Novel Full Chapter 1683: Jack Sparrow?
Chapter 1683: Jack Sparrow?
The old man with mechanical arms looked at the pink-striped black mech-suit with a deep frown. Thin pink streams of data flowed across the suit’s armoured visor while a holographic projector embedded in its wrist cast the image of a young man into the air.
The mech-suit’s voice emerged cold and distorted through a military-grade voice modulator.
"Have you seen this person?"
The old man glanced at the hologram. The young man wore a massive hat whose brim concealed most of his face beneath shifting shadows. After a brief look, the old man raised his eyes toward the armed mech-suits standing before him.
"Yes."
The old man nodded without hesitation and pointed toward the restroom.
"He’s taking a shit."
Instantly, every helmet turned toward the restroom. The leader’s visor flashed before he motioned toward the door, silently ordering his subordinates to investigate.
One of the mech-suits stepped forward, and he approached the restroom entrance. He raised a hand and was just about to knock when,
Brrrrrap
Pffft
Pppppppppppffffffffffft
Braaaap
brap
Shart
Pbbbt-thud
"Oh my god! What the fuck?!"
The mech-suit froze.
That sound...
It was horrifyingly familiar.
It sounded exactly like what happened whenever he ate expired military rations that transformed his digestive system into a battlefield of fire and suffering.
"What happened? Is the target resisting?" the Leader asked.
"N-No, Sir..." The mech-suit visibly hesitated. "I just think... maybe we should leave him alone for the time being."
The Leader’s helmet tilted slightly.
"Why?"
The mech-suit stared at the restroom door.
"With all due respect, Sir... I don’t think any living being should interrupt whatever is happening in there."
The Leader frowned beneath his helmet.
"Bring him out. Now."
"Yes, Sir."
Swallowing his fear, the mech-suit stepped closer and knocked on the door.
"E-Excuse m—"
SSSHHAARRRTTTT!
PPPBBBTTT!~Thud~Thud~PPBBBTT!!!
BURRRUUUPp~BURRRPppp~
"OH SHIT!"
The mech-suit jumped backwards.
This time, he was genuinely disgusted.
The sounds coming from inside seemed almost unnatural. They rose and fell in rhythm like some twisted musical performance. It honestly felt as though whatever was happening beyond that door had evolved beyond ordinary human biology.
Where the fuck was he even shitting from down there?
"What is wrong with you?" the Leader snapped as he strode forward. "Can you not handle a single damn assignment?"
The rest of the mech-suits followed behind him.
While all attention focused on the restroom, the old man casually lowered one of his mechanical arms beneath the counter. Hidden beneath the desk, metallic fingers retrieved a golden access card.
Without even looking down, he slid the card through a concealed scanner.
A faint green light flashed.
His fingers moved across the keyboard with practised precision without even glancing at... Judging by how naturally he moved, this was far from the first time he had performed such a task.
Meanwhile, standing before the restroom door, the Leader raised his armoured fist and knocked three times.
The electronic amplifier within his helmet projected his voice throughout the corridor.
"If you do not come out immediately, you will be placed under arrest."
Thud!
Just then, the doorknob turned, and the restroom door slowly parted open with a soft mechanical hiss. The Leader glanced at the subordinate who had been struggling to get the occupant to open it.
"That’s how you do it."
The subordinate could only nod quietly.
"That’s easy for you to say after he finished all his shit..."
"What?"
"N-Nothing, Sir!"
"Hmm."
The Leader gave a short nod before turning his attention toward the young man standing in the doorway.
The hat-wearing youth had one hand pressed against his stomach while the other rested against the doorframe for support. His face looked slightly pale, and he rubbed his abdomen with a painful expression.
"Ah... I really shouldn’t have eaten that. Fuck, it hurts..."
His eyes suddenly landed on the mech-suits gathered outside.
"Oh? Sir, what are you doing here? Do you need to use the restroom? But... please don’t. I made the place a little messy."
"Little?" the subordinate blurted out before he could stop himself. "From the sounds coming out of there, it’s probably a massacre scene!"
A glowing warning icon flashed across the Leader’s visor.
The subordinate immediately shut his mouth.
The Leader ignored him and activated the holographic projector embedded in his palm. The image of the individual appeared above his palm once more.
He compared the hologram to the young man standing before him and spoke in a cold, emotionless voice.
"Show me your face."
The young man blinked.
"...Pardon?"
The Leader stepped forward, armoured boots striking the floor with heavy metallic thuds. His towering frame cast a shadow over the young man.
"I said, show me your fucking face before I rip it off myself."
Young Aether’s gaze shifted toward the hologram floating above the Leader’s palm. After studying it for a moment, he slowly nodded.
"Do you have a warrant or anything that allows you to ask me tha—"
"We are not the fucking local police," the Leader interrupted sharply. "We are Beta Soldiers. You don’t ask questions. You obey. Do you understand, lowborn?"
"..."
"Oi."
"Yes, Sir."
Young Aether sighed and lifted his hat.
"You want to see my face? Fine. Here you go."
As the hat rose, revealing his face completely, the surrounding soldiers unconsciously froze.
For a brief moment, the shop fell silent.
A single thought passed through several minds simultaneously.
’Fuck... he’s a handsome young man.’
Even beneath their helmets, they found themselves slightly stunned.
The Leader, however, remained expressionless.
Young Aether’s heart began to beat faster.
Then faster.
Then even faster.
Beneath his calm expression, tension coiled throughout his body.
If the Leader somehow saw through Nightfire’s illusion, everything would fall apart.
The seconds stretched endlessly.
Inside his mind, a familiar dark voice echoed.
"Fuck him. Why are you scared of some armoured pussy? Just shove a sword through his throat already."
Young Aether clenched his teeth.
Not now.
For nearly a full minute, neither side moved.
The tension grew thicker with every passing second.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
His hand slowly drifted toward his pocket, ready to summon his guns at a moment’s notice.
He wasn’t entirely sure whether the weapons would work against these bizarre advanced mech-suits. Still, there were only four soldiers present.
If things turned ugly, he could probably take dow—
"He fell asleep again."
"Huh?"
Young Aether was taken aback when one of the mech-suits standing behind the Leader suddenly tapped the officer’s shoulder.
The next second, the Leader’s posture shifted.
"H-Huh? W-Where am I? ...Oh, right."
The officer straightened slightly before looking directly at Aether.
"What’s your name?"
Young Aether stared at him in complete disbelief.
Here he was, moments away from drawing a weapon and potentially killing all of them, while this asshole had apparently fallen asleep in the middle of an interrogation.
Then again, it wasn’t entirely surprising.
Because of the Lackey incident, the soldiers had reportedly been working for two straight days without rest or even a moment of proper sleep.
The Mech-suits might have been terrifyingly advanced, with compact reactors, neural interfaces, and military-grade enhancement systems, but the people inside were still... weak fucking humans!
After a brief silence, Young Aether answered.
"Jack Sparrow."
"Jack Sparrow?"
The Leader nodded as if recording the information.
"Show me your ID."
The hologram hovering above his palm vanished, but he kept his hand raised expectantly.
Young Aether instinctively glanced toward the old man.
"Oi. Look at me."
The Leader snapped his fingers.
The glowing lights on his visor brightened, forcing Aether’s attention back toward him.
"Yes, Sir. My ID... I think I have it somewhere."
Young Aether began patting his pockets and searching through his clothes as if genuinely looking for it.
"Where is it... where is it..."
He checked one pocket.
Then another.
Then another.
"Hmm..."
A few more seconds passed.
"Oh shit."
He looked up with a shocked expression.
"I think I lost it."
The moment those words left his mouth, the atmosphere changed.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The soldiers immediately raised their weapons.
Low humming sounds echoed through the shop as guns activated and targeting systems locked onto him.
The Leader’s voice turned cold.
"Unless you can provide identification, we have the legal authority to detain and imprison you. You will accompany us immediately and refrain from causing any trouble."
Young Aether smiled and took a small step forward.
"Come on, Sir. Give me some time. I’ll personally bring it to you tomorrow. I probably dropped it somewhere. Once I find it, I’ll come find yo—"
"Do I look like a fucking idiot?"
The Leader’s visor glowed brighter.
Around him, the other soldiers raised their weapons in perfect unison. Their targeting lasers flickered across Aether’s chest as trigger mechanisms prepared to fire.
Young Aether slowly stepped back.
The smile never left his face.
"Well then... I suppose I’ll follow."
As he spoke, his hand slipped behind his back... A gun silently materialised in his grasp.
"Yes. Kill them all. How dare they look down on us? Those pathetic mommy-sucking titters!"
The dark voice laughed viciously.
The Leader suddenly frowned.
His visor’s scanners focused on Aether’s face.
For a brief moment, he noticed something strange.
The young man’s ice-blue eyes were changing.
Blackness was slowly mixing into the irises, like two colours being poured together and merging into something unnatural.
The Leader’s instincts immediately screamed danger.
"What is tha—"
"Sir."
The old man behind the counter raised a golden card into the air and waved it casually.
"Sir, you left this card on the table while making a purchase before you rushed to the restroom."
The Leader immediately turned.
"VIP Card."
He walked over and took the card from the old man’s mechanical hand.
A beam of light emerged from his visor as he scanned the card’s embedded barcode and authentication chip.
Lines of encrypted information flashed across his display.
At the same moment, the gun hidden behind Young Aether’s back silently vanished.
Clap.
He lightly clapped his hands together as if suddenly remembering something important.
"Oh, right! I gave it to him."
He pointed toward the old man.
"Sorry... hahaha."
The smile on his face appeared innocent.
Harmless.
Almost cute~
Like an ordinary young traveller who couldn’t remember where he had placed his belongings.
Only moments ago, he had been one heartbeat away from turning the shop into a bloodbath.
Now he looked like the kind of harmless idiot who would struggle to hurt a bird even if he accidentally stepped on it.
The Leader suddenly frowned. "Hmm...?" Streams of data flickered across his visor before he turned toward the old man behind the counter. "Did you use to work at Beta Tower?"
The old man blinked before awkwardly scratching the side of his head with one of his metallic arms. "S-Sorry, Sir. I accidentally gave you my card instead... and yeah, I used to work there."
The Leader remained silent as a detailed information panel expanded across the inside of his visor.
Employment records, security clearances, and decades-old personnel files scrolled before his eyes. Whatever he saw made him pause... After a few moments, he glanced at Young Aether, let out a quiet sigh beneath his helmet, and turned away.
"We’ll be leaving."
His subordinates immediately looked surprised.
"But Sir, didn’t we come here to check whether he was that Criminal Slave?" one of them asked.
The Leader answered without hesitation. "Does he even look like him? Look at his height, and especially that face. It’s like comparing the moon to a pile of shit."
The three subordinates looked at each other through their glowing visors while an encrypted communication channel silently opened between their suits.
’I can’t believe this asshole just pulled the reverse card. Didn’t we say exactly that when we first noticed him on the surveillance cameras?’
’Yeah. The height difference was obvious, yet this fucking asshole dragged us here during lunch.’
’Fuck, he’s the one who insisted we investigate him, and now he’s acting like it was stupid from the beginning. Fucker.’
The three soldiers silently shared their complaints through the private network while standing perfectly still on the outside.
"Oi, are you coming or not?"
The sudden shout from the Leader immediately closed the communication channel.
"Yes, Sir! Coming!"
The three soldiers responded at once and hurried after him.
The automated entrance doors slid open with a mechanical hiss as the squad prepared to leave. Just as the Leader reached the exit, he stopped for a moment. Without turning around, he spoke in a cold voice.
"Next time, make sure you don’t wander near the border sectors while hiding your face. Others might not be as merciful as me."
Young Aether awkwardly smiled.
And the old man’s expression softened slightly.
"Thank you, Sir... really."
The Leader didn’t respond. A few moments later, the squad disappeared outside, and the sound of their armoured footsteps gradually faded into the distance.
Only after the doors fully closed did the old man finally relax. The tension drained from his shoulders as he slumped back into his chair and rubbed his forehead with a metallic hand.
"Fuck..."
He let out a long breath before glaring at Young Aether.
"The fuck were you doing near the borders?"
Young Aether simply shrugged. His expression had become noticeably friendlier after what had just happened.
After all, the old man had just saved him.
Or perhaps more accurately...
Saved those soldiers from him.
"You could’ve just said you didn’t know me."
"If only it were that easy."
The old man sighed and shook his head.
"They didn’t come here randomly, little guy. They came straight here. Ever since the Criminal Slave escaped, surveillance has been tightened across the sector. The street cameras that were inactive must’ve come back online. They already knew you were here before they even walked through that door, and then if I lie..."
He didn’t bother finishing the explanation.
Young Aether had already understood.
"Then..." Young Aether asked after a brief silence, "Why did he leave?"
For that question, the old man simply smiled.
"Maybe there’s still some good hidden inside the bad."
"...Huh?"
Young Aether stared at him with an openly confused expression.
Seeing that look, the old man suddenly burst into laughter. His mechanical arm slapped the counter while he laughed, and the sound echoed through the nearly empty shop.
"Hahahaha!"
The more confused Young Aether looked, the harder the old man laughed. Eventually, he waved his hand dismissively.
"Forget it, kid."
His smile remained as he leaned back in his chair.
"Some things take a little longer to understand."