Feliz Navidad

Before we left to head back to the town with Gabriel, I had to give the tower AI an important order.

“Mr. Frost, please deactivate the tower mana generation function.”

“Mistress Yalda, are you sure this is wise?” he asked. “If I do that, won’t the environment become unstable?”

“If life developed an ecosystem here without this tower controlling the climate, it’s best to just let the environment stay how it was.”

“Very well. I will deactivate the tower for now. But this unit will remain on standby until further notice”

“Thank you for everything, Jack Frost. Merry Christmas, and have a good rest.”

Jack Frost went into hibernation mode, shutting down all systems that weren’t necessary for matanence. Hopefully I’d be able to get in contact with him before another 10,000 years passed by…

Anyways, we went outside and Indena shot a flair gun into the sky, alerting the other search parties that we’d found the mayors son.

“Alright, can you fly us back?” Indena asked me.

“Er…no.” I shook my head.

“Why not? You flew me here!”

The issue was that it was already hard enough to carry one person. Trying to lug around two without my combat mode was going to be a real pain.

So despite her protests, we really did just have to walk back. I mean, I could have flown, but that wouldn’t be very nice to the humans.

“Hmm…so what your saying is, if you were fighting, you could fly us back?”

“I guess,” I shrugged. “But I can’t just engage it whenever I feel like, or it’ll tire me out.” It’s usually best to only activate it in response to a need, as I’ve come to find.

Indena had that grinching smile of hers on full display, giving me no confidence in whatever diabolical plan she was cooking in her head.

She turned to see a group of pavan birds huddling up for warmth.

“Oy, stupid birds!” She lit a fireball in her hands and tossed it at them. “That’ll warm you up!”

BOOM!

“CAWW!”

“CRAAH!

What in the high heavens was she doing?! Now those birds were all angry at us!

If her plan was to get my combat mode active so my strength would increase, she had the dumbest way of doing it!

“There, now fly us back.”

“You jerk!”

Rumble…Rumble…

The Pavan's all parted to make way for something big stomping in. Good Lord, It looked like a T-rex turkey! 

-WARNING! Threat sighted! IFF tags active-

-Identifying monster...monster identified-

-Dire Pavan monster tagged; foe-

Oh great! It's a Dire Pavan!

I didn’t want to deal with that, so I picked up the two of them with my short arms and flew off to the town.

“If this thing follows us all the way back, you’re dealing with it, not me!” I shouted at her.

“Hey, look on the bright side…” Indena gave me a smug look. “at least we don’t have to worry about walking back.”

“That’s what you’re worried about!?”

If I didn’t have literal commandments preventing me from harming humans, I would have dropped her fiery butt right here!

~☆☆☆~

Lucky for Indena, I managed to lose that Dire Pavan she peeved off. But boy did she owe me one!

Thankfully we made it back to town. The mayor was the first to race to his son and embrace him tightly.

“I’m sorry,” the mayor said, tearing up. “This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have ignored you for so long.”

“Papa, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have forgotten how much you care about me.”

The warm sight made me run to Uncle and give him a big hug. He picked me up and let me sit on his shoulders.

“Uncle, Indena made me fly all the way back here. Now I’m hungry. Can we go eat now?”

“Yeah, let’s get some food.”

Our grand feast had gotten cold, but still plentiful. Indena used her magic to heat everything up.

Man, all the food was so tasty! There were these turkey taco things that were so good! I ate like ten of them.

While we all feasted, I felt there was a jostling in my systems…what was that about? It’s weird how I knew, but it was coming out of my INVENTORY menu.

I checked my virtual inventory…the egg I picked up before was shaking. Remember that thing? I got it from the Pavan hunt before.

Wow, wait a minute! The description said ‘It appears to move occasionally. It may be hatching soon.’

“What’s wrong, Yalda?” Yamin asked, noticing me space out.

“Oh…I found this egg. Apparently it's about to hatch.”

I looked a little more into how to hatch this egg, and apparently hatching a monster egg was tied to my distance traveled. So each footstep was slowly lowering its hatch time. Strange, but it is what it is.

I stood up and started marching around the big table. After a couple laps, the message didn’t seem to change at all. Of course, everyone was giving me funny looks.

Was there a way to speed this up?

“Hey, Indena…you have a warm body from your magic.” I materialized the monster egg and handed it to her. “You can make this hatch faster.”

Warm bodies always make eggs hatch faster. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it.

“Eh?” Indena took the blue spotted egg, but was very displeased. “What, now I gotta’ march this thing around?”

“You owe me. So do it.” I glared at her.

She conceded and started walking circles around the church.

The message on it changed, saying “Sounds can be heard from inside! This Egg will hatch very soon!” You definitely could hear sounds too.

It finally cracked open! Out came a little pudgy bird like monster. Was this a baby Pavan, or something else?

It’s head twisted all around, scanning the room for something it wanted until shouting “MAMA!” at Indena. Its fluffy little wings flapped all around.

“Oh heck no!” Indena tried to put it down on the table, but it kept jumping back onto her. “Get this stupid thing off me! I don’t wanna’ be it’s mom!”

“Ha ha!” We all laughed at her.

I’m glad we managed to help the town recover. It paid off big time with how everyone was smiling and happy. In a few days they'd have their power back on too, so all's looking good.

You know...as long as that Dire Pavan doesn't show up...

The best part was, all this happening just before Christmas made me feel all the more warm and fuzzy on the inside.