This was given to me as a request for The Untold Stories of the Smash Mansion. I'd forgotten about it until I was looking back through reviews and spotted it, and I knew that I just had to write it before the inspiration went away again. So here it is! Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
"Somewhere… it's-a somewhere down here…"
Wario continued to mumble to himself as he lifted, shoved, and very well kicked old and musty cardboard boxes out of his way. Deep down in the basement of the Smash Mansion, where everything reeked of mildew, the tubby little man was hot on the trail of one thing: his fart bombs.
As keeping them in his room was a bad idea (they tended to go off randomly, causing the place to quickly fill with noxious gas) Wario had taken to storing them in a large mahogany chest in the basement of the mansion. The only problem being that he could never find it when he needed it.
Forcing himself between a tall dark wood wardrobe and its matching chest of drawers (why there was abandoned furniture down here was beyond him and not something he wanted to waste time thinking about), Wario popped out and stumbled, rolling a few feet on the dusty concrete floor until he came to a stop in a small cleared area surrounded by stacks of boxes. He looked up and his eyes grew wide.
There, in front of him, was a very damaged—but unmistakably—a robot.
Wario scrambled up off the ground to get a closer look: the robot's once white paint coat was now a yellow gray from aging and dust; the lens of one eye was smashed and the other was popped out, hanging by a wire. The base was dented and cracked, and when Wario gave it a gentle push there was a loud squeak and scrape as the empty wheel bases left grooves in the floor. Two once red arms flopped as lifelessly as the robot's head, and a thick coiled cable that once connected the body to the base was bent out of shape, frayed, and cut in many places. A rotting piece of cardboard with "JUNK" in thick black marker taped to the robot's head completed the image; it looked like a piece of trash that had gotten left behind and then forgotten.
In all of his years, Wario had never seen anything so sad that moved him so deeply. His mind was filled with images of the robot, full of life and interacting with the world around him, and he wanted to make that a reality more than he wanted to deal the final blow in a brawl with a fart bomb. It might take everything he knew about artificial intelligence, but he'd be damned if he didn't give it his best shot.
Fart bombs all but forgotten, Wario raced out of the basement, tripping over boxes the entire way, back to his room to retrieve his toolbox. He didn't care whether it would take him hours, days, weeks, or the rest of his life: he was going to fix that robot if it was the last thing he did.
In order to completely restore the Robotic Operating Buddy (Wario had stumbled across the name when he noticed it printed on the base of the bot; despite many letters being scratched out he had been able to guess at what it originally had read), he had to disassemble it. When the floor around him was covered in R.O.B. parts, Wario could finally begin restoration. Switching on the high-powered industrial lamps he kept on hand for working in dark places, he set to hammering out the dents in the frame.
Once that was complete, the next step was to replace the useless coiled cable. It took several comparisons, but soon enough he found a suitable match from his collection of wires and it was an easy thing to get it connected.
The lenses and wheels were the hard part. Wario had enough wires and cable to make a new artificial nervous system for R.O.B., but curved pieces of glass and wheels were not something he generally kept on hand. These he would have to look for.
He figured he might as well begin in the basement. He spent what felt like years but was really only hours rummaging through boxes upon boxes, but not finding anything other than old clothes, broken weapons, and useless trinkets. It wasn't until he pulled open the chest of drawers near the matching wardrobe that he found useable material: an old, thick pair of glasses with lenses still intact. Shuffling further through the drawer, he found a set of LED replacement bulbs that looked very much like the broken ones he'd removed from R.O.B.'s sockets. Not believing his luck, Wario hurried back to his work site.
Ten minutes later, he had the head back together. Now he just needed wheels. Looking around the immediate vicinity, he spotted a small gray object underneath a wooden pallet, upon which boxes sat. Fishing out the object, he was pleased to identify it as a wheel, likely one of R.O.B.'s originals and in surprisingly good shape. And there was more where that came from: under the same wooden pallet, Wario found three more wheels identical to the previous one, and quickly made to reattach them.
As Wario screwed on the first wheel, he noticed what looked like rocket boosters on the bottom of R.O.B. and he almost dropped his screwdriver. Quick inspection told him they likely weren't broken, so he left them alone; with any luck they would work, and if not then Wario could fix them later.
Now that the little robot could roll across the floor and the arms contained no broken circuitry and were mostly intact, Wario set about giving the bot a new paint job before tackling the final hurdle: repairing the inner workings to finally get R.O.B. up and running again.
Meanwhile, on the surface, Link and Marth lay stretched out on the grass, enjoying the last rays of sunshine. While the latter had his arm resting on his forehead in order to shade his eyes, the former had shifted his hat to accomplish the same thing. Small talk had all but petered out, so the pair were simply enjoying the smell of fresh air, until a small nagging doubt in Marth's mind pushed him to speak.
"Have you seen Wario lately?" the Altean casually asked.
Link frowned. "No. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Marth shrugged, "I'm just worried about him, you know? He up and disappears for an entire day, and nobody knows where he's gone. He didn't even turn up for dinner."
"I suppose it is a little odd," Link conceded, "but he's probably just busy with one of his projects. You know how he's always babbling about his latest fart bomb recipe to anyone who'll listen." He rolled on to his side and propped his head up on his fist. "I'm sure everything is fine."
Marth sighed. "Yeah, I guess you're right. He'll turn up eventually. I mean, I know for a fact he can't just live off dust and mildew, I've seen him eat as much food as Kirby!"
Link chuckled and, rolling on to his back, resumed observing the sun-kissed green leaves of the trees in the distance from below the deeper green of his hat.
R.O.B. looked much better with fresh red and white paint, but its glassy eyes were still dead. Wario needed to find a new battery, and then reconnect the circuitry, before R.O.B. could interact with the world once more.
It would have been much simpler to just recharge the old battery, had it not been cracked and leaked long ago. The acid had eaten through parts of the battery's casing and some of the wires (which were easy enough to replace), and Wario would bet his moustache that the acid was the reason behind the blotch-shaped uneven dent in the concrete floor not far from where R.O.B. had been found.
Upon close inspection, Wario was pleased to discover that the source of R.O.B.'s power was nothing more than a standard car battery. Easy enough to obtain, Wario chuckled, if you know where to look. He left the basement for the first time in nearly 18 hours to retrieve the final piece of the puzzle.
Marth, ever the early riser, lounged on a purple leather couch near the entrance to the Smash Mansion with a book held open with one hand and the other clutching the handle of a half full coffee mug. He was about to turn the page of the novel when he saw Wario go running past, hardly giving him a glance.
Well, Marth thought as he sipped his coffee, at least we now know Wario's still up and about. He flipped the page. Just hope whatever project this is doesn't leave a crater in the field like the last one did.
Kkrrrrkk. "Why." Kkrrrrkk. "Won't." Kkrrrrkk. "It start?!"
The president of the university allowed his head to fall against the black steering wheel of his cobalt blue Mercedes. He was sure the battery had been at nearly full power just the other day! There was no way it was already dead, and there was no way he could be late to work again.
After several more frustrating turns of the key, the president finally jammed the button to pop the hood and climbed out of the car to get a look at what was really going on. Circling to the front of the car, he peered inside, and what he saw made him almost stop dead. The reason the car wouldn't start wasn't because the battery was dead.
It was because the battery was gone.
The short black-haired man stood there for a minute, grinding his white teeth together, before slamming the hood back down and marching off to the nearest bus stop. He was going to be late to the office, and somebody was going to pay.
After replacing R.O.B.'s broken battery, Wario began reconnecting wires, connecting blue to red and black to yellow, searching as sparks flew for the magic combination that would bring the robot back to life. Sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled down his face as he worked tirelessly to restore what could very well wind up being his legacy.
Eventually, finally, Wario found it: when he joined the long black wire to the short blue one, he heard a loud humming. Scrambling off the ground, what he saw before him lifted his heart so much he couldn't help but smile: R.O.B., fully functional, bright round eyes gazing at him.
"Hello," the computer voice intoned, "my name is R.O.B."
Wario was glad he was down in the basement alone; he felt like he could have cried. "It's-a Wario," he said.
"Nice to meet you, Wario."
"What can you do?"
In response, R.O.B.'s middle section spun around twice before the robot began speeding around the little area, punching and lifting boxes out of the way until it had a long, clear path. Then, setting itself near one end, took aim at a lone empty box. Wario watched on in awe as R.O.B. suddenly fired bright pink laser beams from its eyes at the box, setting it on fire.
"That's incredible!" Wario shouted as he quickly ran over to stomp out the small fire before it grew. R.O.B.'s thrusters fired and the little robot appeared to be hopping up and down with glee. "With those-a powers, you could fight-a the brawls with the rest of us."
R.O.B. cocked its head to one side as if to consider the proposition. At length, it said: "I would like that."
Wario grinned hugely. "Then-a follow me, friend, and we'll-a go introduce you to everyone."