersome..." Redd grunted, stiff from the new painful tightness in their chest. They tried to make Hammer arise and return. The attack clearly wasn't enough to incapacitate on of Redd's rooks. There was a larger problem, however. Hammer's exoskeleton had sustained too much damage. That shell wasn't just for protection. It provided all of the structural stability for Hammer's massive frame. The square-cube law being how it was, Hammer needed something incredibly stern to support its own weight. Now that support structure had a giant hole in the front and back of it and was breaking apart at the seams everywhere else. Simply getting back up from that was a ridiculous assertion. It would be like you or I standing up and going for a walk with our ribs and spine broken into a million little pieces.

Hammer was conscious but immobile. For the time being.

And now, the PenDragon was more interested in what was happening on Dire's side of the conflict.

The PenDragon activated maximum thrust. Dire, who was just about to go in for the kill on Rory, was understandably distracted by the spectacle of the PenDragon's kinetic burst. Now, he was being bored down upon by the machine himself. It rushed at him like a train with a burning blue halo of thrust behind it. Dire blocked the swing from the shield arm with his tongues, but the difference in weight was such that no matter how well Dire blocked the hit, he was going flying.

"Rory, what's your status?" Asked Laddie, cradling the boy in the PenDragon's precise mechanized hands.

"I've been better..." He replied, his limp arms dripping black bile onto the PenDragon's pristine hull. Laddie, thinking quickly, sheltered Rory in a nearby heap of rubble, conveniently shaped and assorted to create a hidey-hole in which the boy might be able to recuperate for a while. That was one problem temporarily taken care of.

"I'll come back for you when all of this is over, alright? You did a fine job, taking the odds into consideration. Now rest."

"I can still fight..." Rory murmured. "Just... Give me a breather..."

Laddie, despite his low-effort protests, left Rory in the relatively safe cover while he switched his focus to Dire.

While the villain was still pulling themselves out of the rubble, something caught Laddie's eye. The stuff that Rory left on his hands, that black slime. He'd seen it somewhere before. Or, he'd heard about it. Laddie had a chilling revelation. His spine suddenly tingled with a deathly chill. Dire threw one of the rocks that they had been thrown at back towards the PenDragon using one of their unholy tongues as a type of grisly sling.

Laddie deflected the projectile with their shield and advanced on Dire's position.

"Hey, you there. Kid. What did you call yourself again? 'Dire' or something?"

Dire didn't respond to the petty attempt at provocation. He simply snarled in a gesture of acknowledgement. Knowing that he had the kid's attention, Laddie continued his line of questioning. His heart raced, and his lips trembled. This wasn't exactly going to be easy to ask.

"Listen and listen well, villain. Don't think I haven't noticed that black slime you're trailing everywhere. And I realise that I've seen it somewhere before."

"Oh, are you going to tell the tale of one of my many conquests?" Dire responded cockily. "Well, then you'll have to remind me, theres just too damn many to remember, y'know?" The teen dug around in his ear and spat onto the ground, looking more like he was queuing outside of a jobcentre than embroiled in a climactic showdown with a building-sized mecha.

Laddie vibrated with rage, digging his nails into his palms and biting his lip, both so hard that he almost drew blood. It was a struggle enough by itself to simply say the next words out of his mouth. The man's suspicions had been more or less confirmed before he'd even raised them.

"A few nights ago, Jacob 'The Bulldog' Pembroke boarded a London King's Cross underground train responding to a call from the national hero service about a mugging. When he failed to report back the next morning, authorities found the train that he had most likely boarded that night. Among the blood, broken glass, dents in the floor and the wrecked door, that same black slime was covering everything. DNA was inconclusive, as the substance recovered from the scene was too volatile to test adequately. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Dire looked at the giant robotic facade before him with a dull, uninterested look on his face. His hands were placed back comfortable into his pockets.

"What did you say his name was again? Damn, I just can't remember..."

Redd shot Dire a dirty look.

"How much has That Man been messing with his head?" They thought. Questions for later.

Internally, Laddie was snarling like a ferocious pit bull. He was practically frothing, almost rabid with rage. He managed to maintain enough composure to say one more thing.

"I'm gonna give you another chance, villain. If you don't tell me what I want to hear, then I won't be showing you any mercy, do you understand?"

"Your first mistake was showing me mercy from the start, you dumb fuck," Dylan laughed. "Come and get me!"

Laddie let his anger loose.

-MEANWHILE-

Rory reclined into a shadowy nook in the rubble in order to recuperate. He could take a breather, but sooner or later he would have to get back in there. He wasn't going to leave Mr Pembroke for dead. First, he needed repairs. With his quirk, his exosuit was as malleable as clay. The arrangement of parts could, in an emergency, be changed. Taking into account all of the tech that he had which was ravaged by Dire's acrid spit, he would be spreading himself thin. It was, however, better than nothing. Getting the refuse off of his arms would be challenging and painful. He would simply have to bear it.

The boy twisted himself into an awkward configuration and tried to grab at the ruined parts with the heels of his boots, thinking of kicking them off like shoes. When he got the first one-off, it took a layer of skin with it, exposing the raw and wet flesh underneath. The boy hissed and tensed all of his muscles. It stung like nothing else. He bore it and kept going. It wasn't as if he had anything to bind or even wash his wounds with. Letting his agonized arms fall stiffly to his side, he focused on the technology.

Rory closed his eyes and focused. Slowly, his exosuit half-disassembled and half came back together. It did and undid itself in a circular pattern, eventually forming into something resembling its former self, even if much slimmer.

"IMPRESSIVE."

A voice entered Rory's mind. He immediately lost focus on his quirk, and he whipped his head around all directions to see who was talking to him. Something was up. Some kind of psychic quirk would have been an easy assumption to make, but Rory discarded the idea immediately. This was unmistakably a part of his own ability, not any kind of outside interference. When Rory used his quirk, he interfaced with the machine. Spoke to it. Gave it commands. In a metaphysical sense, that was. This was the first time that he'd used his quirk and a machine had spoken back to him.

"Identify yourself. How are you speaking to me?"

"'SPEAKING' IS THE INCORRECT TERM TO USE. I AM AWARE OF YOUR ABILITY, ELLIS. I AM SIMPLY WRITING THESE MESSAGES FOR YOU WITHIN MY OWN CODE, AND YOU ARE READING THEM. IT'S... AN ELEGANT MEANS OF DISCREET COMMUNICATION."

"That does not answer my question."

"BUT OF COURSE. IF YOU WOULD SIMPLY MOVE THE LARGE, FLAT STONE THAT YOU ARE LAYING ON THEN I AM SURE THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DEDUCE MY IDENTITY FOR YOURSELF."

Rory grunted as he got to his feet. With a well-placed kick, he managed to displace the precariously balanced stone to which the other party had referred. Inside of a safe little nook, he saw the wreckage of a machine. Vaguely anthropomorphic parts lay in a heap enshrined by rubble. Countless arms, a heap of some kind of advanced technological fabric, and most notably the head, whose eyes were still blinking with red light as they focused in and out on Rory. This was a robot. It was one that he had seen before.

"I do know you..." Rory whispered. "You're the robot that we fought in the entrance exams... I thought that I'd seen around here out of the corner of my eye one or two times, but I could never make sense of why."

"I WILL GIVE YOU THE SHORT VERSION. ASIDE FROM BEING 'THE ROBOT THAT YOU FOUGHT IN THE ENTRANCE EXAMS', I AM A SELF AWARE HUMAN LEVEL ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE WHO TRIED AND NARROWLY FAILED TO EXTERMINATE THE ENEMY WHICH YOU SEEM TO BE ENGAGED WITH. MY PRESENCE HERE WAS NOT EXACTLY A SECRET, BUT WITHOUT ANYONE SEEKING ME OUT OR BEING EXPRESSLY INFORMED OF MY POSITION, I MORE OR LESS WENT UNNOTICED EXCEPT BY THE PEOPLE WHO I REVEALED MYSELF TO. NOW, YOU MAY NOTICE THAT I AM IN A STATE OF DISSASEMBLY AT PRESENT TIME."

"I did notice that... um... What should I call you?" Rory inquired.

"'SAWTOOTH' WILL SUFFICE, AS THAT IS MY NAME. I AM AWARE OF YOUR ABILITY TO MANIPULATE MACHINERY, ELLIS. I GAVE MYSELF FULL ACCESS TO THE STUDENT REGISTRY, AFTER ALL. YOUR ABILITY GIVES YOU THE CAPABILITY TO REPAIR MACHINES, DOES IT NOT? IF THIS IS THE CASE, I REQUEST THAT YOU USE IT ON ME."

"Well, that's somewhat true..."

"IN WHAT WAY IS IT NOT TRUE?" Sawtooth asked, cutting right to the point.

"I can assemble and disassemble technology, but what qualifies as 'technology' can be quite strict at times. Fabrication, for instance, is beyond the scope of my ability, and I have to do it by hand..."

"IN WHAT WAY DOES THIS RELATE TO ME?"

"The damage that you've taken is so severe that several components vital to your normal function no longer register as 'technology'. You're mostly scrap metal at this point. Sure, I could repair you if I had a workshop and time, but not in the field. I'm... sorry," Rory was dejected at not being able to grant the robot's request. He prepared to replace the stone which he had moved to get access to them in the first place, however, he was stopped partway through.

"THEN I HAVE ANOTHER PROPOSITION FOR YOU."

"What is it? I can't give you any guarantees... but..."

"THAT SUIT YOU ARE WEARING. IT HAS ALSO BEEN PARTIALLY DESTROYED, CORRECT? YOU'VE BEEN FORCED TO COMPROMISE IT'S INTEGRITY IN ORDER TO RETAIN IT'S FUNCTION. BUT I HAVE A BETTER WAY."

"...Go on...?"

"BETWEEN US, WE HAVE ENOUGH FULLY FUNCTIONAL PARTS TO MAKE A FORMIDABLE FIGHTING UNIT, DONT YOU AGREE?"

Rory surveyed the wreckage of the robot. There were some high-value parts that were still salvageable among them. His mind raced just imagining what he could do with some of those. This was stuff that was beyond his ability to acquire under normal circumstances. A robot built with the full financial backing of the crown, as opposed to something built by a teenager with whatever he could get his hands on. Comparing the construction between Sawtooth and the kinds of things that Rory built for himself was like putting a Reliant Robin next to a Ferrari.

"I PROPOSE THAT WE POOL OUR RESOURCES. A... STRICTLY TEMPORARY, MIND YOU... 'FUSION' SO TO SPEAK."

Rory responded before the words had fully formed in his mind. He need not hear the full sentence to know his answer.

"I accept," he said enthusiastically.

"WONDERFUL. SHAKE ON IT?"

Rory took what was left of Sawtooth in his hands, and a soft blue electric glow enveloped the pair. Sawtooth's parts began to move magnetically, converging on one point. The parts of Rory's suite met with them. What coalesced there before the boy was something altogether greater than the sum of its parts. Rory hesitated to take any credit, but what he had just had a hand in creating was the finest machine that he had ever put together. The parts formed over his body, sliding mechanically and elegantly into place. Laced with mithril, and capable of thinking on its own. Rory's injuries werent even phasing him in this new suit.

There was only one question that remained. What to call it?

TO BE CONTINUED

The path of convergence towards the inevitable conclusion draws ever closer! This time, we returned to the fight in the courtyard where we, at last, see the newly evolved form of Dire's quirk! Just in time for Laddie to make an important deduction about the identity of his partner's killer! Meanwhile, an injured Rory has combined their strength with the almost destroyed Sawtooth to create a formidable new form. How will it all go down? Keep reading next week to find out! And while you're waiting, why not tell me what you thought of the chapter in the reviews? It means the world to me that even after writing this story for almost a year now, people are somehow still engaged and interested in it! So thank you to every one of my regular readers, whether you leave a review or not!

In other news, happy birthday to PokeMaster64, or MysticHunter777 as they go by on discord! They're Mallory's submitter! I promised that the last time a birthday happened to fall on an update day that I would give a shoutout in the authors note, and what do you know the very next birthday also happened to fall on a Friday! At least, the next one that I recall as I write this...

Anyway, with all that out of the way, I'd like to sign out how I usually do and say: Thank you for reading, and I'll see you in the next one!