Betrayal From Within
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Three – A Pleasant Afternoon in the Suburbs
Jenny balanced her weight on the tips of her metallic toes, her sensors tuned to their highest setting, ready to charge in any direction. She was feeling in the zone today. The last six attackers had come from the left and the right, so her instincts told her to be ready for a surprise from behind. Sure enough, with mechanical quickness, a green Cluster roach-drone popped out of the bushes only twenty feet behind her, its weapons drawn and trained directly at her.
Faster than the blink of an eye, she leapt into the air toward the drone, somersaulting gracefully as she deployed a giant mallet from her right elbow. Taking advantage of her momentum, she swung her mighty Thor's Hammer towards the doomed drone's head. With a thunderous crash, her giant mallet shattered the roach-drone … sending a hail of plywood and cardboard fluttering about the front yard.
"One point eight five seconds!" she laughed. Jenny licked her finger and poked herself in the hip. "Sssss! The girl is hot tonight."
Drew slowly shook his head at her. "Yeah, yeah, that cardboard cut-out never had a chance. Okay. So does this mean I'm supposed to do the hammer on this one?"
But before he got an answer, another cardboard roach-drone popped up twenty feet to his left. It surprised him, and he didn't get a good jump towards the target. But he was getting faster with his shape-shifting. He clasped his hands together, and swung his arms around his body as if he was jumping rope. By the time his hands were over his head, they had expanded into a large, cylindrical silver-green mallet. It slammed into the cardboard target almost as forcefully as Jenny's blow … but half a second slower.
"Wicked cool!" shouted Tuck, enjoying the show from his perch on Brad's shoulders. The boys were watching the action from the safety of their own front yard; they'd learned that, while it was fun to watch these training sessions, it was a good idea to stay clear of them. Jenny was really putting Drew through his paces this afternoon, and there was a lot of target debris flying around.
"Ehh, I could have read the paper while I was waiting for you to hit it," she giggled, with a smug little smile. "Okay, let's bring on the next round … if you think you are ready, grasshopper."
"Give me a break, sensei," laughed Drew. "Less talky, more smashy."
With a shoomp of compressed air, a set of roach-drone targets popped up simultaneously in a full circle around Jenny. These cutouts had been fitted with primitive suction-cup dart guns, and during practice, one hit from a suction-cup meant you were "dead". The drones opened fire, but Jenny was already in motion. Dodging the first three darts, her left forearm converted into a powerful chainsaw. With an air-shattering roar, the chainsaw shredded the first target-drone into pieces, and quickly made short work of the rest of the them, as Jenny sprinted around the circle at super-speed.
"Two point three three seconds," she beamed. "Your turn, rookie."
"Your turn, rookie," smirked Drew, mocking her voice. "But I can't do motors, so I'll just have to …"
Another set of cardboard roach-drones popped up around Drew, and fired their guns. But his pliable body was tailor-made for dodging projectiles. While he twisted and folded to avoid the darts, his arms stretched out into long, nano-edged sabers, with edges only a few atoms wide. Then he simply pivoted on his toes, rotating in place like a giant weed whacker. With a quick succession of schwicks, each target drone snapped in half, sliced with atomic precision.
"… improvise," he grinned. "One point nine four! Uh-huh … go Drew … it's my birth-day …"
Brad roared with laughter at Drew's little end-zone dance. "Perhaps the student has, ah, surpassed the master," he chuckled, speaking in a bad Kung-Fu movie accent.
Jenny seemed a little irked at Brad's friendly jab. "We'll just see about that," she smiled. "PULL!"
A small training device whined to life in response to the voice command. It lifted its single arm, deployed a clay disc painted in red-and-white circles, and launched it into the air. As it curled two hundred feet into the clear afternoon sky, Jenny confidently unhinged her left elbow to deploy her laser-limb. She took sight on the target disc and … ZAP! A brilliant streak of pale blue laser energy streaked into the sky, blasting the disc into a cloud of dust.
Drew's shoulders slumped. "Aww, geez, Jenny – not the laser. You know what's going to happen."
"Come on, Drew!" she grinned. "You've just got to think positively. Today's the day you're going to get it all figured out. The new laser schematics Mom made for you don't have any moving parts! Just think, 'Today's the day!' Get ready and … Pull!"
"Think positively," he mumbled to himself, as the clay target arced high into the air. Drew squinted his eyes in concentration, and rapid waves of silver-green warbled back and forth over his right arm. It shimmered and flexed, and expanded slightly into a long, cylindrical cannon barrel. Silver pipes and stabilizer rings formed around the outside of the barrel, and it began to whine with a faint but high-pitched squeal. An internal message in his robotic vision told him that the newly formed laser chamber was at full charge. He took aim at the clay target, fired the laser, and …
Recoiled backwards, as an explosion blasted his right arm into a thousand pieces. Jenny and the boys tried to duck, but they were pelted by high-speed blobs of shiny goo – as if somebody had set off a firecracker in a can of silver paint.
Drew got back to his feet, waving a smoking stump where his right arm used to be. Scorch marks coated his upper body from the waist up, but he didn't seem hurt … just annoyed. "Okay, that's it. I'm not going to try the laser anymore, all right? Man, I am never going to get the hang of this! A guy can explode only so many times before he gets tired of it." Drew's nanobot body started to repair the damage as he walked around the yard, collecting and re-absorbing the larger chunks of silver-green shrapnel.
Tuck was laughing hysterically, even as he wiped a large glob of shiny molasses off of his face. "I never get tired of it! It's like watching that crazy coyote that keeps trying to catch the road runner. He keeps blowing up too! Kaboom!" He scooped up a few more puddles of slime, mashed them together into a silver ball, and lobbed it back towards Drew.
Jenny finished cleaning off her torso with her rotary polishing tool, satisfied that she'd gotten all the big pieces of nanobot sludge. For a girl who had just gotten her paint job messed up, she was in a remarkably giddy mood. "Okay, okay, laser practice is done for today. But you're really getting better at this, Drew! And you'll get the laser right one of these days. I know you can do it!"
"Man, you're in a disturbingly cheery mood," said Drew, as he wiped nano-goo off the side of the house.
"Yeah, Jen, you've been bouncing and skipping around all day," added Brad. "What's the occasion? Did your mom give you a fresh set of servo motors?"
"Naw, I'm just in a good mood, guys," she grinned. "I guess I'm still pumped up from yesterday."
"You mean you're happy because you got a medal?" asked Tuck.
"Not really, Tuck. I mean, it was nice of the city to put on that ceremony … even if it was a little dorky," she giggled. "But all day yesterday, everyone was being so nice, and thanking me, and congratulating me! It just made me feel … appreciated. And that means a lot more to me than any old medal, or getting my picture in the paper. Although … it was kind of great to get my picture in the paper!"
"You were on the television news, too," said Brad. "Now everyone knows you're a hero!"
"And that's swell and all," smiled Jenny, "but the really cool thing happened when I went to the mall last night. Nobody chased me out of their store! Nobody complained that I smelled funny. Nobody ran away when they saw me coming! It might have been the first time … that I actually felt a little bit like a normal teenager. I even bumped into some of the girls from school, and they let me hang out with them! We went shopping for shoes, and then we got our nails done … well, they did have to use a rotary grinder for mine … and then we went to the food court to check out guys, and catch up on gossip ..."
"Oh, yeah, I really want to hear about this," groaned Tuck. "Bleah!"
Jenny huffed at the little fellow's remark, and her eyes drifted off into a dreamy haze. "You're just too young to understand, Tuck. See, it's only eleven days until the prom! The most important social event of the school year. All the girls will be in fancy dresses, and the guys will all be wearing suits and tuxedos. Everyone is talking about it! I figured I wouldn't be going to the prom … it's kind of lame for a girl to go by herself, without a date. And who would want to take a metal freak to the prom, right? But last night, Connie told me that Juanita heard a rumor that somebody was going to ask me to go to the prom with them. But she doesn't know who! It's a secret! Isn't that awesome?!?"
Drew's arm finished repairing itself with a quick schwerrrp. "Pffft. Gimme a break, it's hardly a secret."
Jenny's head whirled around. "Not a secret? You know who it is?"
"Of course I know … doesn't everyone?" Suddenly, Drew stopped himself – he realized that Jenny honestly did not know who it was. "Wait a minute. You mean he hasn't … I mean, nobody's asked you to the prom, yet?"
Jenny ran towards him, with a hyper expression on her face. "You know who it is, don't you! Tell me, Drew! Come on, you've gotta tell me! Tell me tell me tell me!"
Drew started backpedaling like crazy. "Ah … uh … no, wait, Jenny … all I meant was, I heard the same rumor that you did …"
"Ba-loney," laughed Jenny, growing more excited by the second. "You know. Start talking!"
"Look, just forget it, okay?" Drew wished he had just kept his big mouth shut. "Um, ah … shouldn't we be more worried about training?"
A wicked grin grew on Jenny's face. "All right then," she said. "Last exercise of the day. A little one-on-one combat training. First robot that gets pinned for a three-count is the loser! If I win, you have to tell me who's going to ask me to the prom!"
"What!?!" Drew was getting really flustered. "No way! I mean … aw, c'mon, I don't want to fight you!"
"If you don't, I'll … I'll …" – Jenny thought for a second, then grinned even wider – "… I'll tell XJ-8 that you want to take her to the prom."
Drew gasped in horror, and his jaw nearly dropped off of his face. "You wouldn't dare! Ulp … oh, man, that's dirty pool, Jenny! That is so seriously not fair!"
Tuck rubbed his little hands together excitedly. "All righty, time for some robot rasslin'! Woohoo! Let's get ready to rumble!"
"But I don't want to rumble!" shouted Drew, waving his arms frantically …
Jenny wasn't going to let him off the hook. With a lightning-fast leap and squeal of laughter, she plowed into Drew with a flying tackle, sending both teenage robots tumbling to the ground. Jenny flipped Drew over onto his back, leaned on his shoulders, and hooked her arm around one of his legs for leverage. "And Silver Toothpaste Boy looks like he's down for the count! One … two …"
But Drew finally gathered his senses, and his body gurgled like a block of gelatin. Suddenly, Jenny wasn't holding onto anything. Thick cords of doughy, silver-green paste curled into the air, and slopped into a new six-foot blob standing ten feet behind her. Drew reformed himself by the time Jenny got back to her feet, still hoping to bargain his way out of this. "Whoa, hold up, Jen! Stop! Time out?"
"Heh, heh, heh … no weaseling out now, rookie!" Jenny was having an amazing amount of fun watching Drew squirm and scamper about the front yard. He wasn't trying to fight back, but his fluid body was proving to be very hard for her to get her hands on. It was difficult to pin somebody's shoulders for three seconds when they didn't have any shoulders. Finally, after a minute of frustration, she hovered ten feet into the air, and cracked open her right elbow. With a few quick whirrs and clicks, one of her many beam weapons deployed, and extended its glowing barrel towards Drew.
His eyes nearly shot out of their sockets. "Holy smokin'-eyed catfish! What are you doing!?!"
"It's my paralyzer ray," she giggled, "set to the lowest setting. It won't hurt you, Drew! It'll just keep you solid for ten seconds or so. Long enough for me to claim victory!"
"Gahhh!" Drew sprung into a long, arcing stream of silvery syrup to avoid Jenny's first shot, then resumed android form and ran around the back of the Wakeman house. Jenny missed with two more shots, then ignited her pigtail-jets, and streaked around to the back yard, in hot pursuit. Poor Drew sure didn't want to tell her his secret, and that only fueled her need to know. She paused just long enough to scan the back yard, but her quarry was nowhere in sight. Rushing around the other side of the house, all she saw was the neighbors' hedges and a few lawn gnomes. Soon she was right back in the front yard. There was nothing in sight but shredded fragments of cardboard targets.
Oh, great – he's hiding. This might be tough. Drew could have shape-shifted into part of the sidewalk, or the mailbox, or the rain gutter … Jenny gave her front yard the once-over and saw Brad leaning against the house, fighting back a chuckle, as he watched her search for her silver-green student. "Having problems there, Jen?" he laughed.
Jenny zipped over to confront him. "You saw him come around the house," she grinned. "Where'd he go, Brad? Come on, we're best friends! You'd tell your best friend, wouldn't you?"
Suddenly, she heard a another burst of laughter from next door. She turned to see Tuck snickering furiously into his hands, trying very badly to remain silent. Brad had to hold onto his little brother extra-tight to keep him from slipping off of his shoulders. Wait a minute … Brad's over there with Tuck … but Brad is here in my front yard, standing right behind me … oh, no.
There was a liquidy schwerrrrp from behind her back, and then Jenny shuddered slightly, as she felt the touch of long metal fingers against the back of her head. "Brad" gurgled and warbled with patterns of silver-green ripples, and moments later, Drew had resumed his normal appearance. But now he had the upper hand; catching Jenny by surprise, the nano-computers in his body had interfaced with Jenny's electronic brain. She slumped, and her arms dropped by her sides, hanging limply. A dazed expression washed across her face.
"It's the android sleeper hold!" said Tuck, in a pretend-announcer's voice. "This could be the upset of the century. I think this match is just – about – over!"
Drew was snickering too – he decided that a little payback was called for. "Not quite. Just one little thing, first. Oh, man … Jenny, I'm sorry it had to come to this!"
Jenny's eyes quivered, and zoned out into a straight-ahead zombie stare. Then she snapped perfectly upright, her pigtails perked up, and she perched one hand on her hip, while holding the other one out to her side. Then … she started to sing.
"I'm a little teapot, short and stout … here is my handle, here is my spout …"
Brad and Tuck wiped tears from their eyes. "Dude," gasped Brad, "she is going to kill you."
"I know," grinned Drew. "I'd like a small, simple funeral. Okay, let's wrap this up. Pardon me, madam – if you'd kindly lay down, please?" Jenny obediently sat down, and laid back on the grass. Drew placed a single finger from his free hand on her torso while he kept his other hand interfaced to the back of her head. "And-a one, and-a two, and-a three. It's all over, folks! I shook up the world! Yo, Adrian!"
The instant he removed his hand from the back of her head, Jenny sprang to her feet like a wildcat, with fierce crackles of electricity leaping from her cheeks. Her eyes glowed with fury as the boys laughed themselves silly. She balled her hands into fists, and started marching towards Drew. "You are – so – dead," she growled, pounding a fist into her open palm.
Drew was laughing and scrambling for his life, oozing his way out of her clutches. "Look, it was just a joke! C'mon! Besides, you have such a lovely singing voice." He jumped over the fence into Brad's yard, hiding behind Brad and Tuck. Jenny converted her right hand into a huge power first, and waved it menacingly while she chased him, trying to stay angry in the midst of all the laughter. "Jen, you really didn't give me much of a choice!" pleaded Drew. "Whaddaya say? Huh? Buddies? Huh? Hmmm?"
"I'll buddy you," laughed Jenny, rearing her power fist over her head. "You know Drew, the great thing about having a friend like you is … I can whoop your butt, and it grows right back!" But as mad as she was at Drew's little mind-control stunt, she grudgingly admitted that it was kind of funny. And so what if he wanted to keep his little secret? She was in too good of a mood to let something minor like that ruin her day. She'd find out eventually. Drew kept circling Brad and Tuck, laughing like an idiot, and Jenny kept waving her power fist over her head, threatening to whoop all of their butts …
Then she stopped, with a puzzled expression on her face. "Do you guys hear that?" she asked.
That's when the first helicopter gunship roared overhead.
It seemed to come out of nowhere, skimming the rooftops of the suburban neighborhood with a staccato thunder, the wind from its blades kicking up dust and debris, even from a hundred feet in the air. As it slowed down to hover in place, directly in front of Brad's house, another giant helicopter howled in from the opposite direction. Soon a third massive copter dropped through a low layer of clouds, taking up position between the first two. All three gunships had a military appearance to them, painted in mottled shades of green … with very nasty-looking rocket pods and laser cannons slung underneath their weapons pylons. And they all pointed those weapons at the small group of terrified friends.
Brad and Tuck clutched their hands over their ears, gaping at the amazing scene hanging in the sky in front of their house. Jenny and Drew stared at each other, dumbstruck, completely baffled by the sudden and spectacular appearance of the helicopters.
A loud PA speaker squawked to life from the nose of the center gunship. "Attention! Attention, XJ-9! This is the United States Army! Stay where you are! Do not make any sudden movements!"
"The Army!?!" shouted Jenny. "What in the world are they doing here!?!"
But while she was still wondering about that, she heard the squeal of tires coming down the road. Two large, canvas-covered trucks roared up the street at high speed, barreling directly towards them. They were also covered in mottled green colors, and had white stenciling on their sides which read National Guard. The trucks jumped over the concrete curb, coming to rest halfway on the front lawn. Even before they had come to a complete stop, soldiers began leaping out of the back, barking orders to each other. Each soldier was armed with an impressive-looking laser rifle; some of them carried bazookas.
The front door of the lead truck swung open, and a large man in his fifties climbed out, with a salt-and-pepper brush cut, and wearing a colonel's uniform. He scowled in Jenny's direction, and raised a bullhorn to his mouth. "There is your target, men! And she's taken hostages! You are ordered to hold your fire until said hostages have been secured!"
Now Jenny was starting to get scared. "Hostages!?! These aren't hostages! These are my friends!"
"Stow your weapon immediately!" shouted the colonel. "Step back, and deactivate yourself!"
Jenny realized that she still had her power fist deployed, and for some reason, these soldiers thought she was actually threatening Brad and Tuck with it. She retracted it back into her arm, desperately trying to make sense of the situation. The boys were just as bewildered as she was. Brad took a few halting steps towards the soldiers, with his hands held over his head. "Don't shoot! For crying out loud, don't shoot! What do you guys want with Jenny!?! She hasn't done anything!"
Tuck ran after his older brother, scared out of his wits. He glommed onto Brad's pant leg with a vice-like grip. "Brad! Never argue with a man holding a bazooka!"
"The hostages are in the clear! Subdue the robots! GO! GO! GO!"
And suddenly two fully-equipped special ops soldiers sprang from hiding in the bushes. They grabbed Brad and Tuck, and sprinted with them to safety, away from Jenny and Drew. Dozens of soldiers sprinted towards the front yard of Brad's house, and formed an armed perimeter around a baffled pair of teenage robots. Drew was almost petrified with fear. Jenny was stunned and confused – they were obviously after her – but these weren't the bad guys. She couldn't fight back against the Army.
Jenny spun around, and saw nothing but soldiers in every direction. "But … but why?"
The front door of the Wakeman house finally swung open, and out burst an extremely agitated white-haired scientist in a yellow lab coat. Mrs. Wakeman stormed onto her walkway, fists shaking in righteous fury. "What in the name of Sir Isaac Blessed Newton is going on out here! It sounds like somebody is trying to start the next World War! What is all this – some of us have very delicate bacteria cultures growing in the incubator, you know!"
The colonel pointed towards Mrs. Wakeman. "There's the ringleader, men! Grab her!" Half a dozen soldiers sprinted from one of the green trucks, quickly surrounding the perplexed scientist. One of them raised his laser rifle to aim at Mrs. Wakeman's chest. "Hands where I can see 'em, lady."
"Oh, my goodness," gulped Mrs. Wakeman, quickly flinging her hands over her head.
The sight of a gun pointed at her mother sparked a defensive instinct inside of Jenny. She bolted towards her yard, pushing aside two startled national guardsmen. "You leave my mother alone!"
"She's attacking!" shouted the colonel. "Fire Team Alpha, GO!"
A bazooka-carrying soldier aimed his giant weapon towards Jenny as she ran towards her mother, and pulled the trigger. A loud bang of compressed air erupted from the mouth of his bazooka. Thickly wound coils of steel cable streaked through the air, unraveling into a long, twirling set of bolos. The cable struck Jenny in the waist, and immediately began wrapping itself around her arms and legs, immobilizing her. She tripped and slammed awkwardly into the ground, bound from her shoulders to her knees in steel cable that could support a suspension bridge. And for an extra touch, the end of each cable was connected to a powerful capacitor. A high-voltage current discharged through the cable, rocking her body with violent electrical shocks.
"Are you guys nuts!?! You can't do this! What about our rights …" shouted Drew. He managed to take one single step towards his fallen friend, before three dozen rifle barrels leveled at him.
"Rights? Rights?!? Robots don't have any rights," growled the colonel. "Now, you're not in trouble, android – not yet. But give me one excuse, just one excuse, and you'll be deactivated along with your little friend here. If I had my way, every last one of you miserable contraptions would be melted down for scrap. You just can't trust robots!"
"But why? Why are you doing this!?!" protested Drew.
The colonel took a few steps towards Jenny, snarling down at her immobile form. "In the last twelve hours, the XJ-9 robot has attacked and destroyed every major deep space radar facility in the United States and Europe. It has also destroyed a long-range spy telescope, and sabotaged three military bases. It has seriously damaged the ability of this country, and this planet, to defend itself against alien attack."
He clasped his large hands behind his back, and glowered at the confounded scientist. "Doctor Nora Wakeman, by the authority of the United States government, and the World Senate, you … and your little robotic traitor … are under arrest for sabotage and treason."
Continued in Chapter Four / Nine Days to Cluster Dawn