Chapter 21: 21: Pink Tumbleweed

Amelia

 

All throughout our morning preparations, Rosa was subdued. Not sad, exactly, but definitely lost in her thoughts. Honestly, it was kinda cute the way her brow furrowed like that. I mean come on. Look at those perfect little eyes all lost and scrunched up in thought. I wanted to grab her and snuggle her until she was wiggling and clawing at me like a cat that was done with your affections.

A cat. That’s what she was, but like… a tiger, not a housecat. Both were the same in temperament, of course, but tigers had the ability to make do on their murderous boundary protection.

When the guild was geared up and ready to go, we all trouped out of our house and towards the closest engagement. The Jories had been going hard recently, and the whole retreat had been halted in its tracks.

The battlefield today was a more uneven area than the flowing icy plains we were used to. Hills dipped down to frozen streams and boulders dotted the landscape where years of erosion had unearthed them.

For several kilometres in every direction, both NPCs and players gathered. The former in neat lines with their tactics and uniform equipment, and the latter in large blobs that might have resembled formations if you really squinted. On the Pag side, their barges were in position, with mages seated in the spell amplifier turrets and marines ready to repel boarders.

Meanwhile, the foxes had their walkers. Not every vehicle the artifisuki made was a giant walking town. They had smaller ones too, that could only be described as walking tanks. They reminded me of steampunk AT-SE walkers from Star Wars, actually. Either way, those things didn’t have spell amps. They had huge versions of Jazz, minus the extra features that set my beautiful gun apart from the common rabble.

The huge walking centipede things that were the counterpart to the artifisuki cities were further back, the large artillery amps on their backs pounding away at the Taeru with alarming accuracy. Every time a spell arced overhead, it screamed like a banshee, raising the hairs on my arms and neck. The Taeru returned fire, its own guns more than a match for those of the Pags. That exchange of fire would last throughout the whole battle, until both sides withdrew out of range so they could perform repairs.

Then there were the heroes of both sides. The players who were warmachines in their own right. People like Lady Scales, a lizardfolk woman who could turn mage platforms to slag with a single spell. Or there was the Pag guy we called the Mageblade Butcher, who would stand on the tallest object he could find at the start of the battle, only to disappear and start assassinating our casters.

Of course, we probably counted in their ranks now. Well, Rosa did definitely, and there was that Tami chick and her crew running around somewhere now too. This was going to be epic, I was honestly so excited to go into battle with Rosa being my own little pocket amp.

“You ready?” I asked Rosa.

She stood next to me, her hands stuffed into her big fur coat and her tail wrapped around her neck like a scarf.

Looking sideways up at me, she shrugged. “I’ve been in battles hundreds of times by now. I’m just worried I’ll get bored, to be honest.”

“So cocky,” I grinned, shaking some errant snow off Jazz.

“Not really,” she said, her lips quirking up into a sly smile. Leaning in towards me, she elaborated, “I got rid of my cock a few years back.”

Her unexpected joke had me coughing and choking as my body tried to laugh while I was inhaling. After a moment to recover, I slipped my free arm around her and hugged her tight for a second. “Shit, you’re great, you know that, Rosa?”

“I’ve never heard it said, but I think I can believe it,” she mumbled, going into shy mode.

I wanted to tease her, or maybe tell her all about how amazing she was so it really cemented the idea in her head, but that was when the drums began to beat. Overhead, multiple airships began to pound our battle lines with artillery spells, prompting guild leaders and NPC commanders to shout orders to spread out.

Rosa and I stayed put on the hill where I had a view of the field. Intel suggested the Steel Giants, Fear Gang, and others had teamed up to try and punch through to the Taeru. Apparently the city was seen as a bit of a prize for looting by the Pag players.

“Aim for one of the ships,” Rosa ordered me suddenly, getting down on one knee.

I did as I was asked, swinging Jazz up to aim at the behemoth armoured battleships that hung in the sky. “What ammo type?” I asked her, opening my bandolier to grab a spell canister.

“Can you do an explosive projectile of some kind?”

“Yes, I actually have one that will penetrate armour and then explode,” I replied, selecting one. “We called them HEIAP in the army.”

Nodding thoughtfully, she got into position beside me and placed a featherlight hand on my knee. “Okay. When I say armed, you will have approximately three seconds to pull the trigger before my enhancements wear off.”

“Ready when you are,” I agreed, sighting down the scope towards the ship that was currently battering our forces nearby.

Magic swelled in a torrent around Rosa, the force of which just kept building and building. It was like the sensation of suddenly falling backwards, but it just kept intensifying with every second she channelled. Mana surged through her veins and lit up the purple in her hair and fur, until she looked like some sort of anime spirit demon thing.

There was a thump, like the shockwave of an explosion passing through your body, and a buff icon appeared in my vision.

“Armed!” Rosa said excitedly.

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I almost laughed when I saw the buff text was cut off by the UI that had clearly never been designed to accommodate numbers like that. Then I saw the counter ticking down, and I pulled my attention back to the ship and fired.

The recoil knocked me off my feet and threw me cartwheeling and bouncing down the hill like some sort of acrobat on meth, until my momentum was rather abruptly arrested by the canopy of a scraggly old tree. I hung there, upside down and laughing, while I watched my shot absolutely annihilate the ship.

Like, we’re talking about an explosion so devastating that noticeably moved all the mage platforms nearby. Since they were technically lighter than air, they were particularly susceptible to outside forces.

Meanwhile, the ship above was torn apart, and pieces of twisted metal, wood, and canvas rained down on the whole zip code we were in. A smouldering chunk of armour plating even decapitated a tree nearby. It was wild.

Rosa came bounding down the hill to find me, her little legs giving her surprising speed and airtime. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have wondered if she shared my race’s chronic aversion to gravity.

“Are you okay?” she asked, arriving breathless under my new bed.

Giggling, I pushed myself out of the tree and fell towards the ground. I landed unceremoniously in front of her with a thump, and I was assailed again by laughter when I saw her raise an eyebrow.

“I’m fine,” I grinned, pushing myself to my feet.

As soon as I was vaguely upright, she moved in and started dusting off my now filthy clothes. “I must apologise,” she said, a little more of her old formality creeping back into her speech patterns. “I didn’t factor recoil or your racial traits into my spells. I will devise a ritual to keep you in one place next time.”

“Nah girl, don’t apologise!” I said, flicking her ear lightly with a finger. “That was awesome! Look at all the carnage! Let’s do it again!”

She blinked incredulously up at me. “Again?”

“Hell yeah.”

We started for the hilltop, but barely three steps up the slope and our previous position ignited with dark red hellfire. It was like someone had opened a portal to the devil’s asshole.

My eyes widened in horror and realisation. “Jazz!”

“In my inventory, silly,” Rosa smiled, bopping me with her tail.

“Oh.” Relief flooded me. “Thanks, babe. You’re the best.”

Her lips parted slightly when I called her babe, and I mentally kicked myself. Then I saw her nostrils flare, and I basked in the little bubble of happiness that sprouted inside my belly. She was smelling my affection, and she didn’t mind. Did that mean… she might… like me? Maybe?

“You are most welcome,” she finally mumbled.

The moment was broken rather spectacularly when a thunderclap of epic proportions briefly ruined our ability to hear, and we all looked up. Lightning arced across the sky, rippling randomly between the low hanging wispy clouds in a trail that led to, and then through, another Pag ship. Geysers of lightning tore out of any and every hole they could find across the huge warmachine’s chassis. Beyond our sight, the Joret troops let out a savage cry of triumph, and soon the fighting was beginning in earnest.

“That’s the girl we had ramen with, right?” Rosa asked, pointing up at the carnage in the sky.

I nodded. “Pretty sure, yeah. Her people are probably somewhere around. Not that we’d ever find them.”

“It is rather difficult to pinpoint an individual when there’s tens of thousands of people on either side,” she agreed ruefully.

“Can I have Jazz back?” I asked, holding my hand out. “I think there’s more Pags to explode.”

“Certainly.”

 

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