In front of Erina was her underclassman, whom she had bonded greatly with over the last year, and her classmate, whom she had the most feud with, yet still somehow managed to remain one of her closest friends.
Thanks to Zoe’s reading, they were able to track down Erina and get a hold of her. After all, Zoe was not going to quit despite Lloyd’s earlier claims about Erina being fine, she had to go through the extra mile to come to her friend’s aid.
Lloyd extended a helping hand to get Erina off the ground, but she pushed it aside. She was more than capable enough to help herself up, and so, she brought herself to her feet and started dusting off her skirt. After being done with that, she placed both her hands on her hips in a posing fashion with a huge grin on her face, as if to show that she was victorious. Victorious in what? Lloyd and Zoe had no idea.
— Always the oddball in the room.
Lloyd looked at the woman on the ground, who was knocked unconscious and seemed happy with her deep sleep off to dreamland. The first thought that came to his mind was that Erina might have knocked her out, since it was not that far-fetched to think that. Erina was once suspended for a month after going up against the gym teacher in a one-on-one fight and putting him out in the hospital for weeks, just because he wouldn’t let her skip for the day.
“Coulda went easy on the poor woman, don’t you think?” He expressed his displeasure.
“Wait wait! Hold it—” Erina backed away, “That... wasn’t me!!! I’d never hurt someone and you know it. She just passed out on her own. What do you think I am? A thug?”
“(Not really, just a blockhead…)”
A huge smile formed on her face, but one could easily tell she was extremely irritated. She cracked both her knuckles together. “Looks like you need a piece of my mind, Loy! How about that thing I mentioned on the phone earlier?”
“See what I mean.” He looked at Zoe, who just stood idly watching both of them, to try and prove the validation of his words.
“You’re the only person I wouldn’t pull any punches from.”
Without waiting for him to take the defensive, Erina immediately swung her fist at him but he dodged it in the last second.
“Ha! Not gonna be easy to take me down—”
“Think fast!” She quickly swept her leg at his feet right after her initial punch failed. This time, it didn’t take a second for him to be taken aback and fall to the ground. “Gotta be prepared for mixups. Now get up or—”
“Fine… I give, I give. Ow… (I think I broke my ass.)” He tried not to think about the pain too much. Falling on solid concrete was no joke after all, especially on a sensitive part. It still wasn’t anything a trip to the infirmary wouldn’t fix.
This short moment of “normality” came to a halt when the dragooun’s roar from far away brought them all back to reality. That great threat was still at large. It seemed like the other side of the team was just as short on luck as them. Defeating a beast like that wouldn’t come with luck of course — nothing ever would — they needed to rely on their wits to achieve such a miracle.
Unlike Lloyd and Erina, Zoe had much more of close observation on the scene from afar, thanks to her merit as a reader — she would make a fine archer. From where she stood, she could see Shogo traversing from point to point to keep the beast from leaving that block, Nathan writing constantly and trying his best to pin it down with aid of his surroundings, and Juno flying on her owl with her “book of spells” in her hand.
“Scores aside, we really have to do something, guys.” She turned to face her friends, “We don’t have much time.”
“How about…,” Lloyd tried to work his brain for a good minute, and then he hit his grip and palm together as if a light bulb had been lit, “We bait it to another location, then we all attack at once.”
“I… don’t think that’s a good idea.” Zoe tried to voice her opinion.
“Yeah, bait it where exactly? You seem to be forgetting the fact that we can’t even get it to slow down.” Erina shared Zoe’s answer.
The whole point of the evacuation zone they were currently in was to trap the dragooun inside and contain whatever damage occurred within. If by some method, they were to move it to another location, which was likely to be outside of the zone, they would endanger citizens and put the rest of the city at risk.
“Really thought I had it there for a second.” Lloyd rubbed the back of his head with a disappointed expression, “Then I guess… we try talking to it? Calm it down? Explain the whole schmuck to it?” He pictured himself and the others casually chatting with the almost thirty-feet long beast.
“You can’t be serious right now.”
Just like Zoe before, Erina’s expectations began to lower deeply. She didn’t expect much from the beginning, but she didn’t expect him to be this bad at thinking of something. Yes, she might not be any better at devising plans but at least she was quiet about it.
“I mean, do any of you speak dragon?”
“No!” Both Erina and Zoe said in unison.
— Okay, shesh, I get it. They love pointing out how bad my ideas are. But what’s wrong with having a talk with a dragon? Just imagine how cool that would be… chilling with a dragon. Casual racism is no joke to my flying reptilian friends, huh. Wait! Are dragons reptiles?
“Maybe this random woman will talk in her sleep and give us a better plan than whatever you’re thinking of,” Erina deeply sighed. “Honestly, Nate or Shogo would be a better fit than this sorry excuse of a—”
“Let’s call Gilgamesh!” Lloyd presented his last resort happily.
“Like hell, we will!!!” She shouted, “No way are we letting that condescending so-called king help us. He won’t talk to us even if we licked his shoes, and I sure as hell am not going to do that!”
It was quite a convincing point. The King of Fables would be the last person to ever be called in the time of need, especially since he was from Wonderland. And it wasn’t like Lloyd did not have that knowledge, in fact, he despised him as much as Erina did, but with the situation being as it was, he didn’t have much of a choice.
“Please… just… stop.” Erina rubbed her eyes, which were beginning to tire. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if she got a headache all of a sudden. “Why does it have to be a dragon? Why can’t we track something normal for once? Hell, since nothing is normal in this city, I’d rather take on a zombie-sized chicken instead of that monstrosity. Ugh… I hate this so much.”
Then it all clicked to Lloyd… the perfect plan.
His slight laughter started being audible with every passing second before turning into something completely maniacal. It was as if he was a self-proclaimed mad scientist who just discovered how to overcome the mystery of time paradoxes. And instead of talking of his plan to a dead phone like said scientist, he was just mumbling to himself.
Erina and Zoe were absolutely convinced that he had finally lost it. Erina was even thinking of restoring her energy just to knock him out — that would be a big enough win in her book.
Rather than consulting the others on what he should do, Lloyd went ahead with his plan with all the confidence in the world. He had the entire district pictured in his mind. Every street, exit, alleyway, and corner, he visualized it all, credit due to Zoe’s helping hand. From up top, aside from the many side roads, the town was essentially one huge cross with four exits.
— Spot on!
Lloyd began to act in a frantic and unusual manner; it worried both Erina and Zoe, who were standing a couple of feet away from him. He held his pen up high and started writing at his own pace instead of increasing his speed. With all this excitement within him about to swell up, he couldn’t hide his once again maniacal laughter, as if he was Frankenstein about to awaken his monster.
“Hey hey!” Erina felt that something wasn’t right, that Lloyd was on the verge of starting another disaster as per his fame. She ran to his side, “What in the world are you going to do?”
“Exactly what you thought up!” Lloyd answered, not stopping his writing.
“Huh?!” She was as confused as ever.
“You said it yourself…,” he sensed that she didn’t get what he meant so he needed to remind her, “What would you rather fight? A hundred chicken-sized zombies? Or ten zombie-sized chickens? Seems like a pretty easy answer for you, huh.”
“What are you even on about—” She could not comprehend the fact that he was seriously asking such a question. The last time she was asked something like that was back in elementary school. There was no time for games like that, but knowing Lloyd, he wasn’t going to settle unless he got an answer. “Ugh… I guess… ten zombie-sized chickens? Is that correct?”
“There is no correct answer actually…” He laughed.
“Then why did you—”
“It all depends on perspective!” He interrupted, “You see, you chose the latter answer because you’re afraid you’d be overwhelmed by the former. Most people would go for the same answer as well. It’s a matter of “picking your own size”... kinda. Having those little dead pests crawl all over is a nightmare for us. So what are the odds that’d be the same for that dragooun?”
Zoe stepped forward. “You’re not thinking of—”
“But I am! We’re the size of ants to that thing. Push an unstoppable horde at it, and we got it within our grasp.”
“So what?” Erina scratched her head, “You’re going to anger chickens and call the rest to attack or something? — Like in The Legend of Zelda.”
“Even better…”
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