"Ahem," he began, "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please!"
The crowd was restless at first, but eventually became silent as he had requested.
"As most of you know, it had been 10 months since the tragic deaths of Redmond and Blutarch Mann. What came next after their deaths were months of chaos and hiding. A lot of us ran, some of us retaliated and either lived to tell about it or were killed in the process. When Gray began hunting us down, it was unlikely that we would ever see our families and friends again. We thought that we'd all be killed. I was chased by those machines, I saw them do unimaginable things back at Mountain Lab. They are remorseless, unfeeling, and fearless. It was a miracle that I managed to escape and it's a miracle that the rest of us survived. Sadly, many others did not. Many of us have also perished while attempting to make it here. Many risked their lives for others, even if they weren't related. The day after the Mountain Lab attack, I was hiding in a secret base inside a mountain that looked uninhabited. I made some odd discoveries in there, God knows what the original owners did there, because the data was written in an unknown language, but that data was deemed irrelevant for my personal operation."
"Actually it was written in Japanese." Thomas said
"Right... anyway, after exploring the hidden base a little more, I met these eight workers in the base's backroom, including Thomas, and I explained my plans to them and they all agreed to join my group. Even though they didn't really have many military skills, we were successfully able to raid Sawmill which was already under Gray's control. There, we deliberately made a mess of things and stole a lot of equipment to show Gray that he's not the one in charge any longer. Yes, we were chased by his army. Yes, they managed to surround us, but that didn't stop us from counterattacking and escaping with no losses. Afterwards, we began upgrading our little mountain base, discovering an abandoned mineshaft by mistake, thanks to Theodore over here." Luke continued, and pointed at him.
Theodore stood up and waved lazily.
"But that mistake turned out to be a blessing, we discovered so much Australium down there, we couldn't believe our luck. After completing our medical bay, we headed out to find any potential survivors still hiding out there. We checked out Lumberyard, Utah, where we discovered hundreds of people hiding out in the abandoned sawmill there. Yes, Gray's machines did track us down, yes they may have killed 73 of the people there, including two of my eight loyal men, but we were successful in rescuing and protecting the remaining survivors. That was when we began turning Lumberyard into our second base. When 1972 came, we finally began hiring people that weren't in the mercenary business yet, and begun training them. Many months ago, I've wanted to spread my message about rising against Gray, we've planned this reunion for a while now, the journey here was overly eventful, to say the least. Gray's men attacked us while we were heading here, heck, Gray himself joined the chase. I thought for sure that was it, but we fought back, I arguably had the most intense brawl that day, as I had to fight Gray himself." Luke said