"Is it okay to just leave them lying there?" Cami asked.
"Yeah, should they just be left on the floor like that?" Page inquired as well.
"The two of them are dead... dead as hell from what I see. Also, Cami, avoid touching yourself at all costs," Carter informed her.
He did not know everything himself but knew enough that Cami's touch could be lethal to those who came in contact with it. While she seemed to have some resistance to it herself along with the Southern Guardian, there was no telling how much that was and how long it would take for her to come back online a second time if she had done so now.
"Everyone is going to be so shocked when we show them Cami," Page said, excited.
"Are you sure that it's okay for us to be taking her back to the village in the first place? And what about the Guardian? Should we just leave him there all alone like that?" Carter asked curiously.
"Our lord should be fine as no one can get in there now but me," Cami told them.
After leaving, she somehow managed to close the door behind them, and there was nothing that Page or Carter could do to get the door open a second time. It seemed like it was locked with no access being granted to anyone. Though Page did not try it this time around, she simply accepted Cami's words at face value instead.
"If Cami says that only she can get in, then that's probably how it is. After all, if our lord is not awake, then it's probably also for a good reason," Page commented, this being her reasoning.
"Ummm... your village is in this direction, right?" Cami asked.
"Yup, it's this way. Why?" Page asked.
"Is that smoke coming from over there in that direction?" the female mecha asked.
Looking to see, there was indeed smoke coming from there, causing Page and Carter to rush back to the village, with Cami following behind them as she had to follow them. She had no idea where this village was located herself, after all. She had never been there and had just learned of its very existence now after being activated for the first time since her own roboticization so many years ago.
They arrived to see the village had been raided, as that duo was part of a group they had split off from, seemingly as part of this group's scouting party. The duo, given their actions, might have gone rogue during their task. Thus, the others were not aware of what they had managed to find on their own, as they had managed to miss the location of the village, possibly by overshooting when scouting and finding Page and Carter first. Then, they managed to find the location of the legendary and thought-to-be-mythical Southern Guardian. Thus, not reporting back, there was no one in the main group who knew of this nor of their fates as well.
"Those two idiots! They must have gotten ahead of us, and because of that, a number of our forces were lost as a result," the leader said, rather annoyed at this outcome.
Vowing to deal with their betrayal later on, as right now, they were busy overseeing the raid that was going on at the moment.
"This was a rather interesting village, that they were able to live all the way out here alone. However, while they all seemed abnormally strong, they are not used to fighting against other humans and have apparently never seen an actual human mecha before. Thus, dealing with them was hard but not impossible," the vice leader said.
Page and Carter arrived to see the village in ruins, and everyone scattered around in various states of health and conditions. Though no one was, luckily, in a state where they would die at the moment, as the group went out of their way to ensure that would be the case, given that lower casualties would eventually profit the leader, who was daydreaming about how abnormally strong everyone seemed to be even without proper training.
"Everyone..." Page said, looking around at the carnage in the place she had called home since she was born here. Carter was in an equal state of shock as well.
Cami, however, just looked around, not really paying attention to the raiders at the moment. She was just observing the place and how things had been affected because of them and their actions.
"This was a village allowed to exist because the Southern Guardian, the lord of this domain, permitted it. What reason do you have that would warrant causing harm to it like this?" Cami said.
"Shut up," the leader said,
striking at Cami in that instant and causing her to fly right into Page and Carter. She crashed into the ground, with them breaking her fall and, as a result, getting injured as well from being her cushion.
"Weak, just like the legends say about the Southern Guardian. That's probably why this domain of his is so small compared to the others," the leader laughed, as none of them got up after that attack.
"What, over already? You sure did seem to be talking a big game, ignoring us to just look at our handiwork," the vice leader said, laughing.
That was true, as Cami was down, but it was not because of that attack at all. Page was not on guard because the attack had done no damage to her at all. The only reason she was down was that she had briefly come into contact with herself, thus going offline again as a result of doing so. Page and Carter were doubly damaged because of her weight and their direct contact with her as well. However, they did not seem to suffer the same effects as the last person who had come into direct contact with Cami.
Though this trio was down, the leader and vice leader would soon find out that they had messed around. Like the old saying goes, the more you mess around, the more you are going to find out.