Alfred and Sentinel volunteered to dig through the [Defender] code, line by line, to see if there was an exploit that [Dominator] was able to use to bypass the safeguards I’d put into place. My subRoutine, MainFrame, being missing was also very troublesome. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where it had gone. Had it been deleted somehow by the psychic attack that I’d been hit with from the Emperor’s advisor, Quintess? I could use its help as it spent more time in the code base than any of the others or even myself.

I finished modeling up the [Cloak] illusion and imported it, along with the spell, into a [Format]ed illusion stone. I was quite confident that it would fool zero people into thinking I was a dwarf; but I was sure that no one would confuse me for a fugitive robot on the lam.

I installed the stone, walked over to a slab of polished steel, and mumbled a little prayer to the Cybertronian god, Primus. I mimicked the motion of opening the Matrix of Leadership while uttering the words “Light our darkest hour.”

I triggered the [Cloak] function and the ripply distortion of the illusion cascaded down my body, starting at the top of my head. What looked back at me in the reflection was clearly an abomination of some sort. My body was covered in skin the color of cherry wood with little patches of hair here and there, though the illusion was unable to prevent my panel lighting from shining through so I looked like some sort of mystic with glowing tattoos.

I turned over my hands, studying them. The fingers were thick and the knuckles were gnarled with little tufts of hair on each one. Of course they still retained my two-thumb-two-finger configuration, adding another layer to the rich tapestry of creep that I was weaving.

My head... I had a buzz cut with a little bald spot, which would normally be fine. I lacked any proper ears though. I just had ear holes... Little, weird, holes on the sides of my head where ears might have been had I not lost them in a horrible accident... My eyes were freakishly huge as compared to the size of my face. Granted my actual optics were quite large on my face, but when the illusion mapped over it... I also had no nose, just little slits for nostrils and a thin slit of a mouth that didn’t move since I had no mouth to actually open.

I was reminded of various nightmare fuel images that I’d seen in my past life, where an artist would take a popular cartoon character and then replicate it in photo editing software with real human skin and textures. No matter how cool or cute a given character looked originally, when run through that sort of process, they would haunt your dreams.

I quickly shut off the illusion before Lena got back. She may have taken it in stride, she may not have. Either way, I didn’t feel like dealing with it. Trying to look like something close to a human was probably my first mistake. I lacked any of the protruding bits or facial markers that the “stock” [Cloak] program relied on to map the illusion over a body. In a sense, it was basically the same as creating a new skin for a 3D avatar and if the 3D mesh was different then the skin got distorted and weird.

I had a 3D mesh of myself already, that I’d created for mapping armor placement for the [HotSwap] function, so I imported it into my illusion editor software. Once I threw out the idea of trying to look like some sort of human variant, all sorts of ideas came to mind for illusion skins. I was still limited in terms of my body shape, but found that going for a race that was more reptilian or aquatic seemed to work way better.

By the time that Lena returned, I had four different illusion skins finished up and tested. One was covered in copper and ivory scales, using a scale pattern that was similar to Najii’s snake parts. Another was all black scales with large green eyes and white tipped claws; I’d been going for something like a toothless dragon I’d seen in a movie once. The third was slick and dark gray like a dolphin with light gray undersides and solid black eyes with a little blowhole on top. The last one had tan hands and feet with stubby black claws and a body covered in short, coarse, brown fur. The head still lacked any ears or nose, but was designed more like a chimp or some sort of monkey. I guess I should say, some sort of ape rather than monkey, since I lacked a tail.

Lena returned, looking slightly annoyed.

“Would you believe those merchants still assumed I was a princess, or at least a duchess? They just didn’t know which one,” she complained.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“You don’t say? I’m sure every girl in the Empire has hunting clothes such as those, right?”

She looked down at her clothes and frowned.

“They don’t?”

I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. I hoped for “not”.

“So what did you find?” I asked, moving along the conversation.

“Ah, right. You see, I tried going into all of my favorite shops and could barely find anything that would be suitable for a dwarven companion to myself. I did find some really cute boots and a new shawl though. Why are you making that face? Stop it. Look, I know you can’t actually make a face but somehow it seems like you’re making a judgy face and I don’t like it.”

“Huh... that’s pretty amazing that you got that without me having to say a word or emote in any way.”

“Wait, you really were judging me? You’re doing it again... how are you doing that? All you have are those adorable giant puppy eyes, how can you look long-suffering? I’m soooorrry Prime! Please stop looking at me like that! Okay! I get it! The boots and the shawl weren’t practical and they wouldn’t help disguise you! Please... please stop... my heart can’t take any more...”

I relented and stopped projecting annoyance. I had no clue how she was picking up on any of it though.

“I did get some other things too!” she said, relieved. “I did get a nice traveler’s cloak-- one in my size and one for you. What else, oh yes, this leather breastplate... I couldn’t decide if you would look better with the rose design or the cute rhinoxen along the edge so I got both. I also purchased a belt for each of us with some pouches and some cheap swords.”

I looked at one of the “cheap swords” to find a price tag on it of 86 gold.

“Hey Lena, how many loaves of bread can you get for one gold?”

“Bread? What do you need bread for? We can pick some up later, don’t worry about it right now. I saw a fake beard in the magic shop and thought about getting it for you but it looked rather unpleasant. I suspect it may have been a collection of Woolrats strung together in reality. I settled on this lovely red scarf with some gold thread trim. See how the edging looks like a series of people running? Each image is a little bit different from the last. The merchant told me that when the wind blows through the scarf you can see the people running. Isn’t that charming?”

“Oh yes. Charming.”

“Here, try this helmet on, it matches the rose design on the breastplate.”

She set the helmet onto my head and burst into a fit of giggles when she realized there was no way it could possibly fit over my noggin. I removed the helmet that looked like a thimble sitting on a tennis ball, and put it onto her head instead. It fit properly.

“Okay, we don’t have time for me to craft a set of full plate armor or anything or go shopping for mix and match sets to fit me. You wear the rose armor, I’ll put on the rhinox one. With the cloaks and sword belts plus our illusion skins, I think we should be fine.”

Lena adjusted her illusion to give herself a royal blue skin tone and bright red hair. I had yet to see anyone with that look but she assured me that Azurious Mystic demons were fairly common. I donned the armor, sword belt, cloak, and scarf, and cast the dragon scale illusion on myself. Lena squee’d and hugged my head.

“Oh you look so cute! You need a tail! A nice fat one would be perfect!”

Hmm... a tail would help sell the illusion, though for now, just having the cloak would have to do.

“Good idea, I’ll have Rom work on designing one and I’ll leave her and Ram here to build it.”

“I would have thought you’d use Ratchet instead, since you were so worried about conserving your mana.”

“Ratchet uses three times the mana to connect with than Ram or Rom do. I’d consider just one of them, but I’m worried that one would be lonely without the other.”

Lena gave me an odd look.

“Are you dead certain that they are still you controlling them as puppets?”

“Nope. And to be honest, I’m trying not to think about it too much for fear that I might not like the answer I arrive at.”

“Fair, I suppose.”

I left Ram, Rom, and IronHide’s body behind and we headed out of the AutoForge and into the early evening.

“Look how clear the sky is Prime, how brilliant the stars,” Lena said, looking upwards.

I followed her gaze to see brilliant purple and magenta bursts of color swirling around in the night sky, pin-pricked by dazzling gems of light.

“It’ll snow soon. How lovely would it be to have a white blood night? Just like in that old song? My father loved all the festivals leading up to blood night...”

I took her hand and looked up at her. She looked down and shivered a bit before giving me a sad smile.

“We’ll find justice for your father,” I consoled. “In the meantime, you can tell me all about this blood night, its festivals, and its songs. It’s all new to me.”

She knelt down next to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, squeezing me tightly and shook for a while as I patted her back.