I entered the Inn with Shiro and greeted Jackie and Sentinel.

“Good evening. Rough night to have guests,” I said.

“Prime, good to see you. These gentlemen are from Thompsons Fork. IronHide had told us about them,” I had Sentinel tell me.

“Ah yes. Thanks to the big guy, I believe I owe you a new well.”

“Um, no sir. It really isn’t much. Just the roof over the well was damaged, really,” Lemont said.

“What?” Davin said, sitting up. “THIS little runt is the Master Prime we’re supposed to be begging help from?”

From under his shirt, Davin pulled out a knife and lunged at me. I had one of Sentinel’s arm guns converted and leveled at the boy, but it was Shiro that had thrown himself between Davin and myself. Davin was frozen in mid-lunge with his knife wavering to his side as he looked down to see four blades extending from Shiro’s fingers and just inches from his chest.

Davin dropped the knife on the floor and backed up to his chair as Shiro straighted up and retracted his own blades. The others from Thompsons Fork had mouths open while Lamont looked ready to explode.

“I’m.. I am so very sorry about this. Excuse us for just a moment,” Lamont said through gritted teeth. He then stood up and dragged Davin out of the Inn and into the rain by his ear. We could hear Lamont tearing into Davin verbally while everyone inside the Inn silently became suddenly interested in their nails or the woodgrain of the table.

I was really surprised by Shiro’s response. This whole time, he’s talked about avoiding fighting and exhibited pacifist ideals. But when I was attacked, he sprung forward to protect me. I made a mental note to talk with him about that later.

When the tirade subsided, a soaked Lamont came back in, followed by a red-faced, but much-subdued, yet also soaked Davin.

Davin picked up his chair that had fallen over and sat down in it. He wouldn’t meet my eyes but he did manage to croak out “I’m very sorry for my actions Mister Prime. It won’t happen again.”

Lamont nodded in approval, before turning back to me. “Yes, I’m sorry as well Sir Prime. We truthfully didn’t come here to make trouble. Rather, we hope to rectify some trouble that these youngsters brought to our village.”

“Right,” I said, “I take it that these three young men are the ones that had attacked our friend and left him for dead on the road outside of your village?”

“Yeah, it’s these three brats that did it,” Charlie grunted, folding his arms.

“We didn’t think it was such a big deal,” Mikk said looking downward. “It’s not like we were actually hurting anyone, right?”

“I know that Automata are expensive, but wandering around in the woods by itself... we just saw it as some harmless fun... It’s not like we were hurting any real people.” Stew added.

“I see,” I responded, “We Automata, are pretty expensive, that’s true. But did you know that we have the mind and feelings of real people in here?” I said, tapping my chest. “Every Automata that you see, used to be a living, breathing person before they were converted into this form. Most, against their wishes.”

Mikk looked at me wide-eyed, “that’s... that’s not what the shops in Urd say.”

“If that’s true,” Stew said, looking down at his hands, “then that means we murdered someone?” He then grabbed Davin and glared at him, “I can’t go to prison! I’m too pretty!”

Davin shrugged him off, “that’s not true,” he retorted, “the government said so. They’re all just magic tools, and it’s their fault that we can’t find any decent work.”

Lamont and Charlie both glared at Davin, but he ignored them.

“I’m afraid you’ve been misled,” Shiro spoke up. “I used to be a child in Trone before I was sold to the Factory and murdered so that my spirit could be sealed into an Automata.”

“Yes, let me introduce you. Gentlemen, this,” I said, gesturing to Shiro, “is Shiro. He is the Automata that you—”

“That you can rely on during your stay here,” Shiro finished, cutting me off. “If you will allow me, I have the culinary skill [Cooking Lvl 8], and it would greatly please me to handle your meals and show you our hospitality. It is my understanding that I shall have the aid of these fine young men to help me manage this Inn.”

“Um, yes! That would be wonderful,” Lamont said, sharing nods with Charlie. “I’ve only ever seen a [Cooking Lvl 3] before. I can’t even imagine what a level 8 can do!”

“With that settled,” I said, “why don’t you gentlemen turn in for the night. It’s gotten quite late, and we can talk some more in the morning.”

The group of organics went upstairs to find rooms and Shiro went to find the kitchen and explore the rest of the Inn, flashing me a wide grin and thumbs up. I’m not certain, but I think the lion face on his chest winked at me. I left Sentinel in the dining room to keep an eye on things if needed and headed out with Jackie.

I stumbled as we were leaving the Inn and felt faint. Jackie caught me and held me upright until I got my footing again.

“Oof... that wasn’t pleasant.”

“You alright, mate?” Jackie asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Had to be done, I just lost Ram though.”

“What did you have to do?”

“Well, my proxies back in Urd. They’re trying to escape the city and wanted to help a big rock smasher type Automata that was bolted to a large stone plinth. In order to break the huge bolts that were holding it down, I had to overload the heat output in my forge bot’s hands.”

“Hands? Heat output? I’m not following.”

“Sorry,” I said still a bit woozy, “Ram, the bot I use to work the forge and build the larger items for sale, has hands that can heat up enough to keep metal soft enough to extend the work time when forging so that she doesn’t have to keep reheating the metal to keep it going. I basically had to shut off all the safety protocols and overclock that ability to be able to melt through the metal plates and bolts holding this big guy to that stone slab while in the rain. But in the process, I think I completely fried and melted all of Ram’s internals. I’ll take a look at her when they get here, but it might be better to rebuild her from scratch than try to repair that body.”

“And here I thought you were feeling the loss of a comrade.”

“Hey, I feel loss! She was really useful.”

“So she was just a tool.”

“Of cour... ah. I see. But she was a proxy body of ME. An extension, a puppet. She wasn’t anymore alive than that Barrier Device over there.”

“Okay Prime.”

“What?? It’s not the same Jackie!”

“G’night, Prime. I’ll see you later.”

Hmmph, he didn’t get it. Jackie walked off through the rain, and back to his Mecha Nick shop. I just stood there and watched him go. Of course I felt bad losing Ram, and the fact that I had broken her myself made it worse. The mental feedback from being connected to her during the process was no joke either. Still, as a proxy, she was just a tool, right? It wasn’t the same thing. Right?

I didn’t have time to dwell on it too much. Royal Ka-nigits would be breathing down my neck in just a couple of days and I really wanted to have this upgrade set ready to go. I got back to my workshop and looked at my project. It would be good to divert from working on the code for a bit to finish up the mechanical aspects so I decided to double check on the magical circuitry but needed a small pry bar to get the housing opened up. I opened up a small chest that I had on my workbench that was supposed to be stocked with various small components and tools. When I pulled the drawers out I instead found it loaded with burnt nuts and seeds of various varieties.

I looked around for Sparky but he was probably off sleeping somewhere, since it was the middle of the night. I didn’t have a running forge for him to hang out in here and without Shea, he was mostly doing his own thing. Maybe he found a girl-squirrel. Come to think of it, I’d been using “he” this whole time and really had no clue what Sparky’s actual gender was. I opted to dismiss the concern since “he” didn’t seem to be bothered by it, and the idea of manually checking wouldn’t be fun for either of us.