Ravage looked up at me and took a step back from Jada. Her head dropped down and her whole body started folding in on itself as cat limbs disappeared and small human-shaped limbs emerged. The cat’s body unfolded and folded again like origami. It seemed to be going slowly and deliberately, which made me think of nearly every robot show I’d ever seen that gave you in-depth transformation scenes at first then later skipped over them. Now I was wondering if they went slow at first to test things out, or if it was a skill thing where you got faster as you gained experience. Ravage the cat was gone and in her place stood a small, humanoid Automata no more than a foot and a half tall. Her face was featureless and white like Elita’s, but she had long fibrous black hair that flowed down her back and little kitty ears on top of her head. The cat tail was still present and flicked from side to side. If you knew to look for it you could see the shape of the cat head in her chest and the cat ears as little shoulder pauldrons. I was pretty happy with the results.
“What? W- What’s this??” Jada screamed, looking back and forth between me and Ravage.
“This is Ravage. Clearly, she’s a transformer.” I tried to wink, but I thought one of my eye lights just flickered. I doubted Jada noticed it. It also occurred to me that no one on this world was going to get my vast stockpile of jokes, and it made me sad.
Ravage tried to speak, but all that came out was that modem sound.
“Don’t worry, Ravage, we’ll get that fixed.”
More modem sounds.
“Well yeah, that’s true.”
“You can understand that?” Jada asked. She looked skeptical.
“I can? Huh, yeah I guess I can. She’s just saying that as a cat soul, she doesn’t have any experience with human speech, so that could be causing problems. I’ll have to look into it.”
At that moment Shea came back down from her apartment with a sandwich on a plate. She froze the instant she saw Ravage and just stared with her mouth open. As if in slow motion, the plate and sandwich hit the floor.
“Hey, Shea. Um, this is--” I started to explain.
“SHE’S. SO. CUTE!!” Shea screamed, covering her mouth with her hands.
Ravage looked at her and cocked her head a bit, then did a curtsy holding the edges of her little armor plate skirt. Shea screamed and grabbed Ravage, hugging her and rubbing her face against Ravage’s. Ravage screamed in modem and tried pulling away but couldn’t break free from Shea’s grip. Jada and I just laughed; I’m sorry, Ravage, I fear this is your life now.
Elita rushed in with her hand on her sword. “What happened? I heard screaming.”
“Ah. That'd be Shea. And Ravage.”
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Ravage had mostly given up at this point and hung limply in Shea’s arms. It was so easy to see that despite the new body, she was still very much a cat. Elita looked at Ravage and cocked her head to one side then the other. It was hard to know what she was thinking. Slowly she reached out a hand to Ravage. For just a moment Shea relaxed her grip and looked at Elita. In that instant, Ravage broke Shea’s grip, batted her on the nose, and lunged for Elita. She transformed mid-jump and sat on Elita’s shoulder, looking back at Shea with a glare. I don’t know if anyone else could see it, but I got the express impression of blushing from Elita. It was cute; she was just frozen with this robot kitty on her shoulder.
“What? What happened? And why am I thinking of your old cat Tibbins?” Shea asked Jada.
Jada just laughed all the harder and slapped Shea on the back. Shea looked dejected until she remembered her sandwich was now on the floor. Then she looked panicked and forlorn. Poor thing, the loss of a sandwich was a heavy thing. Jada helped her clean up and walked her back upstairs to get some new food.
“Say Prime... what... what do I do?” asked Elita, still frozen with her arm outstretched and a now curled up and possibly sleeping Ravage on her shoulder.
I chuckled at the sight of this big tough warrior frozen by a little kitty and gently pulled Ravage off of her and set her on the workbench. Ravage gave me a modem chirp of dissatisfaction. While waiting for the two organics to come back, I thought I might as well fix Ravage’s voice issues.
By the time Shea and Jada got back, Ravage was making mostly normal-sounding cat sounds. Her voice had that metallic echo that mine and Elita’s had, which reminded me of an Ultra Magnus robot voice changer toy I had as a kid. She could speak English now—wait, am I speaking English? Well, whatever language we’re all speaking, Ravage could too, but she had a bit of a vocal quirk and kept sounding like that silly “meowing cat speak” that characters do in cartoons. I guess it was actually a true thing. Who knew?
“So Mr. Automata, do you think you could make more like Ravage here? I’m sure they’d sell pretty well,” Jada asked.
I thought about that for a while; I certainly could make more if I had enough materials, but I wasn’t interested in crafting more slaves for people. I could make puppets though that would function like magic tools. It was worth a shot at any rate.
“I’m not going to make more Automata slaves, but I have an idea I’d like to try out. Jada, may I borrow your shop and tools? If this works as well as I think, it could be pretty popular.”
“If it’s half as good as Ravage here, then I’ll rent the shop and the workshop to you plus 60% of the profits.”
I stared at her with my expressionless face.
“Okay, 50%.”
Stare.
“40? 30?”
Staaaaaaaaarrrrrre.
“Come on now Prime, be reasonable! 20??”
“How about 50% but no rental fees, you’ll still be the owner of the shop and I’ll be your ‘assistant,’” I suggested.
She mulled it over for a bit, and I could see her doing calculations in her head and muttering figures to herself. At last, she nodded and thrust out her hand. I took it, and she pumped my arm up and down vigorously. “It’s a deal!”
“We’ll be neighbors!” Shea chimed in.
“What about me, Prime? I’m pretty useless in this shop and I’m honestly afraid to try and go out on my own,” mentioned Elita.
Ravage hopped back up to Elita’s shoulder and transformed into her humanoid form and took a seat, resting her head against Elita’s.
“No worries, Elita. I won’t let anyone enslave you again.”
“I appreciate that, but I need a purpose too. I can’t just stay in this shop all the time and do nothing.”
“That’s fair. Hmm, I’m not really sure how to handle it.” I was a bit stuck. What sort of job would I give a warrior class Automata in a tool shop?
“You’re going to need regular material orders, right Prime?” Shea asked. I nodded. “Then how about Elita registers as an Adventurer with me and you can hire us on retainer for material collection?”
“That could work,” I thought aloud, “but wouldn’t that mean she would need to be your property to register? Plus she’d only be registered as your tool, not as an adventurer herself.”
“Rejected,” Elita said flatly. “You seem nice enough, Shea, but I don’t want you for a master. Not even for pretend.”
I looked around the shop; there had to be an answer here. I crossed my arms in thought and remembered that I was wearing dwarf armor. I looked over at Elita and cocked my head to one side, thinking about the armor she was also wearing.
“What is it, Prime? You look like you’ve thought of something,” Elita said, cocking her own head to the side. Ravage mirrored her, but who knows what the cat was thinking.
“I think I’ve got an idea, but I don’t know if you’re going to like it... Meat bag.”