Watts regarded Penny for a long moment, the faint smile never quite leaving his face.
It wasn't mocking, that was what unsettled Jaune the most.
It was the smile of someone observing a reaction in a lab, eyes bright with interest rather than malice.
"So," Watts said at last, voice carrying easily through the vast chamber, "what will you do now?"
The featureless android shifted its grip minutely. Weiss and Blake swayed with the movement, their bodies limp and unresponsive. Blake's head lolled to the side again, and Jaune's chest tightened as the thin line of blood at her temple caught the light.
Hostages.
Watts did not need to emphasize it. The situation spoke for itself.
Yet there was no gloating in his tone. No relish. Just curiosity, as though this were all part of an experiment whose results he was eager to record.
Jaune hated it.
Hated the calm. Hated the fact that his friends' lives were reduced to variables in Arthur Watts' mind.
Penny did not lower her cannons. The glowing barrels remained trained squarely on Watts and the android beside him. Her stance was perfectly still, balanced, ready.
But she did not fire.
Jaune exhaled slowly and stepped half a pace forward despite the wariness screaming through his mind.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Watts blinked, almost surprised by the question. Then he shrugged lightly, one shoulder lifting as if the matter were trivial.
"I already have what I came for," he said, raising the crystalline plate slightly. The fading rune at its center pulsed weakly, as though in agreement. "Truth be told, I don't particularly care what happens next."
Jaune stared at him.
"You expect us to believe that?" he said, voice tight.
Watts chuckled softly. "Believe it or not, I am not an evil villain, Mr Arc. I am a researcher. I pursue results."
Something hot and sharp twisted in Jaune's gut.
Not a villain.
He thought of the corridors filled with dead operatives. Of Centurions tearing through LUCID personnel like disposable obstacles. Of command rooms drowned in panic and blood.
Jaune's hands curled into fists.
"That's a joke," he said flatly.
Watts did not rise to the bait. If anything, his smile grew more thoughtful.
Jaune's weakness sense churned uneasily. Arthur Watts' runic energy was still revolving in that strange, abnormal pattern. Not flaring or spiking. Just moving and cycling. As if something was being prepared, layered, or timed.
He was lying.
Or at the very least, he was not finished.
Jaune swallowed and forced himself to think.
He had no training in hostage negotiations, nor did he have any clever lines. No experience talking someone down while lives hung in the balance. All he had was instinct and the sick certainty that Watts was stalling for a reason.
And that reason terrified him.
"You can't just walk away," Jaune said. "Not with them."
Watts tilted his head slightly, studying him. "Why not?"
Jaune gestured sharply toward Weiss and Blake. "Because they're not bargaining chips. They're people."
Watts' gaze flicked briefly to the unconscious girls, then back to Jaune. "And yet, here we are."
The android holding them remained utterly still, like a statue carved from shadowed metal.
Jaune glanced sideways at Penny. "Lower your weapons," he said quietly.
Penny did not move.
"Jaune," she replied, her voice softer than before, "I cannot do that."
He looked at her, frustration and fear tangling together in his chest. "If you keep aiming those things, he's not going to let them go."
Penny's eyes flickered, something unreadable passing through them. "If Arthur Watts is going to act, he will do so regardless of my posture."
She met Jaune's gaze. There was something almost apologetic in her expression.
"We must be careful."
Watts' smile widened slightly.
"She is not entirely wrong," he said.
The air changed.
Jaune felt it before he understood it. A sudden shift, like pressure building beneath his skin. Arthur Watts' runic energy, which had been revolving so strangely, suddenly surged and expanded into... an attack?
No. It wasn't an attack.
A wave rolled across the chamber, invisible but unmistakable. Jaune's senses blared red for a heartbeat, as the energy passed through him, yet... nothing seemed to happen.
Then Penny stumbled.
One of her cannons dissolved and metal flowed, before reshaping with surgical speed, forming a precise, needle-like implement. Without hesitation, Penny drove it into her own shoulder.
Jaune shouted her name as she reached inside herself.
She withdrew her arm holding a mechanical device the size of a small fist. It writhed faintly, spindly legs clicking against Penny's grip. A bug.
The thing sparked weakly, then went dark as Penny crushed it in her hand.
Her other cannon arm was still trained unwaveringly on Watts and the Centurion android.
"So that was it," Jaune muttered.
Watts watched with clear interest, eyebrows lifting slightly. "Impressive," he said. "You found it faster than anticipated."
Penny's voice was calm, but there was steel beneath it. "Your sabotage attempt was ineffective."
Watts' smile did not falter.
"Perhaps," he conceded. "That one was."
Jaune's blood ran cold.
Watts' gaze sharpened, and for the briefest instant, his runic energy flared again.
"But what about the second?"
The world seemed to tilt.
Jaune felt it like a hand closing around his chest. A creeping weakness spread through Penny's frame, visible even to his exhausted eyes. Her posture faltered. The glow within her dimmed.
Penny stiffened.
Then she dropped to one knee.
Her cannon dissolved into inert metal, systems shutting down in a cascade of failures. She braced one hand against the floor, head bowed slightly as internal diagnostics fought a losing battle.
"Penny!" Jaune shouted, rushing toward her before stopping short.
His weakness sense screamed at him. This was not a physical injury, it was systemic. Something deep and insidious.
Watts' smile was serene.
"Redundancies are wonderful things," he said mildly. "They allow for experimentation."
Jaune turned on him, fury blazing through his exhaustion. "What did you do to her?"
Watts shrugged again, infuriatingly casual. "Insurance."
The android shifted, tightening its grip on Weiss and Blake just enough to be noticeable.
Penny's arm once again transformed into a needlepoint that stabbed towards her right leg. She pulled out another bug and destroyed that one too. She looked up, meeting Jaune's eyes.
"I am… still operational," she said, though her voice carried a faint strain. "But my combat capacity has been significantly reduced."
Jaune clenched his jaw.
Watts stepped forward a single pace, boots echoing softly in the vast chamber.
"Well," he said, eyes bright with curiosity once more, "Your rune must have gotten a lot stronger to have survived that one, Penny. I'd even estimate that you're combat capabilities will go back to normal in approximately 7-10 minutes. Very impressive."
Watts patted his centurion on shoulder.
"I've tested this on my hound here and he got completely screwed up. I probably should have listened to him, regarding that, but I wouldn't be able to call myself a researcher, now could I, if I just listened to whatever he said."
Watts seemed to be talking to himself now.
"But... considering that his damn rune probably already foresaw that. I guess he had already expected me doing that."
Jaune was startled. Something about what Watts was implying tickled at his brain. "What... are you talking about?"
Watts waved his hand. "Don't worry about it. You'll see soon enough.
Jaune's thoughts felt tangled, pulled in too many directions at once.
None of it mattered.
Not Arthur's strange rambling or the implications hidden in his words.
What mattered was Weiss, Blake and Penny.
Jaune glanced at Penny, kneeling but still upright, eyes alert despite the strain written through her posture. "Significantly reduced combat capacity" echoed in his head, vague and useless. Did that mean she could still fight at Rank 2 strength, or was she barely holding herself together? Jaune had no way of knowing, and the uncertainty gnawed at him.
Watts no longer needed hostages. That truth settled heavily in Jaune's chest. If he wanted to leave now, there was nothing stopping him.
Watts' gaze flicked toward him, that same faintly curious expression returning, as if he had followed Jaune's train of thought.
"You were thinking I was just going to leave like this, weren't you, Jaune Arc?" Watts said mildly.
The, suddenly, Watts was gone.
Jaune's eyes barely caught it. A smear of motion that resolved itself an instant later with a burst of air that pushed Jaune backward.
Arthur Watts stood directly in front of the orange haired android girl.
"Penny!" Jaune shouted.
She reacted instantly.
Her arm reshaped itself mid-motion, flowing into a precise, needle-like blade that thrust forward in a perfect piercing strike aimed squarely at Watts' heart.
Metal met flesh, and stopped. Watts caught it between two fingers.
Watts smiled.
Almost lazily, he reached out with his free hand and wrapped his fingers around Penny's neck.
Jaune lunged forwards with all his power.
Crocea Mors flashed as he brought it down with everything he had left. Lux Aeterna followed in the same breath, twin arcs of steel cutting toward Watts' back.
Something moved.
A limb unfurled from behind Watts like a living thing, sleek and fluid in a way that made Jaune's strikes recoil. It curved upward in a smooth arc, interposing itself between Watts and the incoming blades.
Metal rang.
Jaune's strikes glanced off harmlessly, diverted as though he had hit a wall that was already anticipating the blow.
The limb flexed, bending like liquid reinforced with bone.
For a split second, an absurd memory surfaced in Jaune's mind. Some late night show he had watched a while ago. Cannibalistic ghoul-like human with weapons grown from their bodies, writhing and alive.
Except this was worse. This wasn't flesh.
This was deliberate and engineered. A weapon born from a rune and refined by a mind that treated combat like a hypothesis to be proven.
Watts did not even look at Jaune.
Liquid mechanical metal began to flow from Watts' palms, crawling over Penny's shoulders and chest. It moved with invasive intent, slipping into her mouth, her eyes, her nose.
Penny's body convulsed.
Her limbs jerked sharply, then again, as if something inside her was tearing through her systems. The glow beneath her skin flickered wildly, unstable.
"Penny!" Jaune screamed, voice cracking.
Then she went still and Watts released her.
Penny collapsed to the floor like a doll whose strings had been cut.
Jaune stumbled forward and caught her before she hit the ground fully, lowering her with shaking hands. His chest felt tight, breath coming in sharp, panicked bursts.
Behind him, Watts stepped away.
Ten meters.
Jaune barely noticed.
He knelt beside Penny, hands hovering uselessly over her, afraid to touch her and afraid not to. His weakness sense told him the truth even before his eyes did.
She was unharmed.
But something was deeply wrong.
Watts conjured a chair behind him, the metal flowing up from the floor as easily as breath. He sat, crossing one leg over the other, posture relaxed.
He watched.
Penny's eyes were open.
They looked unfocused, pained.
Jaune swallowed hard. "Penny," he said softly, forcing calm into his voice. "Talk to me. What's wrong? What did he do?"
Her lips moved slowly. "Arthur Watts has… introduced a viral construct into my systems."
Jaune clenched his jaw. "A virus?"
"Yes," Penny replied. "Physically, I am undamaged. However… my operational systems have been forcibly shut down."
Jaune's hands curled into fists at his sides. He turned sharply toward Watts. "You didn't need to do that," he snapped. "You already won. You could've walked away."
Watts exhaled, the sound heavy and weary. The smile was gone now, replaced by something closer to irritation.
"If it were up to me," he said, "I would have."
Jaune stiffened. "Then why didn't you?"
Watts leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling as though searching for patience. "Because this was an experiment, I suppose?"
Jaune frowned. "An experiment? For who?"
"I did this as a favour," Watts continued, ignoring the question. "One I agreed to perform."
Jaune's mind prickled sharply. There it was again.
"A favor for who?" he demanded.
Watts' eyes flicked back to him.
"That," he said lightly, "is not something you need to concern yourself with. You'll see him soon enough, I suppose."
Jaune rose slowly to his feet, placing himself between Penny and Watts without thinking. His grip tightened on Crocea Mors, though he knew how pointless it was. Rank 2. The gap felt insurmountable now more than ever.
Watts raised a hand placatingly. "Relax," he said. "We have time."
Time.
Jaune almost laughed at the word.
"Enough time," Watts continued, "for a conversation."
Jaune stared at him, anger simmering beneath his exhaustion. "You're holding my friends hostage. You've crippled Penny. And now you want to talk?"
Watts regarded him quietly for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yes."
The featureless Centurion in the distance adjusted its grip slightly. Weiss and Blake remained limp in its arms, unmoving.
Jaune felt the weight of that choice settle over him.
If this was a game, he had no choice but to keep playing.
"What do you want?" Jaune asked again.
Watts leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers steepled. His eyes gleamed with interest, like a scientist about to take notes.