22
“Tania Tazzlefoot,” she exclaimed suddenly.
“What?”
“That’s my name.”
“Tania Tazzlefoot?”
“That’s my name, buster,” she crowed. “Don’t wear it out!”
“Right.” Milo looked her up and down.
Being unfamiliar with women’s clothing, he’d bought a couple of pairs of intimate underwear until he got the right size.
“I’m telling you,” she said. “It’s not pretty enough. What’d you do? Pick the most boring panties you could find?”
His ears flushed warmly. “I was the only man in the shop,” he told her. “Everyone was looking at me funny. The lady who owned the place even asked if it was for me.”
“Why would you wear my panties?” She peered suspiciously at me. “Are you weirder than you look, Milo?”
“Stop that.” Milo shook his head at her. “I’m not interested in your underwear.”
“Really?” She plucked at the hem of her panties. “Not even a little?”
“Well, not in wearing them,” he said drily. “But I’d also prefer if you put on the dress I bought for you.”
“But it’s frumpy.”
“It’s supposed to be a bit loose,” he said. “So you can hide yourself. If people get a close look, they’ll figure out you’re not proper human.”
“So?”
“It’d be troublesome to explain,” he told her. “And the mages would most likely pull you apart to take your core.”
“Take my core?” She let out a horrified gasp. “What for?”
“To stick on their wand.”
She wrinkled her nose. “So, all mages are perverts now? Great.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant their actual wand. Your core would increase the size of their mana. By a lot.”
“Typical. Even in this era, men are looking to increase the size of their thing.”
“Mana! Not… Not that!”
“It’s all the same.” She shrugged.
“No it isn’t.”
“Then why do all the other students tease you and point out how small your mana is?”
“Because I don’t have much mana?”
“Yes, but they say it like they’re talking about your thing, right?”
“Well…”
“So, it’s the same.”
“Your mind is really in the gutter.” He sighed. “Are all golems like you?”
“No one’s like me, buster! I’m the best! And don’t ya forget it!”
“I mean, are they all… obsessed with… you know…”
“Sex?” She grinned up at him. “You really are a bona fide virgin, ain’t ya? Can’t even say sex.”
“I’m trying to be polite.” He scowled down at her. “You said you were a lady. Gentlemen aren’t supposed to talk like that in front of a lady.”
“And gentlemen ain’t supposed to stare at a girl’s coochie, neither,” she countered. “But you do it all the time.”
“Only because you were naked!”
“And whose fault is that?”
“This is going nowhere,” he muttered.
“I need some gold.”
“What for?”
“I want to go shopping.” She plucked at the frumpy dress and pushed it away. “Your taste is terrible. I want to get something prettier.”
Milo let out a choked laugh. “I think they made you too realistic.”
“Just give me some gold, Milo,” she whined, holding out her hand.
“I’m not sure you should go wandering around the city on your own.”
“Why not? I’m a big girl.”
He looked down at her. “Not that big.”
She flicked her wrist and a blade snapped out. “I got big knives, though.”
“That’s another reason I’m not sure you should be wandering around.”
“Look, I’m an infiltration unit, Milo. Infiltration’s what I do. Just let me sneak out and get a pretty dress. Or two. And some heels. And maybe some frillier underclothes. And a handbag. And-”
He dropped a small purse into her hand. “That’s all I can give you.”
“Alright!” She grinned, hugging the purse tight. “You won’t regret it, Milo. You’ll like me in my new dress, I promise. Just you wait.”
“Right.” He sighed. “But please keep a low profile, okay?”
“What do you take me for? Some rube from the boonies?”
“The what?”
“The boonies.” She rolled her eyes at him. “What’s with this era? You ain’t got any proper words.”
She tugged on the frumpy dress with a reluctant growl, then skipped out of the Workshop.
He still wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her to be on her own.
“Click?”
A small whir came from the ducting.
“Follow her, please. Let me know if anything awful happens.”
A click of gears and a soft purring clatter was all he heard before the little spider golem raced off through the ducts.
At least Milo could trust Click.
He thought about the gold he’d just given her.
It was a good thing Spragg had taken a few of his smaller cores and was able to sell those. The fully-charged one was still being bid on, he said. It might take a while to sort out.
Then he thought about her new name.
“Tania Tazzlefoot.” He let the name sit on his tongue.
It wasn’t bad.
Moving to the security room, he settled in to watch one of his classes. Master Garmstooth, who taught strategies and support, was discussing the importance of back-up.
How it wasn’t uncommon for someone to hang back with a sniper rifle or something.
Milo thought about that.
He’d started piecing together a new rifle from one the Workshop had in the library. The girl golem, Tania, had laughed at him for thinking it was a good rifle.
“Buster, that little thing’s only good for popping rats.”
Given it was a lot more powerful than anything the mages were using, he had some doubts about her assessment. She swore there were more powerful weapons available, but Fed promptly referred him to the Prime once more.
“The key to good Support roles is knowing when to interfere,” Master Garmstooth was saying on the screen. “Inserting yourself too soon can lead to resourcing issues as you waste your ammunition on a target best left to your Tank and Damage roles.”
It made sense.
So much sense that Milo yawned. The class was terribly basic.
Or was it that the students seldom thought more than a step ahead of themselves?
Clack had been positioned quite far behind and above the class, so Milo could make out the other students.
Jin and Fergus were sitting up the back. They looked more interested in a map they were flipping through. It looked like a map of the Keep. It made a change from the magazines they were usually chuckling over.
Another student Milo recognized was Cerena Fenwington. She had her back to him, which was a bit of a shame. He was of the opinion that her figure was better than anything inside Fergus’ magazines.
Which made him think of Tania again.
The female golem seemed a mess of contradictions. She was shy about her internals, but her skin was something she was proud of. She was deeply enthusiastic about how her breasts bounced and liked to show him whenever she could grab his attention.
Which was often, he had to admit.
When he was assembling her, it’d been distracting but he hadn’t thought of her as more than a machine he was putting together. Now, though, with her skin in place and long lush black hair tied into a slick ponytail, she looked more human than she had any right to be.
It was getting harder to think of her as just a construct.
Especially when she had such a powerful personality.
“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” he murmured. He’d expected something more cold and aloof. Something like Fed.
He’d expected a machine.
Dwarves, he thought with another bemused shake of his head. They must’ve been freaky.
Cerena exchanged notes with a big man next to her. Belt Borridge. Broad, blond, and a little dim. Everything the other female students were looking for in a man.
The two had formed a team. They seemed to know each other from before their time in the Academy.
The lesson continued slowly. Garmstooth put forward several scenarios, querying random students as to potential best options.
Then he gave a few tips and pointers for the upcoming dungeon, The Scaled Worm’s Lair. It sounded like it wouldn’t be the kind of worms Tania had assumed. Instead it would be lizards. Small drakes.
Kobolds.
Garmstooth promised the kobolds would be sneaky and intelligent in their tactics, where the drakes would be blunt but terrifyingly powerful. They could, after all, breathe fire.
That, he said, usually killed a few students every year.
“You need to watch them closely,” he said. “The Support role should be calling out when the drake is ready to exhale. That’s the Support role more than anything else. Observation and information transfer. Your success in a dungeon will often depend on noticing little things.”
Milo nodded along to that.
Fergus folded the map away and clapped Jin on the shoulder. Whatever they’d decided, they looked happy about it.
Milo wondered which one was going to die screaming in the flames of a drake.
He hoped it would be Fergus.