Transformers: Survival of Defective Products

Chapter 168, Battlefield 1

The next second, the shark demon pounced on them from all directions.

They no longer lined up as before, or maintained the order that law enforcement should have.

The first wave crashed directly into the shield array of the Law Balance Knights, their fangs biting the edges of the shields and their claws digging into the gaps. Those behind climbed up by stepping on the back armor of those in front, like a whole pack of wild beasts that had been starving for a long time.

One of the shark demons had half of its shoulder armor blown off by a shot from Ultra Magnus, yet it still dragged its broken arm forward.

The mechanical dog darted out from beside the vector's feet, grabbed the cable on its neck, and dragged it to the ground.

Three more vehicles surged over the pile of corpses.

With a flick of her wrist, the magnetic ring lit up, simultaneously pulling at the shattered metal fragments on the ground. A horizontal swirl sent the foremost shark demon staggering half a step. Without retreating, she slashed diagonally with her double-edged sword, the pale golden blade pattern cutting from the shark demon's jaw to its breastplate, flipping it to the side.

The number of shark spirits is still increasing.

The same shark-like machines were everywhere: in the side doors, the lower elevator shafts, and the old passageways opened up by the eccentric. Their optical mirrors shone with an empty gleam, and their movements were mostly extremely synchronized.

Megatron glanced at it, and the Fusion Cannon blasted open the gap leading to the Witness Zone: "Control Module."

The magnetic force grabbed a red search line hanging from above with its backhand, and the magnetic force pulled it off course. The search line grazed her shoulder armor, burning a thin mark on it.

"Find the source," she said.

The sound of shockwave immediately came from the external channels.

"Shark semen synchronization rate abnormal, control source is not within the current visible range."

The background noise from the jack's side is very loud, like some door has just been blown up.

"Isn't that damn module in the lobby?"

"At least not on the surface," Shockwave said.

The vector didn't respond; she was busy.

The prosecutor's screen was fully extended.

The red search lines spread out from behind it, like beams of waving laser tendrils, bypassing the artillery fire and heading straight for the few machines that had just emerged from the witness zone.

An Autobot's shoulder armor was touched, and an error message immediately popped up in red.

Disrupt, restrain, deal with.

Alita severed the wire with one slash and pushed the Autobot back into the protective circle with her other hand.

She moved very quickly, only slowing down a fraction of a second when she turned around.

A shark-like creature lunged at her from behind, its fangs biting into the edge of her shoulder armor. Alita grabbed its jaw with her other hand, used her strength to pry open the jaws, brought the gun close, and fired directly into the jaws.

When the shark demon fell, she swayed for a moment, but quickly regained her balance.

The vector has been observed.

The curator also joined the fray.

The gentleness on his face vanished completely, and his disguise as a local began to show an incongruous stiffness. Below his wrists, a split appeared, revealing a skeleton covered in grotesque five-sided patterns.

He swung the skeleton, and several restraint rings popped out from under the floor, attempting to catch the gravitational vector and Optimus Prime's ankles.

Optimus Prime had just broken free of his restraints and was still a little slow in his movements, so he didn't completely dodge the first attack.

The restraint rings brushed against the armor on his lower leg and immediately activated their locking mechanism.

He glanced down and the blade severed the lock ring.

"Autobots, retreat to the protective line."

The Autobots, who were still lost, have found their direction again.

The ambulance grabbed a young Transformer that hadn't moved and dragged it backward.

Iron Man raised his weapon and used firepower to suppress a row of shark demons.

Arcee slashed in from the side, the blade cutting along the enemy's joints, her movements even more ruthless than before.

Jazz vaulted over the witness area fence, landed, and kicked away a rolling restraint grenades: "Finally, I don't have to act anymore!"

On the other side, Megatron takes over the Decepticons.

"Decepticons, form ranks!"

Starscream instinctively straightened its carapace, the missile bay opened, and it shouted, "Tracker, launch!"

Knock down the active wrist, the gear saw starts spinning, and the roadblock tops the front row.

The sonic robotic arm extends, the data cable pierces the side warning end, rewriting the dispatch signals of a batch of shark demons, causing a batch to go astray and not even enter the courtroom.

Rumble glanced at the sound wave, and then felt confused.

The sound wave didn't turn back; it only flashed a confirmation mark in the corner of the screen.

A rumbling sound came from his throat, as if there were words stuck there.

Confused, she bumped into him: "Hit first."

"Know."

With a thunderous roar, he raised the iron hammer arm and smashed a shark demon that was lunging at him.

Tong Tianxiao steadied himself outside the courtroom.

The shark spirits surged in from both sides, while the crocodile spirits mingled at the rear, wielding heavy restraints. Compared to the shark spirits, they were somewhat more rational and in control. No longer cautious, they used the swarm of shark spirits as a human wall to advance, attempting to separate the witnessing area from the central battlefield.

Tongtianxiao saw through their intentions and unleashed a barrage of heavy artillery.

"Knight of Law, advance and cut them down."

The shields of the Knights of the Law moved forward one step, then another.

A Faheng Knight was bitten on the forearm by a shark demon. Sparks flew but it did not retreat. Instead, it grabbed the shark demon's head with its other hand and slammed it to the ground.

"Protect the witness area."

Another knight filled the gap.

The more they fought, the more silent and composed they became.

AZ's figure disappeared and reappeared among the enemy ranks.

One second he was a crocodile demon, giving incorrect instructions to the gate controller; the next second he was mixed into a group of shark demons, causing one of them to bite the wrong direction. As the executioner's long arm pierced down from above, a similar shadow appeared behind the execution machine.

The shadow reached out and turned off the half-second execution lock for it.

Taking advantage of the moment, the executioner slashed across the ground, severing his long arm in the middle. The arm twitched as it hit the ground.

AZ retreated into the shadows, silent and still.

The eccentric man raised his head from the edge, remaining silent while seemingly controlling something, until a muffled thud, as if a machine were awakening, echoed from deep within the ground.

Below the judge's bench, several beams began to descend, their outer shells peeling away to reveal rows of heavy iron hooks inside.

The wall cracked open, and the gun emplacements emerged from the decorative patterns, pointing towards the witnessing area and the outer defensive line.

Several mechanical limbs were dragged out from behind the eccentric man, like old torture instruments dug out from the bottom of the courtroom.

The curator shouted sternly, "Suppress them!"

The five-faced judge finally appeared in full from above.

It didn't land completely; the entire courtroom sank a short distance with it.

With the "Death" face gone, the remaining four faces no longer rotated smoothly, and the angry face pressed against the front, with red light sweeping across the location of the gravitational vector.

It emitted a beam of white-yellow light directly.

The gravitational vector used magnetic attraction to pull away a shattered metal shield on the side. The shield was pierced by the beam of light and instantly burned into bright white slag.

Taking advantage of the opening, she rushed down below, her double-edged sword slicing through three restraint rings as she spun close to the ground.

The mechanical dog leaped out from her side and bit a tracking wire that was chasing after her.

The red light burned the metal teeth, but they did not loosen.

With a flick of her wrist, she and the robotic dog snapped the retrieval line, which then bounced back towards the prosecutor.

The prosecutor's screen cracked open, emitting a sharp, angry sound.

BICk0's voice came through the channel, short and clear: "External legal invasion. The Quintessons have added a new label to Cybertron: Executable."

Vector slammed a shark-like creature into the restraint rings the eccentric had erected: "They're not going to execute me!"

At the same time, a second tremor came from the lower level, which was more obvious than the first one.

Several massive supporting pillars swayed, one of them shifting. This caused the beams and pillars inside the courtroom to become unstable, nearly crashing down on the shark demons.

The curator suddenly looked down at the ground, his expression revealing a hint of genuine loss of control.

Black Widow's voice came through the channel: "Proceeding according to plan."

There was a faint, continuous sound from her, like insects gnawing on metal.

"There are about fifteen minutes left."

The vector blade blocked the executioner's other long arm, causing the blade to sink slightly.

"Don't do it in advance."

Black Widow chuckled, "Whatever you say."

The vector didn't return. Following the force of the executioner's downward pressure, it turned sideways, flipped its wrist, and the other end of the double-edged sword sliced ​​open the inner joint of the long arm, severing it again.

The five-faced judge turned his angry face toward her.

Yin Xiang raised his eyes and smiled smugly: "I'll help you demolish illegal buildings."

Jazz almost burst out laughing from a short distance away, but Arcee kicked away the shark demon that was lunging at him from behind.

"Focus!"

While the Quintessons were focused on the center, the vector connected to a private channel.

"Optimus Prime, Jazz."

Optimus Prime deflected the crocodile demon that was rushing towards the ambulance: "I'm here."

Jazz used the shark demon's back for leverage to flip over: "Listen up."

The vectoring blade slashed, cutting the search line, in a low voice: "Approaching the seabed underwater, confirm the signal from the previous noise."

The jazz dancer paused for a beat, then quickly followed up: "Now?"

"Now."

The vector looked up at the furious faces above: "They're only watching this place now."

Optimus Prime was silent for a moment, realizing that the battlefield had been prepared in advance.

"What if there really are Aquitron natives there?" he asked.

"Make contact first, don't start a war," said Vector. "Assess the situation, see if we can communicate. We need to get there before the Quintessons."

The jazz chuckled softly: "It's a job I'd like."

"After all, it needs to be a machine that can communicate, can run, and won't fire indiscriminately."

"Wow, you have too much faith in me."

Optimus Prime was looking at her, his gravitational vector not turning his head, his right pulse cannon firing at a group of shark demons rushing towards the witness area.

"Optimus Prime, that place might be more important than this one."

Optimus Prime helped her shoot down the shark demon.

"clear."

Immediately afterwards, Jazz discreetly found a side path from the edge of the witness area, took away two Autobots who recovered faster, and quickly opened the side corridor entrance.

Optimus Prime took one last look at the Graviton Vector.

The vector simply said in the channel: "Remain silent, we will dive in three minutes."

As the side corridor door closed, the five-faced judge's angry face remained fixed on the central battlefield, unaware that the real target he should be watching had already left.

The vector pulls the line of sight back.

Directly in front, the curator's layer of local resident identity has peeled away even more.

His shoulders and back split open, revealing a mechanical layer that resembled the Quintesson. The skeleton extended outwards, and several beams of red light crawled along the old patterns on the ground.

"Restrain them all," the curator said. "And if necessary, administer torture."

Upon hearing this, the shark horde went completely berserk and charged forward.

They clung to shields, leg armor, and weapons, crawling forward even as their armor cracked from artillery fire. The crocodile demon pushed them from behind, rows of heavy restraints lighting up as if to put all the mechanical pins back in place.

Tongtianxiao blasted through the middle lane with a single shot, his shoulder armor nearly getting bitten by a Shark Demon. Without even flinching, he raised his hand and slammed the Shark Demon, now only half its body remaining, into the arms of another Crocodile Demon.

Megatron's side was even more direct.

The fusion cannon fired, blasting three shark demons away. The red spider missile followed closely, the knocked-down gear saw cutting through the restraints of a crocodile demon, and the barricade simply crashed into its side.

The sonic robotic arm pierced through the gaps in the enemy ranks, pulled out a bomb that was about to explode, and flung it toward the prosecutor's screen high above.

With a thunderous roar, the hammer arm slammed down; a chaotic short-range interference exploded, creating a flash of warning red light.

From the outer ring road, a shout from the steel cable briefly squeezed out of the channel: "Lots of sharks!"

Tong Tianxiao: "Defend the outer ring."

The steel cable didn't respond, and a loud bang that sounded more like "demolition" than "guarding" came from the background.

The vector-guided sword slashed at the strange man on one side again.

The mechanical dog, which was close to her side, suddenly turned and pounced on her back.

There, a shark spirit crawled over the pile of corpses from below, opened its jaws, and lunged at her side.

The mechanical dog bit into the wires on its face.

The shark demon shook its head, dragging the mechanical dog as it crashed into the ground.

With a flick of his left hand, the magnetic force lifted the entire shark-like machine and slammed it into the red search line laid out by the prosecutor.

The red light was scattered by the impact, and the mechanical dog landed, shook its head, and sparks still flew between its teeth.

"Good dog," Yin Xiang praised.

The mechanical dog barked softly and returned to her feet.

Then she saw Alita.

Alita stood at the front of the witnessing area, with elite guards protecting several Autobots who were not yet fully recovered.

Her injuries weren't severe, but they were numerous; her shoulder armor, waist, and arms all bore marks from being bitten and scraped by retrieval sutures.

Even if she was noticeably a fraction of a second slower when raising her gun, she immediately made up for it with even fiercer close-quarters combat.

She kept holding on.

From the start of the war, to the Ark, to Aquitron, to this godforsaken place.

Everyone was used to her standing there, and even she herself was almost overwhelmed by anger and exhaustion from being misguided.

The magnetic vector cleaved through the executioner's long arm blocking the way, and then used magnetic attraction to tear a shark demon apart.

She looked at her and suddenly spoke.

Alita.

Alita looked up.

The battlefield is still burning.

The vector stood in the center, its blue-green optical mirror peering over the chaos towards her.

"Your anger and exhaustion."

"I heard everything."