Chapter 681: Handsome

Grey punched him.

The hit landed with a satisfying crack, the sound of breaking bone and teeth carrying farther than Grey expected before the attendant’s roar collapsed into a wet shriek. The surrounding noise died almost immediately afterward, and as Grey walked forward through the sudden attention, the weight of hundreds of gazes seemed to settle over the platform without slowing him in the slightest.

He grabbed the attendant by the collar, hauled him upright and then squatted until they were almost eye level.

"Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?"

The attendant tried to answer, but whatever words he managed came out as a garbled mess through a mouth that no longer seemed interested in cooperating. Grey shook him once to cut the attempt short, already deciding that listening to the bastard struggle through another sentence was only going to annoy him more.

"You know what, don’t talk. You’re gonna piss me off."

Grey leaned in slightly, his grip tightening just enough to keep the attendant’s attention.

"Let me just teach you a little lesson. Don’t piss a man off if he has his harem with him. He might go extra far to embarrass you."

The women behind him had been genuinely stunned for a few seconds, mostly at the speed with which Grey had gone from mildly irritated to rearranging someone’s face, but that last sentence broke whatever concern they had left. Sabrina rolled her eyes first, Amunet followed soon after, and even Elowen’s expression relaxed once it became obvious Grey had somehow found a way to turn the whole thing into another joke.

Grey dropped the attendant onto the floor with a grin and stood, only then noticing that the atmosphere around him had changed for a completely different reason. The staring hadn’t stopped, but recognition had started spreading through the plaza now, murmurs passing from one group to the next as more people realized exactly who had just punched one of the attendants.

At this point, Grey had appeared in enough recap episodes that even casual spectators had seen his face several times over, and the participants of the Genesis Games gathered throughout the plaza had even less excuse not to know him. The whispers eventually began dying down on their own, leaving behind a silence that felt strange in a place that had been deafening only moments earlier.

Grey looked around, clearly pleased with the effect, then clapped his hands once.

"See, ladies? This is what we call aura."

Sabrina muttered under her breath, "He’s lucky he’s handsome, otherwise he’d be an insufferable prick."

Amunet’s lips twitched while Elowen lowered her head to hide the smile forming there, but Grey’s attention snapped toward Sabrina so quickly that her expression soured.

"Handsome, you say?"

"You weren’t supposed to hear that."

Grey’s grin widened. "Sounds like a skill issue."

Sabrina rolled her eyes and turned away, mentally adjusting for the fact that Grey wasn’t exactly working with normal human senses anymore. Whispering around him the way she used to was probably something she needed to stop doing if she ever wanted to complain about him in peace.

Before Grey could enjoy himself any further, a mechanical whine rose above the plaza, followed by the heavy rhythm of synchronized metal footsteps. Several enforcement units pushed through the crowd toward them, broad armored torsos and jointed limbs looking nearly identical to the machines Grey had fought on Earth, though these versions carried brighter insignias and noticeably heavier frames.

Brad shifted first, with James and Duke tightening up almost immediately after him, while Mensah finally stopped looking entertained by the whole situation. Amunet’s hand drifted toward her weapon and even Sabrina stiffened, all of them clearly assuming Grey had just turned their arrival into a fight with local security.

Grey, however, barely reacted.

One of the bots stopped directly in front of him while the others spread out around the group.

"Assault upon registered personnel has been detected. Remain still."

Brad leaned slightly toward Grey.

"Are we fighting?"

Grey glanced at him. "No."

Brad relaxed, though only slightly, as Grey reached into his jacket and several weapons around the plaza immediately shifted toward him. A moment later he pulled out a small black-metal badge instead, smooth around the edges with a silver mechanical crest stamped into its center.

Six interlocking rings surrounded a stylized Cyber Core, while a thin violet line passed through the symbol and pulsed once when Grey raised it. Beneath the crest sat a title that had become official only the day earlier.

—

[DOMINION CLASS MECH TECH]

—

The lead enforcement bot froze as its sensors passed over the badge, then repeated the scan once more before every weapon in the formation lowered. A moment later, the rest of the units bowed in perfect unison.

"Identity confirmed. Grey Temolt, Dominion Class Mech Tech."

Its sensors shifted toward the people standing behind him.

"Grey Temolt and associated parties are designated valuable guests. Please come with us."

For a few seconds, nobody moved.

The attendant on the ground let out a miserable sound through what remained of his mouth, drawing the bot’s attention for half a second before it looked back toward Grey without further comment. James stared at the badge in Grey’s hand, while Mensah leaned closer to Brad with an expression somewhere between disbelief and admiration.

"Did he just punch staff and get upgraded?"

Brad slowly nodded. "I think so."

Grey slid the badge back into his jacket as though nothing particularly strange had happened, only for the air around the enforcement units to suddenly ripple.

A broad wave of force swept outward through the plaza, harmless but irresistible, pushing the crowd aside in two directions and opening a wide corridor through the mass of bodies. People stumbled and complained as the path expanded, while Grey watched the line form all the way into the distance with growing satisfaction.

He started forward, took several steps, then noticed nobody else had followed yet.

Grey looked back over his shoulder.

"Well, come on. Don’t just stand there."