A woman Fate could only assume was Helga Grendeven stepped out, the faceless guards following closely behind.
She looked like a clone of Kathrin, aged up a few years to resemble a woman in her late twenties. Her face bore a kind smile that reflected into her eyes, and she seemed to have little issue standing in the chill night wind with only her crown-pattern pajamas on.
Unlike the machines to her side, which planted their feet and aimed the barrels of the weapons at Fate and Venden, she had a tangible, measurable power level.
Master.
Fate deduced swiftly that they didn't stand a chance in a direct fight, even without the two metal men backing her up. He had no choice but to let her speak.
"Ah, Venden. What have you done to yourself?" she asked, her kind smile switching to motherly worry. "Look at you, you look awful."
"Playing games, mother?" Venden asked after catching his breath. "We both know you did this to me."
"Nonsense. I never laid a hand on you. How could I?" A true statement. Helga had never laid a hand on any of her children with intent to harm. She preferred having others do the dirty work for her. "You're my child, my wonder. Tell me who hurt you. Was it this young man here?"
Her green eyes landed on Fate, the worry turning to anger. "Did you do this to my son?"
"You switch faces too quickly," Fate replied. "It makes your ruse less believable."
She gestured with a hand, and Fate instinctively activated his Skill. It didn't stop the mountain of Mana coming his way, which flung him into the fence less than thirty feet away.
He hit it with a grunt, flopping to the ground five feet below as the air was driven from his lungs.
He coughed and sputtered as he put his arms underneath him and lifted his torso off the ground. With hazy eyes, he looked at the woman from afar.
Suddenly, Fate became very aware that the fact she was in nothing but her pajamas was irrelevant to the power she could display.
'Need help?' Kravoss asked.
'Are the Guards on the way?'
'…' Kravoss squinted as he looked around at the dark streets below. 'Not for a while, I don't think.'
'Can you hit her with a water beam from that far away?'
'Not without it losing every bit of pressure behind it.'
'Kathrin have any suggestions?'
He grimaced and stood, dusting himself off and walking forward just as Helga started to monologue to her son about how "this is what families do. They protect you from such violence," and other nonsense he couldn't believe she was saying with a straight face.
'Just let her talk,' Kravoss summed up.
As Helga directed her sermon to Fate, condemning him as a treacherous worm with no background as Mana surged toward him again, he sighed.
'Harder than it sounds,' he thought as he was slammed into the fence once more.
Only this time, he didn't drop, the woman's telekinetic grip on him keeping him pinned to the metal bars behind him as the metal men raised their weapons and pointed them at him.
"It's obvious that this man has filled your head with lies," Helga said sorrowfully. "I don't know what would motivate him to destroy your body like this but I, as a mother, cannot tolerate such actions."
The strange tubes in the hands of the metal men started to whir, the front of the barrels splitting in three and sliding back on top of the rest about halfway, leaving a pulsing white light in their place.
"Didn't you always preach turning the other cheek, mother?" Venden asked with a snarl.
"Look at you," she said, her voice cracking in a convincing display of emotion. "It's obvious we're long past that stage."
'Guards on their way. Keep stalling,' Kravoss warned.
"It sickens me when I think of what you've filled your child's head with," Fate shouted across the distance. "How could you do that to your own flesh and blood?"
Fate knew what an unhealthy parent-child relationship looked like. He lived with his asshole of a father for eighteen years.
"A child questioning the ways of an adult?" Helga replied, wiping a tear off the corner of her eye. "What I've done is for the good of the family and for the good of my child."
"For the good of yourself, you mean."
"Believe what you want. It'll be over soon either way."
The light from the barrels brightened several times, becoming blinding lights as bright as the sun, visible from several blocks away.
Just as the light reached a fever pitch, blotting out all Fate could see with a blank whiteness, he heard a voice.
"That's enough, Mrs. Grendeven," barked a man Fate couldn't see through all the light.
In a flash, the light turned from Fate to the newcomer, leaving Fate's vision swimming with stars and red splotches as his eyes readjusted to the darkness.
His sight recovered just as the weapons fired, two beams of pure white cutting through the air at an intensity visible from miles away.
The man who had spoken, a Guard in uniform with dark hair, didn't even blink as a barrier of Mana appeared in front of him, then another, and another, until there were twenty walls of Mana between him and the beams.
The two lasers smashed through the first five walls without slowing, slamming against the sixth. They pulsed brighter and brighter as the invisible Mana of the wall was colored a pale white from the attacks, before the sixth gave way as well.
It bulldozed through the remaining fourteen with no issues, cutting through the spot the Guard was a second earlier and extending into the distance, where it pierced through the fence and three buildings before stopping.
The Guard, meanwhile, had wisely stepped out of the way while occupying the laser beams, and was now walking toward Helga and her machines with a displeased expression.
"Resisting arrest, Mrs. Grendeven? I hope you're aware that comes with a doubling of your sentence. You're looking at eighty years, minimum."
Helga gave the Master Stage Guard a fleeting look before returning her attention to her son. "Kill him. I need to bring my son back inside before he succumbs to his wounds."
The weapons in the machine men's hands started glowing a radiant light once more, but the Guard only shook his head with a mocking smile.
"Bad idea, Mrs. Grendeven."