"Astro? Did you do this?" Several armed men from Creekhollow approached him as they gawked at the carnage.
Astro blinked and sat up. It was full daylight. Where had he been? Out of it, apparently. "Um, not exactly." He scrambled to his feet and knocked the dirt off his pants as he wondered what else he could say: Every explanation he could think of sounded like mass murder.
"Hey Mike!" said one of the men, who was examining some of the bodies. "These guys were from the Iron Fist Division! Look at their shoulder patch."
Everyone came over to see.
"Yes!" said another man, pumping his fist, and several others echoed the sentiment.
"But how did this happen?" asked a third.
"What's the Iron Fist Division?" Astro asked the man who had spoken to him first.
"The Iron Fist?" he said as if he couldn't believe that Astro had never heard of it. "Why, they're Leader Orkan's elite enforcers; the dirtiest, meanest, most vicious fighters in his military."
No way, thought Astro. No way! They must have been sent to crush all opposition, but then God made them panic into crushing themselves. And we never fired a shot. ... Perfect.
"Oh man! Orkan must have meant for them to wipe us all out," said someone else behind him.
"Murderers and cut-throats, that's what they are," said another.
"Or were," said Mike. "Let's check around and see if we can find any survivors."
Startled at that, Astro looked around for the soldier he had dealt with earlier, and found him dead in a pool of his own blood beside his comrade—suicide. How had he missed something like that? He must have been way out, because he couldn't remember anything for a while back. However, he couldn't worry about that now; there was work to be done. "Let me go first," he said. "If anybody starts shooting, I won't be seriously hurt."
"Oh yeah, you're that android, aren't you." He waved Astro to the front. "Lead the way, my boy."
As they trudged grimly through more of the field, which was littered with corpses, Astro radioed Dragon. "Are there any humans alive where you are?"
"No, Astro. Those few who survived the first round of shooting killed themselves. Most of their equipment and robots are in good shape however."
"Thanks," Astro answered. "Why don't you head back to Creekhollow and tell Mayor Johnson that the battle's over for now."
"Yes, Astro."
Astro turned to the men behind him. "My robot, Dragon, says it's the same where he is. How about I go up and do a quick recon to make sure it's like this all over."
"Good idea," said Mike. "If it is, then we need to gather up all their equipment and bury the dead, have the biggest damn celebration we've ever seen, then get ready for whatever the Leader throws at us next."
Astro sat on a park bench well away from that afternoon's celebration.
It was a miracle, everyone was saying, but people telling him how wonderful he was for what he did made him uncomfortable. It's not like the victory belonged to him, after all—Sorry I doubted you, God.
Nobody in the Resistance got even so much as a splinter. (Except for him: he'd taken that bullet to the head. But that hardly counted.)
The Resistance was now well equipped to wage a guerrilla war against the hated Leader, having gained so much in vehicles, robots, arms, ammunition and explosives. Hopefully, he could resume his search for Luna soon.
Luna ...
He clenched his fists.
Luna ...
"There you are!" said Will, trotting over to him. "I've been looking all over for you. What are you doing here?"
"Uh, just thinking." Hastily relaxing his hands, he asked, "What's up, anyway?"
"Mayor Johnson wants to talk with you about Resistance stuff. He's over by the band-shell with everybody else."
"Sure. Let's go."
"Oh, thank you for coming so quickly," said the mayor when Astro approached him. "Please, come over here so we can talk privately." He excused himself from the group of people he had been chatting with and led the way behind some trees and shrubs. "It's about the Resistance: we could use some help here, and I was wondering if you might know of anyone with connections up in Antemonain."
Astro grinned. "Yeah, me. Before I came here, I was doing recon work for Colonel Devan."
Johnson stared. "Really? That is wonderful! Would you be willing to approach him as soon as possible—before Leader Orkan can regroup?"
"Absolutely. I'll go right now if you want."
He rested a hand on Astro's shoulder. "Do it—for the people of Foredan."
"Okay, Dragon," Astro said a few days later outside Arammis's workshop. "The Resistance is getting lots of help now, so they can let me go look for Luna. I think it'd be safer if I did that alone, so I want you to go to a guy I know named Hamegg up in Antemonain."
"Yes, Astro. Will you return there once you have located Luna?"
"Yeah." He uploaded Hamegg's location to the robot and continued, "Just keep clear of those two junk pirates."
"Yes, Astro. Good-bye." Dragon drifted off into the woods, heading north.
Astro kicked at a leaf in the grass, then leaned against the steel-clad building and crossed his arms. Now what? He still didn't have a clue where to look for Luna. Obviously he couldn't simply fly around; the Foredanians would be forever trying to shoot him out of the sky. And filing a flight plan would be the same as waving a banner that said 'Here I am' to Orkan's agents. He'd have to do it on foot.
He wandered back into town, ready to start making his good-bye's to the people he'd met, but ran into Will, who had been looking for him as usual.
"Whatcha doing?" Will asked.
"I'm about ready to take off to look for my girlfriend, Luna."
"You've got a girlfriend? I didn't know robots did stuff like that."
"Yeah, well, we're both androids, we're really good friends, and she was made to look like a girl." He shrugged. "So, girlfriend."
"Okay, whatever. Is there any way you could come over to my place? Mr. Arammis gave me one of those old robots that survived the battle, and I'm trying to get it to do stuff for me. Maybe you can help."
"Sure. Let's go."
While Will tinkered with the robot's right foot to get it moving smoothly, Astro went over the programming to make sure it would do what Will wanted. Once he was satisfied, he gave Will 'master' access, and they gave it a basic task to complete: raking the grass on Will's lawn.
"Hey Will!" called Thedd, one of the boys around town, as he pulled up on his street-model hover-board. "Come and see what Yosh got!"
"What is it?" Will replied, plainly reluctant to leave his project now that it was going well.
"Just come and see." He started to ride off. "And hey, you can come too, Astro. You might get a kick out of it. At the hideout, okay?"
Will sighed. "Yeah, alright. See you soon." He turned to Astro. "I've gotten more popular lately, ever since you won that battle—you know, friend of the hero and all that. I'm still not sure I like it."
The 'hideout' proved to be a small clearing in the middle of a dense woodlot at the edge of town, out past Mr. Drew's mansion. Several boys were already there, kneeling, huddled over something on the ground.
"So, what you got there, Yosh?" Will asked as he straightened up after entering the place. Astro crawled in right behind.
Yosh triumphantly held up a magazine which opened to a spectacular three-dimensional picture of a naked woman.
Will stared and turned bright red. "Wh-where'd you get that? It-it's illegal, you know."
Yosh put the magazine down and scowled. "Oh, don't be a fog-head, Wilbur. My uncle Broderick picks these up in Antemonain all the time when he's up there on business. It's no big deal, really."
"Yeah, give us a break, okay?" snapped Thedd.
Astro noticed that Will was getting scared, so he thought he'd try and deflect the discussion to something safer. He crossed his arms. "What makes you think I'd find that interesting? I'm an android."
"Right!" said Yosh, and flipped some pages. "Look at this!" It was a full-page advertisement that was head-lined, 'A dream come true! Satisfy your every desire—and we mean every desire!—with your very own sex doll!' The picture revealed what appeared to be a sultry model, but it was obviously robotic. "What do you think, Astro?" Yosh went on with a leer. "Doesn't that get your gears spinning?"
"Oh yeah, like I've even got gears like that to spin!" Astro responded jokingly, but it was bothering him a lot more than he let on. There was something about the 'sex doll' idea that was totally wrong, and he could feel himself getting angry. What was the matter with it? It was just an advertisement.
No, the problem was deeper than that.
Then it hit him: What if it had been Luna in that picture? What if someone wanted to use Luna to 'satisfy his every desire'? No! He couldn't bear the thought of her being cheapened in such a way. She was his friend who had shared his thoughts and feelings, his life. For her to be dishonoured like that ...
"Astro!" Will cried out, pointing. "What's with your hands?"
He checked his hands, which were now tightly clenched: they were covered in an electric blue glow.
That got the attention of everyone else.
"Hey, what's going on?" Yosh asked nervously.
"He's short-circuiting!" said another boy, Zong, as he scrambled to his feet.
"Let's get out of here!" said Thedd. "He's going to blow!"
Astro hastily opened his hands and brought them together, hoping to rub the glow off or something. A massive bolt of light immediately jumped to the tree beside him, and its trunk exploded with a loud bang, throwing him across the clearing. The upper part of the tree then dropped on top of them all.
