“[warpFactor(2)].”

I’d pointed myself at a distant mountain range and engaged the Blink Engine at warp 2. I’d set the function up so that it would initiate a [Blink()] jump at 10 meters multiplied by the input amount. It would then loop that action 5 times per second for as long as I had mana, or as long as I kept my will focused on keeping the function running. If I broke focus, it would stop looping as a fail safe.

If my math was right then I should be chain jumping at about 220 miles per hour. The strobing effect was even worse than when I’d tried warp 1 heading straight up. Catching a glimpse of my surroundings every 20 meters was super disorienting, I could barely register my position and what was around me before another jump kicked in and it changed again.

Thanks to the strobe effect, I only had fractions of seconds to react when a huge, purple shape suddenly replaced the horizon in front of me. The function cut out as expected, but my wind turbines were still engaged at full thrust and I slammed into a meaty, armor-scaled wall. If I had [Blink]ed through this meat wall like I had as Cyclone through that wyvern, I was certain that I wouldn’t survive it.

As it was, my nose cone smashed into the meat wall and crumpled in, destroying my forward facing camera. From my side cameras I could see the length of a massive body that was crunching in from the impact of my hit. Wide open skies and I managed to get into a front-end collision with an honest to Primus dragon.

I transformed from the jet mode back to armor mode, and held on to the large scales while getting my balance on the wind turbines. Each scale was as large as my hand and several appeared to be damaged and falling out from my impact. Compared to the overall size of the beast it wasn’t much, but a damaged area of unprotected flesh roughly the size of a large shield lay exposed and unprotected by those thick scales. The dragon’s huge head came around to inspect what had dared hit it. Its head alone was larger than IronHide. Iridescent scales glistened and shifted colors across its face and horns the size of trees sprouted from the top of its head. Rows of sharp spines sprouted from between the horns to follow along the ridge of its spine to — I assume — the rest of its body.

I had been expecting slitted eyes like you always see in movies, but instead I only saw bottomless pools of inky blackness. In a way, I was reminded of the eyes of a hawk or an eagle. Its mouth was sort of reptilian but also sort of beak shaped. I was fascinated by what I was seeing more than any other creature I’d seen in this world so far.

The dragon was so large that from my position at its flank, I hadn’t even noticed the wings until they flapped downward. Massive doesn’t begin to cover it. From under the wing, it was hard to gauge but it felt like the thing was large enough to serve as a tent big enough to cover AutomaTown.

It was so beautiful, rows of teeth glistened like crystals as wisps of what looked like blue flame danced around its mouth and coalesced... gaining... in strength... and size... AH CRAP!

I cut the power to my turbines and dropped like a rock as a torrent of blue flame roared over my head. The dragon must not have realized that it had an exposed area and I think it hurt itself with its flame. It flinched and a shiver shook throughout its body. If it was annoyed before, it looked downright pissed now.

The dragon turned in the air to come after me but it was about as agile as a blimp. Nope, I did not want to fight this thing. The ground was rapidly getting closer as I lost altitude and the dragon had come about teeth first. I angled back the way I’d come and engaged the Blink Engine again.

“[warpFactor(3)].”

The hit to my mana was a lot stronger than the first two runs. When I first tried it, the cost was at about 100 mana per jump. The second at warp 2 was 200 mana per jump so I expected this one to be 300. Instead I was hit for 600 mana 5 times per second. I still had plenty but it occurred to me that I wasn’t recovering my mana anywhere even close to the rate that I had been using it up with what all I had been doing.

I cut the function off after a 3 second burst and noticed that my mana level was currently at 3 Billion which was an incredible amount but I started out with 5 Billion when I got to this world. I pushed forward using the wind turbines which were eating up my mana at 25 per second, each. I was naturally recovering at a rate of 1 per second, but it clearly wouldn’t be enough to keep up.

I risked a look behind me to see the dragon looking around confused. Letting it find me would be a terrible idea so I dropped until I was just above the trees. I wasn’t sure if Elita would laugh at me or hit me when I told her about this. Maybe I should keep the whole dragon part to myself.

Below me I could see my workshop and the Range as I headed back home. As I got closer to my starting point, I realized that I had no means of slowing myself down. I cut the power to my turbines and tried to pull my legs forward like you always see in the movies and cartoons but without any sort of positioning thrusters or lift pushing on large wings I just ended up jackknifing myself in the air with my butt pointing skyward.

I thrust out my arms to try to correct my positioning but only succeeded in throwing myself into some sort of aerial tumble. I managed to get my feet under me just in time to hit the ground and immediately went ass over tea kettle, as they say. I skipped like a stone across the Range, bouncing on the ground as I flipped and smacked into the ground repeatedly.

My world was replaced with the internal view of a washing machine as everything spun and thumped and crashed. Sky. Ground. Sky. House. Sky. Fence. Ground. Tree!

“[Blink()]!”

I jumped just a short distance off line and missed hitting the tree but I bounced right into the forest outside of the village boundary, tripping against a large root that put me flipping through the air sending my momentum upward. I smashed back into the ground and bounced twice before coming to a rest in a little gorge of my own making.

I tried sitting up but found that I couldn’t. I looked around me but only the left side of my HUD or Heads Up Display seemed to be working. The right side was just blackness. It was time for a fresh perspective so I brought out Carnivac and connected to the proxy.

Carnivac looked down and saw me laying in a deep groove in the forest floor, rocks and roots pushed out of the way. To say he saw me is actually a bit generous. What he saw was the top half of me, less one arm and half of my face. Carnivac looked around and saw parts of my CloudBurst armor strewn across the Range. Carefully, he pulled me up out of the ground, I was hemorrhaging energon at a rapid rate and was having difficulty staying focused enough to keep control of my proxies.

I had Alfred apologize to Number 17, who he was conversing with prior to the crash, and shut him and Rom down. I wanted to shut Sentinel down as well but had him run and get Jackie and come over. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay focused. Carnivac carried me to my workshop and put me down on the work table while I started shutting down all the damaged systems to halt the bleeding.

Sentinel came into the shop holding one of my legs in one arm and the rest of my lower half in the other. I couldn’t find my missing arm, it was probably in a tree or something. I [Inventory]ed what CloudBurst armor was still attached and had Sentinel line up my detached parts where they should go. I could feel my repair systems kicking in and slowly trying to reattach the parts.

Things were feeling really heavy now and just trying to think was getting sluggish. Carnivac dropped to the floor like a marionette that had its strings cut followed by Sentinel. I could just make out Jackie saying something to me. Something about being okay and that things would be fine. Then everything went blue.