Automata Prime

1.5: Ravage eject

Ravage looked up at me and took a step back from Jada.  Her head dropped down and her whole body started folding in on itself as cat limbs disappeared and small human-shaped limbs emerged.  The cat’s body unfolded and folded again like origami. It seemed to be going slowly and deliberately, which made me think of nearly every robot show I’d ever seen that gave you in-depth transformation scenes at first then later skipped over them. Now I was wondering if they went slow at first to test things out, or if it was a skill thing where you got faster as you gained experience.  Ravage the cat was gone and in her place stood a small, humanoid Automata no more than a foot and a half tall.  Her face was featureless and white like Elita’s, but she had long fibrous black hair that flowed down her back and little kitty ears on top of her head. The cat tail was still present and flicked from side to side.  If you knew to look for it you could see the shape of the cat head in her chest and the cat ears as little shoulder pauldrons.  I was pretty happy with the results.

“What? W- What’s this??” Jada screamed, looking back and forth between me and Ravage.

“This is Ravage.  Clearly, she’s a transformer.”  I tried to wink, but I thought one of my eye lights just flickered. I doubted Jada noticed it.  It also occurred to me that no one on this world was going to get my vast stockpile of jokes, and it made me sad.

Ravage tried to speak, but all that came out was that modem sound.

“Don’t worry, Ravage, we’ll get that fixed.”

More modem sounds.

“Well yeah, that’s true.”

“You can understand that?” Jada asked. She looked skeptical.

“I can? Huh, yeah I guess I can.  She’s just saying that as a cat soul, she doesn’t have any experience with human speech, so that could be causing problems. I’ll have to look into it.”

At that moment Shea came back down from her apartment with a sandwich on a plate.  She froze the instant she saw Ravage and just stared with her mouth open.  As if in slow motion, the plate and sandwich hit the floor.

“Hey, Shea. Um, this is--” I started to explain.

“SHE’S. SO. CUTE!!” Shea screamed, covering her mouth with her hands.

Ravage looked at her and cocked her head a bit, then did a curtsy holding the edges of her little armor plate skirt.  Shea screamed and grabbed Ravage, hugging her and rubbing her face against Ravage’s.  Ravage screamed in modem and tried pulling away but couldn’t break free from Shea’s grip.  Jada and I just laughed; I’m sorry, Ravage, I fear this is your life now.

Elita rushed in with her hand on her sword. “What happened? I heard screaming.”

“Ah. That'd be Shea. And Ravage.”

Ravage had mostly given up at this point and hung limply in Shea’s arms.  It was so easy to see that despite the new body, she was still very much a cat.  Elita looked at Ravage and cocked her head to one side then the other.  It was hard to know what she was thinking. Slowly she reached out a hand to Ravage.  For just a moment Shea relaxed her grip and looked at Elita.  In that instant, Ravage broke Shea’s grip, batted her on the nose, and lunged for Elita.  She transformed mid-jump and sat on Elita’s shoulder, looking back at Shea with a glare. I don’t know if anyone else could see it, but I got the express impression of blushing from Elita. It was cute; she was just frozen with this robot kitty on her shoulder.

“What? What happened? And why am I thinking of your old cat Tibbins?” Shea asked Jada.

Jada just laughed all the harder and slapped Shea on the back.  Shea looked dejected until she remembered her sandwich was now on the floor. Then she looked panicked and forlorn. Poor thing, the loss of a sandwich was a heavy thing.  Jada helped her clean up and walked her back upstairs to get some new food. 

“Say Prime... what... what do I do?” asked Elita, still frozen with her arm outstretched and a now curled up and possibly sleeping Ravage on her shoulder.

I chuckled at the sight of this big tough warrior frozen by a little kitty and gently pulled Ravage off of her and set her on the workbench. Ravage gave me a modem chirp of dissatisfaction.  While waiting for the two organics to come back, I thought I might as well fix Ravage’s voice issues.

By the time Shea and Jada got back, Ravage was making mostly normal-sounding cat sounds.  Her voice had that metallic echo that mine and Elita’s had, which reminded me of an Ultra Magnus robot voice changer toy I had as a kid.  She could speak English now—wait, am I speaking English? Well, whatever language we’re all speaking, Ravage could too, but she had a bit of a vocal quirk and kept sounding like that silly “meowing cat speak” that characters do in cartoons. I guess it was actually a true thing. Who knew?

“So Mr. Automata, do you think you could make more like Ravage here? I’m sure they’d sell pretty well,” Jada asked.

I thought about that for a while; I certainly could make more if I had enough materials, but I wasn’t interested in crafting more slaves for people.  I could make puppets though that would function like magic tools. It was worth a shot at any rate.

“I’m not going to make more Automata slaves, but I have an idea I’d like to try out.  Jada, may I borrow your shop and tools?  If this works as well as I think, it could be pretty popular.”

“If it’s half as good as Ravage here, then I’ll rent the shop and the workshop to you plus 60% of the profits.”

I stared at her with my expressionless face.

“Okay, 50%.”

Stare.

“40? 30?”

Staaaaaaaaarrrrrre.

“Come on now Prime, be reasonable! 20??”

“How about 50% but no rental fees, you’ll still be the owner of the shop and I’ll be your ‘assistant,’” I suggested.

She mulled it over for a bit, and I could see her doing calculations in her head and muttering figures to herself.  At last, she nodded and thrust out her hand.  I took it, and she pumped my arm up and down vigorously. “It’s a deal!”

“We’ll be neighbors!” Shea chimed in.

“What about me, Prime? I’m pretty useless in this shop and I’m honestly afraid to try and go out on my own,” mentioned Elita.

Ravage hopped back up to Elita’s shoulder and transformed into her humanoid form and took a seat, resting her head against Elita’s.

“No worries, Elita.  I won’t let anyone enslave you again.”

“I appreciate that, but I need a purpose too.  I can’t just stay in this shop all the time and do nothing.”

“That’s fair. Hmm, I’m not really sure how to handle it.” I was a bit stuck. What sort of job would I give a warrior class Automata in a tool shop?

“You’re going to need regular material orders, right Prime?” Shea asked.  I nodded.  “Then how about Elita registers as an Adventurer with me and you can hire us on retainer for material collection?”

“That could work,” I thought aloud, “but wouldn’t that mean she would need to be your property to register? Plus she’d only be registered as your tool, not as an adventurer herself.”

“Rejected,” Elita said flatly.  “You seem nice enough, Shea, but I don’t want you for a master.  Not even for pretend.”

I looked around the shop; there had to be an answer here.  I crossed my arms in thought and remembered that I was wearing dwarf armor.  I looked over at Elita and cocked my head to one side, thinking about the armor she was also wearing.  

“What is it, Prime? You look like you’ve thought of something,” Elita said, cocking her own head to the side.  Ravage mirrored her, but who knows what the cat was thinking.

“I think I’ve got an idea, but I don’t know if you’re going to like it... Meat bag.”

Over the course of the next several days, I worked continuously on designs and schematics.  Jada and Shea came and went while Ravage helped me out around the workshop.  Elita was getting more agitated with nothing for her to do and nowhere she could go.  Sparky seemed to have taken a liking to Shea and spent his time with her, which was just as well.  My coding tests with the new design didn’t go as well as they had with Ravage.  Ravage was mostly “off the shelf” code, and what I was working on now was all scratch built.

Finally, after repeated tests I got things working and brought Elita into the workshop to show her.  There sitting on the workbench was a pair of, almost, human-looking hands and a human-looking head and neck along with several other armor replacement parts, aside from their metallic coloring and texture.  She stared at them for a while and then looked at me.

“What is this?”

“Replacement parts.  To help you blend in.”

“This is dumb. It won’t work.  It’s close, granted, but it’ll never pass.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.  Let’s try, you’ve got nothing to lose except your extra thumbs.” I said wiggling my fingers at her.

The silence was drawn out.  This whole idea was way outside of her comfort zone and I couldn’t blame her.  We were talking about heavily modifying her body here. This wouldn’t be a simple disguise or mask to pull over.  I’d thought about those but given her warrior class size, it would never work as an additive thing.

“Okay. Fine. What do you need me to do?” she said, resigned.

“Great! Hop up onto the workbench and lie down,” I said as I cleared the space for her.

She looked at me for several beats then did as she was told.  I could feel that she was putting a lot of trust in me, and I wasn’t about to betray that trust.  I brought up [Console] and started opening up multiple screens.

“Okay, relax.  I won’t let anything happen to you.  I’m going to start shutting down your senses so that you won’t feel anything as I work on you.  It’ll be like you're asleep and when you wake up I’ll be all done.  Just like with the [Slave Override] I’ll need your permission to do any work with your magic code, okay?”

She looked at me and nodded slightly.  “I trust you, Prime.”

“Good. Sweet dreams.”

“Dreams? What do you meeee....” she started to say, but I’d already begun shutting her senses down.

Once she was fully out I got to work and began removing her armor plating, exposing the mana fiber muscles below.  For the most part, all of the new armor was one to one, so it wasn’t too much of a problem to replace old for new.  The head gave me the most trouble, especially the eyes.  In the end, I had to keep her original eyes and make some modifications to the head plating and some of the code I’d embedded into it.  She was nearly ready.  Aside from some joint lines and the metallic sheen of her grayish-white “skin,” she looked to be a young woman in her early 20s with a tall and athletic build and long silver hair.

I started bringing her systems and senses back online, and slowly the glow came back to her eyes.  Slowly she sat up and looked at me.

“Did... Did it work?” she asked.

Before I could answer, Ravage jumped up onto the table and into Elita’s lap, throwing her arms around her neck.  “Big Sister! Nyow you’re awake!”

I had to chuckle. I knew that Ravage had taken a liking to Elita, but I didn’t realize she saw her as an older sister.

“You tell me.  Come, have a look.”  

I guided her over to a large slab of polished steel to see her reflection.  She looked at the reflection then down at her hands, turning them over and moving her fingers.

“There’s an extra one,” she remarked, wiggling her pinky. “This is amazing.”

Then she touched her face and looked back at the mirror.  She had a mouth now, one that opened and closed as she spoke.  She spent a while just making different shapes with her mouth, opening and closing it, and looking at her teeth.

“How... How is this possible?  This is really amazing work Prime... but it won’t fool any of the people in the town if they get close to me.”

“That IS true. It won’t.  And you’re still bigger than most human or elf women.  So check this out.  Open up your [Skill Menu] and look for [Cloak()], good.  Now activate it.”

The joint lines and articulation creases disappeared, giving her a smooth surface while her plating turned a light yellowy green.  Her black gem eyes gave way to natural-looking organic eyes with red irises while a small set of tusks protruded from her mouth.  Her mouth dropped in shock and she looked at me then back at the reflection then back at me.

“What what what?? I’m an orc??”

“And a very beautiful one at that if I do say so myself.”

Her cheeks flushed. I was happy to see that function worked.  The more life-like the better and the lower the chance of her getting found out.

“My voice is different too”, she remarked.

“When you [Cloak()] a vocal filter kicks in to mask that metallic echo we have.  It’s not perfect though so I wouldn’t get into any long conversations with any cute boy orcs.”

She rolled her eyes at me, “So, am I a Transformer now too?”

I couldn’t help but smile inwardly that she remembered what I’d called Ravage.

“My dear Elita, you are what I would call a Pretender, but be careful though and keep an eye on your mana.  Using [Cloak()] eats up a lot, so try to go without when possible,” I warned.

At that moment Shea returned with Sparky on her shoulder and nearly fell over when she saw Elita.

“Um Um Um we’re not open to the public, Miss Orc!” She shouted.

“Shea, this is Elita. Her [Cloak()] disguise is pretty good, right?”  If Shea was fooled, then I was sure that Elita wouldn’t have any problems.

“Ah. I see. This is Elita.  Disguised as an orc.  So Prime, tell me... WHY IS SHE NAKED??”

Elita cocked her head to one side, then looked down at herself, then at me.

“Right.  She’s going to need clothes, isn’t she...”