Chapter 20

Peb’s face had continued to pale the longer I had explained the intrinsics of my plan to him. It looked like he was going to vomit the paste gravel that was full in his stomach at my proposal. Giving him the glider I had sequestered at the side of the interior of the helm, I patted him on the back to lead him out of the opened visor of the mecha.

He looked defeated and glum, no answer to acknowledge and sick at the prospect. I then told him the process of flying, and which course he should take to reach his destination in the air. I surmised that Peb was heavy for a stone folk, but all stone folks are heavy by nature; so he would survive the currents of the wind. No other sense for waiting, I cracked the combusting stone that was underneath the glider.

“I cannot! this is not right! I am a stone-”

He skyrocketed out from the helmet before he spoke the end of his words to me, now lost in the pressure of the wind. Ah, Peb, a reliable egor, always willing to do the bidding of his mad scientist. I watched him scream his outrage, a stone man of the earth, now a stone man of the sky.

“Teka?”

Teka’s head poked into the entrance of the helm, he just witnessed Peb fly out on my contraption with utter horror. Not wanting to be part of my evil machinations, Teka was hesitant to enter through the interior. I had told Teka not to worry, and to stay with the ladies and protect my charge. He was against it, so I told him the latter half of my plan.

“Yes, sir...” The Grass Soldier sounded defeated, a moment ago he was eager for violence against giants. He had witnessed me storm the Leviathan and he wanted to brandish his bravery against the big, to the weakness of his competitive nature. But, after listening to my conclusion, his face turned mint.

“Tell Peb where I fell,” I said with a weighty tone, as the visor of the helm closed shut.

“Commander...?”

Teka, noticing that I was not answering his call, turned to jump out into the hovel where the clothed baby and Sera were situated. Oona was hovering as she looked out, watching the duel between the squire and the dragon. An indecisive grimace on her face.

Wink hollered my name up from below at the damaged chest compartment, where the dragon had clawed through. “I managed to cultivate the grass to heal back a few strains that broke, but the grass frame has a huge tear at the front.”

“Wink, I need you to bring up something.”

“What?”

“I want you to bring the biggest and thickest grass leaf from the ecosystem.”

After a few moments, Wink climbed up, lifting a wrapped half meter long grass leaf. Finding some grass strings I had beside my cot that was sequestered in the helm, I began my trade. Invent. It was already wrapped in a cylinder when Wink had brought it up, so it could fit through the bottom entrance of the helm compartment. With that already done, I expanded one of the ends wider and wider, whilst fixating the strains atop each layer to make them tight without any seams. The other end I had tied it with the grass string, tight, to keep its cylinder hole small.

I had shaped the leaf into a grass pleated cone.

For its one job was to be a loudspeaker, for my plans.

“Proceed back to position,” I commanded Wink. I needed Wink back to his left shoulder compartment within the pauldrons that were bulwarking those shoulder compartments and had the thickest caging along with the helmet. For what we were going to attempt, may retire us all through the door of fate.

The squire Dravon was making a good vaunt of his prowess against the forest serpent. He had dodge, parried a few blind swipes then countered with expert precision. The dragon had a gash across its arm from where Dravon was directing most of his strikes to. He wasn’t slashing but piercing, poking the dragon into a feral rage. Blinded by the fair man, and squired by the squire, for what is a forest dragon to do in this quagmire.

Not wanting to assay the match any longer, I had deliberated on how I could solicit the dragon’s attention as I activated Amelia tilting her to move towards the peculiar mountain peak.

Dravon had misstepped when he countered a blow. His energy had wavered after the 2-minute span in battle. Seconds were everything in a life and death struggle, and what time Dravon had given me, was now about to be fully paid by the attrition of the moment. The haphazard blind attacks the dragon had operated, were now becoming more spontaneous with the accelerated speed--fueled by the rage of a blind dragon.

Dravon had jumped over a horizontal tale swipe after his misstep. He landed and turned too late to face an upcoming blind flick of the dragon’s scarred arm. He was sent flying. The squire slammed into a stone wall, clouting his head unconscious on one of its curves. He fell limp, now ready for ruin. The dragon, receiving no more pricks, halted his blind swings to sniff the air so he could find his fallen prey through its debilitation.

Absconding my thoughts of second-guessing, and alternative planning. I situated the circular grass speaker in front of me, where I could control the mecha while using the volume amplifier. I hoped this would work?

I had theorized I could bypass the limitations of my Active Skill’s specifications. For sound has its own rules, not fixed by the edicts of the System. Restricting distances to sound, is like restricting the sun by the shadows.

Of course, that was an over-exaggeration, for no variable in this world can propagate faster than the speed of light. But speed is not what I’m after, for a distance of sound can be amplified from the energies of the sound waves and reverberations.

‘I can’t believe I’m going to do this. I’m insane. Why again, am I also in these stupid situations. Hopefully, the ballad of my saga annuls this from the songs.’

I cast Invoke Song and sung my song.

“Yo listen up, here's the story

About a little guy that lives in a blue world

And all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue”

With the hardcore techno humming its fast tempo throughout the interior of the mecha, I began to start singing the most irritating song from my past life, ‘Blue’ by Eiffel 65.

“I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa”

The Dragon’s head, with reptilian quickness of an amphibian, swiveled its head to direct a blind and furious glare at me. The wounds of his eyes, grass shrapnels in his lenses began to dance to my aggravating tune. With the feral rage of a dragon affront by something small, the dragon charged me.

“I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa”

All the fair folks who were theatergoers to my aggravating rendition were befuddled by my words, for I wasn’t blue, but green, green like the fair man in the verdant hellscape of the forest.

Like a Spanish matador, I shifted to the side away from the blind charge. The dragon slammed head first into the stone wall, that was part of the peculiar stone mountain I had planned for the dragon’s end. The dragon had shaken its head, then like the aggrieved gasbag of his kind, he raged at me with the blinding fury of a dragon.

“I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa”

I tilted my analog twigs with the maximum tempo of my frame to avoid the haphazard swings and swipe of said dragon, as I waited for Peb to finish his part. It was exhilarating to be at the precipice of my command. For this was the first proper giant to giant battle I had encountered.

This reminded me of an episode in an old Gundam anime I had watched, coincidentally it was an emerald tinted Gundam, called the Dragon Gundam.

If it wasn’t for the song choice, this battle would have been an epic brawl between knight and dragon. Instead of what it was, which was a grass man, singing through a mechanized knight, taunting and dodging a blind and angry dragon.

“I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa

Da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa”

I activated for the first time a jump script throughout the battle. It was just in time, I had barely avoided the tail swipe that distracted the squire from the follow-up. Seeing a similar tactic that was about to be played, I spun back, avoiding the claw. But barely, already the chest interior was pierced, so adding another one might collapse the framework.

I soured at the thought of assessing the damage done to my mecha after this whole debacle was all over.

“Peb come on.” I gritted, my teeth chattering as my anxiety rushed me to move faster from the haphazard swipes of the dragon.

My face perspired from the quick movements I had achieved without compiling the damage against my mecha. I can withstand dents and scratches, but those razor-sharp talons can pierce through my armor like a butter knife through cottage cheese.

Like all combat, your senses are heightened to the extremes. You could hear the rapid beats of your heart, you can feel the droplets of your sweat slide on your clamp skin, and you can feel your instincts influencing the gymnastics of your mind.

I then heard it then, the crushing sounds of stones, oncoming stones. Like the drop of a bass after a hectic tempo, a huge mountain fell. A deluge of stones crashed down on us. Clinks and chinks echoed within the interior of the Knight Mecha. I cringed at my armored mecha being dented by the sheer force of stones.

The dragon and I were being buried alive by the stone avalanche I had planned.

The large elephant size boulder along with its brothers and sisters thumped down on the blind Dragon’s head, knocking it out unconscious. The plunging mass of rocks began to bury the dragon alongside my knight mecha, who fell later-on it’s back by the first large impacts of stones.

Gravel and stone dust began to leak through the slits of the visor of the helm. The sight was slowly losing the glare of the sun by the drowning of rubble. I was still sitting on my stool as the grime of the earth descended on my face. A small pebble smacked the temple of my head, giving me a concussion. I was slowly losing consciousness.

I had to turn down the tempo of the lever, the reverberation of the grass within were killing my earlobes along with the grass fibers still dancing to the high beat.

With that finally done, happy at the end of a well-executed plan, I fell unconscious with a huge and bloody grin.