Bob had been slingshotted off the beetle's horn, sailed through the air and impacted, not soft mud, but the hardened surface of the bunker wall (so much for his grand plan). He'd pounded smack into the middle of the last standing wall, which promptly toppled over. The wall jarred against his back as it landed diagonally on top of one of the fallen side walls. Bob moaned to himself. What are the chances...

The wall had fallen. The mud curtain crumbled down. It was the end of an empire. The end of an age. The mud bunker that had once held back the mighty arm of the beetle army was but scattered ruins on the plains of death. Bob looked up at the sky. It was a beautiful sky. The sky is always beautiful. He should move. He had to move. It's man's duty to struggle. He would move. Just one more breath of the divine sky.

It took the beetle a few moments to realize it had gotten rid of its pest and then a few more to ascertain where said pest had gone. It finally located Bob, lying on the mud-brick wall, staring at the heavens. It was a beautiful sky. If only the beetle would look up, just for a moment, and see the sky's imperial beauty, surely they'd be reconciled, surely they could yet be friends, Bob and the beetle.

The beetle, alas, never looked up. Instead it sprung towards Bob, leaping the distance with a powerful beat of its wings, advancing horn first. It was the death blow, the coup de grace. No more messing around. It would end the fight here and now.

Time seemed to slow as Bob watched the beetle come at him. Bob was back to the wall; he wasn't touching the mud on the ground, so he was powerless to manipulate it. Harry was somewhere nearby, but Bob simply didn't have the time. You can't conjure up a magical directive with the snap of your fingers. There's a reason mages stand way back from the front lines.

"So roll away Bob, just roll away!"

"You think the master swordsman can't adjust its strike mid-flight?"

"Don't tell me you're just going to lie here."

"It's such a beautiful sky isn't it?"

Bob looked up. He was remembering something. He chuckled to himself and whispered into the evening. Two words. Two familiar words. With a broken grin on his face.

The tank-beetle sensed the blow just before it landed. It twisted, trying to bring its blade around, but too slow. The beetle felt something dig into its side. The point penetrated; it slid deeper, then caught. What was it? A brown, horn-shaped object... It had appeared mysteriously and invisibly out of the ground. An annoyance, but no more than an annoyance. The tank-beetle could be stuffed full of these little pins and fight on undeterred.

The beetle recovered immediately, turning back to its adversary, only to see him roll off the wall, splat down into the mud face-first and then sink under. The beetle exploded at the enemy, the horn stabbed deep into the ground, then again, then again, then to the right, then to the left.

Was it over? Was the enemy dead? The mud under one of the bunker walls shifted slightly. There! The beetle slammed its horn into the wall. The wall would shatter, the horn would plunge straight through and the challenger would die instantly. Except the horn ricocheted off, throwing the tank-beetle back with its momentum. A man may fall and yet endure. Why can't a wall do the same?

Bob was feeling smug and comfortable inside the mud. He was chilling out underneath one of the bunker walls. He'd been in a cold sweat when the beetle had unhesitatingly spiked the wall, but now he was congratulating himself on some first-rate material engineering. They don't call him the mud mechanic for nothing.

"Mud dart", he repeated the fateful words to himself. A hundred repetitions had drilled that cue into the fabric of Harry's being. It was amazing. It was the point-and-click magic of pre-system gaming. Bob only had to say the phrase, think about direction and distance, and the mud cloak would launch into action.

He hated to admit it, but the plan had worked out surprisingly well. Not exactly in the way he'd intended, mind. Why on earth had he been trying to get his hands on Harry when he could control the cloak from a distance? Sometimes in the heat of the moment a man thinks stupid things. The important thing wasn't the weapon, but the wall. Under the mud, behind the strong, thick wall he was practically invulnerable. Sure the animal had shrugged off his first mud dart, but Bob could be patient when he needed to be. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, Bob had all day and all of tomorrow. Time to go on the offensive.

Bob made to pull out the mud dart lodged in the beetle's side. Harry gave a sharp yank and... the horn didn't budge. What? Harry rolled up his sleeves and strained against the horn. Not a twitch. Harry put his back into it, he pulled his damnedest, he contested the will of the horn and the horn won. It was jammed fast in tensed-up beetle muscle and didn't move a jot. Hm... there goes my offensive strategy. If Harry couldn't budge the horn, then he might as well reunite with his master; Bob called the cloak back to his position.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

In the meantime, the tank-beetle continued to pound its horn into the bunker wall. Each blow seemed to physically hurt the beetle, as the horn was rebounded back into the animal's skull. Maybe the beetle will kill itself, Bob pondered cheerfully. It's a lot easier to be cheerful when you're not standing up or running around. Bob didn't really have much to do, so he pulled out a health patch from his inner pocket and slapped it lazily onto his torso. Soothing warmth spread around his damaged body. The slash on his stomach cleared up. His bruised ribs and back were swiftly mended. He was feeling good.

The tank-beetle backed up a step and then charged forward, battering its horn into the mud brick wall. I've seen this before. What do they say: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The beetle backed up, one, two steps and charged forward again, pinning all of its consideration force on the tip of the horn point. When is the dumb brute going to learn his lesson?

The beetle backed up, one, two, three, steps, like distance made a difference, and charged forward. Crack, the wall splintered and the horn penetrated deep into the ground.

"Aha, oh no, he got me, I'm skewered, I'm dying, help me. Not!" Nobody gives Bob enough credit. Bob wasn't stupid. He was smart stupid. He did stupid things in smart ways. Bob had long ago maneuvered himself to a different wall (the old ceiling). What kind of ambush predator remains in an exposed position? The extinct kind. The tank-beetle proceeded to ravage the ground around the broken wall. It was all wasted effort.

What to do? What to do? What do the philosophers say, the unexamined life is not worth living. Pop. What was that sound? Bob might have imagined the noise. It was so hard to hear anything over the rowdy crowd and the tank-beetle's vigorous thrusting, but that sound had a special significance for our hero. It was George's special sound. Was the dog awake?

Bob scouted out towards George's position. The dog was awake. That meant he'd straight-up ignored Bob's instructions. Bob didn't know whether to be happy or annoyed. Either the dog was smart enough to recognize that the situation had changed or he was entering a rebellious phase.

Instead of jumping the tank-beetle, the dog had popped something out onto the mud. Bob sucked the object underground and rolled it over to his position. A present from the dog. It was hard to see properly with all the mud, but it was some kind of glass jar. Bob unscrewed the cap and caught a full-on whiff of the pungent stuff.

"George, you devilish fox," Bob smiled to himself. He knew exactly what was in the jar. He'd prepared the stuff himself. Really why did he bother thinking up plans at all, when the dog was obviously his intellectual superior. Let's get this show on the road.

Bob slithered through the mud until he was directly under the overlapping walls. The back wall was propped up against the side wall creating a diagonal opening. This is where he'd make his stand. His final stand.

After a calming breath, Bob surfaced. The beetle locked on, but hesitated. Its enemy was a trickster, a devious, roundabout fighter. The beetle circled around so that it could face Bob head-on with no obstacles between them. They stood two meters apart, eyeing each other off over the distance.

The crowd fell silent. This was the final showdown. A wind rolled through. Bob's cloak billowed behind him, as he fingered the glass jar at his left hip. The beetle swayed its horn left to right. Bob crouched forward. The beetle tensed, shifting its weight towards its back legs. A cloud rolled over the sun and shadowed the plains below.

They both moved at exactly the same moment. The horn missiled forward, straight for Bob's chest. The jar flew up into the air. The horn was faster. It pierced straight through the cloak. But Bob had stepped away. It was empty cloth. The horn pierced straight through and guttered into the opening between the walls. Bob jumped up, using his own body weight to brace the upper wall.

The jar spun through the air. The beetle tried to dodge left, but the horn was caught in the opening. The animal quickly pivoted and began backing away. Too late. The jar smashed over the beetle's eyes and green pus splattered out. Level 3 Raupenflieger pus, collected at great psychological cost and squeezed by hand into a jar.

The beetle shuddered. The acid melted straight through its carapace, burning and hissing, ravaging the animal's face and eyes. The beetle jerked violently at the trapped horn. The horn snapped and the whole wall with Bob on top of it was thrown into the air. Bob was flying. His scrambling hands contacted something in the air and he caught hold. Bob was falling. He parabolaed down and cratered into the beetle's back.

Thud. Bob made out a horn fragment in his left hand. The beetle's horn fragment. Somehow he'd caught it in the air and stabbed it into the beetle's back as he fell. A happy coincidence. He held on to it for dear life as the beetle bucked and howled while the acid ate away at its face.

Harry quickly secured his master, tying Bob to the peg and pulling him fast. After five seconds Bob was feeling pretty anchored. After ten seconds, Bob felt confident enough to take his hand off and wave it in the air: "George, George, look at me. I'm riding the beetle. Bob the beetle rider."

A breeze tripped through the air. There was a scent on it Bob didn't recognize. Something sweet and inviting. A part of Bob wanted to rush off in the scent's direction. But he was a rational being. He was intellectually superior. He wasn't just going to chase after some random smell. It was obviously a trap...

What? All of the assembled beetles had fallen dead still for a moment. They all turned and looked in the direction of the smell. Oh no, oh no. One heartbeat later and the whole host of insects was sprinting off towards the source of the fragrance. The whole host of insects and one golden retriever. Bloody dog.