Itinit summoned the hilt of the "sword" and was about to activate the aura, but the head disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
"I just thought so," Itinit sighed and turned toward the door that led to the train's exit. "I just think about dolls too much."
Even though the head hadn't appeared again, Itinit decided to check what was outside and entered the password into the field under the lock. The door slid open.
Itinit jumped onto the platform, then immediately turned around and looked at the roof of the train. There really was something out of place there...
"It's not a doll."
Itinit carefully took a step back and saw a brown head with small ears.
"Ahh, it's just a bear. But how did it end up on the roof? Was it scared of something?"
Itinit retreated a few more steps. The brown head turned out to be a hood, but the ears were real, sticking out from holes in the hood.
"I've seen this somewhere before."
Suddenly, Itinit realized he was being stared at by two brown eyes just below the top of the hood.
"Hey, you," a slightly low voice came from the roof of the carriage. "Did you bring food?"
"It's something talking," Itinit turned away. "Maybe I imagined it again? If I turn around and see that creature again, I'll have to believe it."
Itinit closed his eyes, then opened them again and turned sharply toward the train. The hooded creature was still on the roof, only now the upper part of its head had been supplemented by a lower one, its mouth wide open, and its red tongue slightly protruding.
"Is that a bear girl? A rare species…"
Itinit waved his hand in front of him, but didn't have time to summon the camera. The bear girl hid her tongue in her mouth, stopped smiling, and looked down with a tired expression.
"Did you bring food? I'm hungry. Bears can't go hungry, or they won't be able to hibernate."
"It seems to be spring now," Itinit answered. "You should wake up."
"I woke up, but there's no food. The whole forest is empty. Not even the squirrels are there. They've either hidden, or someone's already eaten them."
The bear girl frowned. Two thick, bare legs descended from the edge of the roof; very similar to those Itinit had seen many times.
"She's definitely from the Mausoleum of Nature. But who created her? Really... no, it's impossible. It's just a coincidence."
"There's plenty of food in this house," the bear girl leaned over and sniffed the air. "They finally brought me some food. But I just woke up, so I'm a little clumsy and can't open the door to get in."
"I think I know what food she wants," Itinit looked at the creature's long black fingernails. "But what should I do? I can refuse, but then she'll taste me."
Fortunately, there was no need to decide. The door opened by itself, and Kyotyoryon jumped onto the platform. The bear girl immediately noticed the metal spirit's thick thighs, but she missed everything else...
"My creator said she'd come back to life later," Kyotyoryon said. "She's very low on power. But we're already here. I wanted to cut her to revive her, but then I thought she'd never wake up."
"Kyotyoryon..." Itinit looked at the roof of the locomotive. "Get away from the train."
"This is my metal home. I don't want..."
The metal spirit didn't have time to finish her sentence. Something brown fell on her from above and knocked her down onto the platform.
"Hey, metal, I'm under attack," Kyotyoryon said calmly. "Do something."
Unfortunately, it was too late. The bear girl's teeth sank into the skin of the metal spirit's thigh, but they couldn't penetrate any further. The metal, combined with the filling, was too hard.
"They brought me some tasteless food," the bear girl climbed off of Kyotyoryon and dodged the metal hand that extended from metal spirit's neck.
The metal spirit rolled a few steps to the side, then rose to her feet and looked at her opponent.
"You're angry."
"A bearry is not evil," the bear girl answered. "A bearry just big..."
"Do you have a name or do you call yourself a bear?" Itinit asked.
"Eh?" The bear girl looked at the man as if he'd just called her something offensive. "You need a name, but being a bearry is enough for me."
"But someone created you," Itinit said. "Didn't it give you a name?"
The bear girl looked at the creator of the dog girls with more anger than even Noru had ever looked at him.
Itinit clutched the lever of the ancient robot in his hand, took a few steps back, and already imagined a translucent wall of energy barrier before him...
The bear girl was tormented by hunger, so she couldn't stay angry for long. Instead of tearing the human to pieces like a true wild bear, the girl turned to the train and sniffed the air.
"It smells like meat there," the tip of the tongue stuck out of the creature's mouth and went back.
The bear girl was unlucky again. A blue-haired doll emerged from the only wooden carriage, a shovel in hand. She only managed to notice something brown in front of her, but she did not forget to cover herself with her weapon like a shield.
As a result, the bear girl's teeth bit into something tasteless again.
"Sis, there's some kind of brown animal here," Sitihi turned her head into the depths of the carriage. "It could eat you. Don't come out until I deal with it."
Sitihi pulled the shovel forward, causing the bear girl's teeth to lose control of the shovel and the doll to be thrown onto the platform.
"There's food there, I know it," the bear girl sniffed the air. "They're just hiding it from me in gray, inedible packaging. But bears know how to open it."
A miniature brown bear head with red eyes appeared on the creature's hand.
"Does she really want...?" Itinit extended his hand, containing a clot of energy.
The bear girl smiled, revealing her sharp teeth. Her eyes turned as red as the miniature bear head on her hand.
"...fry some food?"
The mini-head's mouth opened and released a jet of fire. At the same moment, Itinit clutched the ball of energy in his hand. A spherical barrier of translucent blue energy appeared around the wooden train car.
The jet of fire struck the wall of the barrier and was deflected. Instead of the carriage, it headed towards the forest, which soon caught fire...
"What have I done?" Itinit sighed.
The bear girl noticed the attack had failed and stopped emitting fire from her strange device. Her eyes turned brown again, and the mouth of her miniature bear head closed.
"If she's hungry, that means she's low on energy and can't attack with her abilities," Itinit thought. "This thing on the hand probably takes energy from the surrounding space, but in order to use it, the creature must also have energy."
The bear girl sighed and then sank to her knees. The mini-head on her hand disappeared.
"Oh… I won't have any yum-yum."
Meanwhile, the fire spread more and more throughout the forest. Soon, it spread to the wooden train station and set it ablaze. The bear girl cried against the backdrop of burning trees, unaware that brown miniature bear heads with red eyes were appearing on her hands. This time, they were twice as large as their predecessors, completely concealing her palms with their clawed fingers.
"These things feed on fire energy," Itinit guessed.
A plan appeared in the head of the creator of the dog girls. He removed the barrier around the train car, and then summoned a similar barrier around the bear girl.
The mini-heads stopped growing, but this only helped for a few moments. The energy stored in these devices proved too great, causing them to burst into flames and transfer them to their owner, creating a fiery aura.
"She won't break through the barrier until it runs out of energy. We need to get out of here before things get worse."
Itinit looked at the burning forest, yawned, and then walked toward the train car, where he bumped into a girl with metal horns, kneeling and smiling.
"Why are you looking there? You need to run."
"The pillars are getting smaller," Kyotyoryon explained. "No one's cutting them down, but there are fewer of them. That's good. The Creator said the poles can't be cut down."
"You can't set them on fire either. They're normal trees. If they burn, there'll be nowhere to hide."
"Will they burn forever?"
"No. New ones will grow later. But that will be many years from now."
The smile on Kyotyoryon's face was replaced by a protruding blade-like tongue.
"If those tree-like life forms from the Southern Continent were here," Itinit thought and recalled the tree ferns. "I wouldn't worry at all. But we better do something about this fire. Of course, it'll go out on its own when it reaches the nearest river and the wet forest, but then the bear girl will gain even more energy and be able to pursue us."
A translucent blue ball with a snowflake inside appeared in Itinit's hand.
"This is too little, but I don't have any more. I'm not an ice animal girl."
At that moment, Itinit regretted leaving Etinnei in Yenekit. In reality, he was simply trying to keep this trip a secret, so he didn't tell the arctic fox girl and her feathered friend.
"I didn't know there would be a fiery bear girl here who sets fire to forests," Itinit thought.
...The snowflake-filled ball flew toward the burning building and exploded. The clot of cold that had been hidden inside him was released, but it was unable to affect the spread of the fire in any way.
"No, I'd better just run away."
Itinit ran toward the train car, then hid behind it and opened his inventory, which had an infinite number of slots.
"There is so much here… How can I find what I need in all this?"
After a few dozen moments, Itinit found a search bar and entered a few characters. Instead of multiple slots, a single one appeared, with a gray object inside.
"Finally... At least the search works."
After clicking on the slot, a bird-shaped flying device appeared in front of Itinit.
"There are only four seats here. Good thing I didn't take the ice animal girl."
Meanwhile, the fire was spreading through the forest. It did not affect the platform because it was made of stone, but the heat could be felt even inside the carriage.
"Sis, we have to run," a voice called from the open window. "Something's burning there."
"Put out what's burning."
"I can't. I only have the elements of earth and air. If you don't wake up, the horned one will wake you up."
A scream, like the roar of a wild animal, came from the window. At first, Itinit was frightened, but soon recognized the sound as his friend's voice.
"Halankuo has finally woken up. It's good I took this doll."
But the fire wasn't the only threat. The barrier surrounding the bear girl was running low on energy, and its walls began to flicker.
Itinit, who was standing on the opposite side of the carriage, did not see this, but he understood that the wild animal would soon be freed.
A purple aura surrounded the Metal Bird. The wing-shaped door slid upward. Itinit sat in his driver's seat. The control panel glowed brightly with blue energy, ready to send the craft almost anywhere.
"Why didn't I summon that thing right away? Maybe something serious happened there, but I don't remember it..."
Itinit looked at the carriage, expecting to see a bear-like girl surrounded by a fiery aura above the roof, but instead saw only a blue-haired doll stuck in the window.
"Anything but this..."
Fortunately, a solution was found quickly. Sitihi began to disintegrate and emerge from the window separately. When all the doll's body parts were free, they activated their aura and began to reassemble.
Itinit looked again at the roof of the train car and finally saw a fiery silhouette...
But the silhouette vanished just as it had appeared. Something big and grey pushed this terrible creature to the opposite side of the carriage, after which a girl with metal horns on her head and another girl in her arms landed in front of the Metal Bird.
"Here's Halankuo," Itinit glanced at the girl's hips and confirmed that they were covered only by a black T-shirt.
"Sit in the back," Itinit gestured toward the three seater rear seat.
"You sit there," Kyotyoryon said. "That's my bird. It's made of my metal."
"Uh... that's why I didn't want to fly here on the Metal Bird,'" Itinit thought. "When we were flying from the Southern Continent, she tried to control that thing, and we almost crashed."
"This birdie wants you to rest," Itinit said. "So sit in the back seat."
"That's not true," gray balls appeared around Kyotyoryon's horns for a moment. "She didn't tell me anything."
While the creator of the dog girls and the metal spirit were deciding who would sit where, the threat returned. This time, a thick stream of fire was approaching the Metal Bird."
Fortunately, the aircraft was surrounded by an energy barrier in time. Only then did Itinit realize something was happening and turn around.
The stream of fire gradually thinned until it became a normal game skill. The creator of the dog girls was even able to discern the creature that was emitting the attack.
"If Tuot sees this, he'll never be able to look at the animal girls again."
The bear girl's face transformed into that of a cartoon monster. Her eyes burned with genuine fire, and smoke billowed from her wide-open mouth, between her fangs.
"We need to get out of here," Itinit jumped into the backseat. "The barrier won't hold soon."
"I won't burn," Kyotyoryon placed the almost sleeping creator in the back seat, after which she turned to her opponent. "I'll just cut off those things she uses to shoot fire."
"It's dangerous. It's a bear."
"What? Can't we cut it?"
"I'll have to wake Halankuo," Itinit thought.
Kyotyoryon released the short blades from the bracelets on her arms and ran forward, but ran into the barrier and was thrown back a step by the vibration.
"Put that thing away," the metal spirit begged. "It's in my way."
"It'll disappear soon," Itinit waved his hand in front of him and saw the barrier's nearly empty health bar.
Soon, the energy wall actually began to flicker, though it continued to block the fire. The enemy was also losing strength. All that remained of the stream of fire was a thin "thread," which began in the mouth of the miniature bear head on the creature's arm.
Itinit looked at the backseat, saw Halankuo there, and realized something was missing.
"There was someone else here."
Itinit looked at Kyotyoryon. The metal spirit stood before the barrier, waiting for it to disappear, and accidentally noticed a doll's head, bathed in a blue aura, near the miraculously intact train car.
"That's her fake little sister," Itinit remembered. "She's assembling, but she might not make it in time."
By that moment, the barrier's health bar had completely drained, and then it disappeared. The wall that had held back the fire turned into particles of energy...
Itinit looked at the slightly charred carriage and accidentally discovered thick legs with metal bracelets and blades sticking out of a broken window.
"How... did she end up there?"
Itinit turned his gaze to his opponent and soon found his answer. In place of the bear's mini-head was a brown pillow with small ears and red dots. The second mini-head on the other arm retained its appearance, only slightly smaller in size.
"These things can turn into shields and block attacks," Itinit thought. "I've never seen anything like it. This is a very unusual creature. Could it have been created by a human? No, a normal human couldn't have done something like this."
The bear girl looked at Itinit with an exhausted gaze. Her eyes lost their glow, and a long dark purple tongue protruded from her mouth.
"When I was a kid, I was afraid to meet a real bear. But now I'm not. Thank you, bear girl."
The bear girl looked at Itinit for a few moments, but those few moments seemed like a whole scene to him.
Itinit imagined a large brown bear in place of this strange creature, so exhausted that it would soon fall to the ground and never rise again.
But the bear girl simply fell to her knees. Her tongue returned to her mouth, after which she looked at Itinit with a tired gaze:
"Bear cubs want to sleep..."