At first, the gunshots, so faint compared to the noise of the venue, drew no one's attention. Even those who heard them assumed the organizers were setting off fireworks or something.
It was not until someone in the crowd was hit and collapsed, prompting screams and warnings from those nearby, that the entire venue plunged into chaos.
The audience frantically fled toward the exits or searched for cover wherever they could. The casualties caused by the stampeding crowd were even greater than those directly struck by gunfire.
Kraft and Fatty Liao were unharmed. Being relatively small, they had not been exposed to the gunman's line of fire, and with Alice the robot around, the panicked crowd could not hurt them either.
"Fxxk! Since when did places outside Hell's Kitchen become this dangerous?!"
Kraft and the other two scrambled behind a flower bed. Gunshots still rang out beyond it. Those who could escape had mostly fled already, while the people still trapped at the scene were largely those positioned too close to the front to squeeze their way out.
"Being too close to the front doesn't always pay off."
Now that he was temporarily safe, Kraft still had the mood to crack a joke.
"Hey! Kraft! Do you have any inventions that can deal with this situation?"
As Fatty Liao asked, he desperately tried to hide his rolls of fat behind the flower bed.
"Damn it! When I get back, I'm definitely starting a diet!"
"Want me to sponsor you with a weight-loss set?"
Kraft had already contacted Haro through his Bluetooth earpiece. From the information it had sent back, he knew there was only one shooter: an elderly white man staying at a nearby hotel. From their current position, unless their luck was unbelievably terrible, they were basically impossible to hit. That was why Kraft still had the leisure to shoot the breeze with Fatty Liao.
"Did he start shooting because the noise was keeping him awake?"
After Kraft explained the situation, Fatty Liao finally let out a sigh of relief, then complained indignantly.
"The music festival has been advertised for so long. He should've known about it already! Why did he stay nearby?"
Kraft rolled his eyes. "The nearby hotels are meant for people attending the music festival in the first place. That old man obviously planned this in advance, okay? Pulling a gun over a noise complaint... you really have some imagination."
"Um... big brother?"
Alice's timid voice sounded beside them.
"What is it?"
"Can't you help them?"
Alice pointed at the wounded people lying in the distance and wailing in pain, her face filled with pity.
"There is a way... but it'd make too much noise." Kraft frowned. "I don't want the FBI coming after me."
Given Kraft's view of people with other skin colors, there was no way he would expose himself to save their lives.
"B-but they look so pitiful..."
Faced with Alice's pleading little face, Kraft immediately got a headache.
Even if Kraft had firmly refused Alice's request, she would not have said anything more. But he truly regarded her as his ~~daughter~~ little sister now, so naturally, he could not simply ignore her wish.
"I'll think of something first."
Kraft helplessly comforted Alice, then began considering what tools he had that could resolve the current situation without anyone noticing.
If all he needed to do was deal with the shooter, Kraft had far too many options. Even having Alice charge straight at him would solve it easily.
But to resolve the problem without anyone else noticing, Kraft could think of only one method at the moment: the Gnome Mind Control Hat in his bag.
He had originally prepared it for Hulk, who knew where. That guy looked like he was not very bright, and the mind-control hat should be able to keep him firmly in check.
But there was another problem. The Gnome Mind Control Hat's range was not that large. Kraft was too far away to control the shooter at all.
"Come closer and block their view of me."
Kraft considered the equipment in and on his bag, quickly settled on a plan, and beckoned to Fatty Liao and Alice.
He did not need to worry about cameras; Haro had already taken control of all of them. But there were other people to the left. They were all lying on the ground and not looking this way, and the darkness made it difficult to see clearly, but Kraft still preferred to play things safe.
Fatty Liao and Alice followed Kraft's instructions, shifting to his left and thoroughly blocking him from view. Fortunately, Kraft was the smallest of the three, so hiding him was not difficult.
Then the two watched as Kraft took a ridiculous-looking hat from his backpack and put it on. It looked like an iron pot with a black-and-white spiral disk stuck into it. Once Kraft placed the strange hat on his head, the disk began to rotate slowly.
After staring at the disk with an odd expression for a while, Fatty Liao began to feel dizzy.
"What the hell is this thing now?"
He rubbed his double-visioned eyes, lowered his gaze, and muttered.
But Kraft had no time to explain. He pulled another metallic device shaped like a stopwatch from his bag, opened its protective casing, and pressed the button inside.
Then Fatty Liao watched Kraft vanish right before his eyes. Before he could cry out, a gust of wind howled past him, blasting cold air mixed with grit into his mouth, which hung open in shock.
"Ptooey! Ptooey! Ptooey!"
Fatty Liao hurriedly spat out the sand in his mouth, temporarily forgetting to scream.
Kraft had no idea that Fatty Liao, his pigheaded teammate, had nearly screwed him over. As he activated the Gnome Invisibility Device, he also activated the Gnome Rocket Boots on his feet. Since the invisibility device lasted less than twenty seconds, he had to hurry.
Since he did not have enough time to take a detour, Kraft also activated the Gnome Protective Belt around his waist, worried that he might accidentally be hit by a stray bullet.
I fucking love Gnomech!
Hidden from sight and protected by the force field generated by the Gnome Protective Belt, Kraft quickly crossed the venue and rushed beneath the hotel. Before the invisibility device's effect wore off, he found a concealed spot and hid there.
The hotel was in chaos as well. Shouts and sobbing occasionally echoed from inside, while the most dangerous sound of all—the gunfire—never stopped.
Fortunately, the floor where the shooter was located was not very high. From where Kraft stood now, the man was already within the Gnome Mind Control Hat's range.
Kraft raised his head and fixed his gaze on the murderer, whose head poked halfway out of the window. Then he switched on the mind-control hat. As the black-and-white disk above his forehead began to spin rapidly, Kraft felt as though a vortex had torn his consciousness from his body and fired it like a cannonball at the shooter by the window.
"Hmm... so this is what controlling a human feels like?"
When Kraft came back to his senses, his view had already shifted to the shooter's perspective. It was not much different from when he had tested it on animals, except that the sense of rejection was far stronger when controlling a human.
Since the Gnome Mind Control Hat only lasted a little over ten seconds, Kraft had no time to waste. He directly raised the gun in his hand and aimed it at himself.
Rat-a-tat-tat...
The instant Kraft pulled the trigger, his consciousness returned to his own body. He rubbed his chin. While controlling someone else, he could not feel anything besides sight and hearing, but shooting at himself was still not a pleasant experience.
After dealing with the killer, Kraft opened the back cover of the invisibility device and replaced the emerald powering it with a fresh one. Then he picked up a stone at his feet, rubbed some gunpowder out of it and poured it into his boots. Before anyone could react, he used the same method as before to slip back to Alice and Fatty Liao.
"Since there aren't any robot maids, this invisibility device will do!"
The first thing Kraft saw upon returning was Fatty Liao's fat face, practically stamped with lsp.
"Get lost!"
Before you continue