I finished packing up the last of the tools and things I thought I might need on the trip to take Lena back to the Imperial Capital. I say “packed”, but really it was just tossing things into my [Inventory] and if I forgot anything then Ratchet could store something for me via the Inventory Bag I’d made some time ago.

The soldiers that had hung out just outside our village had packed up and left several days ago, the trip back would take them orders of magnitude longer than it would take us. I figured that we would catch up and overtake them somewhere along the road from Urd to Capital City.

IronHide was getting scrubbed clean after dealing with the whole ogre thing, but once he was done we’d head out. ‘Hide being our primary mode of transportation for this trip. Not counting my cockpit, of sorts, in the engine compartment, he had seating for eight, though I’d only be carrying six passengers this time. The plan was to bring the princess, of course; the adventurers, Strider and Anani; the Royal Guard scout, Marshoo; Shea; and Devin. The latter, of which, had decided that he wanted to become an adventurer and party up with Shea, who seemed equally keen on the idea.

My shop bots would be staying behind to finish working on the Carnivac Mk II body, which was coming along nicely. Shiro had his parents to tend to, but was sad to see all the customers leaving the inn. Alfred would be staying with him to keep him company, and Sentinel had resumed his post as the village’s Prime representative and sheriff.

Entirely by coincidence, one of our Automata residents, Vike, stepped into Jackie’s office while Sentinel was working on crafting a new duster. Apparently, Vike was a tailor before his conversion and didn’t approve of Sentinel’s stitching and took the whole project away from him. Mikk, a mustelid from Thompson’s Fork and subordinate of Shiro, expressed an interest in textile crafts and has started to apprentice under Vike. I’ve been tasked with getting more fabrics and supplies for them when I get to Urd.

Lena let me examine her storage bangle, I was curious about how it was used as a mini teleporter. Like most [Storage] or [Inventory] based tech, it was keyed to a registered mana signature; in this case both Prince Milliardo and Lena’s signatures. Either one of them could put a little mana into the device while it was touching something and the something would get sucked into the storage space. It had a script installed that would watch for items added to the database and would then mimic the entry signature and push the command to the other device. The other end would then act like it had been triggered locally and eject the item.

The signature “password”, for lack of a better term, wasn’t encrypted at all and was sent in the headers of the command push as plain text. If any of my former back-end developer coworkers saw this, they would throw a fit.

If I could see the signature when I inspected the devices, then I could only assume that someone else could do the same and capture the signature. With that, they’d have access to anything that the princess or prince had access to. I tried explaining my concerns about security to Lena but it all sailed over her head and she thought I was foolish for worrying about such things. According to her, I’m the only one that would even know or care about having “security” on a magic device. I decided to table the discussion and bring it up with the prince instead.

Using the storage bangle as inspiration, I wrote a similar set of programs and attached them to a steel plate in my shop. This time, I encrypted the mana signature and assigned the plate a location ID. I repeated the process for another, smaller, plate that I put in the inn. Both plates were attached to a common storage database which I also connected to via a tunnel from my main [Inventory].

This way, I could exchange things from plate to plate or from plate to my [Inventory]. The use of the location ID allowed me to set a plate as a destination and choose where things went via a dropdown menu when the device was accessed. Currently, only me or my proxies had access to this system but I should be able to add additional users as needed. Because of what a dork I am, I etched “Prime Shipping” onto the plates, not that anyone here would get it.

Carnivac Mk II wasn’t ready yet but the shop bots could toss him into [Inventory] when he was done via the shipping plates. Via Alfred, I directed all my passengers to the main gate where a relatively cleaned IronHide was waiting. Shea tossed me her bag, then took Devin’s bag off his shoulder and tossed that at me as well.

“You can store that for us, right? Till we get to Urd?” she asked, while not really looking at me.

She’d gotten pretty cheeky of late and I noticed Devin smirk as well, though his face went slack and paled when he saw IronHide staring at him.

“It... it’s fine, sir,” he stumbled, retrieving his bag.

I rolled my eyes and put his bag into storage. I did the same for Marshoo as well as the Adventurers. Lena’s stuff had already been sent to the palace via her bangle. Shea’s bag got tossed back to her.

“Hey! What about mine??” she whined.

“Watch how you talk to people, Miss Shea,” I chided, “especially ones you claim are friends. Doubly so for those you want help from.”

“Hmph,” she sulked, picking her bag up and hugging it.

With the exception of Shea, the organics were looking confused or resigning themselves to the long walk back to Urd. All of them were giving the giant IronHide plenty of room. I walked over to Cyclone and put a hand on his arm. He gave Prowl a wink before dissolving into my [Inventory]. I didn’t know what we might run into, but I knew I didn’t want to be caught off guard.

“Safe trip,” Prowl called back as she turned and walked off to meet up with Sentinel.

She was an odd duck, that one, and I never really knew how to best deal with her type.

“Alright, let’s hit the road,” I announced, as IronHide knelt down and held out his open palm; his chest opened up to reveal my containment pod.

I hopped onto his hand, but before he could pull me up, Shiro wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

“Be safe, Master Prime, and come back to us soon. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“Don’t go raising any flags,” I said with a wink, patting his face.

“Flags?” he said, confused, his lion face mirroring his head tilt w/ one ear up and the other down.

“Heh, it’s nothing,” I chuckled.

I noticed Lena pouting a little so I caught her eye and gave her a wink. Her optics widened a bit and turned pink, then she abruptly looked away. While I totally didn’t intend for a method to show Automata blushing, I was certainly having fun with it.

IronHide stood up, bringing me up to his chest. I climbed in and closed up the hatch.

“Let’s roll out!” IronHide boomed in a commanding voice as he transformed into truck mode.

“Shotgun!” Shea yelled out as she ran ahead and jumped into the passenger side front seat.

“What’s shotgun?” Marshoo asked, giving Shea a head tilt.

“It’s some weird word that you say when you want to sit up front. I learned it from Prime. I think he just made it up though.”

“Ah jeeze, is that thing safe?” Devin moaned, “Maybe it would be better if I stayed here after all.”

“Too late now, Dee,” Strider laughed, shoving Devin towards IronHide.

Marshoo opened one of the rear doors for the princess and helped her in with a bow. Once Lena was secure, Marshoo climbed into the driver seat herself. The others found their own seats and IronHide set off down the road leaving Shiro and some of the other residents waving in the rearview mirror.

“Can we have the windows down?” Shea asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been sealed up better so you shouldn’t be getting so much heat and steam in the cabin,” IronHide replied, “no AC yet but it should be better than the last time you rode with me.”

“Aysee? I don't know that word,” Marshoo asked.

“Um... like having ice magic cooling the air in the cabin.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” Lena interjected, “Prime, be a dear and make that for me.”

“Your highness...” IronHide said carefully, “he says you shouldn’t need it since you’re an Automata and shouldn’t be bothered by the air quality.”

“Well, IronHide, it’s not always about me, is it?” she said loftily. “We must always strive to make everyone riding with us comfortable. Comfortable people are more likely to be cooperative people and compliant people, yes?”

“... yes ma’am. He’ll work on it.”

“Good,” she said, looking a bit smug, and overly proud of herself.

The adventurers looked at each other, suppressing smiles.

The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly with the exception of Devin getting car sick and needing us to pull over so that he could paint the bushes. Marshoo spent the trip with her head out the window which, I admit, caught me by surprise for a lizard woman and a royal guard. What really shocked me was how little the Adventurers seemed to be surprised or amazed at traveling by truck when the rest of the world was still using animal powered transportation. I guess when you’re a high ranked Adventurer, you learn to roll with the punches pretty easily or, at the least, hide your surprise.