140 X in savage Land

X

X flew into the Savage Land at top speed, making no attempt to slow down as he came down towards the ice. A small beam of light flew ahead of him. The veil around the Savage Land opened. He passed through.

For a moment, when the veil closed behind him, he was disorientated. The veil cut him off from every satellite on the planet, the connection he'd had since the moment of his creation. He adjusted to the 'sensation' in microseconds, but it was uncomfortable. In many ways, this was the first time he had ever been left with the silence of his own thoughts.

He imagined it was how a modern teenager felt when left in the woods with no technology.

X stopped musing to press a button on his harness. The straps holding him to his jetpack released, allowing him to drop as he flew. For just a moment, X freefell through the air, his body streamlined with arms and legs tight to his body. At the last second he snapped his form outward, hitting the ground in a plume of earth and stone flying about.

Boom!

X took a moment to let his android form adjust to the sudden stop before rising up and striding forward. He patted the weapons across his body while ignoring the jetpack flying away. Instead, he spoke on the radio signal being used by BRIDGE.

"This is X. I have arrived in the Savage Land. Acknowledge."

X used the long second's humans always took to speak to process the jungle around him. The river Mahmoud had fallen into was just a few feet away. Good. He made his way there, reaching for his machete. With brutal efficiency, he sliced his way through the vines.

"X!?" the voice of Carl Creel said in surprise over X's radio. "What are you doing here?"

"Finding Mahmoud," X kicked aside a boulder, ignoring the three-ton stone bouncing its way into the jungle. "Are you well, Mr. Creel? You look fatigued."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm- wait, you can see me?"

X had access to all BRIDGE camera networks, so he was able to see through the security cameras installed in the BRIDGE Savage Land mobile base (More of an RV than a base in truth) to watch as Creel looked around in shock. Creel was standing in a room surrounded by screens, with scientists and soldiers looking at the screens, all of which were covered in maps.

"Indeed, Mr. Creel. I am obtaining all the data I can from the mobile bases servers. I've extrapolated the last possible location of Mahmoud before the trail becomes muddled. I am headed there now."

"How-" Creel shook his head. He rubbed his eyes slowly. The superhuman had all the clinical signs of exhaustion and lack of sleep. He had dark coloration beneath his eyes, hanging eyelids, pale skin, and the corners of his mouth were sinking. Still, he was clearly motivated by the way his back was straightening. "Whatever, it's good to have the help. You want us to come along?"

"No need," X said as politely as he could. He stopped by the river, robotic eyes tracking across the water. "How is Fantasma?"

Creel hesitated. He looked towards a back room. X accessed the cameras in that room.

Fantasma was reading in a chair. The young Russian witch looked even worse than Creel. Her hair was straying about, far from the usual sophisticated way she had, her hands were shaking slightly, and her eyes were falling constantly. She was reading a screen, frantically taking notes. X took a look at the file she was reading. An upload of a book of magic. She was reading through spells on tracking items.

But she was making mistakes.

"Mr. Creel," X said at last. "Please, endeavor to rest. Both you and Ms. Fantasma. You are both exhausted. Exhaustion does not help us."

"X, we need to find him," Creel growled.

"Yes. But you need to sleep," X said firmly. "I do not. I can attempt to track him while you rest. Once you are rested, I will inform you of my position, and you can come aid me. Fantasma is currently writing a spell that, if I am understanding correctly, is meant to track Dial's sword. However, she has currently set it to summon a creature I believe is called a Flumph. She must rest. And so must you."

Creel stood in silence. X strode into the river until his head was submerged. Finding nothing, he exited and began to walk along the bank, his eyes taking in every bit of information he could process so that he missed nothing.

Creel lashed out suddenly, his fist shattering a tv screen before going through it. Everyone in the room stared at him. X ignored it, instead pushing aside a tree and slicing through more brush.

"Fine," Creel said, as though he hadn't turned perfectly good equipment into scrap. "I'll get Fantasma to rest. You're right. We need to sleep. But you tell us the second you find Dial. Because I'm going to break his arms if he's just hanging out having fun while I'm trying to find him."

"That is more than likely not what he is doing," X said dryly.

"One thing," Creel said. "Ka-Zar hasn't shown up yet, but we're planning to ask him for help the second he shows up."

"That would be welcome," X continued forth. He disconnected from the radio, but kept a subsystem monitoring the mobile base.

He continued to follow the river for a mile. From what he could hypothesis, Dial's armor had kicked in emergency functions when he had landed in the water. But for some reason, they couldn't access the emergency beacon that should have activated. So what had gone wrong? Where did his trail continue?

X continued along the river calmly, his processors taking in the footage from his eyes and going through it at immense speed. His large feet left depressions in the mud. His immense strength tore through the jungle with little regard, several times carelessly ripping a tree out of the earth to move it out of the way. His focus was absolute.

Soon, he'd left the jungle to find himself walking along the river as it cut through a field of short grass and weeds. Then he noticed it. At one point, the current of the river changed before continuing as normal. X stopped to watch the river. He'd been taking constant measurements. The river was diverting. But where?

It was probably best to wait to figure that out. X felt that he was currently being investigated.

He turned to look at the creature who was slowly walking up to him. It was about the size of a baby elephant. It toddled towards him awkwardly, large eyes looking up at him curiously.

A triceratops baby. Or at least, a descendant of one. It had two tiny horns that hadn't grown just yet, and was looking at him with the fascinated gaze of all infants. It must have been only a few months old.

X lowered himself to a knee as it approached. He reached out and pulled some grass up out of the ground before holding it out. The baby triceratops eyes lit up, and it rushed forward. It tripped over its own feet, struggled back up, and continued towards X, leaning it's head down to devour the grass in the androids hand with mewling sounds of happiness. X raised his other hand and rubbed it's head, getting more sounds happiness from it. It was covered in extremely soft feathers the color of mocha coffee, with some small amount of blue across it as well.

X noted it's actions calmly. It was a cute thing. It was part of why he'd felt the urge to feed it.

"RAAAAAGH!"

She had been just out of sight, in the treeline. X watched as the mother came towards them. The infant squeaked, rushing towards the mother, who nudged it back. As it did, X noted the size of the Triceratops. Thousands of pounds of flesh and bone, with feathers similar to its child, only more aggressively blue than mocha. It's horns were more like spears of solid bone three feet long, and it's entire body was built like an armored tank similar to a rhino, with it's crest rising high off it's head.

Once the baby had moved off into the treeline, the mother spun to glare at X.

This was very interesting. There were many theories on the behavior of dinosaurs, but no way to prove them. Of course, X mused, this triceratops may have evolved to act this way on the Savage Land, but it was better than nothing. She was acting more like a mother bear than anything else.

Oh. She was attacking.

She charged towards him with an aggressive roar, her elephantine feet crashing into earth with quaking force. X adjusted to the shaking and faced the animal, who outweighed him by tons. He felt some digital approximation to excitement.

This would be his first fight in the real world.

He waited for the mother to reach her full speed, an impressive 25 km/h. He calculated the time to impact, his own physical bodies reaction speed, weak points across her body, and the rules in place for the Savage Land, as well the moral implications of any of his actions.

By the time she was three feet away from him, he had ducked her horns and sidestepped her. The mountain of furious dinosaur missed him by inches. She slammed her feet into the ground, grinding herself to a halt and trying to turn around. X dived under her, crouching. Then he placed his hands against her belly. Servos and pistons spun within him. He rose up.

And so did the triceratops.

"Eugh?!" the mother waved its feet in shock as it was lifted off the ground. X stood to his full height, supporting the weight of the dinosaur. He took a moment of synthetic pleasure in the ease of the movement. His body was taking the weight very well. He kept its weight distributed across his shoulders, mimicking the way human weightlifters did similar feats. Then, as the triceratops continued to wave its feet around and look around in a panic, he hefted her up and pushed. It took some careful movement to make sure when she landed, she wouldn't shatter or break anything. She still landed with a 'Boom'. Confused, the triceratops slowly rose to her feet and faced him. X turned his back on her and walked into the river.

The triceratops was smart. Apparently, being lifted off the ground and dropped by something that followed that by ignoring her was too much. She slowly backed away, making sure to keep it's cub behind her while the baby watched with adorably wide eyes. X ignored them both even as he recorded the incident. Internally, he thought that had gone rather well.

Back to business, however. He disappeared underneath the water. His advanced cameras tracked along the river bottom. Based on the movement of the silt as it was lifted by the water… Ah. There.

He walked up to the opening that was in the side of the river, deep under it. An underwater tunnel. This explained everything. The river had a small amount of it constantly pouring into the tunnel, but no one would know that unless they swam under its surface as X had. So when BRIDGE had attempted to follow the river, they missed this area, which was where Dial must have been swept into.

However, Dial's chances of survival had significantly dropped.

X ignored the statistics running through his mind. He simply walked up to the stone tunnel and pressed into it. For a moment, his squat form struggled to enter it. He pressed deeper, the stones scratching at him and moved on, shoving aside hundreds of tons of stones to enter the tunnel.

He moved into it, finding himself in almost claustrophobic conditions. All light was left behind, forcing X to turn on a function in his eyes that activated simple LED lights within them. He crawled for several minutes before the tunnel opened up into a larger cave. X made his way out of the tunnel and looked around the cave. It was twenty feet around, with stalactites and stalagmites in one corner, and the river cut its way through it. X updated his internal map and strode forward. He could see small scratches on some of the surfaces of the stone along the river, possible where Dial had bumped into as he had floated. The cave continued to open up as he moved forward. At one point, he found himself in a cavern that was dozens of feet high above him, opening up at the top in a large hole that revealed the sky. X noted the plantlife surrounding that hole, as well as the waterfall pouring down it to join the river. He also noted the large temple in the middle of the cave, about the size of a house, the stone building having fallen apart centuries ago. The statue of some figure still stood in the center where the temple had once been, though it had been beaten by the elements for some time. It appeared to be some sort of… feathered being? With a rooster comb on the head?

X took footage, then continued on. It was as he left the cavern to continue deeper into the tunnel that he noticed some metal imbedded on a wall along the cave, a strain of some oddly silver-

ALERT! X's internal systems screamed a warning the instant his body's structure was compromised. X leaped back the instant he understood what was happening. His right hand, which had been reaching forward started to flake and turn to liquid as he got closer to the metal. X got back as far as he could before the melting finally stopped. He stared at his hand.

The hand was still intact. But the metal on it had been melted and left to drip. His hand now looked like liquid silver had been poured across it, only to freeze midway. He twisted his hand and was forced to shatter a piece of his armor to allow him to move it freely. The sound of steel cracking filled the air as he squeezed his hand into a fist, watching dispassionately as he returned his mobility to his hand. It shouldn't have been so easy to shatter the metal on his hand, even with his enhanced strength, but the damage had weakened the metal as well. Then he looked up at the cave ahead, staring at the strains of metal.

Anti-Metal. Antarctic Vibranium. Dial had told him about it. An element that could make other metals fall apart at the atomic level. He didn't have any sensors to see if the damage to his hand's casing had truly been down to the atomic level but it was easy to surmise what had happened.

And if Dial had floated along the river, then that explained why he had gone missing. If the Omnitrix had fallen apart in response to the Anti-Metal…

X activated his radio. As of now, he had no way to follow Dial. He'd only made it a couple of miles, but already needed aid. It was… disappointing. But logic prevailed. He needed a humans help from here on out.

"This is X," he said over the radio, reconnecting with the mobile bases cameras. "I have a lead on Dial, but I require help from a human."

In the base, several people looked at each other before one man, the BRIDGE soldier in command of the unit on the Savage Land, came up to the mic. "We read you, X. We have an asset in the field heading out to you. He said he should be able to find you soon."

X acknowledged that. "Very well. I'll track their armor and contact them through it."

The BRIDGE soldier hesitated. "That… won't really work?"

"Why not?"

"He doesn't have armor. The only thing he went out with was a knife."