Jon didn't say a word.
'I asked you to take care of her before you left...' Patty said, 'and all I had after you returned are your lies and the news coverage...'
'Don't tell me you actually believed in the nonsense of the media?' Jon countered, and Patty clenched her fist angrily.
'See, that's your issue!' Patty said, pointing her finger forward, 'all you care about is whether YOU are right or not, not about the people around YOU! YOU didn't care about whether Hannah would have wanted for YOU to do what YOU did, YOUdidn't care about the consequences of YOUR actions, and YOU didn't care about me!'
Slamming her fist to her side and commanding Purple and Yellow to began their fusion into a single unit, Patty took a step back and raised up a hologram besides her. It was a footage of Jon when he entered into his Escalation 2 in the underworld due to the provocation of his father.
The footage showed him completely demolish both his father and the remaining forces in the area, though what he didn't realize was that his impacts of his rampage also thrown Hannah's body around with her wounds getting worse and worse with the gusts of wind cutting into her body like knives.
Jon froze in place with his mouth widened and eyes still.
When Hannah was dead, all he did was moving forward towards the future that HE wanted. He created the narrative by using his power to threaten the truth out of the various executives because that was what HE wanted. All that HE wanted was to clear his name, and he didn't care what he had to do to achieve it.
And yet he never stopped to look back towards the wake of his destruction. The ripples created by his rage had turned into tsunami and swallowed those closest to him.
United Networks and everything around Jon right now was how Patty coped with the past. And she was only surrounded by nothing but metal throughout all of this time.
The fusion of Purple and Yellow created a suit of mechanized armor that gently encloses around Patty's body as strands of nano-robots not only surrounds her body, but also penetrated through her skins, bones, blood vessels and bones. As the sentries became integral parts of her body, she also became one with them.
Now two and a half meters tall standing, Patty looked down at Jon in his state of Escalation 2 and dashed forward at a blinding speed, the wind created from her movement peeling up layers from the ground underneath and destroying the stage even further.
Jon quickly moved to the side to avoid the initial attack, and a arm materialized from the side of Patty's body to slam Jon right across in the shoulder. Raising his fist in the last minute, he parried the second attack too.
Taking no time at all to slow down, Patty circled around the room like a comet dipping in and out of a solar system before charging back in towards Jon, this time her body splitting into two individuals as they pressed on with their attacks.
'Patty!' Jon called out her name, 'please calm down!'
'You are in no position to tell me to do anything...' The two individual robots replied at the same time before they attacked furiously towards all of the weak points on Jon's body. Their speeds were unthinkable to most, but Jon was able to handle it somewhat in his Escalation 2 form. Then, two legs materialized out of thin air before they found their way onto Jon's stomach as he was sent flying backwards through the doors of the backstage.
The two robots conjoined with one another before Patty lept through the hole too.
Then, there was the sound of Jon grunting before he was also thrown back out from the back stage.
'What's the matter?' Patty taunted, 'did you forget how to fight?'
Landed onto Jon with a knee over his chest, Patty started her beat down of him. With every punch into his face, Patty only felt worse and worse, and yet...and yet there is nothing else she can do.
Perhaps if she killed Jon, all of the deals with the Red Blob will be over....Perhaps if Jon killed her here, all of the fruitless investigation would be over.
As she continued to lay her hits into Jon, hoping that he will rise up angrily and shatter everything about her, the man underneath her knee simply yielded and stopped his attack.
Then, Jon pulled away from his Escalation 2 form.
'Hand as steady as a black hole...' Jon murmured, before he held onto Patty's upcoming fist, 'Fingers as accurate as entangled quantums...'
With a few taps along the nerve connections in her arms, everything felt limb for just a split second before the repairing mechanism kicked in, however, a split second is more than enough for the killing blow in fights like this! Patty cursed under her breath that she didn't realize Jon's Escalation 1, or his base form and his Escalation 2 had different utilities in their powers!
As Jon rose up from underneath her, Patty was expecting a killing blow delivered to her, perhaps a hand through her chest, or a decapitation....
Instead, Jon reached out with both hands and wrapped his arms around Patty's body.
'I am sorry, Patty.' He said, 'I am sorry for everything....I am sorry for not being around when you needed most...I am sorry for not telling you everything...I am sorry for leaving you alone to face the consequences of my actions....I am sorry that you had to fight this fight by yourself all this time....
The fused body of Patty and her twin sentinels are cold and hard, but Jon can feel the heartbeat of the girl that was once his friend through the layers of armor. Then, the metal began to peel away slowly layer by layer.
'I cannot pretend to know what you have gone through to get to where you are now, but I am here not only to find out the truth I wanted to know, but to also atone for what I have done, if you would only give me this chance....'
As more and more layers of metal began peeling away, revealing the flesh of Patty's and face with the dyed blonde hair rolling down behind her head, she finally saw the completely bruised face of Jon, which is rather comical.
'You idiot...' Patty said, biting onto her lips and letting her hair cover up her teary eyes, 'why did you let me beat you up like that...'
'I...I thought that's something you wanted to do?' Jon said, calming the trembling girl in his embrace.
'Do you have any idea how shit that makes me feel....' Patty cried out, slamming her fist into the back of Jon, 'did you know how lonely I was...'
'I am sorry...but I will be here from now on...' Jon said, letting Patty vent out all of the suppressed emotions from all of these years, be it the past or the future, she will no longer have to walk alone, 'whatever load you were shouldering all by yourself, I will now share it with you.'
After Jon created his own narrative and ran away from S Prime, Patty was left all alone to face the aftermath of his actions. He essentially made the public distrust superpowered journalists and gave both the governments and the high society an excuse to diver attention away from the real matter at hand and focus their purge towards the various journalistic industries.
The matter of the Red Compound as the superhuman drug were thrown by the wayside.
The cameraman course was taken down by the University, and the society moved forward trying to figure out what to do next.
Patty attempted to investigate on her own, but it was nothing more than a fruitless labor. She doesn't have the skills, the instincts nor the power to look into what really killed Hannah and forced Jon to run, so she took another route.
She, along with a few others, started an automation revolution of the various industries.
It was a few years when the first usable robotic servants are pushed into the market, and a few more years when the first usable version of robot cameraman are pushed forward.
The robotic cameraman abide by all rules and regulations programmed into their system, and their behavior came be modulated from a distance. Better yet, they are expandable, meaning they can get even better shots in professional fights than human cameramen who feared for their life in the midst of combat. And if one is destroyed, another one will continue the stream as if nothing has happened.
By breaking into the market through the long and arduous way, Patty started gathering more and more information and data. That's when she came across the information that the trading and distribution of the Red Compound had gone even more rampant ever since Jon seemingly destroyed everything that was responsible for it.
Now, there are even those taking in Red in broad daylight in S Prime, and the police seemed to have turned a blind eye to it!
She also came across a complete recording of Jon going on his rampage after he lead Hannah to her death, and from that moment on, Patty diverted all of her attention into creating robots that will match the combat power of Jon at that instant. Utilizing the footage as a base, she developed a complete training simulation and continuously run her robots through it.
Eventually, a few iterations of the design made it through, the two that actually survived the simulations being Purple and Yellow, and each individual design costs billions and years of manufacturing to put together. Fortunately, she had other robots working on the task.
The ones that survived for more than a few instances are also put together, and Patty planned to push them out as security type robots, those being Blue, Red and Green.
'I get it now....' Jon nodded with regretful look on his face, 'I can never foresee that things would have been worse after I destroyed my family's company...'
'Power vacuum breeds chaos.' Patty said, slapping a pen across Jon's arm, 'do you not know that?'
'I...I wasn't thinking that far, rather...at all....' Jon admitted.
'You idiot....' Patty said, looking at the boy that she once knew. He looks much more earnest and truthful compared to the faced he put up underneath his long hair before, 'don't think I will be trusting you so soon! Tell me what you know about the Red Compound.'
So Jon did, as he told her about his encounter with it at the abandoned city, with the middleman, about the heightened generation and superhuman experimentation and trafficking and what Freya told him about the Edge.
'Shit.' Patty said, scratching her hair roughly as she appeared slightly irritated, 'Ok...here's the deal. As you might have imagined, the deal with the RED goes all the way up in S Prime, and someone at the top is controlling all of this from behind the scenes. That's almost certain. There IS foul play at the highest level.'
'Are you suggesting that Freya might be one of them?' Jon asked, thinking to the girl with a red hair and her smiles when she was with him at the gallery.
'That is a possibility, and that the Edge might be a trap to kill you all.' Patty said.
'Do you have any better leads?' Jon asked, and Patty shook her head.
There is absolutely no information out there that Patty found over all those years, and that played into how desperate she was earlier too.
'Then we must go there.' Jon said firmly, 'I have a group of strong people with me, so even if it is a trap, we should be able to handle it.'
'.....Bring me with you.' Patty said, reaching out and grabbing Jon by the wrist with her blushed face hidden under her hair, 'You said I don't have to walk alone anymore....so...'