Brad choked on air, coughing, hacking and wheezing. He was fairly sure his saliva had gone down the wrong tube.
Mauve’s picture perfect demeanor shattered like porcelain glass again. Grey had already broken her once, and this time it was just easier than the last. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing at all.
Amunet was stunned into silence. She went from barely being able to hold her laugh back before, to staring ahead in half abject horror.
Elowen didn’t even know what was happening. It was like she was lagging a full seven seconds behind everyone else. It simply hadn’t registered to her how wild and foul the words Grey had spoken had been.
As for the main star of this show, the person who should have been able to stop Zara pretty easily, he was staring just the same. Half his thoughts were completely blank, and the other half was wondering just how Grey moved around with the steel balls he had to drag everywhere.
There was another sliver of his thoughts assigned to something else, but that was something only he would know without a shadow of a doubt.
Zara pulled out a sword and slashed for all she was worth.
"Hm," Grey mumbled as though he had all the time in the world to respond, "bad temper too. Poor emotional regulation."
"You cannot be serious," Amunet mumbled as though she was stun locked that Grey of all people was talking about someone else’s emotional regulation.
"Hush."
Grey suddenly moved, a blast of heat erupted from his body.
Zara suddenly felt like her sword was moving through a quagmire of thick sand and heavy air. No matter how much she flexed and pushed all the strength she had forward, her strike slowly weakened instead until it was little more than a snail’s crawl pulling across the currents of billowing heat.
Then Grey lightly pinched it.
It was an action that shouldn’t have done much of anything to such a pristine blade. As weak as Zara was, she was still an Imperial Princess and the equipment she was given could never be so poor.
Yet it was.
The crack echoed in the silence and spread as fast as fragmenting glass.
The pieces clattered to the ground.
Zara’s rage completely froze over as though she had entered a frosty hell on earth. Despite the sweat falling down her brow from all the heat, she simply couldn’t help but feel that cold chill.
"Well, what have we learned?" Grey asked with a smile.
Zara shrieked again, seemingly realizing that she was an Imperial Princess and Grey couldn’t possibly dare to do anything to her.
BANG.
A kick rocketed against her lower belly. Vomit, air, and blood flew from her mouth in a vile mixture that was incinerated long before it touched Grey.
She shot back so fast she was rolling out the guild doors before Grey could even cringe.
"Ugh, that’s fucking gross. I need more heat."
He had incinerated the mixture, but unfortunately not enough to get rid of the smell as well. He couldn’t help but pinch his nose.
He really, really didn’t like the smell of vomit.
"Alright," Grey clapped his hands together and looked at Petri, "let’s get this going, shall we? Losing daylight."
Petri, though, didn’t move. He seemed partially stun locked, but as in-shock as he was, the last thing he expected was for Grey to walk up to him and snap his fingers before his nose.
"Hey, old-young man, I’m going to need you to lock in a bit here."
Petri shook awake. "Old... young man?"
"Listen, I get it. You and your master have it out for me. I don’t believe someone as strong as you couldn’t have stopped her from attacking. You probably wanted that to happen, right?"
Petri’s "shock" vanished and his eyes couldn’t help but sharpen.
"But you see, this time," Grey continued, "I actually appreciate that because if you had stopped her, then her nagging ass would still be here. That said, don’t mistake the fact I’m letting this slide for anything other than that.
"I’m on a time crunch and don’t have the bandwidth to play your political games. But at the same time, I don’t really like the idea of someone thinking they pulled one over on me. Neither you nor your master are as clever as you think you are. Anything I do is because I want to do it.
"Now. If you want an actual chance at your disciple brother or whatever—still a weird way to say that, by the way—having an actual usable, functional mech, then I would advise we get a move on.
"Otherwise, there will probably be some very annoying people coming to harass me very soon and then none of us will get anything done today."
Petri’s lips parted, but for once... he had no idea what to say.
Grey looked over to Elowen and smiled. "Hey pretty lady, I’m Grey. Nice to meet you?"
Maybe it was because Grey was so confident, but Elowen was shaking his hand before she knew it. Apparently she had forgotten that he had insulted her mother as well.
"You... why did you want to see me?" Elowen asked. She realized after she asked that it was probably not the time to ask this, but she felt it was only polite to try and reply some way and this was the least generic response she could think of.
Her etiquette training went into overdrive all on its own.
"Didn’t this guy tell you?" Grey blinked. "It’s because you’re gorgeous."
"Ah..." Elowen froze and Grey laughed.
"Oh my god, his dick is going to get us all killed..." Amunet sighed.
"No need for jealousy. There’s enough dick to go around for everybody."
"Over my dead body." Amunet scoffed.
"There is also one other reason, though," Grey said, ignoring Amunet. He swiped a hand over his face and his Helm Frame appeared. "I’ve heard that you’re very interested in mechs. You want my expertise, and I want your endless wealth. What do you think?"