Raine sat impatiently at the kitchen table that morning waiting for Hela. "Are you done yet?" She called up to her.
"Almost!" Hela responded, "Just give me five more minutes!"
Raine grunted. Why were humans so slow at getting themselves prepared for the day? She was up at 4:00 that morning ready to go but Hela, half asleep and half-awake angrily told her that they weren't leaving for the Bodies Pit for another four hours. So she went into the kitchen and sat at the table until Hela was ready.
Raine heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Hela entered the kitchen and grabbed her car keys rom the hook on the wall. "Let's go."
They entered Hela's red hover truck and drove to the Pit. "We could have been there by now." Raine grumbled.
"We'll be there in a few minutes."
"I should have just walked there."
"No, not again. Not after last time."
Raine scoffed, "It's not my fault that human tried to stop me. He wouldn't have ended up in that tree if he had just let me go."
"That 'human' was a police officer," Hela sighed, "and he was only trying to make sure that you were safe. If you hadn't tried to run off on your own it wouldn't have happened."
"I will destroy him." Raine said.
Hela slowed at an upcoming yellow light. Raine looked out the window. All around them, people and robots of different shapes, colors, and sizes were going about their day.
Hela glanced at Raine then back at the stop sign as it turned from red to green. "Have you recovered any more of your memories?"
Raine kept looking out the window.
"Nothing yet at all?"
"It's still the same." Raine answered, "Noises and voices- nothing more, nothing less." She turned her head. "It's been three weeks since you found me and I still can't remember anything. I should be able to remember something by now!" Her fist pounded against the cars door handle.
"Before you break my car, I have told you before that recovering memories is a process. Unlike humans, robots are able to store their memories on their EPU's like files in a filing cabinet. It makes it easier for the robot to access certain memories from a very long time ago. Your EPU is different- the memory files aren't damaged; there just… scattered like a puzzle and all the 'pieces' are there. You just have to put them in the right places."
"How come you can't put them together?"
"I've tried. But the 'pieces' don't fit when I try to put them together. You're the only one who can."
The car parked next to the Pit's open garage door. Sounds of tools were heard from inside. Hela turned off the ignition and faced Raine. "I know how frustrating it can be to not have the answers exactly when you want them. But I promise you, we're going to help you find your memories again. We just need to have a little patience."
A "humph" was Raine's response to that.
Hela sighed and got out. Raine opened the car door, stepped out, produced her spider legs, and headed inside the Pit.
Spider legs. Those were Raine's first step towards recovering her memories. She found out about them last week. Mong was reaching for something on a shelf (she forgot what it was) and the shelf started to tip over and almost squished him. Raine had seen what was about to happen and, on total gut instinct, pushed him out of the way. Four thin, long, silver spider like legs emerged from her and set the shelf back upright.
Every human and bot stopped and gawked at her. She just looked at the legs, looked back at them, and just shrugged as if to say, "Wow. I have spider legs now."
She didn't know how they got there or how they worked but at the same time she knew exactly how to use them. It was weird, like her. She knew, even though she didn't know how, that her legs could bend in any direction and they could twist and turn all the way around allowing her to be in different poses at once. They could allow her to somehow stick and crawl on the wall like a real spider. Hela had inspected her legs and couldn't figure out how they were doing it, all she discovered were that the legs came out of these four holes in Raines back which had black plates that slid in and out when Raine used her legs. Hela was impressed, being her exact words to Raine were, "This is too advanced, even for me. Whoever made you must have been an incredible genius."
Whoever made her, however advanced she was, apparently didn't want her since she was here at the Pit instead of with him. Or her.
As Raine entered the building she saw everyone gathered around the fixing table. "What the heck happened?" She asked.
Mong turned his head to her. "Hi Raine. It's Dondon, he had an accident."
"Hela," Abby asked Hela with concern, "is Dondon gonna be ok?"
"It doesn't look good." Chip said.
"If it's trash then I could use those circuits…"
"Take that back Mong!"
"Well I could."
As they talked, Raine put her legs back inside her. She noticed a new kid walking around, examining the Pit. He had black hair, wore a white shirt and blue shorts and sneakers. Raine marched right to him and barked, "Hey."
He looked down. "Oh! Uh, hi. I didn't see you there."
"Who are you?"
"I'm Conner. Who are you?"
"Raine."
"Raine?" he said confused. "What kind of model is that?"
"What?"
He was about to say something but all of the sudden, something caught his eye. Raine followed his gaze and saw that he was staring into the back of the Bodies Pit. In one of the storage rooms, in a cluster of broken robot parts and scrap metal, was a white, cubed-shaped robot. Something went off in Raine's memory banks- it was extremely blurry; only noises and sounds were heard which wasn't a big surprise since that was all her memories sounded like. The blur she was seeing looked a little like that robot. It was strange but her gut was telling her that somehow, some way, she had seen that robot before.
Mong came over and stood next to Conner. "Watcha looking at?"
Chip came over too. "There's nothing much back here, bud. Except Cubix."
"Cubix." Conner repeated.
Raine frowned slightly. Cubix… she felt like she knew that name from somewhere…
"We all really tried," Chip said, "but none of us could fix him up."
"He's great." Conner said.
"Once, maybe," Mong said, "but not anymore."
"He just won't work." Chip said. "Finally, even Hela gave up."
"But for some reason she doesn't want to throw him out." Mong said. "So, what kind of robot do you have?" He asked Conner.
"I don't have a robot." He replied sadly.
"What! No robot!?" Mong said in disbelief, "Wow, what a bummer."
Chip told Conner, "Don't go hoping for a Cubix, cause this hunk of junk is the only one they made."
"Who's 'they'?" Raine asked Chip.
"I dunno?" was his reply.
"Wooaah!"
Everyone turned around and saw that Dondon was flying around. Hela managed to fix him. "Dondon!" "That's my name!" Abby hugged her flying companion. "I'm glad to have you back!"
Hela set the tools back in their place and leaned against the table. "You did a really good job on figuring out what was wrong, Conner." She smiled at him. "We could really use you. Maybe you'd like to work here in the Bodies Pit?"
Conner's face lit up like a light. "No 'maybe' about it, I do! Show me where to sign!"
"Hela," Mong injected, "Conner should have to pass the initiation like we did." Chip nodded in agreement. "That's right. He has to do everything that we had to do. He has to pick a robot and fix it in 24 hours with no help and if he can't do it, he's out of here." Mong and Abby agreed with Chip. Hela said, "Ok." Raine just looked at them all, since she had no idea what they were talking about.
"Well," Abby said, "you start tomorrow, so you better look around and pick a robot Conner."
"Alright." Conner pointed to the storage room. "Then I want to try to fix that one. Cubix!"
Everyone couldn't believe it. "Cubix?" Abby said in a confused tone. "Why him?"
"Why not?"
"We just told you that no one could fix him, not even Hela."
"Yeah, but, I still want to try."
"He should try." Raine said, getting confused looks from the other Bodies members. "You all said that he was unfixable. If he tries and fails, it'll be hilarious."
Abby looked to Hela. "What do you think, Hela?"
Hela was quiet for a moment, then said to Conner, "If you really want to try."
"I do!" He said.
"Alright then." Hela looked at the clock hanging on the wall. "It's getting late, you should all head home. You've got a big day tomorrow, Conner."
The next day at the Bodies Pit, Hela and Raine were busy cleaning. Hela was inspecting her tools and Raine was stacking boxes when all the sudden Conner came bursting in. "Hi Hela bye Hela!" Was all he said as he zoomed by them.
They stared at each other in confusion.
Conner immediately got to work fixing Cubix. After inspecting the tools, Hela came over to see how he was doing. "Well Conner, I see you're working hard."
"Yeah it's pretty tough." He said while he worked.
"Tell me about it. So, why did you choose Cubix?"
"Well… it's kind of funny, in way I really didn't. It's almost like Cubix chose me, really."
"Hmm." Hela snapped her fingers and said, "How about a couple of assistants?" Two robots, a small red one and a large yellow one came over to them. "You can't' have humans help you, but its ok if Mr. Fixit and Diagnostix give you a hand. And Raine, too, if she wants."
As Conner kept working, Raine studied the robot that she did/didn't know. The robot was white, his arms and legs were cubes with different color circles on them like red, orange, yellow, and green. His feet had blue circles on the sides of them. She could see that he didn't have a mouth but he had a black screen in the middle of his face that probably was his eyes. That face… why did she feel like she knew this guy? Raine growled. This was driving her crazy!
"You ok?" Conner asked, still fixing Cubix.
"I'm fine."
"So, what kind of model robot are you?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I don't know what I am. Or who I am."
"You lost your memories? That's awful."
"It's nothing to worry about, human. I will regain my memories and then I'm out of here."
"Well, could you help me keep his arm steady while I work on it?"
"Whatever."
Raine helped Conner fix Cubix (for two minutes because she got bored). The other Bodies members arrived and started to work on their robots. While they started to become friends with Conner, Raine studied Cubix. She searched through the noise and sounds, trying to find some sort connection to them and this robot. After a minute of trying, she stopped and hung out with the humans. It's not like she didn't like being with humans; she just didn't like being with humans, she had no good reason she just didn't like it. By evening, everyone had gone home making Raine and Conner the only one's there. By the time Hela locked up the place she found him asleep on Cubix. "This human is wasting his time." Raine said. "He's been working on this pile of blocks all day and it's still broken."
"He's determined." Hela said.
"He's stupid." Was Raine's answer.
"We better wake him up and take him home." Hela said walking up to Conner and lightly shaking his shoulder.
The next morning, Hela and Raine got caught in some traffic on their way to the Pit.
Hela sighed, "This construction's been tying up traffic forever."
Raine just sat in her seat, growling.
"Oh! The new doughnut shop! Well, if I'm gonna be stuck I might as well be stuck with a coffee and a chocolate glazed. " Hela turned the car wheel and drove out of the traffic and into the parking lot.
Raine stayed in the car. Only a few minutes had passed when a large crash was heard. Raine got out of the car just as Hela and some other human got out of the doughnut shop.
"What is that?" The human asked. Across the street at the construction site was a pile of fallen debris and some sort of being trapped beneath it.
"A Weldonfix." Said Hela. Raine headed across the street and, using her spider legs, pushed and hauled the debris from off the robot. She leaned the robot against her and used her spider legs to walk back over to Hela, who was opening the back of her truck. The two carefully placed the robot in and got back in the truck, weaved around the traffic, and sped towards the Pit. When they arrived Hela said to everyone, "Alright, I need everyone's help right now!"
Raine watched as they set the Weldonfix on the table. "Ok," Hela said once they did that, "let's open it up and see what the problem is." Raine heard Hela emit a small gasp as she opened the robot. Raine could see a faint blue light emitting from inside it. A blue light she had never seen before, but felt like she had seen it. Somewhere.
All of the sudden a huge menacing arcade like claw burst in from the windows and grabbed the Weldonfix. Everyone ran out of the building because the giant claw had caused the ceiling to start caving in on itself. Raine saw the robot that grabbed the Weldonfix. He was large and gray and Raine had a very fuzzy looking image that suddenly flashed in her mind. The image, though fuzzy, was very similar to the robot that just kidnapped the Weldonfix.
"No Conner! The building's not safe!" Raine turned around and saw Conner booking it towards Cubix who was still inside. Raine sprinted towards him, got her spider legs out, and tried to hold the roof up long enough for Conner to get Cubix out.
"Raine!?" He cried out.
"Just grab the pile of blocks!" She grunted.
It took all of her strength to keep that roof from crushing her and Conner. From the corner of her eye she could see that he was trying to get Cubix onto a dolly.
"Just leave him! I can't hold this forever!" Raine shouted at him.
The weight and pressure was pushing down on her legs so hard that Raine almost screamed from the pain. She didn't know why she was rescuing this foolish human who thought he could play hero and rescue this broken pile of blocks.
Suddenly the weight of the roof was lighter and the word "Friend" was heard. Out of the corner of her eye Raine saw what was lightening her load.
Cubix. One hand was holding up the roof and the other had Conner scooped up protectively.
Cubix helped Raine hold up the roof as Mr. Fixit fixed the roof. Her legs weren't damaged by all that weight, they were just really sore. When she put them away she got the feeling someone was looking at her. She turned around and saw that Cubix was looking at her. He didn't really have eyes, they were just green circles, but even thought his whole face held a blank expression she felt like that he was looking at her like he had seen her before.
"What are you looking at, blockhead?"
He blinked, not saying anything. Then he went and helped fix the Pit.
Once the Pit was fixed, Conner and Cubix went with the others to go find the kidnapped Weldonfix. Hela and Raine went back inside. Hela was muttering something to herself that Raine couldn't hear, but she did hear her mutter, "It just can't be…"
"What 'can't be'?" Raine asked.
"It's nothing." Hela said quickly.
Raine just raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything about it.
The Bodies were able to get the Weldonfix back from the large gray robot and back to normal. And Conner decided to officially join the Pit. Raine was glad he decided to stay. It wasn't because Conner was a new member. It was because she could find out why she and Cubix looked like they knew each other from somewhere.
A/N: YES! This took so long to write but it's done I'm so happy!
Please like and review!
