Apparently my little stunt had thoroughly pissed them off and they had mobilized a huge portion of their troops to crush the Red Dragon base.

They were probably expecting to steamroll over the outrageously arrogant gangsters, and as such, they were caught totally off guard when the white mecha appeared.

With the appearance of the white mecha and the fearsome firefight that occurred not long after, the military strike force had pulled back to a respectable distance and had adopted a wait-and-see attitude even as an entire firestorm of a discussion was raging in the upper echelons of the government.

Oh I can already imagine those old fogeys arguing.

An unauthorized and unidentified white mecha has appeared within our borders! We need to mobilize our armed forces and drive it out!

You fool! It is a WHITE MECHA! A superpower must be behind it! We must not act rashly! Even a single scratch on it would be extremely expensive to repair!

You blithering penny pincher! Our national sovereignty and dignity is at stake, and you’re still thinking of repair costs? I say we destroy it! Send a powerful message that we’re not some pushover nation that they could come in and out as they please!

NINCOMPOOP! Do you want to start a war?! Who’s going to pay for the war? You? And HOW do you propose we destroy it? Using your imaginary white mecha?

We have more than a thousand blue mechas ready to mobilize! I refuse to believe that we can’t destroy one white mecha using a thousand of our blue mechas!

… Who the **** voted you into office? You dumb ****!

YOU’RE THE DUMB ****! YOUR MOM IS A DUMB ****!

*&^*^&%&^%*&^*&^*&^&*%

*&^*^*%&$&^%R&*^(*&)*)(&*

So on and so forth.

Oh nono, it’s definitely true. In fact, I might have been a tad too mild in my use of language. In the following years, I’ve eavesdropped on their ‘discussion’ sessions many times and I’ve always come out enlightened in the creative application of curse words.

Are you kidding me? Our nation is a tiny nation. Of course our government is being eavesdropped. If not by the top ten powers, then at least by the two superpowers. Mine was definitely not the only ear listening in.

Anyway, back to my story.

The military sent out multiple flying drones to keep tabs on the situation. They could not afford to lose sight of the white mecha at that point.

And that in short, was the situation I was facing at that moment.

I had an entire white mecha to absorb. And I needed to do it without a bunch of curious dudes checking me out from the rear.

I could not break them down and absorb them, because that would reveal my power. I could not even break them down, as that would create a very compelling mystery to solve, and which might just lead them on to me.

I know I absorbed ten blue mechas already. But that was in the heat of battle, and the two factions would probably be too busy pointing fingers at each other to investigate properly.

But if scouts and drones were to magically disappear in a period where both factions were in an unofficial and temporary ceasefire, then the questions would be raised.

If they didn’t do it, then who did?

It must be that strange mecha and his faction! How did they do it? Investigate!

And that was the worst thing that could happen to me. No can do.

Sabotage it is then. With sabotage, the suspicion would be directed inwards. Who had access to the units in question? There must be a spy somewhere! Investigate!

With a thought, tiny slivers of red energy shot out from my body. A few entered the drones and took out a minor steering component. With my enhanced resonance, even picking out a small part at such a distance was not a problem.

Immediately, drones began to fly in circles, totally unable to proceed to their destination.

The rest of the tiny slivers of red energy shot into the exo-suits of the scouts. Suddenly, the scouts stopped dead in their tracks. They had lost all power to their legs.

Mission accomplished.

With the enemy temporarily blinded, I immediately got to work.

I tightened my grip on the white mecha and sent my red energy around the core components of the white mecha.

CRACK!! POOF!!

Core components broken down.

GULP! GULP! GULP!

Core components absorbed.

I grinned. That was delicious! I could feel my body’s potential shoot up once more. At the same time, I suddenly realized that I could manifest a far more powerful mecha than before. Far, far stronger in armor, in firepower and in mobility.

Awesome!

I went on to break the rest of the white mecha down section by section.

CRACK!! POOF!!

First, the head. Then, the arms, and feet. I purposely left the cockpit for last because I wanted to capture Amelia Dragonos instead of killing her. I needed more information about the organization behind her, just in case that despite my best efforts, they were already somehow on to me.

Afterall, being forewarned is forearmed.

After going through so many enhancements, my body had a much greater capacity, and I was able to effortlessly absorb the white mecha.

Physically, I had no problems. No sir. My body was groaning with pleasure. I could not wait to unleash the full power of a white mecha condensed in a small and compact mecha frame!

The problem came when I absorbed the white mecha’s software.

The sheer amount of information that flooded my brain made it excruciatingly painful for me, yet at the same time, my brain could not help but admire its wonderful beauty.

The white mecha software was an incredibly wonderful piece of work. It was totally a masterpiece of epic proportions, and I couldn’t help but gasp at the beauty of it all.

But my brain, as enhanced as it was, was not ready to deal with such humongous and intricate information.

Previously, absorbing the blue mecha’s software hardly caused a blip in my normal sized brain. All the information simply nestled down somewhere in my brain, and stood at the ready to be utilized at will.

However, the white mecha software was nothing like it.

The science and technology that went into perfecting a software that could flawlessly control and exert all the power that a hundred-meter robot could bring to bear was millions of times more complicated than that which went into a standard ten-meter tall blue mecha’s.

I grimaced and gritted my teeth for a full minute as I forcibly disengaged my active brain from delving into all the information that was filling my brain to the brim. Instead, I focused on assimilating the white mecha and immediately enhancing the mecha I was in.

Interestingly, I was able to vastly reduce the pain I was experiencing in my brain when I did that.

“What do you plan to do with Amelia?” Emma asked as she stared at the white mecha’s cockpit with an intense hatred that was absolutely chilling to see.

I sighed deeply. That was definitely way too much hatred for a little girl to be dealing with. Waves of sympathy sprouted from within my heart.

She must have gone through absolute hell for such hatred to form.

“I plan to capture and interrogate her for information.” I said evenly.

“Good.” Emma nodded in satisfaction. “I will help you do that when the time comes.”

I shook my head with a sigh and did not reply her.

It was a dilemma for my ten year old self. I knew that torturing Amelia in revenge would not make the painful memories go away. It would only expose her to the pain of being lowered to the level of her torturers.

But to deny her revenge when it was right in front of her would probably cause her to hate me. I didn’t want that.

“Nevermind. That is a dilemma that future Justin can deal with. Present Justin had other things to do.” I thought.

I reached down with my right hand, grabbed the cockpit and replaced it with a metal cage, revealing Amelia Dragonos in all her evil glory.

Why did I do that? I don’t really know. I could have just picked up the cockpit as it was and ran. But I didn’t.

I chose to replace it with a cage. And thus allowed her to have direct access to me and unleash her final trump card on me, one that would drastically disrupt all the plans I had made for my future.

She released the Mecha Virus on me.