Automata Prime

1.14: Interrupting a wyvern's lunch

I was thinking about how I might construct and program a controller of some sort when Carnivac spotted a small wyvern on the road up ahead eating something.  I called it small but it was a bit smaller than a horse; not quite large enough for a full sized man to ride, but someone my size would likely be fine.  I tapped George on the shoulder and quietly told him what Carnivac had spotted and that he should stop before the horses caught wind of it.  He gave me a funny look but didn’t question how I knew what Carnivac had seen.

I slipped down from the carriage and gestured that the others should stay there while I moved up quietly to meet Carnivac.  Along the way I picked up any rocks that looked like they would fit into my arm cannon and put them into my [Inventory], ready to load.  When I caught up to Carnivac, he had a number of appropriate rocks ready for me as well, which were put into storage with the others.  Our best bet was going to be surprising it while it was distracted with its meal.  My effective range with the arm cannon was only about ten meters, so I crept around through the woods to approach it from behind.  Carnivac went the other way to approach from its front and to be a distraction if needed.

I got within range and could see it had killed something that looked like an armor plated hippo.  I imagine that normally a predator like this would take a kill back to its nest to eat but this thing was likely too heavy so it had to eat what it could here.  It kept glancing up at the sky, through the tree canopy, as it ate; likely for other wyverns that might try to steal its kill.

I selected the rock bullet ammo, hoping that the blunt rocks would kill it but leave the skin more intact for later.  Carefully, I took aim at the base of its skull and fired.  Right at that moment it put its head back down for another mouthful of meat, allowing the rock to sail harmlessly over its head.  I nearly took Carnivac out, who was waiting in the shadows just on the other side of the road.  The launching of the rock doesn’t make much noise from my cannon since it’s propelled via magic, but the sound of the rock whistling over the wyvern’s head and then hitting trees on the other side, certainly made noise.

The wyvern jerked its head up at the crashing sound and looked into the woods.  Carnivac was hidden in the undergrowth as well as cloaked in the shadows, but still the wyvern stood up straight and slowly started to walk in the direction of the sound.  It was nearly on top of him, peering into the woods for a sign of what may have made the sound.  I rushed from my side of the road and fired off two shots, hitting it in the side.  Unfortunately they didn’t appear to do much, if any, damage.  What they did do, though, was get the wyvern to turn around and focus on me.  It let out a roar and flapped its wings at me in, what I assumed, was a threat posture to look bigger.  I was wrong, it was using a wind attack that sent me back across the road to land on my backside.  Wasn't I supposed to be immune to all magic based attacks?

As it was attacking, Carnivac lashed out with a sword slice that cut deep into its thigh, catching it by surprise.  It whipped around with surprising speed and caught him by the foot as he was dodging backward.  I jumped back up to my feet and ran at it, peppering it with more rock shots as it thrashed back and forth with Carnivac.  With a quick snap of its head, it sent Carnivac flying into the air while I jumped onto its back.  Back and forth, it thrashed and snapped trying to get me off, I even had to convert my arm cannon back in order to grab its spines with both hands.  Carnivac landed hard after his toss and his health had dropped to 117/438 between the hard fall and getting thrashed around like a rag doll.  Sensors indicated there was extensive damage to the leg that had gotten bitten but it wasn’t critical.  A flesh and blood creature probably would have had its leg ripped off as soon as the wyvern started thrashing.  Lucky thing we’re not flesh and blood then.

The wyvern gave up on trying to bite at me and instead was trying to take off into the air, but with its thigh hurt it was having a hard time pushing off the ground.  Carnivac got to his feet but was shaky on the one leg, I’d have to run a full diagnostic on him when we got back to the workshop.  He could barely hobble, let alone walk or run, so his combat effectiveness dropped dramatically.  The wyvern hopped on one leg as it flapped, trying to get airborne and succeeded in getting several feet off the ground with me on its back.  It turned to face Carnivac and flapped its wind attack at him sending him reeling.  Carnivac threw one of his swords at the wyvern, lodging the blade into its shoulder, before he crashed into a tree.  Carnivac went offline and the proxy connection was replaced by an error message.  Crap.

Higher the wyvern rose, but I managed to climb closer to its neck and jerked Carnivac’s sword free.  The thing screeched in pain but was determined to gain altitude.  I tried to take a swing at its throat but the angle was awkward as I was also trying to keep from falling off.  It grabbed my arm as I swung and pulled me forward.  My arm wasn’t nearly as sturdy as Carnivac’s leg and would get torn off in a matter of seconds, I was sure.  As I swung around, I wrapped my legs around its neck, grabbed the dorsal spines with my prehensile feet, converted my arm back to cannon mode, and shoved it hard into the soft area under its jaw; firing round after round of ice shards which had a sharpened point to them.  The wyvern instantly went slack and we started to plummet back to the ground.  We dropped from about three stories high, but I managed to pull my arm free from its dead jaws and get above it before we hit the ground.  For the most part, the wyvern cushioned my fall and I could hear, and feel, several of its bones break when we hit, however, I still sustained a decent hit to my health taking me down to 44/100.

If I were still a human, I would have laid there for quite a while catching my breath, but as an Automata I had no breath to catch and “pain” was just sensor warnings that I could turn off.  Mechanically, continuing to lay there didn’t accomplish anything but I still couldn’t resist the habit to just let my mind settle for a minute or two.  I pulled myself up and off of the crumpled wyvern.  Fighting this thing SUCKED.  I couldn’t help but wonder what rank it was for subjugation though.

I ran a quick diagnostic on myself and found that I had multiple cracks along my back armor plates, some torn mana fibers in my lower back, and my right forearm was crushed where the wyvern had bitten it and was nearly ready to fall off at the elbow.  The glowing blue liquid-ish mana gel that I’d taken to calling “energon” was dripping pretty feely from the wound.  Hopefully my self repair systems would be able to take care of all that, given enough time.  I stumbled over to Carnivac, he didn’t look too good.  The leg looked pretty shredded and the Automata parts were fully exposed and heavily damaged.  That shouldn’t have made him go offline though, then I noticed his head was at a weird angle.  He must have broken the neck joint when he smashed into the tree.  I was about to roll him over to look for further damage when I heard a gasp from behind me.

I slowly turned around and saw Lily with her hands over her mouth with the kids huddled behind her and George trotting up behind them.  I looked back at Carnivac, there was no talking my way out of this one.

“Oh... oh no... is he... is he dead?” Lily stammered as she slowly approached Carnivac.  She stopped when she saw the energon leaking from him and his mangled, mechanical, leg.

“Well... how to say this... he’s not alive, but he never was?  Carnivac is a doll.  My doll, I built him.  A proxy body that I control... he lets me get around without being attacked for being a free Automata... I just need to get back to my workshop and I can repair him, good as new.”

She stared at Carnivac for a long time, no one else said anything.

“Gods I’m such a fool.  All those things he said or did, that was all you, huh?  An Automata pretending to be a real person.”

I knew she felt heartbroken to find out that the thing she was attracted to wasn’t real and was lashing out at me for convenience so I held my tongue... but man I wanted to refute that.  Abruptly, she turned around, grabbed her sons by the wrists and marched back in the direction of the carriage.  The kids yelled and tried to resist but she just dragged them along.  George looked confused and just looked back and forth between me and Lily.

“I’ll leave you guys be, if you want to set up camp for the night.  I don’t need sleep so I’ll keep watch for you.”

“You don’t really...”

“He may be a doll, but I’m the one that agreed to the contract.  I’ll make sure you get back to town safely.”

George nodded and walked back to the carriage.  I sighed and looked down to see that I’d been instinctively holding my damaged arm to keep it from falling off.  I had Alfred put Shrapnel, along with the tools and materials I’d need, into my [Inventory] so that I could retrieve him and established the proxy connection.  Shrapnel transformed into humanoid mode as I laid down on the ground and set about removing the crushed armor plating.  Since the first time I’d used him, I’d equipped him with a small torch for cutting and welding as well as different drill and screw attachments.  He was a pretty handy bot for doing small detail work.  With my free arm I put the wyvern corpse into my [Inventory] and opened my [Console] to shut down all mana flow heading to the damaged arm, this wasn’t going to be a proper or pretty repair but it would be enough to get me going till I could get back to the workshop.

I opened the Network tab so that I could keep an eye out for anything in the area.  I spotted a couple of hits but without knowing what direction they were in, it was hard to decide what to do about them.  In the end I transfered Rom and Ram to my location via the [Inventory] and had one working on getting Carnivac’s neck repaired while the other kept watch for anything in the area.  It was kinda neat having my own little team at the ready like this, having more could come in handy since now the shop was understaffed.

Rom got Carnivac’s neck repaired and dragged him over so that I’d be able to [Inspect] him to figure out how to get him back online.  Thankfully, the problem seemed to be a mana disconnect so when it was repaired, I would just need to reboot him.  Once he was back online and the proxy connection established, I had him stand and lean against a tree to keep an eye out while Rom continued working at repairing his leg.  With Rom and Shrapnel working on mechanical repairs to Carnivac and myself, I had Ram slip away to keep an eye on the carriage through the night.

I was really worried that something might happen during the night when our combat abilities were so hampered, but thankfully nothing happened.  In the morning, the repairs were as good as they could be until we got back to the workshop.  Carnivac’s leg was mostly repaired though it still looked like a robot leg and I had a functional hand again even if it was unarmored and skeletal looking.  I didn’t want to upset Lily and the others further so I put Rom and Ram into my [Inventory] but left Shrapnel, in beetle mode, with Carnivac.

I approached the camp with Carnivac as George was packing things back up and Lily and the kids were finishing their breakfast, but stopped ten or so meters away and waved George over.

“You got beat up pretty good, huh?” George said, gesturing at my arm.

I looked down at my arm and flexed my fingers a bit, “You should see the other guy.  Carnivac here is going to need a lot of repair work but he should be fine to get you back to town.  I’ll scout ahead with him to make sure our path is clear but I don’t want to leave your back unguarded.”

I had Shrapnel fly off of Carnivac’s shoulder to land in my palm.

“This is Shrapnel, he’ll be my eyes in back.  I can’t keep him flying the whole rest of the trip but I’d like to have him ride on the back of the carriage and do sweeps from time to time.”

“That another of your puppets?”

“Yeah, so anything he sees, I see.”

“I see.”

“...nice, I see what you did there.”

“You were a human before becoming an Automata, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, you can tell?”

“Only humans make dumb jokes like that. Other races just don’t seem to have the knack for it.”

“Huh... I’ll have to keep that in mind when playing Carnivac.”

“Yeah, so, Lily won’t like having one of your buddies onboard so I guess just keep to the back.”

“That was my intent.  I’m sorry I upset her...”

“Yup, I heard your warning too.  He’s more of a machine than I am. Now those words make more sense, I thought you just meant he was all about the job.”

“That’s what I was hoping for.”

“I don’t know her full story, but I think she’s been raising those boys on her own for a long time now.  She probably saw Carnivac as a strong man and potential father figure. She’ll come around sooner or later, don’t worry too much about it.”

“Right.  Thanks George, you’re a good guy.”

“Heh, I don’t know about that!”, he laughed as he walked back to the carriage to finish packing up.