Chapter 91 - Earn A Man Card (2/2)

Gray yelled after Paul and said "Don't catch it! Hide behind it!" since that shield of compressed armor probably weighed as much as Stacia's mech.

Stacia then ducked behind the shield that had landed next to her wedged into the ground, a split second later the missile collided with the shield and most of the blast was deflected up as the shield was pushed over on top of Stacia's mech, burying her with it in a pile of snow.

"You ok Stacia?" Gray asked

"Yeah… I'm just stuck…"

"Sorry about that!" Paul said as he bounded over to Stacia's mech and dug his shield out. His Hoplite Mk 01 was significantly stronger and a bit larger than Stacia's Cupid Mk 01 so Paul easily hefted the shield off of Stacia allowing Stacia to get her mech off of the ground.

Paul inspected the shield and saw that it had received nothing but a scorch mark and said with a surprise "Looks like you're unhurt baby!"

Stacia said "I told you I was fine!"

Everyone then looks at Stacia and Paul meekly says "Sorry, I was talking about the shield."

Awkward silence ensued as everyone was trying not to laugh, thankfully Jono didn't quite catch what was going on and instead blurted out "Hey! What're we standing around for! Return fire!"

Luckily this seemed to bring back everyone to their senses and Gray said "We don't have enough visibility to use snipers, and we can't sneak up on them due to that wall of a mountain behind them."

Everyone glanced at the mountain behind where the enemies were and it really did make it a perfectly defensible position.

Suddenly Geoff started giggling. "I've seen bigger"

"No comments from the peanut gallery!" Yurika said, but also giggling too.

"It's not the size that counts, it's how you use it!" Jono added.

Everyone laughed at this a bit even and suddenly Gray thought of something. "That's it! We just need to use the terrain even better than them!"

"No kidding, can you elaborate a bit more though since we need more to go off of than just some vague statement." Caleb said

"Has anyone else here seen that old Disney movie, Mulan?" Gray asked.

Unsure of where Gray was going with this, only Stacia and Xyra said they had seen it so he added. "Remember the scene, in the mountains, when it was that tiny group against the entire Mongolian army?"

Stacia and Xyra both thought for a moment and then looked up at the mountain, caked in snow, and both went. "Ohhhh!"

"Paul!" Gray yelled

"Yes sir!" Paul replied resolutely.

Gray thought to himself that he liked being called sir then said "Guess what, you get to earn your man card today!"