"So we're going to Hawaii now?" 2D asked Russel, whose head he was sitting on.

"That's were Mudz said to meet him," Russel replied, his voice shaking his whole skull. Noodle had put a blanket on it so they'd be comfortable on their long journey to the Aloha State. Her belongings - and anything useful that 2D had managed to salvage from the wreckage at the beach - were in backpacks.

"This is so great! I haven't been off the beach in forever," 2D said dreamily.

"Where was Murdoc keeping you?" Noodle asked. She was trying to keep her mind off the unsettling image of dead Cyborg Noodle by endlessly tracing her fingertips across the design on her mask.

"'E imprisoned me in an underwater room with that big sodding whale to guard me!" 2D spat, his dreamy expression disappearing instantly. "I'm so glad Russel killed it for me. Fanks Russ!"

"No problem, 'D."

"So he just left you all alone down there?" Noodle asked sadly, wishing she'd been able to free him sooner. Murdoc was just awful. Always had been, always would be. She was going to have a nice long 'chat' with him when they got to Hawaii. It wasn't going to be pretty.

"Well," 2D said, a small smile now replacing his scowl, "I wasn't always alone. Cyborg sometimes - "

He stopped suddenly, his smile fading. Noodle's eyes widened and she stared intently at the mask in her lap instead of at 2D.

2D gave a sigh, but managed to continue. "She used to come and keep me company sometimes. Before she went all psycho, I mean."

Noodle's mouth felt dry. She could tell by the fondness in his voice that he really had considered the robot a friend. Now she knew why he'd stuck up for her on the beach.

"She... She was nice to you? I thought she was just Murdoc's slave."

2D looked off across the open ocean wistfully. "She wasn't really so bad. When Murdoc was around I wouldn't mess with her, 'cause she would only follow his orders and do whatever he told her to do. But when Murdoc was asleep and she wasn't charging or patrolling, she would come to my room and cover the window so I couldn't see the whale, and say she was lonely. So we'd listen to music or watch a movie or sumfink. It was nice. She even got me out of my room sometimes, won me some... things." His eyes moved to the multicolored snake head sticking out of his backpack. It had washed up on the shore just as they were leaving and he'd stuck it in his bag silently.

"Of course, if I ever made a move to escape, the guns would come out... But that was part of 'er programming. Murdoc's bloody programming..." He shook his head. "I bet that's what happened to 'er. I bet she went nuts from taking his sodding orders all the time. he wasn't even nice to 'er, used to call 'er names all the time and chuck garbage at 'er... It's his fault, Murdoc and his bloody programming," he said bitterly. "You never got to know her the way I did, Noodle. By the time you got here, the Cyborg I knew was... gone."

Noodle was silent. The sound of the waves crashing around Russel's enormous body was all she could hear - until she picked up on a small sniffling sound. She looked at 2D to see he was rubbing his vacant eyes and looking away from her again, out at the ocean.

Noodle felt awful. She could tell that 2D had really cared about the robot and a terrible guilt began to settle in her stomach. Cyborg had been 2D's only company for almost three years... And then he had to witness her decent into madness and subsequent murder by Noodle. Noodle thought about what he'd said - 'you never got to know her the way I did.' In the end - when the robot had whispered her name - was that the Cyborg that 2D once knew, appearing for one last time in her final moments?

She probably would never know.

"E-Enough about all that," 2D said finally, composing himself. "What happened to you?"

Noodle gulped down the lump of guilt in her throat and began to tell her story.

"After the windmill crashed..."