chapter 113
POV: The First Son of the 4th Founder Family
Finally, things were starting to settle down a bit. I still had to repress my emotions, as just three days ago, I lost my little brother. Why did you have to make me do that?
“Captain?” I heard someone call outside the door. That’s good, a distraction is nice.
“Enter.”
My right-hand man walked in. He was carrying a tablet, so this must have been important.
“I managed to piece together what happened with the Forward Horizon ship.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”
He walked closer, playing a video from the tablet and showing it to me.
I saw a really well-defended base that seemed to have its hangar doors opened, and a ship that was taking off. When it was fully hovering above the base, instead of going somewhere, it started to sway left and right, moving erratically but always keeping itself above the base. I was about to ask, but it seems I didn’t have to.
“We got the data from the cult’s computers. While the ship was hacked, it seems they were able to somehow fake that they were flying over the city towards the dozen locations the ship was assigned to destroy.”
That was clever of them. I wonder how they did that. My little brother’s hacker, if I understood correctly, was extremely good. Then I saw him walking onto the roof, the video zoomed in on him.
He seemed to be quite tall, with two legs and two arms, a typical humanoid. He wasn’t wearing metal armour, but he still seemed quite dangerous just from a look. I had only ever seen his profile picture, and it most certainly didn't convey the radiating power this individual seemed to have.
“Isn’t he just an E rank?” I asked while continuing to observe him.
“To our knowledge, yes, but we believe he’s getting close to the next rank.”
That would be fast, but he does have a kind of cheat with all those robots at his command. Probably uses hundreds of those to help him clear portals fast. Then he started smoking while closing his eyes, seemingly concentrating deeply.
The video zoomed out, showing the turrets of his base activating and trying to aim towards him, but most seemed to be glitching out before they could.
“What’s going on?”
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“The cult sent five of their best Benders after him. I believe he’s currently fighting off their attempts to take over his bonds.”
“Five, and he’s resisting them so long?”
Then I saw him look towards a location and mouth something. A translation of lip-reading followed soon after, edited in by someone.
“Found you.”
Well, wasn’t that scary. All of a sudden, the video switched to a different scene, four large robots jumping through a building. A moment later, the entire thing exploded. I’m pretty sure I saw missiles coming out of one of the robots. Did they just blow themselves apart?
A moment later, through the thick dust kicked up by half of the building that collapsed, laser fire could be seen. The wind quickly cleared everything away, revealing four robots firing huge laser rifles at a few surviving individuals.
One of those survivors suddenly disappeared, reappearing in front of one of the robots, cutting its weapon clean in half. The robot didn’t even hesitate for a moment, trying to backhand that individual, who dodged easily.
I was surprised to see the robot take a step back, dodging an attack in return. That huge robot moved way too fast, but it wasn't enough, as the blade still cut through some of its armour, a moment later, a piece of it fell to the ground.
They sent a Blade Dancer. Seems I have another reason to be grateful to that captain. If that Blade Dancer would’ve been in that room, things could have played out differently.
The other survivors tried to put up a defence, but they weren't anywhere close to the skill level of the Blade Dancer, so in just 30 seconds they were dead, but that huge robot was also basically dismantled.
It didn't have a right arm, some of its fingers from its left were missing, and now it had a blade buried deep into its power core. She turned around, using her blade to stop the laser fire from the only robot remaining that had a functioning laser rifle. The others used their sidearms, but she also reflected those shots, although it didn't seem as easy to do so with those bullets.
Then she received the heavy strike from behind her, the first real damage she had taken during the exchange. The fighting seemed to stop for a moment. The half-dismantled robot continued to move. I was not entirely sure how, but it pulled out a really large knife.
The Blade Dancer tried to rush back in to finish this half-destroyed robot. She wasn’t successful this time because she had three other robots to worry about.
What followed was a magnificent fight, but the Blade Dancer was slowly grinding away at the robots, taking out their weapons one by one. Now she was surrounded by four robots, all of them only having their blades remaining.
She said something, but this time there wasn't a translation, probably because it was at an awkward angle. She seemed confident, and I could understand why, she had taken three arms in total, and after another exchange, managed to take a leg as well.
The robots were trying their best, but they simply were not able to keep up with her. Then she made her last mistake. One of the blades had gotten a good angle and was about to reach her. She moved enough that she could block the attack, probably expecting her blade to cut through the attacking one.
Instead, there was a large clank, with her blade only managing to cut maybe an inch into the other. So the blades were made of tougher metal. The power those robots wielded was no joke, and her guard collapsed almost immediately.
She still seemed to have some defensive trinkets that defended her enough from being cut apart. But the two other robots were close by, and their blades found their marks as well. And just like that, it was over.
The video then sped up, showing other robots coming in to start clearing rubble and taking the damaged robots back to their base. There were quite a few body bags on the streets after the cleanup. It seemed that some of the other people who were living there were crying over some of the bodies.
“The cult was using that apartment because there were civilians there. I believe they thought that that would make Remi Graves hesitate to give an attack order.”
“Well, obviously it didn’t. I told you before that he seems like a dangerous individual.”
“Because of the collateral damage, the Police Department is trying to go after him. This, up to this point, hasn’t been labelled as a cult attack, so they currently think it was just two criminal gangs fighting each other. Should we let the Police Department take him down?”
“What do you think?” I asked my right-hand man.
“I think we should classify it as a cult attack, which it was. We could also reveal that the cult wanted to take over their bonded robots, so we could perhaps hire him to continue your brother’s work. He seemed quite close to finishing his magic-tech robots.”
I took a while to think everything through before answering him.
“Classify it as a major cult attack; that would give him a nice reward. As for my brother’s research, just archive it. No need to make that captain even stronger, and with the current dislike of robots as a whole, I do not think it would go over well if we tried to introduce them into the police force.”
“Of course, I will do as you say.” And with that, he left. I had a feeling that there was no need to tie him to this place. Remi Graves was most definitely going to move on sooner rather than later, and I would be glad of it, as such individuals usually always brought trouble.