(Hope everyone pulls Dusk and Mr. Nothing.)
"What... is this?" Zumama's eyes widened as she stared at the small sphere in Bai Ye's hand.
Such a tiny thing had actually rendered her "Big Ugly" useless!
"High Priest?!"
She turned to look at the little blue bird sitting in the "driver's" seat.
"Whew... Looks like it really is broken..."
The High Priest jumped down from Big Ugly, gave it a brief inspection, then shook his head.
"The Originium crystal circuitry on it has been completely crippled. It was barely cobbled together to begin with... Besides, this thing was theoretically unfinished..."
Zumama fell silent for a moment. She gave Gavial and Texas, who stood to the side with her sword in hand, a complicated look before nodding.
"You won. I will withdraw from the competition for Great Chieftain. Gavial, you are the Great Chieftain now."
"Gavial, your friends really are impressive..."
Then Zumama turned back and glared fiercely at Bai Ye, as though she wanted to etch his image deeply into her mind.
Bai Ye's skin crawled under the girl's stare. He could sense defiance, indignation, resentment, and grievance in her eyes...
In short, Zumama had her eye on him now.
Bai Ye was glad that his current appearance was merely a disguise. Once he reverted, the identity of "Victorique" probably would never appear again.
Still, Bai Ye was extremely interested in the Big Ugly that Zumama and the others had built.
"By the goddess... How exactly did you put together something this cool...? Also, did you install our aircraft's engine in it?"
"Engine? What's that? Ours doesn't have anything resembling a proper engine."
The blue High Priest skipped over to Bai Ye and chimed in.
"Thank goodness you didn't get around to installing the engine... Otherwise Dr. Kal'tsit would kill me..."