The robot had been walking for days now. Its objective completed, there was nothing to stand between it and returning home to Robotropolis.

The assignment had taken an unfathomable amount of time, it appeared. Robotropolis looked insanely different. Gone were the cyberpunk buildings with the dark and dusty look that the robot liked. Gone was the charm of the dystopia the robot worked for. In the place of what the robot was fond of, there now were immensely tall buildings- built not with military efficiency in mind, but with lots of windows, lots of lights, lots of...

What the hell were those? There's thousands of them. Up in the buildings, some walking on the sides of the streets, even glimpses of them in relatively unique large vehicles moving in an orderly fashion in the middle of said streets. They were about as tall as the SWAT Bots the robot worked with back when he was last here, but they were not SWAT Bots.

They were not robots, nor mechanized. The only metal one of the robot's many sensors can detect were either small devices that served as telephones, or other tiny contraptions found around and sometimes within their person.

It was nighttime, but the robot's mission clock was not working properly. Specific times were impossible to determine. Either way, Usually the SWAT bots would be on patrol. Usually the streets were empty, and peaceful. Instead, it's chock-full of these organics.

The robot found this unpleasant, but retained its proverbial cool. The last thing it wanted was an unnecessary encounter.

ZHOOM

Damnit, what was that, Sound barriers being shredded? The robot was about to investigate the source of the sound when multiple other sounds erupted around it.

It sounded like cheering... Wait, cheering? What the hell for? Considering they were organic, wouldn't their ears pop, thus irritating them? The robot didn't have ear drums to pop, but it did scramble its audio sensors- and it found that rather annoying.

Amidst the cheering, the robot managed to catch "Yeah! Go Sonic! Sign my shirt, Sonic!"

Who was this Sonic? The robot asked itself. It then realised that it asked the same question aloud.

The closest of the tallish non-bots turned to the robot. The long-haired, effeminate non-bot failed to catch a glimpse of the robot's armour plating under the dark brown wide-brimmed hat with matching backpack and trousers. She looked as if the robot just heard something remarkably stupid. Either way, she failed to answer- or care to answer.

"I guess it's one of those "Read a book sometime" things," the robot added. "I haven't been here for a long time, mind."

The woman didn't respond. She was talking to two other similar-looking and similar-dressed women.

The robot shrugged to itself and continued walking. Not so far off, the robot could hear... music?

The good doctor never allowed music apart from what he liked. Then again, Doc never liked music anyway. The robot knew it needed to investigate.

It walked at a significantly faster pace, then turned the corner to where it was sure was the source of the musi-

Hundreds of the non-bots on the sides of the street. Hell, maybe thousands. Some of them wading through the sea of slow-moving- if not completely stalled vehicles. This was hardly orderly at all, although it appeared nobody was really getting hurt.

Aside from a few stumbling around while giggling to themselves about inside jokes. They were dropping to the hard concrete ground- followed by laughter from their cohorts. What the hell was this?

The robot glanced at many of the signs of the area. Bars? This many bars? The Doctor would be absolutely furious at this many bars being open and crowded! There's no way he could have allowed this to happen overnight.

Common sense and more observation revealed that this street with all the bars and all the bargoers getting piss-drunk had all been here for a long time.

Maybe this all came with the many skyscrapers that put the Good Doctor's main base to shame. Maybe it all came with all of these organics the robot had never seen before.

This was nothing like during the robot's last assignment- far far away.