The wind passing by my face with a cool breeze and a mix of tiny rocks crushing beneath me while walking down a narrow pathway had me surprisingly feeling comfortable. The road led down away from the center of the village and connected through a forest as it seemed on the map. Tall wooden trees swung their arms back and forward following the movement of the dancing wind. There were even small bugs down below, building their own community having a pool made out of a dirty old bottle, and using sticks as platforms. 

The turning gears in my brain had me imagining I could have been relaxing out here planning some of my future hero business since the calming nature does clear up my mind a bit, but I still had to walk to the academy of blandness. 

While I was hoping for something exciting to happen like a dragon appearing from above, ready for a beatdown, my eyes instead took a glance at the side of the road and noticed something moving in the distance between the trees. Soon I saw ahead of me multiple roads connecting to the main one I was walking on, with a couple of other kids appearing walking down the pathway. 

A few minutes of walking passed by and I could see what appeared to be a large stone building at the end of the trail. Within those few minutes of walking, the road to the school started to be filled with kids talking and yelling over each other in somewhat excitement and curiosity about what the school was going to be like or whispering about what was happening at the market early.   

“Eh, have you heard of the lockdown happening at the market today?” One of the kids asked another person as I listened from behind. “Uh, I heard it wasn’t even a lockdown anyway and it was just some regular inspections. Am more focused on improving crafting skills at the academy if anything.” 

From hearing everyone's conversation nearby, it seemed like they were more thrilled about going to school and learning about the foundations of crafting as it is quite the opposite of my view on the school. But I still have hope of a dragon still showing so I won’t die of boredom, but instead being in the blazing glory of a fight from protecting everyone. 

The school was appearing much more clearly to my vision as the rest of the camp looked pretty decent and the main building was shockingly large in size. The walls around the building had a strong interior and smooth look to them as if they were almost looking like pure steel. The front gates of it had largely shaped statues mainly made out of hard metal, posing in fighting positions while their metal hands, held the roof high in the air. The roof itself looked even more neat and strong with a stone bend between it, and other floors could be rooms below it to my guesses. 

I had to admit the school was good-looking but still didn’t change the fact that it was still going to be a boring day of rotting away at a desk. In fact, the teachers here were most likely- Wait! There was no way. Could that be? No, there was no way what I saw was possible. I must be seeing things. 

As I walked along with the rest of everybody else towards the towering front doors, we all took a glaze behind us from hearing a loud weird sound and could see a large shadow hidden in the clouds above. “Ich-ich-ich-ich-ich” was the sound being heard from high in the sky and I know this is crazy, but it almost sounded like steam being made. 

“Wait, I know that shape in the clouds, it's a-” “Dragon!” The rest of the students shouted over me in panic and shock as I was more eager than anything to prove my might. I couldn’t actually tell what the dragon's appearance was, but I could tell it was massive by its shadow, buried deep into the foggy air above. By my guess, it was the size of the schoolyard and it wanted to bring its fury down on one person: me. That right, I wanted a dragon to appear and fate must have heard me calling out for my destiny of being a hero. Now, I will fulfill that order.

“Don’t worry everyone, I know this isn’t how we want to spend the first day of school especially me, but I will save all of us . . . No need to thank me,” I said proudly and stood in front of the fearful crowd and faced towards the winged beast shadow, who was now circling around the school. I glazed back at everyone for their relieved faces, but I was instead met with expressions that said “Are you insane?” or “We are so dead.”. Despite them not being grateful for having the most defined skilled hero by their side, I stood my ground and watched the shadow get closer and closer, while students were getting so worried that some started to run away to the woods nearby. 

Ich-Ich-Ich-Ich-Ich. Those weird sounds came from the beast once more and its shadow was only a short distance from us. It was casting itself onto school as it flew in too fast for me to see. Boom! It used its fast speed to crash onto the ground, filling the area with dust and small tremors. I coughed and saw my vision go dark by the wind carrying all the dirt into my path. My hand swiftly blocked my eyes for a moment. My legs shook from the vibrations traveling along the ground, almost lost balance. I could hear weird sounds more clearly and to my surprise, it reminded me of gears turning in a machine for some reason. I could see other nearby students waving their arms in the air, trying to clear up dust. My eyes focus on the glaze of the winged beast, now hiding amongst the clouds of dirt mixed with smoke.   

“Hey, am I the only one who hears the sound of a spinner going off?” I asked out loud until I heard a sarcastic and rude response from behind me. “That actually is more like a running steam engine, oh great, powerful hero. In fact, I can smell some smoke in the air coming from it and you would’ve noticed as well if you stop playing pretend.” 

“Pretend,” they said as if I'm not the only one who is activating, trying to save everyone by striking the beast down. They and everyone else will rethink their statements when my plan of total awesomeness folds into action without a certain. 

I really wasn’t worried about the chance of being turned into ashes since Udo did pack my bag and I knew he would put the one tool that was commonly used for fixing most problems since ancient times: a classic hammer. With my hands swimming the waves of clutter tools, I release a small hammer from inside the lifeless fabric stomach on my back. The hammer might be small, but it seems right for this kind of problem. 

“I hope you're ready because I'm going to nail some sense into that empty head.”  Not only do I have the best skills to fight, but also have the best hero puns that put fear into all my foes. But, I had no time to make more jokes; the one right in front of me had to be taken care of first. 

As my legs made a quick haste toward the beast hiding, my eyes took more notice at two beams of light suddenly shining from above its foggy domain. The bright spark followed my movement as the sun followed our two moons in the sky. The dark shadow of the winged beast didn’t move a muscle I pulled my hammer backward for a hard attack at what seemed like its chest area and approached closer to its space.

“Ha! Am not falling for your trick of playing dumb,” I said sarcastically knowing a dragon would try to play with its meal and strike when am wasn’t looking. I started swinging like no tomorrow “Take that and that and that and have one of these, you big tyrant!”. 

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Wait, am I surely hearing that correctly? Wouldn’t I hear a big roar of pain from it instead of the sound of metal? Let me just make sure I hear that right the first couple of times. Bang! Well, is this surprising?

Ich-Ich-Ich-Ich-Ich. More sounds of machinery and gears were coming off from the beast and sounded more clearly like a machine being overworked. Before I could even think what was standing before me at this point, I was quickly sent flying backward by what felt like a strong gust of wind but was more likely a shockwave. I felt a small amount of pain hitting my body as I went across the ground like skipping stones across the water. My arms and legs got twisted a bit and my head hurt a bit more when I finally crashed into something. It wasn’t the school building for sure, as I would be hurting a lot more.

“Ugh… don’t worry everyone, I am not hurt too badly.”  “You're going to be even more hurt if you don’t get up.” Said a voice from down below. I stood up to see the faces of a few annoyed students who were picking themselves off the ground. Now it may seem bad that I accidentally bump into the bystanders, but that was only because I was caught off guard. Am going to beat whatever this thing is and put it to shame. 

Steam and fog slowly slowly blew away across the schoolyard and disappeared into the air. The steam stopped flowing around the sky as it was only small streams of it and revealed the true form of my enemy. The beast that had everyone terrified wasn’t even a beast to begin with: it was a machine. A giant dumb machine the whole time. I had asked for a real dragon to face, not some giant bucket-shaped one. Get it right next time, fate. 

What stood just a few blocks away was one of the most disappointing things that I laid my eyes on and that isn’t counting what Udo did to me this morning. 

The metal machine had a body that looked like hard steel and the rest of it had to be made of different kinds of materials by my guess. Its arms and legs had a brown color to them with a flexible look. The feet and claws were shining off the sunlight and were most definitely sharpened to the max. From the top of its body, was its large head with glowing glass for eyes, and rows of metallic fangs were sticking out within its mouth. On the back, it had to be one of the strongest fabric-made wings to even carry it in the sky. The entire machine was just standing still on all four of its metal and showing no sign of movement. Yes, it was somewhat cool for its size, but still at the end of the day just a walking pile of junk. 

“Wow. . . Look at that astonishing design and how perfectly made it is!” 

“Yeah, and I bet those bolts had to be a special kind and be hammered into a flawless clockwise spin for those wings to function right.”

“I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting a closer look at those Polish claws for studying.”

“Yeah me too.” “I'm coming with you.” “I want to explore its full design as well.”  

Wait what? A couple of minutes ago, everyone was terrified out of their mind by the thing and now they want to go see it. Then it attacked me as well. Am the hero here who deserves their attention and not the flying garbage that clearly tried to kill us all. 

I took a deep sigh and followed along with everyone who was getting excited over something that was a complete waste of time. Even the kids that ran into the woods early, came back with a cheerful smile on their face upon taking a glance of it.