Prince Milliardo sipped daintily at an expensive looking teacup. We had moved from the smashed up courtyard to an opulent receiving room inside the palace. General Greevus had gotten cleaned up and was nibbling at a tiny cake while watching me with the eyes of a predator. Primus, he creeped me out. For a fleeting moment I wondered if he was having carrot cake since he was a giant rabbit but buried the thought.

I had been seated in a plush seat across from the General and to the right of the Prince. I had put away Convoy so my legs dangled in the air like a child’s. I could feel Cyclone behind me, trying not to laugh.

Prime:// you knew about this, didn’t you Cyc? About the General?

Prime.Cyclone:// ...

Prime.Cyclone:// yes...

Prime:// A little warning would have been nice

Prime.Cyclone:// Sorry Pops, though if you’d synced with me, you’d have known too

I audibly sighed. Milliardo gave me a side glance and set down his tea.

“Master Artificer, how is my sister? If you’re here, I trust that she must be back on her feet,” he said cooly.

“She’s nearly done. We’ve got her new body nearly complete. She should be able to transfer in an hour or two.”

“New body?” Greevus asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My dear Relena was my weapon of choice in the duel, you see. Unfortunately, she was hurt pretty badly,” Milliardo said regretfully. “You could have stood to be more insistent, Master Prime, so that my sister wouldn’t have gotten so hurt.”

“I like you well enough, Milli, but I am decidedly not your weapon,” I said flatly.

“No, I suppose you are not. Still, I suspect the duel might have gone a bit more smoothly had I your assistance.”

“Thanks for the... greeting, I guess. I better get back to the shop to finish up the work on Lena and all,” I said, tipping out of the chair.

“Ah right. Regarding the Princess. Are her... measurements... all the same?” Milliardo asked, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Your highness...” I quietly groaned.

Greevus gave him a side eye as well. I knew he had a fixation for his sister but...

“It is for a dress!” he shouted. “In three days time, we will have a grand procession through the city for father’s funeral. The Princess needs to be presentable and we need to make sure that her attire fits accordingly. That’s all there is to it!”

“Gotcha,” I said, giving him a dimmed optic wink and a finger gun.

“Yes, well, at any rate, have her here and ready in time.”

“Of course. Are you okay? You took some pretty nasty hits in that duel yourself plus there’s all of... this,” I gestured vaguely around the room.

“I’m fine physically, thank you. Just tired. As you might imagine, things have certainly been busy. The last several days have been a parade of executions as we purge the co-conspirators and traitors from the court.”

“Sounds like grizzly work,” I said, glad that I couldn’t feel squeamish.

“Quite so. Still, one must prune the diseased branches to save the tree.”

“What will become of your cousin’s territories and assets?” I asked, trying to make relevant conversation.

“You want it? We might be able to work something out,” he said, with a scheming smirk on his face.

“Ha! An Automata Lord, I’m sure your country would just love that,” I joked.

“Hmm.. maybe,” he replied, his mind elsewhere. “Well, if you don’t want it, then I can’t force it on you just yet.”

“Wait, what?”

“I suppose that if Rau’s son swears fealty to me, I could allow him to become the chief administrator for the region until you’re ready.”

“You clearly said ‘yet’.”

“Of course if he doesn’t then I’ll have to exile him, though I don’t know which country would be willing to take him in right now.”

“Isn’t exile a bit harsh?” I grumbled, curious and annoyed at having my objections dodged.

“You would prefer that I have the boy executed along with his mother and older sister?”

“The Marchioness and LeCrueset’s daughter? You’re having them killed but not the son?”

“The both of them are adults and were active in the conspiracy against the empire. As they are the family of my cousin, and thus my family, I can offer them the mercy of a private death rather than a public one. As for Roa, the boy, he is a mere thirteen years of age and I won’t hold a blade to a child for the sins of the father.”

Suddenly the world that the Prince had to deal with felt considerably heavier than anything I had.

“For his sake, I hope he chooses fealty so that I can put him into a government position once he comes of age. Otherwise, he’ll live out his life in a foreign country with my assassins keeping tabs on him to make sure he doesn’t get any funny ideas of revenge,” Milliardo added.

“So... what about your eastern front?” I said, nervously, attempting to change the subject. “There’s that alliance of countries that got tricked into marching on you, right? The one with several thousands of Automata soldiers, as I recall.”

“Them. Yes. After the funeral for our Emperor, the nation will hold a week of mourning. Afterwards will be my coronation. You will be in attendance as well Master Artificer. Use your more impressive looking armor, and I expect it to gleam like a mirror back. Once I’ve been crowned, I’ll have the official authority to send emissaries and we can put this nonsense behind us.”

“It sounds like you have a plan?”

“Naturally, though I don’t care for it. I shall be sending her highness, Princess Relena on my behalf to broker peace. With her current constitution, I’m less worried for her safety but it still makes me anxious.”

“As long as she doesn’t punch a hole in somebody, she should be fine,” I quipped.

“Yes... about that, I’m grateful to you for what you’ve done for her. She was a strong mage before her... accident, so I’m happy to see that you’ve been able to give her back the ability to use magic. Something I didn’t think was possible for Automata. Her incantations were quite strange though...” he trailed off.

I waffled back and forth on telling the Prince how magic worked for Automata but in the end opted to give him a brief introduction. I figured that sooner or later Lena would end up telling him anyway. In return, I had him tell me about how he used magic in combat.

The way I understood it, most people did magic by chanting specific spells. These chants were essentially like manually loading a function into RAM. Some functions required the chants to be repeated in order to build up an effect, others could be triggered with a keyword. For combat mages like Milliardo, they would spend the whole fight chanting the keyword type spells, loading the functions up into their mental RAM. The process would take the required amount of mana from them, but then they would hold off on triggering the function.

The upside was that during a fight they would have spells preloaded that they could access immediately, the down side was that by preloading spells they could end up spending mana on spells they don’t use.

Milliardo, himself, had several trigger spells that he would constantly keep loading, but would always keep a portion of his mana reserved for larger scale spells as needed. It was amazing to think that he could keep all that in his head in the heat of a deadly fight without having an operating system for a mind.

Greevus also fought the same way, but all the spells that he loaded were related to physical enhancement, while Milliardo was more balanced. Milliardo was also, apparently, exceptionally strong in terms of mana capacity and spell variety.

“I apologize, but I have to ask... When Relena was hurt, why didn’t you heal her? During the duel, I saw you heal yourself after taking what should be fatal levels of damage,” I asked, apprehensively.

The Prince sighed and looked helpless, hanging his head and resting his forehead on his hands.

“It would seem that it never once occurred to any of my tutors that I might have need to heal someone else,” he said bitterly. “I can’t fault them though. The idea of the Crown Prince performing such a task is not one that I even considered until that moment. Yes, I can cast healing upon myself, but I can only target myself with my spell. Additionally, the spell I use is optimized for the battlefield. It is the fastest healing spell available with the lowest mana consumption. It is not without its drawbacks, however. It is... extremely painful. Additionally...”

He lifted an arm and pulled back his sleeve, revealing an ugly and ragged scar. I remembered during the duel, that arm had suffered a compound fracture. Thinking about it made me wince. If I could study the healing spells he used, could I improve upon it? Could I cast healing if I had the right mana crystals?

Before I could quiz him further on it, a messenger was shown in and took a knee beside the Prince. Milliardo leaned in close to hear the whispered message. A sound dampening spell was actually being used, but I could catch mention of the Eastern Front. Milliardo’s eyes grew large and he stood up quickly.

“Please excuse me, I have something I must attend to. Two days, Prime. I expect both you and Lena to be extra shiny,” he said, lighting out of the room.

Greevus shoved another tiny cake into his mouth and stood up. He stretched in a lazy way before following after the Prince. Short of the door, he stopped and half turned to smirk at me.

“Next time, come at me with the intent to kill. I could tell you were holding back,” he grinned.

“You’re insane,” I huffed, hopping down from the chair.

I walked up to the giant bunny and realized that I could clearly see through his thigh gap while standing upright. Still I stood toe to toe and glared up at him.

“Not to sound arrogant, but if I want you dead, you’re dead. Killing would be easy, stopping you without killing is harder,” I growled.

“If I die, then that just means I wasn’t good enough,” Greevus chuckled, clearly amused at the idea of this tiny robot getting over on him.

“No, you don’t understand. I try to stick to non-lethal options but if I came at you with everything I’m capable of at my full power and with intent... this entire city would be wiped off the map.”

To emphasize my point, I put a hand on his thigh and slowly started squeezing. His smirk dropped, then he winced, then he tried to pull back, then he put a hand on my head and yanked his leg out of my grip. His look turned to one of uncertainty and I shook pink fur from my palm.

“Lucky for you, my mana levels are running on fumes these days with a paltry 250 thousand,” I said, patting his other thigh and leaving the room first.