//------------------------------// // 51. Challenging Sanity. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Gedol Territory, Evil Core Preparation Campsite, Ligstrun- I was Ligstrun, average lizard soldier, decent mechanic and short like all the other lizards like me, some fiery yellow hair trailing down my neck, stuffed inside some armor that will let me survive one mortal blow. From what I hear of the rocket knight, mortal blows come at you fast and you’re armor is gone in an instant. Run for the hills was the general recommendation when the true blue rocket knight blew through you or your machine like a wet tissue paper. It wasn’t an exaggeration, the rocket knight blew through at least three feet of solid steel in the form of a wall… head first… without injury. The good knight of the world was just that terrifying. Not much going on out here. Just preparations for an entire unit of evil core machines to be activated. I really did not want to be around when they were. I also didn’t want to be one of the lizards that were getting parts of themselves replaced with machinery for failing, those experiments were nightmarish and the eighty percent lethality rate had me scared for my life. I heard what happened to Generalissimo Lioness when things like that happened. I wanted my mind to stay its own and not be actively eaten by machines until nothing was left. It was well known now that General Sweinhart wasn’t one of the mind controlled pigs, he actively helped the evil machine emperor take over his own people to launch an attack on Zebulos. That was after having one of the rocket knights turn on their own and wipe them out… except for the one rocket knight who then quickly tore through Devotindos forces like a hot knife through butter. Intelligent machines were the ones you had to watch out for, most of them were the ones with evil cores. Not all machines needed evil cores to be intelligent. Why couldn’t there be heroic cores too? I mean how hard would it be to actually make one of those? I would desert my position in an instant if I thought I could get away with it without being hunted down by Axel Gear to be made an example of for trying. I wasn’t nearly good enough with a sword to survive that and I doubt dark magic enchantments on the blade would help against someone who wore magical armor covered in the stuff. Oh I liked machinery well enough being a mechanic, but I would prefer the machinery not try to eat me alive and use my soul to power itself or something. Nobody really knows what happens if an evil core machine eats you, maybe it would double its power output? What I wanted to do was find a random land strider, a wild one that doesn’t run on a malicious operating system. It would be easier to tame one of those for my needs ever since Yellow Dog caused mechanical creatures neutral to most people to start running around. I wanted to live a nice peaceful quiet life away from evil cores, monstrous machines and this doomed war. Instead here I am stuck as a soldier, working for a powerful magical nutcase named Gedol. “Nothing ever goes wrong around here, I seriously doubt anything ever will.” I muttered the guard near me just grumbled in agreement while nodding her head. I wondered if I would spend the rest of my life working on the numerous rocket pack knock-offs of what actual rocket knights use, the things break down at regular intervals from shoddy materials. At least I tried to make mine better than ones that Axel Gear was spreading around to us Gedol troops. I think I got more functionality out of my knock-off rocket pack. At least more so than we lizards could usually manage and I was thinking about using it to escape, but it still wasn’t nearly fast enough to outrun or fight off Axle Gear if he wanted to run me through. That’s why I would need a semi-intelligent land strider, it would have to be an animal type as full manual land striders were entirely reliant on pilots to operate. I wanted to innovate and help the world, not destroy it like every other machine monstrosity that comes around. At least Emperor Gedol was smart enough to not try and fuse his body with machines or wasn’t one himself, but with his dark magic… I wouldn’t want him to come after me if he ever found out I wanted to try and prevent him from achieving world conquest. The thought of Axle Gear coming after me was frightening enough already and almost a big enough threat to keep me in line on his own, that’s even if he was miles away. Being in Gedol’s presence meant you were going to die if he thought you were plotting against him, that or be turned into a compliant machine. “Look, I know you’re nervous about them being kept here Ligstrun, but those three Panth-Zers land strider units are going to be sent out as soon as they are battle ready. They aren’t just going to jump up and rip us to shreds, even if the things scare everyone even when they are inactive. I wonder what development team thought making automated land striders would be a good idea. We can only hope they don’t replicate like the O-type land striders do, those wild machines can be annoying.” Pretal wasn’t a big fan of this either, but she was still going along with it. She wasn’t the most attractive lizard around, but she wasn’t ugly and I thought her red and orange scales were attractive. Rare to see a color more than green and purple among us. “Be glad we all got really easy jobs far away from the front. Nobody would be stupid enough to try and pass behind the front lines or even bother with attacking us in the middle of nowhere in our own territory.” Amphibians, lizards and other reptiles in general didn’t have it so bad. If we wanted things to be better, then why not learn how to make things better? At least our cousins the amphibians had cooking, castles and artistry. If all we did was steal, nothing would get better and we’d be living on limited resources with no knowledge of how to get more once we destroyed the source of said resources. At least some long term planning skills would certainly improve our lives. “Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, we should try to defect?” Was I the only lizard soldier that thought about these things? “Do you want them to send one of those things to come after you?” Pretal grunted angrily. “Nothing is going to happen Ligstrun, especially not to us. We aren’t going to be attacked all of the sudden.” She’d be proven wrong approximately five seconds later, when parts of our camp started exploding and a land strider pulling a wagon charged in amongst us and slowed down to attack various tents, supplies and everything in the general area with rapid blasts from its beak. The entire camp was thrown into disarray and fires were popping up everywhere. It quickly totaled one of the Panth-Zer units we were supposed to protect by ripping into it with its beak and legs, apparently it learned from destroying just the one of Panth-Zer units and efficiently ripped out the small evil core right out of next one’s skull disabling it permanently. Before it could get to the third a spear narrowly missed its head. The… was that a goat? I watched as the, obviously sapient, goat leapt onto the land strider’s neck to shout something as some of the surrounding lizards started to react, albeit slowly to the intruders. The land strider glanced at the goat for a barest of a second to take in her pointing hoof and then started charging off in that very direction with the wagon as several weapons were about to be used against the suddenly aggressive intrusion. Is this what it was like to be attacked by an evil core machine? Well in this case the land strider had odd eye color, wasn’t red at all and being pure evil wasn’t the driving force behind it. If anything the goat was giving it orders and it didn’t mind following them. So my plans were feasible if there was a magical operating system that doesn’t make you feel like it wants to kill you constantly… even when it was supposed to be on your side. I had spent that entire time just standing there and staring dumbly at the chaos, I blinked as the last Panth-Zer unit eyes glowed to life and it took off after the wagon. “That… just happened.” Pretal stated blankly as what were supposedly our comrades were still running around everywhere in a panic, a few of them had lost their armor. “Yes, now if you’ll excuse me.” I blinked and looked at the Panth-Zer with the ripped out and destroyed core. Maybe… I looked around nobody was paying attention to the still somewhat viable automated land strider, it wasn’t meant to have a pilot. I was okay holding on for dear life. “I have repair work to do, go help with putting out the fire.” No one would be suspicious of me trying to get the Panth-Zer with the destroyed core operational, it was my ticket out of here… and hopefully to a better life. Evil cores were not always main power source for the monstrous machines, but they did power most of a machines weaponry functions with pure malice. Since I didn’t need weapons or evil to power this thing, I could rig it to run on an auxiliary power core in a pinch and it’s not going to have much of a brain without the evil core, but I really didn’t want the evil core running it. . I could force it to move manually, but the weapons wouldn’t be operational and if I could figure out what those intruders did to get a friendly land strider to do what it just did… I needed to follow them at the very least. I wasn’t a programmer and would need to know how they got it to be friendly instead of neutral. They probably wouldn’t like me, I’m quite sure no one likes the Gedol Empire right now and anyone tangentially related to them. If I could talk to them for even a minute and they’d let me get a copy of the system running that land strider, then maybe I could have a friendly machine that could protect me from Axel Gear. Panth-Zers were a prototype, lightweight armor, high speed, predator style land strider machines with one rotating energy cannon on the back that can fire small shots quite quickly and or charge of for a powerful explosive burst. The tail fired lasers and was able to aim in any direction. The only weapon I would have available once I got this things running are the natural metal claws, I wouldn’t be able to use the energy slashing function of them. That didn’t matter… freedom did. I only have a limited amount of time to make this work and catch up to those people and beg them for sanctuary. They were obviously a strong group if they could hit us this far into our territory and keep going. It wouldn’t be long before someone figured out what I was doing, I started connecting wires to on another in the ripped open portion of machine cats head. I’m glad that land strider left this one mostly intact instead of wrecking it completely. I pulled a tool from my belt and started to tweak a few things and with a wire pushing into the right place, then I bypassed the need for the evil core and directly tied into the power systems. I then smacked the wire into place. The machine soon stood up on all fours unsteadily with me straddling the neck. With no evil core to guide it, I hoped that this next part worked without issue, because I had a lot riding on this. “Forward!” I shouted into the lifeless eyes of the machine. The machine took off at a pace that nearly threw me off and I scrabbled to get my claws purchase on the metal hide of the beast and was quickly slipping off. Unlike the land strider that just launched a surprise attack on us, this thing did not come with a protective divot with a seat. “Uh, reduce speed slowly?” The machine slowed until I managed to straddle it safely. “Speed up until I until I say signal… signal.” Panth-Zers didn’t have manual controls, but I was able to control it by telling it what to do. Not intelligent like the land strider I saw, but it could still follow rudimentary commands… and I could work with this! Although I would need to find a way to make it intelligent in the future, hopefully in a manner that would not try to destroy the world and all life on it. I already saw one friendly example, sure it may have destroyed the camp, but it didn’t try to kill anyone. A hope for the future. -Shanty- “The cat thing be incoming!” I can’t be believing that it worked, we had caused so much trouble on our way to our destination. Third time’s the charm before we be running into evil core machines. Yellow Dog would have been uncomfortable for Pom attracting everyone, also we be hearing they are in a bit of a civil war at the moment. General Sweinhart was likely to be stabbing us in the back when we tried to leave. We could have done safer things, took the long way around and try to avoid trouble. We be deciding to visit Jean’s people the amphibians, by cutting straight through Gedol controlled territory. I think we be disrupting Gedol forces quite badly. “I see it Shanty, now if only most of us had long range options, at best I barely have a middling range attack!” At least Pom can be defending it be getting close enough. Dodo be the only thing capable of attacking from a distance among us and he had to keep his head forward. “Dodo veer left!” A powerful blasts of energy passes by the wagon and took out a large chunk of the ground. It probably won’t be getting close enough for Pom to bark blast it. “Be veering right!” I was sitting with Dodo and I be looking in the back were the rest of the team, a red beam ripped through the air as the cat machine moved to match speeds with us and kept its distance. It be firing that from its tail. “Another incoming, something’s off though.” Pom stated. -Pom- The second cat was in the distance, it could have fired upon us, but I notice the lizard on its neck and that the machine’s eyes weren’t active. That wasn’t the immediate problem, as Dodo dodge the next shot my eyes narrowed at its tail. “Grab on to something, Dodo jump!” I shrieked out. Grabbing a groaning Ocellus, I clamped down to the wagon with my wool. Said wagon was made of solid rust immune metal and, thankfully enough, a strong suspension system. Dodo leapt and the wagon followed it right up into the air, as the sweeping beam swept underneath. I narrowed my eyes on the machine chasing us and the distance it was keeping from us and it. The entire wagon shook as we landed. “Shanty, no matter what, make sure Dodo holds steady!” I leaned out of the wagon I attached my right hoof and right rear hoof to inside of the wagon as I leaned out. “Pom… what are you doing…” Smolder asked slowly, she was the only other one that could perform long range attacks. “Whatever it is you better do it soon!” The charging energy in the cannon on its back was about to fire, it fired and I inhaled sharply. Time slowed to a crawl. Even then the bright red energy was moving at a blistering pace as it came towards us, I continued inhaling until my lungs hurt. I exhale and time sped back up to normal and I fired an absolutely normal bark burst, just before the energy reached us. The energy met my bark burst and stopped dead in the air and took on a powerful golden glow, the machine ran into the floating energy a second later and it’s cannon was blasted apart along with the tip of its tail that was about to fire at us. My bark blast would have never reached the machine itself, the machine could have avoided it. What it couldn’t have avoided was an anomaly happening. I just bark blasted the momentum out of the energy cannon’s shot, I needed to do more outside the box thinking. My bark blast wouldn’t have last long enough, the shot that it fired itself… lasted long enough for it to run straight into it. Now I watched it tumbling into the distance with badly damaged armor, until it managed its tumble until it was back on its feet and continuing to give chase at a much faster pace. I noticed the other follower wasn’t trying to speed up or attack, I’m sure the others have noticed that one as well. He didn’t seem aggressive and even slowed down to steered well away from the other machine. I don’t think it’s noticed him yet, he wasn’t acting aggressive and was actually looking rather pensive about following us. Having been in battles with larger machines probably made me less afraid of the smaller ones. Having thought that, I watched the machine leap up and the long glowing claws that popped out of all four it’s legs and it started tearing apart the ground as it came towards us. Its tail was also sparking with energy. Okay now the fear here, don’t know what those claws would do up close, but I seriously doubted I could put enough magic in my wool armor would stop it. It bounded twice and tried to leap for us, but was intercepted by the other machine being rode by the lizard as it dumbly leapt into the path as the people in the wagon prepared to knock it back. I narrowed my eyes again. That lizard didn’t aiming for us, I think he was intentionally trying to… help? “Ocellus, how many evil cores would you say there are?” I turned to Ocellus wincing on the floor. “One…” She managed to whimper out. I turned back to the lizard trying to frantically steer the obviously stolen panther shaped machine and the fact that it was now under attack by the active evil core machine. “Move out of the way and be prepared to help me if I do this wrong…” I stated as I watched the lizard narrowly missed getting hit by those claws. I grabbed the roof of the wagon and lifted my hind legs off the floor and started to swing myself back and forth. Colleen saw what I was about to do and went to grab me, but it was already too late and I launched myself out of the moving vehicle while curling up and forcing my body to spiral as I shot towards the endangered lizard. I uncurled and slammed my rear hooves down as hard as I can, while reaching out and latching my left hoof onto the upper back of the machine. My rear hooves connected with the damaged spine of machine where the cannon was sitting and the energy blast occurred and the impact snapped it half. The rear half of the machine tumbled and fell away as my rear hooves went numb, I quickly slapped them down and stuck them to the destroyed back half of the machine and raised my right hoof to start hitting its head rapidly. Its front to limbs started to flail the glowing energy claws at me as it swung them about, I leaned away and ducked out of the way of the swipes. I brought my left hoof off of the machine as I bound my lower torso to it. Bringing it together with my right hoof, I slammed them both into the head to start grinding it against the ground. The front half of machine tried to swipe at me as its faces was quickly ripping apart against the dirt, stones, grass and whatever else we were skidding over at high speeds. I increased the pressure on my hooves, grit my teeth and continued to press down on the head, inhaling sharply when I noticed one of the two claws going right for my front legs. Time slowed just long enough for me to pull them out the way and the energy blades cut straight through its own skull and the machine started sparking as it slid to a stop. I exhaled and kicked off the machine with my front legs as my rear legs were still a bit numb, I curled up and fully inflated my wool. The closer of the two shockwaves hit my wool and deflected around my body underneath as I was thrown clear of the blast, I heard a whining noise and I felt something catch me. I heard a grunt when I hit the ground, I uncurled and looked to see I was on top of the lizard. He look weak, but he hadn’t been physically injured aside from slapping to the ground with that cylinder pressing into his back. He really didn’t need to catch me. I would have been fine, but he showed the effort to try and help even though he didn’t know what I was capable of. I raised my right hoof and he flinched closing his eyes, until I just gently rested my right hoof on his shoulder. He opened his yellow eyes and stared at me with confusion, I gave him a calm smile and nodded. He tried to grin back weakly and then passed out. I noticed his armor had shattered, which left his backside exposed to the rocket pack and grew concerned, I put my ears to his chest and heard his heart beat a bit. He was still alive. I was going to trust that he was a good guy, I was not going to be driven insane by the thought that he might be an infiltrator or trying to destroy our group from the inside… He deserved a chance, like the changelings deserved a chance, like King Thorax was given a chance to turn his people around into something better. Ember was right, I can understand what it’s like to be different and out of place… This was not going to earn me points with anyone, also OW----… my rear legs. Why?! “Pom, what the buck!” Glaring at Smolder, I shuffled protectively in front of him. “Language young lady!” My words had Smolder cowed as she dropped to the ground and scrunched into herself. “Ocellus, tell the others to help us load that machine and our new guest into the wagon. We're all continuing as planned.” “Pom, that's a lizard from the Gedol Empire.” Whined Ocellus while rubbing at her pained head. “And you’re a changeling, I think there are a lot of similarities going on here.” I commented dryly, Shanty looked a bit confused. “He’s coming with us.” “Pom we can’t trust…” Ocellus started to say. “King... Thorax...” That shut Ocellus up immediately. “Okay.” Ocellus turned to talk to the others. "What... Ocellus you can't possibly want to go..." Smolder started. "If Thorax was never given a chance... Ocellus and you would have never met." My goodness the silence was quite palpable.