No sooner had Shiro completed his transformation, and roared, then I heard a high pitched —if modulated— squeal.
“Big metal kitty!” Beju shrieked as she ran over to Shiro, completely leaving her brother to fumble while carrying the barrel by himself. To his credit, after a bit of a stumble, he managed to adjust his grip and walked the rest of the way on his own, setting the barrel down next to me.
Beju had her arms around Shiro’s neck and was rubbing her face against his lion face. “Oh he’s such a good kitty! Yes he is! Prime, I love him! I want to keep him forever!”
“Um.. Beju.. That’s Shiro,” I said, crossing my arms and covering where my mouth would have been.
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I don’t remember opening my eyes, or rebooting, or anything, I was simply sitting in a chair at a dining room table. The dining room reminded me of a large open kitchen like you see on shows that take place out in the country somewhere.I was the only one in the room and I was apparently in the middle of breakfast. On the table before me, sat a bowl of some sort of cereal. At least, I thought it was cereal until some of it started swimming around.Crap, did I die again? I looked down at my hands. They were black. Jet black, armor covered, and claw tipped. I was wearing a denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up and heavy duty overalls. A second set of arms was holding the bowl and chasing the things inside with a spoon. I realized that as I was looking at my hands, I coul
With the help of Shrapnel I managed to get my limbs reconnected much faster than my natural repair systems would have handled it. I didn’t have much time but whatever it was that Elita was up to I now had a ton of new materials and even some processed materials to work with. I still hadn’t seen her since she went out to go kill something but all the evidence of her work kept showing up in my [Inventory].I even found some Automata parts showing up. I really hoped that she wasn’t out murdering people to get me parts. I appreciated the thought, but... No, I was sure that she just happened to find them somewhere. Don’t ask qu
When Carnivac arrived back at AutomaTown, he handed Ram’s body over to Ratchet, who got straight to work on replacing the damaged arms as well as all of the fried internal components. I didn’t have any fire based crystals on hand so restoring her forge abilities would have to wait but hopefully I’d be able to get her back online. I put Rom to work with the CloudBurst repair job while I worked to get the LandMine armor built. I only had a couple of hours until dawn and no idea where the Royal kill squad was actually at.The only proxy I had with flight abilities was Shrapnel and he didn’t have near the range to scout out their location. Shiro had extended gliding abilities but I wouldn’t send him on such a mission. That left Elita, but I had no idea where she was or how to find her. Okay Carnivac, old buddy, looks like it’
My plasma tests went well, if you don’t count igniting The Range on fire. After the flare-up, I pulled IronHide out of storage to dig a trench between The Range and the treeline of the forest. I figured it wouldn’t hurt. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires. I said that to Elita but she gave me a confused, what-are-you-on-about, look for my troubles.Once I got the containment field working properly, I was able to hold a mass of superheated plasma at the blunt end of my second hammer. The first one was sacrificed in learning that I needed to use the containment field to protect the hammer itself from the heat of the plasma. The mass was intentionally quite thin, only a few millimeters thick, but it was more than enough to cause some pretty serious damage to whatever came in contact with it. With the [HammerTime] keyword command, the hammer parts disappeared from my legs, going back into [Inventory] and then reappearing in their proper configuration on the staff. The overall weight of the hammer was a bit more than I was expecting in practice and I nearly toppled over as I swung it around. I caught Elita stifling a giggle and gave her a wink... which with a single working eye was completely lost on her.“Alrighty then, let’s establish a baseline...” Once I found the proper rhythm for swinging the weapon around, it was just a matter of building up the momentum and then letting it crAutomata Prime 2:18: Hammer time
Sentinel sat on a rock that he had dragged into the middle of the road and carefully whittled at a small carving of a robotic condor. He had swords built into both of his arms, but it was nice to carve with the small knife that Kull had given to him.“Maybe I should have been named SoundWave,” he chuckled to himself as he thought about the bird design he’d been crafting. “SoundWave Prime.”From around the S curve of the road, the two centaurs came trotting along, looking very confident and less like “scouts” and more like a “spearhead”. When they saw Sentinel, they slowed to a stop, allowing the Automata and the lizardman to catch up to them. Sentinel slowly looked up at them from beneath his wide brimmed hat. From his hidden position in the trees, Carnivac watched as the Prince ignored the conversation between my main body and the Princess to whisper something to the Captain. The Captain then relayed those orders to a subordinate who ran to the rear of the caravan.The soldiers started to gear up for battle, beginning with the remaining Automata. Their handlers barked orders at them and ineffectually shoved them when they didn’t move quickly enough. The Automata were sent into the tree line in order to flank our group, followed closely by their handlers. Even in a situation like this, it seemed like the leashes on the Automata were kept quite short.The golems sat like statues until four specialized mages approached each one and began chanting spells of power and activation. The mages entered a trance in a protected area as thAutomata Prime 2.20: A wolf shaped speed bump
With a yell from their captain, the prince’s soldiers rushed at us and the unlocked Automata met them steel for steel. A deep roar bellowed from the command group and with a terrific leap, the Guild Master came flying over the heads of the royals and the officers. He landed with a heavy thud, already growing in size and swinging a fist the size of a frozen turkey in my direction.Elita sent a bolt of lightning into the oni’s back. The electrical shock hit him and he convulsed, dropping to a knee, but not out.“I have business with you, Guild Master,” she spat with sword and needle gun at the ready.“Fine! Don’t worry, this won&rsq