A/N: It's obviously not necessary to leave an authors' note, but I always feel like I should ^^ Writing this fic has been a blast so far...hope you've liked reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. At any rate, tell me what you think! Enjoy :]
"Okay, we're here." Charlie pushed open the heavy glass door to Tallet's, and Max practically ran through the entrance, as if he were a magnet being pulled in by his dormant best friend inside.
It was amazing, Max wondered as his father deactivated the intruder alarm, how different Tallet's Gym looked after the renovations. The old boxing ring was left in the middle of the gym-a tribute to Bailey's father-but the ceilings had been raised, giving the gym-turned-workshop a grander, awe-inspiring feel. New work-tables had also been added where the remains of Charlie's old robots were once kept, and most of them had robots lying across them, in various states of repair. Glancing up the stairs, Max noticed that the space where Bailey's tiny one-bedroom flat had once been now had a computer and a filing cabinet-her office, he assumed. With bated breath, Max continued to scan the room until he found what he was looking for.
Atom had been left in a defensive pose, with his hands clenched into fists and knees slightly bent; behind him, a giant poster declared him the "Peoples' Champion". Max nearly tripped over his own legs as he darted across the gym, staring up at his robot. Charlie was right-someone had taken good care of him. His armor had been replaced since last summer; Atom was now almost more platinum than pewter-grey, but the facemask had been left untouched, and although Atom's eyes were unlit in his dormant state, Max couldn't help but feel comforted by looking at the welded lines in his mask that gave Atom an odd, sentient-looking smile.
"I'll power him up," Max called out to his father across the room, doing so without waiting for his father's approval. As he switched him on, the robot's body gave a slight jerk, and a faint whirring sound coming from inside of Atom's head area let Max know that he had been successfully powered-up.
Again facing the metal giant, Max strained his neck to look into the robot's cyan-colored eyes, and felt a chill run down his spine. He knew how strange it was to say that he was best friends with a robot, but he knew somewhere inside that Atom was more than just a robot-he represented to Max the complicated emotions he had been forced to confront two years ago; he represented the odd but powerful relationship between Max and Charlie, and the amazing exhilaration and sense of power that Max had felt that whole summer while he and his father traveled from town to town for boxing gigs. And besides, since the first time that Bailey booted up the rusty, mud-caked version of Atom, Max had always felt that there was something in the robot's eyes, something damn near sentience. He never dared tell anyone about this idea of his-he didn't even think Charlie would understand-but he was pleased to see that, despite his new upgrades, Atom's eyes remained the same, cold and blank but oddly understanding at the same time.
"You like it? Bailey said we should put some new armor on him, if we're going to take him on a tour this summer," Charlie said. He approached Max with a set of headphones hung around his neck, and a controller in his hand-Atom's voice-controller, as Max instantly recognized it-and stopped next to Max, where he also looked up at Atom. "She also got some new parts for him-custom parts, they don't sell stuff for this guy anymore. Hey, look." He took a few steps backwards, signaling for Max to do the same.
"Left hook! Uppercut!" Charlie barked into the headset. Max watched in awe as the robot swung its powerful arms in the combination that Charlie had ordered. Covering the microphone with his hand, Charlie turned to Max. "See that? Practically no noise, right? And faster, too."
"Right," Max said finally, still mesmerized by his robot. "Quiet…so quiet. What did you do?"
Charlie powered down the headset, and Atom's body relaxed, the lights in his eyes pulsating peacefully. "Bailey did it-thank her when we get back, okay? She said there was no way that we'd be able to last fifteen seconds against the new crop of boxing robots with Atom's old machinery. Replaced almost everything. He might still be smaller than all the other guys, but you're looking at a top-quality robot now."
A shadow of worry crossed Max's mind. "He still has his shadow function, right?" he asked. To Max, Atom's shadow function was his most important feature-he still remembered the long nights he spent teaching the robot its boxing moves, and the rush of adrenaline he got from the cheering crowd as the pair danced together.
Charlie's smile was reassuring. "Of course he does. You didn't think we'd get rid of that, did you?" He put his hand on Max's shoulder, shaking him teasingly. "Besides, you've gotta bring the moves, right?"
Max giggled. "Right." He didn't fit in well at school, not with children who were raised on yachts, in houses with more rooms than a small motel, and certainly not with children who weren't raised on robot boxing-but he was here now, and he had his best friend back, and nothing could have felt better.