"No!!! My children!!! How could you do this?!"
Grace stared at the distant machines in disbelief, her pupils constricting, her breathing turning ragged, her ample chest heaving with every breath. Beside her, Koleda and the others rushed to calm her down.
"Calm down! Calm down, sis! This must have been unavoidable!"
"Right, right, the chairman's right. They must've had their reasons."
Ben nodded along in agreement with Koleda's take, while the rather slow-witted Anton hadn't noticed the gravity of the situation at all.
"So cool! This is awesome!"
Watching the three Greta units in the distance fuse into an ever-taller mass, Anton's eyes practically sparkled with stars.
It was true — the damaged Greta units had no combat power left on their own. But three heads beat one, and three broken machines could still combine into something like a Transformer.
They stripped parts off one another, dismantling and reassembling their bodies together with the other two machines, piecing themselves into a single complete unit.
The process was a little rough, since they had no proper equipment for it, but luckily all three shared the same part specifications, so the fusion wasn't too difficult.
Before long, a colossal steel behemoth rose out of nowhere.
"Ultra-mega mechanical fusion! Now that's a man's romance!!"
Warmth surged through Anton's chest — a joy carved straight into his soul. No boy alive could resist a giant steel robot! None!
"Romance?"
Anton, who moments ago had been misty-eyed with emotion, froze at the sound of that icy voice, an involuntary shiver running through him.
"Uh, Grace, l-let me explain!"
"Explain? Explain what? You don't understand anything at all, Anton!"
Grace's earlier look of anguish vanished, replaced entirely by fury.
"This reckless disregard for your own body — fusing your parts onto other machines like something out of an old cartoon! What a rebellious, delinquent thing to do!!!! I! Absolutely! Cannot! Accept this!!!!!!"
Looking at Grace's twisted face and bulging eyes, Anton thought she looked even more terrifying than the calamity beast itself.
Wiping the spit from his face, Anton, trembling, looked at Grace — restrained by Ben and Koleda — and apologized with lingering fear.
"Sorry, I was wrong. I take it back. That is absolutely not what a real man's romance means!"
A man's romance shouldn't be betrayed, sure — but when it came down to it, staying alive mattered more.
In the end, Koleda managed to calm Grace down, and her sharp mind reasserted itself.
"Ohh, my poor babies."
In truth, Grace understood that something must have gone wrong with the three machines. She checked the tablet in her hands, but still couldn't reach them — it seemed even their communication components had malfunctioned.
Back at the main battlefield, Geno was still being chased by the calamity beast. But things were different now — he was riding on Geroy, using its high mobility to keep leading the beast in circles.
"Geroy, you doing okay?"
Geno looked down at Geroy beneath him. Earlier, when it had charged in to help him, its firepower support had proven completely useless.
Because of that, Geroy had charged straight at the calamity beast, trying to block its advance with its own body.
Five minutes earlier.
Seeing that conventional firearms had no effect at all, Geroy had launched a charge at the calamity beast. Before it even made contact, frost began creeping across its body while flames wrapped around its treads, scorching its mechanical frame.
Watching Geroy's reckless behavior, Geno couldn't make sense of it, but he still turned back to help.
"Big guy, don't push yourself so hard! You're making this really tough for me!"
He was touched that Geroy had come to save him, but charging face-first into the beast like that seemed a little too reckless, didn't it?
Whatever the reason, Geno had to step in — he couldn't just stand there and watch Geroy sacrifice itself.
"Hah! Transform!"
The ether crystal armor materialized on his body once more. This time Geno had deliberately thickened it, hoping it could withstand the frost-flame's burn a little longer.
"Roarrr!!"
The calamity beast was already irritated enough — it couldn't catch Geno no matter what it tried, and now a giant hunk of iron had shown up too.
With its limited brainpower, it decided to go after whichever one annoyed it most first.
So the calamity beast opened its massive jaws, gathering flame to burn Geroy — the iron lump — to nothing.
But just as the flame finished condensing in its mouth, ready to be unleashed, Geno suddenly dropped onto its head like a bolt from the blue.
"Eat my hammer!"
Wham!
To match his heavy armor, Geno's weapon had changed too — he'd traded his longsword for a warhammer.
After a single blow, the beast's jaws were forced shut, and the flame it had been about to spew got swallowed back down, blasting back inside.
The warhammer proved shockingly effective!
"Aoooo!!!!"
As an ether-based lifeform, the calamity beast had no true flesh or organs, but the energy inside it detonated, and its body erupted in an uncontrolled blast.
Its entire head was blown apart — for an ordinary creature, that would've meant instant death. But as mentioned before, the calamity beast wasn't a biological entity; it was made of pure energy. So even with its head blown open, it didn't die outright, though it did lose the ability to move for the time being.
Geno took the chance to knock the frost off Geroy's body. With its mobility restored, Geroy quickly carried Geno off into the distance.
Left behind, the calamity beast — quite literally unable to get its head together — slowly set about repairing itself.
"Why were you so reckless? Don't ever do that again, got it?"
Geno patted the big guy beneath him, then casually tossed aside the warhammer that had just saved the day.
Even a heavy weapon like that hadn't been enough to withstand the calamity beast's frost-flame — by now it was corrupted beyond recognition.
Still carrying Geno at a run, Geroy said nothing in response; only the flickering screen on its front betrayed that its mood wasn't great.
"All right, all right, I'm not blaming you. You did it to save me, after all."
Seeing that Geroy was down, Geno started trying to comfort it.
Just as he'd said, Geroy's reckless act really had been to save him — reckless as it may have been.
Just as Geno thought the topic would blow over, Geroy suddenly spoke up.
____
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