Petri couldn’t tell how he eventually made it to the private crafting rooms. Honestly, it felt more like Grey led them there than the other way around, as though he had never really needed his lead in the first place.
Grey seemed to have intimate familiarity with the city that didn’t make sense for someone who was only coming here for the first time. But there was thorough documentation of everyone who came in and out of the city, and there was no way Grey could have slipped through unnoticed.
Whatever thoughts Petri might have wasted on this, though, were quickly overturned by his shock.
Not only was Grey just as capable as he said he was...
He was more so.
The one thing Petri didn’t disclose was that he himself was a mech tech. In fact, so, too, was The Boundless. Pandro didn’t have the patience for it, but their master had always wanted him to learn. It was just difficult to do so with his... affliction.
It was something that The Boundless and Petri both had been researching for quite a while. They thought that they’d be able to come up with a mech for Pandro by the time he crossed into Vanguard, but they had failed.
Though The Boundless never admitted it, Petri knew that this was something that weighed heavily on him. It was just that his master and father didn’t have the best coping mechanisms. So rather than being conciliatory and caring, he instead treated Pandro with a harsher, heavier hand.
When Petri mentioned Grey building a mech for Pandro, he did so casually and only because they would lose nothing. Not only would he learn more about Grey, but he could confirm just how much of his bloviating was just boasting and how much of it was real.
It was all real.
Too real.
Petri knew the moment Grey rolled out his Cyber Mat. Those swirling, curved golden lights, the sleek black slate they pressed against.
He couldn’t have been more sure the moment Grey began. One would have thought that he had become a completely different person.
Petri understood then... Grey was playing a game none of them understood.
He trampled over Pandro, then humiliated Bas. He hung a Valdi from the city square and nearly crippled an Imperial Princess with a kick.
Then, as though he didn’t have a brain between his skull, he called out Petri to his face when almost anyone else clever enough to understand what was happening wouldn’t have said a word.
Petri had taken Grey’s act hook, line, and sinker. If Grey just continued to be as careless, it would be Petri who thought he was easily manipulated.
But Grey realized that he had always planned on crafting like this in front of Petri. There was no way Petri would give him the map he wanted without seeing for himself how Grey did it. And that action alone would have proved Grey to be far more than a brute.
In such a situation... would Petri still be so easily fooled?
So Grey just took the opportunity to vent and let Petri know his actions were starting to piss him off.
As Petri watched Grey finish the last steps of the Loading Phase, a complex series of circuits pulsing through the jaw-shaped mech, he also realized he had made another mistake.
He should have definitely brought Pandro here like Grey had said to do.
"Done."
Grey picked up the golden piece. It looked like the bottom of a skeleton’s skull. Honestly, he was kind of jealous, it was no doubt badass.
Pandro’s problem was energy conservation and converting his eating into strength. The moment Grey had unlocked the rest of the Mechanical Jaw Lineage Tome, he had had dozens of options to pick from that could fix that one issue. They just needed to be slightly tweaked and modified.
For one, he definitely wasn’t going to use Curved Faces for the likes of Pandro and his people. Second, he definitely wasn’t going to make it strong enough that it could actually harm him and his own people.
But, he had to make it good enough that Petri was impressed, but especially so for Elowen’s sake. He needed Elowen on his side, so he took advantage of her fascination for mechs and their creation.
Petri looked at the mech rolling in Grey’s hand.
"Who are you?" Petri asked seriously.
"Me? I’m Grey." Grey said with a grin.
"No." Petri said, his voice growing chillier. "Who. Are. You."
Grey chuckled and then stood, his own gaze becoming cold.
"Do you want to intimidate me?" Grey took a step toward Petri, spinning the golden mech on his finger at an odd balance point only its creator could have possibly known the existence of. "Please do. I’ve been looking for a reason to smash that two-faced, fat blob of a head in."
Petri didn’t say anything for a long while. When he finally did speak, the edge of his voice had barely dulled.
"You are playing a very dangerous game. You’ve offended not just one, but two Guardians. You’ve gone too far in humiliating the Valdi, and now you’ve not only laid your hands on a princess, you have insulted Her Holiness. Alone, all but one of these things can be swept under the rug. But the last only has to be mentioned by the right person to warrant execution.
"Are you certain that you do not want a single person on your side? Are you certain that this is the game you want to play."
"That’s not the question you should be asking." Grey replied with a wild grin, the mech on his finger spinning even faster than before.
"Oh? And what question should I be asking, then?"
"The question you should be asking is if you want to keep pissing me off at the rate you are. Because I’d imagine that someone who can craft a mech like this on a whim, and have the fighting strength he’s displayed without displaying any of his own, would be a lot stronger than you know."
Petri’s pupils constricted but Grey’s crimson clawed gloves had already formed over his hand. The roar of a Crimson Wolf echoed as he smashed a fist into the big man’s chest.
BANG.
"Sound proof rooms are so convenient, don’t you think?"
Grey knew he was walking a tight rope, he knew he was pissing a lot of people off, but he didn’t have the time to waste with these people.
Petri realized too late that this was also part of what Grey wanted.
If not for the sake of showing Elowen what he could do, he might not have bothered to complete the crafting at all.