a/n: Just a few rambly introductory caveats: 1.) While mostly backdropped by the 19th and early 20th century, this story isn't set in any concrete time period, so there might be anachronisms and shady historical data abound. A general idea of the setting is an alternate-timeline North America with heavier influences from European culture, Edwardian/Victorian-era sensibilities, and the Industrial Revolution. Hence the casual hints of Latin and French (and unusual lingo) in the dialogue, and the classical-ish style of prose. I do big time suck at worldbuilding, apologies if bad. 2.) I am a big Dumb who knows absolutely nothing about mechanical engineering or quantum science, so if some of the information reads like a bunch of erroneous garbage, that's because it sort of mostly is. But idk I tried ;-; 3.) I also took inspiration from the song New Invention by I Don't Know How But They Found Me, whose lyrics could be found at the opening verses before every chapter.

I: E-U-R-E-K-A

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{ VERSUM UNUM: "YOU'VE GOT THE DEVIL ON YOUR SHOULDER / YOU BETTER SHUT YOUR MOUTH JUST LIKE I TOLD YOU / YOU'VE BEEN CONTROLLING ME THROUGH FICTION / IT'S OBVIOUS / I'VE GOT TO BREAK YOU LIKE A BAD ADDICTION" }

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"Logan! Hurry the heck up man, what is taking you so long?"

Kendall pounded a fist at the brass doors of his genius friend's workshop, ignoring the 'Do Not Disturb: Science in Progress!' sign sloppily tacked onto it. "If we run late again today, it's gonna be five extra hours in the gears from us. FIVE, are you listening to me?!"

It didn't appear so, as he was only met with the resounding answer of whining buzz saws, barely getting muffled by the heavy door separating Logan from the rest of the outside world.

It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles Capital, California. The sky was a bright arctic blue, shimmering silver zeppelins were lazily idling by amid the tranquil backdrop of the horizon, and even the usual smothering smoke and fog being emitted by the capital's numerous industrial factories and machineries were mellowing out to make way for a clearer afternoon.

Kendall Knight, Logan Mitchell, Carlos Garcia, and James Diamond were living right at the very heart of the city, working as four-piece musicians and vaudeville performers under the stage moniker 'Big Time Rush', and helmed under the guidance of master tunesmith Gustavo Rocque and his esteemed (and exasperated) acolyte Kelly Wainwright. They had only been wrenched from their humble hometown in Duluth District, Minnesota a few years prior, yet there they were, making it huge and already having a prestigious reputation of being one of the region's most famous entertainers.

But right now, it seemed that they wouldn't be upholding that job and reputation soon.

Kendall was an extremely patient person, but he was really tested to his limits whenever it came to getting Logan to abandon his current experimental fixation and go out of his dark and stuffy science-cave. The de facto leader may as well be talking to a brick wall, for all the good it did him. Or in this case, a locked door.

"What is up with that boy lately?" he murmured to himself, stressfully rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Usually, he'd be the one harping on and on about punctuality to us or whatever."

"Yeah, I noticed Logie's been super distracted this week." agreed Carlos through a mouthful of homemade mincemeat pie, as he watched the entire situation unfold from their velvet chesterfield sofa. "Whatever he's got on going there must be super interesting...what kind of wacky contraption d'you reckon he's building now?"

"I don't know, and I would love to hang around and gossip about it—but he better be building something that's gonna keep Gustavo from flaying our backsides and using his tardy dogs' skins as his personal high-end lampshade, if he's planning to show us up!" Kendall replied, before resuming with his shouting and adamant door-knocking.

"HORTENSE LOGAN MITCHELL! If you don't get out of there in the next two minutes, so Divinity help me, I'm gonna have James drag you out and we're making a stop at the abattoir and feeding you straight to Bloody Ern's brutal meat grinder!"

"Ohhh no, no way am I going near that damn machine again!" James called out from the suspended mezzanine, situated just above Logan's workshop. "Camille once double-dog dared me to steal an entire link of sausages from it, 'cause I was helping her practice for one of her nutty roles or whatever, and you know what happened? A completely heartbreaking tragedy! I ended up breaking a fingernail!"

"James, please…"

But he didn't cease with his maundering as he zipped out of their yellow twist n' tumble chute—or as Carlos informally christened it, the loopy-doopy banana. "And do you have any idea how hard it is to grow out your nails? And I even put Mrs. Slipseas' Extra Strong Keratin Coater and everything on it, and that stuff's crazy expensive! And what did I get for it? Not strong nails! That was such a friggin' scam. I shoulda stuck to 'Cuda."

"Dude, honestly, your weirdness and your creepy hand issues are the least of our prob—" Kendall turned around to face his diva friend, and had to swallow back a barking laugh as he finally caught sight of James' ridiculously ostentatious outfit.

"Really dude? A dinner bib, a top hat, and a glittery maroon coat?" Carlos razzed, beating him to the punch. "You look like a freaking circus showman!"

"Shut up, it's called a cravat—and my look is way more stylish than your ratty army tunic and stupid looking helmet!"

"For your information, it's called a bone dome," the shorter boy happily slapped at the protective headgear, "and it's awesome!"

"Um, no, it's an aviation helmet, and Logan told me that so I know it's right—and also, captain Garcia's gonna be so mad once he has super important aeronaut duty to attend to and finds out that his son nicked his spare helmet," warned James, "and he's gonna fly all the way here and give your sorry butt a boot-beating you'll never forget."

"Pffft! My papi knows I borrowed this from him, I left him a little note with a smiley face and everything! And anyway, I'm deffo gonna need this helmet, 'cause someday, I'm gonna be a supertastic elite rocket crewman, and I'm gonna soar all the way to the stars!" Carlos jumped up on the sofa, pointed his fork at James, and cocked an imaginary weapon. "And I'm also gonna get Logie to invent me an awesome heat ray gun, so I could fly out and defeat all those evil astral critters trying to take over our planet! Pew pew pew!"

"I thought last week, you said you wanted to be a chief firejumper?" asked Kendall.

"Well, I can put out fires in space too!"

"I guess that's a nice dream to have...except Loges would also tell you that the lack of oxygen there would mean there's no fires in outer space."

"Yeah, 'cause I would've put them all out, duh!" Carlos rolled his eyes and pounded a fist at his chest. "Me, captain Carlos Garcia, el supertastic space ranger extraordinaire man!"

"Ugh, whatever, airhead." With a dismissive shake of his head, James removed his gaudy hat and carefully placed it on the dining table. He then took out his lucky comb and loaded it up with Dr. Barracuda's Specially-Formulated Gentleman's Pomade, before using it to carefully slick his lengthy hair back. "But whatever you say, I look good!"

Kendall's bushy eyebrows raised contentiously. "I don't know, the outfit is a bit much, Jay. Especially for some random afternoon dress rehearsal. Why don't you save the glitz and glam and jewel-encrusted cane and uh, tappy-toe shoes for the actual performance night?"

"Oh, believe me, I've already got an entire wardrobeful and an organised lookbook lined up for that grand event. And anyway, this look is not for your green peepers, blondzo, and you should count yourself extra lucky to even get to take it in. 'Cause guess what? The showtime ladies are gonna love it!" James' head bobbed along with his signature hand-wavy move. "Ooh!"

"Yeah, I think the only ladies you're gonna get with that kinda fit are bearded ones and acrobats."

"Hey, just because you drab beige and pewter-loving bricklayers are too scared to make risky fashion choices like me, doesn't mean you have to be so obviously jealous about it!" defended James. "And so what if it does? A little facial hair never hurt anybody!"

Kendall smirked. "Hey P.T. Barnum, are you talking about the bearded ladies, or your pathetic-looking goatee?"

"Oh you're going down!"

With this declaration, James yanked the younger boy by his taupe cable-knit sweater, trussed him in a headlock, and pulled him along into the ground. Meanwhile, Carlos whooped at this chaotic turn of events and drummed his palms on the sofa, bouncing up and down and scattering pie crumbs everywhere as he eagerly egged the fight on.

But before Kendall and James could progress any further with their pummel quarrel, the doors of the barred workshop suddenly squealed open, making everyone stop and cover their pained ears.

The three boys craned their heads towards the lightless opening to see Logan finally emerging from it, a trail of black smoke rising up in dramatic whorls behind him. He was wearing his usual attire of an arabesque-stitched waistcoat over a long-sleeved plain white shirt, along with baggy grey trousers barely held up by braces, and brown lace-up boots. Apart from this, Logan was also donning a leather apron and his anthropologist's goggles, holding a crooked spanner in one gloved hand, and he was entirely covered in soot and oil, his beaming grin the only visible part of his oleaginous face.

"I've done it." was his only statement.

"Done what? Gotten us all late again?" James deadpanned, releasing the spluttering Kendall and giving his sparkly suit a poised dusting. "'Cause yeah, you sure did, buddy."

"Late for what…" Logan slid the goggles up to his forehead and fumbled for the antiquated pocket watch chained to his waistcoat. His chestnut-brown eyes widened as he checked it, snapping out of his epiphanic trance and taking notice of the time at last. "Guys! We're late for Gustavo and Kelly's show rehearsals!"

"Yeah, tell us something we don't know. Now come on, we could still make it in halftime hour if we hurry!" Kendall urged.

"Like, right now? But I'm a total mess!" Logan pointed out churlishly.

"And whose fault is that?"

"Kenny! I don't wanna go out looking like something the furnace coughed up!"

"It didn't?" Carlos innocently quipped. Logan stuck his tongue out at him, and instantly regretted it as he caught a mouthful of his own bitter face-grime.

"Okay," sighed Kendall, "I guess this calls for emergency protocol five point three, then..."

He pulled a towel hanging from one of their dining chairs with a loud snap, while James took out a small canister of Super Shine Powder Polish from his suit jacket and wordlessly handed it to him. Stepping aside, Kendall looked over his shoulder and gave their other friend a knowing nod.

"Carlitos?"

"On it!"

With some helmet taps and a battle cry, Carlos charged out of the sofa and went flying towards Logan, who shrieked as the smaller boy checked him across the waist and sent him crashing to the ground. Logan's doubled vision immediately got engulfed by a dazzling blur of flailed Turkish cotton cloth, suffocating carnation-pink polish clouds, and six (or twelve?) hands holding him securely in place, as they furiously scoured him down like he was a piece of bone china dinnerware from momma Knight's collection.

With their incredibly efficient cleaning system, the three boys took no more than three minutes wiping their frowsy friend down to a neat—albeit slightly reddish—shine.

"There, now you're golden!" Kendall announced as he gave Logan a quick pat on his pristinely-styled quiff, courtesy of Dr. Barracuda and Mr. James Diamond.

"Ehhh, I'd say silver." the acting hairdresser opined. "We didn't even beat our previous record time."

"Yes, we did, lookie!"

"Carlos, sweetheart, you're holding the watch upside-down."

"Oh...that explains why the numerals look all whacked-out. I thought it was just the evil astral critters suddenly using their super-fancy airwaves brain control to confuse me!"

James gave him a sympathetic pat on his helmet. "I think the termites living in your 'bone dome' and chewing holes in your cheese brain are doing a perfectly good job of that on their own, Los."

"Thanks! I think…"

"Well, whatever the case, I still think we did a pretty good job, team." Kendall passed around some congratulatory hand slaps towards James and Carlos. "Now move out!"

For his part, Logan had been sulky and eerily silent the whole time. Which—his friends knew all too well—only meant that an internal storm was brewing, and was just about to rain down on them hard.

Logan took a deep breath, but before he could start up yet another one of his unholy 'assaulting your friends with good intentions is still assault, which is bad' litanies, James was swift to cram the filthy towel in his mouth to effectively shut him up. Carlos then grabbed the enraged inventor by the shoulders, whirled him around, and shoved him out of their lodgings, with Kendall steadfastly following suit behind them.

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The four boys made a mad dash across the carpeted hallways and ducked in the pneumatic lift with extra stealth, narrowly avoiding one of the many red-eyed security automatons Mr. ('miser') Reginald Bitters set upon the dwellings of the Palm Woods Palazzo.

Apparently it was to "protect the perimeters by apprehending hardheaded hooligans and mischief-makers", which was good news for the uptight tenement manager, but the worst news for the troublesome teenagers. The last time they came across one of the automatons' metal brethren, they were forced to violently lock horns with it, and ended up getting bathed in greasy fluids and looking worse than Logan did before emergency protocol five point three.

Who ever knew that a robot could actually vomit and bleed?

But just when the boys thought they were safe from its evil clutches this time around, the hidden automaton suddenly reappeared from the end of the hallway, blared out a bloodcurdling warning siren, and started rapidly barreling towards them.

Kendall repeatedly punched a fist on the lift buttons, with Carlos and James shrieking "Close the door close the door CLOSE THE DOOR—" in his ears, and Logan's panicked "mmph mph MMMPPHHH!" frantically prompting him on.

"What is with this—stupid—broken—thing?!" Kendall groaned in frustration. The speeding automaton was only a few feet away from the open lift, and its metal arms hinged open to reveal a set of lethally-glinting muskets pointing directly at them.

Upon seeing this, Logan emitted a muffled whimper and leaped onto James' arms, while Carlos drew down his helmet visor and took on a combat-ready stance with a hyped scream, refusing to go down without a fight.

"Oh, bring it on, you ugly stinking metalman!"

"Carlos, n-n-no—don't!" protested Logan, spitting out his towel gag in the process. "If we break another one of Mr. Bitters' precious security automatons, we're—we're going to get our final strike on our lease violation a-and, we're going to get permanently terminated from the Palm Woods, and—not to mention..he's gonna, he's gonna kill us!"

"Not if we get killed by his murder robot dudes first!" James interjected back.

"Guys, heads up!" An alarmed Kendall broke into their squabbling, jabbing a finger towards the nearing homicidal machine. "I think we're in for some big time trouble!"

{ DELINQUENT ALERT – DELINQUENT ALERT – EXECUTING CODE 10110100 – PREPARATION – FOR – E-R-A-D-I-C-A-T-I-O-N }

Giving up on the futile button-mashing, Kendall could do nothing else but defensively throw his arms in front of his terrorised friends. The four of them braced for the very worst, as the deadly gun muzzles greeted their faces and the piercing metallic whine turned into a deafeningly victorious roar, rivaled only by Logan's manic chants of "we're dead we're dead we're we're dead we're so dead—", Carlos's eager hollering, Kendall's unheard pleas for everyone to, "for Divinity's sake, calm down!", and James' lamenting wails rising above all the pandemonium...

"Oh, I'm so not gonna get my super-spectacular show outfit ruined with yucky friggin' 'bot grease like this...AGAIN!"

But luckily for the sparkly-jacketed boy and the rest of them, the lift's scissor gates finally snapped shut in the nick of time, and the automaton collided with the bronze doors full-force instead and bounced back with a stupefied judder, saving them all from imminent demise.

Everyone collectively breathed out in relief. Except for Carlos, whose sigh sounded to be more out of disappointment than anything else.

"That was a close call." Kendall slumped against the closed doors. "Too close..."

"Eradication? ERADICATION?! That wasn't originally programmed in their integral systems before!" Despite already being in the clear, Logan's tone was still wrung to a shrill indignation, rattling James and nearly getting himself accidentally dropped by the taller boy. "Those are RCM-CBT's top-of-the-line Security & Safety automatons, ascertained by Governor Griffin himself to follow the strictly-imposed standards of robotics laws, and Mr. Bitters is just recklessly tampering with it to—what?—assassinate his valued tenants in cold blood?! What gives?!"

"Hey, anyone else's ears ringing from getting too much of a smarty-pants talkathon—or is it just from all the yelling mister smarty-pants here is doing right in mine?" replied his begrudged carrier.

"Yeah, I didn't catch half of that, Logie. I'm glad for you though!" Carlos paused with a tilt of his head, his face scrunched up in mild confusion. "Or uh, sorry for it?"

"Oh, you'll all really be sorry soon if you don't listen to me!"

Kendall held out his hands palms-down and gently lowered them, signaling for Logan to slow down and take a breath, which the latter reluctantly did.

"We are, Loges, we swear." the younger boy soothed. "And whatever the case, we're definitely gonna have to make some kind of emergency protocol for dealing with those pesky automated exterminators." He trailed off as his viridian eyes gleamed with that ever-familiar devilish twinkle. "And I think I already have a few interesting ideas..."

"Agreed." everyone else chorused.

Things started to calm down while the lift idly continued its descent, raspingly trumpeting every current floor number and distorted greetings of pre-recorded well-wishes as it went along. James had carefully set Logan back down to smooth out his crinkled clothes and straighten his crooked top hat, while Kendall was fussing over everyone as usual and checking to see if they were alright—especially Logan, and he wasn't all too happy about being mollycoddled.

As Carlos made a move to crank back his headgear's visor, he peeked behind their grousing inventor friend and spotted something rather strange.

"Hey Lo...you've got goggles hanging out of your butt!"

Logan's cheeks flushed pink. His friends burst out into laughter at the droll sight, as he hastily yanked his protective eyewear from behind him and buried it deep in his trousers' pocket.

"Oh, so is that your brand new invention? No wonder you've been holed up in your room for ages!" hooted James. "Is it like eyes for your bottom? Butt-eyes?"

"Yeah," Carlos gasped in between giggles, "and then it has two settings you can use, butt-on and butt-off!"

"Hey, that's actually a good idea for an invention, a detachable butt!" was Kendall's brilliant suggestion. "So that you can just instantly remove it, put it in a steamer trunk, and get it sent by post to Gustavo's office when he yells at you to get your butt over there! And then maybe you wouldn't make us late again!"

Their oldest friend suddenly turned sombre at this idea.

"Okay, but like, what if Logie sent his butt in..." he asked very seriously, "but then he after that, he needed to go to the bathroom, like really bad?"

The boys jeered out disgusted noises as they imagined the extremely unpleasant scenario.

"Go ahead, mock!" chastised Logan, waving his damp mouth towel in their faces. "But if one of my brilliantly amazing inventions makes me super rich and famous and the nation elects me as the supreme leader of the whole country—no, wait, the whole freaking continent!—because of it, you wisecracking scamps better not come running back to me and asking for forgiveness and mercy!"

"Awww come on Logiebear, we're just joshing around." Kendall said apologetically. "You know we love you!"

"Removey goggle-tailed butt and all." James added.

"Sorry hug?" offered Carlos, and the three of them coyly opened up their arms.

Logan simply crossed his own and scowled at them in response, but Kendall, James, and Carlos all closed in anyway and smothered him in a tight embrace, making him giggle and finally breaking his grumpy mood, right as the lift wheezily announced that they had reached the tenement's lobby.

{ THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED PATIENCE , AND HAVE A PALM WOODS DAY ! }

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As the small band of friends made their way past the ornately-decorated antechamber—which was bustling with aspiring l'acteurs and stylish starlets, longtime thespians and raconteurs, and other blooming prodigies of different talents alike—another dry and throaty voice greeted them. But this time, it was coming from an actual human being instead of a dusty tannoy speaker.

"Top of the mornin', boys!"

The resident maintenance man popped up from behind a row of vivid-magenta bougainvillea bushes and waved at them with his calipers, the tool's sharp tips trimming off the ends of his incredibly bushy beard in the process. The teenagers waved back at him enthusiastically.

"What's cookin', Buddha Bob?" Logan asked.

He and the older gent always got along dandy due to their shared love of mechanics and inventing—although Logan was a little more cautiously scientific in his approach, while the older machinist had the ardour of a frenzied child jamming random parts together in the hopes of creating a homemade motorrad in their bedroom. Because of this, it was sometimes rather difficult to tell who was actually the apprentice and who was the craftsmaster.

But whatever the case, a conducted experiment with these inventors' joint involvement almost always resulted in a guaranteed topsy-turvy havoc. Whenever people described them as { LOGAN AND BUDDHA BOB GOT TOGETHER LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE }, it usually wasn't too much of a hyperbolic exaggeration. Even their exasperated local fire brigade could vouch for that fact...

Everyone quizzically gazed up, searching for the source of the strange disembodied voice that derailed their conversation.

"Wow, Mr. Bitters' super annoying Expositionator Gizmonator is really on overdrive today." observed Carlos, and they all nodded in agreement.

"Why does he even have that thing installed, anyway?" Kendall wondered aloud. "I mean seriously, who wants a creepy unseen narrator—with Bitters' hair-raising voice, out of all people!—constantly following them around like a phantom and announcing the most obvious life details to a non-existent audience, like they're the main character of some terrible story?"

James simply shrugged at him. "I mean, this is Hollywoodland, Ken. Who doesn't want that?"

"Me, fer 'un. Ought'r get that durn nosy blight'r fixered up." grumbled Buddha Bob. "'Er put down, more like."

"Yeah, much better to do that, I reckon. But anyway, Sire Robert," Logan reverted their attention back to the original topic at hand, "you got any new projects lately?"

"Aww y'know, jus' a little bit of repairin' after your last recent alarm disarmin' tango with 'un of boss Reggo's security bots." the maintenance man replied, motioning to the headless metal corpse splayed next to him. "I really hope y' boys arn't gettin' int'er any more trouble wuth 'em after this. I had ter check th's systems 'n this blighter, and 'ere's been some weird issues wuth 'is protection inhibition. Basic'lly, thung's all woozed up wuth waaaay too much power, all armed 'n ready ter destroy. Wouldn't want you 'er anyone gettin' croaked by it."

The four boys blustered out in speedy assurances of "oh wow really, what a surprise, we'll be good and not break any more stuff—!" "yeah, we would never do such terrible things, anyway—" "yep, we sure learned our lesson back then, ha-ha—" "I mean, we definitely didn't almost get ourselves completely eradicated by one of them literally just five minutes ago, pffft...what—what are you talking about?"

"Rrright." Buddha Bob looked unconvinced, but he simply gave them his signature avuncular chummy grin and let it slide. "Aye, I gotta say though, I'm impressed. Good job on cleavin' this bugger's connection to the main centralised system, you guys. S'a pretty clean durned job."

"Hah, puny machines like that are no match for a little classic manpower muscle. Especially when it's delivered by Minnesota's finest—the very pride and joy of Central Duluth!" proclaimed Carlos, excitedly pantomiming a play-by-play of their previous brutal takedown.

"You know how satisfying it was to turn that stupid robot's conker into a hurley puck? It was just making angry beeping sounds while trying to get at us and then suddenly...bam, a direct bodyslam! And then a little feint to the left from Kendizzle," the blond crouched and quickly weaved left and right, "a fast pass from the J-man," the brunet put his hands together and swung an invisible hockey stick, "and the robot went soaring with Loganator and went a'rattling! Aaaand finally, WHACK! I showed that clanger-brain who's boss and we finally scored a goal—and blood spurted everywhere!"

"Oil." corrected Logan.

"Oil spurted everywhere, and it was so freaking majestic, oh sweet delicious oily death, have mercy on its damned soul and deliver us all from the Divine!" The frenzied Latino tossed his head back and cackled maniacally, as the sound of bass strings in allegro fugato swelled triumphantly from behind him.

"Barbarians. I live with barbarians." Logan shook his head, sighing. "And by the way, Cello Dude, that's some stellar playing, but it's also not helping!"

"Oh, sorry!"

The bow came to a literal screeching halt, as the laidback concert musician stopped practicing Cello Sonata No. 5 in E Minor on his baroque instrument. Cello Dude flashed everyone a sheepish grin and regarded the dead automaton with a drawled "unreeeaaal…" before finally ducking out, ruff collar and powdered wig bobbing along as he struggled to lug away his giant cello with him.

"Anywayzaroonies, after this bit of tinkerin' with Marie Antoinette here's wheel janglies, I'm gonna go search for her noggin so I can reattach it. An' after that, I'll be settin' up a version two trap in the cellar." continued Buddha Bob. "There's a durn-deviled gopher that curse wormed its way into one of our textile transformers an' made a ratty 'lil cozy home nest for itself, an' it was snitchy enough to escape my version 'un trap."

"Really? Are you encountering any predicaments with the mechanisms?"

"Wuuuull, I done checked the rotatey-cylinder things and springy springs that woulda brung down the snapper right on i's neck, but I guess something about the juncture 's off or maybe causin' bleedin' issues, 'cause it gunked out hard on detectin' the nasty scoundrel rodent passin' in an' outta it."

"Hmmm...I think I see the problem." Logan said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe the erroneous calibration with the concentric cylinders and spring-loads caused it to fail generating enough lift to activate the hold-down bar and snap the hammers."

"Oh, righto y'are...whassat mean?"

"Well, for that—if I'm correct with my proposed hypothesis, then I would highly recommend using a vernier scale instead of a standard caliper like the one you have there. With the function of the scale's mechanical interpolation, you can increase the resolution and reduce measurement uncertainty by using vernier acuity to reduce human estimation error with calibrating the trap's components, and then it's snap!—goodbye gopher!"

"Uhhh...okay." Buddha Bob scratched at his unkempt beard, clearly not getting a single word of the explanation. "I'll uh, I'll sher' do that."

"Earth to professor screwball," James impatiently rolled his eyes and knocked a fist on Logan's skull, "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're the ones getting snapped and gopher-trapped by Gustavo 'cause we're running late for rehearsals!"

With this, Kendall and Carlos hooked their genius friend by the arms and started dragging him away with them to the Palm Woods' entrance, where the vehicular parking vicinity was situated.

"Feel free to borrow mine, I'll get Katester to fetch it from my toolbox and give it to you later!" Logan called out to Buddha Bob.

The scraggly mechanic gave the harried boys a quick farewell wave that sheared off the right half of his facial hair, before merrily going about with his usual business.

Humming an atonal melody and thumping his peg leg to the offbeat, he began dragging away the headless automaton to his toolshed; while Kendall, Carlos, James, and Logan hopped on their jet-propelled velocipedes and kicked it in seventh gear all the way to Rocqué Entertainment Conservatoire.

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