The Brawling Lawyer and the Second Decision

“What are you doing there, Mr. Lawyer?” The confused pink girl asked the man with a half-burned suit on the ground of the reactor room while staring at the bulky robot inside the control room. “And where did you find this thing?”

Compared with the dark reactor from a moment ago, what she was seeing wasn't that confusing, but still... Seeing a lawyer fight some vaguely humanoid robot equipped with flamethrowers wasn't usual in the least.

“How would I know?! This thing just appeared out of nowhere and tried to flame me!”

“Oh… That is true indeed.” Amy concluded after a quick look at the recordings. “Did not expect you to be able to destroy a robot like this, Mr. Lawyer… I see you are stronger than I expected.”

“Don’t play dumb, dammit! Can’t you see this thing is falling apart by itself? I’m sure any decent hit would break it apart as is… And I was panicking there anyway, so I couldn’t even put that much strength.”

His words matched what was on the recordings and what the few that were paying any attention to the lawyer saw, so it was fine.

To summarize, Benjamin was trying to write a report when some ancient-looking android came bumbling through the opened door and then proceeded to try firing some kind of flamethrower at the tired man. His reaction time was quite impressive as he blocked the flames with his clothes, but he still ended up falling to the other side of the wall. The only reason the robot ended up destroyed too was because he shoved it away during the fall.

The only hard-to-be-sure part was how his suit managed to both survive a flamethrower and break through the thick reinforced glass. There were ways to manage this much, of course, but it was weird that a lawyer would have them.

It wasn’t as if Amy believed he was just a lawyer anyway…

“Are you still in one piece, Mr. Lawyer?”

“This will get me an earful and a bill to repair the clothes, but I’m fine… I’d like to know why this thing got here before you though. Wasn’t you supposed to protect me?!”

“Huh? You are fine, are you not? So, there is no problem at all and I did my job. Also, if you do not warn Lily about this, then I shall do my best to hide the fact that you broke an ancient machine that could elude my movement sensors, you know? I assure you your bosses will not be happy with it.”

“This… Sigh… You’re a terrible person, you know that?”

“No, no. I am an incredible idol and you are a very reasonable lawyer, right? Do not think about this anymore and I shall do the same.”

“I want to go home so much… Ah, whatever! Should we take this thing or finish breaking it at least?”

“Well, you are the one who broke it, so you can do whatever you wish with it… I am more interested in knowing where this thing came from either way.” The pink girl decided while already moving closer to the still-twitching machine. “It would also be good to know how this thing is still moving, but knowing if there are more of them is more important.”

The old machine was a droid for sure, but it was impressive that it managed to somehow attack anything. Most of its parts were battered, decaying, or outright missing, and it likely wasn’t that much of a reliable robot, to begin with. Its overall quality was closer to something that was mass-produced without care than what was more common to see nowadays too.

All of which fit well with the few fragments of knowledge Amy could muster about the broken robot.

“Good news to you, Mr. Lawyer… I am very sure this thing is simply a walking flamethrower without anything interesting to show.” Amy went on poking the metallic parts and analyzing its systems before ‘shutting it down’ for good by removing its head. “It is very advanced for something so old, but those basic droids we are using as cameramen are many times better. The processor unit seems to be barely functional too, so I do not think we could get much from it… Shall we take it still?”

“Better than having nothing to show at all, I guess… Are you sure we won’t be snuck again by a bunch of these, though? Who knows if they’ll have better weapons next time…”

“Do not fret, these things cannot sneak on me that easy, you know? This one was a stroke of bad luck at worse...” The idol explained while running her processes in the background before whispering what she believed to be the truth in a way none could hear. “Either that or we have someone trying to kill us with ancient machines.”

“What was it?”

“We should hurry before another one finds us, you know? If it happened once, it may happen twice.”

“How do I hate this place…”

From what she could say, this robot was a cheaply made war machine that somehow survived the ages and kept on roaming. Maybe it was here as a means to guard this power plant. It lacked anything that would explain how it hid for so long and its feet weren’t alike to any of the footprints though.

The ending conclusion was as such: this android wasn’t the thing she noticed earlier, and neither was it what walked inside the reactor room. A very worrying prospect when this one was the first of what should be something mass-produced that they saw…

If that wasn't the truth though, then it meant that this lawyer was uncannily unlucky. The chances of some old robot sneaking around Amy's surveillance and then attacking were way too much. Although the man himself didn't need to know that.

“Let me take the cables and we can start moving, okay? We already lost too much time here either way… And I do not want to leave Lily with those two for too long. They do not match what she wants and will make things troublesome.” The pink girl started to trek back to where she came from but was stopped by the lawyer one last time. “Can you hold the head to me, by the way? I would prefer to have both my hands free while working with high voltages… Or you could handle the cables for me.”

“No, no. I’ll hold it for you, no problem.” Benjamin hurried to answer and hold on to the object that vaguely resembled a head and all of its unexpectedly high weight. He was unable to notice that this head was a lot heavier than the usual control units used nowadays, as he wasn’t a specialist on that, a fact that Amy was sure to take notes on.

“Hold on for a moment then…”

She was almost already ready to move even before the attack, so it didn’t take long for the idol to appear again from the broken wall. She was carrying a massive amount of thick copper wire tied around her body and dragging a metal box as they would need them to the plan. It wasn’t the weirdest thing Benjamin saw today though, so he didn’t react much.

“These are…?”

“A converter I took off from the plant and enough wire to reach that factory. From there we should be able to use thinner wire without losing too much.” She explained by showing the second roll of wire tied a little below the first one. “I did my best to isolate then, but try to not touch me for a while, you know? Even I could not survive directly touching something this high in voltage…”

“That I’ll do then. And I won’t even bother to ask why it’s tied around your body if it’s so dangerous.”

“Good! Let us move on then. I want to talk with Lily.”

Amy hurried ahead, forcing Benjamin to follow her fast while leaving a path of wire and, in a sneakier way, one of her drones landed on the computers. Her plan was to both keep an eye on this location and, with enough time, maybe even manage to take over some systems in the area. Not that she could ever focus too much on it considering the situation.

Blowing this place without taking anything was too much of a waste still, even if leaving it as is would likely end with terrible consequences.

“You sure about walking this fast with these things?” The lawyer trying to keep up with the pink girl while also staying as far as possible from the electric path being left by her. “I’m even seeing some flaws in the isolation…”

“How many times do I have to tell you to not fret? This does not need to hold forever, you know? It will hold for enough to what we need, but we best shut it down very fast. We also have to get closer to the exit, so I can tell the professor to return since the power plant was luckily working.” She went on, although half the reason for the hurry was still the weird events going around them. “Only for curiosity, how good can you be in a fight? A fair one instead of a surprise attack, I mean.”

“What?! I mean, I can manage to flee well and I’m not fully unarmed here, but I only have a pistol... Do you think we’ll need it?!”

“Not really, but who knows, right? I, for one, have no real weapons, you know? Knowing someone else has one or other is less worrying…”

“I see…”

In reality, this question was more to confirm anything than to get to know it. Since it was now probable that another force was operating inside the ruins, it was likely that some fight would end up happening. Knowing what everyone could do would be the first step to protecting them if needed.

It was a pain that she would, once more, end up having to support a gunfight, but that was something she had to accept. The most she could ask was to not end up in a situation where she had to kill someone again. Or worse, one where she wanted to kill someone again.

They were already at the exit of the plant though, so worrying about it would need to be left for later. Now the focus was on moving on, so they could regroup fast.

“Well then, I believe that is enough talking, so what if we would hur…” She tried to cut the talk before Benjamin could get too worried about their situation, but her words were drowned out before she could finish them.

A weak booming noise followed by a meek wind blow called the pair’s attention as something far on the other side of the power plant seemed to have blown up. ‘What had happened’ and ‘if whatever happened would be a problem’ were questions they couldn’t answer. But still, it was easy to get a theory as to why something happened.

It was easy to find problems in a system where the only thing that changed was well-known, so both pairs of eyes turned to the long path of wires.

“Even if this has something to do with that, there is no way to prove it, you know?” The pink girl quickly quipped before anyone could say a thing about the situation. “From what we know, all of this can be due to some unlucky malfunction caused by the sudden air current that we brought, right? I am sure that nothing could be done about it and it is surely not my fault…”

“You know this one won’t fool anyone, right?”

“I know…”

“Just pray it didn’t blow up something important then. Even if I wanted to get you people right now, it isn’t like I can simply call the contract against something no one saw and we don’t even know what was...” Benjamin explained to the worried idol even though he kind of wanted to call everything off right now due to this noise. “It would be different if I was against some random nobody, but that teacher has some real contacts behind him… Going against him without something more concrete will only burn the little reputation I have.”

“Is that so?! Then I will not worry about it. I was worried this deal was a lot more draconian than I thought it was, you know?” The relieved idol went back to what she was doing before the noise without a worry in sight. “Getting concrete proof against me is pretty much impossible either way, so there is nothing to worry about.”

“Wait! What?!”

“I said what you heard, Mr. Lawyer! Now, let us go down and go open that weird box! I also starting to get worried about what those two will do to Lily...”

Then, without giving a second glance or worrying about the noise behind the power plant, Amy jumped down the cliff from which they came with her cables in tow. For a moment, Benjamin had to stay still to think about what he just heard, but the fact he was left behind soon dawned on him and he started to head down too.

For both of them, the time for worrying about whatever was happening far from their eyes was still to come.