C: 7
Nos-4-A2 arrived at Betty's room and positioned himself in the corner. The other fleshling had seated himself on the bed and, upon Nos's entrance, stared anxiously with comically wide eyes. Nos allowed himself a wicked grin; he was feared, he was dangerous. Why not savor such a moment as this? He hadn't been properly feared for a much longer expanse than he cared to remember. He opened his wings and sighed at the cool tingle of energy surging down the fingers of his wings, cracking to life in a red, hot blanket of energy. He raised his arms above his head and opened his wings, knocking several things off of the shelves beside him. The boy on the bed scooted into the corner and closed his eyes, whimpering. Nos-4-A2 reached forward with both hands and released an angry hiss. Tears formed in the human's eyes and then its whimper turned into a wail.
"Betty!" he cried. "Save me!"
Nos ceased hissing, drew in his wings and clasped his hands behind his back, just as Betty entered the room. Betty glanced at the boy and then turned a scowl towards Nos, whose gaze had wandered to the shelves near the ceiling. He appeared completely enthralled by them. The girl folded her arms across her chest.
"Nos, what did you do?" she demanded.
"Nothing that should be found unacceptable," Nos replied waving his hand as if it mattered little. He flicked his gaze to Bobby. "Perhaps the boy cannot handle the grown-up assets of my nature and should go back to kiddie-school until they don't cause him to soil his trousers."
There was a pause, and then the boy-child's face scrunched up; if he hadn't caught the meaning of Nos's full statement, he surely understood the last phrase.
No doubt these toddlers know all about that. Nos-4-A2 thought.
"Hey!" Bobby protested, wiping his tears away with his small fist. "That's not nice! And I don't wet my pants anymore! I'm not a baby!"
Nos-4-A2 glanced, unperturbed, at Betty. She was nearly livid with rage at his insult, but underneath – my, what was that? – the shimmer of a smile in her eyes? Could she have thought his joke was funny? Nos was taken aback; he had made the jest entirely for his own amusement; who cared if she cared? Not him.
Her rage slowly died down and the smile grew until it was full blown across her face.
"That was pretty funny, Nos," she commented.
Bobby was dumbfounded. "What?" he exclaimed pointing at the energy vampire. "Your robot said a very mean thing!"
"He was only kidding, right Nos?" Betty asked, turning towards him.
Nos smiled dark and cunningly. "Of course."
The boy looked into his eyes and his face went pale. He looked longingly towards Betty. "He scares me, Betty." He said quietly.
Betty came to stand at Nos-4-A2's side. "He scares me sometimes, too. But isn't he cool? Look at those fangs." She pulled open his mouth and tapped on with her finger. "And look at that tongue." She was practically hanging from his jaw. Nos-4-A2 grabbed her wrists and threw her hands away. How dare she touch him like that. If she tried again, he would surely bite her: awful taste aside.
"Hey, Nos, come further into my room, will ya? I want Bobby to see all the cool things you have."
Nos-4-A2 drooped his head and shoulders in a silent sigh and moved from his corner to the center of the room. Betty immediately followed and grabbed his cape.
"Isn't his cape neat?" she asked. The boy, still shaken, nodded. "This isn't his original cape, upt it looks about how I think it did before it was all ruined."
She had done a tolerable job replacing his cape. Though this one didn't hug his form like the one Zurg had given him and therefore, Nos-4-A2 thought, it lacked some of the previous dark charm and functionality. He was glad to have one, though, after living with his last one in tattered shreds. Before he knew it, the girl had moved on.
"And this is his big eye. I don't know what it does, but I think I'll figure it out," she said flicking his monocle.
"Ack!" Nos exclaimed and covered it. "You don't just go around flicking people's eyes! And it's called a monocle."
"You can feel that? Wow! How did your creator put a sense of touch there? I've been trying to figure out sense of touch for years! What did your creator do?!" Betty exclaimed.
Nos had a hard, straight face. Surely he knew; what robot didn't know how he was built?! And Nos-4-A2 was not just a robot, he was much more! Robots feared him, served him, and fed him! Even fleshlings feared him. He was the most powerful, most complex being in the entire universe. He didn't need to take orders from a premature human. He was his own master, as he had proven time and time again.
"I haven't the slightest notion," he replied.
Betty scowled. "Liar," she countered. "You do too know. A good robot technician would never program its motherboard without including full schematics. A good robot would know."
"Perhaps I'm not a good robot."
"Well, 'perhaps' you just want to be mean."
"Perhaps. What shall you do about it?"
Betty's face turned red and she struggled the remote out of the back pocket of her overalls. Nos-4-A2 didn't care if she punished him. He was not a pet rabbit that could be twisted, poked and prodded for amusement. She pointed it at him with shaking hands and her eyes moistened. But instead of pushing the button and making Nos-4-A2 fall to the floor, she turned and ran out of the room. Bobby inched past Nos and followed her, not wanting to be alone in the room with the energy vampire again.
Their footsteps died away down the hall and stairs; Nos-4-A2 was left alone in the quiet room. Finally. He thought, gliding to the window and looked down the fire escape. If only he could escape right now. Though the prospect was tempting, he knew that leaving without removing the circuit scrambler around his waist or destroying the remote that controlled it would be futile. He must stay a little longer.
There might be something in the girl's room that would take the ring off. He zoomed to her shelves and scanned its contents. He studied his restraint. It required an incredibly small screwdriver, one of which was nowhere to be found. Nos-4-A2 pulled one out from inside a box of tools that looked promising. No, too big. He scanned all around her room without any luck. Finally, he turned his body horizontally and lowered himself to search under her bed. He pulled out countless finished and half-finished machines, but did not find even one tool.
As he was about to stand up again, a machine in the back caught his eye. Curiously, he reached further under the bed and pulled it out. It was an incomplete robot that looked like a young girl. The face is what struck him the most; the eyes were mismatched – obviously all she had to work with. The mouthpiece was nothing more than a small, drilled hole, but coming off of both sides of the hole were two curved lines with crescent-shaped lines perpendicular to them at the ends. A smile. Why? What did a robot without the ability to move its jaw need with a smile?
Nos-4-A2 frowned. Why did that girl cry like that? He looked at the robot thoughtfully. This was her life's work; the robot she slaved over to make come to life. No wonder she got so upset. Though Nos-4-A2 didn't really feel sorry for making her cry, he did feel a closer kinship with her. She was struggling to keep a dream alive that everyone fought to kill. Hm…he understood that.
