Ray was partially awake. Awake enough to hear steps walking up to the door and then the rattling of the doorknob.
"What the?" Vil's laugh rang through the door. "C'mon, Ray, you gotta get up!" Ray scrambled out of bed and hurriedly began pulling his clothes on again. "I wanna show you to the others at school today!"
Ray froze. No, no, no! No, you can't do that to me! Ray thought, despairing at his luck. Of course Vil would take him to school. He wouldn't just leave him at the house. Ray groaned. "Just hang on! Gotta get my clothes on!"
"Going commando style in my bed? Guess I'll wash the sheets." Vil chuckled and Ray sighed. For how silent Vil was normally, he sure did joke around a lot at home. "All right, well breakfast is ready. Come down and eat when you're ready."
Why me? Ray thought despairingly. He couldn't say that he wasn't hungry. They'd get suspicious. What could he say this time? He didn't really like lying to them. It just wasn't in his nature... or programming? Did his programming determine his nature or was that just something that emerged? He couldn't remember. It had been so long ago since he had been abandoned.
He opened the door and slowly walked down the stairs into the dining room where the rest of the family sat around the table. The food hadn't even been touched yet. They had been waiting for him. He grinned and waved nervously. His cheeks would have colored if they had that function. He was aware of what he should feel and how he should react accordingly. That's how it was with humans.
He sat down in his chair at the table, Vil on his right side and Tamara on his left side. Vil took the first bite and everyone began eating the modest breakfast. Everyone except Ray. He wasn't built with an anatomy. He couldn't digest. He didn't even have a mouth.
"You can take the mask off, Ray," Vil's mother said. "I'm sure you're hungry now."
"Actually..." Ray rubbed where humans had stomachs and tried to look sick. "I feel kind of nauseous."
"Dang..." Vil said. "I guess you won't be coming to school with me then?"
Killing two birds with one stone,... Ray thought. He nodded. "Yeah, I won't be able to come. I just need to rest." And escape.
"All right," Vil said, looking down at his food, disappointed. His disappointment didn't last long. He soon looked back up, a large smirk on his face. "But you'll come tomorrow, right?" Ray looked at Vil, hoping that his shock wasn't visible through the mask.
"Um, yeah... sure." Nooooooo!
"Sweet! I'll let Liv and Dennis know," Vil said, grinning. "Just be careful of Liv. She can be..."
"A little bossy, I know," Ray said. He soon grimaced. He had implied that he knew about Liv and her mannerisms.
"Oh, you know her?" Vil's mother asked. Ray nodded. "How'd you meet her?"
I'm off to a great start... He hated lying, but he was stuck. It was either the lie or the scrap yard. "I never met her personally. I just watched her and Eddy when she was his Support, as well as other times."
"Really? When did she display that elsewhere?" Vil asked, taking a bite of his oatmeal, a meal fit for those much poorer.
Once again, Ray was stuck. Please... please, just stop... He put his hand on his forehead and bent over slightly. "These questions aren't helping my nausea..."
"I'll take him upstairs," Vil's mother said.
"No, I will," Vil said, getting out of his chair and lifting Ray. "Seriously though. You've gotta take that football armor off."
Ray chuckled. They went back up the stairs, Ray trying to act like he was weak, but it was difficult to make sure that he wasn't overplaying it. He was also wrestling with his feelings of betraying them. It felt wrong to be lying to them like this. His own thinking about this brought his focus into his thoughts instead of on walking with Vil.
"I'll be back from school soon," Vil said as they entered his room.
Ray frowned as Vil smirked. Someday he'd need to learn to stop that. It'd probably be Ray that would teach... well, show him how other people smiled and grinned. He couldn't smile himself, so he'd have to bring Vil's attention to his mother's smile. Then show him his dad's, then Dennis's, then a bunch of others'.
"What will I do until you get back?" Ray asked.
Vil shrugged, giving an expression that asked "how would I know?"
"I dunno," Vil said, walking towards the door. "Rest?" He turned back to Ray. "You are feeling nauseous, right?" Ray nodded. "The sooner you rest, the sooner you'll be over it."
Vil left the door open as he left, not bothering to close it. This only made Ray feel more vulnerable. He felt as if he was being watched, even though he knew he wasn't. He hated the feeling of being welcome. It was so foreign from what he had experienced throughout his life.
Gotta get out of here! he thought frantically. He jumped of the bed and landed lightly on the ground. He walked quietly to the window and peeked out of it, hiding behind the wall to minimize exposure to the outside world.
Kids walked, ran, and walked backwards while talking to friends as they headed towards school. It was like a mob forming... Mobs...
He froze slightly. He hated crowds of people. It reminded him of the chase that his researchers did when he escaped from the line of the scrap yard. Those were terrible nights. Especially when he knew that if anything caught him, it was all over for him. Why was he so weak? How come the other robos that were much smaller could disable his systems? Why?
He sighed and opened the window as the last of the kids ran past. He vaulted out and hit the ground rolling. He immediately broke into a sprint for just long enough to give him and the house some distance. Then he slowed his pace down, shoving his hands into his pockets. His gaze dropped to look down at his feet. Inside, he wanted to pull his disguise off and show the world that he was a robo, but he knew he couldn't do that. He would be hunted again and possibly captured. Then, it would be back to the scrap pile.
He walked a few more feet forward.
"I'm laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ate!"
He lost his balance as a flurry of pink ran past him. It didn't take long before he knew who the pink blur was. Who else wore pink and was late for school? It was amazing, actually. After all that Liv had been through, she was still the same. Still cheery, and still late for school.
"Hey Liv!" Ray called out, waving his hand wildly. His hand stopped in mid-wave, and he regretted calling out to her.
"Hi!" she called back, turning and waving while still running. "Can't talk now! I'm laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!" She turned back and sprinted more resolutely, determined to get to school.
He was glad that she was late this time. If she could stop and talk, that would be one more danger to him being discovered. Speaking of being discovered... he was surprised that Vil's father hadn't known what Ray was. After all, his livelihood was researching and designing custom robos. Ray MK X's design should have been familiar to Dr. Geary since Ray MK X was based off of the other Ray models.
Ray paused for a moment, wondering where he should go. Part of him wanted to be left alone, the other part of him wanted to hang around and see if he could talk to Liv or even Dennis.
"Hey! You!" another voice called out to his side. Vil turned and paled.
A group of cops, including Duncan, was coming towards him. Ray took a step back, aware that they had their robo cubes in their hands. They had found him.
"You are under arrest for escaping the research facilities of NeoBrain," Duncan said, shaking slightly as was his habit.
"I... I..." Ray said, backing slowly towards Hillside, where Mount Zephyr was located. "Why?"
"It is against the law to let prototypes wander around free since they are incomplete experiments and could potentially be dangerous."
Ray's mind started working at full speed, and his eyes darted around everywhere. Unfortunately, his concentration also started to sag because of the shock of it all. Cops, arrest, prototype, dangerous... dangerous?
"I'm not dangerous!" he said. He fell over backwards and crawled a short distance before getting back on his feet. "You know that! I failed the tests!"
"Regardless, it is in our duty to retire you, X," Duncan said shakily. He held out his robo cube threateningly. "Either you come with us willingly, or we force you to comply to the law."
"How did you even find me?" Ray said, watching the robo cubes with wide eyes. He didn't want to fight those. Especially ten of them at the same time.
"We found your picture posted in our files," Duncan said. "I knew I recognized you from somewhere."
Ray began to shake, and the only thing he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cover his face. Being cornered, robos threatening to eliminate him, it was just like the last test they ran on him. The test in which he just sat down and covered his face. After that, he ran from the company... Neobrain...
Why? Why did they torture him like that? Maybe they didn't consider it torture, but it was painful to him. Everyday, it was another round of scrapes, tears, and sobs.
He felt his legs moving and soon realized he was running. The cops cried out in surprise and hurled their robo cubes after him. Ray didn't stop running. This was his only chance. If he just sat down and cried, the robos would be sure to destroy him. Running was his only option, seeing as how he lacked weapons.
He clutched a tiny locket that he kept around his neck and under his shirt as he ran, needing to grab something but also to make sure that, if one robo managed to latch onto his neck and accidentally sever the chain that the locket connected to, the locket wouldn't be dropped and lost to the robos.
The first one latched onto his leg, and he tried shaking it off. It held on stubbornly, driving its drill into his leg. -The only advantage Ray had to being big was his armor was tougher.- He tried swatting it off with his hand, but this only slowed him down and gave the opportunity for more robos to grab onto him. He yelped and kept running, trying to ignore the small pricks that the robos were making in his armor.
Parents and teenagers alike threw open windows as they saw him run. Some watched breathlessly, others cried out in shock, the rest only gave confused expressions. He didn't mind that they did what they did, he was just glad that they weren't chasing him as well.
He crossed into Hillside and began to head towards Mt. Zephyr's forest. If he could make it there, he could lose the cops, at least, then try to get the robos off of him. He wanted to smile, pleased at his own thinking, but he couldn't. Didn't have the mechanical parts for that.
Someone stepped out in front of him, and he tried to run around the person. The stranger stuck his arm out, catching Ray in the neck, throwing him off his feet. What? Ray thought.
He hit the ground with a loud thud, his head hitting the pavement. He struggled to get to his feet, disoriented from the fall. The stranger kicked him back down, and his head hit the pavement again. He cried out from the pain and held his head, curling up slightly.
Why? he thought, following his programming and making sobbing sounds. Yet another program that confused him. Why could he make sobbing actions if he was a combat robot?
The robos crawled towards his torso, threatening to deactivate him once again. If they reached his head, they could equip a special weapon that basically knocked out the target in one hit. It was a modified weapon, military grade, illegal for police use and definitely civilian use. Someone from SWAT or something like that might've issued it, but the weapons were tiny to his eyes, so he could never tell if one had it equipped or not. If he was lucky, this police force didn't. However, his luck hadn't been that good lately.
He tried getting up again, and the person brought his foot down. Ray cried out and closed his eyes, shielding himself with his arm. The leg and his arm connected.
It was almost like something physically snapped in his brain. Like a wire or something. It felt like it, but the next thing Ray knew, the person was on the ground, his leg caught in Ray's grasp.
Ray backed up slightly, stunned at what he thought must've happened. When the leg hit him, he must have grabbed it and flipped the man over.
No time to wonder about it, though. He broke into a sprint again, past the wondering man. Hurriedly, he crushed one robo underneath his fist. They were so close to his head now. Flailing his arms frantically, he managed to knock one off his neck.
Tearing past more civilians, he was about five seconds away from the passage to Mt. Zephyr. Then he'd be free. He just needed to get the robos off now.
More robos flew from his body as he slapped them away until all of them were off. Good, now he could escape and try to find a new city to reside in for a while. He would probably have to adopt city-jumping tactics. He wanted to frown. He didn't really like moving around a lot. He would have preferred to stay in one city for a while, but fortune, it seems, had other plans for him.
He entered the boundaries of the forest, and he made the closest expression as possible to ecstasy. "I'm free!"
The ledge was too close for him to react quick enough. He fell over it, twisting around and managing to grab onto a root that protruded from the canyon wall. He breathed heavily, looking around for a way to climb back up and to a safe way around the man-made canyon.
He had heard about this canyon. It used to be a trench in one of the wars that had hit the land years ago, then it became a stream, then, due to periods of drought and rain, the soil had rapidly been carried away downstream. Now, at the bottom of the canyon, the stream lay, but it was about a fifty foot drop.
A shadow dropped over him, and he froze. One of the cops had actually taken the effort to follow him into the forest. He had figured that they would let the robos do all of the work. He didn't think that the cops were that close.
"Hello, Ray."
Ray closed his eyes, despairing at his misfortune. Why, out of all the people, did he have to meet with this one? This was the man that had made him. The one that came up with his concept and technical design. This man was known as Thomas Xavier Light.
"Why are you here?" Ray asked, loathe to look up into his maker's eyes. It was like looking up to God. Both the maker and God held all of the power.
"I'm looking for my creation that just ran off without saying goodbye. You know that's rude, Ray. I programmed that into you. You shoul-"
"I know!" Ray shouted, shutting his eyes tight. "I know what my programming is! I live with it everyday and struggle to find out why I was made with certain functions!"
"Don't interrupt, Ray," Thomas Light said calmly, not startled in the least by his creation's outburst. If he was, he did not show it. Then again, Ray couldn't really expect him to show a lot of emotion. He had never had a lot of emotion... unless he was talking about the next creation after Ray. That one's model name would technically be Ray MK XI, but Light had decided to name it Rock. Probably because he planned on building another robot called Roll. "Now are you going to be a good boy and come up, or do I have to use my own robo on you?"
Come back to you... and get sent back to the scrap pile? Or fall, get damaged, possibly knocked out if I plan it right... Ray thought. At the least, being torn and smelted apart at the scrap pile would be painless if he was knocked out...
But there must be some other way...
The inventor's cube dropped to the ground and began to shift into full form, a drill forming on its right arm. Ray panicked and his arm tensed, refusing to let go of the root. He didn't want to get hurt. He knew this, and his body knew it, and so it refused to let go of the root, even if a robo was planning on hurting him anyway.
A second later, the robo was on his face, its drill feeling like a hornet, although more like a hornet spinning around with barbs hooked to its stinger.
Ray swiped at it with his hand, but it nimbly jumped over and landed on his nose. Ray watched in horror as its arm drew back, and...
His hand let go as the pain shot from his eye. He screamed, holding his eye as he fell down the canyon. The next blast of pain emitted from the bridge of his nose, and he swiped there but didn't feel any contact. He opened his one good eye to try to find it. It was right in front of that eye, bent over. His arm moved to smash it. He soon found out why it had been bending over.
The missile from the robo's back hit his other eye, making him completely blind. His scream became a howl of pain, and he slapped blindly at his face. He heard a slight crunch, then felt the blow of the ground.
Darkness...
