I took far too long again, and I'm sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy chapter three.

July, 2312

The night after the afternoon before the morning after the day after the Apocalypse

The empty hospital, ten miles from G.L.E.E Headquarters

'Ooh, doesn't that make a delightful zapping noise! Oh, just listen to how it sizzles!'

Everyone cringed and shrank back as Doctor Blim attacked his task with relish, cackling with frighteningly manic laughter every time he tampered with some of the hospital machinery and it made an unsavoury sound.

'Oh, man, we're toast, I mean we're dead ducks, man!' Krayonder, standing guard at the operating theatre door, wailed with his head in his hands. It had been hard enough, even with the five of them supporting Up's body, to manoeuvre their way back through the streets and then slip through the hospital doors unnoticed- and all of them (well, Krayonder, Specs and Junior anyway) were half expecting a robot to burst through the doors and apprehend them at any second.

Specs was sure the bright, x-ray-esque lights emitting from this room would alert every robot within a fifty mile radius at least to their presence, and she had insisted they stay prepared, bringing with her every weapon they had managed to salvage and clutching her own like a lifeline.

It had to be said that Doctor Blim was thoroughly enjoying himself- having access to all the technology the hospital had to offer for the first time since the G.L.E.E. had banned him from the infirmary had really brightened his day. With every move he made he was screaming his excitement, hurling chocolate bars across the room in a wild frenzy as he worked away.

If you could put aside the fact that he was, well, insane, Specs did have to admit the spectacle was quite impressive to watch. Blim's hands moved incredibly quickly over the Commander, attaching and plunging syringes, stitching and gluing and using some strange sort of liquid to fuse veins and organs with wires and safeguard them. From the way he instantly seemed to know where to put each piece, it seemed as though he'd been planning this for a lifetime. Specs knew he'd been fascinated with the robots in an unhealthy way for a while- since she'd joined the Academy back when she was a kid there had been rumours about him- making strange robot-animal hybrids and frightening his superiors into blacklisting him from their labs. But she had never thought even for a minute that he could successfully use robot parts as prosthetics on a human being.

Commander Up's new body was taking shape- albeit a very mismatched shape- a bronze torso appeared to be the remnant of a Megagman, while the arm was iron and apparently cheaply made and the hand seemed to have been snatched right off the most advanced models, looking almost human in appearance, colour and texture. As for the leg, its origins were impossible to tell- each part seemed to have been taken from some different toaster. All in all, a bit of a scrapheap of a body- but in these times, what else could they do? They were lucky to have anything to work with, let alone access to an empty hospital and a medic.

Blim was now in the process of spraying the divide between Up's human side and his new robot one with several canisters of spray-on skin he'd found in supplies, using a liberal amount for each small space and tossing the cans aside, ignoring the loud clatter as they bounced along the linoleum.

Specs winced and turned away. They were doomed.

She turned her attention instead to the other members of the group. Krayonder, despite being on watch, was more interested in lamenting their inevitable discovery than either watching the operation or guarding the door. February, who had only come because she was scared of being left behind on her own, was cowering in one corner with her hands over her ears and a plastic bucket in her lap. And Junior, he was…

'Junior, put that away!' Specs snapped as the former boss's son put a hand-rolled joint to his lips and pulled out a lighter. 'This is a hospital!'

Junior rolled his eyes. 'No duh,- an empty hospital!' he waved his arms around in an exaggerated gesture, and Specs rolled her eyes beneath her glasses. Being the son of the Head of the Whole Galactic League had made him obnoxious and spoilt- he had no sense of tact or discretion. He was going to have to learn how to act like everyone else if the whole lot of them wanted any chance of surviving.

'I'm goin' outside for a smoke,' Junior announced, getting up before anyone could stop him and pushing through the door. Specs jumped up in horror. If he went outside and got high, the robots would be on them before they could blink. She hastened toward the doors.

'Ladies and jellybeans!' Blim announced at the top of his lungs, throwing his hands up and showering the little coloured candies everywhere, 'I would ask you all to remain still while I turn on the defibrillators and the electric charge, to revive this man, both the robot and human sides of him!'

Specs might have said Blim was like a kid in a candy store, although knowing the contents of the Doctor's pockets, to say that out loud, she felt, might be tempting fate. She stood stock still, a little panicked at what might happen if she disobeyed the mad doctor's orders.

Blim pranced around the operating table, laughing manically as he flipped switches and twiddled knobs, sending several-thousand-volt charges and flashes of light out across the room. A bleep machine was attached to Up, making very irregular little blips. As the others watched, transfixed, Blim dragged the defibrillator across, placing the panels on the Commander's chest, singing all the while- some sort of mangled version of an old children's song which sounded incredibly terrifying.

'Who can take a human…CLEAR!'

He slammed the panels down and Up's chest jerked.

'..Fuse it with tin caaaans…CLEAR!'

Another jerk. The line on the bleep machine wavered a little, but Blim didn't seem deterred.

'Fix 'em up together with my skilful, skilful hands- the doctor man! Oh, the doctor man can! CLEAR!'

This time, the machine fizzled, and then began to beep, a slow, steady rhythm. Up's left hand twitched, and then the new right side of his body moved, the fingers and limbs stretching out straight in response to the electric charge. The three starship rangers were riveted to the spot, eyes on the strange spectacle taking place.

'Is it, like, safe to move yet?' February squeaked from her corner.

'Safe? Safe? Oh, it was always safe!' Blim said, as if that had been obvious.

Everyone shot him exasperated glances.

'We could have moved?!' Krayonder was by far the most outraged. 'Come on, man! I lost all feelin' in my ass from sittin' still that long!'

Specs just let her head drop into her hands.

'And now,' went on Blim, totally ignoring them all, 'the piece de reistance!' A single Reese's piece went flying. 'We are going to wake him up!'

There was a momentary silence as the other rangers looked at each other and their watches.

'What, that's it?' Specs asked in disbelief. She knew Blim was a madman, but they couldn't have been here more than three hours- not nearly long enough to have completely fixed the Commander's extensive injuries.

'Do you doubt my brilliance?' the doctor turned his crazed, threatening expression on her and she shrank back. 'Do you not think I'm enough of a smartie to pull this off in record time?' He opened a little cardboard box and showered Specs with the contents, and she flinched, covering her glasses and shaking smarties out of her hair.

What are we doing? she thought. If Commander Up wasn't already dead, we just killed him.

'Prepare to be amazed as I…oh, wait!' Blim stopped mid-prance and examined the body.

'Hold everything! I forgot one of the pieces!'

There was a clank and a crash as he dropped everything and started rummaging ferociously through the piles of junk he'd stacked all over the counters.

Specs felt like tearing her hair out.

A street outside what once was the hospital

At least forty-eight hours after the Apocalypse- but it could be forty-nine or fifty- no-one can be bothered to count

Junior knew they'd all jump down his throat for running off, but the stuffy air and dangerous electrical charge inside the hospital had been messing with his head- and only one substance was allowed to do that. Speaking of which, he could really do with some. Ignoring Specs's protests and Blim's cries that he was going to 'miss the show', he slipped outside into the night air and lit up a joint.

Specs couldn't say he wasn't careful about it- the son of the late Head of the whole Galactic League planned it out meticulously- ducking into the shadows the robot searchlights didn't reach, covering the end of his cigarette with his hand while he set fire to the end, facing the wall so the little smouldering light the joint gave off wasn't easily detectable by any of the toasters' sensors. Junior took a deep drag and let the toxins do their work.

It couldn't be denied- since the Apocalypse he'd taken to smoking a hell of a lot of the stuff. He'd always had a bit of a weakness for pot, hiding it in his room, his car, the back of the high cupboards his parents never looked in, but since his family and friends had all perished at the hand of the robots, he'd found himself turning to it to help him forget, and trying constantly to smoke his worries away.

He tried to remember if he'd felt sad when both his parents had bitten the dust. He couldn't honestly recall. He'd been a bit drunk at the time, to be honest, and when Krayonder and Specs had found him, stumbling through the destroyed streets and singing at the top of his voice, and had dragged him out of sight and into their hideout, he'd laughed and yelled out rather inappropriate comments about their faces.

It was only after a little while, when everything wore off and he realised that the miserable, fugitive state he was now in was to be his life- probably forever- that the true implications of all that had happened hit him. He'd gone from being the richest damn kid in the whole of the G.L.E.E. to a pathetic straggler, sticking to losers he wouldn't look at twice except to boss around, simply because they were probably the only humans left alive. He'd had such a great future- his dad had always said that one day the universe would fall under their combined might- and he'd been respected wherever he went- well, when people found out who his dad was at least. The thought of living like this- lying low in squalor, periodically emerging to risk his life collecting measly remnants of supplies until they all either died of starvation or were eventually discovered by their new robot overlords was too much to take- and he chose now to escape from reality as often as he could.

And so he stood out on the street, breathing in and swamping himself in fumes, watching as his problems turned into little, colourful neon balls and started swirling away in front of his eyes. His eyes followed them as they danced about in the darkened sky, bouncing off a swinging searchlight and zipping away. That searchlight sure was an awesome sight…it was beautiful and swingy-ful…was that even a word? Junior swayed his head in sync with it, stepping out of the shadows and moving slowly toward its source.

The road and all the buildings rocked as he took a step, then another, seeming to close in around him then swell until they were far in the distance, undulating and changing shape. He would have stopped to admire them, but he wanted to get to that light, to touch it…

And then, from round a corner, a ringing, echoing clanking sound that should have heralded danger, but to Junior, in his drug-addled state, seemed like the most amazing music. Clank. Clank. Clank.

I wanna MP3 of that….he thought a little dreamily. It was getting louder. He turned, ambling away from the searchlight beam he was chasing and heading towards the noise instead.

As he came closer, Junior realised the noise was, in fact, attached to a great, hulking shape, heading straight in his direction with its arms outstretched.

'Hey! You wanna hug?' he slurred, reaching out his own arms and trying to catch the shape.

'Life sign detected,' said the shape, in a gravelly, tinny sort of voice, and then it made a screechy sound and waved its arms about in his direction.

Neeeew!

'Wow…' Junior said in wonder.

'Confirmed- human. Human will now be taken to base to determine usefulness. If no value for project 15-A2, it will be disposed of.'

If Junior had been with it, he would have recognised the voice as belonging to a robot. He would have immediately turned and run in the opposite direction, dodging its fire and not stopping until he'd lost it- and, if he had any sense at all, leading it as far away as possible from their secret base.

But then again, if he had been at all with it, he wouldn't be in this situation at all.

Junior's arms closed around the metal body of the robot, and a current of several thousand volts shot through him. The son of the dead Head of the Galatic League fell to the floor, unconscious, and the robot's metallic laugh echoed through the empty streets as it picked him up by the leg, slung him over its shoulder and clanked back in the direction it had come.

Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters

Two days and a few hours after the Apocalypse

Taz ached all over. Her ribs still ached from lying on her chest for so long. Her shoulders ached from the number of times the robots overseeing whatever the hell they were making her do had decided she wasn't working fast enough and cracked a whip over them. Her hand still throbbed- her fingers had been taped into place, but the robots didn't seem to consider breaks bad enough to warrant healing, but had merely bound them and left them. Taz only hoped they weren't going to go crooked- she'd seen enough starship rangers in her day who hadn't had their bones set properly, and…no, wait. She didn't care. What did it matter?

She couldn't lift anything with her left hand now her fingers were broken, and if they didn't heal properly that would mean she still wouldn't be able to lift anything properly. Not that that would make a particularly big difference to anything, but it made Taz a little bit smug to think that she was holding the robots up with whatever they were trying to do, by contributing as little as possible. It was the smallest, most pathetic type of revenge going- so pathetic it could be called childish, could be called not even trying at all, but Taz was past making tremendous plans and roaring at the top of her voice, guns blasting. That had been that Taz who knew she had something to look forward to afterwards-that wonderful feeling of knowing she had saved the human race once more, of seeing Up's face beaming proudly at her as they high-fived. Sí, that had been a different Taz, in a different world. Here there were only a handful of lamentable human specimens left, all of them completely bent to the robots' will, assembling parts and lifting loads with every last ounce of their strength devoted to doing the bidding of the tin cans they had once tried to kill, and to grovelling like insects to keep their own meaningless lives. It made her want to throw up- not that she could claim to be any better. She just carried out the motions, same as everyone else, feeling herself turn into a machine- lift, place, turn, lift, place…

It wasn't that she didn't want to be the tough sonovabitch she'd been- she'd give anything to have that back, but she just couldn't see the justification in trying. There wasn't anything for her to save- except perhaps herself, and the thought of wandering around alone, hiding out for the rest of her life seemed almost as depressing as being the robots' prisoner. As for the others, she found herself resenting each and every one of them- not a single one was even attempting to fight back. They were all well and truly resigned to their fate- and that made her sink further and further into her own depression. If there was just one who was still resisting- just one lone, single human being holding on to their own humanity, well, she might have allowed herself to feel a shred of hope. But there wasn't. They were all just drones- except that particular one, who made her want to rip her own head off.

'Well hey there, li'l girl!' he'd announced as soon as she was thrown in with the others,ignoring the dozen robot guards who'd started bleating at him to get back to work. 'My name is Tootsie Noodles!'

He held out a beefy hand for her to shake, which she ignored. Taz looked him up and down. What a stupid name. And why de hell is he smiling?

'Well?' the idiota who was supposedly called Tootsie Noodles asked after a little while.

Taz glared. 'Well what?'

'What's your name? You seem real nice, and where I come from- Farm Planet, we like to introduce ourselves by tellin' each other what we're called. See, on my planet, your first name is…'

'Oh, shut up!' Taz cut him off, throwing her hands up in the air and trying not to wince at the twist of pain her newly-popped-into-place shoulder gave her. 'Who cares about jour estúpido planet? Ees probably destroyed by now! Why does it matter about my name? We're all stuck in here, movin' scrap metal for dese metal hijos de puta until we fall and die!'

Tootsie just looked at her blankly for a moment, and then grinned goofily again. 'Well, dang, you seem real nice! We can be buddies! This here's a real shiny place, ain't it- you see that Megagirl over there, she's one be-yootiful woman!'

Taz couldn't stop her jaw from dropping. She didn't know which part of this bumbling hick's sentence needed correcting most urgently- nor which part of this whole incident she found more difficult to believe- that the idiota could stay cheerful given the dire circumstances, that he thought she 'seemed real nice' after she had just insulted him, that he could possibly consider a robot 'beautiful'- or just that someone could even bethat stupid! It was bad enough to have given up, to see everyone around you having given up too, but for someone to be so ignorant as to be happy about his current situation- to actually like the idea of being enslaved by the robots- it just made her want to run repeatedly into her own knife. Not that she still had it.

She tried to avoid Tootsie Noodles after that.

Which, incidentally, was what she was doing now.

A whole group of tin cans were assembled around them, prodding the humans and grating out orders about how to attach certain transistors to whatever the huge structure was they were building. Taz worked one-handed, occasionally letting her eyes run up and down the structure and wondering absently what it might be. Probably another weapon, she figured, and probably one that would expand the robots' empire and cement their new hold over the galaxy. It would just be perfect to have the last of the starship rangers engaged in building something like that- to force them to assist the universal domination of their own enemies. It was just like the killer toasters to think like that.

Occasionally, as she fiddled with wires and screwdrivers, little bits of the Taz she once was would flitter up to the surface, and she'd find herself imagining what would happen if she were to use the spanner she was holding, take advantage of its heft and bash as much of this device in as she possibly could. Those hijos de puta would boil with a synthetic rage, they'd probably kill her- but she could have at least done something noble in her last dying act- she could at least have stopped them from carrying out an evil plot one last time…

But then an image of Up flashed through her mind, and the gears in her brain skidded to a halt. Wasn't that what the two of them were trying to do, down on Qo'onoS? And look what happened to Up. Somewhere out there he was lying in two or more pieces. She tried to blink the mental picture away, frantically looking up, and immediately caught sight of Tootsie. Her last shred of hope drained away.

The robots didn't even need her for this project- not really. She, like all the others, was just a disposable source of labour, and if they did annihilate her for trying to rebel, there were pathetic idiots like Tootsie Noodles who would rebuild the device, completely unaware of what they were doing.

The Farm Planet fool saw her glance in his direction and gave her a goofy wave. 'Hi there, li'l girl!'

'Silence, hu-man!' the nearest robot thumped Tootsie.

'Oh, yeah, shhhh!' he put his finger to his lips in an exaggerated gesture, which Taz assumed was for her benefit. 'We gotta be real quiet,' the hick said in an overdramatic whisper, 'like in a li-bah-ry…'

'Silence, human!' snapped the robot again, and Taz looked away as scuffling sounds were heard. That idiota estupido was going to land her in hot water if he kept going on like this- not to mention get himself killed. Not that she couldn't say she'd mind all that much if he did.

She shook her head and turned back to the task at hand.

Taz managed to keep her thoughts off anything for a good hour more or so, humming strange tunes in her mind to prevent her mind from latching onto any more painful memories of the G.L.E.E., or Up, or the fact that this was her life now. She jiggled wires until they clicked in their place, resisted the urge to retch every time a hulking metal supervisor clanked past, and kept a large section of her conscious thought focused on staying away from Tootsie Noodles, and pretending she hadn't seen when he sent a stupid, leering grin her way.

'Hey! Get your damn hands off me! Don't you know who I am? Haven't you heard o' me?'

The sudden shriek had the human slaves dropping what they were doing, watching in surprise and curiosity as two Megamen units entered, dragging with them a shouting, struggling young ranger.

New arrivals weren't big news in this place- Taz hadn't been here for more than five hours at most, and since then at least ten new survivors had been brought in- but they had all been like her- non-resistant, weak, resigned. They had merely been pushed in and immediately fallen into the same pattern as everyone else.

This boy was different- and Taz, despite her determination to not care, to keep watching her hands at work and not take any notice, found herself craning her neck to see the newcomer.

There was something oddly familiar about the boy- maybe something around the eyes, or the nose- she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen him somewhere before.

Stop bein' estúpido, Taz, she told herself. Jou've seen so many rangers aroun' de place- it doesn't mean anyt'ing.

But she still couldn't tear her eyes away. The guy was actually still fighting back- he looked terrible, like he'd been up all night on crack or weed or something worse, and was too weak to actually accomplish anything- but he was still trying. He was acting as though, perhaps, he still had something to fight for. Perhaps he still had a family out there, maybe friends-something worth holding on to. A tiny spark of hope flickered in Taz's chest. She was all but finished, a washed up failure of a once-tough Lieutenant- there was no hope of her regaining anything- but this hombre might be able to keep going. Maybe if she tried to get him out, unleash him back on the destroyed city to do what little he could against the robots.

For the first time since she decided she wasn't alive, Taz felt a sense of purpose drifting towards her. It was only a small mission, a self-appointed one, but just because she was done for didn't mean everyone else was- and she could use what life she had left to make sure that someone else carried on- to ensure that out there, there was someone still getting the job done.

It all sounded very stupid, part of her tried to insist, why should she bother- but she ignored it. Having something to do was better than sitting around, aiding the robots and waiting for her own death.
'You're nothin' but vacuum cleaners with legs, you know that?' the ranger was yelling now, and Taz put a hand over her mouth to hide her involuntary smirk from the supervisors. 'I don't answer to any damn robots- you guys should answer to me! My dad…'

Whatever his dad was doing, or had done, or had said was lost to a strangled cry as a third robot glided up, brandishing a small, bleeping device and sticking it roughly into his neck. The ranger made a retching noise and flopped in his captors' arms.

'Resistance is futile,' one robot said, and the others picked up the drone, repeating it again and again so their words were indistinguishable from the echoes that bounced off the metal walls and crashed into each other. They let go of the ranger, but instead of falling to the ground in a heap, as Taz was expecting, he remained on his feet, his eyes glazed over.

'All-hail-Astroboy,' he said in a monotone, and then he shuffled mechanically over to the rest of the group and started sifting through pieces of metal as though there had never been any problem.

It took all of Taz's self-control not to let the NO! escape her mouth. The rage started to boil inside her. They were trying to take everything- it was bad enough they had taken Up, they had taken her, but they were trying to take her hope now, too. All they had to do is jab the boy with a miniscule chip and they could control him like a puppet, effectively erasing all his spirit, all his determination.

I'll kill dem. I will kill dem.

Taz's ground her teeth, and then her body moved without her permission and she leapt to her feet.

'Back to work, puny hu-man.'

She felt a whip whizz past her but she dodged, her legs still moving. She had no plan, just a ridiculous desire to hurtle over to that guy and yank their controlling device from him.

'You will stop!'

Two pairs of metal hands clamped down on her arms, forcing her to her knees. Taz's temper was up- she wanted to get back to her feet and clobber them, but, the more cynical, rational part of her that had recently taken over told her, doing that wouldn't get her anywhere. All it would do would earn her one of those chips in her own neck, and then she'd be reduced to a remote-controlled slave, and those last shreds of the real Taz would be lost forever. So she didn't resist this time, she let them push her back towards their infernal device, she picked up her screwdriver and resumed her loathsome task.

But all the while, Taz's eyes kept flickering towards the robots, then to the young man. She needed to come up with some sort of plan.

I will get dat t'ing off him if it's de last t'ing I do.

Well, Taz and Junior are now in the same place, and Up's neeeearly done...

Sorry about things going so slowly, but every chapter brings us closer to Up and Taz reuiniting, I promise...

Also, forgive any inaccuracies in terms of Junior's tripping- I have never had pot, nor do I know anyone who has, so I have no idea what happens to people when they're high on it. I had to look it up.