Chapter 43: PenDragon
-REGENCY ACADEMY CENTRAL COURTYARD-
Laddie's rage was funnelled. He poured it all directly onto the controls to his front and shot his fury filled heart out onto the battlefield before him. The burning engines of the PenDragon suit's lance came to life, and the weapon began to spin.
Spiralling twisters of blue flame, too many strands to count from their cyclonic velocity, drove the drill tip around and forwards. These were engines that were better suited to be driving fighter jets than a righteous weapon, and they brought that spine-tingling speed with them into their new task: Driving a technological spear of justice through the heart of this horrible monster.
The PenDragon's lance was aimed straight and true as it shot towards Dire.
"It only makes sense, doesn't it?" Laddie's enraged mind conjured. He was, in the way that many of the less decisive among us do when presented with something that we deep down in our guts know to be true but can't prove beyond all reasonable doubt, casting unsureness on himself. Trying, as a man of science, to disprove his own theory to himself only to re-rationalize it over and over. To make absolutely sure he was correct before he wasted the rest of his wrath. "A teacher at the academy is conspicuously killed, only for an attack to happen less than a few days later? Two instances of high profile villain activity to close together? It only makes sense that they'd be linked! It only makes sense that the person responsible for one instance would be involved in the other! That's not a logical leap, is it?"
Dire stared the mighty attack down fearlessly. As casually as one might brush the dust off of their shoulder, the boy dug one fingernail into his left shoulder deep and hard enough to draw blood and dragged it down diagonally, tracing across his bare chest, to the right hip. The scratch mark parted like a pair of thick, rubbery lips, and teeth unfurled from beneath them.
"This is the biggest mouth I can practically fit on my body…" Dire realized. "Which means that this tongue is special… It'll be my most powerful weapon… That would make it my..."
"THAT MEANS IT HAS TO BE YOU!" Laddie screamed aloud. The roar of the PenDragon's engines in Dire's face was overwhelming. The Lance was close enough to spit on, and approaching like a rocket. Dire remained calm.
"...War Tongue."
The foundations shook. When the PenDragon's thrust struck, it made fissures in the ground that spun and twirled out into circular patterns. The statues, benches, anything still intact in the courtyard, it was all either sundered to pieces or fell into the cracks and was swallowed by the ground. Dire was at the centre of it. He was so small compared to the PenDragon that Laddie at first couldn't see past his own bulk in order to check if the kid was reduced to a smear or impaled or at all incapacitated.
He soon learned that that was far too optimistic of him.
Laddie pulled their lance arm back, only to pull something back with it. When he pulled too far, the thing pulled back. The lance was stuck, rooted deep inside of something. One of Dire's tongues. Except that this one was unnaturally enormous.
As wide as a car and as long as a bus. It erupted from a maw of teeth that went across his chest and puffed up like the tongue of a bloated corpse, inflating in size to ridiculous degrees. The monstrous tongue wreathed around Dire like a giant snake protecting its eggs. Dire stood in the middle of it, protected on all sides by its hideous girth.
Laddie's lance wasn't grappling with it. Nothing so regular and un-grotesque as that. Laddie had impaled the tongue, and the muscles that remained were clamping down. The acid wore away the lance's smooth surface and gave an uneven surface to grip more easily.
If Laddie didn't recover the lance quick, there wouldn't be a lance to recover.
He cursed himself. The PenDragon, although functional, was inarguably incomplete. The man had neglected the machine's armour. Usually, he would treat the metal or incorporate some kind of resistant material to avoid attacks against elements like acid. It was impossible to know what a crime-fighting machine would come up against in a world of quirks. He hadn't… gotten around to that yet.
That this was in fact a race against time. It wasn't a question of if Dire would destroy the PenDragon. It was when. The amount of acid that was accumulating in its systems was sure to eventually erode it into a nonfunctional pile of scrap. It would be the likely fate of the suit even if Laddie managed to defeat Dire in the end. The acid, even what was already there, would sink into the metal and melt everything sooner or later.
Laddie started to panic. With the PenDragon's lance arm tussling with Dire's great big monstrous tongue, he had to use other weapons. He went to the first thing that came to his mind and blew the lid on the PenDragon's missiles.
All of them at once. He didn't have the time to pace himself. Just throw everything at him as quickly as possible. As the sea of weaponry filled the air around him, Dire smirked.
"Oh. This again?"
"Predatory Consummation: Thousand Chameleon's Tongue."
Manifold maws appeared all over Dire's body, opening and closing before Laddie could blink. In about as much time, a barrage of tongues, faster than any human would be able to detect, just barely visible even on a slow-motion replay from the PenDragon's observation screen, struck the missiles out of the air one or two or three at a time.
A couple managed to make it passed the chameleon tongues. Even those were no threat. Dire simply thrashed them with his War Tongue, making the PenDragon lurch in the process. Dire was dragging that Lance around like it was a mild inconvenience to him at best.
A secondary side effect made itself apparent. A consequence of Laddie's impatience. His attack blew up in his own face. He found that his vision was suddenly blocked by the smoke and dust kicked up by the prematurely detonated missiles. Damn it! He should have known that Dire could trump that attack. It was him who'd counteracted the PenDragon's first barrage. And now, with the last of his ordinance expended, Laddie had one less tool with which to fight.
It was the difference that inexperience made.
Dire prepared his counterattack.
"Predatory Consummation: Humanity's Tongue."
He spread his jaw open wide enough that it unhinged. His regular, human jaw. The one that was attached at the bottom of his skull and opened and closed logically and with regularity. The most mundane, unassuming mouth on his body of dozens and dozens of them. And something came out all the same.
The tongue looked almost paper-thin. Like the tape of a tape measure. It bent and extended forwards in much the same manner until it slashed through the PenDragon's outer layer of armour and pierced into the machine's heart.
Laddie lurched sideways and covered his face with his arms. Dire's tongue had gone right through the cockpit. He could see it from his seat, and not through a camera. It had missed him by less than one foot.
Shink.
The tongue retracted quickly, leaving only a thin accumulation of acid spit, similar to wiping shaving cream off of a straight razor.
"Y'know…" Dire began, as soon as his tongue was squarely back inside of his mouth. "It loses the surprise after you try it more than once, but I can't help but think that I was really close to… getting to that soft interior. The pilot, I mean. I know that theres one in there… And if it just so happens that there isnt, then there'll still be some kind of radio transmitter I can destroy just the same way, right? But I think that there is… Just a gut feeling… And I think that If I just keep trying, I'm gonna land one right in you eventually, right? I don't even need to cut the machine up any more. That's hard work anyway…"
Dire arched his back and dozens of little mouths appeared all over it. His tongues emerged from them, long and dextrous like an octopus's tentacles, and hoisted the boy off of the ground on many legs. Some tongues stretched out to the wrecked buildings and grabbed hold of outcroppings of concrete or rebar, hoisted Dire higher up by them. It looked like he was in the middle of a spiderweb of black tongues. Some kind of great arachnid that was removed from its exoskeleton and transformed into a fleshy, dripping cadaver.
Dire advanced on the PenDragon. Several tongues broke off from the rest of the ranks and wrapped themselves tightly around the machine's limbs. They dug into the metal slightly as they began to dissolve it. The tongues continued to lash and grow and wrap around like creeping vines.
With the prey properly held in place, like a hock of meat wrapped delicately in butcher's twine, Dire opened his mouth. It was time to skewer.
"Predatory Consummation: Thousand Humanity's Tongue."
Dire's tongue became as a whip sword, slashing and striking and thrusting what must have been close to a hundred or so times in that brief window of time during the onslaught of attacks. The PenDragon was peppered full of holes. Laddie had to take cover in the cockpit to avoid being impaled himself. Disturbingly, ever missed strike only brought Dire closer to sussing out his exact position inside of the PenDragon. He was frightfully close already.
Laddie felt like a magician's assistant being trapped in a box that was stabbed through with swords, sans the part where the routine was practised beforehand and where any part of it took his feelings about being stabbed and dying into account.
Laddie felt something brush up against him. A small cut appeared on his cheek. A few strands of his hair fell down, and he heard the acidic hiss of that foul slime touching his skin. That was close enough.
The man fumbled for the PenDragon's controls. Frantically, he fired up the eye lasers. The PenDragon's visor had been damaged when it had taken that hit from Hammer. For the first little while, it only burned red hot and billowed out smoke and steam, like it were a cut-up lithium battery. Soon, however, it found it within itself to burn cleanly. A pristine white beam shot out, cutting through the jungle of elongated tongues which the PenDragon had found itself in.
Dire growled. It barely hurt him to have his tongues cut down like this, but he found himself becoming easily frustrated. The kind of anger where you feel like you need to bite down on something. The PenDragon's beam grew in intensity as it focused in on the boy, taking more and more tongues with it.
With his supports suddenly cut out, Dire fell to the ground, a ball of cut-up ribbons. Only one of his tongues was left unsevered. The largest one, the one which had Laddie by what was more or less equivalent to the wrist.
He refocused the beam and poured more power into it. He was draining the batteries quickly, but the suit would fall apart before it ran out of power, of this he was sure. The smoke and steam began to billow out of the cracks once again. The frayed wires hissed and crackled inside of the suit's headcase.
The beam touched down onto the War Tongue's girthy width. The skin started to blister, and the spit boiled, pumping toxic fumes into the air. The beam melted through, frying muscle fibres and ever so gradually carving away at the overall mass. The process was slow. So very slow. Like pulling teeth. The tongue was too thick and tough even at this relatively thin portion near the tip.
Laddie gave it everything that the suit had.
The laser continued to cut. It got almost halfway through. Almost.
Laddie felt intense burning heat from behind as the PenDragon buckled like it was caught up in a storm. He could see it without turning his head. Jets of flame were penetrating into the cockpit from the holes that Dire left.
More warnings. It would be hard to find a system that wasn't failing on the PenDragon at this point. The only reason that it could still shamble about was Laddie's obsessive compulsion towards redundancy in design. Now a whole new swath of functionality had been taken out. This time from overheating. The laser shut down so as to not melt the head off of the suit. Not like that would stop it.
The metal was dripping down the PenDragon's back. Redd scoffed. The other robot had been more resistant. This was a step down for sure. Disappointing.
It wouldn't stop them from doing it again.
"Did you really forget about me? Come now, I thought I said not to leave me out of it…"
"Fire of the Proletariate."
Redd continued to bathe the PenDragon in fire. Dire cackled sadistically.
"Predatory Consummation: Humanity's Tongue."
Dire's tongue launched another attack. Like a harpoon, it lanced its way through the PenDragon's head. The tongue spasmed, and it began to mince the PenDragon from the inside out. The head was completely destroyed, and with it went Laddie's lasers and the PenDragon's primary cameras. The man watched as the screen infront of him turned to an empty static. All he had left were the auxiliary cameras.
But... he could still do it, right?
Laddie was at the end of his rope. He sat there in the cockpit as his creation was ripped apart from the outside in. He wondered if was going to burn to death first or be eaten alive. It all depended on whether Dire preferred his meals cooked or raw.
There was simply… Nothing he could do.
He couldn't take them both on his own. The cockpit was full of nothing but red light. The heat was unbearable. Like being trapped in the brazen bull. All that Laddie heard was the roar of static from the ruined display and the hiss of flames from just outside.
He couldn't do this alone.
But then again, who said that he had to?
With an explosion of blue-tinged force, a nearby rubble pile exploded like a geyser, shooting something far into the sky. Laddie looked up, Redd looked up, Dire looked up. Something was looking down on all of them.
A sustained stream of repulsion emanated from its hands, its feet, its elbows, its back. It maintained perfect position while airborne, like it was walking on the sky. It... Was that Rory?
They were wearing a new suit, but it couldn't have been anyone else, right? The new suit seemed more fabric than metal. A sleek, almost skintight design. The black canvas-like portions were interspersed with rings and pads of grey metal. The helmet had more lenses and optics covering it than Laddie could even tell what they all might be for. A slitted visor went from eye level down to the chin. Rungs of a jacobs ladder danced between its limbs. The forearm and wrists were laden with weapons.
"The question is not if we forgot about you, villain," Rory said. "The question is if you forgot about us."
Their voice... it was halfway between Rory's, and halfway between something else... S-Sawtooth?
"So tell me, did you happen to forget who you were dealing with? Where you were? This is Regency Academy. We are its students and its faculty, and we won't stand for this."
"Great. I love speeches," said Redd.
Laddie heard a sudden crackle from their earpiece.
"WE WILL TAKE CARE OF THE SNARKY, SENIOR ONE. YOU TAKE CARE OF THE YOUNG, EDGY ONE."
"Sawtooth, is that you?"
"YES. AND I'VE BEEN WELL, THANKS FOR ASKING. BUT NOW IS A BAD TIME."
"Understood. Sounds like a plan!"
Rory divebombed Redd's position, the repulsors on their limbs flaring up. As Rory accelerated, he left behind ripples.
"So, machine, tell me. What kind of specifications does this new suit have?"
"WELL, FIRST THINGS FIRST. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THAT I COMBINED YOUR REPULSORS WITH MY THRUSTERS, ALLOWING FOR SUSTAINED FLIGHT."
"Yeah, I did notice that."
Rory touched down on the roof. Three-point pose. A big cloud of smoke. Flawless.
"SECONDLY, ALL OF YOUR PHYSICAL SPECS HAVE BEEN INCREASED BY ABOUT EIGHT HUNDRED PERCENT."
"Only eight hundred? Could've aimed for a clean one K..."
"I'M A ROBOT, NOT A MIRACLE WORKER."
Redd sprayed a jet of crimson flame onto Rory. The force of the stream pushed him back, but only for a little bit.
"Sturmmtritt!"
Rory went airborne and landed on Redd's shoulders. A hefty, repulsor fueled spin-kick powered into their mask, sending a chip of ceramic flying along with an echoing blue ripple of light. Redd took out a line of roof tiles as they skidded away. They fumbled to their feet like an old person who'd stumbled down the stairs.
"THIRDLY, YOU'VE INHERITED THE RESISTANCE OF THE MIRACLE FIBRE. YOU'LL BE INSULATED AGAINST ANY TEMPERATURE BASED ATTACK, ANY LIQUID BASED ATTACK WILL FALL RIGHT OFF OF YOU, AND GOD FORBID ANYONE TRY TO USE ELECTRICITY AGAINST YOU."
"So that's why I'm not even sweating after taking a fire bath, huh?"
"IT ALSO ABSORBS IMPACTS. SO DONT THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU'VE LOST SOME BULK THAT YOU'RE ANY LESS PROTECTED AGAINST BLUNT FORCE. NEXT, I'VE GIVEN YOU ALL MY WEAPONS. THE ONES THAT WERE STILL IN ONCE PIECE, THAT IS. SHAME THAT WE HAD TO DITCH SOME OF YOURS, THOUGH."
"I can live with it. And hey, it's only temporary, right?"
Rory held their hands out. From among the tangle of machines that he wore on his arms, the Magsec Suppressors found their way into his palms.
"Voltaischer Regen!"
Rory slowly made their way forward while unloading as many rounds into Redd as they could. These guns fired as fast as you could pull the trigger, and for Rory, that was eight hundred per cent faster than it had been just a little while ago. Redd was caught up in the tidal wave of suppressing fire. They put their arms infront of their damaged mask and crouched down, lowering their profile. They were caught up. Their coat ripped to pieces. Each round rung off of their armour like a bell, incessantly hammering at Redd's flesh just beneath their shell.
When Rory started dry firing, Redd was on their knees, coughing up blood.
"Where... The FUCK... Did this kid come from?" Redd thought, watching red stuff oozing out of the gaps in their armour and the holes in their coat. It ran off the roof into the wrecked gutter. Rumbling with rage, Redd began to fill their reserves. The acid and the poison both swelled prolifically, preparing for their incendiary reaction. It was going to be a big one. Redd would need the largest one they could muster.
"This was... Easier than I anticipated." Rory thought.
"DONT LET UP NOW. DIAGNOSTICS INDICATE THAT THEY ARE PREPARING FOR A COUNTERATTACK AT MAXIMUM CAPACITY."
"Exactly how 'maximum' is this capacity?"
Sawtooth took a moment to reply.
"IT'S NOTHING WE CAN'T HANDLE."
"PANZERFAUST!"
Rory charged fist first forward on a stream of electricity. Something like a sonic boom shot off of them. At just the right time, Redd countered with their own technique. The chemicals combined in an almost industrial quantity.
"FIRE OF THE PROLETARIATE!"
Redd unleashed their backed-up charge. The fireball ballooned in size and heat, reaching all the way to the treeline and rising all the way to the clouds. It screamed like a thousand men having their throats slit at once. Dark images formed in the smoke. Skulls and corpses, dancing devils. The temperature in there would have been like standing on the surface of the sun. Rory charged headlong into it. The screeching fireball completely enveloped him, shutting out all else. The dark smoke in the shape of screaming faces completely filled his vision. He closed his eyes and pressed on.
Rory's fist connected.
The fireball dissipated, cut apart like the red sea. Redd took the supercharged blow directly to the face. Their body rocked, buckling from the impact. Cerame impact. Ceramic armour ground against ceramic armour hard enough to send sparks into the air. The frail body of the queen was tossed back like a plastic bag, slamming into the roof and skidding backwards.
"He's… Immune?!" Redd panicked as they came to a stop on their back. "This… Isnt good… It's just like that last robot… the one with the cape… It didn't seem to flinch at fire either, but I managed to cook it by sustaining a blast for long enough… But that only worked because I had more pieces to help… But they were all taken out. Damn it! Why do these assholes always seem to get back up!"
Redd was wasted, prone on the peak of the Regency Academy roof. Rory made their cautious approach, running as many diagnostics as Sawtooth could muster. No minute factor about their opponent's condition would go undetected. Rory knew before entering range that Redd was either merely pretending to be totally incapacitated or was only very temporarily disabled.
They raised their hand.
"Ok, Uncle. I… I surrender…" They croaked.
"Don't even try it," said Rory. "You're faking."
"I'm what…?"
"You're trying to lull me into a false sense of security, and then ambush me with the acid or poison that your hiding. Did you think I wouldn't notice? This suit makes me practically omniscient. If someone a kilometre away squashed a fly, I would be able to tell. You aren't going to hide anything from me, got it?"
"I got it. That's why I surrendered. I don't intend on fighting you anymore, kid."
"Not 'intending to fight' and 'surrendering' isn't the same thing," Rory pointed out. Redd laughed.
"You're shrewd."
Something appeared on the inside of Rory's visor. A little diagnostic that showed something coming from not so far away. Its point of origin was still on the school grounds, and it was closing in fast. It was big, and it was carrying something with it.
"I assume that you've already noticed it coming. You said you could catch a fly with that visor contraption, so I assume a mosquito would be no problem."
The buzzing started. Incessant and loud. Like the engine of a helicopter. Trees began to shake and leaves were torn off of them. The grass was flattened and dust was kicked up. Rory guarded themselves as the monstrosity touched down. The last monstrosity.
"This is my only piece left aside from the queen. All my pawns. My rooks. My other knight. They've all been put out of commission. Its this body…"
"And this one…" Said the Blood Knight. It was a centaurian creature, with a muscular armoured torso on a frail, six-legged thorax. It had a stupendous wingspan and a proboscis as long as it was sharp.
It was… holding something. Bodies. Three of them.
It dropped them all in a pile and stood atop them.
"These werent easy to get. Even if I selected a piece that directly countered their abilities, they were tenacious. I had to consume the blood of all my fallen pawns in order to recover enough strength to finally exhaust them. Luckily, all of the conditions of the battle favoured my side, so I was able to scrape out a victory. And even then, I didn't escape unharmed. You might notice that this piece has severe damage to its exoskeleton in several key areas. Those shockwaves were no joke. Had the blood knight not been a 'part of me', injuries like that surely would have been enough to put it out of commission."
Rory recognized those three bodies. That was Feldon, Mr Coleridge and Mr Nove. They had faint heartbeats but looked anaemic. Coleridge particularly. White, shrivelled and pruney skin. Barely alive. The Blood Knight stacked all three of them carefully and held them down with one of its hexadic legs. The proboscis was wielded over them like a firearm held to a hostages head. That was exactly what they were now. Hostages.
"If you make a single move on me, I will kill them. Move a single inch from where you standing, I will kill them. Flinch, I will kill them. Stay perfectly where you are and don't even attempt to raise a weapon against me, then I won't kill them. Then we can negotiate. Understand?"
"I don't… Negotiate… With terrorists…" Rory growled. His teeth were grinding together with the force of a millstone. Sawtooth chimed in.
"IGNORE THEIR DEMANDS. THIS IS AN OBVIOUS BLUFF, DONT YOU AGREE?"
"You're funny kid, you know that? So… Are you just gonna let them die?"
Rory froze up.
"THEY ARE WEAK. WE CAN ELIMINATE THEM RIGHT NOW AND SAVE FAR MORE THAN THREE LIVES COMPARED TO IF WE MEET THEM ON THEIR OWN TERMS. IT IS THE LOGICAL CHOICE. EVEN IF THEY CHOOSE TO ELIMINATE THE HOSTAGES, THEY WON'T EVER HARM ANOTHER HUMAN LIFE AGAIN."
"I… I cant…" Rory said, shuddering. His hands contorted into ghastly claw-grips as he fought with himself.
"ATTACK THEM. THEY ARE WEAKER THAN US. YOU CAN SEE THAT. ITS THE LOGICAL CHOICE."
"Don't you get it?! I-I... I cant…"
"WHY NOT?"
"I can't let… someone die…"
Rory saw Erika.
"THAT'S OK."
Rory was surprised.
"But… But I thought…" He stammered.
"YES. PLEASE CONTINUE TO BAWL. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO MAKE THE CORRECT CHOICE. I WILL MAKE IT FOR YOU. I KNOW HOW SENTIMENTALITY AFFECTS YOUR SPECIES. YOU NEEDNT WORRY."
"You… You what?" Rory said. "No… Don't!"
But it was too late. Sawtooth was in control now. The robot charged forward, ignoring Redd's threats. The distance between them wasn't that far. They could clear it in less than a second. They would eliminate both the Blood Knight and the Queen in one fell swoop. Simple as.
Whatever happened, happened. The intruders would be eliminated.
Rory couldn't allow it.
"PHANTOMSCHNEIDE!"
Sawtooth released their blade. It extended outwards in a wide swing. It was going to cut the Queen directly in half. That was the aim, anyway. Redd saw the attack coming.
"Kill one of the hostages," they commanded.
The Blood Knight primed its proboscis and stabbed.
Rory cried.
…
…
…
Something had stopped the Blood Knight's attack. The blade. Rory had stopped the blade short and blocked the attempt. Redd looked at the feet of the Queen. There was Rory, prostrated before them. Their head was close enough to the ground to lick Redd's boots. How… Curious.
"I… I'm sorry… I didn't mean to… It was… An outside force which made me attack… I… I shut it down… So, please… Forgive me… I agree with your demands…"
Redd paused quizzically for a moment.
"Hah!" They laughed. "This worked way better than I expected it to. God, you must have some hang-ups, kid."
"Damn you… God damn you…" Rory seethed. Redd got down on their knees and listened to Rory's enraged babbling.
"It's okay that you're angry. Go ahead. Call me a piece of shit or a monster. Let yourself be angry. I have no objections. I won't break off the deal just because of some verbal insults. That's not the kind of person I am."
"You… You're despicable…"
"Good. Let it all out, kid. You're angry, aren't you? You're so angry that you could die? You're so angry that you're on fire, right? So angry that it's indistinguishable from the worst despair? Wonderful. Then you almost feel ten per cent as strongly about me as I do about your institution."
Redd kicked Rory. It was a rather weak kick from a rather weak body. Rory chose to simply take it. Redd kicked him again. And again. Redd started to repeatedly stomp on Rory's neck. He just sunk down, accepting it. Any humiliation or degradation was better. He couldn't handle any more. Not an ounce more guilt.
Redd had kicked and stomped on Rory so much that they were out of breath. Panting, he gave the boy more orders.
"Tell the one in the robot to stand down."
Rory balled up their fists. Swallowing down shame, he called out to the PenDragon.
"STOP!" He yelled.
"You too, Dire," Redd added.
The pair of fighters stopped wrestling. Laddie was more stunned and shocked into pausing.
"What… What the hell do you mean 'stop'?"
"They have hostages… More teachers… We have to stop fighting… Or they'll die…"
"But… But then…"
"That's BULLSHIT!" Dire screamed.
"Oh? Do you have an objection, Dire?" Redd wondered.
"I was just getting started! We hadn't even gotten to the fun part yet! I had so many more techniques I wanted to show off! C'mon, what the fuck Redd?"
"You… You had more 'techniques'? You… That's it?! You… YOU-"
"Very well," Redd conceded.
"W-what…?" Rory stammered.
"You can continue fighting. But don't lose. Oh, and a message for the man in the machine. Don't win, or I'll kill one of the hostages. How's that?"
"You BASTARD!" Rory shouted, getting up and tackling Redd in the gut petulantly. He clawed at their big dark coat. "THAT WASNT PART OF THE DEAL!"
"Are you aware of a concept in negotiation knows as LEVERAGE?" Redd said, punting Rory for emphasis. "I decide whats 'part of the deal' and what isnt, got that?"
"I... I..."
"Oh, and another thing for our friend piloting the mech. Don't take this as permission to roll over and die. My underling needs some stimulation, got it? Make sure to entertain him. I want to see you fighting for your life. I presume that's what you want, isnt it?"
Dire nodded.
"Well then, get it over with quickly. It's almost time for us to take our leave."
"I don't suppose it'll take very long," Dire said. The boy salivated rancid darkness. Laddie grabbed the controls and started shaking. Anger... Fear... Shock... He couldn't parse what he was feeling. He... He didn't know what to do. What... What would a hero do?
TO BE CONTINUED
Just when it seemed like the tables had turned, Redd emerges with their last trump card. The Blood Knight has returned, and with hostages! Now Rory is pacified and Laddie is forced into a cruel game where he's hunted for sport. Dire needs to practice those new powers somehow, doesn't he? He still hasn't even shown off his strongest techniques yet! This battle continues next chapter!
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! Let me know what you thought of it in the reviews, and in case you SOMEHOW haven't heard about it yet, the discord server is open to anyone who may want to join and talk about the story, submitter or not! And as always, thanks everyone for reading! I'll see you in the next one!