Episode-1008
Chapter : 2015
Lloyd didn't waste time with banter. He triggered the thrusters on his back. Blue fire erupted from the exhaust ports.
Lloyd launched himself forward. He moved so fast he was a black blur. He covered the distance to the ridge in a heartbeat, his metal fist pulled back for a punch that could shatter a tank.
"Too slow," Marcus said.
Marcus didn't try to dodge. He simply slammed the butt of his staff into the ground.
"Gravity Anchor."
The air around Lloyd suddenly turned purple.
It felt like the sky had fallen on him.
Lloyd’s forward momentum died instantly. He slammed into the ground, face first, sliding through the dirt. It wasn't that he had tripped. It was that he suddenly weighed too much to fly.
The "Gravity Anchor" was a piece of high-tier Fire Fly tech. It manipulated the gravitons in a localized area. It didn't crush Lloyd; it increased the mass of his suit.
One moment, the Aegis weighed two tons. The next moment, it weighed twelve tons.
The servos in the legs whined in protest. The metal groaned. Lloyd tried to push himself up, but his arms were trembling. It felt like he was doing a pushup with a house on his back. The ground beneath him began to crack and sink, unable to support the impossible density of the machine.
Marcus walked over to him, his heavy metal boots clanking on the rocks. He stood over the prone Lloyd, looking down with his single red eye.
"You people never learn," Marcus said, his voice cold and corporate. "You think magic makes you special. You think a big suit makes you strong. But physics is the only law that matters. And gravity is the harshest judge."
Marcus pressed a button on his staff. The purple light intensified.
Lloyd felt his ribs creak. The internal pressure warnings in the suit were flashing red.
[Weight Increase: 500%. Mobility: 0%. Structural Integrity: Failing.]
"I’m going to crush you inside that can," Marcus said. "And then I’m going to scrap it for parts."
Lloyd gritted his teeth. He couldn't move. His hydraulics were maxed out. His engines were redlining just to keep the chest plate from collapsing onto his lungs. Brute force wasn't going to work. He couldn't punch gravity.
But Lloyd Ferrum was not just a brute. He was the Sovereign of Logic. And he knew that every law of physics had a loophole.
"You're right, Marcus," Lloyd grunted over the comms. "Gravity is a harsh judge. But you're forgetting something."
"Oh?" Marcus asked, increasing the pressure. "And what is that?"
"Gravity takes time to travel," Lloyd whispered. "It’s a wave. And if you cut the timeline... the wave never arrives."
Lloyd closed his eyes inside the helmet. He reached deep into his Unified Power Core. He bypassed the fire of Iffrit. He bypassed the lightning of Fang Fairy. He reached for the cold, ticking clock that lived in the back of his soul.
"Zafira," Lloyd commanded. "Wake up."
________________________________________
The warning sirens inside the Aegis helmet were deafening. The sheer weight of the Gravity Anchor was bending the Star-Frost armor. Lloyd could hear the metal screaming, a high-pitched shriek of molecular bonds being stretched to their limit.
Marcus stood over him, smug and untouchable. He thought he had won. He thought he had trapped the primitive native in a cage of physics.
But Lloyd wasn't trapped. He was just waiting for the right second.
Inside his mind, a clock began to tick.
Tick. Tock.
The spectral form of Zafira, the Weaver of Eras, materialized behind the Aegis suit. She was invisible to Marcus, existing on a spiritual plane. She looked like a gothic mourner, her dress made of shadows and gears. Her left eye, a golden clock face, spun rapidly.
"Time is a fabric," Lloyd thought. "And I have the scissors."
"Weaver of Eras," Lloyd commanded. "First Form."
Zafira floated forward. She didn't hold a weapon of steel. She held the "Minute Blade"—a long, thin rapier that glowed with a pale, ghostly light. It wasn't a sword meant to cut flesh. It was a tool meant to edit reality.
Lloyd couldn't move his physical arm, but the Soul-Circuitry allowed him to move his spiritual arm. In his mind, he swung the sword.
Zafira mimicked the motion. She slashed the Minute Blade through the purple column of gravity holding Lloyd down.
[Temporal Slash.]
The blade didn't cut the gravity itself—that was impossible. Instead, Lloyd aimed for the cause of the gravity. He aimed for the time-stream of the device Marcus was holding.
Chapter : 2016
For a split second, the Minute Blade severed the timeline connecting Marcus’s staff to the present moment. It "deleted" the last five seconds of the machine's operation.
The effect was instantaneous.
The purple light vanished. The crushing weight disappeared as if it had never existed. The staff in Marcus’s hand sputtered and went dark, its internal clock reset to a moment before he had activated the anchor.
Marcus staggered. He looked at his staff, confused. "What? System error? Why did it reset?"
That confusion was all the opening Lloyd needed.
"Physics lesson number two," Lloyd roared. "Action and reaction!"
Released from the ten-ton weight, the Aegis suit’s hydraulics—which had been pushing with maximum force against the gravity—suddenly had nothing to push against. The suit didn't just stand up; it exploded upward.
Lloyd channeled every ounce of power into the leg thrusters. The black machine shot into the air, doing a backflip over the stunned cyborg.
Lloyd landed ten feet away, crouching low. The engines on his back flared, venting excess heat in a cloud of white steam.
"You..." Marcus snarled, tapping his staff frantically to reboot it. "You hacked it! That’s impossible! That’s Fire Fly encryption!"
"I didn't hack it," Lloyd said, his voice cold and metallic. "I just edited the history of your battery."
Lloyd stood up to his full height. The Aegis Mark III loomed over the cyborg.
"Now," Lloyd said. "Let me show you my favorite law of physics."
The white-and-gold plating on the right arm of the Aegis slid back. The arm shifted, transforming into the massive barrel of the Nova Cannon.
"It’s called thermodynamics," Lloyd said.
The cannon began to hum. It wasn't a slow charge this time. Because of the Soul-Circuitry, Lloyd poured his mana directly into the weapon instantly. The barrel went from dark to blinding white in a microsecond.
Marcus’s red eye widened. He raised his arm, activating a personal hard-light shield. A blue hexagon of energy appeared in front of him. It was a military-grade barrier, designed to stop tank shells.
"Shields up!" Marcus yelled. "Maximum density!"
Lloyd didn't fire from a distance. He didn't want to give Marcus a chance to dodge.
Lloyd engaged the boosters on his back. The Aegis suit shot forward like a rocket.
Closing the distance in a blur, Lloyd rammed the barrel of the Nova Cannon directly into the center of Marcus’s blue shield. He pressed the gun against the energy barrier until sparks flew.
"Point-Blank," Lloyd whispered.
He pulled the trigger.
"Nova Blast."
The sound was absolute. It wasn't a boom; it was a crack that split the air.
A beam of concentrated, high-velocity plasma erupted from the cannon. Because there was zero distance, the energy didn't have time to dissipate. It hit the shield with 100% efficiency.
The blue shield shattered like glass.
The beam didn't stop. It slammed into Marcus’s chest. The cyborg’s armor, advanced as it was, couldn't handle the heat of a small sun pressed against it.
Marcus didn't scream. The air was sucked out of his lungs by the vacuum of the blast. He was lifted off his feet and launched backward. He flew across the ruined pavilion, a smoking comet of metal and flesh.
He smashed through a stone pillar, turning it to dust. He kept going, flying over the heads of the fighting soldiers. He arced over the cliff edge of the island.
SPLASH.
Marcus crashed into the ocean three hundred yards away. A massive plume of steam and water shot up where he landed. He didn't resurface. The weight of his cybernetics would drag him down to the bottom of the sea.
Lloyd lowered his arm. The barrel of the Nova Cannon was glowing red, heat waves distorting the air around him.
"Target neutralized," the suit’s computer stated. "Threat eliminated."
Lloyd looked around the battlefield. The sight of the Gamma Team leader getting blasted into the ocean had a profound effect. The Fire Fly troopers hesitated. The brainwashed guards blinked, the shockwave of the blast snapping some of them out of their trance.
Lloyd amplified his voice. "Anyone else want a physics lesson?"
Silence answered him.
Lloyd turned toward King Liam, who was reloading his pistol behind the barricade. Liam looked at the black mech and gave a thumbs up.
"Nice shot, kid," Liam yelled. "But don't get cocky. The big guy is still watching."
Lloyd looked up. High above, on the ramp of the dropship, Lucifer was still standing there. He hadn't moved. He hadn't frowned. He was just watching, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, amused light.