Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network. I don't know who created the original story and characters of Swarm, but credit goes to them.

Author's Note: In 1997, a television block called Toonami premiered on Cartoon Network, and in the following decade spearheaded the wave of Japanese animation into American media. From 1999 to 2007, Toonami was hosted by two CGI characters: a robot named TOM and an AI named Sara.

The concept involved TOM (Toonami Operations Module) performing the hosting duties, while Sara (the holographic AI on their ship, the Absolution) performed AI-ish tasks and provided someone for him to talk to. While traveling through space on the Absolution, they would broadcast anime and action-oriented cartoons to Earth for a couple hours a day. Other ways to interact with fans included schedule announcements, video game reviews, and a few multi-media games that fans could play online.

I've excavated from my [unfaithful] memory an animated comic that chronicled TOM's first adventure. This fanfic is that story in writing, re-imagined, with some of my own stuff mixed in. It's original air date and creators are both unknown to me. I hope it's good enough for TOM's very few fans to enjoy, and also to be liked by those who know nothing of the characters or the Toonami universe.

Okay? ... Okay.

Swarm

chapter 0.1: ignition

Colonial Freespace Territory.
Gideon Alpha-12, Automaton Construction Platform.

Above a small, dry planet of rough brown crust and faintly luminescent whorls of algae, the space colony Gideon Alpha-12 was in orbit. It was a mechanical hive of lights and activity and nearly twice the size of some of the largest craft currently traversing the galaxy. The capsule-shaped installation was protected by a green-tinted prism that was held in place by a network of six force-field generators. The generators were supported on the ends of spires that extended from the top and bottom edges of the facility, cocooning it within a triangular sleeve that was also covered at the top and bottom ends.

LARS waited inside one of Alpha-12's observation domes at the station's top level. He stared into the green-tinted darkness of the galaxy in expectation of the next dispatch of construction equipment and fuel. Not long into his wait, the distant blackness opened up and the nose-end of a titanic, silvery starship with dark blue windows slid through. The ship slowed while the hyperspace tunnel closed behind it, then drifted over to the robot colony using its directional thrusters.

As the loaded cargo ship approached, one wall of Alpha-12's force-field prism shut down to allow it through. Attaching its cargo nacelle to the docking port at the very bottom of Alpha-12 created the effect of sticking a big, silver-wrapped sapphire to a partially-shredded tin can. The ship's hull was immaculately clean and its curving panes of reinforced glass reflected starlight from all directions. Alpha-12, on the other hand, was in modest repair and had large sections that were still under construction.

"Starship, this is Platform Alpha-12 dispatch," LARS said, looking down at the ship from his position at the very top of the installation. "We are receiving ship's cargo. Does it have any crew or machines that could provide help with the load? We're in short supply of the heavy-lifting kind."

"12, this is starship Absolution's onboard AI," replied a smooth, English-accented female voice. "I'd love to assist, but it's not much different over here. No independent mobile crew currently on board. Sorry, dispatch."

"No problem, Absolution," said LARS, hiding his fuming disappointment behind monotone. "We will make do with what we have. Dispatch out."

LARS turned away and stopped at the elevator that would take him down to the main construction chamber. Eight fresh automatons had been slapped together just hours ago, and breaking them in for service was on his personal roster. He punched the control and waited while the elevator doors did nothing. Holding the control down for several seconds did the trick, and he hovered inside. "Should remember to send a command to get that fixed," he murmured as the doors hummed shut.

Gideon Alpha-12 was the home of several hundred robots, working to assemble and mobilize various models of droids, automatons, and other machines that were needed in deep space. At the station's widest point, near the top of the structure but below the cluster of observation domes, the main work chamber was in constant, whirring motion.

Eight of Gideon's product entered the vast disc-shaped room and stopped in a row, standing shoulder-to-rounded-shoulder like pawns in a chess set ... Fidgety pawns that were shuffling their feet, swinging their hands, or examining their polished casing as they impatiently waited. While a workforce of construction droids, hovering platforms, and mobile cranes swarmed about, the group of automatons had nothing to do.

"Busy here," one commented.

Their hands, feet, and heads were gigantic in comparison to the short matte-black appendages that connected them to their nose-shaped torsos. Each robot sported a three-bladed radiation symbol glowing on its protruding potbelly. On their large spherical heads, their swept-back optic visors reflected the activity before them. These visors were opaque, but tinted with whatever color designated each robot. They were all mostly white with about forty percent of their casing filled in with color. Most of the group was detailed green, but there was a fuschia automaton at the end, and a blue one farther down.

The blue robot glanced away from the industrial activity pervading the room to nudge his adjacent green companion. "What a place, huh? How long d'you think we have to wait?"

Turning just his head to look at him, the green replied, "Your face and my hand are both worth a couple thousand dollars. Otherwise ..."

"Oh-kaaay, stop right there." The blued waved his hands about. "I'll just conform and be boring like the rest of everybody."

"Please do."

"Hey, I'll make you a bet," the blue decided. "If I do better than you, you owe me two or three thousand bucks."

"Fine, I'll take that. And in answer to your question, about half a second."

The blue automaton glanced up and looked around, then spotted a tall, gangly droid sweeping into the room.

The obvious emcee stopped and idled imperiously before the row of eight. Long, spindly arms were held clasped behind his back. Below thin shoulders, his trapezoidal torso widened out into a hoverskirt that kept him about twenty inches off the floor. On his flat oval head, black lenses and a protruding grille formed his eyes and mouth.

"I am the Operations Administration Robot, or 'O.A.R.'," he fizzed from his voice grille. The administration robot glided to and fro in front the smaller automatons, his image being reflected in each of their optic visors as he passed them. "Automatons can refer to me as LARS. The eight waiting here are beta units, meaning they're model is not yet approved for Colonial Freespace living and service. They will be physically tested momentarily. Any questions insofar?"

"Yeah, all that construction going on over there is kinda distracting, so can you dance around a little to make us pay more attention to you?"

LARS paused and glared at the blue automaton. The blue droid gazed back. There was a moment where, despite their lack of facial expression, a tenseness seemed to form up between them. But it was broken when LARS turned away. "Precious ... A wisecracker." He seemed annoyed, but not surprised.

The O.A.R. stopped at the end of the line and concluded: "This brief trial course will determine their effectiveness and legitimacy as serviceable units." Then he turned back to the blue automaton. His black eyes narrowed with a dubious whir. "Name."

"Tom, Your Honor."

"Get to the end of the line. If it is last, it will know how much better the betas ahead handle the course. I've no doubt it will fail miserably."

"Yes, sir!" TOM saluted sharply and ambled down the row to fall in behind the fuschia automaton.

"And the rest!" shouted LARS. "About face! Go get it over with."

The eight automatons turned like toy soldiers and shuffled with clacking footsteps down a white, featureless corridor.

"I don't think he likes me much," TOM said to the automaton next in line. "What do you think?"

The fuschia droid turned her head half-around to they could walk and talk at the same time. "I think you made a wonderful friend." She glanced ahead, then back at TOM. "What did you say your name was?"

TOM tilted his large bubble-head and scratched it curiously. "It's Tom, I guess."
"Hm ... I'm Ruby. Listen, you wanna party up on this? I don't believe there are any rules regarding partners during test courses. So if you and I put our giant heads together and avoid bumping them constantly, we may have a better chance of getting through it successfully and approving this automaton model."

TOM kept a wary lookout as a pair of immense, powerful demolition droids floated past them. "Yeah ... that sounds like a good plan. As long as I get to be the MVP."

As the last two beta units disappeared inside, LARS spotted a pair of VIK Series 161 Class J Demolition units coming out of the same corridor. They were basically big cylinders with arms. Their black optic visors stretched from both sides of their heads to meet in the shape of a V, and their powerful, boxy arms hung idly at their sides. They were only a foot higher than LARS, though much more sturdy and destructive. They were giants compared to the automatons.

LARS summoned their attention: "The two trash cans!" He may have been programmed with protocol as an imperative, but that was no reason he couldn't blow off steam by giving a few demeaning monikers to his underlings.

The pair of demolition droids turned simultaneously to face him as he approached. LARS drew up before them and pointed back down the hallway. "They're both going to have to go back in there," he said to them. They swivelled back around and started to hover in the direction indicated. "Not right this second! Wait for orders!" They stopped and spun back around to receive said orders.

LARS pointed through the access hatch to TOM and RUBY, bringing up the back of the line of automatons. "The rearmost automaton in that line is inadequate for both public and private services, and needs to be dismantled. It's the blue one."

The VIKs wheeled their husky frames around to look. "Excuse me, I'm still talking!" They spun back to him.

"Basically, it can't be approved," LARS continued slowly. "But there are stipulations preventing me from going scrap-happy on whomever I please. Demolition units must follow the group automatons into their trial course ..." he paused, making sure his suggestion sank in, "... and do whatever is necessary to keep it from successfully completing its trial run. If their efforts fail, implement destructive measures," he finished. "Understood?"

Most of the few indicator lights on their cylindrical torsos were blinking rapidly, most likely meaning their tiny, oversimplified processors were still digesting his orders.

"Stop the blue robot ..." said one of the demolition units.
"... From finishing the course," completed the other.

"Correct so far," LARS encouraged.

"And if he gets through ..." The second VIK thought for a long minute. Such simple tools of destruction were more effective when they were downloaded with tasks that had the steps and parameters all graphed out and listed. They were unaccustomed to word-of-mouth orders.

"... We beat him up." They finally had the whole picture.

"Not my idea," LARS said quickly before gliding away.

As he moved off to his next task, he scheduled an order to have both VIK units dismantled and their processors wiped. The last few months of construction had been exhausting without many strong-armed machines. But if some of the station's only remaining heavy-lifting robots broke down or became dangerous ... the company would be under a contractual obligation to provide Alpha-12 with a fresh set of mechanical muscle.

It was a good idea. It took care of two problems with a single motion. He'd never done anything outside protocol before, and thought nothing of it now. This was simply the first problem he'd ever encountered that required breaking the rules to solve.

The corridor was wide enough to allow TOM and RUBY to stand next to each other when they emerged into a long, rectangular white room. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the room were covered with tiles, and in the center of each and every tile was an active laser port. Sizzling green beams exploded from them, firing across the room into corresponding squares. Most of the automaton recruits had already crossed and moved on. But off to the side lay the partially disintegrated shell of a green automaton, black and smoldering. His helmet was seared in half, and wisps of smoke drifted up from the hollow side.

"Let me guess, there's no 'easy' setting for beginners, is there?"

"This ain't a game."

"Well it should be." TOM gestured to the flashing green chamber. "We're supposed to be tested for our effectiveness in deep-space operations, not playing TRON!"

"We're also being tried for comprehensiveness," RUBY urged him. "What about that 'Most Valuable Player' title you want so bad? We can get through it if we put more than an ounce of thought into it."

"Fine, but if one of us dies, it's your fault."

"Look, I found a sequence already ..." she distracted him by pointing her bulky three-fingered extremity at the laser discharges. "The floor-to-ceiling lasers are firing in a certain sequence. It's fast, but detectable if you actually look for it. There are eight quadrants in the floor, and every two discharges come from the next two quadrants in sequence, starting at opposite ends and converging on the center. Can you see it?"

Studying the flashing laser-fire, TOM nodded his understanding. Then he paused thoughtfully for a second. Then he shook his head. "I can't keep up."

"That's okay. The horizontal lasers look like they're designed to confuse you and keep you from noticing any pattern in the vertical ones."

"And burn your fraggin' head off," TOM contributed, indicating the dead automaton.

"But these tiles look like they're detachable." She peeled a pair of white tiles from the wall behind them and held one in each hand. TOM did the same as RUBY proceeded across the room, swinging her arms in all directions to block the wall-to-wall lasers and navigating her way through the floor-to-ceiling ones. Immediately, a set of laser ports surrounding their exit lit up. They began firing from the distant end of the room, making RUBY compensate her left and right blocks for the oncoming bursts.

"Maybe I should have gone ahead of you," TOM said from directly behind her, mimicking her tactic with his own set of tiles.

"You said ten seconds ago you couldn't keep up," she reminded him.

There were no physical vibrations as the laser bursts hit the panels he was holding, but TOM could feel the deflective side ripple with searing heat as they bounced off.

Unbeknownst to TOM and RUBY, the two VIK units had entered the room. One hovered in front of the other, too big to be adjacent in the doorway. The foremost VIK turned to an access panel and plugged in. Finding the laser port controls, he turned up the rate of fire.

"Whoa, whoa, this is getting intense!" TOM said. "Is it supposed to get this dangerous halfway through? This doesn't seem right."

"Just move faster," RUBY called over her shoulder. "I'll try deflecting some of the lasers into panels that are ahead of us."

She did so, angling her tiles and deflecting a few discharges into several laser-ports near their exit. They popped, fizzed, and shut down. But she only hit a few, and the rain of light was still worse than when they'd started across. In addition to that problem, TOM could feel the tiles taking heat, the deflective surface carbonizing while the sides under his grip were melting and bending to the shape of his hands.

They picked up the slack, going from a fast shuffle to a reckless run. Bright green beams flashed before their visors. RUBY deflected more shots into the laser ports surrounding their exit, lowering her defenses. The back of her head and right hand took unfortunate hits.

Finally, TOM decided they were close enough. He leapt forward and shoved them both through the exit. Behind them, the laser-bursts ceased and the room quieted.

After a brief lapse of time, the two VIK units hovered across the room, preparing to follow.

continued in chapter 0.2: "epic fail"