CHAPTER 373: BLOODY TROPICAL SHIRT

"Why did you not kill him?" Jace asked as he tossed the orius’ core back and forth between his hands. He could already hear that all of the enemies had been taken out. The republic’s people were moving up to their position.

"Figured we needed one of them alive to interrogate." Cain answered as he moved around and looked at the box of EMP grenades. "This is not good. We should not leave these here. The same with the rest of these weapons. Have you contacted the police?"

Jace stopped tossing the core back and forth and started to play with his communication device. Then he frowned as Commander Tyler and his subordinates came around to the rear of the truck entrance. Which was partially inside a building and where Jace was currently standing. "No good, it looks like something is preventing it on their end." He looked at the various crates of weapons and his ears twitched as he could hear several more explosions far in the distance.

"Umm... excuse me. I apologize but do you know what is going on?" Jace looked over to see Commander Tyler. Jace stepped out from the shaded area he was standing in and Commander Tyler flinched in surprise. "Uh... you have a little- a lot of blood covering you."

Jace blinked and then burst out in laughter. "Of course I do. I got in close. It would be odd if I did not end up covered in my enemies blood. Now was that all? I have to go clean up and get these crates in my..." Jace stopped as the realized something and looked around. "Son of a... that is my truck." He nodded at a small truck that was flipped over.

"Oooo..." One of the soldiers groaned as they looked at the vehicle. "That sucks!"

Jace groaned and looked around at the crates of weapons. "Well..." He looked down at himself. After a few more seconds he made a decision. "Pack up the weapons and move everything into the restaurant I am... going to go clean myself up. Because I am going to terrify the civilians if they see someone covered in blood."

Commander Tyler contemplated for a moment before nodding. "Let’s get these crates and weapons into the restaurant and move the bodies into the back of the truck. We do not want them sitting out on the street. If the police could come, they would have already." Commander Tyler began directing his men and then helped them.

Jace walked back into the restaurant and saw the dwarf was sitting at the bar still tinkering but now he was drinking straight from a whiskey bottle. "You good?" Jace asked as he walked by.

"Yeah- hell’s hangging balls! What happened to you?" The dwarf asked when he saw Jace.

Jace raised an eyebrow and spun the orius core in his hand. "I got in close and used one of their knives. It tends to get messy when you aim for arteries and to sever limbs." Jace declared proudly, causing the dwarf to roll his eyes.

"Done did similar things with axes and hammers before. You should wear armor when you do something like that." The dwarf pointed out as he continued to tinker. "Hope you do not mind. They have not been letting me near weapons, and I want to mess with some."

"You are good." Jace shook his head. "Remind me to talk to you after this. If you are here for a long time I want your help with something fun!" Jace told him as he walked over to the bathroom and entered it.

He set the orius’ core in a sink and began pulling off his two shirts. His tropical shirt was slightly scorched while his white shirt was completely soaked in blood. He just tossed the white shirt into a trash can and began drowning his tropical shirt in water. Washing the blood off of it he glanced at the intact orius core.

This must be an attack by the orius using the splintered Tyranus groups as their fall guys. But there must have been better ways to go about it. Going into the middle of the city with a bunch of EMP grenades are not the most effective method of execution. There must be another play here for them. But why did they crash into the restaurant?

Jace took a deep breath and thought back to what happened earlier. He just went into full offensive mode as soon as they appeared. But something weird had happened. They were screeching down the road as they came towards the restaurant. He could see sparks as it tried to turn but then the back end fell on its side.

Jace managed to stop it with a table and then his foot but it looked like they were trying to turn it. But this was not their original stop . They just had the misfortune of being forced to stop here by accident. Meaning it was either sabotage or something else. But the important point of this little memory scanning revealed that the EMP grenades were not meant for here but somewhere else.

He should disable those. Just draining them of the stored up energy should work. Jace finished cleaning the tropical shirt and then pulled it on, no longer a blood soaked tropical shirt. It was wet but it was fine he did not care much he just needed to get the blood off of it.

He began walking to the bathroom’s exit but stopped as he reached the door then spun around and walked to the sink and pulled out the orius core he had been carrying around. Jace stepped out and saw some of the civilians that had come back out.

He saw the weapons crates had been moved inside and the dwarf was still tinkering. But now the girls were sitting on seats by him. Looking at what he was doing. Peter Reese was talking with Commander Tyler while Cain was sitting on the back of his captured prisoner.

Jace walked toward them as he glanced at the crates and picked out the one that had the EMP grenades in it. "Jace, just in time we were just coming up with a plan. Because Commander Tyler has pointed out that there are some EMP grenades in those boxes. I was telling him that we should just leave it to you."