The Country of Panacea, The Capital City, Helios.
The City of Light, run by the Council of Gears - A council made from representatives of every race and every guild, every walk of life.

Helios is a 'golden city', though that is a misnomer. Most of the metallic sheen seen all over is infact copper or brass, not gold. Yet it is called as much because of the shining light of the people's hope, and the many opportunities that are said to be here. Everyone is cared for, everyone can thrive, or so they say.

Long ago, it and the country of Panacea was created with a vision of peace and equality. It was supposed to be the leading light, the goal post for all of society- both technological and magical. Thus, it was made to be ruled by a grand council, and no king or queen. These days, most believe this is still true, but some say that the light is dimming.

Our story begins in one particularly metal section of the city- here gears are produced, clockwork is competitive, and daily life is run on steam and engineering than it is by magic.

Asteria, or Ash as her friends called her, was a brilliant girl. She was the daughter of an engineer of the College in the city of Helios. Her father had passed a few years before, but Ash still carried out his mission to make the city a better place. And that best way to do that was through the art of steampunk machines.

Ash ran a shop in the capital city, The Silver Gear, that handled almost everything and anything to do with machines or problems. Ash ran the shop alone with her creations. At this point it was mid morning while she was working on something for the second prince of Helios. It was a tracking system so he could track military forces and such to make sure no one was lost in the fields of battle or on missions for the crown. Ash was trying to fix a small part when the doors opened and a young girl came in, carrying a small robotic creature in her arms.

Ash looked up, her googles over her green eyes and she pushed them up. "Little Cassie, what brings you in this morning?"

Cassie was crying softly and set the creature on the work bench. "Its Tinker...his broken...a guard stepped on him..." Ash sighed and walked over, looking at the damage. The guards were rough and didn't really care about the poor people of the city. But Ash did dearly. She smiled at the young girl and picked up the creature.

"Leave him with me, Cassie...I'll have him fixed up in no time" Cassie smiled and nodded, running out of the store without another word. Ash shook her head and moved poor machine to the back table, turning the work lamp on and gathering her tools. She started working on him when she had to pause. His core was damaged badly, smashed to pieces. Ash sighed and moved back.

"I'll have to get him a new core...I think I have some in the back..." She got up and went out the back door of the shop, shutting it behind her. Behind her shop was a small yard were other of her creations liked to hang out in the sun and recharge. At the back of the yard was a storage building for the big parts she didn't have room for in the shop, or power cores she didn't want laying around. She unlocked the store door, pushing her brown hair behind her ear as she was about to walk in when she heard a roar from above her. She looked up to see a dragon fly over head. She smiled and waved at it, knowing the rider of the scaled sky master. Then she opened the door and slipped inside.

At some point while she was away, probably a short while before she once again returned, a golden spark was created in mid-air. With each passing second, the size of the spark grew, until eventually it would connect to itself in a ovoid shape. And, at about the time that Asteria walked back through her door, the fabric of reality would ripple, and open a portal. One could look through this portal, straight to the other side. And if they were to look, they would see some dirty, cluttered alley way. Non-descript, and darkened by shadows.

From that location, a young man seems to be crawling up through the portal, from the ground, as if he had been laying before. His appearance is likewise tusseled enough to suggest as much. His hair and skin, both appearing normal despite the stripes of purplish silver, were both dirty. His car ears lazily announce his current form. Yet, in contrast of that and his rather ragged looking clothes, he wore what appeared to be light armor, made of shined bronze.

The cat boy flopped the rest of himself onto the floor, and laid still for a moment as he took in his surroundings, and the girl infront of him. Then he would burst out laughing, "Oops...wrong location~"

However, the portal would close behind him quickly, giving him no option to backtrack.

Ash walked into the shop from the back, holding a box of glowing spheres. But she stopped when she saw the portal open. The inventor threw her jacket over the box and smiled walking over. Setting the box on the table, Ash moved the small creature over and covered him with a towel so she could work on him later. Leaning on the counter she watched the scene before her and didn’t seem too surprised by the events.

When the cat boys portal closed and he was left blinking up at her, Ash moved around and bent over to look at him. “Hello there? You’re in the Silver Gear. Can I help you with something?”

The young man kept giggling to himself a moment, then tried to quiet himself as Asteria welcomed him...beofre bursting again in a bit of a giggle fit. Clearly, he was happy, and perhaps a bit intoxicated. His golden eyes shined with delight, "Ah...the silver gear...heheh...what a relief."

Then he paused as if to think of sommething, "ah..uh...I mean, its not a bad store." He nods, seemingly satisfied that he managed to explain himself, "There are worse location to...to... uh... Heh. I messed up my teleportation contract, you know?"

He looks around lazily, looking for a place to sit, but eventually just crawls his way to the nearest wall to lean against and yawn, "...hey, can I rest here a while?"

Ash blinked at him but then smiled, nodding. “Of course. Trigger?” From the other room came a wolf like machine, copper and gold gearings and metal pieces moving in harmony walked in. He sat down and Ash moved to get to work on the small creature. “A blanket for our guest? And a bottle of water?” The wolf nodded and slipped up the ladder stairs in the corner.

Ash started to fit the new core into the small rodent and asked “and who might you be if you don’t mind my asking?”

The young man, still in his altered state, grins as the gear wolf walks in. Scooting a little closer, he tries to get a better look, but too soon the wolf is sent away for supplies. Turning his gaze back to the owner of the store, he continues to grin. "Oh yes, oh yes....my name is Chi. Im a shifter...its nice to meet you."

At least now, he tries to stand again, only half succeeding, still needing something to lean on. "oh, its spinning.." he sighs and closes his eyes for a moment. "You're such a nice girl."

Ash was sealing the chest of the creature as she said “always happy to help. There is a couch on the wall behind me. You might be more comfortable there?”

Trigger came back in and had the water in his tail, blanket over his back. He walked over and used his teeth to grab the cat boy and lead him to the couch she spoke, pushing him onto it.

Ash was checking her work and muttered “that should do it…a deep cleaning and you will be all set for your owner little one…”

"Meow~" he teases, as he was being led to the couch. He had no resistance for being pushed down on the couch. ANd instead of complaining or doing anything else, he reaches back towards the gear wolf. "..pet?"

Regardless of being allowed to pet the cool metal wolf thing, he brings his feet up on the couch, and wrapping himself with a blanket, "She's a god girl, isnt she? Oh. I meen good. A good girl."

He nods a little and curls up on the couch.

Trigger moved closer and nodded, allowing to be pet by Chi. He sat down and his tail wagged when the petting started. Ash smiled and said “that is Trigger and yes he is a very good boy. Now Tinker here will be just fine.”

She carefully set the sphere into the chest of the machine and muttered softly a chant in her father native tongue. The sphere glowed brother and fused into the core machine came back to life. Ash smiled and sighed, looking worn out and tired as she closed the door to the chest. Tinker jumped up and chirped, running around the work table. Ash leaned back and muttered “back to working on that dumb tracking system…” Ash moved and started to deep clean the small bot then when all done she put a fresh brown leather bow around his neck and put him in a box to keep him safe.

Walking over to the couch, she smiled at the young neko(not sure it’s the right term) and pulled the blanket up more and said “let him stay til he wakes…I’m going to work in the work shop” Trigger nodded and laid down by the couch as Ash walked to the side door and opened it, walking inside.

Chi seemed pleased by being allowed to pet the metallic creature by his side. The petting lulled him closer, and closer to sleep, even as he seemed interested and absorbed by watching the girl work. He would curls up more as she pulled the blanket to cover him more, smiling sleepily, but also almost knowingly.

As he drifted off into sleep, hopefully to recover from his silly state, he dreampt of robots cats and dogs, and junkyard and booze, and a world of illusions and giant gears.

He would likely wake in a couple hours.

Ash worked into the night on a huge wall panel that had a metal medium map of the capital. She had been asked by one of the City Saints to build a tracking system that could be used anywhere in the city. Which wasn’t an easy task thanks to the fact most of the city was metal. Ash was working the bugs out of the map itself first, the small bug like trackers sitting on a far table waiting to be worked on.

In the corner of the lab was a huge shape under a tarp, a protect Ash would rather be working on than this. It was about midnight when Ash heard a small ringing sound. She turned to see one of her machines, a small hummingbird, was blinking and flying around behind her. She frowned, standing up. “That’s the backyard alarm…” she picked up an arm band and slipped it on, also picking up a small pistol from the side table. She moved to the main shop, seeing her guest still asleep and moved to the back door, opening it slowly.

In the yard stood three all black humanoid bots, wearing street clothes and caps. Ash slipped outside and turned on her pistol with started up with a hum. She stepped out of the shadows and aimed the pistol. “I’m in no mood for this…leave now if you don’t want your circuits fried”

For a while, the apparent cat boy kept sleeping. They were weird dreams, a mix of pleasant and dark chaos. Not that he minded. He just went along with it...but he could feel a change of some sort. He woke up, still a bit groggy, but in the face of waking up somewhere he did not immediately recognise, he blinked such drowsiness away.

For a moment, he was very still as his mind wrapped around his own situation, and then the one in the immediate area as the girl from earlier went outside and began to talk to someone. It seemed to him that it was not a good mood in the air. He frowns slightly as he very quietly gets up to look out from behind her, observing the interactions happening here, but unsure if he himself should get involved.

By the time he got there Ash was firing at the bots who were on a full on attack on her. One bot was sparking on the ground from her blaster shots but the gun was on the ground as Ash was fighting with another bot who was trying to get to the back shed. The last bot was being taken down by Trigger.

Ash finally got up and kicked the bots chest hard, braking into it and the bot fell lifeless. But the last bot grabbed Triggers neck and threw him into the wall and saw Chi standing at the doorway. It stood up and aimed its arm at him, a blaster built in. It fired at Chi and Ash cursed “no get down!” She jumped and tackled Chi, the ballast hitting her in the shoulder. She landed in front of him and gasped in pain her shoulder burned badly.

Ash flinched trying to get up and muttered “run…you shouldn’t get involved in this..”.

Chi had barely gotten in place, enough to remember hearing about such bots in the past - somewhere, he wasn't sure- and also enough time to watch as things went downhill quickly. It went from speaking to intruders to a full gun fight.

After the girl took a shot for him, some sense of determination filled him.

She hadnt needed to say the words, but it lodged itself into his mind anyways.

"...run?"

There was a beat of hesitation, but then he grabbed her and shut the door, already mid-transformation. It appeared to be a humanoid form again, closer to a tiger than a regular cat. Next, he would try to pull her further into the shop, hurriedly drawing up a teleport contract in the air.

Ash cried out as they moved inside, the wound bleeding badly. Then she said “just…get it…inside…the work room…” she was weakly trying to hit a button on her arm band, sadly being on the other side of the bleeding painful arm.

The doors burst open and the bot came in. Aiming the blaster at Ash and Chi as it walked towards them. Ash seemed to be waiting then said “gotcha” right as the robot in a coat was in front of the workshop door. Then she hit the button. After five seconds the door flew open and a hard form came flying out into the bot, taking it down and slamming it over and over. The form turned out to be a huge turtle looking machine who kept slamming until only parts remained.

Ash panted as her own gun fell from her hand and she swayed on her knelt position. She said “thank you…for getting me…inside…”

During the entire ordeal, Chi had been keeping an eye on her bleeding wounds, while trying to complete the contract. Things were going by quickly. She instructed him to get the bot inside the workshop, but it was too much for him to act right away. He was busy with the construct, and trying to decide how good her idea was, while also struggling to figure out how to follow it - the bot burst in, and within just a few seconds, everything was over.

He stood stunned, the contract nearly complete, but paused. After some prodding from the spirits, he looked over at her, then back at the contract. He allowed the spirits to take the required magic from him, and a portal opened, ready whenever he was. However, instead of immediately going, he would kneel down by the girl and look a bit concerned.

"It was just instincts..." he said, speaking softly, "but wow. You were made this your home turf huh? Dont suppose you got some medicine or healing magic?"

Ash was panting hard and shook her head weakly, her eyes dull now that the threat was gone. “No…I have a medical machine…Nurse Moth but…she’s with the Capital guard right now…they are doing training and I wanted her to go help if anyone was injured…”

She held her wound as she swayed more to the side but she fought to stay up right. “Healing magic…isn’t my thing…for myself…my blood…Magic…healing isn’t part…of it…I’ll have to…clean this…up…” she faltered a bit; blood now flowing from her wound as she started to fall to the side.

Looking at her incredulously, the shifter-now-tiger-man stood up to steady her, hopefully guiding her back down to the floor, "You shouldnt be doing anything, just sit there and try to not go to sleep..." Trying not to panic, he holds himself together as he looks around, until he finds a box of what looks like clean rags.

Grabbing some, he carefully tears them into strips. Calm, slow, movements carefully wound the fabric around the wounded arm. His field dressing would be impressive to anyone experienced. As he works he murmurs softly to her, in a tone light enough to try to not make everything seem as problematic as it could be, "Try to keep your blood inside ok? Cant tell you how bad spoiled blood smells later..."

Ash, now laying on the floor, was fighting to stay awake. She looked at Chi as he worked on her wound and said “you…know what your…doing…are you a medic?” She flinched at the pain then said “the smell…I’ll have the others clean it up…can’t let it stain the floor…”

She looked around the room and sighed “more repairs again…really wish these guys would stop raiding my home…”