CHAPTER 9
THE VILLAGE IN THE TREES
As soon as he saw the ottsels emerging from the holes they hid in, it let out a blast of dark eco (it doesn't breath fire it breaths eco! That makes sense seeing it is a dark eco-dragon)
"Run!" Rambo said again.
"You don't have to tell me twice" Balder said and only just avoided the dark eco beam.
They climbed up the walls of the tunnel to get out in the open, constantly jumping into holes in the sand walls to avoid the dragon's eco-breath.
It was only just that they managed to get to the top, but now that they were in the open it was even easier for the dragon to hit them.
"It must run out of energy soon" Rambo said. "It's young. It can't have much muscle."
What XD lacked in muscle-power, it made up for with enthusiasm.
Every now and then it screamed with joy, proving it actually enjoyed this.
It flew down and before Balder had time to react, he felt a sharp pain in his tail.
The dragon had grabbed him, and tried to pull him backwards.
"Hey! Let go of my nephew abomination!" Rambo said and tried to hit the dragon with a stick.
XD's reaction was to pull Balder off his feet and toss him into a nearby tree.
Balder tried to get up and run away, but his tail hurt so much he lost balance, the dragon came charging at him again and this time it grabbed his left foot and arm.
"I said leave him!" Rambo yelled again.
But for X-D03, he might as well be shouting "go on", cause he had no intention of stopping.
But suddenly something happened that took away the smile on the dragon's face.
A large bolt hit it, as if someone had thrown a fire bolt at it.
The dragon hissed, dropped Balder and flew back to Tunnel Town.
Rambo and Balder looked in the direction where the bolt had come from.
There was an animal, fuzzy like them and holding a large black pipe.
The animal had a very round body, and a fluffy squirrel-tail sticking out back.
Its back legs were designed for jumping, with fur covering even the soles. (Zakura: just like me!)
The front feet were like hands; those hands were now gripping the black pipe, which obviously was a weapon.
The head looked like a rabbits head, complete with the long ears.
Around the head it had a lion mane, making it look quite majestic even though it was a few inches shorter than Balder and Rambo were.
"I can't believe it" Rambo said.
The animal put the pipe in a bag next to him and turned to the ottsels, mostly to Balder.
"Hey! Are you alright?" he asked.
"I… I really don't think so" Balder gasped.
The chinbit walked/jumped up to him and examined his tail and feet.
"This doesn't look good; you need to come back to the village. Hey you!" he shouted to Rambo. "Give me a hand".
Rambo ran up to the two and lifted Balder's feet and tail while the chinbit took the front end with one hand.
With the other he pulled out a tiny box with an antenna sticking out of it.
"Hello? This is Lio, I've got an injured ottsels here who needs immediate medical care, he's been attacked by one of the dark maker's new toys" he said into the box.
And as a surprise for the two ottsels, the box answered back.
"We'll come with a medical transport as quickly as possible, but right now everyone's occupied. You'll have to walk towards the village and we'll meet you" it said.
"Thank you" Lio said and put the box back in the pocket on his belt.
"A communicator" he said as he saw the ottsels' puzzled faces. "Helps me communicate with other chinbits even at the other end of the planet."
"Amazing!" Rambo said.
"Better save your excitement for later, here's the transport" Lio said.
Something that looked like a small flying house came towards them in a hurry.
It stopped dead in front of the two ottsels and one chinbit.
A couple of other chinbits jumped out of the transport.
"Oh no. this sure doesn't look good" one of them said as he helped Balder get into the transport. "We need to get to the hospital this instant. But still I don't think we'll be able to save this leg".
"Can't save it? What do you mean?" Balder asked.
"It means we'll have to amputate it. Your tail and left arm looks bad too but the right hand we might be able to save" the chinbit said casually as the transport started moving.
"Amputate? You mean cutting it off?" Balder said, sounding slightly frightened.
"Don't worry my new friend. You'll get used to it. We might not even have to go that far but we'll see… oh, we're there" the chinbit said.
The transport had stopped and its doors were opened to a sight Balder and Rambo had never seen anything like.
It was a chinbit city, looked much like the precursor cities only more advanced and all the houses were built into the enormous trees.
The house they had stopped by looked much bigger than the others.
The front sign said "Lion Head Clan Hospital" in the ancient precursor language (Chinbits and ottsels use the same letters makes it easier for ME, who doesn't have to make up anything new :p)
"Whoa, this is huge" Rambo said.
"That's so chinbits who are attacked by predators doesn't have to die before there's any doctor available" Lio explained. "We have gotten far in medical research; many chinbits actually make a living out of working at the hospital."
"They work here? But how about when they try to gather food? Won't that be very exhausting if they have to work all day at the same time?" Rambo asked.
"Of course not. They just buy food from the food-gatherers, they have a store lower down the branches" Lio said and pointed at a smaller building bellow.
The sign on this house said "Left Branch Leaves", and a lot of chinbits, young and old, jumped in and out of the doors.
Inside the hospital it looked nothing like the wooden hut it was on the outside. All the walls were white, with long corridors stretching here and there through the large trunk; some even looked as if they went through the branches, and linked this tree to many others around.
Balder was placed on a bed with wheels, and was taken to a room called "Predator-injuries".
Three doctors and one nurse helped doing the operation, and in a matter of hours Balder was awake, he had been anesthetized throughout the operation, now with only one arm, one foot and no tail.
"How am I supposed to live with this?" he asked the doctors. "You might as well let the dragon eat me!"
"Relax Balder. Our technicians are making artificial limbs as we are talking" the doctor said. "I promise you that tomorrow you'll be running around like you were six years old again".
"I am five" Balder commented.
"Still, you'll be fine" the doctor said and left.
Rambo had been standing by Balder's bed during the whole operation, not moving an inch, and was now staring at his nephew as if he was an extremely interesting TV-show. (If the ottsels had TV)
Balder sighed.
"Go on. Say it. I look ridiculous don't I?" he asked.
"I was about to say "psychically challenged", but if you prefer to be called ridiculous I can…"
"Shut it" Balder growled.