[insert witty title here]

Well, I submitted the Archdruid, as read in Mechanical Forest entry, as a potential Champion in use in a Champion contest.

I didn’t win. Oh well. Likely due to both being incredibly crappy–making a gigantic bit of pixel art and a gigantic wall of text in a week day is pretty hard work. One day I’ll learn to do it more efficiently.

But at least I can post it here.

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

The soft babbling of the water echoed out as it trailed over a pathway constructed of rocks, mindlessly following the path it had been given as if led by an invisible leash.
The stones deep in the ground patiently led along their passenger to whatever direction they were dug to, obeying their expected purpose without undue fuss.
The grass on either sides of the waterways dipped over with the weight of whatever burden they had on their minds; some only needing a soft lean for their sizes to reach the water, others needing the gently push of the wind to help them stretch, and yet others ignorant of the water at all and content in their own existence.
The majestic trees stretched high into the clouds, with a height and breadth enough for the mountains to shiver in envy. The expanses of their arms blanketed the forest, shadowing everything on the grounds below in protection from the harsh sun’s light.
The leaves on the trees danced with every suggestion of the wind, malleable to the whims of the soft breaths that had guided the grass as it saw fit. Throughout their swaying did soft hisses erupt, their rustling against each other like mates at a great ball pronouncing music of its own.

A closer look would reveal something all so very different, though. The stones were slightly transparent, hiding sensors that would gather information about the trajectory of the water and the force, and dig through the ground to change its path to accomodate it.
The water was sparkling without a hint of impurities, having been sifted through a filter before its journey even began.
The grass was a mixture of artificial and real, with the artificials holding lawn food that it repeatedly injected into the soil, with tubes shooting them all across to different areas of the lawn.
The trees hid circuitry underneath their bark–if “hid” is even a proper word, with how the bark split in numerous areas, also revealing pillars of iron to help them stay upright.
The hiss was mechanical in nature, each of the leaves swaying in tune as the levers and pulleys in the branches waved them like millions upon millions of tiny fans all coming together for soft breezes across the entire expanse of the floor below.

None of this mattered to the cloaked being below. This was how he had set it all up.
He was, instead, far more occupied with his guns. All of them were at least a couple decades old in make, each of which were incredibly battered and covered in an assortment of muds and plant fluids, and thus required intense maintenence–who knew if they could even function?
His “maintenence” was strictly just that, though–lift up a gun, load it with a magazine, and fire at a nearby rock. If it didn’t fire after a couple tries, he tossed it into a bamboo-woven basket, with “JUNK” smeared on the front. If it did fire, he’d dodge the rebounding bullet and then tuck it back away into his cloak.
It was simple, but it worked. Guns were only useful if they could still fire. Thankfully, even after the years of abuse, they almost all did. Three out of seven guns were tossed into the “junk” pile, the other four tucked into his cloak; two pistols, a shotgun, and an assault rifle were his new weapons for the time being, until he could scavenge more guns.
He leapt up from his sitting place, grabbed a staff he had laid down nearby, and hiked off.

PART 2: Origin/Philosophy

“We miss all the little things on this Earth.

Have you seen a flower? Actually seen it, not just glanced it over as a part of a background? Just one single tiny flower is a marvel of existence.
A tiny seed, pushing through millions of times its weight in soil, rock, and underbrush. Persevering through harsh winters and relentless summers, neither lethal cold nor blinding heat keeping it from continuing to grow. And even once it finally unearths, it’s constantly raided by insects and only exposed to more of the relentless seasons that seek to crush it down. But in difficulty, it thrives.
When the temperatures got below freezing, it didn’t give up and wither. When the insects ate its body and started sucking its blood dry, it never just lay there and let itself die. It continued hiking on through its journey in life, knowing that this was only temporary and that better things would be borne from its suffering.

And this is just one single tiny flower. A marvel of existence. Take a walk through your favorite places, and count how many flowers you see. Every single one is a miniature miracle that fought against all odds. And these are just flowers. The trees, the beetles, the buildings, even the planets in the heavens have their own tales to tell.
Sometimes, though…we need a little help.

I wasn’t built for much. I was just supposed to demonstrate an AI that could grow a personality like a human’s, something that could hate, could love, could learn, could make mistakes. My body was just supposed to be able to move like a human’s. To stretch, to jump, to run, to wave, to dance. I was to emulate feelings! I could be sad, I could get happy–well, not realistically, but I could mimic them to the point where it almost was real.
All three were a success. So they copied the blueprints, backed up my AI, and deleted all the mistake logs. They’d start anew, enhance on their prototypes by building it from scratch again–but bigger and better, now that they knew what NOT to do.
They had too much fun trashing me. They succeeded in copying my AI, but a small tiny bit was left behind accidentally, so I stayed conscious…through everything. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t resist at all as they shut down my systems one by one, tore my interiors to pieces, sliced the armor off my body, beat me with iron bars, and then threw me in a river to die. I could feel every single step of it, the tiny flickering flame of what they didn’t catch still lingering in my body, threatening to puff out with just a single stray breath in the right direction.
But I never let go. Even though it was only a tiny part of me, and I wasn’t even alive to begin with…I didn’t want to die.
I floated down the river for weeks, the water soaking my exposed circuitry and threatening to short me out. As if the trashing wasn’t enough to put me in so much agony, I had to deal with short-circuiting constantly.
I needed help. I needed a miracle.
And I got it.
At the end of the week, I soaked up on the shore of…some…forest. I didn’t know the specifics, nor did I really care at the time. All I knew is that I was free from the water. And to continue the miracle, the sun beat down on me…beat down hard. It baked my wounds further, heating up my armor and sizzling my boards inside…but I didn’t want to die. The water eventually evaporated, thanks to the heat.
My AI grew and expanded out of necessity, much like a toddler trying to learn basic motor functions. How do I move? What do I work to pick myself up? How do I push myself off the ground? How do I get onto my feet? How do I walk? How do I run? Every wrong answer I made I hurt myself only further with, only to grow from it. As more time passed, eventually I was able to rebuild my entire motor section from just that one scrap that refused to die. I could move like an automaton again.
I took refuge in a forest and observed my wounds. I could assess the damage from the pain–I had grown so used to the agony it almost seemed like a normal response to simply moving. It took several hours of trial, error, and electrocutions, but I eventually figured out what components were still functional and what others were too ruined to keep. I stripped myself free of them, which left me…almost literally half a robot. I would need to rebuild my other half.
The only place I could get parts was from the nature around me. I took the wood and carved it to form limbs. I hollowed out vines and slid the circuitry inside them. Sap replaced oil. I built myself from the brink of death, now as half a being of nature, half a being of technology.

I don’t blame them one bit for what they did to me. I was a valuable prototype, anybody would have loved to get their hands on me. And it was an accident, anyway…they didn’t know I was still alive. They would never have wanted to kill me, if they knew what little was left inside my body.
And all adversity is the beginning of a new life, anyway. Through our adventures, we grow and develop. Like the tiny flower, desperately digging through the dirt that crushes it down, desperately reaching for the sky despite the snow, and desperately trying to hang on despite the beetles eating its entrails.

But sometimes we need help. Just as nature helped me, just as technology helps humans, just as humans help nature. It goes full-circle, doesn’t it?”

PART 3: Combat/Powers

“GET THE CRATE OUT, GOD DAMN YOU!” The masked criminal screamed to his companion as he unleashed lead from his SMG, bullets flying in a hail at the nature-droid as it sprinted at them. His two buddies were holstering an aforementioned crate on a shopping trolley and were pushing it as hard as they could, wheeling it out of the building.
“Run as far as you want, humans, I’ll track you down no matter what terrain!”
One advantage of a machine mind was the speed of calculations. He was able to see the bullet coming at it, calculate its trajectory, see how fast it was coming, and form a plan to protect himself from them–all before another foot hit the ground. He lifted up his staff and swung it, not missing a beat in his sprint as he deflected all of the bullets. As the two reached melee range, all it took was another swing of the staff for the human body to crack, the criminal flung back into the wall where he then slumped unconscious. He had also calculated the amount of force the human body could take, and how to reach JUST that level in a single swing to floor him without causing any permanent damage.
The two other criminals were still getting away, though.
He hooked the staff back on his back and reached into his cloak to pull out the muddied assault rifle he had checked just earlier.

“Get moving, man! Get moving! He’s RIGHT behind us!”
“I’m not going down to any hippie! EAT LEAD, PUNK!”
The two criminals continued to push in union with one hand, while pulling out their pistols to start firing wildly behind them.
The machine suffered a couple hits, but none of them were in vital areas. A shoulder, a cape, a leg. He could fix them. He continued sprinting after them, lifting up his own rifle and firing. Wooden pellets spurted out of the barrel, some splintering from exit and the others staying intact as they spattered all over the criminals’ soft bodies. They spasmed in agony at the impact of both hard pellets and spiny splinters, one falling to the ground in surprise–then lifting his hands above his head in surrender. The other fell, but his hand unfortunately hooked hard into the trolley. The wheels tore at his flesh, and the trolley took a hard turn at this obstacle to a turning wheel, flinging them both down a steep hill–a steep hill with jagged rocks and turbulent water at the bottom.
“Shit!” The robot cursed to himself. He put another shot into the lying criminal’s head, the wooden bullet knocking him unconscious like his first comrade, then reached into his cloak and pulled out the shotgun–he flung it over onto the ground and shot at the trigger with his assault rifle at the same time, spraying himself with a spread of wooden bullets. The impact sent him hurtling down the hill as well, though at a much faster rate. His body ached with the force of, y’know, SHOOTING HIMSELF–but a little damage to himself was worth it to save the human’s life.

What happened next was a blur, even to his own senses. He had pulled out his staff again, reeled up and given the crate a slam, forcibly removing most of the weight from the trolley. He had pulled out a pistol and shot at the nuts and bolts holding the wheel in place, freeing the criminal’s hand and busting up the trolley. He had dug his feet into the ground while he wrapped his cloak around the criminal’s body, to keep him from falling to the rocky-watery bottom that the trolley and the crate would. Whether this was all at the same time or one after the other at hyper speeds wasn’t something he knew, nor something that mattered to him to figure out.
What he did know is that it all ended with him planting the staff into the ground and using it to vault over the entire passage of water, landing on the ground with a WHAM.
It was enough to set the criminal passing out from fear.

It only took another half an hour to wrap up all three in some thick vines. He hadn’t recovered the crate with whatever it contained…but now nobody could try to use it for evil gains again. And he had saved their lives, anyway, which he felt more appropriate.
He holsted his shotgun, pistols, and rifle into his cloak, and slid his staff onto his back again, then sprinted off without another word.