I put the finishing touches on the dragon by making him some plating to cover his internals, as that wasn't something Clockwork Planet could do (I made sure not to add the ability to make plating to further boost the Sacred Gears' main ability of gear creation). I help the big guy out of my workshop after we found that he is too big to actually get him self out of the garage door I had installed for the larger automotons, and when he is out, he gives my chest a bump with his snout and nuzzles me as I think of a name.
"What about Draco?" he looks at me dead in the eyes and huffs and blasts me with warm air from his nose, "Alright, what about Festus after what I built you after?" That gets me another blast of air, so I lightly swat the big baby on the nose.
"I'll call you mittens I swear to god" I grumble and freeze when I notice he doesn't blast me with air, "No there is no way I'm calling the 20-ton dragon of celestial bronze and physics-defying clockwork bullshit fucking mittens"
He decided his name was Mittens.
"Whatever, just guard the area for now, you asshole", I grumble as I walk back inside and get to work on my doppelganger, I was going to make so nobody would suspect that I had left the universe while I was out exploring.
It was quite simple, actually. It took my summoning clockwork planet and willing the parts to appear and assemble themselves into a completely skinless body (can't make fake skin as it isn't made of gears), which I put the finishing touches on and activated its IM gear.
This automaton's IM gear was built around the work 'copy' and its IM gear could gather and store massive amounts of information just by looking at somebody before its secondary system activated and shifted the outside plating and even the proportions of the automaton to match the person it intended to copy.
Basically, I just made a robot Mystique that was chrome instead of blue, as her specific gears and plating wear made of incredibly trace amounts of mysterium, which downright negates the use of magic on itself, allowing Mystique not to be able to be spotted via divination magic or any other similar magics.
I went through the whole awakening process with her and explained why I had created her before further explaining that this was a request and not an order, and she was allowed to refuse me.
When she asked if she had a soul as an atomaton I was happy to explain that she instead did have her own soul and that while it was technically a tiny piece of my own soul that was removed and placed into her, as she lived and experienced life and all it held that soul shard would grow into a complete soul of her own.
"I want to have a small trip sometime this week but I am good to wait a few days for you to decide if you wish to take my place while I'm gone or not" If she refused I would just ask Peter to take over with running my shop while I'm gone and maybe even teaching the kids.
She nodded and got up from her chair as her scale-like patterning rippled, and she grew about a foot in height as she took my form so we could test if everything was working properly.
"This is incredibly disorientating when my own thinking pattern changes, but I do think I can get used to the incredible amount of knowledge this form gives me", she (now myself) says, and she starts stretching and inspecting her own body.
"Yes and eventually I should be able to make it possible for you to copy not just form and knowledge but also any abilities the person has" I didn't think I would be able to do that anytime soon as she would most likely need a full soul and even DNA (or an equivalent) to copy most powers.
"Well you are free to do as you like for the next few days but I would like for you to return and give me your answer as soon as possible" she nodded and I watched as she walked out of the workshop and looked over to the side before her body rippled and her form changed to that of mittens and she took off in the direction opposite the city.
"I didn't restrict her form to humanoids, did I?" I mutter as I watch the shapeshifted dragon roar and fly faster.
"Well that's won't become a problem I hope" I shrug and go back to my workshop and continue building my of the horizon series atomaton's as they had been doing a wonderful job and had even managed to make an area (no matter how small) actually fertile allowing me to make a garden and actually grow more food for the people at my shop.
The next few days flew by in no time, and by the third day, I saw myself enter the workshop carrying a small automaton modelled after a sheep.
"What you got there, Mystique?" I ask as she sets the sheep down, shifts her hand to become a screwdriver and reaches into the sheep to wind it up. When the final click of the wind is done, she pulls back and admires her work as the sheep baa's, and I can see actual thread being pushed slowly out of the metal sheep's body in a mimicry of a normal sheep.
"I was playing around with your form and decided to have a go with your extensive clockwork knowledge and managed to create this. A sheep automaton that converts anything it eats into threads of all types, be they metal threads or fibre" I look over the sheep, and I have to admit it was well done, as somebody without the knowledge to create an IM gear, she had managed all of this.
"It's a damn good job, especially because the longer you go without scanning the person you are copying, the more data your system throws away as 'junk' data", I say as I continue inspecting her work.
"I had noticed that after a while in mittens form I seemingly forgot how to manipulate my own gravity like he does and had to manually flap my wings to glide down without crashing." It made sense that the first thing her system would throw away as junk data would be the ridiculously complex math mittens' system that it uses to manipulate its own gravity.
"But I've decided that I will accept your request on the condition that I get to use your workshop while you are gone, as I have found I quite like the process of building things" I nodded and handed her a copy of my key before stepping back and doing a big stretch.
"In that case, imma go to bed for the night, and I'll leave tomorrow, so I should be back the day after", I say as I make my way to the simple cot I had set up in the corner of my workshop for situations like this, where I was dead tired.
" Goodnight", she called out as she made her way outside, and I returned her goodnight with one of my own.