“You’re right. This is a stupid plan,” Elita told me after I went over the details, “but you’re telling me about it before hand, so that’s an improvement. Let’s do it.”

I placed Sparky back into the satchel, the little guy was exhausted so I put a handful of nuts in there with him. Elita took the satchel from me and I converted into bike mode. She got on, and we pulled around to the far side of the rooftop to give me as much runway space as possible heading towards the gate.

I clamped the brakes on my front wheels and poured power into the rear ones, churning up the roof tiles. The breaks released and we tore off across the rooftop building up as much speed as I could in the short space. Another guard poked their head up, shrieked, and immediately ducked back down again.

I [Blink]ed twice forward but we were too far away from the wall to be able to clear it and were dropping too quickly. Once we’d cleared the crowd of guards and Adventurers below, I [Blink]ed us to the ground. It was a little rough but nowhere near as bad as falling that full distance. Vicky had been right, there was at least a squad’s worth from the Knight Watch blocking the gate and the portcullis was lowered.

“Ready to switch?” I yelled.

“Go, Go!” Elita yelled back.

I partially transformed my arms enough to pop us up a couple of feet and ‘hot-swapped’ Cyclone for IronHide. It was a lot harder having to keep track of Elita as well and I had to partially shift IronHide in order to keep her in the cabin before resuming in truck mode.

The guards panicked and scrambled to get out of the way, but the gate was still closed. Thanks to the mana crystal from the Iron Turtle, IronHide had the [Iron Growth] skill. What this did was basically grow iron plating for the turtle’s shell, but for IronHide, it meant that I could significantly increase his armor as needed.

I built up targeted armor plates until I had a “Cow Catcher” type of wedge mounted to the front. It got really heavy, really fast, but I continued to pour on as much speed as I could.

We hit the iron bars of the portcullis hard as sparks flew and the gate was folded around my iron wedge. The folded door pulled neatly from its guide track in the stone and flew off. I don’t think this would have worked if we were pushing from the outside but these weren’t designed to be rammed from within.

I felt a couple of arrows hit me but they deflected off harmlessly. Some riders on horseback as well as a couple of centaurs chased after us; I was hoping to lose them with my speed but all the extra armor I’d grown was really weighing me down and I didn’t have a way to shed it.

“Elita, I’m running low on water in my boiler tank so I won’t be able to keep moving soon— this excess armor is really slowing me down too. Switching back to Cyclone, get ready!”

I ‘hot-swapped’ back to Cyclone and nearly lost Elita off the back and started to slow down so she could get situated.

“Don’t slow down! Keep going!” she yelled.

I did as bidden and picked up the pace. In no time, I’d left the cavalry in the dust. My electric motors didn’t make much noise and I wasn’t using my lights since Automata eyes can see just fine in the dark; so their ability to pursue at speed dropped to nothing in the inky blackness of the forest at night. I almost felt bad for them.

I allowed myself to slow down so that I wouldn’t drain my mana as quickly. By morning our pursuers would easily be able to track us thanks to my unique wheels on these undeveloped roads, but they seemed to know where AutomaTown was anyway thanks to Shea. I hoped that Shea didn’t betray us out of malice and was just a kid getting coerced into giving up information when confronted by positions of authority.

We were several miles out from Urd now and just passing near the first village on the route. I think this one was called Thompson’s Fork. Elita leaned down and patted the side of my fuselage, was I a horse?

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“Hold on, back up to that intersection. Did you see that on the ground?” She asked in hushed tones.

I slowed to a stop and doubled back.

“I don’t see anything”, I said scanning the ground. I had the infrared wavelength overlaid on top of the visible light spectrum to navigate the roads in the dark but nothing looked unusual.

“You don’t see it on the ground, there?”

Maybe she was using a different frequency. I broadened my light filter to include ultraviolet as well and near the road I could see a faint trail of a glowing liquid leading away from the cut off to the village. I had Elita get off and transformed to bot mode before getting out of Cyclone.

I touched the liquid and used [Inspect] on it.

Mana enriched plasma

Rarity: Common

Quality: High

Source: Unknown

Notes: Blood substitute used in the production of Automata. Referred to by Prime as “Energon”.

“This is energon”, I said looking up at Elita, “an Automata was bleeding out here.”

We looked for more and found a trail leading up the road a bit, a large pool at the side of the road, then cutting into the woods with what looked like something being dragged or crawling. Elita said that she could see signs of a struggle with three people fighting and chasing after a single person, one of which had a thick tail that dragged on the ground. I didn’t see anything of the sort.

We searched through the forest undergrowth until we spotted a naked Automata foot sticking out from under a bush. I pushed the bush away and saw a heavily damaged Automata body. Its clothes had been ripped off along with an arm and its head. It appeared to be a male type, servant class body.

I looked around but I couldn’t find the missing body parts; I could only assume that his attackers took them as trophies or threw them elsewhere. There was still some mana flowing through his system, but it was weak and hemorrhaging from the wounds, but he was still alive. I closed the open mana cords to stop the energon from leaking out but the pressure was low.

“His energon levels are low, I’m going to try a transfusion”, I told Elita, prepping the tools I would need.

“No, use mine. With your mana levels, it might be too rich for him.”

I nodded and opened up his chest panel, exposing the spark chamber and soul core housing. The housing was fully intact and hadn’t taken any damage so his soul core should be fine; he was just floating in the dark without the brain sensor module inputs coming from the head.

Elita had stripped off her armor and tunic, and opened up her own chest panel. I hooked up the syphon pump to both of them and her energon started flowing into our damaged friend.

“Let me know if you start feeling weak. Okay, while that’s running, let’s see who our friend is”, I said bringing up [Inspect].

Name: Shiro

Race: Automata

Rank: N/A

Promotion: N/A

Magic: N/A

Health: 8/175

Mana: 32/100

Status: N/A

Level: N/A

Exp: N/A

Strength: 8 | Agility: 12 | Constitution: 10

Class: Butler, merchant

Registered Owner: N/A

Skills: Clean 2, Organization 4, cooking 8, Negotiation

Titles: Employee of the Month

“Oh... Oh no... This is Shiro”, I said horrified.