Upstairs was Talios, keeping an eye on Shea; and outside was the Knight Watch guards; but in the shop it was quiet. The shop front looked untouched. I was afraid that the “Police” in this world would justify confiscating someone’s possessions when they arrest them.

Shrapnel ducked back to the workshop and found that all of my projects and partial builds were gone, but most of the supplies and tools were still here. I knew already that they were in my [Inventory] but who put them there and when? And where was Shiro?

He climbed up onto the worktable and found the Storage Plate I had made sitting there instead of its usual spot on the shelf. Anything that was put onto the plate would get transferred into the [Inventory] when a little mana was given to the plate.

He looked around, trying to figure out what had happened when he was attacked from behind. He got knocked onto his face and pinned to the table by a weight to his back.

“Oh.. it’s neuw” he heard Ravage say. Gently, she let him up. “Is big syister Elita with neuw, Meowster Prime?”

He flipped over onto his back and regarded the Automata cat looking down at him. He nodded and pointed up.

“The roof?”

He nodded again.

“Do neuw need anything else from here?”

he looked around and pointed at the materials bins and tools. Ravage looked over at them and transformed from her cat mode into her bot mode. She wasn’t that much bigger than Shrapnel at a foot and a half tall, but it was still better than Shrapnel’s six inches for this task.

Ravage grabbed the plate in both hands and jumped off the table. He watched as she walked from bin to bin, tossing everything into [Inventory]. In a matter of minutes, everything I needed had vanished from the room. All that was left was the work table and a rack of shields with various elemental buffs. She looked at the rack and tossed it into storage as well and then stored the worktable out from under Shrapnel.

“Mrow” she said, as if to say “That’s that. Job done.” She then set the plate neatly in the center of the now empty room. She stopped and looked around, Shrapnel did the same for fear of discovery. He hadn’t heard anything though. Then Ravage nudged the plate ever-so-slightly to the left, then up a bit. Then she nodded in satisfaction that the plate was at the exact center of the room.

Ravage shifted back into cat mode and told him to transform as well. He did as bidden and she grabbed him in her mouth and headed out the back door. In the backyard, was another group of guards but they were mostly lounging around. One of the guards spotted them as they hopped into the shadows then up into a tree, but she didn’t seem to be concerned in any way.

Ravage leapt from branch to branch until she was high enough to get to the roof. Once on top, she dropped Shrapnel onto the shingles and waited. He flew up and over the edge and across the street before heading a couple of buildings down the row. Ravage easily followed behind him and I couldn’t help but wonder if her leaping abilities had been this good in her previous life as a cat, or if she had easily adjusted to her enhanced physical stats as an Automata. I couldn't help but think about the time that my shop proxy Rom got a guided tour of the town thanks to Ravage.

In my main body, I could see Shrapnel and Ravage heading our way and held out my hand. Shrapnel landed in my palm and I disconnected and put him back into storage. Ravage gracefully cleared the space between the buildings and delicately landed at my feet.

“Nice work Ravage.”

“Mrow.”

“Hey Ravage,” Elita gently called.

Ravage tip-toed over to Elita and rubbed her head against Elita’s leg before hopping up to her shoulder and pretending to go to sleep.

“Come on Ravage,” I said, reaching for her. “Automata don’t need sleep.”

Ravage opened an eye to look at me. “A cat never needs sleep either. A cat only sleeps because they want to.”

“So what happened here? Where is Shiro?” I asked.

Ravage made a big show of stretching and yawning before shifting to bot mode and sitting on Elita’s shoulder like a doll. She then proceeded to tell us everything that had happened after we left.

When the Automata steward belonging to the son of the local lord, Baron Karza, went missing; it was believed that they had been stolen. Days later, one of the Automata maids in the manor attacked the lord and was killed. Several of the other Automata staff had begun behaving strangely so the Lord had all of the Automata killed, believing that they had become defective.

Orders then went out stating that all Automata were not to be allowed out in public in case the cause of the defect was contagious. Automata were then further ordered to be kept under lock and key when not actively in use.

Guards began patrolling Urd looking for defective Automata and killing any that seemed at all suspicious; whether they had been `infected` or not. Around this time, Alfred and the other proxies in the shop shut down without warning and Shiro was at a loss of what to do.

Guards arrived during one of their sweeps, hearing that there were Automata managing the shop for Jada. Jada had told Shiro to hide in the back and got into a shouting match with the guards. The guards found Alfred and the other two and accused Jada of stealing them and arrested her. Since Alfred, Ram, and Rom were offline, they were simply impounded as evidence instead of killed.

Shiro had grabbed a cloak and slipped out the back. He told Ravage that he was going to try and find Master Prime if he could get out of the city. Before the guards could come back to search the shop, Ravage put anything that might be damning into storage.

“Good kitty”, I said, patting her on the head. “Very good.”

Ravage made a whirring purr-like sound and leaned into my hand.

“So... If Shiro was able to make it out of the city— and that’s a big if, then he’s now trying to walk all the way to the former Shady Grove, through the forest, on his own”, Elita reasoned.

“Damn. I’ve really got to come up with some sort of means for communication. I hope he’s okay”, I worried.

“Hey Prime, we’ve got company”, Elita warned, pointing out over the rooftops. I could see two figures headed our way, leaping from roof to roof. If it wasn’t for our enhanced sight, they would have been nothing more than shadows on the night sky. I switched to infra-red and saw two honest-to-Primus ninja hopping about like in an anime.

“Ninja?” I asked, “Like... really ninja?”

“Those two are from the Guild. Do we fight? Or do we run?” asked Elita.

“As much as I love to jump into a fight, we need to get out of this city”, I answered, “let’s see if they can keep up.”

I had Sparky ride inside the satchel. I was sure that he could keep up using his various upgraded skills, but I didn’t want him to have to burn up all of his mana just keeping up with us. He seemed to like riding in there and would poke his head out to see what was going on. Ravage refused to ride and insisted that she’d be able to keep up, maybe it was her cat pride.

Elita and I, in Carnivac, took off at full speed across the rooftops. The guards below had been alerted and were chasing from the ground. The gate would be reinforced and heavily guarded, I was sure. Unfortunately, the city walls were intentionally set far enough from the buildings to prevent anyone from getting to them from the top of the wall.

I risked a glance back and the Ninjas were keeping up with us, just who were these guys?

“We’re not shaking them, Prime!” Elita warned.

“We’re almost at the city limits!”

Ahead of us, two more figures had climbed up onto the roof to intercept us, it was the Adventurers from before.

“Hey Elita, you have some old friends come to say hello.”

“That jerk has my sword!” she yelled.

“Nice of him to bring it for you” I quipped.

Without slowing down, Elita transformed her gun arm and sent a volley of electrified quills in their direction. The attack took the Adventurers completely by surprise. The swordsman caught a single quill to the knee causing him to go rigid like he’d been hit by a taser. The ranger was hit by at least four quills to the chest and hit the ground convulsing. I didn’t think she was getting back up any time soon.

Elita smashed into the swordsman with both knees to the chest, fluidly shifting her arm back and grabbing the sword out of his hand before he hit the ground. Never once did she break stride, I loved watching her fight.

The ninjas hadn’t slowed down either and were starting to throw shuriken and kunai our way. One of the kunai slashed through the strap holding my satchel with Sparky and I skidded to a stop to go back for him. Elita whipped around firing quills at them to provide cover but not one found its mark. Both of the ninja dodged her attacks, expertly.

The ninja got to the satchel first but they didn’t realize that Sparky was inside. They must have assumed I was going back for my stuff. Sparky burst out of the satchel, the size of a lion and spewed a stream of fire at one of the ninja at point-blank range.