Doing all the steps to manually design and engineer aeromorphs was on the level of the most classified state held secrets. Only 7 countries had the know-how to make and control a sentient craft. Those 7 great technologically advanced countries were spread across the 8 continents of this game world. That meant that each one had their continent as a sphere of influence. Obviously the interfered constantly to get the jump on the others and become the world hegemon. Until then, it was a global cold war. They were Ixiti, Oplixo, Strianya, Landzi, Rusmaia, Treaca and the Lile Uros Islands. Aside from them the only aeromorphs outside of them were just loans given to vassal states and proxies. If we moved to another continent, it would be very hard if not impossible for them to reach us. If we joined with an upstart nation somewhere and they gave us asylum, that would be even better. We could go through all the pros and cons of each continent later. The high mountains of Quailim Kingdom was our first destination. We had to pick up Bouncer. He was waiting for us to go get him after all.
Eventually we found him after he let off a few flares to show his location. It was just as Wideload had said. Bouncer was in a sorry state and barely clinging onto life. The dessert of L'bajo was not kind to him. He was nearly half buried and there were some young traders near him. From what we could tell before they scurried off was that they were there to scavenge parts from his body. We lifted him out of the sand and laid him on his back. The armor of his body was cracked and falling off of him. His leg was inoperable, and he was missing an arm. The large turbine used for liftoff was cracked and the resulting fire burned parts of the biometal flesh that were his back, thighs and ass. His visor for seeing was cracked and chipped to the point it was clear he could only see us with one eye. His wings were bent and dented. All in all, he was fucked up really bad from that fight. It would have been worse if he had stayed. When he was finally able to see all of us, he said "I followed your advice from that day, Guardian Blue. I did what you said." I looked at him with a smile. "Did I win?" he asked.
Feeling overwhlemed, Babybird and Hatchling crouched down to talk to him. "Yeah, you won! You really got him. He was crying on the ground like a human baby when you left!" Hatchling said. "We're going to fix you up. All good as new. How about that?" Babybird added. Bouncer sighed and said "If you want." He was already resigned to die. The 2 F-16 jets lowered their jockstraps and stoked their DDMs. The covered their clutch mate in the gray nanite paste. It went to work immediately. Everything was fixed and made whole again. It was practically magic. When he was able to rise to his feet, he hugged them. They both happily hugged him back. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Bouncer." I said. He shrugged and asked what we would do now. It did not take much convincing for him to defect. After we told him he was on the kill list he was furious. "Those bastards!" he yelled as his hands balled into fists. The others just looked at me and waited for me to tell them what to do. I was the leader after all. "We're not going to have much time here. Let's just choose the closest continent."
