The urchins had stayed outside the room at his request when he’d found that Avariel had put the device in an underground portion of her facility. He didn’t want the two to become affected, though he was sure that Tepic might be alright.
The horse greeted him happily as she lead him to the device Kane had delivered, and laid down next to it crushing the mushrooms underneath, “Its kind of whirly!” She inspected it closely again and then nodded to herself. “What’s more my sensors have indicated that it has an aetheric battery!”
Arnold gaped at her for a moment, but she wasn’t done, “They are the best available and we are doing a special on aetheric recharging this week!” The cat opened his mouth, but she continued, “…then again, we have a special on aetheric recharging every week, and we have not changed the special for several decades…”
Arnold stared at her for a moment, his eyes shutting slightly, “….so it’s always the same price anyways.” She nodded once.
Shaking his head at the eccentric clockwork, he wondered if the dinosaur had stolen them from her. He didn’t have time to worry about it as he got the conversation back on track, “Are the batteries why they explode when mishandled?”
“That has been known to happen!” She answered. “So what does the whirly thing do?”
“It makes people try to kill me,” Arnold replied.
“Oh,” Avariel said, apparently surprised by this revelation. “But it does not effect clockwork unicorns because I’m not running you through in a rather icky manner.” She nodded to herself.
“It doesn’t affect clockworks, we already saw that, several have been helping me in fact, the M bots and Unit 3…” The cat paused for a moment, and then face-pawed, “I should have come here the past week to hide!” He could have had a proper bath instead of sneaking upstairs to boil water in the ovens after hours!
Avariel smiled, “Unit #3 is a most helpful coggy cat! And the power station has its own security force of clockworks, although its a big and complex place to guard!”
“At least I’ll have access to a sewer if I have to run…” Arnold twitched despite how accustomed to the waterworks as he had become.
“With some working out you could run to a different land through the portal, although that is not for everyone.”
“…no. I’ve had enough with other dimensions or places or whatever.”
“We usually serve the travel arrangements of adventurers, people looking for excitement, and with our travel system they often get more excitement than they could ever wish for!”
The cat looked at her blankly, “They die don’t they?”
“Only once or twice…a few lost a few limbs in the early days, and there was that one that turned into a hybrid monster…but these days its almost safe!”
The cats face twitched again, he really needed to stop that…
“So, what are we going to do with this device? Experiment on it to find out how it ticks?”
“The plan was to reverse the message. Figure out how it was making people serve Dr. Dinosaur and then get them to not.” Arnold paused and looked at the clockwork “I don’t suppose you have the resources to build a giant eye here to cover the whole city?”
Avariel Falcon nodded cheerfully, as she thought of all the underground workshops, laboratories, and warehouses at her disposal. “We have the resources here to build about anything you could imagine!”
might not have stolen the batteries, but the blueprints? possibly
Avariel and Arnold
Inspecting the device