Grey here. I remember this time I went on a pub crawl with a bunch of Brits when we were on leave after a bunch of joint exercises in the North Sea. I can’t say they’re representative of Brits, but it’s just kinda funny how they started a bar fight but only went for their fellow Brits like some sort of inverted IFF. I was drinking with the guy who came out on top, a Royal Commando named George, by the end of it.
***
Sam’s gone out to meet with the huge-ass dragon that’s landed on the fore of the deck. I really wish he’d move a little closer to the center so my forward engines aren’t fuckin’ screaming in pain just trying to keep things level.
“Greetings. I am Princess Eagle Samantha Burnheart of the Kingdom of Merika.”
The Liberty Dragon—I still can’t with the name—squints at Sam.
“Ey. Name’s Ned.”
Besides the low, foreboding growl that came with the words, isn’t this guy just too easygoing?
“Fool, address the Princess with respect—”
Sam smashes Oreo’s head into the deck. That hasn’t happened in a while, huh?
“Fool! Royal courtesy is too below them!”
Ned’s real fuckin’ confused right about now. His neck recoiled back like “what.”
“… Fool.”
Oh. That came from Ned.
Sam and Oreo look up to the tankiest flying tank I’ve ever seen. They’re sweating bullets.
Despite that, Oreo manages to speak.
“D-did we say anything to offend the great ancestor—”
Ned’s head and neck recoiled again.
“Eh? Everywun’s was just saying ‘fool’ so I’se thoughts it’s just somethin’ everyone says?”
I… kinda hate how he makes sense. Not in the “Oh wow, how clever” sense, but in the “Yeah, I’d totally think that, too” sense.
“I apologize. It is not,” Sam explains.
“Ehh, sounds good,” Ned replies with a dragon thumbs up.
Though, obviously, if someone ends on a good note that’s too short, it’s usually to follow up with—
“… By the way, lady, y’all mighty strong ain’t ya?”
And to top it off—
“Wan’ fight?”
Honestly, I don’t think Sam and Oreo’ll be in danger. I can sense a lot of “I’m real fuckin’ bored, let’s take this outside” moods wafting off this Ned guy, so he’ll probably try not to actually kill anyone. Oreo’ll probably take it up coz he’s just too easy to offend. Sam’s probably got a headache from this. Heh.
“How dare you—”
“May I ask to postpone that occasion to our return trip? Our house was burned down.”
Sam interrupts Oreo with words and a backhand to the face before he could shoot off unneeded sentences.
“Ehh, but—”
“Do not worry. I will be bringing many challengers at that time.”
Ned’s eyes sharpen into slits and he roars into the sky.
“YEEEAAAAHHH” (RAAAAGGHH)
Come to think of it, Sam’s guards are mostly weirdos aren’t they? Guess she really knows how to handle these types, after all.
***
So, it should’ve ended there, but Ned got too excited and his tail slapped one of my railguns and—uhhh—instantly modified the specs, I guess.
As it turned out, a bunch of things were all happening at the same time.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
First, the wyvern riders finally came out, and they piled out like elementary school kids unleashed on a playground. They mostly spread out in a line to match the far-off Liberty Dragons, but a bunch of them swarmed around Ned.
Second, Ned roared into the sky out of excitement. The roar was louder than the excitement.
Third, Oreo shouted “Fool!” and went back to dragon form before Sam could reach his head. A honestly think she could’ve just stubbed his toe with a sword, but maybe that’s an unexpectedly fatal weakness for a dragon?
And of course, Ned damaged one of my railguns. It's basically out of commission 'til we fix it.
Now, if you were one of the Liberty Dragons just watching from far away, what’d you think if you saw just all these going on? “Diplomacy successful” or “diplomacy failed”?
So yeah. I ain’t taking chances.
{Marge! Shields up!}
Oh yeah, Marge got assigned as my science officer—well, magic officer, but that just makes her sound like she disappears from roll call like magic, so “science officer” it is.
“Shields, ready up!” she shouts in reply from her control room in the lower decks.
Oreo and Ned are still wrestling on-deck, and damn, Oreo’s like half Ned’s size. He’s basically stuck with trying to grapple Ned from behind and beating him to a pulp from blindspots instead of trying to pin him down. I’m not entirely sure it’s “to a pulp” though, since his blows are just bouncing off. It’s probably on the level of a rough massage for Ned.
Looks like the wyvern riders and Liberty Dragons are still facing off in skirmish lines, but neither side’s really shooting. If I’m guessing right, at least a bunch of the riders have tac nukes and they’re totally ready to shoot them off at this sort of close range. I mean, we don’t really have anything else that can deal with this many Liberty Dragons at once.
At least the nuke factory downstairs managed to put out some micro-tac nukes this time, so the riders won’t get caught in the blast radius.
If there’s a silver lining, the Liberty Dragons aren’t shooting off laser beams my way coz Ned’s still on-deck—
“INCOMING!” a bridgeman shouts—fuck my life. A bright light converges around the mouth of one of the dragons.
“SHIELD UP!” Marge directs the full strength of the shield to the fore.
“It’s not enough! Stack! Stack!” “That’s all I’ve got! Freedom take meee~”
The dragon riders and knights that saw the converging light and the shield trying to meet it realize that the shield won’t work, and they cast their own concentrated shields behind it.
The beam fires.
It deflects off the stacked shields and downwards behind us into the desert, turning a couple of acres into glass. The beam dies off after just two seconds. It might’ve just been a weaker one.
{Marge! Shield status!}
“That took all the juice we had! Full charge again in 5 minutes!”
Good-lord-in-christ.
{Riders, knights! Y’all okay?}
I get depressed grumbling as a reply. Marge did say that completely draining your magic is a good way to instantly get depressed, huh?
… Never mind that!
{Sam! We can’t take another hit like that!}
“I will see to it, Sir Grey!”
Huh? She sounds oddly confident in this situation.
“Esteemed Ned, please have your people cease interrupting your fight!”
It’s all about the wording, huh?
“Ehh? Somwun did?” He turns around and shouts “Fool!” before firing his own sweeping breath laser in the general direction of the dragons.
A couple of them are falling down and smoking—is that okay, though!
Ah, they righted themselves. Yep, they’re rejoining the other dragons. They’re real fuckin’ sturdy, the fuck, dude.
A couple of them beelined for the deck. The wyvern riders couldn’t stop them and got blown away by the wind pressure. Looks like Sam’s keeping them from firing nukes, too, so the wyvern squads are just sort of stumped that they can’t really do anything.
I mean, at this range, that’s gonna be an instant 1000 counts of friendly fire, won’t it?
“Ned! That’s no fair!”
“Yeah! Yeah! Let’s fight, too!”
The Liberty Dragons landed on my deck. Aren’t these guys just really bored?
“Gh! This youngin’ started it!”
Meanwhile, Oreo’s thrashing around on the ground. Ned’s finally pinned him down after he made a wrong move.
“I will have you apologize to the Princess! I will have you apologize to Sir Grey!” Oreo spits while squirming.
“What’d I even do, huh, ya git?”
Yeah, there’s no way Oreo’s getting out of that.
“Esteemed Ned, I implore you to release my knight.”
“Gh. I ain’t ’til I beat sum sense into ’im—”
“In exchange, I will have one bout with you.”
“Ayt.”
Pfsh, that was fast.
“P-princess!”
“And you,” she casts some sort of shield on the deck before smashing his still-dragonified head into it. The damage that’s usually left, just… isn’t there. Thanks for the consideration.
Sam and Ned stand about 30 feet apart—which is basically point blank compared to Ned’s size.
“Sir Grey. Please signal the start of the match.”
{Uh, sure. Three, two, one—go?}
Sam deploys a shield on the deck before side-stepping, avoiding Ned’s claw-punch. The claw-punch is stopped by the shield before it reaches my deck.
Again, thanks for the consideration.
Before Ned could even retract his arm, Sam’s already propelled herself over his head—all the way up 100 feet in the air—before axing her leg down to smash his head into a shield she’s deployed below his jaw. That shield breaks, but not without dealing a concussion. She deploys a new a shield 10 feet below that one and axe-kicks his head down into the new one again.
Rinse and repeat about 4 times until she axes his head into my deck—making sure to deploy a shield on top of it first, of course.
Really, Sam, thanks for thinking about my structural integrity. I’m crying here.
Just like that, the match is over.
There’s a commotion among the Liberty Dragons watching by the sidelines. By the way, my engines are suffering—maybe I should start tilting just to get them to use their wings?
“Hey, hey, isn’t that human a little bit too powerful.”
“I wonder if she can take an Orbital Strike…”
Hey, that sounds pretty dangerous.
“Naw, mang, methinks a Hillside Tunnel Borer’s the dandiest she can do.”
What the hell do these dragons do as a hobby?
***
You’d think we’d settle things after that.
The explosions that ripped through the Liberty Dragons weren’t any of ours.