Below us, it seemed like every Knight Watch guard and Adventurer were out running around looking for us. Not one of them thought to look on top of their Guild Hall building. It would be much safer for us to move from roof to roof once the sun went down so we had some time to kill.

First, I finished the repair work for Elita. Thankfully, I had my mobile workshop stored in my [Inventory]. A lot of supplies as well as all the projects I’d left in Jada’s shop were in my inventory too, but I had no idea how or why they had gotten there. Since I was doing work to her anyway, it would be a good opportunity to install an upgrade that I’d been wanting to give her for a long time.

“Hey Elita, I’ve been working on a ranged weapon upgrade for you for a while— like my arm cannon— but I couldn’t solve the ammo storage issue. Since I got a system upgrade, I think I’ve got a solution. If you’re interested.”

“Having an integrated weapon that can’t be lost, and ranged at that, would be useful. Not my sword arm, though.”

I nodded, and disconnected her shield arm at the elbow and opened it up. Thanks to whomever had tossed the project into my [Inventory] I was able to integrate the variant on the RockMortar cannon that I had in my own arm. What had stopped me before from giving it to her was the ammunition situation. The arm, itself, didn’t have much room for storing anything and I couldn’t attach the function to my own [Inventory] to handle ammo storage since she couldn’t access it. This time though, thanks to my own firmware upgrade, I was able to create a new [Inventory(small)] space like I had done for Sentinel Prime. I talked with Elita about where she’d like the [Server] attached since if that part was damaged then the [Server] would go with it. Ultimately she decided that she wanted it attached to her Soul Core so that if she got a new body then the [Server] would go with her.

I finished installing the new cannon upgrade and reattached the arm for her. The bore tube of the cannon was a lot narrower than my own so the ammo required would have to be as well. I had a TON of Thunder Bear quills that I’d been saving for her for exactly this reason.

I updated her function files to include the new hardware controls and walked her through the process of using them.

“Okay, this new function is called [Needler()],” I instructed, “Go ahead and try it out.”

As she did so, her shield hand split apart and her forearm transformed into the Needler Cannon.

“What’s this?” she asked, “There’s some sort of symbol in my vision now with a shadowy line leading to my arm. It’s moving all over the place, and I’m also seeing a group of zeroes off to the side.”

“That is your targeting system, wherever that symbol is, is where your attack is going to hit, and the line you see is the path your attack will take to get there. The zeroes are how much ammo you currently have, to help you keep track in the middle of a fight. I’d love to have those upgrades myself.”

“Clever. Why don’t you then? You made them for me, so it should be a simple thing to make them for yourself.”

“You’d think so, but for some reason there is a lot of stuff regarding my own systems that I don’t have access to and can’t modify. Okay, here, this is your ammo.”

I started dropping the Thunder Bear quills onto the rooftop near her.

“Hold your hand near the quills and think about adding them to your [Inventory], good, just like that.”

“Oh! The number is going up, it’s not just zeroes any more.”

“Right, you can also load crossbow bolts, steel nails, anything that’s similar in shape. When you have multiple ammo types, you just need to think about switching to a different type and your ammo count will change to match that type. Since the quills are electricity based, they’ll get charged by your lightning crystals for an electric attack with piercing damage.”

“Can I store other things or just ammo?”

“Whatever you want as long as you have room. The storage space is roughly a meter squared. As I get upgraded to be able to create larger spaces, I’ll upgrade your capacity as well.”

She nodded her head looking at her new cannon. She then turned and fired off five quills at one of the chimneys poking up out of the roof near us.

“Whoa! What are you doing?” I asked, worried that she might give away our position.

She looked at me with a long-suffering expression. “Prime. The first time you try a new weapon should NEVER be during combat.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic, we’d been lucky so far that I hadn’t had any major problems with any of the stuff I’d built and tested out as they were needed.

There was more I wanted to work on, but the sun had fully set and Sparky had woken up from his mana crash. If we wanted to get back to Jada’s shop then now was the time. I put my mobile workshop back into storage and pulled out Carnivac, he’d be the best choice for travel right now.

Elita wasn’t as light on her feet as Carnivac was, but she still kept up. Unsurprisingly, Sparky moved fluidly from leap to leap, barely touching the buildings below him. From roof to roof, we crossed the city of Urd. Below, shops had closed up, bars were full, and the occasional search team could be spotted. We made our way past the market district to the low-rent area where Jada’s shop was and slowed down to observe what was going on.

I pulled Shrapnel, my beetle insecticon proxy, from storage and connected to it. Shrapnel took off and flew over the shop. Surrounding the shop were at least a dozen or so guards from the Knight Watch. They must have expected us to come back here if Shea had started working with them. I hoped that Shiro was okay.

He flew up to a darkened window on the second floor, transformed into bot mode and landed on the window sill. Carefully, he pushed open the window and peered inside. The lights were out and everything was still, but he didn’t want to take any chances. On the other side, was Shea’s bedroom. He leapt from the window, to the bed, and down to the floor. He could hear talking elsewhere in the apartment and thermal was showing two heat signatures in the kitchen living area.

He edged his way around the door and could see Shea sitting at her table, staring at a bowl of soup. Across from her was Talios from the Guild.

“So Carnivac wasn’t a real person? How is that even possible?” Talios asked.

Shea just shrugged and continued staring at her soup. She looked like she’d been crying. “Prime. It was really Prime. In disguise.”

“And Elita was an Automata in disguise too?”

“Yeah. Prime made the disguise for her.”

“It sounds like this `Prime` is very clever... for an Automata. Was Prime the Automata that came into the guild with you that one day?”

“For an Automata?” Shea repeated. “I guess he was right. We just see them as magic tools and not people, huh?”

“They are just magic tools. No matter how clever they might seem, it was a real person that made them that way. They are just machines pretending to be alive.”

“He was my friend. Elita was a really good friend too... and I panicked and attacked him. And with a spell that he made for me no less.”

“He can make spells?”

“Yeah, he just... I don’t know... looks at my magic and is able to make changes to it. Make it better.”

“No one can do that, sweetie.”

“He can! And he’s not just some magic tool, and neither is Elita! They’re my friends!”

I didn’t really blame Shea, she was just a scared kid and had gotten tangled up in some serious trouble thanks to me; but she was dishing a little too much dirt on me for my tastes. I cursed myself for not taking the time to give Shrapnel any weapons and looked around. Shrapnel spotted an acorn close by that Sparky must have missed, scooped it up, and lobbed it as hard as he could at the dishrack next to the sink. One of the plates shattered from the impact. Sorry, Shea, I’ll buy you a new plate some time.

Both Shea and Talios jumped in their seats startled by the sudden noise. When they got up to see what had happened, Shrapnel scampered around the edge of the room behind them. He got to the landing at the top of her stairs and heard Talios before heading down into the shop.

“An acorn? Where did this come from?” Talios wondered aloud.