The Undying Mecha Emperor

The assassination attempt ended without much fanfare, with the final white mecha falling gently through the sky and impacting the ground beneath it with a loud BOOM.

By all measures, it was an extremely mild ending, considering the ruckus we caused in the course of the batt- I mean, massacre

The air was thick with smoke and sparse lightning energy, and destroyed mecha parts littered the ground.

My alien mecha hovered in the sky and studied my surroundings with cold satisfaction.

I had won a great battle, and had clearly identified my ultimate enemy for my trip this time.

"Richard Draco huh. You\'re not only irreparably ugly, but also treasonous, traitorous and ungrateful like a damned snake. The world will be a better place without you. You are so dead." I muttered with a determined heart before I turned to check on Princess Louisa.

She was seated comfortably like a schoolgirl on a chair and desk which Arabella had summoned for her. Her head was lazily reclined upon her folded arms, and she was staring at me like some foolish schoolgirl in love with her teacher.

Our eyes met and caused her eyes to widen in shock and embarrassment. She shot up on her seat and blinked away awkwardly to look at… well. There was nothing worth looking at in that sparse cockpit.

"How are you? What prophecy did you make? I didn\'t know you\'re a prophet!" I said to her.

"Ah. Hehe. Yeah. Uhm. Ehmmm. My family came from a long line of Prophet Kings. We always had the power of prophecy. That\'s one of the main reasons why my father believed in the prophecy so much." Princess Louisa said quickly.

I nodded and continued to ask her questions to ease her out of her awkwardness.

"What\'s the other reason?"

"Uh. Well the other reason was because the one who made that particular prophecy about the Black Dragon is… my great grandmother." Princess Louisa said.

"I see. No wonder. Your dad probably had fond memories of his grandmothe-" I started to remark.

"He had her killed after she finished making the prophecy under torture." Princess Louisa interrupted me before I could get to finish my sentence.

"Ah." Was the only word I managed to say in response to that.

I knew Emperors and great leaders had to be cold blooded in order to succeed. But torturing his own grand mother to squeeze out a prophecy he wanted from her and then killing her off after that was beyond brutal.

It was evil.

"My great grandmother was the greatest prophet the Empire ever had the honor and privilege of having." Princess Louisa said softly with a slightly mournful and angry edge in her voice.

Apparently the one who had happy memories with that old woman wasn\'t her father.

"She was the one who taught me how to control my prophetic powers. She…" Princess Louisa trailed off without continuing at that point.

"Well done. Excellent way to freeze a conversation and drive girls away." Arabella smirked in my mind. "The next time I need to drive people away, I shall ask you for advice!"

I was about to say that she would never get the chance to do that because she was probably already dead and that mere wisps of consciousnesses do not have friends.

But I held myself back, because if I said it, then I would merely be proving her right.

I sighed.

"I see. Well, back to your prophecy. What did you get?" I asked curiously.

Princess Louisa seemed to snap back to reality at my question, and she frowned lightly at me.

"That… thing you did with this mecha when you unlocked its potential…" She said hesitantly.

"Uhh. Ehm yes. What about it?" I asked uncomfortably. It was a topic I didn\'t want to talk much about just in case I let something slip.

As pretty as she was and as in love with me as she was, she was ultimately still an enemy. There was no bloody way I would reveal my secret to her.

"Can you… perhaps… do the same to other mechas?" She asked with her eyes opened wide, oozing suppressed excitement and anticipation from every pore.

Even though I knew that it wasn\'t meant as a trick question, it was a question that would tell her a lot about my true abilities if I answered it truthfully.

Being able to unlock a mecha\'s potential with just a simple act could easily point to the existence of a power that could be linked to devour.

So I acted stupid and gave her a vague answer.

"Alien mechas are really unique. This particular one has technology which somehow resonated very powerfully with me. I felt… a very strange sort of… hmmm. Kinship? With it. Maybe the ones who built this mecha are related to the two bloodlines I absorbed earlier." I babbled a random answer without actually answering her question.

But as I said before, she was no dumbass, and my attempts to avoid the question ended up giving her an answer anyway.

"I see. So you can do it, but you don\'t want to tell me about it. But you also didn\'t want to lie to me about it. Strangely… It makes me happy and sad at the same time…" Princess Louisa said with a smile and a sigh at the same time.

My jaws dropped at her words.

"Damn it. I should have lied to her outright." I cursed at myself internally.

"At times like this, you truly seem like a little ten year old boy." Arabella sighed. "So naive, and so pure. Ah damn. Now all of my protective motherly feelings are gushing out."

"You girls are way too complicated." I said to them both while shaking my head helplessly.

"Don\'t worry. I won\'t tell anybody about your abilities. It\'s just that… the prophecy which came to me had something to do with it…" Princess Louisa said softly.

"What is it? Tell me the words." I commanded her.

"The dead shall arise at his call and the smoldering fires of earth will awaken to greet him. Every mecha will bow and Emperors will declare that he is Lord. Beware the Black Dragon. Exalt the Black Dragon. Receive Him with all haste." Princess Louisa said in a clear and zealous voice.

The way she stared at me gave me no doubts at all that she viewed me completely as the Black Dragon of her prophecy, and that she would "receive" me with all that she had.

She had seen me summon the spirit of the three headed monster in the alien world. And although I did not cause the "smoldering fires of earth" to awaken, I had just revealed that I was able to unlock the potential of mechas almost at will.

To her, it was confirmation.

What was once mere belief that I was the Black Dragon had instantly transformed into unwavering faith.

"Hmmmm. Are you sure its a prophecy? And not your random thoughts being driven by your feelings?" I asked her doubtfully.

"It is undoubtedly a prophecy, no question about it." Princess Louisa answered without hesitation.

"And you\'re so sure because…"

"Because of this." Princess Louisa stretched out her right arm and pulled back her long voluminous sleeves to reveal a slender, silky smooth arm, with three, horrifying red scars each the size of a thumb on it.

"Everytime the Prophets of the Empire makes a valid prophecy which engages the power of our blood, it will trigger these runes to appear on our arm. These three scars on my right arm simply meant that I have made three valid prophecies." Princess Louisa explained.

"Hmmmm. Interesting." I said and frowned.

I had just received two bloodlines with two supernatural powers. I was someone who was fully convinced that bloodlines have power.

"If her bloodline has the additional power of making prophecies, wouldn\'t that mean I would end up marrying her?" I thought glumly.

I mean, she was really beautiful. And a Princess, at that. Marrying her is probably the dream of countless young men.

But I did not like the idea of having my future being determined by powers other than my own. Plus, I already had someone in mind for the exalted position of being my wife.

I looked at her and saw that she was blushing quite deeply.

"She\'s definitely thinking about our future marriage as well!" I thought even more glumly.

"No girl will blush that deeply if it\'s just about the obscure notion of "Marriage". She\'s definitely thinking about something much more physical, and much more pleasurable… Hahahahahaha!!" Arabella laughed uproariously in my heart.

"Go on! Lean in and kiss her! She will definitely like it! In fact, she seems like she\'s ready to allow you to do much, much more than just kiss. If you play your cards right, you can even get her to-"

Bzt.

I threw up the mental wall between us once more.

"Damn that horny middle aged woman! Why the hell does she keep talking about sex?" I raged in my heart.