As Ester cursed inwardly, others cursed outwardly.
"What iz thiz bullzhit!?" A man with a heavy lisp cursed, a singular glowing eye glaring from underneath his hood. "I came to rezeive my payment, not to be dezeived with falze promizez."
[I-I assure you that there are-are no false promises being made.] The man bound to the chair twitched as the speaker continued to crackle.
[In the event that the Heir isn't here, I shall g-give you my knowledge and if that dis-dissatisfies you, you can exchange the-the opportunity for units.]
"I azzume that we still have to reveal ourzelvez?" The man lisped as his eye glowed all the more brighter underneath the hood.
[Of course.]
"If thatz the caze then I don't want to do it." The man huffed, his hand waving in the air as he resolutely turned towards the door. "You all can keep that money to yourzelvez, I'm leaving."
[Who said that you have a-a choice in the matter?]
A quiet chill crawled up Ester's spine at those words as the moment suddenly stretched and his breath hitched.
It was the onset of a familiar sensation that made his hair stand on end.
One that he made specific preparations against several days ago.
Instinct overrode cognition as his right arm twitched, connecting the Aether battery to the modified faraday's caging he had created and hid underneath the numerous clothes on his body.
Then it hit him.
Feeling a brief tingle on the parts of his skin where he couldn't get the cage to work right, Ester fell down to mimic the others who were hit by the wave of high frequency energy.
'Ouch.'
Feeling a bit of pain from the fall, Ester subtly adjusted his body so that his eyes had a wide range of his surroundings.
To no one's surprise, the six cyborgs were all perfectly fine, an undercurrent of energy coating their metallic limbs as it pulsed in retaliation to the ADP's waves.
The initiator of these waves of ADP was currently incapacitated weirdly enough.
The tall man who glared at them all initially moved behind the bound man, bringing out a rod shaped apparatus with a large spike protruding from the end of it.
Adjusting the body bound to the chair, the cyborg stabbed the spike straight through the neurostem, a shudder shaking the body in response as a groan escaped him only to be swiftly cut off by the speaker crackling back into existence.
*Crackle.
Head snapping back up from where it fell, traces of blood began to leak out of the man's camera eyes, like a puppet controlled on strings, the man spoke to them all.
[If-if you all complied to-to our demands then we wouldn't have to re-resort to this.]
It was quite condescending.
[Now be-begin taking off-off their hoods beforetimers.]
Mechanical eyes whirring as they took in everything around them, it might've been his own paranoia speaking to him, but the camera's replacing the man's eyes seemed to linger on him longer than the others before the cyborgs began to move starting from the outer edges.
There were seven mechaphiles in total, six if Ester didn't count the one who was currently being controlled(?) by the leader of the Beforetimes.
Accounting for the fact that there were Eighteen people in total, with him in the relative center and how long it would take for them to remove the hoods so that they could confirm the hair color he had...
Thirty seconds.
Twenty nine now with all this thinking he was doing.
It was neither a large amount of time nor a small one.
But if Ester took into account the fact that the people of this trash planet were those who wouldn't be here if they were weak enough to be taken advantage of by the roadside burglar then the time was more realistically forty five seconds.
Forty now since he was spending the seconds calculating the time instead of thinking of a way to escape.
'Focus Ester.'
Pinching his side as he looked around, Ester eyed the two cyborgs blocking the way to the door before recalling the two metal guards outside of it. 'Even if I break past them there's the problem of those MG-102s outside.'
The six people on the outermost edge of the gathering struggled weakly as metallic hands forcefully ripped off their hoods, exposing the faces underneath.
Flashes of recognition briefly passed over a few of the cyborgs eyes as they observed the faces, one of them even taking the chance to kick one while they were down.
Thirty one seconds thanks to their resistance
'Can I take the leader hostage?' Ester thought as he stared at the body bound to the chair before denying his own question. 'What good will that do? The boss controlling that puppet body is definitely far away from here.'
Six more had their hoods forcefully removed with tears appearing in the fabric, angry faces filled with discontent appearing underneath respirator masks.
Thirteen seconds and counting.
'Think Ester, think! What can you do!?'
Hands twitching as he was tempted to just risk running past the MG-102s whilst hoping for the best, someone else beat him to it.
Shielding from ADP waves weren't unique to Ester it seemed.
"What the Void-!?"
"-Urk!"
Shoving the two cyborgs in his way, the small frame that was hiding more strength than it would initially suggest shouted loudly with a distinct lisp. "Get za fuck out of ze way!"
Slamming against the door as bright lights decorated their shoulders, from the bright lights on their shoulders a visible wave of pure force undulated against the doors, slamming them the opposite way that they were intended to open in.
Metal flying out in all directions as it squealed against the floor, the lisp man hurriedly ran for the exit.
If only those prowler bots didn't exist.
"Zon of a-!?"
Tripping over an extended wire that suddenly extended from one of the scrap piles flanking the door, as the man instinctively rolled to break their fall, the two piles of scrap finding it useless to pretend anymore revealed themselves in full.
Pushing past the scrap covering their body, flakes of reddish rust fell down from their bodies as two dogs with mouths filled with sharp teeth appeared.
Metallic forms pouncing onto the man, he let out a cry of pain as the full weight of their bodies pressed down onto the bones, their jaws clinking together as one of the two cyborgs he pushed aside earlier slowly walked towards him.
"Zhit!"
Cursing loudly when she ripped off the hood and allowed the metal bodies to press against the bones more, it revealed a singular red optic and a normal red eye.
Recognition flashed through her eyes as she opened the data pad from the middle, a bright light scanning his face.
Despite his struggles to prevent it from recognizing him, when the scan finished, she read the data on the pad before turning to look back at the room filled with eyes all looking at her.
Particularly the eyes belonging to the person currently inhabiting the puppet body.
"This one has a bounty of four thousand A-Units boss."
[Did-did you fear us j-just because you had-had a bounty of four-four thousand?] A peal of laughter grating on the ear. [How f-funny that you-you think that we would be t-tempted by four thousand.]
The man's head forcefully righted itself upwards as an even colder voice than before exited the speaker.
[T-turn him in, we don't need doubters who c-can't even listen to simple instructions.]
"Wait! Ack! I was wrong! I'm sorry for trying to run! Wait! JWaaaaaaiiiitt!!!"
Disappearing behind the corner as the cyborg led the man with a lisp away tied up in the MG-102's wires, the second MG-102 having already been exposed moved to replace the position where the woman previously was.
[Now then...] The head lolled around to look at the bunch of people slowly recovering from the aftereffects of the wave of ADP that had just disrupted their biology, a shared look of discontent sent towards the man tied to the chair.
But when his gaze turned to look at them in turn, they all simultaneously looked away.
Ester included although for reasons other than fear.
The man let out another scattering of broken laughter before he nodded his head.
[Continue re-removing their hoods.]
The five remaining cyborgs moved to remove the hoods covering the remaining six's heads, one head in particular more submissive than the rest.
Thinking that they could take off that ones hood last, palpable disappointment radiated off of the bound figure's body as the cameras stared at the heads of hair placed atop each person's head, not finding the trace of grey that he wanted in the slightest.
Then the final hood was taken off and silence fell.
---
'This is boring...'
Those were the thoughts of the man watching the flow of people entering and leaving Junk Bunk.
His job was being an overseer meant to catch and punish all those who can't pay the toll to enter Junk Bunk.
That meant outside of being able to take some units from the toll box at the end of the day and punishing those who couldn't pay, there was nothing else to look forwards to.
'Architects this is so fucking booooooring...'
Fiddling with the high tension crossbow issued to him by the higherups of Junk Bunk, from the corner of his eye the man saw someone slowly walk in without paying the toll.
A someone who had boobs.
'Nevermind~' A lewd smirk appearing on his face as he sauntered his way towards her, the man made sure to reveal the crossbow in his hands as he sidled up besides her.
Stopping her from entering the deeper depths of Junk Bunk, he lowered his voice.
"You know people can't enter Junk Bunk without paying the toll right?" A wide grin appeared beneath his eyes as he placed his hand onto her shoulder, pulling her closer to him.
It seemed strangely lumpy but he felt weirder things.
"If you can't pay I'm sure that we can work something out~" Hand moving to remove the long locks of black hair covering her face so that, the man froze in place when his hand disappeared instead.
Blankly staring at the place where his hand was previously, the man let out an anguished scream as pain belatedly struck him, attention being drawn to their position.
In particular, the guards of Junk Bunk.
Anger filling their eyes not from the sight of one of their fellow guards rolling on the ground in pain but because they were forced to do their jobs for once, the captain stepped out of a booth with a protruding beer belly.
Respirator mask struggling to keep the flab contained, the man grunted noncommittally. "Come with us peacefully or we use force."
Seeing that no response came from the woman the fat man grunted. "Force it is."
*Snap!
Dozens of crossbows loosed from guards who couldn't care less found their mark on the woman, instantly lodging into her body.
"..." Disinterest suddenly appeared in the spectators eyes as they stared at the woman riddled head to toe in arrows.
No one normal could solve that.
Even the man who lost his hand wasn't spared as he lay on the ground bleeding from arrows poking out of his body.
Life slowly returning to them as they began to funnel in and out of the depths of the megastructure, it instantly halted when the woman who was covered head to arrows laughed, all the disinterested eyes suddenly becoming more interested in the woman who seemed to shrug the arrows off as nothing unusual.
Those eyes of interest swiftly transformed into ones of fear when the woman swept back her hair to reveal a swirling vortex of purple and black.
The sound of shattered glass rang out.
The Corrupted was here.
---
25 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRST FIRED ITS FLAMES
13 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRED ITS FLAMES THE SECOND TIME
13 DAYS SINCE THE CORRUPTED OF C-POINT BEGAN 'HER' HUNT
+++
This Tree has his interview results tomorrow and the day after, then they have a swim competition where they probably would be to busy sleeping to write.