The word hung in the air, a tiny, feathered hook lodged in my brain.
"...Nobita?"
I stared at the bird. It stared back, its head cocked with an intelligence that felt… old. Out of place. Like finding a calculus equation scrawled on a cave wall.
Okay, I thought, my mind a sluggish, traumatized engine trying to turn over. A bird. A blue bird. Talking. My name. Right. Because why wouldn't it? The dragon just melted into my soul,and my only friends are ghosts. A talking bird is practically mundane at this point. Just add it to the list, Nobita. File it under 'Tuesday.'
The bird hopped closer, its tiny claws making no sound on the moss.
"Piyo," it chirped, and the sound was less a chirp and more a word, formed with psychic effort. "It is you."
The name hit me like a physical thing. A key turning in a lock I'd sealed shut years ago.
Pippo.
Memories, sharp and bright, flashed behind my eyes. A world of chivalry and clashing swords. A little, round-bellied pig… no, a dog… no, a… whatever he was. A friend. One of the few who hadn't looked at me like a useless kid, but definitely kicked me few times in the face.
"Pippo?" I whispered, the name feeling foreign and familiar on my tongue. "But… how? The Professor… he reset your entire species. Wiped your memories. It was a clean slate. It was supposed to be… peace."
The bird ,Pippo,puffed its chest, a gesture so inherently him that my heart ached.
"I'm psychically connected to Riruru, you know, piyo!" he chirped, a hint of pride in his tiny voice.
"Her memories, her pain… it started bleeding through. Broke the programming, piyo. Like a song you can't get out of your head."
Of course, I thought, a wave of sheer, exhausted absurdity washing over me. A psychic network. Because a simple reset button was just too easy. The universe really loves its loopholes, especially when they involve twisting the knife in my general direction.
Then Pippo hopped onto my knee, his beady eyes wide with a hope so pure it was physically painful to look at.
"Nobita! You're here! Does this mean… you're here to help, piyo?"
The question hung between us. I could feel the weight of it. The expectation. The hope I was destined to crush. I saw the dragon's dissolving form.
My face moved on its own, muscles pulling into a familiar, practiced shape. A smile. It felt like a crack in a dam.
"Yeah," I said, the word tasting like ash and taiyaki. "Yeah, I'm here to help."
The lie was so much easier than the truth. The truth was a screaming, hollow thing inside me. The truth was that I was here because I had nowhere else to go, because a debt of fire had been seared into my bones, and because running away had only ever brought the war to my doorstep.
Also.... Can't stop because of him making me his final hope.
Pippo's joy was instantaneous. He fluttered into the air, a little blue vortex of excitement. "I knew it! I knew you wouldn't abandon us, piyo! Come on! There's someone you need to meet! Our trump card!"
He zipped off, and I forced my legs to move, my body feeling a thousand years old. A trump card. Great. Let me guess. Another dragon? A giant robot? Please don't be a giant robot. My track record with giant robots usually ends with me getting stomped on.
We moved deeper into the cavern, away from the main refuge, into a narrower tunnel guarded by two hulking Metropian soldiers who nodded at Pippo with a respect that seemed… reverent.
Something I definitely didn't think he'll have as a child. Especially because he was too much of a chick. Literally.
The tunnel opened into a smaller, quieter chamber. And there, in the center, seated on a throne of salvaged wiring and stone, was…
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
It was old. Incredibly old.
Pippo practically vibrated with joy. "Piyo! I knew it! I knew you wouldn't abandon us! We've been saving it for a moment like this!"
He glanced back, his beady eyes gleaming in the bioluminescent light.
"Our trump card! The big guy from the old days! When the Metropians fled, they managed to salvage the core. We've spent months rebuilding him down here."
A sight so absurd, so utterly disconnected from the grim reality of this war, that I almost laughed.
It was a giant, jolly, red-and-white robot, shaped like a rotund man with a bushy white beard. One of its arms was still missing, and its paint was scorched and chipped, but the friendly, twinkling eyes were unmistakable.
"Handicapped robot?"
"WE'LL FIX IT SOON TOO!"
Zanda Claus.
He stood there, a silent, 50-foot-tall monument to the sheer, unadulterated weirdness of my childhood, now being prepped as a last-ditch weapon in a war for survival.
Pippo landed on my shoulder, his voice filled with reverence.
"Isn't he magnificent? With him and you on our side, we might just have a chance!"
I stared up at the placid, ceramic face of the mechanical Saint Nick. My "trump card." My hope.
The cracked smile finally fell from my face.
We're all going to die, I thought, with a strange, detached calm. And we're going to die in the most pathetically ridiculous way imaginable.
"Isn't that... Your true body?"
Pippo just smirked, as if he was waiting for me to point that out.
But being honest, I'd love to fly in a robotic one last time before we die.