Chương 141: Carried Away
As the crowd started to move towards the arena, Altair was left within the grasp of that woman. Everything had happened too fast for her, even though it was actually pretty slow in reality. However, Altair's mind had flown away a while ago due to her nervousness. Nothing came to her mind for a while as she was moved around by the woman she didn't know. She didn't even want to uncover her head because she didn't want to see those passionate and interested gazes that she felt.
But, since the crowd was no longer gazing so intently upon her, she felt more relaxed even though she couldn't see anyone and had no visual proof that most people weren't watching her. Because of that, her face slowly recovered its original color and she nervously lowered her wings from her face to look around herself.
When she actually noticed that the crowd wasn't paying as much attention to her as before she finally let out a relieved sigh.
There was still an empty circle around them that the crowd seemed to be following, giving the three people within it a wide berth, but that was fine for Altair.
At least until the woman asked the man, "Why are you dawdling? Hurry up and call the transport. There's no way we'll get to our seats with this many people around us."
The man smirked at her while simply stating, "You just don't want some random person to grab your ass." But he did bring up his communicator and start fiddling with it.
Altair couldn't feel the woman's hands tighten angrily on her wings as she shot him a contemptuous look.
Sensing a lull that she could take advantage of, Altair finally asked her, "Can you put me down now?"
The woman still had the same mischevious smile she had when she had picked Altair up. She turned her head towards Altair and matter-of-factly stated, "You aren't heavy, little darling. So I'll carry you through the whole thing."
Altair gave her a confused look while asking, "What thing?"
"More importantly," the woman said while obviously changing the subject, "Who made these wings for you?"
The man had finished what he was doing on his communicator. He frowned at the woman when she said that and took it upon himself to speak up for Altair, "Hey, you hate it when people ignore your questions. Why are you suddenly doing that to others now?"
The woman didn't even turn her head towards him when she replied, "Because I am me. Obviously it doesn't apply to myself."
The man sighed loudly, which the woman completely ignored as she gazed into Altair's eyes. After several moments of silence due to Altair being completely unable to answer her without lying, the woman finally said, "You have really pretty eyes, you know that?"
Altair had not covered up her eyes with her Shadow Magic. There was no point since she didn't know anyone around her and she didn't want to use the Mana on it, even if it was a miniscule amount. Thus her emerald colored eyes were open for anyone to see.
The woman went on with another question, "Are they natural or are they colored?"
Altair drew her head away from the woman slightly at this question. For some reason, it felt like the woman wanted to take her eyes from her. Since the woman was ignoring her questions, Altair decided to return the favor as she started to try and struggle in her grasp while saying, "Enough, put me down I have things I need to do." She still needed to find out what direction the Marnithok family was in from here.
The man spoke up for the woman this time as a bike came floating down into the circle, "Hey now, give us some face would you? She picked you for her event so you can at least accompany us until the tournament is over."
Altair gave him a confused look. The man then exchanged an odd look with the woman in response to that before the woman asked, "You… This really is your first time in Gizmotech City isn't it?"
Altair's confused look was focused on the woman, which prompted her to sigh lightly. "Well, I'll explain on the way. Suffice to say, it will only take an hour or two of your time so you can do whatever you need to do after. I cannot let you go until then, though." She made a dramatic gesture while dramatically putting a defeated look on her face before she said, "It would ruin my image and I cannot let that happen."
Altair was completely lost by now. But, if it only took a single hour then it would be fine. If it took two hours then her Mana wouldn't hold out and she would soon be completely naked in the woman's grasp while her powers would, probably, be completely exposed. Since she had made no headway at all in escaping the woman's grasp yet, she figured that the woman was a lot stronger than she thought, potentially even dangerous to her even. Since that was the case, it would be better to cooperate for the time being so that whatever this "event" was could be completed sooner and she could go hide again.
The woman carried Altair as she got onto the floating bike first and the man got on behind her. He wrapped one arm around her waist and the other touched a Holodisplay that came out of the side of the bike when they got on it. The bike slowly listed into the air before it shot forward abruptly over the crowd.
Altair felt like she was being pushed into herself when the bike accelerated so rapidly. She had felt this feeling before when she was fighting, but it was rare. She didn't like it very much though.
The woman spoke softly into her ear as the wind whipped past her face, "I am pretty famous on the Spacenet, you know. I have a reputation to uphold or my fans will riot against me. It was hard to build up my following and it can be destroyed very quickly with a single mistake. Therefore, I need you to accompany me until the event is over with."
While she was talking, the bike had listed further into the air and approached the dome over the arena. It allowed Altair to see inside of it and she gasped when she saw the sheer amount of people inside the arena. At a complete guess she would have to say there were at least a million people in the arena.
Her number would be far off. It was actually closer to eleven million people. Even though there wasn't a concerted effort for them to cheer or anything, it was still a deafening amount of noise coming from the arena. Altair was surprised she could even hear the woman talking to her.
The center of the arena was a massive Holodisplay that showed two different videos side by side. The videos were of the same thing just from two different teams.
On both images were medium sized Mechas that were undergoing preparations for combat. These medium sized Mechas were obviously heavily customized and modified to their pilot's preferences. One of them looked like a giant hulking brute that had a third arm on its back. The other had its lower body completely replaced with a snake and had some changes made to its frame to make it slimmer and more humanlike.
Altair had never seen such strange giant metal men before. As she had no contact or influence with Mecha's in person, this strange contrast to the small Mecha's that noble families employed to guard their mansions was huge. The colossal military Mecha she saw when she first came to the Empire was still buried in her memories and she subconsciously blocked it out due to her fear of it even now.
The woman continued, "The event isn't anything difficult to understand. It's a simple battle, but they are evenly matched so it could take a while." She pointed down to the videos that were being played in the arena and added, "Those are the combatants."
Altair shot the woman an even more confused look than before. She didn't understand how two Mechas could find in such a small location. She understood that the video being played at the arena floor was probably from a different location, but they still couldn't fight in such a small area if they were as big as the small sized Mechas that the nobles used as guards. Even those small sized Mechas were twenty to thirty meters tall.
If two things of that sized fought in the small area that she could see as the arena, it would undoubtedly lead to thousands of deaths from the spectators. She didn't see how any government or the organizers of this battle would be able to get away with such a thing.
The woman didn't seem to understand the confused look as she continued to explain, "We are going to be sitting right there," she pointed towards the front of the seats in the arena. There was a box shaped building that was kept separate from everyone else. It even had multiple people wearing suits, which stuck out like an apple among oranges with everyone else's costumes, guarding the building. There were at least a dozen of them that stood around looking as imposing as they could to dissuade anyone from doing something foolish.
The bike entered a hole that opened in the dome before them and raced towards the building. The moment they entered the dome, the noise from inside assaulted them. It was at least four times louder than it was outside the dome. It was so much louder that Altair even covered her ears reflexively, which brought a chuckle from the woman.
Since Altair had her ears covered, the woman stopped explaining things to her for the time being. There would be plenty of time to continue when they were inside the building.
The man maneuvered the bike down dexterously near the building. The guards cleared a spot for them to lower down into in practiced fashion and, soon, they were low enough to disembark from the vehicle.
Once they were, the woman wasted no time in pushing herself off the bike while carrying Altair. She walked ahead and ignored the man behind her, entering the building while a guard opened the door for her.
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