Chapter 90: Cutest Helper Ever
"I really don’t appreciate your attitude and language. I am going to see for myself," pouted Sha Shou. I was trying my damn best to hold onto the snake, dragon, thing that was dragging me through the jungle in its attempt to get away from whatever was chasing it.
"By all means," I said, still waiting on the toe blades. There was no way I was going to be able to activate the blades through my wrist unit, so I would just have to wait.
"What the hell is going on?" demanded Sha Shou.
"I am being dragged by an Agkistrodon rhodostoma through the jungle. If I want to get off of the ride, I need to be able to climb to the top of it and press the off button," I answered as if I hadn’t said the same words more than a few times.
"Oh, well, activating toe blades," said Sha Shou.
"Thank you," I managed to get out. I really needed to find her something to do so I could get the other guy back.
I couldn’t feel the blades emerging from the top of my boots, but I definitely noticed a difference in stability. I quickly retracted my wrist blades, raised my arm as high up as I could reach, and then reinserted them back into the scales of the creature.
I then pulled first one foot out of the flesh of the snake and then, once it was in its new position, removed the other before trying to push/pull myself into a higher position. It was similar to ice climbing if I wasn’t able to use one of my arms. However, since I had no way of holding on with my left arm, it was a slow climb.
I was lucky that the thing was too terrified of something else to pretty much ignore my presence.
Finally able to get to the off button, I dug my toe blades between two scales to hang on. Raising my wrist blades, I punched down onto their reverse scale as hard as I could.
The creature collapsed into a heap but continued to slide forward a bit more before coming to a stop. I looked behind me to try and see what had scared it so badly. The only thing I saw was Night scampering up the body and back onto his familiar place on my back.
"Did you scare it?" I asked, looking at his cute six eyes that couldn’t seem to all blink at the same time. He frantically nodded his head. I smiled in satisfaction and gave him a little pet under his fangs. "Such a good boy. You are the cutest helper ever! I don’t suppose that you will be willing to find more for me? I only need one more like this one and four more of the first one. Think you can help?"
Night chirped and jumped down. He scampered into the bushes, and I quickly put another tracking device. Hopefully, I had enough to be able to get all the snakes into the ship. "Jun Li, another one for you," I said as I jumped down off of its back. I didn’t know how tractor beams worked, but I didn’t want to be on top of the snake just in case it brought me up too.
"What? You can talk to Jun Li, but not to me? I am feeling a bit underappreciated for my contributions right now," said Sha Shou coming through my helmet. I sighed, wondering if I could deprogram an AI to get rid of the overly dramatic programming.
"I am sorry, Sha Shou," I said with a sigh. "Thank you for activating my toe blades. Maybe I can find you a ship like Jun Li to be able to merge with. Being simply my armor is too much of an insult to someone of your grandeur. Maybe you should go through Jun Li’s databases and find a ship to your liking? Leave my armor to the other program to handle."
"I think I like that idea. I will get back to you once I have found a suitable vessel to hold me." There was a click, and I crossed my fingers that Sha Shou had gone to do just that.
I breathed a sigh of relief and watched the snake disappear into thin air. Three down, five to go. And with Night helping, it would go a lot faster.
I disengaged my armor long enough for me to find my water bottle and take a long drink of water. Unfortunately for me, it was very quickly empty. I would need to find a safe source of water if I wanted to survive much longer.
A good rule of thumb was to go by threes; three months without food, three days without water, three minutes without air.
By that standard, I would be fine to go without water until I returned to my ship.
Psyching myself up to go without food or water for a while, I quickly activated my armor when I heard more rustling coming toward me.
Fuck my life.
When I had given my list to Night, I thought it was going to be more of a ’please keep this in mind for when you come across another snake’ not ’bring them to me all at once.’ I might be more than a little screwed.
I stared at the five giant serpents coming at me at their top speed, crashing through large trees like they were nothing more than a paper screen. I quickly activated my anti-gravity boosters, letting them shoot me as high into the air as I could. Spotting my first target, I turned off my boosters and let myself be plunged back down to earth, my wrist blades locked onto the off button.
First one dead. But now was not the time to relax. There were still four left. Throwing a tracking device onto the creature, I reactivated my anti-gravity settings and went to chase down the next snake. Hopefully, Jun Li will be smart enough to pick it up without me having to ask him to.
My eyes focused on my second target; I didn’t see a third Bothrops lanceolatus veering toward me. Its head hit me in the ribs, sending me into one of the trees. There was enough force behind that blow that I actually had a hard time catching my breath.
Fuck, was I going to die because my helper was a little too helpful?
