As I sat waiting by the Elevator Entrance, on the 6th Depth of the Clockworks, in the burning heat of the Blast Furnace (But I felt none it for my Cooling Cells were working quite well with my Wolver Coat and Cap, but that’s another story for another time) I took another look at my Autogun. It was nothing special. I had bought my own Recipe from Basil, a proper electronic schematic so I had no need to transcribe it; and I had enough Gold Crowns to put into the Alchemy Machine in order to give it that yellowy finish; the Alchemy Machine was even ‘kind’ enough to ‘bless’ my Autogun with a mild hatred towards Gremlins. All-in-all it was a pretty ordinary Handgun. Emphasis on the WAS. Of course, as soon as I had fought a few battles with it, I knew that this weapon, this GUN, could be so much more. And so I went to work; removing and tinkering with the magazine, replacing the Ammunition with my Specialised Shards (I’ll talk about them later), adding an accelerator to the end of it, and even a Picatinny Rail (for further experimentation). However, no matter how careful I was with dismantling it and reassembling it, the Binding was broken. For those who still don’t know, the Binding is something which enables a weapon to do many things, most of which allows the Knight wielding it to stop worrying about trivial matters, such as proper maintenance and reloading of the magazine for Guns, and sharpening of the blade for Swords; and concentrate on more important matters, such as actually attacking the Monsters of Cradle. (I could talk about this in more detail, but I think I’ll leave it for another time.)

Anyway, where was I? ...

Oh yes! My modified Autogun! So what happened afterwards was that I then became responsible for the regular cleaning and manual reloading, among various other things, of my now-Modified-Autogun. Whilst this did become a slight nuisance at least I was able to store it within my personal Hammerspace, so there was at least that. Also, another interesting feature was the fact that the Stock of my Autogun, normally slotted within the Autogun itself to keep it within ‘Safety Mode’, actually served a dual-purpose now. Whilst it still reserved the ability to ‘lock’ my weapon into safety mode, once withdrawn, the special modifications I made to it allow it to help in increasing the power of each Shard shot by the Autogun, as well as various other ‘things’.

In hindsight, I think that... Wait. Did you hear that?

*The screech of metal on moving metal reverberates throughout the whole of the depth, even going as far afield as a nearby Clockwork Tunnel, as the bottom of an Elevator rapidly appears above the Blast Furnace*

With a gentle hiss of steam being released and a resounding and solid-sounding sound of metal sliding into place, the Elevator finally slid into its base and stayed there.

Before the person inside could see me through the thick steam I quickly put away my Autogun, and withdrew my Arc Razor.

“Hey G! What’s up?” Was the welcome which issued from my friend, Soulstaker, as he waved through the fog, wearing his Divine Veil and his Ash Tail Coat. In his right hand was a Vile Striker; over his left a Surge Breaker Shield lay, activated, shining it fluorescent light out towards the inky darkness of the Clockworks; and in his left hand, was a non-descript brown bag, which had the bottom half unnervingly sodden with frick-knows-what kind of liquid.

“Let me guess,” I said, pointing towards the brown bag with my Arc Razor, “My rations?”

“Yep!” Was the chipper reply from Soulstaker.

“And let me guess again,” as I let weapon hang loosely in my grip, “Pumpkin Pie?”

“Could it be anything else?” Said Soulstaker as he stepped off of the Elevator. And as soon as he stepped off, the coiled springs underneath it released their tension and sent the platform flying into the air, guided by Iron Rails. There it hung briefly in mid-air before a robotic arm, pushed forward by equal parts pistons and equal parts servos, caught it within its iron grasp and carried it off without breaking pace into the darkness that was the Clockworks. Soulstaker looked up at it as it vanished from sight. “Do you remember the first couple of times that we went on that thing?” He asked.

“Of course. We both passed out. Just like every other Newbie.”

“Yeah, except you my dear friend, you woke up halfway through and passed out again.”

“That I did. Remind me again why I told you that?”

“Because we’re friends of course!” Soulstaker spread his arms wide as if to accentuate that simple fact.

“Well, then remember the time we first encountered the Prize Wheel? You got an Iron Lockbox to the face!”

“And you got a Sharp Fang to your face!”

I gave a long drawn out sigh. “Come on. The sooner we can get this over and done with the sooner we can get the hell out of here and back up-top.”

“Back to your ‘Home’?” At this question he also threw me my rations. Thankfully I had learnt to at least flail my hands through the air until I caught something. And I was also thankful that he threw it at my face instead of the back of my head.

“Yes,” I replied, as I remove my helmet to eat the single pumpkin pie in the bag, “My ‘Home’,” I continued to eat away at the pie until it was all gone, and my hunger sated, “I’ll have you know that that cost me immense amounts of Crowns and Crystal Energy.”

“Here we go again,” Was his response to my oncoming rant. That and beginning to walk through the current depth.

“It cost 30,000 Crowns to have my original Crash Pod scavenged. 100,000 Crowns to reserve an Acre for myself. 300 Crystal Energy to fully activate my Pod. And on top of all that I had to pay several thousand Crowns to fully furnish everything.” At this point I was jogging behind him, shouting all the cost I had incurred in the setting up of my ‘Home’.

“Ok, ok. I get it. It cost a lot of money for you to do whatever you wanted to do to make a cosy little... whatever for yourself. Ok? I understand.” A pause, “What I don’t understand is why?”

“Why?” Was my incredulous response.

“Yes. Why would you want to do that? We don’t need to sleep. And we can carry everything within our own personal Hammerspace dimensions. See? No need to have a place to ‘sit down’, no need to have a place to ‘store away our stuff’.”

“It’s just... It’s just...”

“Yes?” By now we had both stopped before an entrance to a Danger Room.

“It’s just something which only I can understand.”

“What? Like some sort of instinct?”

“Sort of. Look. All that I know is that I just want this. I want to have a place that I can call my own. A place which I can change as I see fit. A place where... where I can... where I can just say that I own and... And...” I gave a long, drawn-out sigh, “Look, I just need to do this, ok? For me.”

“Okay. I understand. It’s something deep and personal that you need to do.”

“Yeah, that and I’ve invested too much money to pull out now. I’m in for the long haul anyway now.”

Soulstaker laughed a derisive laugh. “Yeah, you’re pretty much messed up either way now, might as well keep on going forward.” He turned his head to look at the foreboding gate to the Danger Room, and turned to look back at me, “How about we mend our friendship over a good old-fashioned Danger Room Run?”

I simply looked straight at him with a condescending look, before putting my Wolver Cap back on and walking away from the Danger Room.

“Oh, come on!” Shouted Soulstaker, “You know that was a joke!”

“I don’t care!” I shouted back, “We’re moving forward!”

Laughing a comradely laugh he took out his Magnus and ran after me as we continued out on our mission to meet up with the other half of our party, and from there we would meet up with the other parties. After that, we could finally begin our mission. What was it? I’ll tell you that another time. For now though, goodbye.