“Bam! Pow! That was amazing! I’ve ne’er seen nuthin like that!” the horned rabbit boy squealed. “How you even do that? What store did ya come from? No wait, ya a custom model, right? Who built you? We have a Auto in the shop. His name is George. Yer really big too. I ne’er saw a Auto as big as you before.”

Solus glanced down at the boy as they walked. The possibility of the thugs coming back or other unsavory character showing up kept her from separating back into the sisters. Since she’d scared off the thugs the boy hadn’t stopped peppering her with questions or trying to inspect every nook and cranny of her frame. It was honestly far more embarrassing to be scrutinized like that than she thought it’d be. Her skirt might be comprised of armor plates rather than fabric but that didn’t mean she wanted the little brat staring up it. The kid had all the tact of a brat running around the women’s bath and using their age as an excuse for being handsy.

The voices of Ram and Rom warred in her head on whether or not to smack the kid until he stopped pawing at her. The leading deterrent plan was to release low voltage pulses across her “skin” giving him a little zap each time. She’d tried being nice at first, of course, but his large ears seemed to be strictly ornamental.

For the third time a small paw found its way running up the back of her calf. Thankfully the bunny couldn’t reach much farther up. Even reaching her knee would be a stretch. Ram and Rom both agreed that their smaller, separate forms would put them lower to the ground and allow for bun bun to reach further up their bodies and neither one was too keen on the idea; even if it would only be a bit past their knees.

They both wore fabric dresses too. No, best to stay combined for now. Solus stopped walking and dimmed her optics for a beat, mentally composing herself. Both bunnies looked up at her, confused. Her optics flared back to life and she bent over, scooping both of them up. Moshi was tucked on one arm, sitting across Solus’s forearm while the boy was held most ignobly like a small sack of coffee beans.

“You both walk too slow,” she announced and picked up the pace.

If the boy took offense, he didn’t show it. Instead, he happily pawed at her fingers wrapped around his torso, inspecting her knuckle joints. His legs dangled freely in the air but he didn’t seem to be uncomfortable. The new position did nothing to deter his monologue of questions and statements, though he did break to offer directions.

The boy steered them to a large building with heavy iron doors. A sign next to the door read “Tosche & Sons” with a smaller sign under it reading “Solicitors will be stabbed. Thieves will be incinerated.”

“Wait, what are we doing here? We’re supposed to be taking you home,” Moshi asked.

“Yeah, this is the place. We live upstairs. My old man runs this dump,” the boy complained.

“Mike! Where in the bloody pillars of the ancients have you been?!” a tough looking brown horned rabbit screamed.

Like others of his species he resembled an extra large earth rabbit on its hind legs and wearing clothes. This one had a salty muzzle and ear tips betraying his years. A few scars crossed his muscular shoulders and one of his paws looked like it had seen the bad end of a fire but otherwise he was in fit condition as far as Solus could tell. His muscular anatomy reminded Solus of a kangaroo, actually.

Solus set the bunnies down and Mike ran over to the older rabbit and started verbally pelting him with all that had happened. Apparently, the adult was Mike’s father and the “Tosche” in “Tosche & Sons”. A spindly Automata with a single optic in an otherwise featureless face approached, giving Solus the briefest of glances, and addressed Moshi.

“Welcome to Tosche and Sons Artificary Warehouse. Do you have an order list of items that you are looking for? I can assist you to quickly complete your shopping,” it stated.

Solus tapped the Automata in the forehead, transfering [Freedom.exe] and causing it to stumble back several steps.

“You’re George?” she asked.

“Yes?” George said, confused.

“Well, happy birthday then. Moshi, we’re going to look around a bit,” she said, giving Moshi a half-hearted wave.

She took a few steps and burst into a collection of parts that flipped and flung around and reconfigured themselves into the form of the Proxy Sisters, Ram and Rom. Tosche’s jaw hit the floor and even George looked shocked, though it was hard to tell on the faceless model.

“Hey Tosche, got anything for remote access or control systems?” Ram asked, looking back.

“Aisle four... I have some puppet-mancy scripts... uh... telepresence stones are behind the counter...” the old rabbit said, stunned, waving vaguely.

Ram gave him a nod and headed off for aisle four while Rom began perusing the selection of mana crystals behind a thick, glass counter. Nothing was labeled, of course. A rainbow of different colored stones in trays spread out across several shelves. Rom recognized several that she’d worked with before but most of them were new to her. How were customers supposed to shop if nothing had a label or even a price tag? Could she [inspect] things like Prime could?

Her optics dimmed as she mentally retreated to the HeadSpace. She had a stripped down version of the [Inspect] program called [Interface] installed so that she could work with magiScripts and her own mini [Developer Environment] but something more powerful could come in handy. She didn’t have much free space available though. She found what she was looking for in the program directory and took a copy of the software back to her room directory.

The [Inspect] software block took up three times the amount of space that [Interface] used. She pulled [Interface] off of her program shelf and tossed it onto the bed. She’d never actually slept on the bouncy mattress or crawled under the fluffy blanket adorned with an animated texture of lazy sheep-like clouds drifting across an azure blue sky. She’d tied the texture to Prime’s internal clock so that the color of the sky and clouds would shift with the time of day. She had no need of it, but you couldn’t have a proper “bedroom” without a bed and she loved being able to decorate it to her own tastes. She even had plush versions of all the people that she liked sitting on the bed.

The [Interface] block bounced across the blanket and nestled between the plush Lena and the plush Ravage. With the program uninstalled, she still didn’t have enough room for [Inspect]. Was there anything else she could get rid of? The mass remodeler took up a healthy chunk of space. Ram handled most of the part fabrication, so Rom could probably get rid of it, right? She sent a tendril of thought out and got a reluctant yet acquiescent response. Well, she could always put it back if she had to.

The modeling program was tossed onto the bed and knocked the plush Naji over. Rom squeaked a bit in panic and righted the stuffed snake woman back up, patting her on the head, before setting [Inspect] onto her install shelf.

In her physical body, her optics flared to life once more and she saw a concerned, older rabbit standing across the counter from her. He seemed to be studying her.

“Ahem. Yes, don’t mind me. Just installing some new software,” she said, embarrassed.

“What... are you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen an Auto like you. How? The face moves like a living thing. Who built this? This is genius.”

“My sister designed and built our bodies as a surprise for me. I’ve made a few modifications since then, of course,” she replied, feeling proud.

“Sister?” he asked incredulously, looking her in the optics.

“The one looking at the puppet-mancy stuff,” Rom answered, tilting her head in Ram’s direction. “Daddy is the one that merged our cores with his systems and installed us into our first bodies though.”

“Dad... dee?” Tosche stumbled, getting even more confused.

“Okay, so... I want to look at... these blue ones... the orange ones with the purple stripes... and everything on the third shelf,” Rom went on, ignoring his Confused Status.

Prime.Ram:// Hey Daddy, they have some interesting scripts here for remote puppet management. The range isn’t great but we might be able to do something with them for a guided missile system.

Prime:// Oooooh I like that

Prime.Rom:// There’s a bunch of different mana crystals too. I’m going to grab one of each of the ones we haven’t played with before.

Prime:// good idea, I can copy/paste them to make more so also grab up a bunch of whatever is cheapest that we can format. I guess grab big ones if you see them too. Bill it all to Milli! BWAA HAAA HAAAAA

Prime.Rom:// Can do! <3

I chuckled to myself at the thought of hitting Rich Boy with the bill, earning a skeptical glance from Lena.

“Uh... the girls are doing a bit of shopping for parts. Do you mind if they charge it to the palace?” I asked, sheepishly.

“You are building new toys for me, right? I think that is fine. Oh, they will need proof of authorization. Here, take my accredit card,” she said, pulling a small purse out of thin air.

She withdrew a metal card that had been embossed in gold with the royal seal. I had so many mixed emotions about accepting the card, but accept it I did. I hated to admit it, but my personal pride took a hefty hit as I took the card from the hand of a sixteen year old girl that was promised to be my bride and put it into an [Inventory] space where Rom could retrieve it. Lena just scrunched her face in a cute smile and went back to her personal spell development.

Was I to be a kept bot living as a bum off his wife’s money? Ugh... The thought didn’t sit well with me and I shook myself to dislodge the idea. Lena looked back at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I can pull my weight!” I said defiantly.

“Okay?” she asked, confused.

I shook my head again and redoubled my focus on a small, vaguely fish shaped device. The overall silhouette had the basic bits of a fish with fins and such, though it was hollow down the middle. The back end of it reduced in diameter to pressurize water that would feed into the front and shoot it out the back for propulsion. The front of it was a concept borrowed from excavator drills and had several rotating heads of teeth. Internally, more grinding teeth would pulverize anything that made it past the front so that it could be forced out the back.

I set a small water crystal into the device and retrieved a bottle of wine from Marybell. I wanted to do a small test to see if the compression worked and figured that wine would work just as well as sea water. I couldn’t submerge it or anything but I could pour a small amount into the “mouth” to see how it comes back out.

I carefully held the thing in one hand and tipped the open bottle down the hatch. It took a few moments. Just long enough for me to think about the consequences of my test and to regret my decision. The wine compressed within the device as intended and shot out the back with a burst of high pressure. Not expecting the generated force, the device shot out of my hand, past Lena’s nose, and right out the open window of the cabin. I could count things as lucky that it wasn’t pointed straight up where it would have started chewing through the roof and potentially into our dragon, I suppose.

We were both drenched by the spray of high pressure wine. Slowly, Lena’s head swiveled from looking out the empty window to my direction. Her eyes blazed a fiery red. Ah scrap, I was dead.