The day finally arrived and he and Tess met Bright and Alz for the robot activation. The magic crystal had been expensive even though Alz had given him a discount. He was hopeful sales of the music devices would refill his coffers. He had also been trying to come up with new ideas that he could turn into additional income while he waited for the crystal to arrive. They had spent the previous few days secluded in his house. He didn’t want to worry Tess so hadn’t told her about the possible kidnapping and just kept her close.
Chuck carefully inserted the magic crystal and felt it click into place. Bright did something which caused the crystal to start glowing and the robot twitched. Bright made some adjustments and signaled for Chuck to close the panel. Once it was secured Bright indicated it was ready to receive orders. “We will call you R2 and you will only take orders from me and Tess.” Chuck said, indicating Tess. The robot bowed in an affirmative. While tinkering, it had been evident that the robot couldn’t talk.
Chuck had R2 follow him to the warehouse where they had set up a small obstacle course of empty wooden boxes. He had the robot tackle the obstacle course and took note of its capabilities. Its three legged walking gait was very strange but it could run faster than Chuck. It wasn’t much of a jumper though. It could rotate its torso 360 degrees to bring any of its arms forward and the arms and legs could all extend to a certain degree.
Next, Chuck had R2 fight two of the guild’s security guards. One was an orc and the other a bear beast person. Alz indicated they were well trained, and his best men. They attacked together and the robot proved to be quite nimble on its three legs and it used its clawed arms to parry the attacks. The bear tried to grapple which was a bad idea and got tossed into the air. The orc tried getting behind R2 but the robot didn’t really have a back and the orc was soon held in the air by two arms while the third pummeled the poor guard. Chuck called for R2 to stop and gave the bruised guards some coins for their trouble.
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He decided to give two of its arms four foot long metal bars to act as weapons. They should be good for blocking attacks and could incapacitate targets if need be. They also didn’t really look like weapons if it held them behind itself in a stored configuration. They could pass for being part of the robot which would come as a nasty surprise for any enemies. Now that he knew what the robot could do, he needed to have a meeting with captain Nass and put his plan into motion.
The meeting occurred the next day and Nass was very receptive to his scheme and agreed to pass on the information to his contacts with the capital city guard and the underworld. Chuck got home and announced they would be going on an extended fishing trip. He would be leaving R2 in his garage while they were gone. Everyone immediately thought it was a bad idea and thought they should take the robot along.
Chuck insisted and made up some excuse about the robot still being a little unstable. They made their preparations and headed out. R2 had been given extensive instructions on what to do. Chuck just hoped the thieves would take the bait while they were gone. If everything worked out, he wouldn’t need to worry about someone kidnapping Tess in exchange for the robot anymore.