Robotic

As they stood around, waiting to see where they would land, Zeeth was sent back to another memory. He was in the lab room again ad ahead of him was a long road. The only source of light was the bright white glare from the ceiling and a bunch of targets had been set up on the road. He bent down, feeling nothing in his heart that he should've felt. No excitement or confusion, no happiness or sadness. He had a single thought, to break all of the targets as fast as he could as if his brain was a robot programmed to do that one thing.

A sudden clinking sound came from his legs and without looking down he knew what was happening. His shins were opening and changing like transformers. His heel unhinged and became spinning balls that allowed him to roll along the floor. His knees pooped open and unclicked a pair of springs. He bent down even further, as if having done this countless times and dashed forward, breaking the first target labeled one at the end of the road. He instantly halted himself with the spikes on the balls of his feet and dashed back to crush another target labeled 2. The skin on his finger slid back and revealed small, marble-like balls that pulsed open and crushed the targets placed around the room. A few were even on the ceiling and walls so he had to run up walls and hop into the sky to hit those. Running against the wall and hopping twenty feet into the air made the current him feel super cool and excited, but the past him had no such emotions. He was simply there to crush the targets in the fastest way possible and move on.

He did this twenty times, keeping up this incredible speed the entire way through. He stood back up after crushing the twentieth target and locked his legs back up, transforming all the robotic bits back to a human form.

His body parts closed back up seamlessly, with no sign that there was any kind of opening, to begin with. He pressed the parts that had been opened before and noticed it felt just like normal skin and bones. A door to his left opened and he was pulled out of his memory to the incoming meteor that got bigger every second.

"Page, I just got something! I think it can help, I'm gonna try it on these meteors!"

"Huh? What, what are you talking about? Oh! Oh, you mean your body! Yeah, try it out, I think they can withstand these. Just make sure to protect them with Gul and Mag."

He stood there, trying to simulate what his legs had done earlier. He tried to think about what he had to do to activate them and faintly tried to pull back the muscle memory he had earlier. 'I think I bent down like this, at a forty-five degrees angle, and hopped a little like this, no with my pink toe in? No, my heel was a bit more pulled up. There!'

Just as he pulled his heels up a little more and hopped, various clinks had gone off in his legs again. This time, none of his skin opened up and popped off, there were simply extremely faint noises that he wouldn't have heard had it not been directly from him. He wrapped his entire body, especially his hands, with a layer of Mag and covered it with the rocks from Gul, keeping the highest concentration near his fists.

The meteors were rocketing at them, getting dangerously close. He dived to the right to intercept the first meteor and the others had noticed his actions. Leia yelled, "what are you doing, Zeeth?"

"Boy, get away from there, a meteor is coming at your face!"

The meteor came straight down and his fist came up just as fast to break it. He created a ball of water to shoot at it which was vaporized instantly like the last time, but it slowed down the meteor from a distance this time and cooled it down a bunch. He created a few gems with Gul and caught the meteor. It shattered the gems, but he was able to hold onto the meteor and throw it to the ground. It was a lot heavier than he thought, but at least this time he didn't let it dig a hole into the ground.

He looked up and dashed to the closest meteor that he had memorized earlier and caught it again like last time. He did this a few more times, dashing around large judgment stick, noticing that the meteors were getting noticeably larger with each one. When he got to the last and largest one he fired another blob of water from his hands, but it hardly did anything. He had Gul create a rock to shoot at it, which was blasted to smithereens, but it slowed down the meteor considerably and also tilted its trajectory. Now it was flying straight at the judgment stick.

Tatio jumped at the rock just as Zeeth did and they both tried to attack it, Zeeth trying to grab it and Tatio trying to hit it with his staff. He turned his staff into a spoon that bent backward, holding a bunch of tension. It then sprung back and hit the meteor, launching it towards Zeeth who caught it with his hand and crushed it to bits. Gul and Mag slithered back in and hid.

"Zeeth, that was damn impressive, your skill must be pretty high level for you to move like that."

"Thanks but, geez, Tatio I didn't know you had that in you."

"I guess it was just that surge of adrenaline to protect the judgment stick. It has a lot of meaning in our village. It is said that our ancestors moved here and build this country around this pole, which had been moving ever since they found it. Despite living so close to a volcano, they thought this stick brought them luck and protection. It also has a very practical use, as you saw. I have many ties to this pole, I would proudly protect it in exchange for an arm or a leg."

"Let's go back to building those cannons before dad launches into his whole childhood speech again."

"What speech?! It's a loving story of my father-"

Loren, Leia, and Leardio all said at once, "who taught you life lessons with the pole."

Leardio created little hoverboards for everyone to stand on and they all glided back to the cannon making station. Alba told them that she would alert them whenever the next wave comes.

About an hour later, 8 cannons had been made, more than double what they had made in the hours before Leardio woke up, and Alba told them the next wave had about 36 meteors that were twice as large as the last round and they were going to appear where the last round had come as well, right on top of the judgment stick.

Tatio looked terrified at the prospect and tried to think of ways to protect the stick.

"Is there a way to move the stick? It doesn't look super hard to move it from the stone, considering it keeps moving around on it."

"No, they can't be moved. The magic bonding is so strong that they can't be separated by normal means. The stone can't be moved either, we tried during the Dragon Apocalypse to protect it, but it is way too deeply grounded in the floor."

"So then you just have to keep guarding it?"

"Yes, we have to. I'm sure the cannons can come in handy. We just need some kind of net or something to catch them if there are too many."

Leardio said, "I can create them, but they wouldn't be very strong. Meteors like that would be able to break them pretty easily, not to mention the holes it would have if I don't have enough time would be detrimental to us."

"Not to worry, I can help," Loren told him while weaving a bunch of rocks together and activating some kind of magic circle around his eye that was painted on his mask.

"Great, let's start now." Leardio pulled up sheets of metal from underground and around them and flattened them into long sheets of metal that were woven together like a basket. Loren filled those gaps with rocks and layered the top with another layer of pressed rock.

Zeeth asked, "Hey, I can help add layers to it too."

"Don't add too much, I'm not sure if I can carry much more."

"How about some pillars to hold it up for you."

"Yeah, that could work." Leardio pulled up four pillars and held up the corners of the platform. Zeeth then hopped on and grew a bunch of gems on top and filled the spaces between the gems with water. The center of the barrier began to curve downwards so he created a tall grey stone pillar within a gem to hold it up.