Of all the places Tony thought following Fizzy would take him, power-washing dried toxic sludge off of a pair of mithril butt cheeks wasn’t among them. Yet here he was, rubber hose in hand, doing just that. On the upside, it turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than he initially anticipated. There was something strangely satisfying about the way a high-pressure stream of hot water instantly obliterated the layer of black sludge to reveal the shiny posterior underneath. He could do without the ungodly stench of said pollutants, but he liked to focus on the positive aspects of his predicaments. If not, he would have gone as mad as a two-sided spoon a dozen times over.
That was easier said than done, even in this relatively safe situation. All the water sprays around him left him drenched and freezing in the cold air of the early winter morning. The weird stares he got also weren’t exactly pleasant, but he somewhat understood those. He imagined that the sight of a guy in a soggy cloak power-washing a naked, anatomically correct golem in public wasn’t a common thing. The same went double for applying the toxic metal polish by hand, but at least he had the END to resist any nasty side effects. All in all, it had taken him over an hour of awkward fumbling with a slew of new tools and substances before Fizzy’s frame achieved a level of shine that her ego found acceptable.
“Hm. Worse than I wanted, better than I expected,” the golem commented while looking herself over. “Not bad, Tony.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he grumbled.
“Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
“Very sure.”
“Because you handled that Jetmaster Hyper-Washer 2000 a lot better than I did when I first tried it.”
“I just have a way with dese things, y’know?” he tried to play it down.
“No, there’s more to it,” the golem pressed. “You operated all those gauges and switches as if you knew what each of them did and meant, and I know for a fact those labels don’t explain crap. So tell me how you did it. Now.”
The collar around Tony’s neck buzzed for a moment, and he was issued a mental directive to comply immediately.
“Ugh. It’s a Skill,” he stated the obvious. “It helps me figure out how to use de voodoo in de stuff.”
He was referring to Magic Item Savant, the final ability gained from his Goblin Job. Its main function was that, as he poorly stated, it allowed the greenskin to identify an object’s magical properties and how to best utilize them. Any adventurer could easily obtain this knowledge simply by visiting a Scribe or maybe a Mentor, but a monster like Tony didn’t have access to those services. As such, Magic Item Savant had been a huge help in making the most out of whatever enchanted gear he managed to pilfer. The Skill also had some secondary effects, such as lowering the MP cost of active enchantments and slightly amplifying the power of passive ones. He didn’t regret picking this up when he did, but he understood how someone like Fizzy might consider it a waste of a mid-Level Skill slot.
“Huh. Interesting,” the golem remarked thoughtfully. “I wonder how accurate it is.”
She went over to where she’d left her equipment, rummaged in her ammo pouch, and pulled out one of the custom-made munitions for her modified crossbow.
“Here, what can you tell me about this?”
She tossed it over to Tony, who easily snatched it out of the air.
“Ah? Hm,” he flicked it between his fingers. “Dis thing makes de big boom, with a lot of fire.”
“An incendiary round, correct. And this?” she gave him another one.
“Dis one makes a big flash.”
“What about this?”
“Lightnin’ in a can.”
“Close enough. This one?”
“Dis… I don’t know. No voodoo in it.”
Indeed, it was just a lump of iron and lead for remotely bludgeoning things with.
“Alright. Last one.”
She reached for the Bag of Holding she always carried with her. While certainly a magic item, it was only a container for the thing she wanted to test Tony on. Inside this satchel’s enhanced space were the remains of Fizzy’s left arm, including the cursed shield-gauntlet that originally liberated her from her flesh. It was her most precious possession, hence why she never let it out of her sight and obsessively checked to see if it was still hanging from her hip every few minutes. Normally she’d keep the Artifact in question hidden, but her curiosity was overpowering. So, with only minimal hesitation, she pulled the Left Hand of the Forsaken Sentinel from its enchanted container and held it out for Tony.
“Woooah!” he pulled back. “Dat’s some bad voodoo you got dere, boss.”
“I’m aware. I want you to tell me everything you can about it.”
She’d had the item appraised time and time again by dozens of Scribes. All of them gave her identical results, but she had this feeling there was more to it than those meatbags could detect. Something hidden, beneath the extremely durable surface. If Tony’s Skill worked with things he’d never seen before, then maybe he could clue her in on that secret. The hob himself really didn’t want to touch the cursed gauntlet, but decided it wasn’t worth risking getting the ultimate haircut and complied with the golem’s demands. He placed a hand on it and waited a few seconds for his ability to kick in.
“Ah, so dat how it be,” he seemed to understand something.
“How what be?”
“Dis how you turned metal, no?”
He suspected his boss had some complicated origins. She was too… well adjusted for a ‘natural’ golem, and this thing more or less explained it.
“Yes, I know that part. I need you to tell me about other stuff you sense in there.”
“Mm, not much else. Is tough armor dat repairs itself and fits anyone who puts it on. Aside from de bad voodoo, is nothing- No, wait. Dere be somethin’ more.”
“Yes?” Fizzy raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, yah. I can sense dere be more to de voodoo- de curse.”
“Yes?!” she was getting straight up excited.
“In some specific situation, it does more den just turn de victim to metal.”
“What?! What?!”
“It makes dem ask stupid questions dey already know the answers to.”
Two viciously broken and then begrudgingly healed shins later, Tony and Fizzy made their way back to the golem’s temporary place of residence to collect her luggage. Cargo secured and forced onto the greenskin’s back, the monstrous duo then made their way towards Steelhead’s primary transport hub to catch a ride on the mag-rail train. The vehicle in question was a gnomish invention, one of many patented by the Fizzlesprocket clan. Outwardly, this machine had the appearance of a gigantic metal eel that had been painted sky blue with a white horizontal stripe running along its length. It was just over 200 meters long in its entirety, with a height of 4 meters and a width of 3.5 meters, yet there wasn’t a single wheel in sight.
Just as its name implied, the ‘mag-rail’ used magnetic fields to propel itself along a continuous steel line that was almost as wide as the train. The forces involved also left the vehicle hovering slightly above the ground, making it both faster and smoother than any other form of ground transport. It would have been even more so if the path the vehicle followed was perfectly straight, but that just wasn’t feasible. Despite the best efforts of the Kingdom’s Architects and Artificers, the mag-rail was forced to snake its way through the mountainous terrain in a mostly straight line. Navigating those unavoidable turns and curves was why the train was made up out of numerous individual cars linked together with massive collapsible joints.
The train Fizzy was looking to board in particular had ten of these carriages, with several varieties between them. There was an engine car at the front that mainly served to provide power to the rest of the vehicle and to control its propulsion. This was followed by a service car containing storage for spare parts and private quarters for maintenance crews. The mag-rails had to cover huge swathes of nothing during their multi-day trips, so they’d be in dire straits if something broke down and they couldn’t fix it on the spot.
The next five cars housed the actual passengers in a number of private cabins not unlike those found on ships, connected by a single narrow hallway that ran the length of the train segment. Accommodations varied depending on how much one wanted to pay for their tickets, but most ‘rooms’ were so small that they were basically prison cells. Thankfully for the passengers, they had the option of visiting the eight segment of the serpentine convoy - the dining car. This mobile restaurant didn’t have the capacity to feed all 240 of the train’s potential passengers at once, but that was very rarely a problem. Mostly because regular commuters usually brought their own food with them and only ever visited the dining car to escape their claustrophobic cabins.
The last two carriages were designated freight wagons, and were almost always filled to the brim with cargo. It wasn’t unheard of for a train to attach a third or even fourth freight wagon at certain stations if there was enough demand for it. Unlike the other cars, however, these ones were basically reinforced steel coffins, and passengers were barred from entering them. There were also a number of security measures to prevent people from sneaking in and rummaging through the goods and valuables. Unfortunately for Fizzy, this was also where her ‘seat’ would be. Temporary visa or not, she was ultimately a metal golem, and mag-rail regulations demanded that she be transported as far away from the engine car as possible. Apparently, there was something about the machinery within that could, on rare occasion, cause a controlled construct to go berserk or otherwise malfunction. Fizzy argued that she was far too advanced and strong-willed for something like that to happen, but the rail officials refused to budge. The only way she was getting on that train was if she spent the trip with the rest of her luggage in the back. It was humiliating, but still a better alternative than crossing half the Kingdom on foot. It wasn’t all bad, though. The golem only needed to pay 60 GP for the shipping and handling of herself, which was half the price of the ticket she’d have to buy otherwise.
As for Tony…
“You really like puttin’ me in cages, huh boss?”
“Hey, if I can’t get a seat with a view, then neither will you.”
The golem could have made arrangements for him to ride like a normal passenger. She chose not to. She didn’t like the idea of being treated like cargo when her shield-serf wasn’t, so she arranged for the hob to be caged and bound in the rearmost cargo car along with her. It was the treatment normally reserved for ferrying prisoners. His cell was in the corner and was as bare-bones as it could get. Fizzy herself was situated just opposite him in the open, but was equally forbidden from moving around. Something about her setting off motion sensors and triggering security alarms. She was fine so long as she stuck to the tiny square on the floor she shared with her luggage, but stepping out into the narrow path between the piles of crates and containers was a no-no. The limited space would not be an issue. There was nothing physically preventing her from standing idle in that same spot for three days straight. However, Fizzy dreaded the lack of mental stimuli this trip would entail. That was partly why she forced Tony into that cell, though she wouldn’t admit it out loud.
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Conversation was as good a diversion as she was going to get, and there was a topic that had been on her mind for a while now.
“So, you said you worked for Morton before, right?”
“Uh-huh?”
“What did that involve, exactly?”
“Eh, can’t really say,” the hob shrugged. “I just did my thing and crazy stuff kept happenin’. Lotta strange voodoo, mostly. Now and den de guy asked me to take care of dis or dat, promised loot and stuff if I played along. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn’t. Either way, didn’t ask too many questions.”
“Really? You never got curious what effects your actions might have on the world?”
“A little, but I learned early on not to poke my nose where it don’t belong. Dat’s why it’s still attached to me. I learned a lot of other things from de guy, though.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“Like how to make it in life. Not just survive, but thrive.”
“Really? And what would that involve?”
“Oh, it’s a simple three-step program. You gotta get de XP first. Den when you get the XP, you get de powah. And when you have de powah, you can do aaaanything!”
Fizzy rolled her eyes. She honestly should have known better than to get her hopes up. Of course a goblin would have such a basic philosophy of life. Well, not that she disagreed with it. She might have done so before she truly understood how cruel this world was, but her present self knew Tony was right. He just wasn’t offering anything new or thought-provoking. Fizzy had gotten her hopes up that a former Hero of Chaos would have some deeper insights into the world’s workings, but she was clearly giving the hobgoblin too much credit. Rather than mentally stimulate her, conversations with the guy were likely going to cause more frustration than just staying silent.
Thankfully, the golem figured out something else to occupy her thoughts with.
“If you say so,” she said dismissively. “Now be quiet.”
Tony shrugged and laid down in his tiny cell while Fizzy sat cross-legged with her hand on the metal floor. He watched her for a while, mostly because there was nothing else for him to do. After about half an hour it became obvious she wasn’t going to budge a single millimeter. Was she taking a nap or something? As the hob stated before, he wasn’t in the habit of poking his nose into things, so he just let her be as he closed his eyes and dozed off. He continued to do so for the rest of the day, only ever getting up to tend to some basic needs involving food and water.
The hob got a lot more active once the sun set. There were no windows and the freight car was fitted with magic lights that bathed everything in a bright white glow, but Tony’s body knew when day had turned to night. It grew restless, eager to do something. So, the greenskin started working on his physical conditioning. He grabbed one of the bars that made up the roof of his cell and hoisted himself up. He stuck his ankles through the gaps and used his feet to dangle upside-down, whereupon he started doing various self-taught exercises that chiefly revolved around him going up and down using different sets of muscles. Such physical training could, on very rare occasions, provide an incidental bonus of +1 STR or +1 AGI, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. Tony just wanted to tire himself out so he’d pass out as soon as possible.
However, the manacles he’d been fitted with for the duration of the trip rattled loudly with every rep, causing Fizzy’s eyes to suddenly snap open.
“Well, there goes my concentration,” she grumbled.
“Oh. Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Golems don’t sleep, idiot.”
“No? Den what were you doing down dere?”
The long explanation was that Fizzy was using her Metallopathy to spread her awareness across the train car and beyond. It was the first time she’d attempted to do that on such a scale, and it hadn’t been easy. If feeling out her wrench was like looking into a bucket of water, then trying to grasp the entirety of the carriage was akin to peering into an enormous lake. It took every drop of concentration she could muster, but she managed to do it. At first she spread her perception through the freight wagon’s undercarriage, then up its walls, and eventually started making her way to the front of the train. The golem had just started peeking at the engine car’s inner workings when Tony’s antics pulled her all the way back to the rear. A frustrating conclusion, but far from a waste of time.
The golem’s initial goal was to gain some insight into the technologies and techniques that made the mag-rail move, which she accomplished. It also had the beneficial side-effect of advancing a couple of Skills in the process. One of them was, of course, Metallopathy. It was now well into Level 8, which slightly expanded how much information she could extract from metal objects. The other was Meditation, which was already Level 3 even though she only just acquired it. This one came as a pleasant surprise. Fizzy had made numerous attempts over the past few months to unlock the General Skill in question, yet she failed every time. Why was it that it came so naturally to her this time? Perhaps it was because she’d never had the chance to truly empty her mind until now. Bonding with so much metal at once seemed to impart some sense of inner quiet and tranquility that she hadn’t felt since she was a kid. It was nice while it lasted, but now that she was ‘awake,’ her mind was back to spewing out a hundred thoughts per second.
One of those was that she couldn’t be bothered to explain all that to Tony, so she just offered a simple response.
“I was studying.”
“Ah. Learn anythin’ good?” the hob casually asked.
“Plenty, actually!”
A smile born out of pure enthusiasm dawned on Fizzy’s face. The steady glow of the lights overhead seemed to suddenly dance across her lustrous features, breathing an odd sense of warmth and life into the sterile cargo wagon. It was such a dazzling smile that even the jaded hobgoblin felt something stir within him - a long-lost and immature obsession with shiny things.
“These guys, they’re actually using a self-regulating oxisteel oscillation circuit! And with a parallel array of copper-silver mana conductors there’s barely any loss of energy!”
The golem spoke with vigor and excitement, her one hand gesturing wildly at things only she knew about.
“Sure, it doesn’t produce as strong a polarization field as a thorium impulse array, but it’s way more efficient! They also use a hex-mesh capacitor to reduce the risk of a catastrophic cascade event should a rogue phase-shifted saturation emitter discharge upset the connection between the aft injection port and the magnatomic wave compensator! It’s not the best solution since they could just use mithril instead of gold for the power couplings, but… you’re not getting any of this, are you?”
“… Oh! No, no, I, uh, I know some of de words,” he nodded.
Most of what she said sounded like some arcane incantation or alien language, but he didn’t want to say that out loud. He was still feeling out what was an acceptable level of banter with his new boss, but that wasn’t why he held his tongue. There was just something about her passion that made it infectious. Tony didn’t actually care or want to know what she’d been up to and only asked to make small talk and pass the time. Yet here he was, feeling strangely sad that she stopped.
“Sure, you do,” her cold demeanor returned. “Anyway, I’m getting back to it, so stop being a meatbag and settle down until I tell you otherwise.”
“Whatever.”
His interest rapidly fading, the hob came back down to the ground with a half-flip and leaned against the corner of his cell. With the rattling of his manacles gone, Fizzy directed her attention back to the mag-rail’s inner workings.
“Did you see the way his jaw hung open just now?” Plus remarked.
Yeah? What about it?
“Kind of reminds you of someone, doesn’t it?”
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
“Really? I know there was a lot less drool, but isn’t that how-”
Plus, do you mind?! Fizzy interrupted. Trying to mentally map out an entire mag-rail over here!
“Right. Sorry.”
The golem resumed her quiet remote exploration of the enormous vehicle in both mental and physical silence. There was something bothering her about the mag-rail’s construction that she needed to figure out. Fizzy wasn’t sure why or how, but there was something strangely familiar about the components that made the mag-rail hover. Was it because they operated on the same principles as the arms and legs of Maximilian’s mechanized armor? That was hardly surprising since both contraptions were made by Fizzlesprockets. However, that wasn’t it. The golem was certain she’d seen this design somewhere else, long before she left the Republic. She just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“Hey, boss?”
“What?!” she snapped at Tony.
“De big box ovah dere. See de letters on de side?”
“Hm?”
Fizzy leaned forward to get a better look at the massive wooden crate the hobgoblin was pointing at. It was further down the cargo car’s aisle on the same side as her spot, so she struggled to get a good look at it. It took her a few moments but she managed to make out the symbols he was talking about. There were actually several things stamped on it in various sizes, but she assumed he was talking about the largest and most visible set of letters.
“FTF Mk. 2?” she read them aloud. “What’s that got- Wait. Oh. Ohhhh!”
It took her a few seconds, but she recognized the designation as belonging to a certain spoiled meatbag’s oversized toy. Considering how unlikely it was for there to be more than one of those things stomping around, it was safe to assume this was indeed Maxie’s armor.
“Mhm,” Tony nodded. “Chu thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
“If you’re thinking this is a good chance for some payback, then yes.”
“Anythin’ I can do?” he offered.
“Maybe. Let me think.”
Fizzy had a pretty good idea of a sneaky way to tamper with the construct. She just needed to get to it without being noticed. That was going to be difficult with that motion sensor device in the upper corner of the cargo compartment. She needed to circumvent it first. To that end, reached out with her Metallopathy once more. She extended it through the floor, up the wall, and into the sensor. As expected, its inner workings were a bit beyond her understanding, but that was fine. All she needed to confirm was whether it was primarily mechanical in nature, which seemed to be the case.
“Okay. I have an idea. You’re good at throwing things, right?”
“You could say dat.”
“Great.”
Fizzy turned to the luggage she shared a space with and rummaged through it until she found her toolbox. From it she retrieved an old spanner, which she promptly tossed to Tony. The hobgoblin was quick on his feet and thrust his hand between the bars to snatch it out of the air.
“Break that weird metal box in the upper corner there,” the golem pointed to the device.
“Alright, you da boss.”
Tony clearly had his doubts about this plan, but did as he was told. He tossed the heavy tool up and down a few times, twirling it in his hand to get a good feel for the weight. Once he was ready he spun on his heel to get some momentum going and flung it at the motion sensor. There was a loud crunch as the delicate device was wrecked. This, naturally, sent an alarm signal through to the guards a few cars over. Three of them rushed over immediately, only to find that nothing was out of place. The hobgoblin shield-serf was sitting quietly in his cage, that weird mithril golem stood still as a statue, and there was no sign of either of them disturbing the crates. A quick glance at the sensor in the corner revealed it to be completely intact and silent.
“Bugger. Again with the false alarms,” one of them complained.
“I swear, if I lose any more sleep over these things, I’m gonna murder someone,” another did the same.
“Beats staying up all night ourselves, though,” the last one pointed out.
“Yeah, I guess.”
The trio then left the car, completely unaware that the security device they were relying on was no longer functional. It looked safe and sound, but only because Fizzy’s Metallopathy and Holy Light combo had mended the metal casing to its original shape. The interior components that actually mattered were still a mangled, nonfunctional mess. In other words, the golem was free to move about, which she did right away. She walked up to the enormous crate, pulled a bunch of nails out of its side with her magnetic ability, and looked inside to find Maxie’s prized possession curled up in a ball and strapped into place. The golem smirked viciously as she grabbed her toolbox and got busy. After several hours of tinkering with a machine she barely understood, the mischievous Artificer put everything back in place, sealed the crate back up, and returned to her spot.
“So what did you do?” Tony asked.
“That’s for me to know, and for Maxie to find out.”
“Hmm. Guess I won’t see it den, eh?” he sounded disappointed.
“No,” she grinned in anticipation. “But you’ll definitely hear it.”