Capítulo 93: Chapter 9: Escape Plan
Sir Deva applauds the decisiveness and bravery of the station's captain, though he is honestly a little disappointed that stunner bolts are the ones coming out of the barrels, it made everything a lot easier for him to deal with. The crowd are running outwards in all directions and pushing and shoving for him to get out of the way, and he stood his ground.
The piles of unconscious Aquarians near the outer boundaries began to increase in size, and the riot control droids have already optimized their firing patterns and managed to take out every closing target with a single clean shot before moving swiftly to the next. The Captain can't imagine the amount of shit he is about to receive, but at least it looked like everything is going to be under control.
'Confirm that no one has escaped the circle?' He looked towards the droid control officer, who's constantly looking at the screens showing all of the still functioning droids and their general status.
'Affirmative.' He said without looking away, then, another droid is taken out. Pulling out the drone footage, it seemed like some giant Aquarian is actively looking to take down the droids. No biggie as that's just every other body guard for those rich bastards. Any single bid of them is like a month of salaries for him, and he has no remorse for chopping them down by the bunch. Pulling a few more droids from the outer layer, the gap left was quickly filled.
Then, another few more droids went out of commission, and it seemed the same person is taking them down too, but how is this possible? He looked at the footage curiously and really zoomed in in the area of combat. The big Aquarian is moving surpremely well for someone's that's been shot with stunning bolts, and multiple droids have identified this individual as a high threat target and covered him with fire, and yet he is still moving as fast as he did and taking the droids down without any concerns.
This day have gone from weird to weirder.
The officer zoomed in closer at the footage once more, and something seemed a little off to him. This Aquarian.....had a few too many arms!
Sir Deva cannot believe how well this ridiculous plan has worked out. He wasn't one that needs a lot of innovation in combat, though Lady Lily has repeatedly stressed how important that quality is in taking down foes of similar power, especially now that they will be facing others with artifacts too. Due to great disparity between the durability of individuals wielding the artifacts and the destructive powers of the artifacts themselves, a single advantages move can end a fight in an instant. Dolon could electrocute Lady Lily in an ambush, but she could also knock her out with her Pen of Rearrangement if she's the one that's moving faster.
This is also partially the reasoning behind the constant enhancement underwent by the higher ups of Absolute Being, with each level of enhancements they receive in their body, they close the gaps between the two qualities ever so slightly. Lady Lily would probably be proud to see Sir Deva like this as he snaps a droid in half, snatching it's leg and uses it as a bat to hit another into the air. Around his body were two unconscious Aquarians with exceptionally long wing span.
Stunner bolts won't exactly do any physical damage to Sir Deva, whether he is bare skinned or fully armored. It would just be a constant nuisance that would make his movements more dull and slower, and Sir Deva hates being in that position. The good thing is that the frequency of those bolts are designed to dissipate extremely easily in organic matters, and there is a plentiful of organic matters around him. Those other Aquarians were his shields from the bolts were taken down not long after, and Sir Deva knew that it wouldn't exactly be a sustainable strategy.
That's when the light bulb appeared. Instead of following your shield around, why not bring your shields with you?
Sir Deva quickly spotted the two perfect shielf, two unconscious Aquarians with short legs and long arms. He picked them up with ease, stacked their arms together tight a nice little knot before putting the Aquarian jacket on, an unconscious fish man at the front and another at the back. When he moves and spin around, the free arms of them wobbles like leaves in the wind, though it makes quite a sight.
It turns out the fleshy shields are working incredibly well. Sir Deva is inhumanly strong, so moving with baggage that's almost double his body weight isn't that much of a challenge for him, particularly in the post enhancement days. And just like that, he ran his way through the many droids that are desperately firing at him, only to leave more marks on the poor Aquarian on his chest.
A bolts of two slipped through the gaps, but Sir Deva powered through the fuzziness and tiredness in his mind and continued his work.
'Look!' Someone from afar pointed towards Sir Deva, and he didn't recognize the human that's the one who started it all, 'he is taking all of the droids down!' The crowd screamed out a battle cry and unleashed their anger on the droids.
Ironically, Sir Deva's actions inspired the rest to fight back, and one by one, the droids are all taken out.
Taking this opportunity before the reinforcements are here, Sir Deva vanished into a dark alleyway and dropped off the shields that served him all too well. Now, it's up to him to finish what he has started. He looked at the layout of the space station, and marched towards the Station Control area.
Zel and RG weren't exactly surprised by the fact that Sir Deva was the one who won the bid, and Zel actually made it a point to say that Sir Deva won't be satisfied by simply getting the energy core back into his hands. He is looking for RG too. RG waved it off as overthinking and the two didn't talk much further about it.
However, we all know what happens right after, and as the entire building shakes in fear due to Sir Deva's motion, Zel and RG stood up from their seats immediately and knew that it's time to make an early exit.
'The exchange of currency may occur at the space port section of the station.' RG said as she packed everything into a tiny package and stood up, 'what are you going to do?'
'I think I would like to get off the station too...' Zel said. He didn't see Sir Deva channeling the power of the artifacts, nor did he believe that he could channel such power, and the shaking and the beeping alarms in the background just seemed to be a perfectly timed theatric that are used as a scare tactic, 'let's get to the space port first.'
With two jackets thrown on, the two blended in nicely with the rushing crowd, though when the droids started opening fire, Zel simply gritted his teeth and got both of them out of the ruckus. This did made him curl up in pain once more, but he is a tough one.
He can handle it.
Thankfully, most of the station's security's attention has been drawn towards the Arena of Gods, and two people moving with the large crowds of people towards the ships are not exactly anything out of the ordinary. However, it appeared that they have arrived at the time when the first group of scouting parties have just reached the edge of the gravity well they are in, and for some odd reason...
'As ridiculous as it sounds, all the ships are trapped.' The space port control is currently surrounded by confused and worrying customers, and the best conclusions he can draw are the ones that he couldn't believe it himself, 'if I can't guarantee your safety, I am not sure that I can...'
'NOBODY CARES!' One impatient patron yelled, 'just let us out! Your stupid scout ships are way too weak to get out!'
'YEAH! LET US OUT!' The others echoed his sentiment, and soon, the whole rowdy crowd is yelling the same thing and the space port control had to give it up and started letting people leave on shuttles. Zel and RG looked at the scenes from afar.
'How powerful is your ship?' Zel asked, and RG shrugged her shoulders and didn't give him an answer. Her robotic shoulders creaked with the movements, 'cause I may need to hitch a ride.'
'Sure, but I can't promise you I can drop you off where you want.' RG said, 'You are a great man, Zel, but you know how it works out here. I need to watch out for myself too. I can drop you off at a convenient junction station.'
'That would do just fine.' Zel nodded, as nobody wants to expose their lair to someone they only just met on this day. Despite his friendliness and how he saved her multiple times today, there might have been an ulterior motive, and RG has been in the game for too long not to recognize that. Still, he appreciated that's what she has offered, 'I understand.'
The first few shuttles have left, and Zel and RG both agreed to stay back and see what happens before receklessly going into the unknown and being all pissed off. Thankfully, the viewing telescopes at the station is just left near the windows collecting dust, so Zel chucked in a few credits and get it running. In roughly ten minutes, the first few ships that made their way out were actually some of the bigger ones Zel saw on his shuttle into the stations. Armed with much more powerful engines for an incredible amount of thrust compared to most other ships, perhaps they would be able to escape.
After the magnetic parking locks have disengaged, the ships tilted their nose and flew outwards. As the shape of the ship became gradually smaller and smaller on the viewing screen, it appeared that they might actually be able to get out of here. What's rather noticeable, however, is how quickly the ships have decelerated compared to when it first departed. It looked like a bike that's lost all it's momentum coming into a hill and almost grinded to a hault before the engines roared even more and dishes out more power. However, that wasn't enough.
The struggled continued on another minute or so, with the ship rolling left or right and simply not able to escape the gravity well no matter what they do. They then tried to turn and start moving in a circle and tried to slowly build up speed in a circular fashion and taking it step back step.
The process took another twenty minutes, and Zel actually got bored of watching the struggle. He could already imagine the conditions within the ship, with how the captain is going to scream at the mechanics and the pilots. How fortunate that he is a free soul now, Zel thought.
'Did you see that?' RG asked from beside him, as she stood up from looking into the telescopes, 'I will present my honesty, Zel. My ship is not powerful enough to escape the gravity well.'
Zel sighed lightly and turned to face RG too. Now it's time to put all the card on the table and get out of here together, 'And I need to tell you the whole story so we can get out of here.'
'What are you saying?' RG tilted his head and looked at him curiously, 'and what are you not saying?'
Zel started talking, and he first started with talking about how these artifacts came into possessions of many different individuals from within the galaxy, how each of them offered them an incredible amount of power over known physics and the fabrics of reality itself. RG simply locked her eyes on Zel as he was explaining it and processed what he is saying.
'Sir Deva, very much like me, also possesses one such artifact. His gives him control of fields of gravity somehow.' Zel explained, 'but I don't actually know how that works.'
'Still, how did you know that to begin with?' RG asked, 'and would it affect your...your...'
'No, my Pocket domain allows me to exist in a pocket of space that's parallel to ours, so what he does in the real world cannot affect me.' Zel shook his head and replied.
'So in a way, your artifact is extremely overpowered. Nobody can really touch you. Especially Sir Deva, right?' RG continued on.
'Not exactly,' Zel shook his head again, 'Sir Deva's artifacts merely stretches the spacetime continuum, as far as I can tell, while mine directly tears through it. However, I am not the only one. I fought with a guy named Rydel who also manipulates the actual fabric of spacetime itself, and the cross stream knocked my artifacts out for a good long while.'
RG didn't say anything, but she did raise the one eyebrow she has left.
'It's complicated...Sir Deva came from an organization known as the Absolute Being, and they will continually seek to enhance their body and power through whatever means necessary. They tried to 'recruit' me once, but Rydel, he saved me from their grasp.'
'Right.' RG nodded as the processing have been up to date, and yet many questions still remained, 'Why two artifact users are on the same space station?'
'This is the other truth I need to tell you.' Zel looked into RG's eyes, 'I came here with Sir Deva, but not really.'
'What do you mean?'
Zel then continued on about how he was investigating the theft based on what his contact has given him, how the theft was actually performed and how impossibly seeming everything was and that actually caught his attention more. Then, Sir Deva also came to the same conclusion as he is, and gave up on solving the mechanics of the crime and focused on the tracking down of her instead.
'Sir Deva did something with traffic data that I could not understand yet, but he was using all of the resources of Absolute Being to do it. From what I am seeing, you did perform multiple location jumps before you got here, and anybody else wouldn't have figured out that this is where you ended up being. Actually they wouldn't have figured out this ship is where you came through.' Zel explained as RG looked visibly upset that her escape route was actually figured out by someone.
'To be honest, I would have just cheated using my artifacts as my getaway like always.' Zel said, noticing RG went into more processing again, 'over the past many years, I have gotten quite rusty with my...conventional skills.'
'Never rely on only one thing.' RG said firmly.
'You are right.' Zel agreed, 'so that's how Sir Deva found you. All I did was lock my pocket domain onto the real space that represents his ship and followed along. So that's the entire story of the past few days. I did plan on getting the energy core at some point, but...I changed my mind.'
'Why? I am sure there is big money in it.' RG stared at Zel, who returned her glaze.
'Oh yeah, very big money.'
'How big?'
'Five billion.'
Now everything makes sense, though all those people in this region of space aren't truly aware of the values of the energy core. If they did, they would have thrown in every penny they owned to get it.
'Why did you change your mind?'
'Well...I only needed five hundred thousand.'
The two didn't say a word for a while. RG knew there is something else behind this man's faced. Perhaps it's the information on the thieve's guild that she had given him? Regardless, she could trust him for now. Somehow, she always knew that she could trust him.
'Now, to take Sir Deva down, I will need your help.'
'Can't you just use your artifacts to get to him?' RG asked.
'It's not that easy, however. I have overused the Pocket over the past few days just to get here, and the recoil I feel each time when I use it made it really hard to use at will in a fight.' Zel said, 'but we can make a run if we really need to though.'
'If you can't provide the firepowers to take him down, what can we really do?' RG asked, now realizing the the situation.
'By the looks of it, it seemed like the entire station would be underneath Sir Deva's control very soon, however, using the powers of the artifact at this level of scale is incredibly difficult and draining, and regardless of how much enhancements he has gone through, there must be a limit.' Zel said, looking back towards the crowd to make sure no one is paying any attention to the two standing by the windows. Some of the ships have already given up on wasting fuel and returned to the parking spaces.
'He would have fought for a long time by now.' RG said, 'and it is logical to suggest he is nearing his limits.'
'If I were him, I would seek control of the space station in the quickest and easiest way possible, make all that remained in the station give up and become desperate people underneath his control.' Zel pointed towards the returning ships, the big one that was circling around the gravity well also giving up and returning back into the station. Seeing the powerful engines of the big ship can't even escape the well, some of the smaller ships turned around without even trying, 'they will do anything that he desires, and his top priority will be catching you.'
'But what's in this for you?' RG asked, 'you won't be getting five hundred thousand out of this, and probably neither will I if our plan fails.'
'That's okay. I just happened to find a group of friends in the settled regions, and I am not really in a rush... not at the moment at least,' Zel said with a light smile, then he waved his personal interface at RG and continued, 'plus, you gave me the list of information I have been looking for for a long time, and I can only be thankful.'
'So now, let's talk about how we can take Sir Deva down and get out of here.'
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