Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fourteen – Traffic Is Murder Today

Skyscrapers flew by in a blur on the periphery of Jenny's vision, reducing her world to a narrow corridor that she navigated at speeds far too high to be safe. Morning traffic was already in full swing on the three-dimensional maze of airborne skylanes that flowed through the heart of the capital city. Jenny dodged around a trio of commuter hover-pods and nudged her way underneath a flying delivery truck, weaving through hundreds of flying hazards like a fighter jet avoiding anti-aircraft fire. With the extra burden of Brad, Sheldon, and Drew clutching on to her wings, it was a miracle she hadn't smacked into the side of a bus by now. She just needed to concentrate …

"C'mon, c'mon, fire your afterburners!" shouted Drew, tapping her on the shoulder. "C'mon, hit the turbo boost! Ignite the solid rockets! Run some red lights!"

"We're … going … fast .. enough," moaned Sheldon, who felt as if his clammy skin was being peeled off of his face. All the bobbing and weaving was giving his cheeks a dull green tinge …

"Woo hoo, this is coolness squared!" Brad shouted enthusiastically. "Come on, Jen, I know you can go faster than this! Faster faster faster …"

"Will you all just shut up!" she hollered … not noticing the giant billboard directly in front of her. Sheldon screamed and pointed at the last second, giving Jenny just enough time to shield her face as they smashed through the giant sign. The boys howled and hung on for dear life, throwing Jenny off balance as she unsuccessfully tried to straighten herself out. With an undignified splat, she belly-flopped onto a huge upper-story balcony, pinwheeling to stop underneath a dogpile of teenage boys.

"Arrrghhhh! Guys!" shouted Jenny. "You're not making this any easier …"

"Oh no," gasped Drew, with a horrified look on his face. He pointed to another skyscraper on the other side of the street, where a long motorcade of official Cluster vehicles sat next to the 60th floor entrance. Six black hovercars surrounded a luxurious stretch hover-limousine, which was adorned with small flags and a royal coat of arms. The grinning wasp-robot standing next to the limo was unmistakable. It was Queen Vexus, ordering her Black Mantis robots to escort a terrified lavender-and-white LSN droid into an armored prison van that sat right behind the limo.

"She's got Allison." Jenny felt as if she was choking on the words. "We didn't make it in time."

They watched the royal motorcade pull away from the apartment tower and glide into the skylanes. Jenny didn't have to guess where they were headed; they were probably taking her new friend back to Vexus' palace, where an unthinkable chamber of horrors awaited her. According to Sheldon, Allison was scheduled to have her mind downloaded and reformatted. Jenny's eyes narrowed into a pair of angry slits, then she retracted her wings and pivoted her pigtails to flight mode. "I'm going after her, guys."

"All right, now that's what I'm talkin' about!" shouted Drew. "Let's go rip Vexus a new one …"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Look, there's no way I can do this if I have to worry about carrying you three guys along with me! It'll be easier if I take care of this myself."

"WHAT!?!" Drew was livid. "No way! Jenny, I'm coming with you …"

"No you're not, Drew. Look, I know you're worried, but you need to chill out a little. Besides, we can't just leave Brad and Sheldon all alone here in the city. And we still need to worry about rescuing the class!" She shepherded the three boys over to an elevated parking area at the edge of the massive balcony, where a black-and-yellow hover-taxi was patiently waiting for its next fare. "Drew, you and the guys head for that factory and free the kids. I'll get Allison and meet you there!"

And before any of them could get another syllable out of their mouths, Jenny disappeared in a blast of flame and exhaust, rocketing into the frenzy of traffic in pursuit of Vexus' motorcade.

Drew balled his fists in rage as he watched Jenny fly off without him. "Oh, no she didn't!" he howled. "She did not just dump us off like a pack of kindergartners! That patronizing, bossy little …"

Brad looked plenty peeved himself, and thought that Jenny had been pretty condescending, but he decided to play the voice of reason. "Drew, Drew, calm down! Look, I know Jenny can be bossy sometimes. But she's got a point. You went a little Full Metal Jacket on us back there in the storeroom."

Drew almost blew up right in Brad's face … then his shoulders sagged with a painful sigh. "Guys, you don't understand. If anything happens to Allison … it'll be all my fault. If I hadn't brought her with me last night, she would never have learned the truth about humans, and about Vexus … and she wouldn't be in trouble right now. Oh man, I'll never forgive myself if anything happens to her …"

"Ahhhhhh," grinned Sheldon. "The anguish. The grief. The look of hopeless obsession in your eyes! Oh, how I know that look; I see it in the mirror every morning. You're in love with that robot, aren't you?"

"Look, can we just not talk about this right now?" growled Drew. "Everybody into the taxi."

"Shotgun!" shouted Brad, hopping into the front seat of the beetle-shaped hover-taxi, while Sheldon and Drew piled into the back. Drew tapped the short, bulky robot cabbie on the shoulder to wake him up from his nap mode. He flexed his clamp-shaped hands, and grasped the dual steering-sticks on the dashboard. "All right, where to, Mac … hey!" He gestured to the boys. "No pets in my cab, buddy!"

"Jeez, here we go again with the pets thing," groaned Brad.

The cabbie nearly spewed oil on himself at hearing a human speak. He started to panic – then grew very calm, as a set of silver-green fingers wrapped around the back of his head. Drew's nano-computers were doing their freaky "interface" thing again, overriding the cabbie's electronic brain. The hover-taxi's engine whined to life, it glided away from the skyscraper's balcony … then the cabbie rammed his control sticks all the way forward, and Brad felt like he was going to turn into a pancake. Sheldon grunted in agony as his face flattened against the window. Dozens of hovercars swerved madly and honked their horns as the taxi corkscrewed across three lanes, far exceeding the posted speed limit.

"Hey, Drew, take it easy!" yelled Sheldon. "And this isn't the way to the factory!"

"Look, guys, Jenny's going after Vexus and her robots … all by herself. We can make a turn up ahead, and go to the factory like she told us to. Or, we can catch up with the motorcade and help her out. It's up to you." The look on his face told them what he wanted to do …

And neither of the guys liked the idea of leaving Jenny alone, either. "So is there a gas pedal on this thing or what?" laughed Brad. "Floor it, man!"

Jenny threaded a pursuit course through the raging river of traffic with a mixture of raw speed and a dancer's grace. Then she suddenly came upon an opening, and realized that she'd caught up with the tail end of Vexus' motorcade. All good Cluster citizens naturally gave way to the queen's limo, to give her a smooth, unobstructed ride back to her palatial estate in the center of the capital. Well, Vexus is gonna have one bumpy ride today, Jenny grinned to herself. She nudged up the thrust levels of her pigtail-jets, sneaking up behind the rear hovercar.

She shot past the rear hovercars at blinding speed, before any of the queen's guards could so much as deploy a weapon. But she wasn't going to mess with the guards; she was going after the queen herself. Vexus had caused so much misery in her young life, had brought her nothing but grief and aggravation … and now it was time for a little payback. Jenny landed on top of the limousine, deployed a buzzsaw from her right wrist, and decided that Vexus needed a new sunroof. Mantis robots rocketed from their hovercars to defend their queen, but Jenny was already ripping through the inch-thick steel. She finished cutting the hole and dropped inside the limo …

Landing on top of a pair of surprised Mantis guards. Their programming kicked into emergency mode, and they deployed their sizzling electro-stun weapons … but Jenny already had her sawblade running at full speed. With a few expertly delivered slices, the Mantis robots collapsed into a pile of debris … and then Jenny saw her greatest enemy, and her eyes blazed with excitement, terror, fury, and confidence.

"I hear you've been looking for me, Vexus," she smirked. "So I figured I'd drop in for a visit."

Vexus so rarely showed any kind of extreme emotion; when she did, it was usually anger or megalomania. It was the first time Jenny had ever seen surprise on the evil robot queen's face. There might even have been a hint of fear. It didn't last long, though, as Vexus quickly regained her composure.

"Well, well, Jennifer … going on the offensive, are we?" Vexus leaned back in her richly padded couch and propped her barbed feet up on an overstuffed footstool. She held a gold-plated cup in her serpentine hand, casually swirling the oil in lazy circles. "And right in the middle of Cluster Prime itself? Most ambitious. Care to join me in a drink? It's the finest synthetic blend, of course."

Jenny stowed the sawblade and deployed a laser-limb in its place, pointing it directly at Vexus' smiling, arrogant face. "Tell you what. Instead of that, why don't you just release Allison, send away your Mantis goons, and order us to fly to Slave Factory Forty-Six!"

The queen arched a bemused eyebrow. "Why Jenny, are you taking me as a hostage? How perfectly diabolical of you! I'm so very proud. I didn't think you had it in you."

The laser-limb whined up to full power, and Jenny allowed herself a satisfied smile as she realized that finally, finally, she had Vexus right where she wanted her. It was finally just the two of them, face to face, with no chance for her to escape through one of her stupid portals. She projected a targeting laser from her weapon, and a small dot of blue light danced about between Vexus' eyes. "I'll give you one more chance, robo-witch. If you don't free Allison before I count to five …"

"All right, all right, there's no need for name-calling," said Vexus. "Just let me order my driver to change course." She extended a spidery finger over her armrest, and pressed a red button …

Then Jenny felt a powerful, invisible force tugging at her arms. Suddenly it became difficult to aim her laser-limb; then it became difficult to even hold her arms upright. She lost her balance and fell backwards onto the front couch, her arms held motionless by some kind of magnetic force field. She struggled against the magnetic field with all of her might, but her arms were pinned to the seat as it they were welded there. Her confidence quickly began to evaporate, replaced with a rush of circuit-numbing panic.

Black Mantis robots dropped into the limo through the hole in the roof, with weapons deployed and lethal scowls on their insectoid faces. Vexus took a sip of oil, and gave Jenny a look of mock sympathy. "Hmmm, your little plan doesn't seem to be working very well, does it, dear?"

The black-and-yellow hover-taxi swooped around a delivery shuttle, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car as it sped towards Vexus' motorcade. The six black hovercars had jockeyed into defensive positions around Queen Vexus' hover-limo, and the Mantis guards seemed preoccupied with getting inside. Drew couldn't see Jenny, but it looked like the queen's thugs were rattled at the moment, so he assumed her attack strategy must be working. Besides, it was giving the boys a distraction they could make use of.

Streaking through the skylanes at a hundred miles an hour, the hover-taxi edged alongside the large, boxy prison van. The Mantis guard in the front seat turned his head with a suspicious sneer; then he snapped to attention as he saw a freakish silver-green android leaning out of the taxi. Drew's fist was warbling with tense energy, and he launched it through the van's window, clobbering the Mantis guard right in the jaw. Then Drew flowed the rest of his upper body into the van's front seat, starting a vicious fight with the guard and the driver – even while his lower body was still sitting in the back of the taxi.

But now the cabbie, suddenly free from Drew's control, realized the precarious situation he was in, and he tried to slam on his brakes. Brad and Sheldon grabbed onto his arms, struggling to keep him away from his control sticks. The hover-taxi swerved sickeningly from side-to-side like a water skier, tethered to the prison van by Drew's flexible body. They slammed against the side of the van with a bone-jarring jolt, knocking both of the boys onto the floor of the taxi. But just as the robot cabbie reached for his brake, Brad got a desperate idea. Yelling at Sheldon to hold on tight, they wrapped their arms around Drew's hips – and jumped out of the rear window, into the blast of rushing wind.

The frantic battle continued in the cramped front seat of the prison van, as if a kung fu fight had broken out in a phone booth. The Mantis robots pounded on Drew's body, slamming it against the controls and making the van lurch and roll like a rowboat in a typhoon. The three combatants bounced around chaotically in a blur of arms and legs and silver goop. Finally, one of the Black Mantis robots deployed his electric stun weapon – but Drew had already morphed his hands into a pair of nano-edged blades. Schwick, schwick. Two Mantis heads blinked with a moment's disbelief, and dropped to the floor.

It wasn't that Drew hadn't heard the guys yelling for help; he'd just been a bit preoccupied with the fight. Now he flowed his lower body into the prison van, pulling a pair of relieved teenagers in with it. They shoved the headless robots out the door. Sheldon dug his white knuckles into the dashboard, and Brad exchanged adrenaline-charged high-fives with Drew. They had taken control of the prison van!

Drew gulped nervously. "So, uh … anybody know how to fly one of these things?"

"Hold her steady, you fools!" Vexus snarled at her guards. "I'm not waiting until we get her back to the palace. It's time that XJ-9 got a long-overdue attitude adjustment." A small hole opened in the queen's twisted claw, and the barbed tip of a black assimilation dart poked out …

But even with her arms held motionless, Jenny was a formidable fighter. She battered the Mantis robots mercilessly with kick after super-powered robotic kick. Her leg housing snapped in half to deploy a nasty-looking drill, and she thrust it furiously through a Mantis robot's belly, narrowly missing Vexus herself as it came through the other side. But now her leg-drill was stuck, and the remaining two robots had her other leg wrapped up, and suddenly Jenny was trapped in a prone and vulnerable position. Vexus rose from her seat and took aim at the teenage heroine's chest with her assimilation dart …

And collapsed to the floor in a heap of robotic bodies, as the hover-limo lurched with a bolt-rattling impact. Something big and heavy had just rear-ended the royal limousine.

Vexus snapped her head up as she heard the whine of a heavy engine shoot past her limo. It was the prison van, spiraling through the skies as if it was being driven by a madman! "What in blazes is going on?" she screamed. "Has that driver totally lost his electronic mind?" She climbed to her feet and stuck her head out of the roof, just in time to see the prison van make a looping, barely-under-control left turn at a six-way intersection. Hovercars of every shape and color swerved madly in a hundred different directions to avoid the runaway vehicle.

She pounded on the roof furiously, shouting loud enough for her driver and all of the Black Mantis robots to hear. "Do I really have to say it?!? Send out an emergency call to all Black Mantis units! And follow that van! Follow them! Follow them!"

Unsuspecting diners on the 90th floor terrace scrambled for their lives as the ten-ton prison van hurtled through the petro-café, scattering dishes and tables and chairs to the winds. Then the van lurched away from the building and back into the traffic pattern, blasting through three parked cars like a charging bull. It lunged down to avoid crossway traffic, screamed through another intersection … and took aim at a skywalk bridge, eight hundred feet above street level. The pedestrians nearly short-circuited with terror at the sight of the massive vehicle hurtling straight for them … then it pulled up at the last second, filling the air with the oil-curdling sound of scraping metal, as it glanced off of the skywalk's roof.

"Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this," grinned Brad, ignoring the pale expression on Drew and Sheldon's faces. He eased back into the driver's seat, working the van's controls as if they were joysticks on his GameStation 3000. "Yeaaaap, once you fly one alien spaceship, you've flown them all …"

"Yeah, you're a regular Buck Rogers," groaned Drew, bracing himself against the dashboard. "Just try not to get us killed, willya? Sheldon, you handle the navigation duties – get us to the slave factory as fast as you can. I'm gonna head back and check on Ally."

Drew flowed himself out the window, curling up on top of the van's roof. Then he morphed his hands into sharp claws, and held on for dear life. Brass and pewter skyscrapers whizzed by him at blinding speed. Engines and horns howled angrily as the van barreled through all of the proper traffic patterns. The wail of emergency sirens echoed from behind, as a dozen black hovercars banked towards them in hot pursuit. The queen's hover-limo fishtailed around a corner to follow behind them, and fresh Black Mantis units were pouring out of the side-alleys, converging on the van with the ferocity of a killer bee swarm.

He gathered his nerves and lowered himself over the back of the van; all Drew cared about right now was making sure that Allison was still okay. Maybe the Cluster had already re-absorbed her mind. Maybe she didn't even want to see him again – she did think that he was a human-robot freak now, after all. He grasped onto the van's bumper and swallowed the lump in his throat. Then he twisted the latch-style handle, and rolled the back door up …

And there was Allison, sitting on a bench with her arms bound in a pair of steel manacles, chained to the wall, confused and scared and … trying to shout a warning. She was guarded by a pair of Mantis robots, one of whom was pointing the barrel of a laser cannon directly at Drew's chest …

A blast of light and sound exploded in his face, and the laser slammed into his midsection like a prize fighter's punch, ripping a smoking hole through the middle of his nanobot body. Allison screamed in terror as Drew was catapulted off the back of the van in a splatter of smoke and silver-green droplets. He sailed through the air like a cannon shell … and crashed right through the windshield of a pursuing hovercar, filled with murderous Mantis robots.

There were now six Mantis robots inside the limo, and they turned as one with their electric stun-weapons deployed, ready to subdue the struggling robot girl. Jenny doubled her efforts and pulled on her arms with all her might, straining against the magnetic-force shackles. The metallic frame of the limousine started to groan under the strain that Jenny was putting on it, but still she couldn't move her arms. Geez, if I pull any harder, my arms are going to pop right out of their sockets! Right out of their sockets …

She got an idea, concentrated for a second and … snap-click-pop. Jenny's arms detached at the shoulder, leaving her free to pounce out of her seat like a jungle cat. The limo rocked furiously as Jenny spun with robotic jiu-jitsu kicks that turned Black Mantis robots into heaps of gears and gaskets. She converted her left leg into a set of lawnmower blades, and reduced one Mantis robot into a cloud of tinfoil. Then she twirled and kicked the final robo-goon in the back of the head, sending him and his electro-weapon flying into the front couch. The couch's circuitry sizzled and smoked from the sudden power overload, the magnetic shackles sputtered and died, and Jenny's arms fell onto the seat with a soft plop.

With a silent signal from her pigtails, her arms came to life on their own, and crawled up her body to plug themselves back into her shoulders. Jenny was whole again, surrounded by a smoking heap of wrecked Black Mantis robots … and one evil robot queen.

Vexus snarled with anger, and fired an assimilation dart at her teenage prey … but the limo lurched, threw her off balance, and the dart harmlessly struck one of the windows. She prepared a second dart, but Jenny wasn't going to give her a chance to fire. "It's finally just you and me," she scowled.

She tackled Vexus in a crushing bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides with her powerful grip. The queen's eyes blazed with fury at the indignity of being touched by a commoner, and she surprised Jenny with an uppercut that nearly took her pigtails off. The teenager quickly recovered and delivered a very satisfying left cross that almost spun Vexus' huge head around in a circle. As the hover-limo hurtled through the city at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, two of the most powerful robots in the universe did furious battle inside, locked in a struggle that might possibly decide the fate of the planet Earth.

The black hovercar slalomed wildly through oncoming traffic, banked away from a cargo truck at the last second, and smashed through an aluminum traffic sign. Four Mantis robots attacked the slithering silver-green worm of nanobots with their razor-sharp claws, but grabbing onto Drew's body proved to be like grabbing onto a puddle of gelatin. Drew bent his body into surreal pretzel-shapes, desperate to avoid the electro-stun weapons, ignoring their peril as they side-swiped cars and rocketed through traffic lights. He felt himself slam against the roof from another mystery impact, distracting him long enough for one of the robots to blast him with a jolt of high voltage …

But he pinched off that section of his body like a lizard shedding its tail, letting it dissolve into ash while he morphed his hands together into a giant spearhead. Drew launched himself through the bodies of the four evil robots like a twisting javelin, filling the car with an eruption of oil and shrapnel …

Just as a volley of laser fire blasted them from behind. A quartet of Black Mantis air units was in attack formation behind him, opening up with high-powered laser cannons. Drew tried to get at the hovercar's control-sticks, but the lifeless husk of the driver was slumped against the dashboard, jamming the sticks in their full-speed-ahead position.

Another blast of laser fire ripped into the car, riddling it and the dead Mantis robots with hundreds of holes. Drew's mind raced for a desperate idea … then he came up with a doozy, and flowed his body through a hole in the windshield, oozing himself onto the hood of the hovercar. His nanobots pulsed with waves of silver-green, thinning and flattening his body into the shape of a tail fin …

The prison van with Allison and the guys was directly in front of him, hurtling through the skylanes like a runaway train, under laser attack by the Black Mantis. The queen's limo was directly behind him, crawling with Mantis robots and lasers of its own. More Black Mantis hovercars were approaching from behind – maybe as many as fifty of them, including the four that were attacking his car, and the two new ones that had pulled up on either side of him. The new Mantis units opened hatches in their roofs, and each deployed a huge particle beam, which pivoted towards him and hummed to life with a ruby glow …

But Drew had finished shape-shifting into a giant, silver-green rudder. As the Black Mantis units stared on in disbelief, he gave his body a hard twist – sending his car into a hard right turn. It rammed viciously into the front fender of the hovercar next to him, then with engines screaming, both vehicles flipped over on their side, and started to tumble through the air like giant dominoes. More Black Mantis cars slammed into them from behind, and those bounced off into yet more hovercars, and within seconds a high-speed pursuit had turned into a fifty-car mid-air traffic accident.

Jenny was surprised by Vexus' sheer strength, but the queen was used to having her lackies do the fighting, and Jenny quickly gained the advantage. She slammed Vexus' wasp-shaped body into the door, stunning her long enough to deploy her trusty power fist. Jenny wound up and delivered a crushing blow – but Vexus was extremely agile, and she deftly slipped out of the way just as the teenager mashed her fist through the limo's floor. Vexus wiped a trickle of oil from her cheek, and gave Jenny an arrogant smirk as the robot girl struggled to free herself. "You're fortunate that I like you so much, Jennifer. Otherwise, I'd dismantle you screw by screw for daring to strike me." She deployed another dart from her palm …

Then both of them were slammed hard against the windows, as the limo went into a sickening spin. Jenny heard a horrific crash, then another, then suddenly the air was filled with a deafening series of crashes that strung into one continuous roar, like a wave metallic thunder. The limo rocked from side to side as the driver struggled to bring the massive vehicle back under control. Jenny extended her neck sections to poke her head out of the roof, to see what was happening …

They were flying through a stunning, horrific ballet of crashing hovercars, a blizzard of steel hailstones slamming and bouncing off of each other like ping-pong balls in a lottery machine. Hovercars veered into each other and tumbled from the skies like so much dead weight. Others steered madly to avoid the growing accident, some smashing through skyscraper windows in the process. One black hovercar spun end-over-end like a tomahawk, crashing through the windows of a thousand-foot-high skywalk. Jenny instinctively ducked as she saw another disabled car spin towards the limousine, only to be T-boned by a delivery truck in crossing traffic, which narrowly missed the limo itself. Never had she seen more vehicles flying in so many directions at once. The urban canyons reverberated with the screech of metal and the whine of engines … and a loud, oddly familiar voice screaming out from above.

A shiny mass of silver-green goo fell out of the sky and splattered onto the hover-limo's windshield with a moist thud. Jenny shielded her face against the flying debris and deployed a pair of magnets from her feet, then walked out onto the limousine's roof, struggling to keep her balance as the limo driver flew blind. "Drew! Drew, you maniac! What the heck are you doing here?"

The nano-goo gurgled and stretched into humanoid form, clinging desperately to the dented hood of the limousine. "You told us to go to the factory!" He gestured to the prison van, still bombing through traffic a hundred yards ahead of them. "We didn't like the taxi, so we decided to trade up!"

"You mean Brad and Sheldon are in that hover-van? Cripes!" Jenny quickly rotated her pigtails to flight mode. "There's still some Black Mantis cars attacking them!"

She wrapped her arms around Drew's armpits and ignited her pigtail-jets, and the two Earth robots leapt from Vexus' battered hover-limo, streaking towards their imperiled friends. Three Black Mantis hovercars buzzed mercilessly around the wildly swerving prison van, which was razed with scorch marks and laser burns. The rear door was still open, and they could see Allison being tossed back and forth in her chains, helplessly locked in her steel manacles. Even with chaos erupting all around them, the two Mantis guards were still watching over her. The queen's orders were the queen's orders, after all.

"If you can handle the guards, I can handle the hovercars," shouted Jenny. Drew nodded in agreement, and she flew them directly towards the back of the van. The Mantis guards took notice of her, and deployed a pair of plasma guns from their forearms …

But Jenny dodged their shots, and lobbed her silver-green payload at the van, banking away to deal with the remaining hovercars. With a quick twist of her elbows, her arms expanded into a pair of Gatling guns, and she unleashed a withering barrage of fire on the first unsuspecting Mantis unit. The noise from the brilliant explosion hadn't even subsided before she turned her attention to the second Mantis hovercar, and filled it with hundreds of screaming projectiles.

Drew sailed into the back of the van, his limbs wrapped around his body to turn himself into a cannonball. Allison gasped as a plasma blast came within inches of frying him, then ducked as he plowed into the chest of the first Mantis robot, knocking it senseless. He uncoiled his arms and legs and landed in a ready position, as the second Mantis robot brought his plasma gun to bear on the silver-green attacker. He fired a point-blank-range shot … right through the huge donut hole that Drew had formed in the middle of his body. Then Drew stretched out his arms, grabbed onto the door-frame, and morphed his body into a silver-green battering ram. He flung himself into the Mantis' torso with crushing force, and the evil robot flew out of the back of the hover-van, screaming as it plunged towards the pavement a thousand feet below. Seconds later, Drew tossed the other Black Mantis overboard as well.

The Black Mantis robots had been defeated, the heat of battle had faded away, and Allison was safe … but now Drew grew more nervous than ever.

He and Allison were the only ones left in the back of the van. They stared at each other with uneasy eyes … then Drew snapped out of it, and rushed over to help her. "Ally, are you all right?" he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Did they mess with your memory or anything? Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No, no, I'm fine … but what about you?!? Drew, I saw you get shot right in the chest! Are you hurt?!? We need to get you to a mechanic!"

"I'm a fast healer. Let's get you out of these things." Allison's forearms were enveloped in a casing of thick steel, with chains running around her waist to secure her to the wall. Drew held the casing and the chains in his hands, and let his silver-green fingers flow around the cruel restraints. His hungry nanobots gurgled and bubbled, gently dissolving the steel bonds into a tasty soup of atoms. But the awkward silence returned while the nanobots fed, and the two robots found themselves staring face to face, unable to decipher the thoughts that raced behind each other's eyes.

"Th-that's … that's a pretty neat trick," she mumbled, watching her chains turn to silvery sludge.

"Thanks," he gulped. "Uh … saves me a lot of time when I separate my recyclables."

The manacles dissolved away into a silver-green paste, and the chains clattered to the floor … and suddenly the only thing that he was holding onto was Allison's slender, beautiful robotic hands. But Drew just let them lay in his palms like a pair of lead pipes; he expected her to snatch them away at any moment. After all, the last time he'd seen her, she'd run away in terror, and he didn't want to upset her even more. Maybe she was already terrified to be so close to a hideous human-robot hybrid freak again. "S-s-sorry," he croaked, pulling his hands away. "I didn't mean to …"

"Why … why did you came after me?" she asked weakly, dropping her face in shame. "You and Jenny risked your lives, after I said all those … those horrible, horrible things to you last night … why?"

He lifted a hand to her chin, and raised her eyes to meet his once more. "Hey, hey … of course we came after you," he smiled. "Ally, if anything ever happened to you … I could never forgive myself for getting you into this mess. Ally, I'm so sorry …"

"It's not your fault!" she blurted out, bolting out of her seat. "Drew, you didn't do anything wrong! I'm the moron who decided not to back herself up last night!"

Drew's knees nearly liquefied as he felt the wonderful, mysterious buzz-tingle in his circuits once more, and realized that she had clasped her hands around his arm. "Why didn't you do the backup?" he asked.

She squeezed his hand a little tighter, and looked at him with those fantastically warm, dark, quivering eyes. "Because I didn't want to forget you ..."

Then they flinched from the sound of one final, deafening explosion, falling into each other as the shock wave knocked the hover-van all over the sky. They could see the smoking remnants of the third Mantis hovercar fluttering towards the streets below like metal confetti, and the receding skyscrapers of downtown fading behind them … then they broke into a pair of relieved grins as Jenny swooped into the back of the prison van on her pigtail-jets, fresh out of things to blow up.

"Are you guys okay?" she yelled … then broke into a cherubic grin upon seeing her friends wrapped up in each other's arms. "Well, apparently so," she giggled.

Allison rushed to Jenny with remorse on her face. "Jenny! Oh, Jenny, you were right! Everything you said last night was right! Queen Vexus really is evil – my mom and dad are being mind-controlled, just like you said! I feel like such a complete idiot … you must think I have vacuum tubes for a brain!"

"Allison, you had no way of knowing," said Jenny, trying to console her. "Look, don't worry about that now. I took care of Vexus' thugs, but there's more coming half a mile behind us … a whole bunch more. We need to get to the slave factory to free our friends! Drew, any idea how close we are?"

"Just a sec and I'll ask," he said, morphing his arm into a short, silver-green blade. With a few quick slices, he cut a square section out of the van's front wall. The chunk of metal fell away, making a window into the front driver's cab, where Brad and Sheldon were still trying to navigate the skylanes amidst all of the excitement. Drew stretched his neck through the window, nearly scaring the guys half to death. "Hey, what's the word up here guys? How far till the factory?"

"Geez, what was going on back there?" Brad shouted, visibly annoyed. "Are you guys all right? It sounded like you were wrestling a rhinoceros or something!"

"Almost there," said Sheldon, scribbling figures on a piece of scrap paper. "We just flew into the industrial sector, and by my calculations, the slave factory should be right in front of us!"

"This is your captain speaking," grinned Brad, "please fasten your seat belts, and return your trays to their upright and locked positions!" He twisted the control sticks, nosed the hover-van into a shallow dive, and suddenly the towers and smokestacks grew larger and larger as they streaked towards a checkerboard of factories and storehouses. Sheldon pointed out the correct building, and Brad altered his trajectory to head for the front door of Slave Factory Forty-Six. A blizzard of flashing lights danced in his side mirror from the wave of Cluster hovercars that still chased after them. But the factory was only a few blocks ahead, and nothing was going to stop them now …

"Uh, guys, I just realized something," said Brad. "I have no idea how to land this thing."

Continued in Chapter Fifteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn