The first action Bryce and Jon took after discovering Jason's body was find General Starman. Had they told him the story they had found out any other day, he'd have called them crazy, but the truth of the matter was that everything made perfect sense.
Starman swiftly took control of the dire situations. First, he issued an announcement making everyone gather at the stage, and letting them know of the situation at hand. Notably missing was Dex Tuscan, still hiding away in the communications room. The crowd immediately started erupting, demanding answers, panicking, scrambling towards the empty docks. The corporals and Lavender barely contained them from jumping in the water.
"Starting right now, I am issuing a full lockdown until the culprit is apprehended. You will be staying inside the dorm building until further notice. Do I make myself clear?" Starman said, raising his gravelly voice to seemingly impossible extents. The cadets in the crowd, silently nodded, and began heading inside. All except one.
"All due respect, sir, how exactly are we supposed to catch Thomas -or, uh the killer- if we all get locked inside?" Bryce Hansen interrupted.
"You will leave it to us to handle, Hansen." Starman tried to reassure him, but he interrupted again.
"No! You can't do it on your own, you're not enough people! These are my friends dying and I won't-" Bryce shouted, aggressively flailing his arms around.
"YOU HAVE HELPED ENOUGH, HANSEN!" Starman screamed, taking Bryce by surprise. His face scrunched up, and he stood quiet. Starman sighed, and motioned to them to leave.
"Double-lock room 221, please." He whispered to Liam, who solemnly nodded.
Following that, Starman had Larry search the premises for the Detective, who had seemingly disappeared out of thin air. All he found was his coat and hat washed up on the beach behind the dorm building, bloodied up and torn. No body was present, so he figured that it sank in the ocean.
Starman slammed his fist against the desk upon finding out the news. The staff of the facility had gathered in Lavender's office to discuss their next actions.
"Stay calm, General. Let the pleasant scent soothe your nerves…" Lavender attempted to relax him, but Starman was beyond that point.
"Ridiculous, is what this is. Masons, go lock every door in the building, immediately. It's very late, so first thing tomorrow morning, we'll search every nook and cranny for Gardner. Got it?!" Starman ordered.
"But sir! We can't possibly just go to sleep under these conditions… We need to do something!" Liam objected.
"We will! The four of us will be doing rounds all night, to make sure Gardner doesn't get to the cadets behind our backs. That kid is very dexterous, nothing to scoff at. So keep your eyes peeled. Now go." Starman finally said, and that's what they would do.
Liam went around and locked the doors in the dormitories. Reaching room 221, Liam stopped in his tracks. He put the key in the lock, turned it once, and carried on, no words spoken. This did not go unnoticed by the occupants of the room. Larry, in the meantime, locked the doors in the staff building. He took extra good care of locking the door to the laboratory twice.
That didn't matter in the slightest.
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In the dead of night, at 5AM, Liam Mason was the only person awake on the island, busy doing his rounds. He had walked un and down damn near the whole compound, but there was one thing itching at him the entire time; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was as if the killed had vanished. But that couldn't be the case, he could only get so far by swimming away, so obviously he was still on the island.
He did have one feeling, however. Nikolaoff's body was found in the laboratory, so obviously, that would be his hideout, so that's where he went, against the general's orders for the second time that day. He opened the door and there he was.
Tomas Gaspar was busy tinkering away with the mechsuit that was displayed on the wall. What appeared to be an engine was on the ground next to him.
"Stop right there!" Liam announced, pulling out a rifle from his back and aiming it at the culprit, who despite giving him a glance, didn't seem particularly alarmed about his presence.
"Ah, corporal. How nice of you to visit." He said, continuing to work on the machine and paying him no mind.
"Put your hands behind your back, Gardner! I won't hesitate to shoot!" Liam shouted. His hands were trembling as he weakly gripped the weapon
"You don't have the guts, Mason, to fire on me. And I don't need to waste energy killing you either. You'll die with the rest of these plebians soon enough." Tomas said, and finally stopped tinkering. He ominously walked towards Liam, hands in pockets, staring at the man from behind his glasses.
Liam panicked and shot him!
Only for the bullet to bounce off of a forcefield around Tomas. He pointed his glove at the engine, and it floated all the way into the open chest compartment of the armour. Liam started rapidly asking questions, like what he was doing with the mech, and why he was killing people, but Tomas ignored him, sighing loudly as he headed to enter the suit.
"I've had enough of you ignoring me!" Liam screamed, and rushed towards Tomas, smacking him in the face with the back of his rifle, and momentarily dazing him. Unfortunately, he quickly regained his composure.
"Oh Mason, of all the moronic, unrefined hicks I've met, you're the most pathetic of them all." Tomas said, and then placed his open palm on Liam's chest. Immediately, a spring materialised, and hurled Liam backwards, making him crash against a chair, and knocking him unconscious.
Tomas slowly thereafter went and slipped inside the armour from the back. The metallic monstrosity, painted in Sowei Black and Blue, sported a machine gun on one hand, and a blue spot in the middle of the palm of the other, which could be used to crate various weapons. The coat of arms of Soweiland shone brightly on its chest. With Tomas in the helm, the armour walked, each of it's steps echoing loudly across the room, towards the large lift, that it used to get to the surface. As the lift rose him up, Tomas made sure to use the suit's flamethrower to torch the entire laboratory, leaving no trace of what it once was behind.
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The fire alarms made certain everybody would wake up, and, especially accounting the weapon of mass destruction standing tall in the middle of the island, panic ensued. Tomas was firing rounds in all directions, and stepping on anyone who dared get close. The staff were the first to act, gathering in a huddle to decide what to do.
"Whare's my brother?" Larry asked, but the other two had no response.
"We must organise an evacuation, and hold that thing off before it kills everyone." Starman ordered. "I'll take a few cadets with me and find the most powerful weapons we have."
"I will attempt to gather the cadets. Perhaps we can swim away to the nearest island like that Detective. May God help us all." Lavender said.
"What are you idiots talking about! We need to reactivate the console and send a distress signal!" Larry exclaimed.
"There's no use in trying that, Mason, the console is beyond busted-" Starman tried to stop him, but Larry wasn't having it.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Larry started running, running as fast as he could. He reached the communications room, using his large frame to bring the door down, and began pressing random buttons, hoping to reactivate the console. Obviously, none of that worked, Leaving the corporal with one final option; kicking the console as hard as he could.
The dying console puffed and sputtered, managing to send one ear-piercing piece of static sound into every transmitter in the area, including the campus megaphones, and the built-in transmitter inside the armour, which did incredible damage to Tomas' ears. Dex, still hiding away in the communications room, didn't fail to notice the effect this had on him, but before being able to capitalise on it, the armour's huge hand crashed through the wall, and grabbed Larry, lifting him outside and pulling him close to Tomas' face.
Larry spat on the glass helmet of the suit, disgusting Tomas, who used the flamethrower to set the inside of his palm ablaze, as well as the corporal.
"Insignificant fool." Tomas said, before returning to his rampage of the crowd on the field.
In the meantime, back in room 221, Jon and Bryce were considering their options.
"What do we do?!" Jon asked his best friend, who gave him a confident.
"Remind me to thank Liam for not double-locking us in here!" Bryce said, and pulled a jetpack from the closet. "I stole this bad boy from the armoury last night!"
"Nice! Where's the second one?" Jon asked with heavy anticipation.
"Sorry man, I only found the one. You'd better try to join that evacuation down there!" Bryce said, before taking off and joining the battlefield through their window.
"I can't just let you go down there alone!" Jon yelled, but Bryce couldn't listen anymore. He hurriedly went down the stairs to try and find any other way to help.
In the meantime though, Dex had picked up a chair and had begun bashing the comms console with it, creating tons of noise that flooded Tomas' receiver, heavily obscuring him.
"I knew you were bad news from day one you piece of shit! You'll get what's coming to you!" Dex screamed at the transceiver making sure Tomas listened to every word. The dark prince had no response, instead readying up a missile to fire at the Tuscan heir.
And he would have; had he not been interrupted by a barrage of artillery shells from down below. General Starman, and a few of the most promising cadets had pulled out a couple cannons from storage, and had begun firing everything they had at him.
"Fire!" Starman called out, his face madded than anyone had seen him before. So of course, Tomas turned his machine gun to face them, and began rattling their group down with incredible speeds
"General, look out!" Jon screamed when he noticed the weapon aiming at their group, as he had just gotten to ground level. But the sounds of artillery covered his screams, and by the time they had noticed, it was too late. Jon barely managed to hide behind some rubble and not get shot himself.
After that was dealt with, Tomas turned back to Dex, still slamming away with that chair. He was sweaty, his hands were giving out, and every single instinct he had was screaming at him to run away, but Dex ignored his body, and kept slamming away. Fortunately, he narrowly avoided being shot again, thanks to Bryce opening fire with the jetpack's weapons on the mech.
"I thought I could trust you, man! I thought we were friends!" Bryce cried, as bullets clanked against the bulletproof glass.
"The thought of being your friend disgusts me, you peon!" Tomas screamed at Bryce, before swatting Bryce from above like fly, sending him crashing towards the foundations of the staff building, shaking the building.
"NOOO!!" Jon cried, getting the attention of Tomas, who kicked him into a piece of wall. He clutched his stomach as he collapsed against the wall.
Dex by that moment knew he had limited time to act, as the fire from the lab was catching up, and the console had given out. He quickly grabbed the transceiver and hurled it with all his might! But it simply bounced off the metal plates. Tomas turned to face him, finally arming one more missile.
"See you in hell." Dex muttered, before the missile hit the communications room, making the console finally erupt in a spectacular explosion, sending debris flying in the air.
"WHY!?" Jon screamed. Tomas ignored him, planning on leaving him there to bleed to death. The barely working transponder Dex threw landed right by Jon's foot, as he forced himself to try and pick it up.
In he meantime, Tomas turned his attention to the survivors. Lavender has gathered with around 10-15 people at the docks, dropping wooden boards at sea for them to use to float away.
"Quickly now, gentlemen!" He urged them. One by one, the survivors jumped in the water, and began swimming away as fast as possible. Tomas plunged the hand of the mech in the cold ocean water, and began diverting power to it. Electricity coursed through the robotic arm, eventually being expelled by the port at the end, and electrocuting the survivors. Dead bodies of men and fish began filling the waters around Isle Monroe.
Following that, Tomas began redirecting power to the thrusters. As they slowly gained more energy, Jon finally picked up the transponder.
"Why…?" He weakly said, panting heavily.
"Pretending to be a commoner was fun for a while, but it's time to return home now. I will reclaim this territory for my father and the empire, and finally gain his favour." Tomas spoke, with not a hint of emotion. "I appreciate you for trying to reach out to me. My time with you was amusing. Have a good afterlife."
And with that, Tomas fired one final blast at the building behind Jon, and as the debris covered his former friend, he blasted off.