"Wooooaaaaaah!"

"Oh no, again?! Brother, are you alright?"

Ramirez stifled a laugh as the Flap Flyer's legs buckled under the strain Otto had been putting them through under repeated hard landings. He shook his head and sighed. It's so difficult for them to get into the sky here. I almost feel sorry for them. He wondered why that was so. Were Moon Stones more rare here? Of course, there was also the extra power a ship's engine needed to exert to remain aloft here too, for some reason...

He turned as he saw motion at the window to Dr. Nutmeg's house to see Vanilla and an old man with glasses, a white button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves and a leather apron with several pockets walk up to the window. The old man - apparently Dr. Nutmeg - also had a gray beard and was bald on top of his head, but wore a bushy fringe of gray hair below. Dr. Nutmeg looked out towards Otto and Willie, the sound of their accident having drawn the two of them to the window, and shook his head.

"They don't know when to give up," Dr. Nutmeg said in a grouchy sounding voice. "Trotmobiles can't fly. I didn't design 'em that way."

He suddenly seemed to notice Ramirez staring back at them. "Hmph... And who's this?"

"I met him on my way here," Vanilla replied. "His name is Ramirez." Ramirez nodded silently to Dr. Nutmeg.

"Hmph, okay, whatever," Dr. Nutmeg grumbled, then looked at the Earl Grey II. "Is that your Trotmobile? I can tell you've been fighting. You ran into some bandits, did you?" Ramirez's attention was roused by that comment. Bandits? They have outlaws here too, then? He also looked at Vanilla in a new light. If he was able to defeat bandits with his Earl Grey II, there must be more to him than met the eye. Perhaps he could be useful...

Dr. Nutmeg stared at Vanilla's Trotmobile wistfully for a bit, then said, "I really hoped that Trotmobiles would be used to make people's lives easier... But, I guess using science to help mankind is only in the movies. Trotmobiles are machines... They can be good or bad, it depends on the rider." Vanilla frowned slightly as he considered Dr. Nutmeg's words. "I wish I could change that, but it just isn't possible," Dr. Nutmeg continued, then seemed to shake himself from his reverie and looked back at Vanilla.

"Anyway, back on track. Come back if you start to feel sick. You don't need a letter next time." He started a moment, then reached into one of his apron pockets and pulled out a small paper bag. "Oh, and you should take this, since you're here. It's Rosemary's medicine." He handed it to Vanilla, and continued, "Let Connie know I said hi. And, have her stop by every once in a while."

What an old fool, ran through Ramirez's mind as Vanilla gave his farewell and headed for the door. Science is useful only to build and maintain power. 'Good' and 'bad' are merely titles the weak label the strong with. He glanced back at the Earl Grey II. Perhaps these Trotmobiles could be useful to Lord Galcian and the Armada.

--

Some time later Vanilla and Ramirez were just passing out of the large fields of Vision Ranch where various livestock, mostly sheep, grazed and up an incline to where two yellow Trotmobiles with construction frames were grading a section of ground and laying down steel rails secured to wooden crossbeams.

Ramirez leaned forward in his seat and stared at the tracks in surprise. Those are rail car tracks!, he thought incredulously. How did they come up with those? He glanced back at the construction Trotmobiles thoughtfully, then remembered the underwater ship that sank the Patrol Ship in Lake Luminoso. Hmm, even if they aren't able to fly it looks like they've been able to develop their technology along different paths. I wonder what else besides underwater ships they might have that Valua doesn't?

"That's a railroad," Vanilla commented, and Ramirez turned to look at him. "I guess you wouldn't know about them if you were cut off from the outside world."

"Yes... A railroad..." Ramirez said slowly, then turned his face away from Vanilla to hide his discomfort. Thankfully, he'd mistaken his interest in the tracks for ignorance. I must be more careful.

Vanilla continued piloting the Earl Grey II over a rail bridge and the veered back to the grass to the side of the tracks. Off to the left was a canyon, and further ahead Ramirez saw barren looking mesas rising up above the hills.

"This is Wagtail Canyon," Vanilla commented as they passed into an area where dry dirt replaced grass on either side of the railroad. "I would've been out to see Dr. Nutmeg sooner, but I spent a few days here digging up fossils for the Nefroburg Museum." He gestured to the left arm frame of his Trotmobile, which had a large pickaxe attached to it.

Ramirez raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Trotmobiles can be used for mining too?"

"Sure!" Vanilla said, nodding. "I've also seen them used for farming and hauling cargo."

"That's... impressive," Ramirez replied, and leaned back in his seat. These Trotmobiles are sounding more and more useful. Instead of all the different machines Valua has to build for various tasks, these Trotmobiles can be used for all of them if you install different parts for them.

He was roused from his thoughts when he heard a thump and felt the ground shake slightly under the Earl Grey II. "Hmm? What was that?"

Vanilla was frowning as he brought the Trotmobile onto a railbridge and continued on towards what Ramirez saw were city walls with towers in the distance. "I don't know," Vanilla said. "That didn't happen when I came through before--"

They had reached the middle of the bridge when they suddenly heard a distant sharp rumble. Vanilla turned the Trotmobile to look as the driver of another Trotmobile below turned away from where he'd been chipping away at a canyon wall to also look. "Something's coming this way!" the driver below exclaimed, and started hurrying towards the noise.

Vanilla suddenly walked his Trotmobile off the edge of the bridge and Ramirez clutched the side of the cockpit in alarm for a moment before he heard thrusters kick in from below. They landed relatively softly on a low rise below and turned towards the noise again, this time at a better vantage point. They could see where the digger's Trotmobile was looking around a curve on the ground below, then he yelled "What the--?!" just before he got thrown backwards into the canyon wall. It was followed an instant later by a round disc faced with two concentric circles of claws spinning in different directions; it was followed by rising and falling platforms as it walked along the canyon on insect-like legs, arranged much like a rail car.

"Hold on!" Vanilla yelled as cannons atop the platforms started launching shells towards the rise the Earl Grey II was standing on. He maneuvered his Trotmobile for all it was worth, dodging the shells as they fell in towards them. As soon as the front platform neared the rise, Vanilla gunned the thrusters and sent the Trotmobile flying upward and onto it. He immediately swung it's pickaxe at the cannon and destroyed it with a forward and back swing. He quickly swung the Earl Grey II around to the other platform and launched it to the next platform with the thrusters, where he repeated the process and destroyed another cannon with his pickaxe.

Despite himself, Ramirez was impressed. Vanilla was displaying considerable skill in working what looked to be some complicated controls, piloting the Trotmobile as if it was an extension of himself. Not only that, here he was using a much smaller machine to outmanuever and deal considerable damage to a large machine it seemed was specifically designed for combat.

Vanilla finally leaped to the rear platform and destroyed the last cannon, at which point the large rail car-like machine abruptly halted and started spewing steam all along it. He pointed the Earl Grey II's other arm, which had a tube attached to it, down towards one of the sections spewing steam and fired a small shell into it. As soon as it connected, explosions started rocking the machine from front to back, and Vanilla launched his Trotmobile back to the rise in the center.

"Phew!" Vanilla exclaimed, and grinned over at Ramirez. "That was a close one."

Ramirez looked at the twisted metal rubble of the machine, then back at Vanilla. "That was... impressive, Vanilla," he said. "How long have you been piloting Trotmobiles?"

Vanilla suddenly looked a bit sheepish. "Less than a week actually," he confessed. "But I read the user's manual."

Ramirez stared at him in astonishment, but before he could say anything a voice called out, "Heeey! Everyone, get over here!"

"That sounds like the guy that thing threw into the canyon wall," Vanilla said, looking surprised. "Sounds like he made it." He hopped the Trotmobile down to the ground and started hurrying towards where the large machine had emerged, followed by several other Trotmobiles wielding drills and hammers - digging tools.

When they all reached the area, they saw that the machine had emerged from the wall, having mined through with the forward attachment with it's digging claws. Exposed were an assortment of strange indentations and sections of what looked like bone that left Ramirez confused, but had Vanilla and the others staring wide-eyed.

"It's huge!" one of the diggers exclaimed. "It... it's incredible... What a discovery!" the man who called them over said reverently. "We finally found it! This is the fossiliferous stratum we've been looking for." He smiled and nodded towards Vanilla in the pilot's seat of the Earl Grey II. "You deserve all the credit."

He suddenly looked around at the other diggers and said, "Everyone listen up... This stratum belongs to him. We need to continue our search for other stratums." He looked back at Vanilla, continued, "This excavation's in your hands. I bet you'll unearth something huge. We're all looking forward to it. Okay everyone, back to work!"

Vanilla stared at the fossiliferous stratum with a bemused expression as the diggers sent their Trotmobiles off to the other parts of Wagtail Canyon. Ramirez eyed the stratum, then asked, "This is a discovery?" Discoveries to him meant lost landmarks, strange creatures or long lost pieces of Old World technology. A wall of weird indentations and dusty bones hardly seemed worth getting excited over.

"Well, yeah," Vanilla replied, and gestured towards the stratum. "The artifacts I dug up before are pieces of history. The Museum will pay a lot of UR for rare things to exhibit."

Ramirez frowned. "UR?" he asked hesitantly.

Vanilla blinked at him, surprised. "You don't know what UR are? It's money, the currency of this country." He pulled out a copper coin and held it up in his hand. Ramirez examined it and, sure enough, he saw a 'UR' minted onto its surface with a horizontal line running through the middle of the letters.

"I see... So the Nefroburg Museum will pay a lot of UR for those things in the stratum?"

"Yeah. Except those fossils look like they're going to be a lot bigger... I should head back into the city and get a wider flatbed to carry them," Vanilla said, then turned the Earl Grey II around and started heading back up along the canyon.

--

As they neared the city gate, Vanilla turned to him and asked, "What are you planning to do when you get to Nefroburg, anyway?"

"I'm not sure," Ramirez said hesitantly as the gate opened and the Earl Grey II started walking in. "I suppose I'll look around and--"

"Hold it right there!"

Vanilla and Ramirez looked forward sharply to see three pink and purple Trotmobiles blocking the road; they seemed to be giant cannons with legs and looked much like a side turret on a typical Valuan ship. They had slanted red lights just below the cannon, obviously fashioned to look like eyes. On the upper right of the shield was a logo of a stylized red elephant on a purple background.

"The Killer Elephants control Nefroburg now," said a man standing on foot in front of the three Trotmobiles. He was a weathered looking man with a dark beard who wore a brown hat, goggles with some sort of attachment over the left eye, a red jacket with the same elephant logo on the right breast over a white shirt, fingerless gloves and brown pants. "Auto and Tromobiles are strictly prohibited for civies. We're gonna have to confiscate your ride."

As a look of alarm came to Vanilla's face, he continued, "Don't worry, we'll trick it out like ours, and... ride it." He laughed unpleasantly, then turned to the others behind him and ordered, "Take them away!"

Ramirez started to reach for his sword, then looked at the three large cannons pointing at them and thought better of it. Well, this is a cleverly staged ambush, he thought sourly as he and Vanilla climbed down from the cockpit and were surrounded by armed Killer Elephant guards. They immediately started rushing them further into Nefroburg, shoving when they went too slow to suit them.