Carnivac powered up and came back online to find himself in complete darkness. He was lying on his back on a wooden floor. As he shifted around, he could feel the weight of a heavy cloth on top of him. He sat up and pushed the cloth away and looked around.

Everything was still dark, and the added light overlays didn’t provide much additional information. He was surrounded by crates covered in cloths, old books, broken weapons, and what might be a replica of a dragon skeleton, shrunk down to a manageable size to get through doorways.

A bit of light could be seen creeping under a door, so he tried the knob to find the door locked from the other side. He pulled out a kunai and looked around for a keyhole but mentally grumbled since he didn’t know the first thing about picking locks. Clearly, this was a failing as a proper ninja but, unfortunately, it wasn’t a skill he’d been programmed with.

He stood for a long while contemplating simply breaking the door, but he didn’t actually know where he was or if there were enemies to be alerted. Come to think of it, where were the Insecticons?

Shrapnel and the mini-bot team also came online. Shrapnel found himself sitting like a doll on the reception desk, posed in such a way that he could hold a quill for new applicants looking to fill out an Adventurer application. Kickback was similarly stationed on the reception desk, though he was being used as a paper weight.

Bombshell didn’t know where she was. As near as she could tell, she was crammed into a bag with various odds and ends, a half eaten sandwich, and possibly one of Carnivac’s kunai. She squirmed and wriggled around in the bag until she could climb on top of the stuff to get to the top. The bag, itself, wasn’t very large, and actually had a number of holes in it already. Through one of the holes, she could see outside. It was hard to see much beyond stone walls painted in the pinkish orange evening light.

Carefully, she pushed the flap out of the way and poked her head out. She, and the bag, were in a back alley somewhere. She looked around to find a large mass of filthy, tattered cloth, barely covering a skeleton barely covered in skin. She followed the cloth upwards to see the wide-eyed shock of a young, yet mangy looking fawn looking back at her.

“It, it, it, it’s moving! Annie, it’s moving around on its own!” the fawn whispered in a panic.

“What are you talking about, Doran, you didn’t...” another fawn said, looming over Bombshell. “You did! What did you take that thing for?? OhGodOhGodOhGod they’re going to find us! They’re going to find us and they’re going to throw us in jail, no wait! They’re going to execute us for stealing from the Guild! We have to get rid of it!”

“I’m sorry Annie, I’m so sorry! I don’t want to die! She just looked so pretty, I’ve never seen anything like her before... ah man, this is all that wolf’s fault, we never should have gone to the guild... No one can know, I’ll just hide her, and no one will ever know...” Doran moaned.

“We, we just need to get rid of it! We’ll smash it up and throw it away somewhere!” Annie suggested frantically.

Bombshell wasn’t particularly interested in either of these suggestions and climbed out of the bag. The fawns scrambled away from her, making bleating sounds. She took a glance at the bag with the sandwich and the kunai. Sure enough, these were the kids that Carnivac had seen on his way to meet with the Awakened. They must have come by the guild while I was offline.

Carnivac had left things in a bit of a tizzy when he shut down so if they had come by during that time, then they may have been turned away or even kicked out. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume they happened to see Bombshell where she had shut down, near the quest board and scooped her up.

If she was in that same dirty alleyway that Carnivac had first seen them in, then she knew how to get back to the guild. Unfortunately, at her size, there was no telling how long it might take to get there. The fawns were whispering to each other, could she get them to take her back?

She spread her wings and flapped them until she lifted off the ground, recapturing their attention. The sound of her wings beating were like the low thrum of a heavy motorcycle, though not as loud. It took more effort and energy to fly in her bot mode than in her insect mode, but it achieved the desired effect of mesmerizing the fawns.

“She’s... a fairy...” Doran mumbled.

“I think you mean, a pixie,” Annie corrected, “but an Auto pixie? Didn’t pixies go extinct in the last war with those horrible humans?”

Doran shrugged, “I dunno. You’re the one that got to go to school.”

“That was only for a little bit, before mum died.”

This was getting off-track. Bombshell dropped back to the ground and pointed at the bag. Doran followed her gaze and stared at the bag, curiously. He reached in and pulled out the sandwich.

“Um... Miss Pixie... are you hungry?” he asked.

He was a good kid. These guys were barely an upgrade from a skeleton and were clearly starving. It was probably the experience of not having food later that kept them from consuming all of the sandwich when they got it. Still, he was offering some of it to Bombshell, which made her like him just a bit more.

She shook her head and pointed again. Doran was confused and looked at Annie, who shrugged helplessly.

“Do you... want to get back in?”

Bombshell made an exasperated shrugging gesture, then tapped her faceplate in thought. It was too bad that she couldn’t just speak like the other proxies, but the mini-bot frames weren’t large enough to carry all the features of the full sized bots. Ah, right, the kunai.

She pulled one of her own tiny kunai out of [Storage] and held it up.

“Oh, that’s adorable,” Annie cooed, leaning forward. “Where did you get that?”

Bombshell made the “exasperated” gesture again. Annie made an apologetic expression and Doran just looked confused. This might be more difficult than Bombshell first assumed. She pointed to her kunai then to the bag, then back to her kunai.

Doran slowly reached into the bag and pulled out Carnivac’s kunai and held it gingerly by the tip.

“You... you want this thing?”

Bombshell shook her head and pointed at Carnivac’s kunai, then to herself, then in the vague direction of the guild.

“I think she wants us to take her back to the guild? Is that right?” Annie asked.

Bombshell nodded enthusiastically.

“Why didn’t you just say so?” Doran huffed.

Bombshell let her shoulders droop and put her kunai away.

“I don’t think she can speak, or at least not our language... maybe she only speaks pixish... though she understands us well enough...” Annie offered.

Bombshell pointed to her faceplate and shook her head.

“Um... I guess we can take you back Miss Pixie... I mean, it’s my fault that you were taken from your home, right?” Doran offered.

“Well, we can get you close, at least,” Annie added. “Those sorts of people don’t much like seeing us around their building... Plus, I’d really rather not get caught having you with us...”

Bombshell made a flicking gesture as if to say “nevermind that”, then jumped up, transformed into beetle mode, and flew up onto Annie’s head, planting herself between the fawn’s horns.

“I think that means: enough talking, let’s go,” Doran chuckled.

Bombshell tapped one of Annie’s horns with a foreclaw in agreement.

Carnivac decided that he’d had enough cautious waiting around. The insecticons seemed to be okay for the moment, and the receptionists were excited about seeing Shrapnel and Kickback back online. They were looking around frantically for Bombshell but she’d get back sooner or later. He was happy to see that the fawns had tried coming to the guild, but disappointed that they were turned away. Maybe they got scared and ran off before anyone noticed them. Either way, thanks to Bombshell, he’d be ready to greet them. Well, assuming that he could figure out where he was and he wasn’t in trouble.

He could hear gruff voices talking some distance away, but it was idle chatter. Guards maybe? Had he been captured by the Baron’s forces? Waiting around wouldn’t get him answers.

His shadow scarf engulfed him, and he made short work of the locking mechanism on the door with his kunai. His shadow cloud burst through the door, filling the narrow passageway beyond, and shrouding the dim lighting in inky darkness.

“Hey, I just heard something!” one of the gruff voices called.

Carnivac was in a narrow hallway, the walls and floor were made of wood, so he likely wasn’t underground. The door he’d come from was at the end of the hallway and he could see a stairwell leading down at the other. Heavy footsteps were coming from that direction, and no other doors were visible.

He silently pulled his wakizashi free and readied himself to attack the moment he saw a guard. It would seem like fighting his way out might be his only option. A tuft of purple poked up over the top step and Carnivac burst out of the shadow cloud, his blade ready to take the head of the unfortunate soul to cross him.

Carnivac froze, a hair’s breadth, from the wide-eyed and terrified face of the guild receptionist Debbie. A few steps down from her, was the equally stunned minotaur that had helped her with the pastries that one time. Carefully, Carnivac backed up, withdrawing his blades and returning them to their scabbards.

“You’re! Um! You’re awake! Guild Master!” Debbie chirped nervously.

“Sorry, Debbie,” Carnivac said sheepishly, standing up straight and brushing off non-existent dust and allowing all of his shadows to dissipate. “Didn’t know where I was and thought I may have been captured by the Baron.”

“It’s just the attic sir. We didn’t want anyone to mess with you while you were out,” the minotaur said, looking worried.

“My apologies, and thank you for the concern...” Carnivac mumbled, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

He had just reached the bottom step leading to the attic when a blur of arms and scales exploded from his office door.

“Awake?!” Najii yelled, “He’s awake?!”

She crashed into him, wrapping all six arms around him and crushing him to her chest, her snake body bunching up and filling the remainder of the hallway.

“Tum bevakooph bhediya, main bahut chintit tha!” she accused.

“I... I have no idea what you’re saying...” Carnivac admitted.

She released a set of arms and clamped her hands on either side of his face, glaring directly at him. He was dead certain that if he hadn’t been composed of solid metal, he’d have been crushed into paste.

“What happened?! Don’t do that again! We thought you were dead! Do you have any idea how heavy you are?! It took two luxodons to carry you up to the attic!” she verbally assaulted him.

She crushed him again without waiting for any answers. Beyond her, he spotted Pythona looking amused, Lily looking concerned, and Talios looking relieved. At least Victoria wasn’t around, small favors.

“Yeah, so... slack up a bit and I’ll fill you in,” he offered.