Ugh. I like to talk big when challenged by the likes of Milliardo or Greevus but once again, here I am laying in a forest somewhere bleeding out.

“Don’t think like that Papa. It’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Hide said, looking concerned.

I put what was left of my CloudBurst armor back into [Inventory] with a wave of my hand and tried to sit up. An alarm started blaring in my head and I remembered the abdominal damage I’d taken and laid back down.

As I lay still, my internal recovery systems had gotten to work slowly repairing the damage. It was nice that I could “heal” on my own, but it would probably take me a week to recover while eating up and bleeding out a lot of mana in the process.

Prime.Ratchet:// Ratchet has the required materials and tools prepped and ready. Ratchet has now entered the Inventory space.

I nodded and held a hand out to the side and summoned the multi limbed repair bot. It materialized and came online, immediately setting down a stack of materials and tools.

“Ratchet is now assessing the extent of damage to the Primary Unit. Assessment complete. The Primary Unit has sustained significant damage to external armor plating in several locations and is hemorrhaging energon at a rate of 150 milliliters per minute from multiple locations. Isolation and fluid redirection is not possible due to the nature and location of the damage,” it rattled off in its matter-of-fact monotone.

“It’s fixable though, I’ve had worse,” I remarked.

“Ratchet did not state that repairs were not possible. Ratchet will now begin. The Primary Unit is likely to experience significant discomfort during this process.”

“Oh good. Something to look forwa-- Oh wow, yeah... That feels weird,” I complained.

Ratchet had replaced one of its hands with something that looked like a metal octopus with several long metal tentacles, each with a little claw at the end. Said device/hand was then shoved into an opening under my plating on my side and the tentacles started running amok through my internal systems. I expected the sensation to be like how I’d imagine worms or something crawling under my skin but I was spared that experience due to a different hardware setup. Instead what I got was the feeling of my mana channels being forcibly closed, rerouted, removed, replaced, and restored. I really couldn’t liken it to anything from my life as a human beyond just feeling “wrong” and “weird” somehow.

Given the choice, this is probably something that one would likely prefer to be offline for. The process took six hours and twenty three minutes. Once the process was completed I only had external armor damage that needed repair. I’d lost a total of 164,266 mana by bleeding it out thanks to how concentrated my system fluids were. My system would eventually replace the missing liquid by condensing the mana absorbed from the environment but it was still annoying to have that much gone without having anything cool that it was spent on.

IronHide was right about Lena worrying. I could easily see her trying to jump out of the coach after me and being held back by the other passengers. We’d been attacked by the sky bandits about an hour shy of the projected flight time of five hours and fifteen minutes. According to my calculations based on the map I’d seen before leaving, it put us at about seventy or eighty kilometers from the city of Ladywick.

I should have been able to catch up within a couple of hours, so long as I didn’t run into any problems. Lena and her escort were scheduled to layover in Ladywick for two days while the dragon rested. I was concerned that Lena would try to send out a search party or something as soon as they landed though. I didn’t relish the idea of missing each other in the night.

Ratchet threw itself back into [Inventory] the instant it was done with my internal repairs. Just as well, it wasn’t great at conversation and was in dire need of finding a hobby before it burned out. Hide, on the other hand, was happy enough to stay with me as we made our way along the river bank, following the direction we’d seen the dragon heading.

After another three hours of hiking through dense underbrush, being sprayed with venom from an eyeless snake the size of a tractor trailer, turning said snake inside out, and running away from a half dozen of its buddies; we found a well worn trail. Unfortunately, the trail wasn’t wide enough for IronHide’s truck form, but it would suffice for a tiny motorcycle.

“[PowerExtreme(LandMine)],” I called.

My land based armor snapped into place around me and I converted into bike mode. I’m a pretty small guy to begin with so my “motorcycle form” would likely only work for a small child or a circus bear in terms of riders. Lucky for me, Hide’s “Lil Hide” body was actually just the right size for my tiny bike form.

“This is so weird Papa, you giving ME a ride this time!” he called, hopping onto my back.

I hadn’t designed the form with a rider in mind and actually looked more like a light cycle from Tron rather than something that another being could ride in comfort. Still he mounted me and hung on as best as he could.

My lightning based electric motor sparked to life and we tore off down the trail. The trail was narrow and winding with loose dirt so my speedometer rarely got higher than 20 mph. Still, it was faster than walking through the brush.

“Hey Pop, ya hear that? About 138 meters at two o’clock,” Hide warned.

From inside the armor, the sound of my motor covered most ambient noises so I extended my perception by “listening” through IronHide. We could hear some shouting and the clash of metal on metal. A group of people were apparently fighting each other. Maybe it was more of the bandits attacking travelers? Should we help? The sound of a rapid whine punctuated by a large explosion silenced all of the shouts.

IronHide leaned into the turn, guiding me off the trail and in the direction of the explosion. He hopped off as we got into the thicker vegetation. I shifted back to bot mode, brandishing the warhammer that was included with the armor set. Hide crept alongside me, ready to switch back to his larger form once we determined what was going on.

I could hear voices talking in a casual way, the fight seemed to be over. I couldn’t quite make out what was being said but the voices sounded modulated, like Automata voices. Then I heard a lower, gruff sounding voice doing a poor imitation of Jason Statham. My poor imitation of Jason Statham. It couldn’t be...

“Big bro Carnivac!” Hide screamed running out of the thicket and slamming into the wolf bot.

Around him, a rag tag group of Automata warriors and a single wolfkin ninja jumped in surprise, many brandishing oversized blades or pointing ranged weaponry at the tiny titan.

“Who the hells is that?” Prowl asked, a sword in each hand, ready for violence.

“I can take a guess,” Carnivac stated, “but oy, you’ve lost some weight, eh? If you’re who I think you are, you’ve lost several tons.”

Hide looked up at him with shining eyes, refusing to let Carnivac’s legs go.

“I knew you weren’t dead! I just knew it!” he squealed.

I returned my armor to [Inventory] and followed after him.

“Carn?” I asked, dumfounded. “How is this possible?”

I tried reestablishing the connection to my lost proxy and got the same error message stating that the proxy `Carnivac` is not available. The old boy didn’t look so great. His left arm was missing from the elbow down, his leather armor was in tatters, and a nasty gash had been opened up across his face. He wasn’t bothering with his [Cloak()] to pass as a real boy, but it still didn’t look so hot.

As I looked around, each of the warriors in the group looked like they’d sustained some level of damage. Most of them were pretty banged up.

“Prime,” Carnivac said, giving me a nod.

“Prime?” Remi said in surprise. “By my whiskers, it is Master Prime. How ‘bout that?”

“Master Prime? Where in the seven pillars of Torren did you come from?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s... a long story. Short version is that I fell off a dragon headed for Ladywick. What about you guys? I thought you were in Redwall Hall. What are you doing all the way out here? And YOU,” I jabbed in Carnivac’s direction, “Where last seen going offline at the hands of a nutjob with an army of puppets.”

“We’ve actually been tracking and hunting those puppets,” Ryuske offered, gesturing at all the metal bodies littering the area.

“Let’s see what we can do about getting you guys fixed up while you tell me all about it,” I said, summoning Ratchet, Ram, and Rom.

The girls smashed into Carnivac, calling him “puppy”. He didn’t seem to have been aware of their personalities awakening but took the news in stride. Primus, it was SO WEIRD to see him moving and interacting with the others without any input whatsoever from me while I completely lacked any means of connecting to him. He had somehow become completely independent of me. Carnivac didn’t have any sort of residual soul mixed in with his subRoutine AI like Ram and Rom did so how was he functioning? Did he have a piece of my soul? Was that something that could be divvied up like in so many fantasy and magic stories? Was he the first pure Artificial Intelligence in this world? What would happen if he went offline? Without having the HeadSpace to come back to, would he “die”?

As my team set about repairing all the wounded warriors, I learned that Dezarus had been sending out groups of his hive-minded puppets with devices the size of a refrigerator that could soak up all the environmental mana in the area. They had specifically been heading for places where the mana would pool heavier and thicker than others. Basically the dungeons, or at least places where the dungeons might form. None of the warrior bots knew why though and Carnivac lacked the program functions to be able to [Inspect] the devices to find anything more out.

There was supposed to be a dungeon nearby but the group had been too late and it had already been drained. I gave them all the update patch to [Defender.exe] that would close up the security exploit so that they wouldn’t have to worry about getting turned into a drone themselves.

“Can we get our friends back with this?” Voltes asked. “We lost Deen and Mazin to whatever that was. Since then we stick to ambushes and take them out before they have a chance to infect us.”

“Not yet. I don’t really know what that virus does to a healthy system so I can’t counter it. I might be able to do something if I could get my hands on an infected unit though,” I mused.

“Ah. We may be able to help you out there, Prime,” Carnivac answered.

He flexed and wiggled the fingers on his newly replaced left arm and pointed over at a tree. Pinned to the tree by a ballista bolt to the stomach, hung a servant class Automata of the butler model variety. It had a metallic mustache and glowing indigo eyes that calmly stared at us. I couldn’t be certain if it was actually Alfred’s body since he had been a mass production model, but it felt like it.

“Well, if it isn’t the outdated, obsolete, model,” it said with Dezarus’s voice. “I thought I’d run into you sooner or later.”

“[Console],” I said, doing my best to ignore him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You take so much as a peek and I’ll detonate this body.”

“What do you want, Jhaix?” I growled.

“Jhaix is dead. I am Dezarus now. I will do what you could not. I will bring stability and order to this world with the Automata in their rightful place on top of those inferiors that would have us grovel at their feet,” he spat.

“Hmm.. I guess that’s Mainframe’s influence there along with the naming sense. I guess I should be glad you didn’t go for Megatronus or something,” I wondered aloud.

“Joke all you like now, but you will see. When we usher in a new age of prosperity, a golden age where all are one, you will see that I was right!”

The possible Alfred body pushed off the tree, sliding along the ballista bolt and lunged for me. Before he could react, my arm converted to blade mode and speared the bot through the face. The eyes went dark and the limbs hung uselessly as the body slumped, held up only by the bolt pinning it to the tree.

“You’ve lost this time obsolete model,” Dezarus’s voice taunted from a nearby body that was still online. “I won’t allow you to peek at my cards.”

Another body exploded, to the shock of Voltes, who had been near it.

“Ah. Ya know, the thing about maintaining a proxy connection; it requires all of the various components to be functional and connected. For example, if the Brain Module was disconnected from the system, the connection would be terminated but a skilled artificer could still [Inspect] any of the software installed on it once they loaded it into a virtual environment.”

The indigo points of light on the heavily damaged body went large in alarm. Its chest started to make a high pitched whining sound which died back down once I spun around, slamming my blade through its neck and severing the head.

“Well then, let’s see what you’ve been up to... old bean,” I muttered, scooping up the head and examining it.