{{I've fought hard against demotivation and life being a bummer. Hopefully it's not late to say that this fic isn't me imposing upon the show, nor is it an oblique statement that Lord, Miller, and Lawrence are doing it wrong. I may have bungled that tiny detail about tearing one's clothes in Jewish mourning tradition. I've heard contradictory sources on the topic.

Additionally, the legalese in this universe will now vary in real-world accuracy since Clone High's in an oddball version of ours.}}

Scudworth loosely folded his arms and let his back fall against the desk. He found that doing this calmed him down and should help tie his thoughts together. This lie was neither little, nor white, and not solely carried in frail human memory.

What he was about to say could risk him a subpoena to a court hearing, and he wanted nothing to do with the trials following any hearing.
The urge to shunt his guests through the death maze was rising, but alas, he was bound to playing nice. At least until he knew it was safe to act otherwise, or he'd craft a scenario himself if he could just wing it.

"That man crashed the prom," Scudworth began swiftly, "he burst through the front doors and charged my way." One hand splayed on his chest for emphasis.

Janis had smiled too wide. The mild shock it sent Scudworth's spine caused him to falter for a moment. She probably wasn't some sadist, he thought, although he understood the allure of a good paycheck dangling on a string.

Ketham was more rock steady than the Moai figures despite his kind gestures. Just as intimidating as Janis, though by different means.

"I knew he wasn't just some weirdo who wanted to tackle me in an aggressive display of friendship, and in that moment I climbed onstage and lured him away from the student body. I challenged his integrity by insinuating he was a coward, yes!" He nodded curtly on the last word. "And as I struggled to keep him occupied, everybody fled to the back room! I had to slow him down-"

"They cornered themselves, in other words." Ketham's eyebrow arched.

"Yes, well, we panicked. Moreover, I fought the assailant on stage. He fought dirty, so I fought dirty in return. I do not know how one so delicate as I could have gouged out the man's eye."

"But you did."

The reply was a little hoarse. If it were a look, it felt like a squint. Scudworth cursed inwardly, at himself, and his goodie-three-wheels robot.

"So I did," Scudworth echoed, mentally adding something entirely stupid right now. If he wants to get out of this clean, he has to sharpen up before something explodes. Well before this incident will write itself into the pages documenting and scornful of humanity's nasty underside.

Was Ketham waiting for him to follow through with something to catch him on? Damn, the man's unflinching disposition scared him. Scudworth's hands were sweating enough to feel like greased mitts. He felt all the weight of his own presence, yet transparent as glass. These people didn't excel at their chosen careers. He was inept at his own game.

Then, Janis asked where he was between the freezing and leaving for home.

What did he remember doing that night, that he can tell, and come out not smelling like stress sweat and carcinogenic chemicals? An adrenaline rush had driven him home, a sense of triumph maintained the high, and unplacable sorrow shooed that out. Other times, triumph dropkicked it out. Two of the three had identifiable causes, which were comfortable and didn't say bad things about him.

Butlertron remained in his open-eyed sleep. If only Scudworth had an inch of knowledge on telepathy, neither wouldn't be in this pinch, but he thought loud thoughts at the bot anyway.

Scudworth told them he only remembered fear, feeling far away from his own arms, stumbling into his home, and a fireplace. Janis strained to appear content with this snapshot, but you can't convince someone with a smile when your eyebrows gesture differently. Perhaps she thought even less of him, or worse, pitied him. She began to half mouth words never able to take a voice with their shapes, and her partner cracked his neck in his palm.

The reporter didn't shrivel up. Rather, she scooted to the edge of her seat, leaning towards Scudworth.

"Is he... it? Like a surveillance camera?" Janis asked. Then sharply with a smile, "Cause you know, if he was with you that night, he will prove your innocence."

He'd completely forgotten about surveillance systems, but not the fact his robotic servant was there, and purportedly forgot to warn him of the Shadowy Figures' attempt to kidnap the clones and terminate his life. Nobody knows like he knows he wasn't programmed DOS in a portly metal shell.

A lie here and now would be at the very least suspicious after Mister B displayed them remarkable autonomy. Let them have him and they'd eventually find him guilty. Himself, friendless. Though compliance often sowed trust, and innocent parties wouldn't have to fear harm unless they felt the program was enforced by disreputable hands. He thought on it.

"Why, my robotic servant's memory doesn't store itself in any ordinary digital or analog format, and it is dedicated to his delightfully British mannerisms. You'll get no farther pulling video from him than you will unscrambling the memories of a rabbit with a lobotomy."

Ketham's brows scrunched as he interjected, "that's not how a lob-"

"See, I'm a very busy man," Scudworth said, picking up a duster, "who must clean the scent of science out of the floor and dust the drapes for the building's next calling!" A thin cloud of particles grew from the duster more than the drapes themselves, journeyed up the principal's beaky nose, only to be expelled in a body-folding sneeze.

"Cinnamon," Ketham had stood up.

Scudworth's heart dropped at the personal form of address.

"This lot has no future as it is. It's been bought out to be converted into housing."

There hadn't been any confirmation of that in the news. At least, not that he'd heard. How would the decision come so quickly, assuming Ketham's word could be taken at face value at all?

"F-fine," Scudworth crossed his arms tightly, scowling, "look into my robot servant's aluminum brain." He backed into Mister B, knocking on the flat of his tinny head, and his eyes regained their focused appearance. Their gaze grounded on a twitchy Janis, assumed trying to pretend she wasn't in the same room with a suspect who's making a terrible case of his mental stability.

Mister B chirped, "oh Wesley, how may I be of heellllllp?"

Before anyone could do as much as breathe a consonant, Janis cut in tightly, "where'stherestroom?!"

Scudworth jabbed a thumb at the air beside him, and she flew by before Ketham could refuse to hold the recording equipment she shoved against him. The following slam jiggled the door on its hinge, and Scudworth found himself angrily hoping the ramshackle state of the thing wasn't her fault. He liked those door-hinges, they barely squeaked.

Then his head dropped to look at the robot with a softened expression. "My dear Butlertron, tell this man what you remembered doing that night," then at Ketham with an index finger, "and you tell me when the fate of this building had been decided."

The following exchange after that appeared redundant, and it was evident in the stony brows creasing. Janis returned to pick up her equipment, but didn't stay. It worried the sweat off Scudworth's face, not knowing why someone that eager, who barely had anything to scoop had left. Best case scenario, she was being paid by how many stories she could uncover.

And apparently, the development bulletin was announced shortly after eight-o-five. Ridiculous.

Some papers dense with fine print were offered to the principal, and he felt some weight lift from his shoulders. The men exchanged a bone crushing handshake, and then the weight dropped again as he reckoned nobody will go home tonight.

-0-0-0-0-

Being escorted through the back into a dark van with darkened windows wasn't nearly as bad as he'd thought. Scudworth likened it to the routine of curiously controversial celebrities, and that was always glamorous. Mister B always raised a squeaky eyebrow when Scudworth said such things. The man hadn't absorbed tact, and that made up many odd exchanges between himself and most humans. This time, it was whatever would take the man's mind off his belongings being carried with the help of authorities. During the security checks, Scudworth said his fish tank was an upscaled artificial womb from Philadelphia.

The robot then peered at the scene scrolling with the vehicle's movement through the window on his side. Half of the angry parents' outcry ceased into listless blubbering. Some sat cross-legged, wrapped around with the arms of others, even those they hardly talked with or liked. In his chest cavity, the circuitry was enlivened with dull, painful currents.

The robot had been pre-occupied so long with protecting his friend, that he didn't imagine his future without the clones he'd brought into the world. They began crying and wet. Some were born the old fashioned way as the fosters felt that would be safer. Countless scrapes cleaned and bandaged with gaudy cartoon characters, dividing when who could have which toy to play with, and many more uncounted memories now just simply there to cry over if he weren't to put them to use. Grief counselling.

It had been years since this replayed in his mind. The memory of Vincent pressing his limp pet bunny to his metal arms, pleading to wake Snuffy up. How the boy's eyes reddened from sickness and overflowed when the robot said he couldn't. Vincent also had the flu at the time. Joan was the only organic life form who volunteered to stay by him during lunch period. Even after he vomited on his bully... or precisely because he did just that. She smiled and rubbed her fist in his scalp saying, "nice one!" She waved her goodbyes when he climbed into the car and it pulled away. End sequence.

He regarded Scudworth, who bounced in his seat to a song that wasn't playing. In the odd chance Scudworth interacted with the students on a personal level, they often left him within five minutes. Sooner if he mocked them, intentionally and otherwise. Scudworth's memories were few and far between, and hardly positive. The stain in his backseat, and the continuous complaints about it told that much. They were inserted into conversations where he had to complain about something old, because he couldn't manage what was new. He kept it like bile.

Mister B was among the few, if not the one, to keep his own like pressed flowers.

-0-0-0-0-

The questioning wore on forever in a room without windows, where a low hanging lightbulb was the sole source of light and cast severe shadows on everyone. Some hours in, it knocked around when Scudworth shot up from his chair. He whimpered, clasping the top of his head.

Maybe that would jog his mind which didn't in reality need jogging. When further prodded with the ridiculous stimuli generously provided by the orderlies, they were returned the same answers but with an accompanying factoid pertinent to their methods. One strained to not smile when the pencil-necked nerd detailed how a spill of rubber duckies gave insight to the ocean's currents. He chattered away until some hands smacked down on the table, jolting him in his seat.

He re-centered himself and stilled. Looking down, the shadows quivering under his features made the former principal look grave. But did he feel as he looked? Scudworth had enough self interest to feign a face when necessary. There were faults on most days which the robot knew inside-out and backwards. None were visible this time.

If Mister B couldn't read his guilt and what lay behind it, it must be dangerous. Or he wasn't programmed to recognize shapes in poor lit conditions. The little "what if" of Scudworth learning to express a poker face undecipherable anywhere shook his circuitry.

"Now I say you listen here boy," the sheriff spat, "you and I and everyone knows you're hiding somethin' mighty big. No matter what that is, it's suspicious you're actin' like this! DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!"

Scudworth wasn't laughing outwardly.

Then the robot found himself thinking along algorithms he didn't want to think about. How to continue their friendship in good conscience without undercutting the tragedy or excusing Scudworth's flash-in-the-pan action having cut everyone's lives to ribbons. Was Scudworth's obtuse behaviour a stall for time? If so, the robot was stumped if the answer wasn't to wrestle the authorities. He just couldn't.

Scudworth replied with forced innocence, "should I remind you all the perpetrator slipped into the freezer? I hadn't intended to freeze everyone, you know. I didn't know that was where everything was put on ice."

The sheriff's jaw worked back and forth as he approached the table once more.

Scudworth continued. "He tried to lock himself in there after everyone arrived. He wanted to spit in the face of Clone High Highschool and all it stood for! Science, diversity, the human spirit, and the pursuit of a greater comprehension of consciousness!"

Mister B wordlessly thanked the darkness for concealing his silent facepalm. He understood the gist of what had been said, but damn, there were more academic terms for it. He also just framed a beloved dead television persona as being a backwater extremist with an incoherent agenda and a death wish.

They were sunk, and he felt it. He'd only know how far when those at their level would unveil themselves.

The Sheriff crossed his arms low across his middle. "Was that what he reckoned by phone?"

"Yes, but what does it matter now? He's gone. His mind has ceased to b-"

"We're not about to jail a corpse, son. We'd like to know if he had any connection to more of his... kind." Clearly he wanted to use a more judgemental label, but had to keep it professional.

Mister B's mind whirred, excited. There was an opportunity to take down some assholes and he'd hoped Scudworth would take it. In case not, he blinked morse code with his smile. He and Scudworth shared distaste for these glib jerks with a body count of one important person, but hadn't done anything about that until now. The robot did worry their institution threatened the wellbeing of the values Scudworth brought up. His circuits throbbed in pain at the thought that this is what had been the move to begin taking them down.

He saw Scudworth almost grin. Almost.

-0-0-0-0-

Scudworth's boundless energy stuck with him by the time they arrived home. He pushed the play button on his answering machine to hear the mocking message that Stamos didn't leave, and a sadistic spike ran through him. The inbred hick on the end of the line wouldn't know the clapback he was about to receive. He cackled, curling his fingers, and paused upon seeing his robot being anything but chipper.

"Lyn, why are you unhappy? You saved our cabooses and helped me fulfill my revenge fantasy... I should fit you with new hydraulic legs!" An arm wrapped around the robot.

The reply came distorted and glum, "I did this for someone else."

{{I like to think Joan unofficially adopted Vincent as her brother. Blood from the covenant is thicker than water from the womb after all.}}