A Tale of Tales

Chapter 3: New Friends

Shortly afterwards, John and Prota went home. Ami and Geo had tried to convince them to stay, but John knew it wasn't his place to be.

"You two have fun," he'd said. "I'll stop by sometime to visit, okay?"

Shortly afterwards, Geo would get absolutely stomped by Gwain in training and would head off to school with Ami and her friends, only to fight Luna once more. Since nothing would really happen, he had no intentions of showing up to that. Of course, he also wanted to avoid being put under Marlow's radar. He had nothing against it, but it was just one more thing he'd have to get out of the way, and so after a bit of thought, he'd realized it would be best to just go home.

The castle was somewhat far from the hill they'd built their little cabin on, so Prota had picked up John using magic and flown away. Gwain had stared in amazement as John gave a little wave to say goodbye.

"Home, sweet home. Not really, but I'm a bit stiff," John sighed, stretching.

Prota looked up at him with a somewhat stern look on her face.

"What? Ok, it's not like we can predict everything that's going to happen, especially not specifics. I didn't expect those dog things to be here, especially since Luna shouldn't know about us- right, Gwain told her about us. But still, I didn't think she'd send machines that would actually do damage. Maybe she overestimated us...?"

He shook his head and shrugged. It was way too much thinking for him, and if he were being honest, he'd rather just lie down and sleep, or eat, or play games, or whatever.

Unfortunately for John, the near future did not hold rest, because a mechanical growl came from behind.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

He pulled his revolver out as Prota readied her magic as four mechanical dogs approached, their LED eyes glowing a menacing red. John immediately fired, taking one out, but the other three sprang forwards, crashing into a wall of ice that Prota hastily formed. However, they were unharmed and jumped back, circling around for another opening.

"They're smart," John muttered. "And it doesn't look like they're being manually controlled. What the hell?"

There was a buzz of static, and the dogs froze, their eyes turning green, then resumed prowling.

"...contact. They're bringing in reinforcements. These aren't Luna's dogs, are they? Or... they're modified somehow. Maybe they've been tampered with...?"

"Prota!" John yelled. "There are more coming. I'll hold these three off, get something ready!"
"...that?"
"Yes, whatever, I don't really care! These things are after us specifically. I don't want a horde of them on our tail at all times, we need to get rid of them all at once!"

Prota nodded and began muttering a silent chant, a large magic circle appearing beneath her, slowly lighting up as her chant continued. The dogs sensed something was off and crouched, ready to spring.

"No, you don't," John frowned, spinning around and blasting another bullet. A loud explosion announced the death of yet another enemy, and the dogs knew they didn't have a lot of time left. They pounced forwards, intending to attack Prota and disrupt whatever she was doing, but John was faster. He shot another dog midair, but he wasn't fast enough for the last one.

"Shit," John cursed, then used his own body to tackle the last dog, knocking it off course. Immediately, it changed targets and started clawing at John, knocking his gun out of his hands in the process.

"Gah! Get off me, you piece of shit!" John yelled, kicking, but one doesn't kick a large metal dog off of them easily. All he could do was dodge the attack as they came.

"Prota! Ignore me! Focus on the spell!" he yelled, a bit of desperation entering his voice. Prota frowned a bit, her lip trembling, but she knew that she couldn't help him right now.