Chapter 290: A Cleaver a Day Keeps the Criminals Away
Ares was done with Windsor but he wasn't quite finished speaking to the spectators just yet. He didn't have much more to say to them but that was no reason to leave them hanging without a proper ending. Plus he still had to dole out at least one threat lest anyone think him soft. He'd kinda already done it when pointing at Lex earlier, as the implication was clear enough, but that was insignificant compared to actually openly declaring violent intentions to those who opposed him in ways that were not something he could just ignore. "Let me be clear on this, I will be keeping a close eye on the people who gather in this city at the time of our departure from this domain. Anyone who has not been granted permission to be here will be weeded out so don't waste your time trying to sneak aboard. There will be repercussions for not only this but also those who stand in-between me and my goals. I do not have all the time in the world to play around with thieves, imbeciles who are jealous of my relationship with Enyo, or those who are looking to harm Red Sun in any way.
Do no let my current childish stature fool you, you've all seen what I'm capable of and should know by now how many explosives I have buried in this city. You will not make it far and you will certainly not make it out of this city alive if you grate on my nerves. Of course you're also free to try and attack me outside of Red Sun if you think that will help but if you do then don't complain when you find yourself buried out in the middle of nowhere with nobody to mourn for you. I will not be tolerant of those looking to take my life for any reason so if you're intending on picking a fight with me, you best be sure to make sure you've written and signed off on your will. There will be no mercy and you should consider yourself lucky if there's even enough chunks of you left to bury by the time I've blown up each and every one of your limbs. I will disintegrate you into ashes if need be and feed you to worms so take this threat very seriously.
Taking Red Sun to Vraizon is an important first step for me and trying to get in the way of that, for whatever twisted reason you concoct, will net you the full force of a displeased fundamental champion which, I assure you, you do not want to be on the receiving end of. It will not end with you either as I will track down anyone who means anything to you and make them pay as well. Think VERY carefully before you choose to make an enemy of me in such a capacity, its' not worth it and you don't stand to gain more than you will lose. Being a revenant makes me immortal so, even if you miraculously win, I'll be back to haunt you soon enough. I will only say this once, pick a fight with someone more your speed. You do not have what it takes to oppose a fundamental champion, now or ever, nit Mako or I, so do yourself a favour and leave us well enough alone. You've been warned." A simple enough threat, nothing too grand or explicit, but that was fine. Ares would rather not mess it up than botch something so crucial, especially not in this form otherwise the end result would be catastrophic as it would just encourage even more people to waste his time...
"As for everyone else, specifically those who are intending on staying in Red Sun, provided you don't become the kind of person who the previous threat would be relevant to, I will do my utmost to keep all of you safe going forward. I don't know what manner of incidents we'll run into in the future but I will never compromise on your safety, that I promise you. I will make devising safety measures my utmost priority as soon as the journey begins so you needn't worry about my commitment to this promise. Know that you are in very capable hands, between myself and Hans, so you can rest easy and be assured that the risk associated with this change to all of your lives will be minimal. I hope you're all able to make the most out of the various benefits that will come with this change so, until the time for us to leave arrives, I think it would be wise for each of you to consider what it is exactly you're looking to get out of this situation and pre-emptively act accordingly. Sort out whatever business needs to be sorted ahead of time and have a plan to succeed going forward for your own good. Things will be competitive at first, I can't deny it, but once everything has fallen into place all of your positions will be cemented within this land and the chances of anyone who comes after you living a better life than you on this landmass will be slim. My preference for the early adopters of this new lifestyle, the people who will be the foundation of this entire plan, will remain eternally and I will take that into account whenever it becomes relevant.
I look forward to working alongside you all to turn this landmass into, eventually, a mobile planet that we can call our impenetrable paradise of a home. I don't exactly know how long it will be until it's time to depart from this domain but I will tell you this without a shadow of a doubt; as soon as I return from my trip to Neo Gear, which is still a way aways for now, that will be when the starting pistol fires its blank. When I've decided to leave for Neo Gear, I will make an announcement via Hans and the C.O and that will be the final chance for anyone interested to come to Red Sun. if you are not on this landmass when it leaves, I cannot promise you that you will ever get to stand atop it ever again. Make whatever choice you think wisest but, for now, that's all from me. Regardless of whether you join us on Red Sun or not I wish you all the best of luck in your cultivation journeys... Aside from Lex. Fuck Lex." Ares flipped Lex the bird which earned a few chuckled from the spectators. Ending things off with a light joke of sorts, although it wasn't a joke really at all, was a good way to punctuate his speech and leave a lasting impression even if the speech as a whole was still pretty average. It wasn't rousing nor was it completely dull, just run of the mill. Ares did have a better overall flow to the speech planned, and he would have given it a lot more oomph, but being mini meant it was probably not a good idea to be stubborn and stick to it. Rather than come across as energetic and youthful, bursting with vigour and talent, he would just look like a cocky and insufferable child who was overvaluing himself and trying to be smart. Ares had made the boring but smart choice and that was indicative of his mature mindset, mature enough to be in a leadership position without needing to fear some kind of uprising due to his poor decision making.
Anyway, now that he'd given his speech, which was mostly a matter of duping Windsor more than anything else, it was time for him to step down and be done with this tournament for good. He only had a few more extra tasks to complete, and time to waste until his body returned to normal, and then it was Freeride Federation time! Ares was looking forward to it as his sense of adventure had dulled recently. Fighting all these human / human adjacent foes was great and all but there were wild monsters and treasures / resources waiting be fought / found. While Ares went over the preparations he'd need to make for the journey in his head, Enyo took charge and walked up to the slightly raised part of the platform to give her own speech before Mako could get there. Winners first! Not that that was why Enyo wanted to beat him to the punch, it was just because she wanted to add on a little extra to Ares' threat from before and having Mako come up before her would ruin that as it would diminish the effectiveness of it. The pause between threats would make it seem like something tacked on at the end that they'd almost forgotten about rather than something serious and worth taking into consideration. Still, the severity of what Enyo was about to threaten everybody with ought to make up for the fact that Ares himself wasn't saying it because he was repressing the memory.
"SILENCE!" Enyo's commanding voice quelled what remained of the idle chatter from discussions about Ares' speech. "Let me be very clear to you all that I will be far less tolerant than Ares. You may look at this armour I don and mistakenly believe justice will be served politely and magnanimously irrespective of your crimes but I've had a change of heart as of late. While I certainly still possess Legion values at my core, I will no longer hesitate to punish people accordingly and torture or take lives if I deem it appropriate." Enyo raised her hand and a small spark appeared on the tip of her finger. The spark gently hovered into the air before growing wider and into the shape of a large rectangle in the sky. This was an evolution of the memory share art, Past-Present Polymerisation (a technical), that allowed Enyo to share a memory to a wider audience all at once by playing it on a big screen, almost like a drive through cinema... This sounded great but what was being played on the screen right now was utterly horrifying as it was a reconstruction of the Remmy event in which Blo Blo used her cleaver to chop up the young master's you-know-what. The threat of a man having their thing enlarged and then ripped to shreds was definitely enough to make some people in the audience hurl while parents had to cover their children's eyes. Long story short, although primarily aimed towards men, this threat turned out to be very effective... And yet Enyo still wasn't finished...
"Don't think that being a woman will save you either because we're more than happy to sever all of your fingers, enlarge them and sharpen the nails, and shove them deep up your..."
"ALRIGHT! That's enough thank you!" Ms Windsor interrupted Enyo because this level of crass verbal violence was going to ruin an otherwise good end to this tournament! Of all the people to speak like this why on earth was it the holy knightess in shining armour?! Perhaps the rumours about this woman being a degenerate were truer than they seemed...
"Ahem." Though Enyo had been asked to stop, there was still a little more she wanted to talk about so she calmed herself down and begun speaking again in a more appropriate manner for the venue she was in. "I take it you understand the levity of the situation now? Go after Ares if you really must but if you come after me instead, don't expect to get off the hook lightly. I'm not as lenient as he is so I recommend you respect our relationship and extinguish any pesky thoughts in your head about me that shouldn't be there. The same is true of any women looking to take advantage of Ares, you won't be spared either. Make peace with the fact that we are a couple, and you can't have either of us, or we'll drill it into you by force. To cap off this warning, I'd also like to remind you all that retribution to those who seek to cause trouble in Red Sun will be swift and brutal and this is doubly true in the early stages when everything is still relatively precarious. If you try to hamper the beginning of our journey you will not only fail but you will not live long enough to regret ever even trying. Make the wise choice and leave well enough alone or the full force of both Ares and I will come crashing down upon you, that is all."
The memory share earlier had gripped people by the balls, metaphorically speaking, and now Enyo had rounded up her threat and finished up nicely. This Legion member was not one to be messed with, that was made abundantly clear. There were some criminals who didn't fear the paltry punishments dished out regularly by the Legions, even if they were caught red-handed, so they would openly defy them from time to time. There was no real way of dealing with people like this by adhering to Legion values and Enyo was coming to understand the shortcomings first hand with people like the young master in Remmy's. Though she didn't want to resort to brutality for first, and lighter, offenses, she was opening up to the idea that some people were better off dead or fearful for their very lives. Basically she was treating these people like wild monsters that couldn't ever achieve anything resembling 'humanity' or a 'conscience' and that they were best put down like the unintelligent beasts they were. It wasn't to the same degree as Blo Blo, who'd discarded such notions of pure and unfiltered 'justice' a long time ago, but Enyo wasn't as much of a stickler for it anymore as someone like Tyr was. She was the middle ground, basically, and could find compromise either way depending on the details of the situation. Less letter of the law and more spirit of the law. Impartiality was no longer a word she revered because there were things she actually cared about now, to put it simply. Did that mean she would discard objectivity entirely? No, not at all, and the justice side of her was still as obstinate and strict as it ever was, it's just that whether or not you got that side of her, or the subjective 'I'm just going to kill you because you're a threat to what I value most' side, was dependent on the type of crime you committed, or attempted to, and who it was aimed at. It was important to make that distinction so that the crowd of spectators understood she was not a Legion that could be pleaded to with puppy eyes, and get a slap on the wrist punishment in return, otherwise they'd feel incentivised to target Red Sun specifically for being lax on such matters.
Enyo stepped down and a confused but wary Mako stepped up. That memory of the poor young master was definitely not a pleasant watch but now every man in the audience had it burned into their memory for better or worse... That damn crazy woman Bellona looking so happy with herself, almost like she was having fun with the cleaver... The hell did Ares want to marry a devil spawn like that for?! Mako figured it was best not to ask and just go about doing his own thing while pretending he had nothing to do with these people. Mako stepped up the C.O's mic, begrudgingly as he had no other means of raising his voice other than summoning is own mic (but that would look petty to the extreme), and coughed aloud much the same way Ares and Enyo did before him to start his speech. "Ahem!"... Although it fell completely flat because everyone was already listening anyway. Bad start, much? Well as long as he could steady himself from here it shouldn't matter. Being a fundamental champion meant people would naturally be more lenient with him as strength mattered more than small fumbles like this. "I will be number one!"
....
....
....
THAT'S IT?!
The spectators were dumbfounded into silence and were still silently waiting on the off chance this idiot could actually be bothered to say anything else.
Clap Clap
Who the hell is clapping for this garbage?! The spectators all turned to face the culprit only to see mini Ares cackling to himself as he goaded Mako with his applause. The worst part of his clapping was that it wasn't strictly supportive nor was it solely a taunt, it was roughly fifty fifty and that just pissed Mako off even more. The elf had been clearly trying to leave an impact with a simple declaration but it had just baffled everyone listening while Ares wasn't even taking it seriously. Failure on all fronts! Mako ground his teeth at the stupid revenant, still clapping away, and was about to swear at the little bastard until he caught sight of a displeased Enyo. Did this woman have telepathy or something?! How the hell did she know he was about to pick a fight with the damn kid?! Mako backed off because the image of chopped wiener was still fresh in his memory and he didn't want to have a similar fate befall him. It was better to just take the loss here on the chin and run away with his tail behind his legs and fully intact.
As for Ares, he found this all particularly amusing but wasn't actually trying to be a complete ass. Sure it was a hilarious moment to him, watching Mako fall flat on his face publicly, but the elf also deserved some credit for getting his ass handed to him so soundly and not backing down. It's not like anyone else in the crowd had the gall to walk up to the podium, look Ares dead in the eye, and swear they would best him in the future. Only Mako really had the talent and the gumption to do it so good for him. What were they expecting of Mako anyway? It's not like he had anything important to discuss as all he wanted to do was get this over with and go exploring for resources in Vraizon. He had no plans in a similar vein to that of Ares' so, other than threats (which would pale in comparison to the ones that came before him), there was little else for him to speak about. Yes his 'speech', if it could even really be called such a thing, was silly but it wasn't terrible either considering how few options he even had. That was part of why Ares clapped, he figured Mako would walk away from this way less embarrassed if he was too busy feeling mad at Ares. Apathy was worse than anger so directing Mako's attention towards one asshole instead of however many thousands of dead stares was probably for the best for him. Of course that's not to say Ares' intentions were pure, and he was doing this only out the goodness of his heart, as he never failed to get a kick out of seeing Mako get angsty over his antics. It was like... Good bullying? Ares nodded to himself as if he'd just completed a job well done before waving to the crowd and hopping aboard Enyo's back.
The tournament was now over, even if it ended on a rather strange note thanks to Mako's lacklustre finish, but it was over none the less. Ares would no doubt see both Windsor and Mako again at some point but, for today, he could just chill back at home and celebrate his win with his family... Who were probably going to be more interested in teasing him in his miniature form than caring about the result of the tournament... Well whatever, relaxing was relaxing and messing around with the family, even at his own expense, was fine... NOT! How was Ares going to cook in peace with everyone jumping on him and keeping him pre-occupied?! It had only just occurred to him but he had no mana right now! He couldn't access the Primordial Blade nor could he use the kitchen within it because it required even the faintest existence of mana / cultivation! He was going to have to cook the old fashioned way but was anyone going to let him? Like hell they were! Ares was going to have to convince Enyo to make some of her specialty for everyone while he was passed around like a toy. The issue here was that Enyo wanted to be involved in the mini Ares playtime so Ares would have to give her a reason to let go of him for today and cook... "Enyo..." Ares took a deep sigh... "... I will do literally anything you ask of me in this form once, and only once, if you are willing to cook for everyone today in my stead..."
Enyo, who'd only taken a single step onto the barrier she'd summoned, paused on the spot as a flood of ideas filled her head. There were many things she wanted to try with mini Ares but knew he'd be reluctant to do because he wasn't actually a child and likely didn't want to be treated as such. She was treating him like her son right now but there were still limits but, now, he was telling her that, even if only once, she could ignore those limits and do whatever she wanted with him?! Though she didn't want to cook, as it meant she'd be missing out on all the fun in the other room, she couldn't bring herself to give up this rare opportunity! "Alright, deal accepted! Remember what you said, Ares, you better not back out when I decide what I want!"
"I won't... Even if I have a bad feeling about this in my gut..."
"Good... Now young man, can you explain to me why you were playing around with the scythe in such an important match even after you said you wouldn't?! I didn't raise a liar!"
"Eh?" Ares had completely forgotten that Enyo was going to chew him out for that but maybe it was for the best that it was happening while he was in mini form? Maybe he could get away with it? "Um, sorry?"
Spank
"Nope! Not good enough! You need to learn otherwise you won't repent for your actions and will keep doing it over and over again! I know what kind of tiny devil you can be behind my back!" Enyo gave Ares the classic strict parent punishment and spanked his bottom with a barrier she'd materialised out of thin air. She would have done it by hand but, considering the fact that she herself actually really liked being spanked, for a very different reason, she thought it would be weird and opted not to do it with direct contact. This way it was actually a punishment for a misbehaving child and nothing perverse.
Spank
"Ow!" Mini Ares wriggled in Enyo's grasp but couldn't shake the gorilla strength that ran in the family. Not that it mattered as, without cultivation, there was zero chance of breaking free regardless. He just had to take the multiple barriers that were tapping him on his rear which were honestly more annoying than anything else. It was like some annoying child kept randomly pushing you in the arm when you weren't paying attention and was frustrating not because it was painful, it wasn't, but because it was obnoxious! "Come on! The scythe ended up working out anyway, didn't it? I even got a lot better with it and can use it like a main weapon now! It was the right call!"
"In hindsight!"
Spank
"And you said you wouldn't use it!"
Spank
"Think about the treasures we could have lost out on if you'd messed up against the Genesis!"
Spank
Enyo sighed as she picked up mini Ares off her back and held him in front of her. He was rubbing his butt and had seemingly got the message... Not that it would stop him from doing stuff like this again, nothing ever would and Enyo was at least partially aware of that even if it irked her to no end. She'd married an idiot! A very lovable idiot though, and one that had just worked hard for a well earned victory. "Congratulations on your win Ares." Enyo held the tyke up and gave him a kiss on the forehead before hugging him close to her chest as she brought him back up to the rest of the family. Sure he pulled out the scythe but he'd performed admirably and it was worth praising him for his success every now and then. Between Mako and Windsor, Ares had come away from today having done a lot for the sect, Red Sun, and the team members who stood to gain off his performance, and so a small gesture of appreciation was in the cards. Plus it made Ares happy as he had a small smile on his face, which was very cute in his mini form, so it was definitely worth doing. For today at least, he could enjoy his efforts being celebrated as they rightfully should without Enyo nagging him to death over something inconsequential.