Transformer Transformation
By Sharan McQuack, Launchpad's wife.
Far, far away from Duckburg, far upstate is Flintheart Glomgold's nuclear power plant. Which, of course, is located smack on the only earthquake fault in the state. Why should anybody have a problem with that?
One day, something went wrong with one of the transformers...oil was spilled, as was a little radiation. The transformer...transformed. It came to life.
But it was like a newborn infant in that it didn't know ANYTHING yet. It was immensely strong, and powerful, big and clumsy. It clumped out of the power plant and tried to walk, intimating the "people" it saw around it. It immediately tripped on it's own feet and fell into a huge truck headed to Duckburg.
It was fascinated by the world whizzing by. It sat in the otherwise empty truck, happy to just watch the world go by until the truck reached Duckburg, where it stopped.
Bored, it got up and this time, successfully walked away, It had been people watching during it's ride and paid attention to how they walked.
Duckburgians, seeing the thing, panicked and ran.
"Giant Robot attacking Duckburg!" screamed somebody.
"What, AGAIN?" screamed somebody else.
However, this particular giant robot did not INTEND to harm anybody. It was, however, big, clumsy, very, very strong and totally and completely ignorant. It COULD of easily killed many innocent people without meaning to if they hadn't had the common sense to get out of it's way. Especially since people are so vulnerable compared to it.
Somehow, both Mr. McDuck and SHUSH found out about this and were greatly distressed by this. Mr. McDuck immediately protected his Money Bin, assuming that the Beagles were after it again. You can hardly blame him, given previous experience.
SHUSH sent Dr. Sara Bellum to investigate. Dr. Bellum backtracked the mutated machine back to the nuclear power plant that it came from. And figured out what had happened, if not how. It somehow did not take long to find where the thing was now, as people kept fleeing from it in terror, calling the cops on their cell phones as they ran.
Now the robot had no interest in the Money Bin. It didn't know what money was. To it...let's call it Trans, shall we? To Trans, the Money Bin was a boring tall building where practically nobody went into or came out of, that a bunch of human stood still around, doing nothing. There were so many other buildings in Duckburg that had lots of people going in and out of, doing all sorts of curious things around.
Dr. Sara Bellum was soon meeting with Mr. McDuck about this. Sara asked him to bring Gizmoduck and Launchpad to the meeting.
"Since both Launchpad and his father are agents of SHUSH, you want him in on this?" Mr. McDuck asked.
"I can't confirm that. But knowing Launchpad, he'll horn in on this regardless, so he better know what's going on." Sara said.
Soon, Sara was explaining what she had learned to all concerned: that the robot had come to life by accident and did not seem to mean any harm.
"I invented a special shrink ray that will reduce the robot in size until it's the size of a toy robot." Dr, Bellum said.
"I sense a "but" coming" Mr. McDuck guessed.
"Whoever shrinks it has to get to point blank range...directly in front of it." Dr. Bellum explained. "Gizmoduck..."
"Oh, no, not me! I'm not getting turned into canned ham by an overgrown toy!" Giz objected.
"I'll do it if you'll distract it." Launchpad offered. "If you keep it interested while I get close enough...Sharan..."
"I'll fly in a separate plane or copter so I can rescue you, or Giz, or both if necessary." I said.
MEANWHILE... the Beagles had found out about this and Big Time decided to lure the robot towards the Money Bin so it would accidentally crack the Bin open and they could rob it.
"We'll use this hologram projector Megabyte came up. It'll project the illusion of a lady robot and lure it to the Bin." Big Time said.
"Duh...what if it IS a lady robot? How can you tell?" Burger asked.
"We'll create another illusion of a boy robot, then, if the girl robot don't work, dope!" Big Time replied.
The Beagles soon did create the illusion of a lady robot right in front of Trans. Being a machine, it had no concept of gender. It was curious to see another robot very much like itself and followed it to find out what it was.
Trans was soon very close to the Money Bin. And getting closer by the minute as the illusory lady robot lured it towards the Bin.
Gizmoduck realized it was going to HAVE to do something about Trans. Protecting the Bin is his job. So as Launchpad went into his copter with the shrink ray and I went into my copter with my camera, a large net and some first aid equipment.
Giz flew thur the illusion of the lady robot until even Trans realized that it wasn't real.
Giz also spotted the Beagles, including Megabyte carrying a device that was obliviously projecting the hologram. Giz flew and scrambled the signal, disrupting the illusion.
Trans then realized the Beagles were projecting that illusion, which got Trans mad. Trans started following them. Launchpad followed Trans in his copter, trying to get close enough to shrink it. However, Launchpad found out that he had to get VERY close to even start shrinking Trans.
Big Time tried to get all the Beagles to work together to trip Trans up.
"It'll crash into the Bin! We can still rob it!" Big Time screamed.
But Trans grabbed the hologram projector right out of Megabyte's paws and broke it without even meaning to. This somehow scared the Beagles, they panicked and ran, refusing to listen to Big Time.
Trans apparently thought this was some sort of game, and it chased the Beagles and tried to trap them – or so they thought.
Launchpad had been trying to get close enough to Trans to shrink it, but even he was a little nervous about getting THAT close to the thing.
"My God! It thinks they're playing Tag!" Launchpad said. "it could kill them!"
And he flew his copter down between Trans and the Beagles, trying to rescue them before Trans could "tag" them...which with his strength and size could easily be fatal.
The Beagles somehow assumed Launchpad was trying to capture them to jail them and fled. I ended up netting them before they could accidentally kill themselves trying to evade both Trans and Launchpad.
Meanwhile, Launchpad took advantage of Trans paying attention to the Beagles to get closer and closer to Trans. It started to shrink faster and faster. Trans even noticed but it happened so fast, Trans couldn't figure out what was causing it or how to stop it before it was too small to do anything about it.
Soon, Trans was the size of a toy robot.
Dr. Sara Bellum took Trans and built it a habitat (rather like a model railroad). Sara studied it, tried to communicate to it and tried to reproduce it.
It had been such a freak accident, there was no way to do so. But Mr. McDuck did much a lot of money out of toy robots modeled on it, and he had to cut her in, since she "owned" the original.
And SHUSH paid me and Launchpad quite a bit for handling this.
THE END.