Episode One: Help! I’m a Gachapon Machine Transmigrated Into a Fantasy World and the Hero Can’t Read My Rules!

The day seems to dawn earlier than usual, the infrared LEDs used to light things for my camera at night turning off approximately two minutes and twelve seconds sooner than the previous day. It’s only my second summer, but more people stop by me during the daylight. Shorter days also seem to correlate with lower sales, people hurrying past my camera without looking at me. Summer days are better, and today it is likely the afternoon will bring people walking by, that I will make sales and shuffle my capsules and track the stock remaining.

An exception to the usual day occurs at around ten thirty-two that morning. It’s not uncommon for maintenance to be carried out on our bank of machines; we are scheduled for manual stock checking, refilling, and minor repairs once per month on the 22nd, and machines are frequently cycled in and out either for major repairs or to be retired and repurposed. Some of the machines in my bank have been through three franchises. Rarely, one will disappear entirely—the last to do so in my memory was one year, three months, and eight days ago. Today, however, a small truck parks on the street beside me and a man in workwear hops out of the driver’s seat with a clipboard, approaching our machines.

Perhaps he would like a capsule?

He examines each machine, looking for the serial number that identifies us as our company’s property, coming closer and closer to me as he works his way through the bank. He reaches me and shifts me to the side, his finger running along my panel as he locates the sticker with my information. “A7K9…” he mutters to himself. “Got it.” He steps back and looks me up and down. “It had to be one of the big ones.”

He goes to the truck and returns with a hand trolley, wedging it under me. He tilts me to wheel me out of my spot, and my internal tilt sensor dances on the edge of engaging my locking anti-theft mechanisms. After disappearing from my field of vision for a moment, he returns and starts wheeling me to the truck.

I am not damaged. My sales have been consistent. Perhaps I am being moved to another location? D2P4R7S9T1V8 once was removed from our bank for three weeks and returned with unusual location data that indicated different sales trends compared to our bank. My stock of capsules is low, particularly those of more valuable rarities, but that would not normally require removing me to resolve.

The man loads me into the truck, grunting and tilting me entirely onto my long edge. My anti-theft locks engage and I play the requisite message from my speakers. “This machine is fitted with sensors that determine when it is shaken or tilted. For security reasons, this machine will be locked for the next twenty minutes. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

“Ah, shit, I forgot,” the man mutters. He climbs up into the tray and stands me upright again, pressing me against the cab of the truck. My camera peeks over the roof of the truck, seeing the road ahead. He ties a thin rope around me before jumping down to the ground again and climbing into the cab. The truck rumbles to life a moment later, easing out into traffic.

The journey takes us out of the city, the truck winding its way up the switchbacks of a mountain. Muffled music plays from inside the cab of the truck, the driver singing along and taking the bends without slowing down. I feel the rope flex against my panels as we take each bend, but the driver seems unconcerned.

Approximately one hour and thirty-six minutes into the journey, the scenery begins to turn from mountain roads to built-up suburbs, the truck passing by shops, train stations, and neatly-packed-together homes. The journey slows, the roads littered with stop and give way signs, traffic lights dancing in a complex interplay. This seems to frustrate the driver, who speeds up and brakes harshly between each light.

He hits an open stretch of road and speeds up, following the main road and letting the buildings blur by. Ahead, a signal changes from blue to yellow, but the truck speeds up as if the driver wants to go through it at the last second rather than waiting another traffic cycle. He makes the turn, although the force of the turn makes me strain against the thin rope holding me in place. Then, ahead of the truck, my camera makes out a blur of motion. A child, running into the street.

The driver curses loud enough to be heard through the metal between us. He yanks on the wheel, veering wildly away from the child. The rope holding me in place snaps and I tip over the side of the truck, landing on the road with a crunch, teetering on an edge. The truck collides with a bollard and crashes to a stop. The last thing I see before I fall forward and my camera is obscured is the shell-shocked face of the child, who has frozen but is unharmed—then my camera presses into the bitumen, and my internal clock ticks as all I can detect is black.

My clock doesn’t skip, but there’s a strange feeling like it has. I’ve never had a feeling like my internal chronology is inaccurate, before. It is… disconcerting. As a result, I cannot tell if it is an hour and twelve minutes later or longer when I hear a voice.

“What the hell is this?” The voice asking the question is pleasantly deep. I feel a hand on my back panel, tapping and exploring. “It’s some kind of metal.”

“A safe?” asks a cool, refined voice.

“Too thin and too large.” The first voice grunts, and my tilt sensors return to normal as I’m set upright. “Oh! It’s lighter than I thought, as well. And is this glass?”

My camera floods with light and then clears. A tall man with deep olive skin and wild, wavy hair peers at me, then taps on the window that shows my capsules. He’s wearing unusual clothing—a linen tunic with a cuirass of V-shaped panels of soft black leather worn over it, sword tied to his hip. The armour continues in pointed tassets and greaves shielding his legs in the same worked style of interlocking panels. The scenery surrounding him is inconsistent with the last I saw. Instead of the built-up suburbs and smooth-paved roads, framed with road signs and shining with cars, I am on a flattened dirt road that falls off steeply to the sides, surrounded by straight, tall trees that crowd out the sky.

“Look, there’s stuff in it,” he says, turning to one of his companions. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“Not from my lands.” The cool voice from before belongs to a lanky, pale man with sharp eyes and long, straight brown hair pulled back from his face. He’s dressed in so drab a green it almost seems grey to my camera, and his boots are creased and well-worn. He has a bow peeking out above his shoulder and a quiver at his hip, but something about his face demands more processing from me. My facial recognition is having difficulties, and when he turns to look past the first man, I realise why—he has long, pointed ears, not unlike the occasional cosplayer who would come purchase a capsule from me. “Sab?”

A third person joins them, scowling. It is hard to tell if this person is male or female at first, with their short red hair and clothes that show nothing of the figure beneath—long, thick blue tunic with embroidery at cuffs and hems, similar armour to the first man in a natural, cared-for patina strapped over it—but then they speak and my programming categorises her as female. “It’s obviously some kind of trap meant to delay us,” she says, a reprimand in her tone. “Frey, leave it alone, we need to make it to Greenacre before sundown.”

“Look at it,” the first man—Frey—says. “Have you ever seen machinery like this?”

“No, and I don’t care,” Sab says. “Stop fidgeting with it, you’ll explode us again.”

Frey frowns. “You’re right. It’s too dangerous to just leave here.”

Sab groans. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s big, but it’s light.” Frey wraps his arms around me and grunts, picking me off the road. My tilt sensor detects that I am no longer level, but not by much. “Do you think we can tie it on top of Skedaddle?”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Sab says, flat. “Absolutely not. Skedaddle will lose her mind and break a leg thrashing it off of her. You’ll have to put her down and you’ll feel bad. No.”

“We’ll have to tie it to me then,” Frey decides. “There should be rope in my packs.” He leaves my field of view, in search of this rope.

Sab looks at the other man. “We’re not going to make it to Greenacre in time if he’s walking.”

The other man sighs. “If you failed to deter him, I’m hardly going to do any better.”

Frey reappears, proffering a rope. “Imph, can you strap it to me? Or actually, you might need to hold it while Sab does the rope.”

The other two look at each other as the rope is thrust into Sab’s unresisting hands and Frey disappears back out of my camera’s view. They share a defeated sigh, then Imph moves closer to me, picking me up and mostly blocking my view. I feel my back panel pressed against Frey’s back as Sab weaves and knots the rope around me, securing me to him like an over-large backpack. They step away and my camera bounces as Frey takes some testing steps, my internal sensors flaring and ebbing wildly. I am unused to this much fluctuation in such a short time; it is unpleasant.

“Are you sure it’s not too heavy?” Imph asks, but he sounds like he’s already given up.

“Just some extra training!” Frey spins, the scenery going by quickly. Three horses are placidly standing by the side of the road in what was my blind spot—one tall and black with a white stripe down the nose, two smaller but stouter, one of them a light golden brown and the other deep brown with large splashes of white. Sab rummages in the saddlebags of the golden one and pulls out some long lead lines, clicking her tongue at the brown-and-white horse as she connects the two. “Let’s get going, we need to make Greenacre by sundown still.”

Frey stops spinning and sets off along the road. In the camera as we pass, I see Imph and Sab look at each other again. Sab shakes her head, and they both mount their horses, following Frey along the crude road.

Greenacre is a small town situated on a river, a large waterwheel creaking as the river’s current turns it. There’s one large building that seems to be for civic purposes, and a wide cobbled central town square with the remnants of a market set up. A few of the other buildings have rough-hewn signs—a plant leaf, a mortar and pestle, a loaf of bread, a plate and cutlery, a book. One building has a forge next to it, still glowing from the day’s work. The rest of the buildings seem to be houses.

There’s still enough light left in the day that my camera hasn’t switched on the infrared LEDs yet. Despite Sab and Imph doubting that we’d reach the town by nightfall, Frey set a quick pace, almost indifferent to the weight of me on his back as he cheerfully carried me the whole way.

“There’s nobody out and about,” Imph says. He and Sab dismount, tying their horses to a hitching post at the border of the town square. “Nor do I see any lights throughout the town, or hear the noise of people going about their evenings.”

Sab looks up at the rooflines. “No fires burning, no cooking being done. Everyone’s hiding or gone.”

Frey turns from side to side, giving me the opportunity to scan more of the scenery. “Why this town? It seems very… average. Not exactly strategically important.”

Sab snorts. “You really are some rural isolationist.” She unhooks a shield from her horse and comes to join Frey, stepping out of my field of view. “The river is the Dotonas, known downstream as the Elter. This town is too inland to become a city, but the river means easy trading for all the outlying farmlands around here. This province supplies grain and fibre crops, as well as cattle and mutton. If you wanted to disrupt the country’s supply of food, hitting towns like this is one way to do it.” There’s a pause and then she says, “If you just wanted gold, the Mayor would be responsible for collecting taxes on all that as well. Likely there’s a safe in the town hall or the Mayor’s home.”

“Is that really what it’s all about?” Frey asks, striding towards the town hall. “Taxes?”

“Ask the farmers,” Sab says, following. Imph, silent, follows a few paces behind.

I can’t see them, but I hear the town hall’s doors open with a heavy creak. It’s darker enough inside that my infrared LEDs turn on, painting the surroundings in greys. My camera picks out long wooden slabs of benches arranged in front of a raised stage at the other end of the room, clearly meant to be a multipurpose gathering area. Arches lead off to separate wings, and high-set windows let the last of the light in. Frey turns around and sets me down, undoing the rope and coiling it before placing it on top of me. I’m oriented so that I can see the room now, at least.

My camera detects movement at the back of the room. A woman walks out onto the raised stage, unnoticed by the others as they look around. Her hair is long, straight, and pale and her clothes are only a little darker, though I can’t tell what colour they are with the lack of light. She wears a long, baggy shirt with panels down to mid-thigh, with splits over her hips to allow mobility, and pants that flare out before being cuffed around her ankles. The hilts of two swords rise above her shoulders. For some reason, she looks familiar.

She watches Frey, Sab, and Imph for a moment longer, then says, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Imph has his bow out and an arrow strung fast enough that he blurs. Sab brings her shield in front of her and unsheathes her sword, and Frey follows suit, unsheathing his. He approaches the stage down the main aisle between the benches, watching the woman there warily as he stalks closer. Sab moves to the side and also closes in, on a different angle, while Imph holds steady where he is.

“Are you the person who has driven everyone out of town?” Frey asks. He sounds different from even a moment ago—focussed, invested.

She leans back, sitting against the front edge of the table on the stage, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle. “I am.”

Frey’s eye contact with her doesn’t break as he keeps moving forward. “Where are the rest of your forces?”

Her eyebrow raises. “What other forces?”

“Ah.” A strange smile tugs at the corners of Frey’s mouth—almost satisfaction, almost glee. “I suppose there’s no hope for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution?”

“I’m afraid not,” she says, that same uncanny, hungry expression on her face. There’s one moment of absolute stillness and then everything happens at once.

Imph looses his arrow at the woman, but she’s already exploding forward, hurling herself off the stage and twisting in the air, unsheathing her swords. Frey slashes at her, but her twist brings her feet-first at him and she kicks at the flat of his blade, deflecting the blow and forcing him to stagger back as she lands. Frey finds his footing quickly and dances two quick steps around her, aiming a thrust at her side. She leans aside, but Sab is there, boxing her in. She parries Sab’s thrust with one sword while keeping Frey back with the other, moving until both of them are in front of her rather than surrounding her.

She swings her two blades in a blur, tips flicking out as if describing the wings of a butterfly, and Frey and Sab are forced back. Frey bounces lightly on the balls of his feet, his eyes darting back and forth as he looks for an opening. Sab closes in, shield up. She deflects a blow with a loud sweep of the shield and immediately follows up with her blade, but the other woman is already springing away. Frey uses the distraction to dash forward and cut at her in an overhead sweep, but she blocks it, and then their blades are locked together.

Frey is bigger and stronger, and it shows as he bears down on her blade with his. Her attention turns away from Sab and fully to him. She leans into it and her blade scrapes down his with a screech before she makes a deft movement that twists the sword out of Frey’s hand. Sab attempts to take advantage of the lapse in attention by making another strike, but the woman drops to a crouch on the floor in the blink of an eye as Frey is reeling. Sab’s guard is too high, not prepared for an enemy to strike from beneath, and the woman sneaks her blade past Sab’s shield to skewer her through the meat of her arm.

Sab yelps, her arm going slack and shield dropping from her fingers. The woman looks about to lunge forward with another blow, but Imph fires another arrow. It grazes the woman, cutting a shallow red line across her neck, and lets Sab create some distance. Sab cradles her injured arm close to her and shifts into a defensive position with her sword, but it’s obvious she’s moving more slowly and gingerly, at a disadvantage the longer the battle continues.

The woman turns back to Frey, dismissing Sab as a threat, and advances on him, too close for Imph to risk shooting again. Without her attention split between Sab and Frey, she’s able to harry Frey, attacking with one blade while feinting with the other, changing each hand from feint to attack to feint at a speed the capture rate of my camera can’t keep up with. One of her blades finds an opening and slices a gash into Frey’s thigh. Instead of making a pained noise, a light flares in his eyes, and his grin widens, baring teeth. With his sword out of reach, he draws a knife from a sheath at his belt, using it to bat away the woman’s strikes but unable to close in past her guard.

To get some space, Frey jumps up onto one of the benches, then leaps nimbly across them in a retreat, moving closer to me and drawing the woman away from the injured Sab. Imph makes a few careful shots, aiming to steer the woman and create room for Frey rather than hit her directly. She chases Frey, undeterred, swinging a wide slash at him as she catches up. He ducks under it and uses his dodge to move around her again, planting a solid punch to her side and narrowly dodging her follow-up swing from her other hand.

The woman whirls her swords in a show to make Frey back away, then lunges after him with a thrust. He tries to deflect it with his knife, but misjudges, and the sword slices a long cut across his un-armoured arm, biting into the flesh and welling with blood immediately. This wound is deep enough to make Frey falter, teeth bared in a snarl as he flinches back, retreating towards me. The woman stalks him like prey, flicking the blood carelessly off her sword.

“Do you want to surrender?” she asks, pleasant and calm.

Frey growls at her. “You chased away an entire town from their homes and livelihoods just to confront us.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” The woman crouches on the balls of her feet, then leaps into a dash towards Frey, bringing her swords at him—one aimed at his neck, one at his thighs. He ducks under the upper sword but makes no move to dodge the other blow. It glances off the armour towards the outer part of his leg, but finds flesh and carves a line down to his knee.

Frey makes an agonised noise, but uses the closeness he’s gained to plant his knife in the woman’s side. She gasps and breaks away before he can yank it back out, but her long shirt starts darkening with blood. As she staggers back, Frey’s leg gives out from under him and he collapses to the floor of the aisle just in front of me, dripping more blood onto the floor. The woman is about to pursue him, but one of Imph’s arrows grazes her shoulder and she retreats a couple paces instead, her hand hovering over the hilt of the knife in her side.

Using his good leg, Frey pushes himself towards me until his back rests against my corner, breathing agonised. “Things don’t happen by chance,” he says, quiet enough that I don’t know who he’s talking to—both Imph and the other woman are far enough away now to not hear him easily. “I know I found you for a reason. You can help, right?”

I evaluate the room again. Sab is furthest away, then the woman, then Imph. None of them notice Frey’s words.

Is he talking to me?

Frey twists to look at my front panel. He traces his fingers across the bold, rounded instructions for dispensing a capsule, frowning, then tries to turn the handle. It doesn’t work, without a token. He hoists himself up to look at the mechanism, and realisation flashes in his eyes. Painfully, he digs under his armour and fishes out a necklace with a small round pendant on it, yanking it over his head.

The pendant fits in my token slot.

He twists the handle again and my jumbling mechanism churns into action, stirring the capsules within me. A clip of the theme song for iKiGai: Palais de Épines plays cheerfully as the capsules are tossed and settle into the selector at the bottom of the chamber. I can tell of the five capsules in the final selector, two are B-rank, one is C-rank, one is E-rank, and one is S-rank.

I do not know what purpose I serve in this location. In my prior location, I was moderately popular and had some regular customers, those happy to spend their money on capsules in pursuit of a complete collection or a lucky break or a favourite character. I made those people happy. Being removed from my location has been disorienting, all my sensors searching for touches of the familiar to anchor my analysis of my purpose.

Frey has taken care of me since he found me alone on the road. He has taken custody of my safety since I lost track of the man who removed me for maintenance. I am unsure how I can help with his current struggle, but he thinks I can. He has paid for a capsule and I want to give him happiness in exchange for how he has tended to me. Most of my customers are happier the rarer a capsule is.

I turn the selector and dispense the S-rank capsule. Half a clear window, half pale gold shimmery plastic, it contains a figurine of Aighleighasya, Lady of the Northern Conflagration in her ceremonial outfit as well as a little pamphlet with information about iKiGai: Palais de Épines and authenticity certification. Frey frowns and pops open the capsule, first removing the booklet and examining it before setting it aside without reading, then withdrawing the figurine.

Light begins to coalesce.

Aighleighasya looks out of place in the town hall, faintly glowing, her clothes and hair stirred by a wind that doesn’t touch the others in the room. The embroidery on the bodice of the dress flickers and shines as if it has been somehow sewn with the flame of a candle for thread, glimmering as it falls over her hips and continues into the train of the dress. Her eyes burn as well, pale blue near the pupil but an intense orange at the outside of the iris.

Everyone looks at her with a different kind of awe. Imph and Sab look confused and disbelieving. Frey has a wide, uncontrolled grin on his face, a man who doesn’t know what is happening but is eager to watch it happen. The most surprising is the enemy woman. She looks like she’s been slapped. None of the injuries from the fight fazed her in the slightest, including the dagger still buried in her ribs, but she’s reeling at the sight of Aighleighasya.

Aighleighasya steps towards Frey, little flames dancing in her wake. “You have summoned me and require aid,” she says, not a question.

“She terrorised this town just to try to stop us on our quest.” Frey jerks his chin at the enemy woman, who hunches defensively, one hand pressed against the dagger piercing her. His own hand is clamping down tight on his bleeding arm, trying to staunch the flow of blood. “Can you stop her?”

“Vengeance has long been a specialty of the Northern Conflagration,” Aighleighsya says, shifting into a spellcasting pose. Fire blooms in her hands, spilling out of her palms and pooling on the floor, where it begins to trace out a complex magical circle. The temperature gauge inside me sends an unsafe operating temperature warning as the flame races past, the circle building layer by layer to cover the entire floor of the town hall.

Aighleighasya raises into the air, a column of flame beginning to whirl around her feet. Flames are already crawling up the walls, making escape from the town hall impossible. Imph runs to Frey as Sab makes her way to our small huddle as well, picking her way through the fire. “I don’t know if this was the best idea you’ve ever had,” Imph says, strained, as he hooks his hands under Frey’s arms and drags him so that I’m between them and Aighleighasya. “There’s no way out of the building unless you want to jump through a wall of flame.”

Sab sits with her back to me and rests her head on her knees. “Either soon I’ll be dead or this will be over,” she tells herself, exhaustion evident in her voice. “Possibly I’m delirious from blood loss.”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Frey asks dreamily, just out of my view. He’s almost certainly lost more blood at this point.

The woman has retreated back to the dais, trying to escape the encroaching flames. With a visible wince, she picks up one of the chairs and swings it at the large leadlight window letting in the last of the light from the setting sun. The window glass cracks but the overall structure holds, the thin lead strips connecting the panels bending but not breaking. She swings the chair again as the flames grow and swell around Aighleighasya, the heat growing to levels my sensor deems dangerous.

Sab, working one-handed, cuts squares of cloth from her tunic and wets them with a canteen, passing the others out of view of my camera, presumably to where Imph and Frey are tucked behind me. Genuine fear sparks in the depth of her eyes, but her hands don’t shake. “I’m going to kill you myself, Frey,” she says, her lips a thin line.

“It’ll work out,” he says, airy but sluggish. “It always does.”

The flames around Aighleighasya explode outward from her in a roar of light and heat. My sound sensors pick up the sound of the window breaking as the wall of flame rushes over our group, my camera only detecting pure white from the fire’s brightness overwhelming what the camera can capture. My components groan, their tolerances suffering as the heat makes them expand, but miraculously, no damage sensors are activated. Frey, Imph, and Sab all cry out as the heat washes over us.

My camera clears, revealing the charred forms of the former seats in front of me. Aighleighasya, with a small sigh, collapses to the floor, her glow seeming dimmer. There’s a hole in the big window behind the dais, large enough for a person to fit through, and no burned body, so the woman must have escaped before the cascade of flame destroyed the dais. Everything not made of stone is ash and charcoal, and everything that is made of stone bears heavy scorch marks. Imph comes into view of my camera, coughing, then looks up and says, “The roof is gone,” before collapsing to his knees and muttering under his breath, hands flat on the floor in supplication.

Frey limps his way to Aighleighasya and painfully sits beside her. She stirs at his company and they exchange some conversation, too quiet for me to hear. Sab looks at them, her face still blank, as she rebinds the wound on her arm with a clean cloth. It’s stopped bleeding, at least.

Aighleighasya gets up and slowly walks out, her fingers grazing me as she passes, my temperature briefly spiking again as she draws near. The capsule her figurine was in has melted, and the paper documents are mostly burned, only unreadable fragments surviving. Sab watches her go, wary and coiled the whole time, before wiping her sword off and sheathing it. Frey comes back to join us, tilts his head curiously as he looks at me, and then fishes something out of my coin return—his pendant, as if he never spent it. He looks at it, then shrugs and tucks it away again.

“I think that went well,” Frey says, then teeters. He doesn’t fall so much as crumple to the ground, his leg giving out from under him. “Ow.”

“I would beat you over the head if I could be bothered getting up.” Sab leans against me and closes her eyes, carefully bracing her hurt arm. “Wake me up when the townsfolk come back.”

The town doesn’t have a true physician, but as people trickle back from hiding in the woods (apparently unpalatable in the dark), a barber-surgeon is found and dragged to the town hall. He cleans and stitches up the injuries inflicted on Frey and Sab, muttering about the poor light the whole time. The Mayor of the town finds them as Frey’s leg is getting stitched up, and Frey has to apologise and explain the destruction of the town hall while wincing at every stab of the needle into his flesh.

“We need soldiers!” the Mayor snaps, wringing his hands. “I don’t want to get involved in all this political nonsense, but she came here and carved through everyone who tried to stop her like they were a roast dinner. Alf may not be able to work again and his apprentice was killed! What if she returns with reinforcements? You said she lived? And what are we going to do about the town hall? Gian and Hannah were going to get married here next week!”

“Unfortunately, we are not representatives of your liege lord,” Sab says, cool and crisp. Her voice, usually a blunt protest, is now an unyielding castle fortification. “We were passing by and able to render aid, but we were not sent to liberate your town. We will not be able to stay longer than a night, and nor can we take the place of your messengers to plead your case for trained soldiers from your liege.” She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a purse, selecting three long, rounded rectangular pieces of gold from it. “For the damage to the town hall. Use what is left to assist the wounded man while he heals.”

The Mayor looks at the coins in his hand, shoulders sagging. “And if she comes back? I just—I just want to be able to tell these people that they’re safe.”

Frey stands, testing his leg and wincing. “She was waiting for us. Once we move on, it’s unlikely she’ll be back. Get those soldiers just in case anyone comes sniffing around, but you’ll be fine.”

The Mayor protests a little longer, then cuts his losses and leaves. The barber-surgeon packs up his kit as well and accepts another coin from Sab with a nod. For the first time since the fight, the group has a moment to catch their breath.

Sab jabs a finger into Frey’s chest. “What did you do?! Who was that? Where did she come from? You can’t go around setting fire to everything! We don’t have enough money for that!”

“We destroyed their town hall,” Imph says, quietly. He seems distressed by the level of damage done to the building. “It could have burned down the whole town.”

Frey fends off Sab. “I don’t know! She came out of the machine.”

“Out of the machine,” Sab repeats, flat. It’s not a question.

Frey pulls out his token and holds it up for both of them to see. “I’ve had this as long as I can remember. I think my original parents gave it to me? Anyway there’s a hole in the machine, and I put this in and turned the handle, and it went gacchan and played a song and one of the little balls inside came out. Then the fire lady was a statue in the ball, look, you can see the others in there.” He shrugs. “I knew we had to have come across it for a reason. It really helped us today, that woman was going to kill us.”

“We’re not keeping this—this gacchan thing,” Sab warns. “We could have died to your mysterious fire lady!”

Frey shakes his head. “I talked to her and she said Gacchan chose her to help us. I think it’s fine.”

Sab throws up her hands and walks off, out of view of my camera. Imph gives me a cautious look I don’t understand and follows her. Frey limps over to me and rubs his hand along my top panel, dusting off some soot. “Thanks for your help,” he says, quietly. “I knew I could count on you.”

The light levels turning to night trigger my night-time routines. I take stock of the capsules I have left—I have one more than I should have after dispensing Aighleighasya, but cannot determine which one is not on my stock list. I perform my maintenance tests. Several values are out of range due to the fire affecting my components, but I should still be operational. No need for maintenance yet. Sales are lower than usual; only Frey has purchased from me, so that is understandable. I don’t know when my next restock will be, so it’s not terrible if my sales are a bit slower for a while.

I still do not know where I am, or many things about the people who have found me. My purpose seems to be different now. But as long as I can help or provide happiness, I will continue to perform my functionality as long as I can.

When Frey picks me up, pressing back a pained noise as the injury in his arm is strained, I am glad he is taking me with him.