It was almost time to return to the Hub. But first, I had a few projects I needed to get a start on before we returned. Speeding up our income was crucial to getting my people back.

  For just a few days of being open to the Public, Food Truck was already a hit. Perhaps it was the novelty. The pricing and quality were certainly factors, but at the end of the day I think it took off because it was something new.

  Even the idea of a food service truck wasn't something most people entertained. Mostly because the rate of car theft and destruction was so high, and there was the fact that NCPD didn't bother to do anything about it. It turns out the insurance companies, even if you could afford them, wouldn't cover car theft either. No matter how much you paid. You were forced to protect it yourself, and who was going to waste the time and money outfitting a truck with enough weapons to stand off the Gangs, just to sell some food. It wasn't an economically viable venture for anyone. Until now.

  Had some gonks tried to mess with us while we were working, absolutely. The mini Photon Cannons slagged 'em, and I was selling sandwiches and burritos again in under five minutes. Even NCPD when they bothered to show up 15 minutes later, just shrugged it off, and drove off to bother someone else. They didn't even bother to ask for my permits, though they sure took the free food I offered them.

  Not like I expected better. But if enough Cops came for some free food. Word would get around faster. Maybe we get messed with less. Of course, at some point the Gangs were going to up their game and try to fold me into one of them. And if not them, then one of the Corps. That's going to be an interesting day.

  And the Food Truck was pretty much profitable from the get go. I'd already made back the Eddies I forked out for the food supplies, and I still had enough to run the truck for at least two week. Thanks in large part to the stasis packaging. If I was having to rotate stock all the time, we'd still be profitable, just no where near as much.

  Now it was time to expand the franchise. But I needed workers I could trust. Probes with their size and lack of hands, wouldn't cut it. I could produce more Lordaeron folk, but I didn't want to expose them to NC more than I absolutely had to. No, my thinking was, that it past time to play around with bots.

  Over all the times I'd been in the city, the Probes had been collecting scans of everything, including bots. People here used them for everything, from basic labor all the way to security and warfare. There were a variety of options, already stored in our schematics database.

  I pulled David and Mith with me, hopped into the Food Truck, and with Probius on the roof, we headed to my little base in the Trash Mountains. Traffic was heavy, but everyone behaved for the most part.

  It was sad that David just looked at the mountains of crap as if that was normal. He was a jaded Night City citizen through and through.

  Mith hung his head out the window, his tongue lolled out. He was enjoying life as it came. As long as he had his people, he was happy. I envied that attitude sometimes.

  David did get a wonderfully shocked expression, when we arrived at the base. Even the jaded life of a Night City local, couldn't grind all the wonder out of the kid. He'd never seen anything like the Khalai or the Kaldorei buildings except in his games. For him, this must have been like a dream come true. Again I had the sense that maybe I should have tried a game or two back when I had the chance.

  David jumped out of truck, already talking a mile a second, "Oh, wow. How does that work? Those are like giant versions of the plasma guns on your truck. Is that a real tiger!?" His head was snapping around so much, I thought I might have to heal him later. Whiplash sucks if you let it go untreated.

  I yelled from inside the truck, "Calm down. We're in no rush today. Take your time, I'll be working in the Forge," I pointed it out to him, "and will likely be too absorbed in what I'm doing to pay attention to anything else. You will be hanging out with the real Elves and Aliens. Try not to cause any incidents."

  Lunaria had ridden over on her Nightsaber. I glanced at Mith, I think this is the first meeting between our animal friends. The Canid / Feline rivalry hopefully wasn't going to be a problem. But that didn't mean we couldn't have some fun...

  'Hey Mith... ' I was already cooking up some mischief.

  '?' He cocked his head in my mind, which was funny, at least to me.

  'Don't revert back to your real size, until I give the signal.' Nightsabers are used to being some of the largest things around in their environment.

  Mith grinned that doggy grin. He got it.

  As we got out of the vehicle, the Nightsaber roared, and despite Lunaria's best efforts charged Mith. Who for his part, sat there calmly until the last second, and then reverted to his full size. The Nightsaber leapt backwards, now faced with a canine almost twice it's size. It gave a confused, "Mrowl?"

  Lunaria gave it a light smack across its nose. "Bad, Moonbeam. We don't bully other animals." The Nightsaber pretended to ignore her, as was the way of cats, and their relatives.

  David, meanwhile, was staring at Lunaria in total dunderheaded amazement. His jaw dropped, and reached over and pushed it closed for him. Chuckling as I did. "Think of Lucy."

  That did it, David snapped out of his stupor, and nodded at me.

  Mith sat still, chuffing in amusement himself. Lunaria dismounted and came over to check him over. Mith looked down at her his eyes still alight with joy. He love playing little harmless pranks. The Huntress began to feel his fur and checked his musculature. She made little noises to herself while she perform her examination.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "He has grown well, he'll be ready to carry you into battle soon." Lunaria maybe seemed a bit jealous. Heh.

  I laughed. It was time to play the next prank, " What do you think of that Mith?"

  'I'll be the greatest Dancing Dog, ever!' His mindspeak carried to everyone, providing another shock. Yeah, we kept that under wraps too. Just a bit of harmless fun.

  The look on their faces. David especially. Whose face underwent a very rapid set of changes, from joy to despair.

  "Hey Mith, don't tell anyone about what I was saying the other day." His face had settled on pale. Oh I bet this was juicy. What, was he badmouthing me? Was he talking about Lucy? Oh the possibilities.

  'Maybe, for right price.' Mith looked away, his attempt at guile foiled by his cheerful demeaner.

  They negotiated a price privately. I'll probably cage it out of Mith later, for some extra treats.

  "Where ever did you find such a magnificent beast?" Lunaria asked. I was honestly surprised she didn't demand I get her one. After being around her for a while, I discovered... she was kind of pushy. Unpleasantly so. Which knocked a few more points off the glamour of our first meeting.

  She was just used to getting her way, I supposed.

  "Hmm? Where I found everything else." I evaded the question, but she knew the answer to begin with. She was just expressing her admiration. "Anyway, I'm headed to the Forge. Entertain the kid, and make sure Mith has a chance to run around as his full size for a while."

  "Of course. Have you though about where you were going to plant those seeds you told me about? Korvaith could use some company."

  That brought me up short. Korvaith had settled in well, but he wasn't a Tree of Life. A new ecosystem wasn't going to spontaneously sprout up around him. So he was still alone. However, the Golden Acorns gifted by a secret admirer, were supposed to go to specific places. The Task I'd gotten involving them would tell me where.

  "Those have a different destiny. But while I'm in the Hub, I'll see what I can do." I gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder and headed past the Sentry Towers. Those had finally gotten their first upgrade, which let them identify and attack enemies, a new autoballista was mounted at the top of each town now. The Probes had also built a Photon Cannon by each tower as well. So I wasn't worried about the Badlands approach.

  It took some finagling, but the Kaldorei and Khalai helped use the Hunter's Hall to convert Minerals into the wood, stone and even the gold needed for upgrades. It was a slow process but they didn't mind having something to do.

  A few opportunistic scavengers and trash pickers had been intercepted and turned around. Mostly through trickery. While they couldn't see anything out of place, if they were left completely alone they might figure out that trash was going missing. But at least, we didn't have to flatline them.

  The Kaldorei had another problem, and that was most of them lived for the hunt. What was there to hunt out here? They were getting home sick. Sadly, there was no short term solution there, unless we took a trip to the Valley. But I wasn't ready to reveal my new allies or my plans to the Nomads just yet.

  I shook my head, taking in the changes the area had undergone, and not just the pleasant lack of garage.

  There were three new Forges to streamline output. A few Assimilators had gone up to help convert materials faster. A Cybernetics Core, and another Gateway had been produced. The second Gateway was so we could produce Sentries faster if needed. Since they weren't a limited unit, we might end up relying on them for any large scale operations. The next buildings in the queue would be the Robotics Facilities and Bay, then straight to starting on a Stargate. I wasn't going to let that get away from me this time.

  On the Kaldorei side, not much had changed as we needed the other types of Wisps and Treants to really expand their building capabilities.

  I stopped for a short amount of time to check on the Archers and the Zealots. Seeing what they'd been up to. They were mostly antsy, because right now there wasn't much to do, other than train, and aid in converting materials. I'd have to start thinking about which Gang to hit with them to make some Eddies. Though, I had yet to convince any of my troops to try some Power Armor which worried me.

  I stepped into the first Forge and brought up the different schematics for Bots. I found them to be ugly. But it would be better to stick fairly close to the original designs. At least appearance wise.

  First off, lets clean up the power system, that would save some space, which we could reinforce. Obviously it would run on a psicrystal circuit system inlayed into the core skeletal frame. Then I swapped out the joints with the better Khalai articulators, the sensors with the suite the Probes used. Lastly, I took out the computer and put in a slightly smaller Probe's core.

  Hmm, it mostly looked the same, but a few things stood out. Like the glow from the powered psicrystal. So I slapped some thin crysbronze panels on it to hide the glowing internals, and had everything repainted in Food Truck colors. It might look a little too advanced for a food service job. But I doubt anyone would ask too many question. Fingers crossed.

  Lets build one out and test it. Obviously the Probe's AI was going to have to adapt to the bipedal form, yet soon enough it was walking smoothly. Khalai programming for the win.

  The next Forge over had finished another Food Truck, so we hopped in and I showed it what to do, using some of the food supplies I left at the base. Again thanks to the advanced Probe AI, it picked everything up after one full run through. It even picked up how to speak using the robot's speakers.

  "This is my purpose?" Hmm? Questioning it's purpose? Interesting. Slightly troubling, but given Alina's changes I trusted the Khalai's AI prowess to keep it fitting in properly.

  "Yes. You and your fellow models will be responsible for running the additional Food Trucks, I'll be making."

  "Understood." That seemed to be the end of it, for now.

  "Let's make a few adjustments, and your adapted programming will be the baseline for the new bots." In fact, if this worked out well. I might launch and sell a series of work bots to Night City. Not only would it be a way to make money, I'd have a small army of sleeper agents. Maybe.

  "By your command, Executor."

  Getting everything ready, took a few more hours. I wanted the new Bots to be able to defend themselves and the Trucks. They needed to be able to deal with Customers and all the tricks that might be deployed against them. Then there was clean up. What to do if City Officials, including Cops, poked around. While I wasn't too worried about hacking, I created a series of protocols for just that occasion. Lastly was coordination of where they be selling on any given day.

  Now with the full food service protocols updated, I had my first Food Bot practice servicing the Kaldorei their diner. The Khalai didn't need dinner, they didn't even have mouths. They apparently absorbed the energy they needed from light. A remarkable trait. Still they helped out as well.

  I pulled David and Lunaria into the fun and we role played a few different scenarios. The stress test went smoothly.

  Alright, lets get this ball rolling.

  We already had three new Food Trucks ready. I wanted each truck manned by two Bot at any given time. So the math was simple.

  Of course, I still needed to hit the Hub and stock up on a ton of supplies and get the Kriegsmen their next shipment as well.

  Grabbing Probius, Mith and David, I opened the Gate.