After my fight with Lena, the most damage I had was some scuffs on my back and a scrape across my shoulder. Given that Prince Milliardo wanted me to be present for the Emperor’s funeral parade in an “impressive armor” I could ignore the scratches.
Lena, on the other hand, would need some work to fix some small dents to her face, a multitude of scratches all over, and a major dent to her right torso where I’d kicked her. She’d also cracked a couple of her mana crystals trying to force too much power through them.
On the surface, I guessed that I’d lost the fight but I didn’t feel like I’d lost. More like... I’d let her win, which wasn’t at all the same thing. Or at least, that’s what I told myself for my pride’s sake. It didn’t help that Lena was quite smug about it after I’d topped her off and she rebooted. I wanted to remind her that it took every drop of her mana and playing on my sympathies to get the “win” but Alfred reminded me that such a move would be petty. I did still feel bad about the cold shoulder I’d given her before and she had recovered her good mood so best to let it go. See Elita? I’m learning.
We got Lena fixed up and back to as pristine a finish as we could in the shop. She wasn’t as highly polished as befitting a Princess, though. Milliardo did say that he wanted us to shine like a “mirror back”, whatever that was. The only option I could think of was to head back to the palace and make use of the oil baths; though I admit that my memory of it would be forever tarnished by an assassin implanting a cursed item inside of me when my armor plating was removed.
The Automata maid, Priss, had attached herself to Lena; fully intent on serving the Princess as her handmaiden. I suspected that her reasons for doing so were a combination of guilt for playing a role in the murder of the Emperor and having nowhere else to go. Still, if she was to be the attendant of a weaponized Princess, then I should give some thought to upgrades for her so that she could keep up.
Ram and Rom also tagged along, interested in the baths, while IronHide was told that he wasn’t allowed to bathe with a bunch of women. Since my Convoy armor would be getting the mirror finish and not me, I was able to hand it off to the girls and high tail it out of there. I had zero interest in falling prey to any hot tub shenanigans.
As I left the suite, I passed Captain Sunni and a pair of soldiers that I didn’t recognize. The troops stood at the door, looking nervous while Sunni sat on a small couch, thinking deeply about something.
“Where are you going?” she asked me, suddenly taking notice.
“Just for a walk around the palace. I’ll have no part of a group of giggling girls in a bathtub, thank you very much,” I said, matter-of-factly.
One of the soldiers, a young looking satyr, leaned slightly to try to look into the oil room then snapped back when he caught me staring at him. He looked more intellectually curious rather than perverse. Maybe the idea of calling a group of Automata “giggling girls” didn’t match up with what he was expecting. The other soldier kept glaring at me suspiciously.
“Take Rozome with you, you should be escorted while on the grounds,” Sunni ordered.
The curious one clicked his tongue but opened the door and waited for me to follow. I glanced back at Sunni, who gave me a little wave, and headed out. Rozome wasn’t a talkative fellow. Any attempts at small talk on my part were met with basic, one word replies.
I still didn’t have a handle on the layout of the palace so I mostly just wandered around, occasionally having the satyr tell me I couldn’t go a particular direction. Eventually we found ourselves in a wing that was mostly devoted to dorm rooms for soldiers assigned to inside the palace.
The dorms were technically a separate, but connected, building within the palace. A decent sized courtyard divided the exit from one and the entrance to the other. I didn’t have any particular interest in exploring the living quarters of the soldiers here, but Rozome was of the opinion that I had no business here and should leave.
The area hosted some small trees, a little vegetable garden, a small sparing area, and some tables with chairs. This was probably a popular spot for soldiers coming off duty to unwind with their comrades when they didn’t have the time to actually leave the premises.
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Rozome was getting agitated and kept urging me to head back to the suite. I couldn’t figure out what his rush was but I wasn’t in any hurry and wasn’t about to move at his pace. At a table under the trees I spotted a familiar goblin chatting with someone in a clunky-looking wheelchair.
I didn’t want to interrupt but around the back of the wheelchair I could see a fluffy white robed elbow and a scaly green hand. Nearly hidden by a wheel, the bandaged tip of a thick green tail twitched slightly.
Cautiously, I approached, stepping around to the side of the wheelchair, ignoring the urgent complaints of Rozome. Lieutenant Toadwart spotted me and gave me a sly, shark-toothed smile. The person in the wheelchair stopped speaking and turned in my direction.
“Marshoo!” I yelled, running the last few steps over to her and kneeling down next to her chair. “Oh Marshoo you’re--”
The words died in my vocal processors as I saw her. Bright pink skin crept out from the top of her robe and across her face and one of her eyes was clouded over. The arm I had seen was fine, but the other was bandaged and missing some fingers. Both of her legs were gone.
A high speed vibration like a controller rumble started in my chest and spread to my shoulders and down my arms. In my head, I heard Sentinel call out “Whoa there, let’s get that locked back down.” Within a few seconds that felt like hours, whatever it was was “locked down” and my vibrating stopped.
“Master Prime? I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Marshoo said, kindly.
“Marshoo... I am... I am so sorry...” I whined. “Can I do anything to help you? Anything at all?”
“No offense Sir Prime, but I don’t think I’m ready for your sort of help,” she joked.
“Of course not, sorry...”
“That’s enough of that,” she said, rapping her knuckles on the top of my head.
She immediately regretted it though and yelped in pain. She blew on her knuckles and I couldn’t help but chuckle at how often people seemed to forget I was made out of metal; or tried hitting me on the head for that matter.
“Are you trying to make me depressed by acting like that? Sheesh. So I heard that you built some super big Automata, even bigger than IronHide to fight that dragon. That’s pretty amazing, I would have loved to see it. Oh, how is IronHide anyway? From what I recall, he got hurt pretty badly too.”
“You are a gem Marshoo. Your brilliance is too spectacular for these old optics of mine.”
“Stop being weird,” she said flatly.
“Not gonna happen,” I admitted. “IronHide was completely destroyed in that battle. His body was fused into a solid chunk of scrap metal. I built a second body for him, which also got damaged fighting that dragon. We only just finished the repairs yesterday. His sis-- I mean, my shop assistants built him a smaller 3rd body. It’s shorter than I am, only comes up to here,” I explained, holding a hand out, around my armpit height.
“That big guy in that little of a body? That’s crazy! You Automata are pretty lucky in that regard. Not only can you repair broken parts, you can build whole new bodies when the old one gets busted up!” she said, with a touch of biting sarcasm leaking into her words.
“He feels absolutely horrible for what happened to you... I feel absolutely horrible about what happened to you...”
This time she just patted the top of my head.
“Yeah... it sucks. This really isn’t how I imagined my life would go. I’m completely useless to the Royal Guard now. Well... pretty much useless to anyone...” she said sadly, turning away from me.
“Maybe it’s time ya got back to whatever yer doin’” Toadwart suggested to me. “I’ll walk ya back.”
“Right, sorry. Um, no worries I’ve got ol’ Rozome here as an escort.”
I turned to gesture to the satyr but he’d run off somewhere. Maybe he figured he could dump me off on the Lieutenant.
“Huh, I guess I’ll have to take you up on that,” I admitted.
“Hey Prime,” Marshoo said, not quite looking my way. “If IronHide feels that bad, tell him to come by sometime. I wouldn’t mind having some company...”
“I’ll do exactly that. We’re about to be sent on assignment but I’ll make sure he comes to see you before then. You can make fun of his new fun sized body.”
She nodded and put her hands in her lap. Toadwart had me wait while he took Marshoo back into the dorm. I couldn’t help but wonder how she would be taken care of. Would the Empire retire her in the country somewhere or send her back to her hometown? Would they continue to care for her here in the dorms? If they turned her out on the street once she was as healed as she would get, I’d be pretty pissed off.
Marshoo had said that she wasn’t ready for my kind of help, but wouldn’t things be better if she were an Automata? Maybe that was just my biased love of robots speaking though. It wouldn’t hurt to look into prosthetic research in this world. They had tons of different magic tools for things, maybe they had magic cyborgs too.