Chapter 12

The metal chimes continued whilst I pondered my dilemma. It wasn’t that I was considering aiding my grove, It was that Amelia was not ready yet. Yes, the knight mecha was fully built up with its essential interior and exterior parts. Yes, the grassroots network within the construct was all fully connected. The dilemma was that I didn’t create any functions, scripts specifically yet for the mecha. As a programmer, I have to compile multiple scripts then tweak them into functions to give actions to the mecha.

“Sink? What are you thinking?” My father queried with his face tensed by the news.

Taking a deep sigh, I asked my father and mother to stay back.

“What?!” They both said. I told them that I can’t let them come with me because they are the most qualified to look after the human child, plus I don’t want to worry about their safety throughout the battle.

“We will be in your contraption.” My mother pointed.

“Yes, you will be. But Mother, Father...You won’t be able to help me much when you can help me here a lot more. “

My father slumped his shoulders and nodded, adamant with my decision to not let them be in harm's way.

“If we fail and the mushroom men find this location. Please look after the baby.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Who is going with you?”

“Peb.” Peb munched on a pebble as I included him. “Oona.” Oona looked at me apprehensively but shrugged--giving me the whatever signal. “And Wink.” I finalized, with Wink, giving a wink for the tally.

“Hide Art and yourself in the laboratory, when we leave,” I instructed my parents as they looked on at me with blanched expressions at the thought of their only Pod, heading to war.

“Father, Wink, and Peb, I need you to do something.”

Telling them instructions for their task, I headed back to work with my own task. I wrapped my arm on a grass rope that was attached to the weight pulley, which was formerly attached to the standing mecha. I escalated up to the open visored helmet where the cockpit was placed.

Entering inside, there was a grass leaf platform, with a grass-made stool in the center. Behind the stool was a ladder going down into the neck compartment of the Knight Mecha. Around the stools were platformed tables with grass wires socketed at the sides of the interior of the helm into each of the three controller tables.

Sitting on the stool, I pulled out a pebble button keyboard, similar to a piano from each controller table, the slide-out waist high from the tables. Then I began my dance into code, memorized composition notes by each key pebble binding a score. Using Create songs, and it’s new apprentice attribute, Mimic, I streamlined the process to loop the process down into the grass motherboard network in the chest compartment below.

The first script I had to create was the regular idle pose of a human-limbed automaton, which pretty much was standing still. Grass can sway to the variable by the sound of the wind. So I had to factor a small number of if_statements into a loop to keep the current idle pose still. The arms were still opened out in the Mecha, so doing a few tweaks in notes, both arms began to function down into a rest stance. Then I compiled my loop into a finalized script.

After it was all done, I created another script for movement. With the preset script done for Idle, I moved the right thigh up from the mecha, then moved the foot forward to stamp the ground ahead. I did a similar process with the left leg to create a 5-second motion of animating the walking action pose. I would have liked to create a running preset pose, but I had to factor the environment topography when doing it. With this walking statement done, I can then loop the animation then compile it into a script.

Meanwhile, Peb, Wink, and my father were working on their own separate project which was building an arsenal to store into Amelia. They carefully lifted each grass cylinder-shaped cartridge into a platform then elevated them up into an opened section of the plate in the waist compartment of the Knight.

The last script I had compiled was the most complex of the three by adding a rotational mechanic into the script. I had to connect it into another controller, which I had cannibalized from my mecha centaur. After all, was done, I told my friends to get ready.

My father was elevated down from the weight pulley escalator. Oona flew up into the opened visor to curiously stare at the surroundings around me, at all the pebble buttons and wooden keys.

“Please be careful!” My mother shouted from below.

Giving my mother a salute, I instructed Wink and Peb below to get into their position. Wink was in the second cockpit near the grass network whilst Peb was in the waist; gingerly keeping an eye at the new arsenals I told them to create. Oona just stood behind me at the side, her high heel boots denting the grass platform. I cringed at it. I spoke to myself, and everyone in the

mecha who could hear me. "Launching in T-minus 10 seconds." Every second for a fair folk was 2 seconds, so I had to wait double the time when a second was counted.

“Launching, Amelia Mark I,” I said out loud, my tone excited and nervous at the action. I pressed the red pebble on my centaur controller to activate the melody that started all the concurrent musical boxes and stringed instruments into life. ‘Iron Man’ by Black Sabbath, hummed all over the mecha as every grassroots inside began to vibe to the beat of the track.

Activating my Walking Script with directional controllers attached, I used premade gear sticks on the two controller tables that were protruded from my left and right, to direct the Knight Mecha forward.

So far so good as I stirred over shrubs, mounds, and broken branches. The humming noise of the grass mimicry of the Black Sabbath’s song thrilled my jaunt into the woodland as I continued onwards to my grove.

After passing a few more oaks, and a wall of uncultivated grass, I was there. The scene of the battlefield before me was a scene of organized chaos. The Grass soldiers were defending the two choke points where the Leviathan had munched through the grass walls, whilst the Grass Singers were singing the grass walls surrounding the grove to not let any mushroom soldier pass.

I have never seen so many small bodies clustered in one grove before. It was epic viewing this afar in a higher elevation. I could see everything in such an elevated viewpoint. There were hundreds of Mushroom men, If I had to guess an estimation, I’d probs estimate around 2000 Mushroom soldiers.

The Mushroom soldiers had shrooms on their heads, and shroom shields in their hands. The shroom helms were colored red dotted white, along with their shield. There was a symbol of a tusk emblazoned upon the center of their shields though. Worshippers of the Leviathan, I cursed. I should've guessed they would have attacked. They always attacked after the Leviathan had his meal of the Grove.

The Mushroom Kingdom was an elitist community in the fae forest, believing in the rule of Fungi, which stipulates, that Fungi is the highest form of plant in the ecology of the forest and thus should be in every inch of the forest, controlling the ground’s dominions. The Fae folk, the overseas and progenitors of all small folk in the forest, ignored the Mushroom kingdom’s expansionist ideas, for their only care was above the forest ground. Rarely do they dare to besmirch their delicate sols onto the soil.

There were approximately 100 Grass Soldiers defending the two chokepoints in the Grove circumference; which were 2 meters separate from one another. The Grass Singers continued on their song of war, brushing away Mushroom Soldiers who thought they could slip through the grass within the grass wall’s boundaries. Mushroom men were jumping atop each other's heads to launch themselves into the air, so they could curve over the grass wall’s height to land atop the undefended Grass Singers. But they were stopped by the army of Grass Cultivators who held grass blades to defend their spouses.

It was a siege for the nature of the grove.

And the Mushroom Kingdom was winning by the utter numbers they brought to the table. Then suddenly, the ground began to vibrate by the subtle and alien sound of steel shoes hitting the foliage of the ground. Mushroom men and the fair folk spun their heads to the reverberation. They all gaped and pointed in undisguised shock and horror.

“It’s a huemaan!” “Manling!” “Run!” “No! Fight!

The Mushroom soldiers cried and hollered, alarming the folks around them about the colossal abomination above them. This was the similar reaction the Grass folks were shocking within their grove, but with a more melancholy alarm.

“The Grove is done! We can’t defend her from humans!” They continued on, few of them moaning and crying, slamming their fist onto the ground at the cruelty.

But except for one person who was riding through them, pointing.

“It’s not a hueman! It’s Sink the Tinker!” Said the fair man on his nutted bicycle.

How did he know? I gaped down at him as he rode through the grass folks behind the walls. Then I realized it. The Steel Visor was still open. I forgot to close it. I had hoped I could scare the Mushroom folk with the fear of a colossal human entering the battle, but that was all crushed by this tiny little issue of not covering the Knight Mecha’s face.

I slammed at the table before me, cursing my stupidity and the fair man on the nutted bicycle for pointing it out. Ah well, I wasn’t really counting on them to retreat anyways. I’d assumed by their elitist arrogance they would still continue to fight against giants. It was just in Mushroom’s dogma to do so.

After all the participants pointed and confirmed that It was just a grass folk, inside the helm of a giant construct, they continued their fight, but with half the mushroom soldiers heading towards me to stop me from assisting the grove.

Thrice cursing myself for a fool, I activated my third script, the Aim script. The right armored arm began to lift up, controlled by an 8-directional joystick that was in the grip of my right hand. I then hollered down to Peb who was now at the right shoulder location with an arsenal of grass made missiles beside him.

The grass made missiles were two combusting stones, that were wrapped into a cylinder, one stone in each end. Between them, inside the interior of the grass cylinder was a scrunch of broken grass leaves hardened into steel points. They were shrapnel made combusting rockets when they landed.

I told Peb to drop four rockets into the 4 grass slides, sliding down the interior of the right arm. Peb did so. The rockets slid down and socketed themselves into gauntlet knuckles. Protruding their points out from circular grass holes that bypass the chainmail. I aimed the largest cluster of mushroom soldiers heading this way, then pressed the red pebble atop the twig joystick.

Behind each grass rocket, there was a small metal hammer twined in the grass which was functioned to do one thing. Sway the hammer out from its enclosed area by a tremendous force, and slam into the back of what was lodged between the knuckles sockets. And so it did, the hammers slammed into the combusting stones behind the rocket, activated the gas inside the stone to combust where the crack was made, making them fly out from the knuckles and heading to the direction where the closed fist was pointing at.

It was spectacular, four rockets propelled by the force of the combusting stones heading to the scared cluster ahead of them. When the rockets landed on the ground with the combusting stone on their peaks, they exploded with grass metal shrapnel flying into a huge circumference of damage. Four hits, three explosions. One of the combusting stones didn’t activate, but no matter the damage was done.

I had launched hellfire into the ranks of the mushroom men and they knew it. They were awed by the devastation, but they continued on with the assault, like a people walking through fire for their creed. I was shocked at their display, they were insane to continue. From what the System had told me, I literally killed and maimed dozens of them from my first barrage.

I gritted my teeth at their madness. “Prepare the second barrage.” I spoked down to Peb who was already putting more combusting shrapnel rockets into the slides.

Recalling on the devastation I brought into the battle, I shouted down, “How many do we have?”

“We can do it for about 4 more times.” Wink yelled back, his brows sweating, as he brought more rockets from the storage sequestered in the pelvis compartment.

I cursed at the thought. If my rockets won't do the trick of destroying their Mushroom army, then what can I do?