The amount of mana that an Automata could collect was governed by the soul core and I didn’t yet fully understand exactly how the process worked. I thought it had something to do with the amount of life left for the soul at the time of conversion. So the conversion of a young person would result in a higher mana cap than an old person being converted; but it was just a theory. My pseudo soul core had a rather poor mana cap. Way below the average mana cap of other Automata that I’d worked on.

You could think of the mana consumption a bit like a laptop with the soul attached to the soul core dictating how much total RAM was available. The operating system as well as any programs you had running in the background all eat into that total RAM with whatever is left being what’s available for user actions. In a similar way, Automata have this mana cap but then out of that mana pool comes all of the operational stuff with the leftovers showing up to the individual as their “MP” that they can spend on various spells or abilities.

If the typical Automata had a mana cap of 100 with 20 as their available MP, then my SMUT units... okay I needed a different name if for no other reason than marketing... I went with Soulless Operation Linkage instead for the OS name. Lena suggested that I simply call the physical units “Mana Cells”, so I went with that. The mana cells only had a mana cap of 50, which I assume would be what we’d get if Shiro’s folks were converted. 50 wasn’t enough to even power up an Automata body, much less do anything useful, however, the SOL units only required 5 MP for operational usage so they had 45 MP that they could share.

The units were relatively small and easy to produce. I found that with some more tinkering, I could chain a couple of them together to handle the mana outputs of multiple Automata. If the Factory had these, they wouldn’t need to chain soul cores together like poor Jaff and Meern.

With the power supply sorted, I built a modest rickshaw for Jada. Traditionally they were just a chariot seat sitting on top of an axle w/ some pull poles, but I added a spring suspension to absorb some of the bumps and knocks since paved roads didn’t exist in this world yet that I’d seen. The pull poles were hooked up to an extremely stylized panther-ish looking automata body. I installed three of the mana cells to handle powering the body and a small cockpit, of sorts, for a small bodied Automata to be able to control the thing.

I had thought about just a set of legs but I didn’t want Jada to be laughed at. The whole thing could collapse a bit and had a retractable roof that could be deployed to block the sun or rain. When it was fully collapsed, it could just barely fit inside of three cubic meter [Inventory] space, so I created one and attached it to a simple ring that Jada could keep with her. I was pretty sure she had fat fingers, hopefully I guessed the size right.

I had proxy bodies that needed building, but I really wanted Ratchet and Rom’s help on those so the auto rickshaw was a nice way to stay productive until they were ready to help. The route to take Lena back to the capitol would take us through Urd and I knew that Jada wouldn’t have forgotten the promise she extracted from Alfred.

With the rickshaw stored away in the ring, I set it on the back corner of my design desk. A quick test confirmed that I couldn’t store an [Inventory] device inside of an [Inventory] space, which bugged me. I thought that they basically worked like disc space directories but maybe not. Lena had slipped off a couple of times to contact Prince Milliardo but otherwise she’d become a fixture of the shop.

She wasn’t particularly interested in my design or build process or the things I was making, but relentlessly peppered me with questions about my old world. I had to admit that it was rather liberating being able to talk freely about it with someone, though I often apologized for being such a boring person in my past life.

“Alrighty Lena, we’re finished with your new body. You ready to move in?” I asked, as Ratchet put the final touches on the housing plates.

Lena looked at her hands, or rather the large borrowed hands of Ram. “I do believe I am, no offence to Miss Ram.”

“No offence taken,” I said, “she’ll be glad to have her body back too.” She’ll be glad? I shook my head, dispelling the thought.

By this point the process of transferring a soul core to a new body and going through the setup process was so familiar that I felt like a quick-change oil change service. It had me wondering if it was possible or practical for an Automata to have multiple bodies for different functions like how someone might have different outfits. The process took about three hours so it wasn’t exactly a quick change-out but for special occasions or... war... it could be useful.

Lena’s eyes lit up with the blue pin light I now associated with a free Automata coming online and looked around. I held out a hand and helped her sit up.

“Cheeky as ever, I see, my dear Prime,” she said, giving me a sly grin.

“The boot screen?” I asked, referencing a chibi image of myself that I’d included.

“The boot screen,” she confirmed.

She looked at her new hands, turning them over and wiggling the fingers. They were slender, and in the four finger, single thumb configuration. As requested, the magisteel plating had a veneer of crimson while some of the knuckle joints had been plated in a gold veneer to give the impression of wearing a ring on each finger.

Along her forearms, inlaid scrollwork intertwined in gold, crimson, and rose gold. The scroll patterns repeated across her body in key areas, giving her the look of a work of art. Millions of fine, gold-alloy threads made up her hair, which hung in ringlets. The gold fibers, while still metal, were flexible enough to move naturally and not deform if kinked. I embedded the memory wire functions into it so she should be able to style it as needed. I could easily see her with a pair of “drills”.

Once she had gone through the introduction steps I walked her over to the polished steel plate that I used as a mirror and she scrutinized her reflection.

I tried my best to replicate the build and dimensions of her original body from memory. She had been a thin and delicate looking teenage girl so hopefully this new body would be easy to get used to.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, trying to view herself from all angles. “It feels natural too.”

“Right now, I think that you are the most advanced Automata on the planet.”

“Oh? How so?”

I tapped the reflection, about where her face was. “Smile.”

She looked closer at the reflection of her face and gave a skeptical smile. Rather than the solid faceplate that adorned the face of Ram or most other Automata, or the overlapping-plates face of Elita or Shiro, Lena had a face covered in a fine mesh of memory wire cloth. Up close, you could see the mesh but from a distance of several feet it looked solid.

Lena looked hard at her reflection, squinting, looking surprised, smug, and a whole host of weird complicated facial expressions. The memory cloth was doing a pretty good job of reacting to the mana encoding to mimic facial muscles. She even opened up her mouth and started wiggling around a fake tongue.

“Can I eat now?” she asked, curling her tongue into a tube and trying to look down at it, cross-eyed.

“No, sorry. You can chew stuff, I guess, but there’s no hole at the back to swallow anything.”

“So what special abilities does this body have? From what I’ve observed, you love hidden tricks and things.”

“Well, you’ve got me there,” I conceded, “you have two small and one medium magic crystal port in each arm. When you add crystals, you’ll be able to tap into that crystal’s magic. The more you have of the same type, the stronger magic you’ll be able to do. If you’ll notice—”

Her arms opened up, exposing the ports in her forearms and upper arms.

“Yeah, that. There’s also a dedicated large port in your chest for an illusion stone. Try casting [cloak()].”

She triggered the spell and a digital rippling effect trickled down from the crown of her head down to her feet. Where the ripple passed, crimson steel and armor plate seams were replaced with the illusion of smooth, crimson skin and her hollow, pin-light eyes were replaced with the golden volpine eyes that I’d noticed when we first met.

“Not bad, dear Prime, not bad at all,” she said, looking herself up and down. “You even got...”

Her eyes opened wide and locked onto mine in the reflection as her face turned a deep purple.

“Prime you pervert!” she screamed as she covered herself with one arm and turned, punching me with the other.

As I sailed through the air and crashed into one of my workstations, toppling the contents and myself onto the floor, I could only think: Ah. Right. Should have expected that. I pushed a hand up, through the debri, and raised a finger.

“Just... turn off the cloak... I’m about to sit up,” I warned.

I pushed the tools and scraps of metal off of me and sat up to find her uncloaked, but still covering herself and in a defensive position.

“It’s only an illusion,” I tried.

“A surprisingly realistic one! How did you even know about that birthmark or my grooming habits??”

“I didn’t,” I argued, getting onto my feet. “You crafted that illusion. The program is set to default to look like your original body but it’s entirely based on what you imagine your original body looked like. It then stores that mental image for use going forward. As you get used to it, you’ll be able to store customizations to change things like skin or hair color, facial features, markings, that sort of thing. I thought it rather clever... this is cutting edge stuff.”

“Turn around,” she demanded.

“Eh?”

“Just do it Prime!”

“Yes, your highness,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes and raising my arms.

Via Rom and Ratchet I could see as she took the remaining fabric, left over from the rickshaw canopy, and wrapped it around herself.

“You can turn back around now,” she said with a huff, flipping her gold wire hair over one shoulder.

“You’re... just all robot right now, you know...”

“So? Doesn’t matter,” she closed her eyes and turned her face from me.

“What about them? They’re me too, right?” I asked, gesturing to Ratchet and Rom.

“Hardly,” she snorted, “Rom is a girl so she doesn’t count, and Ratchet is... well whatever. Ratchet doesn’t count either. Besides, I’m not romantically interested in either of them, am I?”

Her eyes got huge and the pin-pricks of blue light turned pink, expanding to fill the full optic stone. I’d certainly never seen that effect before. She turned on the spot and bolted out the door screaming “Stupid Prime!”

“Oh for the love of Orion Pax, Prime baka, huh?” I asked no one, as I lowered my head and tapped the space between my eyes with crossed arms. The gesture had come to replace a gesture from my previous life in which I’d pinch the bridge of my nose in an “oh good grief” sort of feeling. I guess I should be glad I didn't give her extinction grade weaponry for her to fire off just to cover her embarrassment...