The Fashionbot - Mother's Day Special

Note : For context, this Special was written for the father's and mother's day Immersive Ink discord server contest. The prompt I chose was : How my dad’s DIY project went wrong. I switched it to 'mom' for reasons that will immediately become obvious.

There's also a bunch of weird stuff going around because for some reason the contest is anonymized but at the same time you can write for your story which...is weird. It's not like someone else is writing The Fallen World. So I don't know, the server owner said it was okay to tell you guys it's for that contest, I just might get disqualified from some of the rewards. Not that I particularly care since, let's face it, this special will make absolutely no sense to anyone who hasn't read the story.

Here's the invite link to Immersive Ink if you want to check the contest (and the discord server) out : https://discord.com/invite/NGSYbjecRg

If you do visit, remember to thank Arteris Entri for the contest ! It's why you're getting this special.

Anyway, here's the special !

Chapter ???

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Workshop

CQ looked into the workshop, tilting her head at the soft cackling.

It came from the only source of movement in the otherwise crowded room. Though 'room' was perhaps not the right word. The workshop was closer to a warehouse, populated with a seemingly unending collection of prototypes and machinery, ranging from humming fabricators to tanks and even model, fully functional airships.

CQ watched as the cackling resumed, and her mom leaned back a bit from the workbench, grabbing a few parts, freshly spat out by a fabricator, and slotting them in. People kept telling her that she was her mom's spitting image. Same hair, same face, just smaller, and with crimson red instead of pink eyes. The only difference was that her mom's sense of style was...

Well, mommy was always complaining about it, and they both bickered incessantly on the subject of design. Mom thought it was a waste of time if it didn't add functionality. CQ had to agree with her mommy though, sometimes you had to look good.

Which was why she was wearing a stylish uniform, while her mom was in the same armor as always.

"Mom?" Called out the dungeon boss.

She saw her mother jump up slightly, before smiling over her shoulder.

"Oh, heya kiddo! Something the matter?"

"The last party likely to make it to my boss room just left." The boss walked in, looking over her mother's shoulder at the device on the desk. "What is that?"

"This? Oh, nothing much." The dungeon core smiled. "Just an answer to Emilia's incessant nagging."

"Mommy doesn't nag."

"Yes. She does." CQ watched as her mom continued working on the device, not even looking at it. "But with this, at last I shall have peace. And maybe pay her back for all those hours of design I owed her."

"I thought mommy said you could pay those back another way."

Her mom blushed.

"I...yes, but that's another story."

"A story?"

"A long one."

"I have time."

Alexandra looked away, stammering slightly."

"I-I don't. Anyway, this will form the core of my new Fashionbot!" She gestured at the pile of hardware on the table.

The boss tilted her head as she looked at the electronics. Some were mundane, but most sparked with mana and arcane energy. She didn't have her mom's technical aptitude with anything relating to software, so they were mostly alien to her. She knew magic extremely well, but it was on an instinctive level, though her mommy was making sure she was learning the 'proper' way as well.

"They look like the stuff Subtlety and Glitch are made of."

Her mom nodded.

"They're pretty much the same. Just in lesser quantities and with different OS. Nonsapient. I want a bot, not another AI. Well, technically it'll be an AI but...mmmhhh. I realized I don't have a term beyond 'nonsapient AI', which is kind of a mouthful."

"Smartbot? Smartgolem?"

"Eeeeh." The dungeon core snapped her fingers. "Simulacrum! There. Remembered Ciel calling them that name." She lowered her voice, below what a normal person would be able to hear. But CQ wasn't normal. Or, depending on one's view, a person. Though expressing that within either of her mother's reach would be a very messy way to commit suicide. Though at least it would be quick, unlike if they did so within range of the maids. "That murderous bitch." She cleared her throat, speaking normally again. "Let's call them simulacrum. In honor of an old enemy."

"Oki." CQ nodded. She'd have asked for more details, but...

Mom didn't like speaking about her past, but her daughter knew about Ciel. The undisputed dictator of the UIS, and the AI who had eventually orchestrated the build up to the second battle of Alpha Centauri.

The battle that had caused the death of her mother's siblings, the only family she had left on Earth. At least depending on how you qualified Arcadia.

"So, just got to load up the programs, pack all this inside a standard golem, and kick this puppy into gear!"

"Programs? Wouldn't it be super complicated?"

"Nah. I copied some from the Flickerlight's databanks, put in some of Seraph's software, and bam!"

"But how do you teach it, to do fashion?"

Alexandra smiled, fully turning around to face her daughter, setting her tools down on the workbench, in what little room there was left.

"I loaded it up with everything Seraph had about art. The Flickerlight...didn't have much, but still grabbed some stuff. And for any more teaching? Well I have you kiddo."

"So...I get a golem friend to teach how to paint?"

Her mom's smile got wider.

"Yep!"

She grabbed her mother's shoulders.

"When can you start it?!?"

*****

"This is ridiculous." Said Emilia, huffing as the bot followed CQ's instructions and painted the mural.

"It's efficient." Alexandra had a smile that could devour an entire sewer's worth of excrement. "And it gets me out of my debt."

"By outsourcing all the design time you owe me? You were the one supposed to do it!"

"Come on. Don't be like that. It looks good, doesn't it?"

"I mean yes, but still..."

"Plus, making minions do my work is what I do." She waved at the AIs observing the proceedings. "No offense."

"None taken. You are a better overlord than most." Said Glitch, and Alexandra winced. Given that the AI's only experience with other overlords was the Kingdom and its rebellious duchy, that wasn't a particularly high bar to clear.

"Thanks."

"This isn't over." Said Emilia.

"Of course not love! Look, it's only getting started. I'll give it access to the fabricators and logistics requisition system. That'll get it cooking properly."

*****

CQ softly knocked on the wall again as she entered the workshop.

Her mom turned around, tilting her head.

"Oh. Hey kiddo, back so soon? Something wrong with the bot?"

"Well, uh..." CQ looked at the ceiling as she shifted around uncomfortably. "There might be a few...kinks to work out."

"It stopped working?"

"No. The opposite actually. It's more that, once it got going it's, uh...hard to get it to stop?"

Her mom blinked.

"What do you mean?"

CQ coughed, and stepped aside, letting her fellow boss into the workshop.

Her mom dropped the tools she was holding as she saw Jared. The butler golem was dressed in a bright pink tutu, with sparkles. The golem was looking thoroughly unimpressed. Which was something of a feat given that he lacked any facial expression to speak of and the ability to speak.

"Holy sweet- Where is it?"

"Last I saw it, it was exiting the core fortress and going to the fourth floor."

"Shit shit shit shit shit!" Said the dungeon core as she leapt off her seat and out of the room. "If Emilia hears about this, I-"

"Hear about what?"

The dungeon core almost crashed into one of the praetorian golems guarding the hallway as her girlfriend walked out of one of the side corridors.

*****

"This is a disaster." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the golems.

The fourth floor was meant to be a war zone, with a palace at the end. Now it was a circus, both metaphorically and literally. The worst part was, some of it was good. Really good. The napoleonic uniforms for the palace guard? Chef's kiss. Same for the poilu and bosche uniforms for the ones in the trenches. The pickelhaubes were practically works of art in their own right.

But the rest...one of the spider tanks had been decorated as an ice cream delivery truck, and an entire gun crew for one of the field guns was working their artillery while dressed as clowns, complete with squeaky shoes and the red ball glued to their otherwise featureless faceplates.

"I don't know. I kind of like it." Said Emilia, clearly trying to stop herself from laughing out loud. "It has flair."

"I-" Alexandra sighed. "I'm never gonna live this down, am I?"

That wasn't only directed to her girlfriend. Ghost had given up her physical form, and she was laughing so hard in the simulation she couldn't even form coherent sentences.

"Nope!" The vampire smiled. "CQ, what do you think?"

Their daughter looked up from inspecting the spider tank and listening to its ice cream jingle.

"I like it! It lacks coherence though. Every individual piece is great, but there's no...greater view, no ensemble?"

"That's fair." Emilia smiled. "Come on. Seraph said it was on the second floor, right? Let's take a look."

It was a short trip there. The entire dungeon was festooned with high speed elevators for ease of access, and rapid troop deployment. The adventurers had all cleared out for the night, so there was no need to wait for a party to pass, or have to evacuate the floor.

For safety reasons, and totally not to save face, Alexandra had put the entrances on lockdown however, and activated the sentry guns with orders to blast the wayward golem on sight.

They popped into the gigantic, cavernous space of the second floor, and gazed at its ruined city.

The first thing the dungeon core noticed was the golem, sprawled on the ground. She went to its side, running diagnostics check.

"Uh. It overloaded. Its systems tried to go beyond what they could handle and just...died." Alexandra frowned. That was...unusual. Normally an AI in that situation requisitioned processing power from somewhere else. But then again, her dungeon network was so heavily shielded, with defensive systems, some of her own making and others not, the latter working under careful scrutiny of course, that it probably wasn't an option.

"Uh...mom?" Said CQ tugging on her sleeve. or rather the armor plate that covered it.

"Yeah?" Answered the dungeon, continuing to gaze at the golem in puzzlement.

"Look up."

Alexandra blinked, and obeyed.

Her mouth hanged open.

Now she understood why the golem had overloaded.

The ceiling, the entire square kilometer of it, was one, gigantic painting, only broken up by the pillars supporting it.

It featured two ships, a modified Glimmer-class light cruiser that had to be the Flickerlight, and a ship she knew better than her own face: the Dawnstar. Her former flagship, and the fruit of decades of her work.

The ship she had murdered a whole world from.

Behind it was the green, blue and grey orb of Earth, just as she remembered it...remembered it from when she last saw it, from the armored window of the space station, before she was thrown into hyperspace and ended up on Alcheryos.

Alcheryos which was represented behind the Flickerlight. An orb of blue, yellow and green, the wastelands great gashes within its renewed life. A tiny, solitary green dot in the middle of the Arkhan continent representing Rebirth.

And filling the space were the twinkling stars of the Milky Way and the innumerable ships and stations that surrounded her homeworld. Each one a testament to humanity's might and ingenuity. Each...each represented the achievements of humanity ever since the first fusion thruster had been built and the hyperdrive had been designed. That had been her thought when she'd last seen them.

Lights she hoped to bring to Alcheryos one day, and not just the solitary light of the Citadel above the world, threatening to wipe out anyone who dared reach for the stars.

She only realized she was crying when her vision began to be troubled by the tears.

In the simulation, even Ghost was silent.

"Is that..." Started Emilia.

"It's Earth." Said Alexandra, and Ghost simultaneously, both speaking through the dungeon avatar's mouth at once. "And the Dawnstar. As well as the Flickerlight."

They both took a deep breath, and got up, drying their tears as they did so.

"Are you okay?" Asked the vampire, worriedly.

"No. Yes. I don't know." Alexandra shook herself as she felt her thoughts desynchronize with her other self. "I don't know." She sighed. "CQ?"

"Yes mom?"

"Can you...preserve this? I could absorb the ceiling via my dungeon powers, but I don't know if I could do it justice. And it can't stay here. Someone would recognize what it represents, and even if they didn't, adventurers would ask questions."

"Sure mom! I still got the stuff you made to preserve my paintings in the water temple."

"Good. Be a dear and go fetch it?"

"Yes mom!" Her daughter nodded, and vanished in a flash of energy as she teleported away, appearing right next to the elevator and barreling into it.

"You should probably go back to the core fortress. Lie down for a bit." Said Emilia, carefully, as she gazed at her girlfriend. They both knew that would have no effect on the dungeon avatar, but it was the thought that counted, and Alexandra smiled.

"Sure. That sounds good. But first...I want to look at it for a few minutes more."

They both gazed at the painting. A symbol of everything Alexandra had lost, and everything she had gained.