I pulled myself up onto the cliff top and casually made my way through the camp until I reached the largest and most ornate tent with the legions banners and red cloth all over it. Obviously there was no one here to guard it so I walked in without any issue. The inside of the tent was disappointingly bland considering this was Caesars throne room. It was roughly twenty feet wide and long with three "rooms" that were really just extensions of the main tent. The ones on the left and right were just where Caesar and his people would make plans or relax while not running missions.-
The center of the tent had a couple braziers with fire still burning in them and the ornate fur and cloth spear backed throne of Caesar. Behind that was what I was after though, his personal quarters. Specifically I was after the piece of advanced tech he had sitting at the edge of the prewar bed there, the autodoc. Autodoc's were an interesting application of robotics for the field of medicine. They were programmed with a variety of medical procedures that they performed with supplied medical supplies and their several long robotic arms.-
The reason I was after this thing was because it was Caesars only hope of getting rid of the tumor in his brain that was slowly killing him. No human could be trusted not to sabotage the surgery and kill him after all. But this particular autodoc didn't have the programmed data set for brain surgery like this and currently couldn't help him. Me taking it cuts off that hope entirely. As a result it was with a gleeful grin that I pocketed the autodoc into my inventory before leaving the tent and heading for the crumbling cement "weather" shack that sat at the far end of the camp.-
The door was locked but picking it wasn't anything difficult and once it was unlocked I watched the elemental to time my retrieval perfectly. I didn't need to wait long as the next group of legionnaires arrived with an extra, Jess.
"Ah, what a tricky old fucker! He knows that none of the means he has in the legion works so he's sending someone who uses something the legion doesn't as part of it's rules. He's gambling that her plasma rifle will have some effect normal bullets don't. Perfect." I said with a snicker.
The fight went the same as the last I saw with some legionnaires blocking the elemental's bladed arms but the difference it was Jess shooting the now "vulnerable" thing with her plasma rifle. The moment the first shot hit it I hit the recall on the elemental. It vanished and reappeared in card form within my inventory. I then entered the shack and locked the door behind me to wait for Jess to inevitably show up. The look on her face was priceless when she was "let" in by the legions people that were reclaiming the camp.-
"What!? When did you get here!?" she demanded in shock and outrage.
"Calm your tits. You didn't ACTUALLY think you killed my summon did you? It vanished because I pulled it back right when your shot hit it." I said casually.
"Oh yeah? Prove it." she said crossing her arms.
I waved my hand and the card of the Dawn elemental appeared and expanded as it floated out. It's mere presence raised the ambient temperature drastically.
"Magic!" I say with a grin.
"That's, no! Magic isn't real! You have to be lying!" she hissed in disbelief.
"Why? Because it's more convenient than accepting I have been telling the truth this entire time? Because then most of your reasons for being angry at me evaporate?" I asked pointedly.
She froze as her mind echoed those questions and it became increasingly obvious that they struck at the truth. Admitting that I have been telling the truth is no different than accepting that not only is what she understood about the world wrong but that all the outlandish claims i've made might also be true. It was madness. But reality didn't care about opinions, only facts.-
And the facts all pointed to me telling the truth.
She slouched "Why hide it? Caesar told be all about this THING. About how it just appeared entirely invulnerable. How it just showed up hours ago... you sent it here after killing Vulpes!?" she said with a horrified expression as she started to connect the dots.
"I did tell you that House picked up on my magic with his sensors. That was when I had summoned this Dawn elemental here and sent it to give the Legion a bitch slap. Speaking of you have to tell me what the old man looked like when he was explaining it. Was he angry, humiliated? Both?" I asked with a cackle.
"Frustrated, he was frustrated. The entire legion was. A single enemy and their numbers meant nothing." she said with a sigh that looked like it drained years off her life.
"That's because this thing IS invulnerable. No damage can ever land on it. It's not very strong but killing it is impossible. The perfect little headache to make the legion's morale drop like rain." I said with a chuckle as I put the elemental away again. "Now then if you'd be so kind as to produce the chip to open the way." I added motioning to the terminal that had what looked like an oversized coin slot in it.
Jess fished the chip out from her pocket and slotted it in. The thick metal panels on the floor slid into holders as the bunker was finally unlocked for the first time in over two hundred years to reveal a set of metal stairs leading to a hatched metal door. We walked down these stairs and through that door to a clean hallway that had a miniature version of the computer that House had in the Lucky thirty eight.-
His face appeared on it "Excellent work reaching this point but I'm afraid there is more needed. While my connection to this facility has been restored partially with the platinum chips installation my scans of it's systems reveal heavy degradation of the security measures and the need for manual activation of the software update on the units here." he said getting straight to business.
"So basically destroy everything between us and that terminal?" I asked.
"To put it crudely, yes." he said not surprised at all.