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Audie gives you an inscrutable look after he manages to recover from his sudden vomiting. "Why what? Don't you get it?" He promptly stands back up, gesturing around the red-tinted hallway with all six of his arms. "This is my realm! My domain! This is how I'm supposed to exist! This is my kingdom!"
"Now, now! I know you may have forgotten that because of how helpful I've been but this is MY kingdom! I am the Knight that protects this P-Corp facility!" All of his exhaustion has been purged. With every syllable, he's riling himself up. Reinforcing what fragile perspective he seems to have. "In here, I'm the hero! I'm the one who keeps everyone SAFE!"
Your allies quickly begin to back away from him, ready for a fight if it has to come down to it.
"Without me, this facility would've been destroyed in the war! I'm the only reason anyone here managed to survive down here! It's only when that damned Manager began to unseal this place, yes, YES! THAT'S WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG!"
"It's been 56 years. The war's been over for ages, Audie."
"No, no! If the war was over, P-Corp would've rewarded me for my service already! They would be singing my name as the best Security Head throughout all of P-Corp's facilities! I would've been-"
"FIFTY SIX FUCKING YEARS!" Wendy immediately loses her patience and throws her agent baton to the floor. "DON'T YOU FUCKING GET IT? LOOK AT YOURSELF, YOU GOD DAMN COCKROACH! NO! EVEN A COCKROACH WOULD HAVE A PURPOSE!"
Audie immediately rushes over to grab his swords but before he can, Clover lets out a sharp whistle to get his attention.
[DOGMATIC MINDSET + DEADEYE SHOT] Clover already has his revolver trained at Audie's head. "We know what ya did. Even if you try slicing us up like a fuckin' coward, we know ya prodded that damn Manager to seal this place. Ya didn't fucking save anyone, HELL! YA PROBABLY KILLED DOZENS OR HUNDREDS BECAUSE OF IT!"
"And for fuckin' what? Why? Why did ya do it, partner?"
The air is tense. No one wants to move or say anything. Clover and Audie are staring each other down. Audie has his many arms ready to grab at his swords while Clover is ready to pull the trigger. A standoff between a knight and a cowboy.
And Audie loses. Not because he got shot but because he simply stops trying. He steps away from his swords and with a hesitant sigh, all of the energy he riled himself up with is gone. That intoxicated, youthful joy he had is replaced with a deep exhaustion.
An exhaustion he's been suppressing for decades.
"I really did just want to keep people safe. This was the only way I could keep them safe. We had infinite energy, we had enough space to hold hundreds down here, this was the safest place in the world." Audie wraps his many arms around himself in an attempt to comfort himself. "We could live here forever. We didn't have to live in a war torn City anymore. We had a perfect Kingdom here."
"Even if an anomaly breached, I could fight it. I just had to wear my armor and use my blades."
