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It isn’t with any degree of joy that Wemmbu lets the orbital strike rain down on Parrot’s army.
He thought he had gotten himself free from this empire–servitude bullshit the moment he blew up Zam’s entire kingdom into a pile of rubble, but as it turns out, there will always be more power hungry idiots playing ruler, playing God, and Egg will always, always, always be his weak spot. As long as he is powerful, people will use that to his advantage; and there isn’t a world where he goes back to being powerless again.
Therefore— the battle. Against Parrot and his kingdom, or whatever.
This freaking sucks.
Outside of Egg, and Minute, and all the more obvious candidates, Wemmbu can tentatively count Parrot as one of his few friends. They’ve worked together plenty in the past, and it isn’t like he particularly hates Parrot’s personality, or whatever. They get along fine. He’d go so far as to say he enjoys his presence; crazy, he knows. But, being a ‘friend’ of Parrot’s also means he knows of—to some extent—the king’s weaknesses and faults. The guy is too nice for his own good, and Wemmbu’s always known this, but apparently this has finally come to bite him in the ass. And Arachid has apparently gotten his pants in a twist over the fact that Parrot is an altruistic person who cares, because now the guy wants all the power to himself instead of letting it stay in the hands of an actual sort of smart and compassionate person— typical.
Wemmbu’s grateful that, at least, he can’t see Parrot right now. About a hundred blocks up in the sky, all the people below his soaring elytra are like small coloured dots in the ragged landscape below, all milling around and screaming like little ants getting fried in the Sun. It’s easier pretending he isn’t actively forsaking another one of his allyships for the sake of Arachnid’s idiotic server–domination plan.
It’s all for Egg. It’ll only ever be for Egg; as long as his best friend exists, Wemmbu will always have a weak spot. And there's nothing he will ever be able to do about it.
All they need to do is get out of that cave, and they’ll be set. All they need to do is get Jaden and maybe kill Arachid if the circumstances allow it, and then escape. And Wemmbu will never let himself become somebody else’s weapon again.
He sighs up in the sky where nobody can hear him. For a moment, he lets himself float, wind whistling through his hair. Then, he pulls out another fishing rod, wooden pole familiar under his grip, and lets loose another nuke.
Once again, there’s screaming below him; the whole crowd sounds reasonably terrified as they flee for their lives. Fields of diamond armour, tiny blue pinpoints. The ground is almost entirely grey, now that the TNT has exposed the stone layer to the surface.
But something’s different, this time. There are the usual expected craters, yes, but— for whatever reason, one of them catches his eye like none other.
The hole is situated between the crumpled foundations of two blown up houses. Nothing about it makes it particularly unique— it isn’t that deep, isn’t that wide, isn’t anything besides a normal crater. That is, if you disregard the fact that lying in the centre of it is an increasingly familiar figure with singed blue–green feathers, with a tiny gold smear next to his head that, once Wemmbu starts falling closer, resolves into a crown.
Dear god.
“Parrot,” Wemmbu hisses, when he lands, rough on his feet. “Parrot, you idiot, get up.”
Face–down in the centre of his crater, isolated by at least a hundred blocks from the rest of his army—the blast must have flung him here—Parrot does not respond.
“There is no way you died to an orbital,” Wemmbu says, but he starts walking into the centre of the crater despite every rational part of him telling to stop. “Am I just talking to myself? Are you gonna get up, your highness? Don’t tell me you’re actually dead, dude, Theo’s gonna rock my shit.”
“Whhuhhggghh,” Parrot mumbles. It certainly isn’t helped by all the dirt and mud muffling his face.
“Yeah, good one, bro,” Wemmbu sighs. He nudges at Parrot’s splayed out arm with his boot. “Get up. You need to get your army or whatever.”
Parrot rolls over, so slowly Wemmbu has to roll his own eyes.
“Wemmbu?” he says loudly, once he’s pulled himself out from being actively buried in the soil. “What—”
“Lock in, bro,” Wemmbu says.
“—are you doing here? Wait, why haven’t you killed me?” Parrot barrels on, as if Wemmbu hadn’t spoken at all. He’s still speaking so loud it’s bordering on a shout— strange, for a normally soft–spoken guy.
“We don’t have time for this,” he tells Parrot, who is clambering to his feet with great difficulty.
“What?” Parrot says, voice still raised.
“We don’t have—”
“What?” he repeats himself. “Bro. Is this funny to you? Did you mute yourself or something?”
“I— huh?” Wemmbu says, voice trailing off.
Parrot shoots him a strange look, half ridiculing and half bewildered. He looks terrible, covered in dirt and dust and blood of either others or himself. There don’t seem to be any major injuries besides the blood that is actively leaking from both of his ears.
Oh, there’s— there’s blood. Leaking from his ears. A slightly concerning amount, really, dripping down onto his shoulders and onto his deteriorating chestplate. Parrot goes to wipe at the moisture, before stopping to stare at his newly reddened fingertips.
That, plus the volume at which he’s been talking this entire time…
Ah.
Wemmbu pauses. Parrot squints at him again, still confused, as he raises a hand to point to his own ears.
“What’s wrong with your ears?” he shouts.
“No, dumbass,” Wemmbu scoffs, and shakes his head. Signalling his movements clearly, he instead points to Parrot’s ears.
“Mine?” Parrot asks. “It’s okay! I can’t hear, but I’m fine! I need to help my people.”
“Are you stupid?” Wemmbu shouts.
“That’s rude,” he says, confused.
“Oh, so you can hear that but you can’t understand my perfectly understandable charades?”
“Speak louder,” Parrot says hoarsely.
“I thought you were sturdy enough to survive a few nukes, bro,” Wemmbu sighs. “Now you’re deaf, on top of being a quick drop. This is fantastic. Where’s your bodyguard, bro…”
As if in answer, the deafening blast of a TNT minecart behind him immediately activates his totem, a shower of gold–green sparks enveloping his entire body, rejoining the torn–apart limbs and bits of himself back together.
“There you are,” he mutters, once he goes back to being alive. It's strange being on the receiving end of one, but explosions really do hurt like hell; this is what Flame tanks in every fight against him?
“Parrot, are you good?” Theo asks from the edge of the crater, bow and rail braced for another attack.
Parrot looks at Wemmbu, as if waiting for a translation.
Wemmbu sighs again. “I’m not your subtitler, bro. Learn lip–reading.”
Then, to Theo, he says, “Your King is deaf right now, I think. Uh, that’s my bad. You should probably, like, transport him to safety before it becomes permanent.”
Theo’s expression shifts, perplexed, yet he still remains hostile.
Wemmbu glances between the two of them. For whatever reason, Parrot’s not running away from him like he should. Meanwhile, Theo’s frozen in place as if waiting for him to make the next move.
“What the heck? Move,” he says to Parrot. He steps around him, before pushing Parrot’s shoulders in the direction of Theo, who flinches like he’s expecting Wemmbu to stab him or something.
For a moment, Parrot stumbles, his head tipping forward, uncontrolled and bowed in a beeline towards the ground. It is by instinct that Wemmbu grabs at his arm, stopping him in his quest to face-plant into the burnt dirt; he lets go just as quickly when it becomes clear that Parrot was never actually going to fall, and was only caught off guard from being pushed.
Thankfully, from here, Parrot takes the cue and begins to walk, staggering up the side of the hole in the earth.
“I think he has a concussion, too,” Wemmbu tells Theo. “No other reason I can think of for why he’s acting so stupid and trusting. You… do what you want. I’m gonna go back to killing people now. See you!”
For whatever reason, before he returns to the skies, Parrot decides to turn back and raise a singed hand, waving him goodbye. Theo shoots his king another indignant look, one that goes unnoticed by its desired target, and Wemmbu is too disoriented by this whole interaction to know how he's meant to react. And so, he leaves in a cloud of bitter firework smoke, returning to a more comfortable altitude.
Carefully, he readies the next orbital strike. Look, Arachnid and his bullshit may be able to force him into battles that he really couldn’t care less about. But, given a chance to act like a normal, reasonable person who has people that he’d rather not see die— well, he’s gonna do what he sees best. That’s all there is to it, really.
If he purposely aims for the section of the battlefield furthest away from where he left Theo and Parrot, that’s neither here nor there.