“Prime! Where are we at?” Prince Milliardo shouted as the secret lift dropped into the workshop.

It had been several days since I’d seen the Prince or the Princess, he looked haggard. It had been his job to wrangle the nobles and to try and keep things calm in court while Lena had been sent out to visit a number of lower nobles and gather intel discreetly. Naturally, I had Cyclone protecting her.

I set down component diagrams I was working on, it was a bit weird to be focused almost entirely on design work while others were handling the fabrication and assembly. I rushed over to the lift and gave the Prince a quick bow, but held a hand out to prevent Acting Captain Antilles from moving forward. He was a nice enough guy, but he was a button pusher. If there was a button, he’d push it, and if something could be knocked over, it was.

“Good morning, your highness. You!” I said, jabbing a finger at Antilles. “You stay there. Last time you were here, we had an unscheduled test of the one hundred mill plasma rounds followed by a test of the fire suppression systems!”

“Prime,” the Prince said, evenly, drawing my attention back.

“Yes your highness, full inspection?”

“No, Master Artificer, I haven’t the time. Neither does the Empire, which is why I’m here. There is a break room. We’ll talk there. Antilles, stay.”

We didn’t have much in the break room since it existed entirely for the Professor and his students' use and they were all work-aholics. I tried to offer the Prince something that I thought might be coffee-like but he turned it down and closed the door.

“This doesn’t leave this room,” he warned. “My WyverRiders have reported that the dragon has been spotted on the move.”

“How much time do we have? I’ve wanted to take a look at the castle’s shield system. I might be able to extend the range to cover the city.”

“We don’t appear to be the target for the moment,” he said, shaking his head and slumping onto a cot. “It was seen over the western mountains this time. It attacked the Kingdom of Jalagrorun, bearing our colors and laying waste to several major cities.”

“Jalagrorun... that’s the one that those other two, Yliasi and Kokoli were trying to get into an alliance, right?”

“Yes. As you might suspect, this closed the deal. All three of them are marshalling their forces to march on the Empire.”

“Is their military strength a concern?”

“Not normally, no. Apparently, they have acquired a division's worth of Automata soldiers from somewhere to supplement their armies.”

“Forgive me, your highness, how large is a division?”

“15,000 souls?”

“That’s... a LOT of murdered people...”

“Yes. Aside from that, Greevus is returning with our army from that farse to the east. I expect that he’ll be sent out to meet the alliance forces. His Majesty is also calling on the noble divisions to march with them.”

“How quickly can they move?”

“Not very. They’ll move their forces south to go around the mountains rather than over. They’ll also have to pass through Maxoria so that will slow them further. We’ll rally our forces and meet them on the eastern plains. They may attempt to sail around the peninsula to avoid crossing Maxoria, but it wouldn’t be much faster and they’d still end up around the same place. At the earliest, I’d say we have till late Agahana, early Pausha. We don’t know how that dragon will be used in the meantime though.”

“So a bit over two months... and a Winter war at that... What’s the gain here? What does Jhaix gain by starting this war? Is it just to play arms dealer and profit by selling to both sides?”

“Possibly, but my father is shielding him for some reason and I can’t fathom as to why. To make matters worse, I’ve also got the noble faction that supports my cousin’s claim to the throne trying to use this as justification to have my father austed for lack of confidence or worse, madness.”

“Wouldn’t that just promote you?” I asked, taking a seat opposite of him.

He lifted his arm that had been covering his eyes, and glanced at me before returning the arm. “No. If their case is strong enough, it could result in my father’s bloodline being purged.”

“Purged? Isn’t that... excessive? I mean, it’s not your fault if your pops goes batty.”

He shrugged a bit. “They say that bad blood begets more bad blood.”

“So if dad’s crazy, then his kids are probably crazy too? So best to toss the whole lot out?”

“Something like that, yes. Though royalty can’t be simply tossed out. They must be executed, their bloodline removed from the line of succession.”

“Harsh. Well, I’ve taken a liking to you kids so I’ll do my best to keep that from happening.”

Again, he moved his arm a bit to glance at me. This time he laughed bitterly and sat up.

“So how’s my sister doing?” he grumbled.

“She’s leaving the estate of Lord Cromwell. I don’t think you can count on his support though,” I said, relaying my experience via Cyclone.

“He’s with my cousin’s faction anyway so I wasn’t planning on it. What makes you say so though?”

“I may have accidentally broken his wrist when he tried to get creepy and touch Lena...”

The Prince simply nodded absently before standing up.

“Right. I approve. Feel free to raize the estate if necessary. On second thought, delay that order. Might look bad to the other nobles... though it would send a message... Well, whatever. Do as Lena sees fit Master Prime.”

“Of course, your highness,” I said, suppressing a chuckle. “Uh, your highness, it wasn’t too long ago that you wanted my head. Why trust me with all this? It can’t be simply because I saved your sister.”

The Prince paused at the door before opening it. “I don’t know what my father is doing. In fact, I don’t even know if that IS my father anymore. Meanwhile, the noble families all squabble over crumbs and personal power. Each one has their own hidden agenda to manipulate the crown for their own gain.”

“Hey, I have agendas,” I said, acting hurt.

He smiled ruefully and looked down on me, with a look that was both weary and resigned. “Your agenda is hardly a hidden one. Any one that spends five minutes with you knows exactly what you’re working towards. It isn’t even the liberation of your people, though that’s what you might have people think.”

I stepped back, suddenly feeling defensive. “It’s not?”

“No,” he said, opening the door and gesturing at the stuff happening outside. “It’s this. For whatever reason, you want to build the biggest, most interesting, most technologically advanced, toys. It’s all a bit of a game for you, but I will use that. I will direct that agenda of yours however I need to in order to save my country and my people.”

I wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, and I couldn’t deny any of it. I truly, honestly, did want to save the poor folks that had been converted into Automata against their will and forced to become slaves... but my action since coming here betrayed that ideal in favor of, like he said, making toys for myself. Even this big plan I had to fight the dragon Automata, wasn’t really the most efficient method for taking the thing down and securing the safety of everyone. It was playing with toys. I slumped as the realization hit me.

“Buck up,” the Prince said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t mean to discourage you. While this all may be something of a game for you, I still have every faith that you will have something for us that shall win the day. Most likely in a most spectacular fashion. I’ve invested in you, and when this is all dealt with I shall grant you a request. Something like... declaring all the Automata to be free citizens might not be too unseamly.”

He gave me a wink and headed out of the breakroom. Antilles had remained on the lift, though it seemed to be taking all of his military discipline to keep from reaching out to the closest table to see what was being worked on. When he saw the Prince, he snapped to attention though. The Prince, of course, ignored him.

“Progress, Master Artificer. I expect to see further progress on my next visit. Oh, I’ll have someone deliver a smoke mirror to you. Be sure to put it somewhere where you’re certain to take my calls.”

“Yes, your highness,” I said, giving him a slight bow. He rolled his eyes and sent the lift upwards.

“Sir! Sir, could you come here and take a look at this?” a rough voice called out to me.

I turned to see a gangly looking oni with a mop of blue-black curly hair, glasses, and freckles running over with a design schematic. Every other oni that I’d see so far had been huge in height and in muscles. This kid would be considered tall for a human but was a beanpole. He had dark red skin, and dainty horns. I wondered if he was actually mixed.

“What’s up Kiyohime?”

“I’m having some trouble trying to figure this thing out. We’ve been assembling this as designed but there’s a lot of parts that don’t make any sense. I mean, the designs look like some sort of heavy armor coach with seats and wheels, and I can see how this thing is going to move... but then it also has us building a bunch of stuff I don’t recognize and I’m nearly certain that this assembly here is a head.”

I looked over the design to see where he was indicating. “Yup. That’s a head alright.”

“But sir, it’s not even visible in the assembly. If this thing is an Automata powered armor cart, then how is it going to be able to see anything?”

“Ah, well you’re right in that it IS an Automata powered armor cart. In this mode, though, the head isn’t providing any input to the brain module. That data is coming from these nodes, here, here... and here,” I said, as I indicated the visual sensors for the truck mode.

“Mode?”

Ah, that’s right. These kids weren’t here to see Cyclone before he had to head out to accommodate the Princess.

“How far along are you?”

“All the parts are fabricated and we have most of it assembled according to the designs... though we don’t understand how it’s supposed to function.”

As we talked, he led me over to the work area where his team had set up to work on this particular project. We had four teams of students working on things, with the largest being headed by Professor Rechts on the airship project. I had to sit down with his team and explain every little part and how it functioned while with the rest of the teams I could get away with handing them designs and build instructions.

“Oh, exciting! It’s looking great guys,” I said, clapping and bouncing slightly.

They all gave me odd looks since what they’d been building sort of looked like a weird explosion of Automata limbs, and truck parts that took up a considerably large amount of space. At the moment, it didn’t really look like anything recognizable.

“Master Prime, seriously...” a kid that may have been a mindflayer in a jumpsuit, asked. “What IS this thing?”

“Well, it might look really weird right now, but I had you assemble it like this so that you could easily get to everything. This the last part?” I asked, picking up a complicated conical drive gear assembly.

“Yes?” Kiyohime asked.

“This is the Transformation Cog or T-cog. It’s a very important part for a Transformer.”

I walked into the middle of the exploded parts and fit the T-cog into place, then closed up the access hatches and bolted them closed. I [Inspect]ed the assembly, bringing up my developer environment. I already had the firmware ready to go, pre-installed into the brain modult before they assembled it. It just needed to be manually initialized.

“Oh guys, he’s so excited. He won’t shut up. I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to have him out of my head and running around in a body of his own.”

The kids gave each other wary looks. It was one thing to be told about my subRoutines and my proxies, but they hadn’t really seen it. Which just made me look like a lunatic, I was sure.

“Alright, here we go. Establishing neural link up... Connecting subRoutine IronHide... and booting up.”

Connecting...

Connected to proxy: IronHide (5)

I was worried that ‘Hide2 would take up more proxy slots since Carn2 went from 1 to 3, but thankfully he didn’t. I had all 20 slots filled, but I could run all of my proxies at once. Of course, it was a bigger drain on my mana pool, as simply maintaining the connection cost me more mana the farther the distance I was from the target body. Still, it was better to have them out and running around than cooped up inside my head.

The exploded mass of limbs and parts started moving slowly, carefully, folding in on itself. Half the parts hid away, while others connected and collapsed becoming more solid. After an agonizing ten minutes of watching this cyber-abomination arrange itself, we stood looking at a heavily armored coach, of sorts.

Unlike IronHide’s previous body, this one looked more like a utility truck. It had a small cabin area as compared to before with a large armored section for carrying troops or cargo. This time I hadn’t given him the steam engine and boiler but was able to come up with a motor system that used the magic laws of attraction and repulsion within a massive belt-drive. We had been able to salvage the fire crystals and the iron crystal from the old body so they could be devoted entirely to weaponry.

“Okay kids, hop in,” IronHide spoke up, “I think we need to head out for a little test drive.”