Disclaimer: I don't own Treasure Planet, just Asher

Asher tested the shield for weak spots and found one. When he forced his way through the aftershock hit Tesh Ra and knocked him out cold, but he was still breathing.

"Excuse me; are you ready to die yet?" Asher asked them

"No, we're not going to just go down that easily!" Scroop snarled

"That's even better, I like challenges!" Asher jumped up and down excitedly.

Silver shot his cannon at Asher and as expected he dodged, then in an instant appeared in front of Silver and after grabbing his neck threw him into Scroop. Silver gave Scroop a dirty look.

"How was I supposed to know the kid was a total psycho?" Scroop hissed as they got back up

"But, I'm only doing what you told me." Asher laughed as if Scroop had just told a joke

"What are you talking about?" Scroop looked at Asher as if he had no clue what he was referring to.

"You told me to be more piratey, remember? I can see why you enjoy it, now." As Asher spoke he started to beat them up at the same time. He paused for just a moment and noticed a blue gel on himself.

"What's this?" He asked

"We spread it on ourselves just before you got here." Silver explained. Everything was going according to plan. Now they just had to trick Asher into throwing another blast and he would end up shocking himself. According to Tesh there was a limit to how powerful those things were.

It turned out that they didn't need to trick him, Asher's hand started to glow. But instead of firing he sneered and grabbed himself. There was a bright glowing and his skin was turning red. To his horror Scroop and Silver both realized what Asher was up to. Instead of the gel forcing him to absorb the energy of his own blast as an electrical current he was forcing the current back into the gel and making it so hot that it started it burn off. Asher purposely used less energy than he seemed prone to do, apparently aware that he had to use a certain amount in order for the fail safe mechanism to activate. Scroop wasn't about to go down like this and in a display of temperamental and brash action he took advantage of Asher being distracted. As Scroop rushed him he could feel himself going slower than he should have and finally as Asher burned off the last of the gel it exploded and the energy it had absorbed was released. Scroop dodged the explosion just in time, but he was thrown through the through the wall.

"This is stupid! I blew my chance to take him down! Darn it, why'd I hesitate?" Scroop mentally beat himself as he flew through the air.

Silver, on the other hand, was far enough away that when he was hit with the explosion he was able to grab onto the wall and thought he heard Asher talking.

"Bye, bye, Mr. Scroop. Wow, this is like when we first met. Isn't that ironic-." Asher stopped waving as everything came flooding back. Fight, kill, fun, blood, kill, I'm going to kill you Asher, not serious, never serious, fun, fight, fear, cause it, love it, don't do it, stop it, ignore them, keep going, kill, die, don't die, didn't mean it, fun. The confusion was overwhelming. Unable to put up with any longer he acted on an impulse.

Silver managed to get back inside the room, only to find Asher was gone. He and Tesh Ra looked around for Scroop, but he was gone too.

Scroop woke from unconsciousness and couldn't believe what he saw when he turned his head.

"Asher?"

He was hugging his legs in the far corner of the roof and was resting his chin on his knees.

"What, you wanted another free meal before you destroy everyone, you ungrateful little,"

"I'm not hungry." Asher's voice was shaky as he said the one thing Scroop never expected to hear from him and the arachnid felt his anger toward the kid soften.

"Asher, why did you do all that?" Scroop asked him

"I'm supposed to, but then I wasn't so, I-I really don't get it, anymore." Asher tried to explain, and to Scroop's horror he actually understood what he was trying to say.

He'd been programmed to kill, told to do it, so he did it and they got mad at him. So what? The people he was supposed to take out got mad at him too. It was what he was supposed to do, that was what he'd always been taught and nobody had probably bothered to tell him any different. Surprisingly enough Scroop's boughts of anger toward Asher had helped with that, because he'd never really gone through with his threats. Besides, Asher had had a lot of fun on their voyage without destroying anyone. Even though he'd gotten his memory back he made the same decision the amnesiac Asher would've made to save Scroop all on his own.