"So," Cassandra asked, "what happened?"

It was getting actively harder for Lorissa to suppress her urge to nya, though when she wasn't a fuzzy cat she had it much easier. "Some weird old tradition among nobles. It's not done much anymore, or so Stanton and Clarissa said, but suitors would fight for the honor of marrying a woman. This is—a twist on things."

"So all I'd have to do is beat up some noble brats and I could marry him?" As soon as Cassandra said it, she realized she'd tipped her hand. "Assuming I wanted to."

"Come on. We're not nobles, Cass. Way too much going on with all that for me, anyway. Besides, it was all some kind of contract that Clarissa had them sign. There were rules and everything." Sitting in the school cafeteria, Lorissa had found a bowl of fried meats that the kitchen sold to solve her feline cravings for both small and meaty food.

Cassandra had noticed an odd thing Lorissa was doing. "Why are you using those sticks to eat with? Why not use a fork?"

"This?" Holding the chopsticks in her hand, Lorissa shrugged. "My familiar said it would be a good way to learn extra dexterity with my hands. He's not wrong, either, these are kinda annoying." Despite her protest, Lorissa speared another piece of chicken with them, dipped it in the accompanying sauce, and popped it in her mouth with obvious glee. "This is really good stuff."

Trying not to get distracted by the food, Cassandra pulled the topic back to what she wanted to hear about. "So a bunch of rich kids duel it out to see who gets Stanton?"

"They're not allowed to kill each other, that was one of the rules." As Lorissa picked away at the food, Swiftpaw climbed out of the large pocket she'd had sewn into the inside of her new robes that Stanton had gotten made for her. "You want some of this?"

As he'd been training Lorissa, Swiftpaw Deathbringer shot out a paw at the right moment, claws extended like an array of wakizashi blades, to dispatch his foe and bring it to its final resting place: his mouth. "This is acceptable."

"There was another important one, they can't interfere with his school work." Lorissa made sure to alternate between herself and Swiftpaw. "The rest was all contests between themselves of various kinds. Also, they were all werewolves."

"Ugh. Can anything in this country function without werewolf nobles getting involved? I take it she isn't allowing any magic specialists to try at all?" Now angry with the paltry serving of long, stringy pasta she'd gotten, Cassandra stabbed it several times with a fork.

"I think it's already dead, Cass."

"Huh?" Cassandra followed Lorissa's gaze to her plate and saw what she'd been doing. "Oh."

Shrugging her shoulders, Lorissa asked, "How long have you two known each other? A while?"

"Since he moved to Conjur. I tried to hustle him at three-card monte, he lost on purpose for aaaages, then he told me 'double or nothing.' Damn him, he won, then told me to keep the money but show him the trick I'd used to switch the cards so fast." The memory was a fond one and, despite herself, she calmed. "Then he taught me real magic. Magic that didn't rely on me being fast with my hands. Turns out we were both good at what the other could teach. He didn't ask, he just handed me an application form to the Academe."

Finding a mound of rice under her fried meat, Lorissa started picking at sticky little lumps of it—unsure what it was. The taste, combined with the sauce that the meat had been coated in, was pleasing to her. "Do you want some of this, Swiftpaw?"

"Normally, non-meat products wouldn't interest me, but rice is always welcome."

"'Rice'?" Lorissa asked as she fed him.

"This is rice. It is a staple from my homeland. Even the cats there eat it." When Swiftpaw lashed out with his eponymous paw, he snagged a few grains of rice on each claw.

"What I don't get," Lorissa said, "is why they start serving this stuff now. I'm not complaining, but it is strange." With a sigh as she chewed on the last of her rice, she looked up at Cassandra. "Got anything after this?"

"Huh? Oh, classes. No. I'm going to practice some things in the casting hall. There's a new lightning spell I'd like to master." Knowing she'd need the energy of it, Cassandra started eating the weird, thin pasta.

"I'll leave you to that, then. Another day, another class on spellcasting ethics." Using a napkin to clean her chopsticks, Lorissa picked up her tray. "I'll see you later, maybe?"

"Yeah."

----------------------------------------

Stanton's classes were done by mid-afternoon. He'd seen Lorissa going from her ethics class to one on physical augmentation, and she'd told him about Cassandra's afternoon of self-improvement. He, meanwhile, was walking around the streets of Conjur trying to find out where the dragon was.

Most of the city guards were acting nicely, helping him by pointing out any oddness, and generally welcoming him—it helped that he was dressed as Super Lupine Girl. Everything seemed normal until he turned into one of the richer parts of the city and saw a few kobolds in weird, black armor carrying things out of a house toward a hole in the ground. "Hey!"

Spotting Stanton, the kobolds all entered a panic. It was already bad enough that they had to be out during daylight hours, but spotting the foe that continued to stymie their glorious god-queen was too much. "She's here!"

About to charge in, Stanton spotted the Evil Pig of Evil himself stride out of the house on his four trotters—looking like he owned it. "Put down the goods and surrender! Guards!"

"Get her, you fools! She's on her own!" The Evil Pig of Evil gestured at Super Lupine Girl with a trotter. "Remember your training!"

Stanton had read about the pests. Normally they were isolated in small groups, but from his research on dragons he'd discovered the tyrants tended to attract and use them as labor. "Training isn't going to help you. Where's the dragon?"

He'd barely gotten the words out then the kobolds started attacking him. One or two enemies he could have dealt with, three or four he could hold his own, but as he watched they were pouring out of the hold in the ground until he lost count of them all.

The kobolds were only armed with clubs, chains, and their own claws, but the fight was slowly turning worse and worse for Stanton. "Angel!"

Flitting around in the air above him, Angel was in a panic. Stanton's reflexes and foresight skill were holding back the kobolds, but after a few swings at him each would step back and allow a fresh kobold to fight. "I'm here! What should I do?"

"Feed me some magic so I can—" As soon as he started working to build a magical blast around him, Stanton felt something smack his power away. Glaring along the length of the slap, he saw the Evil Pig of Evil standing on the raised doorstep across the street looking very happy with itself. "Get help!"

Zooming up into the air, Angel looked around for help. The city street was deserted. No one else was around—but when she focused, she felt a pull toward a new construction. An old house had been torn down and there was all kinds of stone and equipment laying around, the workers apparently already starting to build another.

Rushing into the little office building, she hoped to find something, anything she could use as a weapon. In the dim interior, she looked around. There were tools, which could all be tools in their own right, but the humanoid figure in the darkest corner made her jump. "Can you help my friend? She's being at—" The shape didn't move at all.

Using a pinch of magic, Angel made a little pinprick of light appear and groaned at the iron golem at the end of the room. "Ugh, why can't you just come to life and help him? Surely there has to be something around here?" She paused. There was potential in the air and, combined with her magic, Angel knew what she had to do.

Spitting on her palms, Angel flew to the iron golem and pressed her hands against it. "Oh, force of goodness and purity, listen to your faithful, and frankly gorgeous, follower and grant her a deed of creation. Bring forth a mighty warrior spirit to serve and protect Stanton in hi—her mission to save the world from evil!"

The metal man was too big, too heavy, too simple, and too unfeminine, though, for Angel's liking. She wrought her magic with all the skill of a trained attack puppy. The raw power of creation shaped and reshaped the iron golem to Angel's will.

Angel watched as magic twisted and shrank the iron golem. Panels all over it opened to reveal flashing circuits of electronics spreading throughout the form like worms in rich soil. It's body shrank and gained curves, lost them, and regained them. Soon a fresh coat of paint gave the metal woman the semblance of skin.

The question was the first thing the iron golem's new cogitation network encountered that was external. Magically advanced circuits processed the words into tokens and it derived meaning and intent from them. "What is my task?" it asked, hoping that the being that had created it would also know why it had created it.

"Save Stanton! You have to protect him!" Angel pointed out the door. The iron golem lit up with two major points of light, blinding Angel for a moment. When she could see again, the golem was right in front of her.

Now far shorter than its previous height, the iron golem looked like nothing so much as a shiny metal woman in a black and white frilly outfit. At the front it had a petite apron that likely wouldn't stop much of anything getting on it, and on its shoulders sat a pair of big rocket pods. "What is a Stanton? Locate the target of protection."

"Stanton! He's wearing a cute pink dress and he's fighting a bunch of lizard guys. He needs your help!" Rushing out the door, Angel turned to make sure the golem was following her, only for it to roar into life and fly past with rocket plumes coming from its feet.

Launching itself into the sky, Battlemaid could use her ultrasonic systems to pierce the buildings and see where the fight was. One lone figure was battling thirty-four much smaller creatures. "Error: designation male not found. Request recalibration. Recalibrating. Figure wearing a dress redesignated as male. Assisting."

Stanton was on the ground. Kobolds all around him were beating him with their clubs, kicking him, and he didn't like the way some were getting out some rope as if they intended to tie him up as a hostage. As his worry reached a fever pitch, Stanton heard a roaring sound and huge explosions all around him caused the kobolds (and himself) to panic.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Retreat!" The Evil Pig of Evil called. The robot that was hovering over the fight spraying rockets down on his kobolds was a huge wrench in his plans. "Get into the hole and get ready to fill in behind you!"

Lifting his head, Stanton watched as Battlemaid landed between him and the hole the kobolds had come out of. "Thanks!"

Launching one last rocket, a high-yield one that should collapse the hole on the kobolds effectively, Battlemaid turned around and looked at the being it was her sworn duty to protect. "Engaging maid protocols. Greetings, master." Dipping into a curtsy, Battlemaid dipped her head down. "Can Battlemaid assist you further?"

"'Battlemaid'?" Stanton asked.

"Yes, master. I am Battlemaid, your cleaner, cook, and multi-weapon-system platform of extreme defense." Remaining with her head bowed forward, Battlemaid froze when a fuzzy finger reached out to the underside of her jaw and, carefully, tilted her head up to look Stanton in the eyes. "M-Master?"

It was uncanny. Battlemaid looked like a metal-covered young woman. Her eyes seemed a little large, and the rocket pods on her shoulders were more a case of function over form, but Stanton could see not merely a reproduction of a person, but the light of intelligence and innocence in her eyes. "Are you okay? They didn't hurt you?"

"Stanton! I made a robot out of a bigger robot and I think it— Oh." Angel flew closer as Stanton reached up to the simulated hair of Battlemaid and brushed an errant bang aside. "Did it help?"

"She, Angel, and she helped plenty. We should probably go and get the guards to take a look at this to figure out what was going on." Stanton was also sure he would need to use some healing spells at the very least, if not illusions to hide the blows he'd been given.

Her circuits fizzing with potential, Battlemaid fell back on established protocols so that she wouldn't do anything problematic. She curtseyed and lowered her eyes. "What would master wish of Battlemaid?"

"Well, the first thing I wish for Battlemaid to do would be to accompany Angel home and wait for me. I need to talk to some people and want it to be straightforward. Can you fly again?" He had to resist the urge to tilt her chin up once more. His past had been filled with servants who'd thought they shouldn't raise their eyes to a noble—Valerie-Anne, he knew, had talked to many new workers to ensure they didn't do that. Now he'd have to start over.

Standing tall, a slight smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, Battlemaid gave a nod. "Yes, master!" She then fired a net at Angel, reeling the panicking familiar in before activating her rockets and launching into the sky.

Staring in mute shock, Stanton let out a sigh. "So much for her keeping a low profile. On well, it will give Angel something to complain about." Looking up and down the deserted road, he shrugged and started running toward the nearest guard tower.

After explaining himself four times, Stanton finally dropped Sergeant Gaoler's name and got an escort to the sergeant's office. When finally standing in front of him, Stanton waited for him to read the paperwork handed to him.

"You reported finding over a dozen kobolds raiding a house in Firth street?" The details were plain enough, though it was an unbelievable report all the same.

Stanton was sure that it was only Louise Silverclaw's nobility that stopped him from being thrown out on his butt. The sergeant, he judged, wasn't buying anything. "Yes. They'd dug up from underground and were rifling through someone's house when I found them. I know, you're going to say that kobolds wouldn't be this close to a city and certainly not in those numbers, but you remember that other matter we've spoken of? Kobolds are often the minions of dragons, or so the lore on dragons says."

"The local guard sent a patrol to check over the area." Steven Gaoler sighed. "If it were entirely up to my gut, I'd be filling out paperwork to have an earth mage rip the sewers up looking for them, but protocols are in place for us mere mortals. Maybe you could have your cousin talk to someone higher up about giving us more leeway?"

One lie. Stanton hated that he'd had to use it at all, and now it was coming back at him to make life more complicated. "I'll talk to him. He's still a bit of an ass, but he can be useful sometimes."

Barely managing to stop himself before adding, like all nobles, the sergeant cleared his throat to cover for his almost faux pas. "I trust you won't be leaving town and your cousin can get in contact with you?"

"Yeah. He's good for that, at least. Sorry if this has been a problem for you. I just—"

"Ma'am, I wish more citizens were as capable and dedicated to protecting each other as you were. Let me and your cousin worry about the heat I get from up top and you keep dealing with problems you see. You wouldn't believe how busy it has been already today. There were dozens of small crimes all along the west side of the city." No sooner were the words out than Steven Gaoler put the facts together. "Which could have been a distraction to keep the guards away from the east side, where you found trouble."

Stanton groaned. "That sounds likely. I'll try to arrange some way for you to contact me that isn't—" He was cut off by a knock on the door of the sergeant's office.

When invited in, a young female guard saluted the sergeant. "Report from Firth street, sir. There was a subsidence with blackened burn marks around it. One of the mansions there had been broken into but we'll have to wait for the owner to send an inventory before we can find out what is missing. There were claw marks on the wooden floors."

Looking at Stanton, Steven Gaoler shrugged. "Looks like your cousin can stay out of this. Alright, we'll get a mage or two to get down there and search for any cave systems. If we have a kobold infestation, who knows what they have down there. You can go. I'll be in touch if we find anything."

Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, Stanton escaped the office and left the guardhouse, giving nods to those he recognized—mostly from the last time there'd been a dragon attack. Walking home, he did his usual evasive things to avoid being followed and, as a final measure, powered down and walked into his home dressed as his usual—male presenting—self.

"Master!" Rushing to the door as it opened, Battlemaid curtseyed and dipped her eyes. "Can Battlemaid assist you in any way?"

"Relax. We beat the bad guys. Well, you beat the bad guys." Turning Battlemaid carefully, Stanton gestured to the sitting room. "Let's relax and talk about all this. Oh, where are those shoulder—"

"My unguided rocket pods, master?" Battlemaid was quick to show off for her newest friend. What confounded her the most was proximity to Stanton seemed to make the forward armor of her face overheat. It was confusing in the extreme, given there was nothing there that produced heat in the first place.

The boxy, warhead-filled weapons had folded out of her back, and left Stanton feeling a little more apprehensive about having her anywhere near his home. "Right, those. Rocket pods?" When she nodded, he continued. "They're very nice, and I was so thankful you have them, but we don't need them right now."

Folding her rocket pods back into her chassis, Battlemaid felt giddy at the praise and followed Stanton into the room he led her to. "Does master require any—" She froze. A single, delicate finger was pressed to her lips. The finger was a manipulating extremity of her master, so she went silent.

"We need some ground rules, Battlemaid." Even the name was subservient, Stanton realized, yet at the same time implied a lot about her combat potential. "It would please me greatly if you sat with me so we could discuss some matters." Once he was sitting, and Battlemaid was squirming a little beside him, Stanton had an odd thought. "How did you know it was me just now?"

"Master's full structural scans have been stored and saved in Battlemaid's main memory. No matter what camouflage master wears, Battlemaid will always identify her." At a wince on Stanton's face, Battlemaid concluded that something she'd said had been in error. "S-Sorry! I—" Her speech processors were malfunctioning, she realized, and even while she fought to regain control of them, she wondered if they were the source of the erroneous heat.

"It's okay. I understand that it would seem confusing. When I'm dressed like this, call me he or him. If I'm out as Super Lupine Girl, that's the fuzzy version of me, call me she or her. If it's just you and me, with Angel, Lorissa, or Swiftpaw too, please call me he or him." Reaching his arm around Battlemaid's shoulders, Stanton gave her a little reassuring squeeze. "And, if you're ever confused about it, ask me, but only do so if no one else can overhear."

The way Stanton had stated it, Battlemaid could assemble things into a simple set of instructions. "I— Battlemaid can manage." She decided it was definitely her speech system causing the overheat. The moment her speech processor had stumbled, her thermal indicators had registered a rise.

"Great." Pulling his arm back, Stanton felt his hand brush Battlemaid's for a moment and he paused. "Your skin feels normal. I would have thought your body would be cold."

"In standby mode, Battlemaid's temperature can be reduced to almost ambient. The magi-fusion core within Battlemaid produces more heat based on energy output." It was perfectly logical, after all. The more work done, the more energy needed, and the more waste heat produced. "Battlemaid's rocket pods also require significant energy to remanufacture metal and chemicals into new rockets. This, too, creates more heat."

"It's alright. What we need to do, though, is figure out a way for you to be less conspicuous when leaving and returning to my tower. Do you have any way to hide your appearance?" Stanton asked.

Scanning her systems, Battlemaid let out a little squeak of excitement. "Engaging stealth mode."

The light around Battlemaid seemed to bend and warp, wrapping her like a blanket and leaving the barest hint of an indication she was still sitting there beside Stanton. He reached out to where he hoped her shoulder was and, when he made contact, her shoulder shimmered a little. "Battlemaid, you are truly an amazing woman."

Multiple system overheat alarms sounded, but Battlemaid probed them and each concluded that it could continue safe operations so long as combat was not required. Shunting the issues of thermal control aside, she realized her facial controller had made her smile and, when she tried to reset it, got an error claiming she didn't have a sufficient privilege level. "Th-Thank you." She realized she'd missed something and digitally kicked her vocal controller. "Master! Thank you, master."

There was a lot to take in with Battlemaid, but Stanton had decided it would all be worth the effort given how the first thing she'd ever done was to protect him. So for her, he was willing to accept that a golem could become fully sapient, far more deadly, and also cute. One of the things that was helping his ability to accept her was her blushing smiles. "Relax. We can figure all this out and work through things."

----------------------------------------

The moment Cassandra's bedroom door was closed she shucked off her robes, stripped out of her clothes, and let go of the tight mental fist she held around herself. Scales unfurling, wings unfolding, talons unsheathing— It was a form of relaxation now. Becoming her dragon-self was more who she was, now, than human.

She'd commanded her minions to make her clothing that fit, and after several sacks and a few other false starts, she finally had some robes. Pulling one such on, she liked the way the fine orange fabric blended well with her electric blue scales.

"You have returned to us! Do you like the new clothes? We have more now!"

"Cleverclaws, you have done well. Where did you find this— Is this silk?" Cassandra didn't care where they got it from, only that it was now hers. Her handmaiden's rushed explanation went ignored as Cassandra approached the entrance to her lair. "How is the building going?"

Honored to be a dragoness' handmaiden, Cleverclaws basked in the moment even as she replied. "We had to put some of the building on hold while acquiring some things, goddess, but work has resumed. The Evil Pig of Evil assisted us in locating and obtaining some new equipment."

Curiosity piqued Cassandra's interest. She wouldn't follow that up with a direct question, though. Her minions saw her as an all-knowing god—she didn't want to dissuade them of that opinion. "Good. And you have put it to good use?"

"Of course! I will summon the engineers to explain it." She had no clue how it was being used since Cleverclaws had spent all the time since the raid making new outfits for Cassandra. "There was a new development, though. Super Lupine Girl tried to stop us."

"'Tried'?"

"With the Evil Pig of Evil helping to stop her magic, we overwhelmed her with attacks. We were about to knock her out and capture her when a flying, metal angel made everything explode. We barely made it back into the tunnels and sealed them before anyone got seriously killed."

It seemed like every day her minions had a new confusing thing for her to piece together. "How many were not seriously killed?"

"Only five. They were put back together and brought back to life without any problem. Kobolds are very simply built." The way she put it betrayed Cleverclaws' own prejudice against more chaotically designed creatures. "Creatures should be more like clothing. Made for purpose with a firm understanding of how they go together, and no extravagant extras."

It was the first time Cassandra had heard her kobold companion have such conviction about a weird topic. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear more or cut out Cleverclaws' tongue. "So, what did we get?"

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.