Yes, I know, tons of clichés and dumbed down vocabulary, but this is more of a one shot than an epic novel (hopefully, if I can control it… ^ ^; ) so I'm not going to put too much effort into it and rewrite it twenty times. Sorry.

Sorry, I don't feel like a lot of character or background descriptions, so those of you who've seen the show before, you should know. The others, just use your imagination. (in fact, all of you, use your imaginations. It will look much better that way…)

Sorry for the inconsistencies in the characters from this fic and the original series. They are such generic characters that it's almost impossible to predict what they will say (besides their catch phrases of course)

Found another one: unbelief and disbelief

...wow, i feel like i'm doing something illegal here...

(POV of Matt)

Dusk was spilling under the shaded garage. The fiery haired boy groaned, the knowledge of time gaining his attention.

"The competition is tomorrow," he despaired aloud. He gazed sorrowfully at the organized montage of wooden planks, springs, pulleys and rope. It worked perfectly, this invention of his, excluding the fact that the entire Rube Goldberg seemed to dismantle itself in one run. The switch was a simple string that slid the lid off a box of marbles when pulled, which, once released, clacked down their separate, encased paths to trigger various reactions in the machine. The difficulty came when a weight dropped and the shock from its landing rocked a precariously-balanced basketball from its vibrating platform and down a wooden plank so that it might knock a hefty piece of literature onto a bag of oil, which would lubricate the course of another object set into motion by a different marble. The ball had been intended to remain at its point-of-contact with the book, but it merely bulldozed over the thing and onto the lower portion of the invention, chaos bouncing jubilantly in its wake.

However, the boy had toiled over this machine for far to long to simply admit defeat. Removing each wrinkle had consumed nearly a week from his life, and one more wasn't going to discourage him. But he had to hurry.

He glanced at the descending pinnacle of luminescence. The Rube Goldberg contest was tomorrow afternoon. If he couldn't find a solution by that time, then all his effort was for not. The boy bent over the assortment of simple machines in concentration.

A shot of static pierced the air and redirected his attention soon after.

"Motherboard!" he yelled, dashing toward the old television set his parents had disregarded in the dumpster of a garage. It was half buried under scraps of other junk, as it had been lazing in that spot since the boy's birth; it was so old, in fact, that its screen would be composed of black and white pictures only, could it actually turn on. Now the sight of Motherboard's colorful image filled the dull grey display.

"Hacker— Radopolis …in danger," she stuttered, the virus previously administered to her by Hacker causing a fickleness in her connection to the Earth child. Short bursts of fuzz disrupted her speech frequently, finding her jumbled meaning in need of an interpreter.

She continued however, struggling against the handicap.

"Find the…—f clovers. Must stop Hacker…"

Her message conveyed, Motherboard opened a portal over her disappearing likeness, the churning, purple tide within waiting gracefully to devour the spectator. But he, being the boy he was, vaulted into the entrance headfirst, elated to embark on another mission for the compassionate ruler of his alternate home—of Cyberspace.

(Wow! Lookit how short the introduction is! Yay for me!)

"Ow," the boy groaned, pinned on his stomach by a life-sized tin-can cybird who had been ejected from the same portal only moments after the human. The bird immediately scrambled off him, obviously embarrassed.

"Sorry about that Matty," he apologized, helping the boy to his feet through form of an extended wing.

"That's ok Dige," replied the orange hair child, brushing dust from his green sweater as he stood. "Motherboard said that Hacker was here," he informed the bird hatefully, glancing around himself to confirm that they were indeed in Radopolis.

The planet held the appearance of Earth, and was similar in every way excluding one. There were incredible ramps sitting on the emerald grass everywhere that had more turns than the ultimate bendy straw and it could rival the Eiffel Tower in height. In addition to that, the most obvious sign was the Radsters, rolling about on their various modes of transportation, attached or not.

"Motherboard told me the same thing," announced Digit, drawing Matt's eyes back to the small bird. "But she blacked out before she could tell me where!"

"Hmm," mumbled Matt, resting his hand under his chin. "She told me, but I could only hear part of it."

"Well, what'd she say?" shouted the tin can, his voice seasoned with anxiety and frustration.

"Something clover." Matt pondered over his own statement, eyebrows furrowed in contemplation. But Digit's brain didn't work like Matt's—he had to think aloud.

"Something clover?" he echoed in genuine confusion. "What does 'something clover' mean?"

"I don't know," admitted Matt. He gave the idea a second's more thought before smacking a fist onto his palm and gesturing excitedly at his companion. "Maybe Jackie or Inez knows!"

The bird's face brightened at this comment. "Yeah!" After all, if Matt had heard more than Digit, then perhaps the girls had received the entire message. His hopefulness dropped, however, when he saw that neither female was accompanying them.

"Hey, where are those guys?"

"Beats me. Let's go look for them," suggested Matt, spinning on his heel in preparation for the search.

But a shaa-ing of grass led him to a halt. When he turned around, Jackie and Inez were following dreamily behind one orange-sweatered Radster- Slider. They were progressing towards the duo, a wave indicating a notice of their presence.

Oh no, thought Matt, grimacing at the sight.

"Hi guys!" chirped Inez, leaving Slider and Jackie to run over to the other members of the Cybersquad.

"Hey!" answered Digit. "Where were you? We were just about to look for you."

"Motherboard told us that Hacker was in Radopolis, but when we went through the portal, we ended up on Solaria," explained the bespectacled girl.

Jackie, who had caught up with her friend, decided to interject. "Lucky for us Slider was there and gave us a ride here."

"It was no big deal," commented Slider when both Jackie and Inez looked back to him.

"No, it was very considerate of you," replied Inez, giggling slightly.

"Yeah, Slider. Thank you," added Jackie, joining Inez in her love-struck stare.

It was obvious from the boy's tight smile that having such acute attention lathered on him caused him discomfort, a fact which might have given Matt satisfaction had not all his interest been on the floating girls. His scowl deepened, in face and heart. What do they see in him?

"Uh, hello?" growled Matt, flinging his arms to the sides as if his next comment were transparent. "Hacker's out there somewhere destroying Cyberspace and we don't even know where to go to stop him!"

This snagged the attention of the two females, for the moment at least, and they nodded.

"Yeah, Motherboard got disconnected before she could tell us where to go," sighed Jackie.

"She's been having trouble lately. Doc says the virus is getting worse," Digit stated, worry playing in his eyes.

"Poor Motherboard," sympathized the yellow-sweatered girl.

"Maybe that's why the portal took us to Solaria instead of Radopolis," theorized Inez, her hand demonstrating her insight.

"Well, whatever it was, if it's on Radopolis maybe I can help," announced Slider.

"Oh, would you?" smiled Jackie, her voice coated in honey and three octaves higher.

"Sure," the Radster replied, shrugging. "I know this place inside out."

Matt frowned. Showoff. But that thought wasn't what threw him into his unsociable mood. No, that was due to the apparent fact that Slider would now be accompanying the squad for the entire duration of their stay. Hours of wasted time watching the blind girls pour their affections onto this cold, selfish snob would be Matt's fate for the entire mission. What fun.

"Dige, did Motherboard give you any clue about where Hacker is?" Slider inquired, rotating to face the shorter cyborg. The bird, in turn, glanced expectantly to Matt, but the boy merely scowled and crossed his arms disdainfully. Digit sighed and slumped in defeat; Matt was always like this around Slider, which forced Digit into the position of peacemaker. And, in all honesty, Digit would rather have any other job; watching the two was like babysitting two over-energetic siblings, with the exception of the boys' right to free will. It was that free will that sent poor Digit into a coma on his bed at Motherboard's headquarters from exhaustion, hoping God would grant him an eternal night of rest. (NOT suicide, ppl. Get that outta you're head now plz.)

But, as much as he desired to be in that haven of a bed at this very moment, the bird has a duty to the ruler of Cyberchase that took first priority.

He sighed, obliging Slider's innocent inquiry. "No, but she started to tell Matt before she went all fuzzy. Something about clovers, I think."

"Clovers huh?" confirmed Slider, chin tucked behind his fist in thought. Suddenly, "I've got it!" and he was rushing off, retracing the steps that had led him and the girls to Matt and Digit.

Naturally, the girls pursued his bobbing figure. Matt merely pointed after the cyborg however, indifferent to whether he stayed to help or left.

"Uh, where he's going?" he asked Digit, still unable to comprehend Slider's personality.

"Who knows, Matt! Digit! Come on!" shouted Jackie, causing the lingering parties to sprint in her wake.

When all three Earth children had topped their last hill in the pursuit, they spied Slider by his ship, scavenging through boxes scattered carelessly across the grass.

Matt was the first to speak once the Cybersquad had descended the slope.

"What is all this stuff?" The boy gestured towards the heaps of cloth cubes.

"It's mine. I went to Solaria for vacation, remember? Aha!" Slider jerked a section of paper from underneath a bulky green suitcase. "I knew I put it here!"

"What is it Slider?" asked Inez, leaning over his shoulder to inspect it thoroughly.

"It's a map of Radopolis," he replied. As he was tracing the paper with his eyes and finger—"Once, my dad took me to a place called The Cavern of Clovers. He told me that I could never anyone else about it, because there was a bunch of magnetite underground. If Hacker got his hands on it …Here it is." The cyborg lifted the map and pointed to a cartoon mountain scribbled carelessly on the chart. "Mount Pinnu," he announced setting the display onto the grass so the entire team could access it.

"Mount Pinnu? I've never heard of that place before," commented Jackie.

"That's cause the weather up there is really bad. No one ever goes there anymore," the boy explained.

"It doesn't look so bad to me," criticized Matt, glancing in the direction of the mountain in reference to the map. And indeed he found it, a large mountain up to its peak in pale green set in the background.

But Slider merely shook his head. "That's only one side of the mountain," he said. "The other side is much colder." The boy tapped the map as if the mound of dirt would pop up right there on his command to prove his point.

"The Cavern is on the other side of the summit, so we'll have to go around," he informed them, demonstrating the route before scooping up the map and rolling it into a sensible width for pocket storage.

"Couldn't we just go over the mountain?" asked Inez curiously.

"It's too steep; we'd slip," replied Slider, rising to return the strewn boxes to the yellow hover car.

"Too steep?" emphasized Matt in disbelief.

Slider glanced back at him, in the process of heaving a blue suitcase into the brimming trunk. "The slope is at a fifty degree angle."

"So?" raged Matt.

"The car can only handle thirty degrees before the engine dies. And we don't want to be stuck up there at the end of the day." Slider glanced up to the mountain.

The orange haired human grew silent at that reply, unsure of a safe come-back, when Jackie decided to interject her own curiosity. "We're going in this car? But there are only three seats that aren't covered in boxes…"

"Don't worry, my garage is only a few miles from here. We can stop there to drop this off first," assured Slider, patting the mountain of colorful prisms. "You guys use the car. Dige and I will walk, if that's ok," directed the boy, turning to the cybird to check for his approval.

"Sure. We'll meet you there," Digit said in response.

"But Slider, are you sure you can walk that far?" asked Inez.

Jackie joined in. "Yeah, I mean the garage is pretty far from here…"

Matt scowled. Stupid girls; they had never made such a fuss over Matt before! How was Slider any different?

"…and you looked like you were having a lot of trouble walking earlier."

This caught Matt's attention and he felt a twinge of guilt for his envious thought. Suspiciously, he scanned his memory; he hadn't noticed anything unusual about Slider's pace.

"It's fine," the Radster replied. "Just a little sprain."

"What did you do?" questioned Inez, to which the cyborg answered shortly, "Twisted it a few days ago while trying a new stunt. It's almost healed though."

"Still, you should probably stay off it until you are completely recuperated," remarked Inez. "I'll walk with Digit. You can ride in the car."

"That's ok, I'm fi—"

"No, take my seat Slider," offered Jackie. "It might get worse if you keep using it."

"Which is why he should take my seat," hissed Inez warningly to her black-haired gal-friend.

"Or he could take mine," countered the opponent smugly.

Matt sighed. Why did he have to be the peacemaker in all this? It was just cruel.

"I'll walk with Dige. Slider can ride with you in the car," snapped the boy ruefully. He would have preferred monitoring Slider's behavior with his friends, but to watch Inez and Jackie catfight over the other boy was even more depressing than remaining unaware of their actions.

"Guys, I can walk," emphasized Slider, frustrated by the fact that he was being ignored. But the silent approval from both females assured his defeat.

"No, I'll go with Digit," repeated Matt, resigned to his fate, as he shoved Slider into a cushioned seat of the vehicle. The girls were already inside and waiting. "You three go unpack the car. Digit and I will meet you there."

"If you're sure…," lingered Slider before clambering in, pulling away from the two grounded figures and maneuvering the automobile back to the paved road. A cloud of dust exploded behind the bumper as Slider and the girls sped towards the garage.

Left to each other's company, Matt glanced at his metal friend, his irritated mind in a world all its own. Digit, sensing the Earth child's unrest, understood that if they were to reach the garage anytime soon, he would have to take the initiative. Jokingly he held out his wing as if adorning himself with the role of a butler and with a "Shall we?" awoke Matt from his stewing daze.

Reluctantly, the boy forced his legs to push forward, Digit following at his side.

Now let's see if I can stick with it! i hope i can