The local wildlife, which was composed largely of goats, chickens, and a few stray dogs, had fled the loud noises and panicked flailing that had accompanied Charlemagne’s fishing expedition. Now that things were calming down, a few animals began to return. The rooster took the opportunity to mate with all the hens he spotted, ignoring the vehicles that occasionally flew past the carnage as well as those that stopped and then turned around. Unfortunately, the peaceful feeling that came from a full stomach and plentiful mates ended all too soon. The military had regrouped, and they were out for blood.
The modified trucks arrived first, their 50-caliber machine guns blazing. Due to the rough terrain, the sheer speed of the trucks’ approach, and the inexperience of the gunners, the rooster remained untouched by the barrage for quite some time. But the sheer volume of fire meant that eventually, a stray bullet did glance off his feathers, proving the worth of the Ironskin skill. Upon noticing that he was under attack, Charlemagne stopped what he was doing and looked around. A pair of small goats had fallen to the furious salvo of bullets, their broken bodies bleeding out on the sandy ground just next to the road. The animals that had escaped unscathed had already fled, leaving the rooster and his most recent mate alone on the asphalt. With uncharacteristic tenderness, the rooster picked up the hen and shielded her with his body while he carried her behind an abandoned half-finished brick structure. Then he stalked back to the middle of the road, opened his wings as wide as they would go, and inhaled deeply to crow his defiance at his enemy. That was when the artillery shells struck.
The first shell slammed into the sunbaked asphalt, sending a geyser of shattered pavement and sand high into the air. A second followed almost instantly, its explosion spraying beach sand and bits of seashells everywhere. The third and fourth landed in two separate piles of trash and debris, making scraps of plastic rained like confetti all over the area. The final shell struck dead center on the cracked road only a few feet from Charlemagne, hiding the rooster in a cloud of fire, smoke, and crushed asphalt. The explosion sent the rooster flying, barely clinging to consciousness as his body reeled from the damage.
The almost direct hit from the artillery shell left Charlemagne in bad shape. Had it not been for the protection that his Ironskin skill afforded, the hit would have been fatal. As it was, the young rooster was violently concussed. Blood poured from his ears, his nostrils, and even his mouth as he lay dazed on the dry, hot sand. Everything hurt.
Charlemagne’s Mana Core surged into overdrive while his healing factor struggled to undo the damage that the blast had caused. The core beat rapidly, pumping additional power through the rooster’s body, which rapidly depleted his relatively meager reserves of mana. Likewise, nutrients stored within fatty deposits in the rooster’s body were cannibalized and magically multiplied to fuel the enormous caloric requirements that his tissues needed to regrow and repair themselves. And yet, the world continued to spin.
The problem was not that the rooster’s body had failed to respond to the healing effects. If anything, the recent leveling of Charlemagne’s Mana Core meant that his healing abilities were stronger than ever. No, the problem was that Charlemagne’s brain had been almost liquified by the enormous pressure wave thrown out by the blast. There was so little functioning tissue left that the brain needed to be practically regrown from scratch, which was simply beyond the scope of the healing provided by his Special Ability, at least for the moment.
Despite the incredible damage, the plucky rooster managed to pull himself onto his feet. He was angry and confused, but he wasn’t sure why he was angry or why he was confused. This added to his confusion. Then he heard a soft whistling sound, which rose in intensity until it entirely drowned out the sound of waves slapping against the shore. There was something almost familiar about the sound, and it probably meant something very important, but Charlemagne’s addled state prevented him from identifying it in a timely manner. He belatedly realized that the whistle heralded the arrival of new explosions, but by that point he was airborne again, having taken further damage from another salvo of artillery shells.
Once again, Charlemagne was bleeding on the sand. This time, however, he found himself unable to muster up the energy to get to his feet. His already mushy brain had been further liquified by the second round of blasts, and although his body had already healed midair, he found himself drifting in and out of consciousness. The explosion had thrown him in the other direction this time, and Charlemagne found himself lying next to the ruined brick building where he had deposited his mate. One of the shells had impacted close enough to collapse the entire structure, sending bricks and rubble everywhere. Although it wasn’t an ideal place to nap, Charlemagne found himself getting sleepier by the moment.
A loud crunching sound brought the rooster back to full consciousness for a few seconds, his eyes sluggishly fixating on a squad of four soldiers carefully advancing across rough terrain, their weapons pointed right at him. A small voice inside Charlemagne suggested that he get up and fight them, but that sounded like too much effort. The men began shooting at him, but that was all right too. Most of the bullets bounced right off his feathers, and the few that managed to break through barely even hurt. In fact, Charlemagne’s body was growing numb and cozy.
The rooster’s vision began to narrow from an impressive three hundred degrees all the way to a narrow circle in the center of his field of vision. As it did, the spot that remained grew clearer, and Charlemagne blinked as he noticed a few stray feathers poking out from beneath one of the rough concrete blocks at the edge of rubble. The sight triggered a response from Charlemagne’s lizard brain, where the instincts that drove Charlemagne so relentlessly to procreate resided. The humans had killed one of his mates. Worse, they had denied him of future progeny. There was no way that he could let that stand. In an instant, he was on his feet, all thought having vanished along with his sense of imbalance. Charlemagne’s primal instincts were in full control.
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The four soldiers were the first victims of Charlemagne’s rampage: their groins, stomachs, and chests completely blown away by the power of the rooster’s savage pecks. The rooster didn’t stop there, however. Barely slowing down to absorb the human’s mana and a quick bite from their livers, he dashed toward the army’s battle lines in a furious direct assault. Bullets shed off his feathers like water, while none of the grenades (both rocket-propelled and thrown) came even close to hitting him. Ignoring the machine gun nests, he looked for the largest of the metal sticks, realizing without even thinking that they were responsible for both his addled mental state and the heavy damage sustained by his body. It didn’t take long for him to spot the five field artillery pieces, flip them over, and slay any of the operators foolish enough to stick around and fight him.
With the biggest threat neutralized, Charlemagne took a few moments to stock up on nutrients before plunging back into the fray. Most of the foot soldiers had already broken and ran, but a few brave ones had stuck around to continue their futile efforts to put down the fast-growing Champion. Several of the Hilux trucks had attempted to reposition themselves to avoid friendly fire, drawing Charlemagne’s attention as they bounced around the broken terrain. He rushed one of them next, slamming his beak through one of the tires, which exploded in his face and sent him rolling backward. The soldier operating the machine gun took the opportunity to punish the savage avian, raking Charlemagne’s body with 50 caliber rounds that bruised him to the bone. The rooster responded by using his wings to close the gap before clawing the man’s eyes out. The driver of the truck punched the gas in a vain effort to save the gunner, who fell out of the back of the truck in a screaming, bloody heap as Charlemagne continued to assault him. Reaching the main road, the Hilux rapidly accelerated, heading due east.
The drivers of the other trucks were spooked by the sudden departure, which led to mass panic. Numerous soldiers lost their balance and fell from the beds of the trucks onto the forgiving sand, with an unlucky few falling onto the unforgiving asphalt instead. Screams of fear and pain filled the air. Charlemagne ignored the individual soldiers and instead raced away after the trucks, catching the first couple and flipping them before they could get up to full speed. Without a second thought, Charlemagne sprinted after them, racing toward Cotonou at a breakneck pace.
Sprinting down the beach road, Charlemagne’s special food sense kept alerting him to dense concentrations of nutrients both in the ocean as well as further inland, but these were nothing compared to what he sensed straight ahead: a whole city full of walking, talking nourishment. Despite the influx of sensory data, Charlemagne never wavered from his current purpose. In fact, he never even considered it, since he was still operating entirely out of the lizard portion of his brain. And right now, all his mental bandwidth was being taken up by a single purpose: revenge.
Charlemagne caught up with the next truck a few minutes later after it was forced to slow down to avoid a rough patch of asphalt but failed to regain speed quickly enough. Having learned his lesson, he left the tires alone and instead powered through a hail of bullets until he was alongside the truck. Ducking low, he used his right wing to slam into the undercarriage and pushed up as hard as he could. The truck rocked once before coming back down onto four wheels with a jolt. One more push did the trick, and the truck rolled over multiple times before finally sliding to a halt on the beach. Charlemagne didn’t bother stopping to see if any humans had survived. He had more trucks to catch.
One by one, the rooster caught, flipped, and finished off each of the fleeing vehicles, although two managed to escape simply by abandoning the beach road, turning north into the sparsely populated areas that lined the coast between the cities. The chase led him all the way past the Fidjrosse neighborhood until he finally caught the last truck when it was forced to slow down at a roundabout near the international airport. Charlemagne was in the middle of a quick snack when he suddenly felt that the squiggles were not happy with him.
As luck would have it, an Ethiopian Air flight out of Addis Ababa was on its final approach at that moment. Charlemagne, already in a foul mood due to the squiggles, instinctively disliked the enormous metal bird and launched himself into the air, heading at top speed straight toward the incoming plane.
What Charlemagne did not understand at that moment was that the Boeing 737 Max airplane was over ten times heavier than the helicopter that he’d taken down. It was also moving at a speed exceeding one hundred and fifty knots. Given that the way to calculate the force of a moving object is to multiply the object’s mass and its velocity, it was safe to say that one could answer the question: “how much force does a Boeing 737 when on final approach possess” with the response: “enough to completely flatten a level 9, devolving rooster”.
Since Charlemagne had never heard of the concept of math, he had no way to fully appreciate intellectually just how monstrously stupid it was to charge a commercial airliner. Thankfully, none of the millions of his direct ancestors had needed actual intelligence to survive until they could successfully procreate. As the rooster tore through the air, his enhanced vision zeroed in on the airplane that was streaking towards him somewhat faster than his own top speed. It took a few moments, but Charlemagne’s brain stem, drawing on its genetic memories involving flight, managed to estimate the size and speed of the incoming aircraft.
It took less than half a second for the rooster’s deep-rooted self-preservation instincts to win out over avenging the loss of his mate. But given how fast Charlemagne and the airplane were approaching each other, that half-second brought the rooster dangerously close to slamming face-first into the nose of the aircraft. With a desperate aerial maneuver pulled deep from within his avian instincts, Charlemagne essentially sidestepped in midair. The move took him right out of the path of the aircraft’s nose, and directly into the path of the plane’s right engine.
