A/N – Ah yes, 'Mindshatter' has finally been revealed. But it looks like it didn't have much of an effect, did it? Only one way to find out for sure …


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seventeen – All You Need Is Love


Vexus shivered for a split second, as if a chill had run down her cybernetic spine. The Mindshatter Virus had actually broken through ClusterNet's firewalls – and had spread throughout the Drone Hive Mind, copying some kind of file as it went! But network security was still on-line … Drone Brain integrity still read as normal … apparently, there were no lingering ill effects …

The queen smiled arrogantly, and her forearms burst into flaming sheaths of scalding energy. Without warning, she unleashed a pair of disruptor blasts into Allison's chest, slamming into her at point blank range. The attack knocked her parallel processors out of sync, and sent Drew flying through virtual space, with painful feedback loops churning inside of his nano-circuits. His connection to the Quantum Core was lost, and in the blink of a microsecond, the roaring river of computing power that flowed into Allison faded away to a mere trickle. She tumbled backwards and started to shrink back to normal, and watched the ominous form of Vexus loom ever larger before her. She collapsed into a exhausted heap, next to Drew. One more blast like that would be the end of her little act of rebellion …

"So much for your friend's little virus," sneered Vexus, as her giant body lowered down onto one knee. Her demonic eyes glowed with smug satisfaction. A flame sprung to life from her spidery index finger, burning thick and black like a fountain of hot tar. It was a Delete command.

Drew and Allison stared up at her like deer caught in the headlights, slid their hands together … and waited for the horrible end to come.


Jenny's dented pigtails sunk in dejection, as a swarm of hunter-killer drones rocketed towards her at with fanatical zeal. More attack drones poured out of the hangar bays of Vexus' flagship, speeding towards her like jackals chasing down a wounded antelope. Hundreds of high-speed fighters were vectoring in on her position. Even the massive Cluster warships were altering their flight paths to close in on her! She'd gambled on a direct assault to break into the flagship, but she was still a thousand yards away from the gargantuan vessel, and those combat drones weren't going to let her get any closer. Now she was stuck right in the middle of the Cluster Fleet, and she'd have to fight her way back out. She might have been able to pull it off under ideal conditions.

But she was heavily damaged. She was outgunned and outnumbered. And she was wearing an unstable Zero Point Energy reactor that was going to explode in less than a minute.

Jenny glanced at the beautiful blue Earth and its blanket of wispy white clouds, and whispered a silent apology to her friends, to her mother, and to everyone who had been counting on her. Then she turned back towards the first wave of oncoming hunter-killers. With a metallic snap and a rusty creak, she deployed her faithful laser-limbs, and prepared herself for one last battle. The lead elements of the Cluster assault were only a hundred yards away now. Sixty yards. Forty yards.

Strange, that they weren't shooting at her yet. "Looks like they want to mix it up," she snarled, cracking her metallic knuckles. Twenty yards. Ten yards …

The lead hunter-killer drone slowed down, and drifted up to Jenny's face, and … what the

The pupils in its electronic eyes had been replaced with … little hearts.

The bug-faced drone clasped its claws together, and smiled at Jenny with huge, droopy cow eyes. Then it sighed deeply, and began to recite a poem. "Oh, I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you …"

Amazingly, the rest of the attack drones joined in, like a robotic chorus! "With your bolts so shiny, your stainless steel hands … and your eyes so black, like frying pans!"

Jenny didn't know whether to freak out or laugh herself silly. Every single one of the vicious, insectoid combat drones was swooning over her like a lovesick schoolboy! They fluttered their optic sensors and twisted their mouth-grills into pathetic smiles. They recited bad poetry that proclaimed their undying devotion to her. Some of them reached into their chest-hatches, and pulled out shiny steel gears to offer as tokens of affection. Arguments broke out over the radio frequencies between the drones in the Wasp fighters and the drones on the warships, over just which drone loved Jenny the most! The very robots that had been trying to destroy her a few seconds ago were now mooning over her as if she were a Greek goddess. Jenny shook her head in bewilderment as she tried to make sense of their insane behavior. I think I got my distraction after all, she chuckled to herself. Wow, how weird is this!

Bold red letters flashed in her vision. Warning … warning … extra-dimensional field failure imminent. Z-Pack Containment Loss in forty-five seconds. Jenny's mind kicked into high gear, trying to think up a way to take advantage of this bizarre new development …

She batted her eyelids coquettishly at the surrounding drones, and flipped her pigtails back and forth. "Oh, my, how's a robot girl supposed to pick one of you big, handsome drones to get snuggly with, when she's freezing to death in the vacuum of space? Brrrr, sure wish I had someplace to warm up … say, like … in the engine room of that big flagship over there …"

The drones' eyes spun around in giddy swirls, and their antennas wagged back and forth like puppy dog tails. Four of Jenny's new admirers looped their arms around hers, and slammed their rocket motors into overdrive. A massive entourage of drone suitors escorted her to the flagship's outermost airlock, which had already been opened by another pair of doe-eyed Cluster robots. Still more drones flew ahead of her to fling open the bulkheads and swing open the hatches, ushering her deeper and deeper inside the recesses of the giant ship. She didn't lift so much as a robotic pinkie finger. Laser guns remained silent. Force fields were deactivated. They carried her past a final thick, yellow-striped door …

And she floated inside the flagship's stunning engine room. Dozens of fusion reactors the size of office buildings fed spectacular amounts of energy into the giant vessel's systems. In a few moments, thought Jenny, those reactors are gonna seem like triple-A batteries. With a huge grin of relief, she stretched her arms behind her back, and finally ripped the miserable Z-Pack off of her body, enjoying the pop of every rivet and the snap of every wire. The reactor was sputtering and foaming like a trash can full of rabid wolverines. It was seconds from a doomsday explosion that would mimic the blast of an atomic warhead. Not a bad tool for a little sabotage … but Jenny had thought of an even better use for it.

As the engineering drones looked on in an amorous trance, Jenny sped over to the colossal power conduits that ran from the giant fusion reactors. C'mon, Jen, faster faster faster … yes! She found the one that led to the ship's hyperdrive engines. With the flick of her wrist, a Swiss Army knife of tools deployed from her fingers, and she attached the dying Z-Pack to the giant power conduit. Faster faster faster faster … She pivoted her pigtails back into power-drill configuration, ignited the afterburners in her toes, and blasted out of the engine room with all the speed she could muster.

In a blur of aqua and a cloud of shrapnel, she tunneled through dozens of doors and bulkheads, until she bulldozed through the outer hull and sailed back out into space. She picked a random direction and accelerated as hard as she could, dumping every last drop of energy from her power reserves into her rockets. Faster faster faster faster … she threaded her way between the giant Cluster warships – which now drifted aimlessly, as their drone crews were reduced to love-smitten idiots – desperate to put as much distance as possible between herself and the alien fleet …

Torn loose from Jenny's circuits, with nothing left to keep its exotic energies under control, the Z-Pack began to pump out unimaginable levels of raw power. A runaway spiral of sub-quantum energy roared into the power conduits of the Cluster flagship. The power flowing into the hyperdrive engines increased by a factor of ten, then a hundred, then ten thousand, then a billion. Alarms rang out all throughout the engine room. One second before the Z-Pack exploded, it sent a burst of energy into the engines that rivaled the output of a small sun. And all that energy had to go somewhere …

Jenny lowered a darkened visor over her eyes, as a blinding light erupted from the middle of Queen Vexus' flagship. The ship's hull seemed to bulge outward, as if it were made of soft rubber. Then the hyperdrive engines broke the laws of physics, ripped the very fabric of space and time apart, and spat out a shimmering bubble of distortion that screamed through space like the shock wave of a supernova. Jenny's eyes grew wide in awe and fear as the bubble of shattered space ballooned outwards at a fraction of the speed of light, swallowing hundreds, and thousands, of Cluster starships in its wake. The shimmering bubble raced towards her, growing larger and larger, until it neared the size of the planet Earth itself …

Then the shock wave slowed down, and started to collapse back in on itself, shrinking just as fast as it had grown. Jenny flailed her arms wildly and re-ignited her rockets, fighting chaotic waves of gravity that pulled on her with the force of a black hole. Wasp interceptors hurtled past her like paper cups in a tornado. Massive warships tumbled towards the center of the bubble like empty soda cans …

A deafening crack roared through the stars. There was another explosion of light …

Then everything was gone.


Queen Vexus stumbled awkwardly and clutched at the side of her face, gritting her teeth as if a spike had been rammed through the back of her head. The black fire around her fingers went out, and the orange orb between her antennae began to sputter … and grow dim. Crackling patterns of snow and static hissed across her cybernetic body, which had taken on a sudden ghostly quality. Her eyes flew wide in shock and disbelief. "No … it can't be … that's not possible … that's not possible!"

Drew and Allison helped each other back to their feet, and traded perplexed glances as they watched Vexus stagger backwards, ranting and snarling with disbelief. She looked like she was about to faint. The data connection to her physical body had been cut off, and her carrier signal was growing weaker with every passing microsecond. The outline of her virtual image started to blur, as it flaked away in a dusty cloud of disintegrating polygons. "You will pay for this," she shouted, wildly thrashing her claws in a vain attempt to keep her hold on Allison's mind. "You will pay for this disrespect with your miserable, worthless lives! None can stand against me … I am the Cluster! …"

Allison stepped forward to look into her tormentor's face one final time, as her virtual aura glowed with a magnificent, iridescent lavender. "No, you're not," she said, in a resolute voice. "You're a devil who's stolen our minds, and rules over our lives with brute force and pathetic lies. And when the rest of the robots in the Cluster learn this … then you'll be the one who pays, Vexus."

Then a bright purple light shone from the tip of Allison's antenna, and her new adaptive algorithms opened up a swirling maelstrom in cyberspace, beneath the queen's feet. With a final shout and a stream of binary curses, the image of Vexus deteriorated into a whirlwind of red and green pixels, and spiraled into digital oblivion with the screech of a carrier tone fading into the distance.

And the two young robots just stared at the empty spot on the landscape, taking a moment to regain their strength – not sure if they could really believe what had just happened, right in front of them.

Finally, Drew decided that it really had. "Ally … you just kicked Vexus' virtual butt!"

"Well, I don't know if I'd say, uh … um …" – then an awkward smile spread across her face. "Heh-heh, yeah, I did kind of kick her butt, didn't I?" She rubbed her arm and chuckled nervously, still overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she'd just done. "Of course, I … uh … did have a little help!"

"You're telling me!" shouted Drew, as he broke into a victorious bout of shadow-boxing. "Jenny must have opened up one serious can of booty-whuppin' on her end of things, too! Wham, bam, body slam! She beat the whole stinkin' Cluster fleet! Ho boy, this is incredible! Jenny lays the smack down in outer space, and you lay the smack down in cyberspace! Hey, that's alright, I got no problem with the whole girl power thing. Especially when it saves my butt …"

"No, no … that's not what I meant!" she laughed. She held up her forearms to show off the dazzling patterns of lavender that ran across her virtual body. "The new adaptive software …"

"Your new software rocks!" he yelled, swinging her around in an enthusiastic celebration dance. "Swish, instant firewall that protects you from Cluster assimilation code! Swish, lighting bolts flyin' around and blasting Vexus right in the keister!"

"No, see … I figured out what must have happened. The energy-sphere …"

"Guess you didn't need my dumb ol' anti-virus software after all," he laughed …

"Drew!" she shouted, fighting to squeeze the words in, "this is your software!"

His victory dance came to a lurching halt, and his silver face twisted into an confused-puppy expression. Then Allison gently took his hand, and rested it against her striped forearm. "This software evolves and adapts on its own, just like yours. Somehow it adapted to fight off Vexus' assimilation code. That's what kept her from overwriting my mind and brainwashing me."

"But … but how did it get here?" he asked, dumbfounded. "It was here before I ever connected …"

A soft, lavender blush came to Allison's cheeks. "How do you think it did?"

Drew's eyes widened as the obvious answer came to him, and a virtual chill ran down his back. "The mind-kiss," he gulped, with a mix of embarrassment and amazement. "Memories and data … flowing from one robot mind to another …" He recalled his new memories of Allison's childhood accident; it stood to reason that his mind had shared something with hers, too.

She wrapped her hands around his, drawing him closer to her chest, and gazed deeply into his sweet, caring eyes. "When we kissed back in the slave factory, you made me a promise. You promised that Vexus would never lay a finger on me." A stab of pain and guilt flashed on his face, and he turned away in shame … but she placed a hand on his cheek, and forced him to look at her once more. "Drew, when her drones captured me and hooked me into this chair, I thought I was going to die. At the very least, I thought my mind was going to be re-written. Vexus attacked my mind dozens of times, and every time she failed. Because …" – her lavender stripes began to quiver excitedly – " … because a piece of you was here to protect me. You were with me all this time, keeping watch over me like a guardian angel … making sure that Vexus never laid a finger on me. Just like you promised."

They stared at each other as if in a trance, while bright pulses of light raced across the universe, completing the cleanup of the Cluster assimilation software. The last of the blood-red patterns was washed away in a gentle wave of lavender, like a field of wildflowers coming into bloom after a cold, cruel winter. Then she slid her arms around his neck, and pulled herself up to press her forehead firmly against his, and whispered a thousand thank-yous into his mind. His thoughts tried to apologize to her for what she'd gone through; but she wouldn't let him, because she told him there was nothing to apologize for. With a flood of relief and joy, he wrapped her up tightly in his arms – and stunned her with a deep, passionate, very human kiss on the mouth, without breaking their intimate robotic mind-link. Allison's eyes flew wide in shock and surprise; then she melted into his embrace, and the young lovers simply enjoyed a few precious milliseconds of time together.

Then he pulled back with a smile. "What do you say we get you out of this stupid chair?"


The Silver Shell catapulted himself over the busted console, performed a double mid-air somersault that would have scored a 9.7, minimum, and landed in a textbook Kung Fu pose. "Woooo-aaaahh! Why don't you just save yourself some grief, Cluster scoundrel, and give up now … lest you taste the fury of my … uh … fury of my … hang on a second …" – a strange flipping sound came from inside the Shell's chest, like the pages of a comic book – "… of my Fantastic Flying Monkey Kick of Justice! Wooooo-aaaahh …" The robot hero swept his arms out and balanced ridiculously on one metal foot …

To the irritation of the Cluster Warrior robot, who yanked a broken attachment from his back, and tossed it across the floor in frustration. "What is the matter with you stupid drones?" he bellowed. "Attack him! Attack him! Or so help me, I'll have you melted down for paper clips!"

But instead of obeying the Warrior's commands, the platoon of drones just stumbled aimlessly around the Communications Node, lost in a collective lovestruck daze. One of them composed a binary love song on the master communications panel. Another had disassembled one of the supercomputers, and rebuilt its circuit boards into a lifelike statue of Jenny. And all of them giddily chanted in unison … "Oh, I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you …"

The Warrior slapped his forehead, and decided to finish the Shell off by himself. His forearms cracked open to deploy a pair of rotary saws, and he lunged through the air with an evil snarl. The sight of two screaming buzzsaws sent the Shell diving behind the nearest chair with a high-pitched squeal. The insectoid warrior swung wildly and missed, crashing heavily into the back of a massive couch with a loud clatter. But he sprung back to his feet in a flash, deployed a pair of photon cannons …

And a huge silver-green hammer smacked him in the back of the head, knocking it clean off his shoulders like a golf ball sailing off a tee. The warrior's saws whined to a standstill, and the decapitated body crumpled to the floor. Drew finished detaching himself the ClusterNet computer equipment, and quickly gurgled back to his default appearance. Then he yanked on a large red-and-yellow knife-switch …

And a series of clamps and locks disengaged with loud bursts of pneumatic pressure. Cables detached and wires snapped loose, and for the first time in five days, Allison's servos hummed to life, fully under her own control. She slowly stretched her arms to work out the kinks in her gears, and with Drew's help, she gingerly climbed out of her couch, still feeling a bit groggy – but otherwise, perfectly normal. "It sure feels good to be back on my actual feet," she smiled, clutching a hand to her hip joint. "Ouch … wow, sit in the same position for a whole week, and a girl's gaskets dry right out."

It was only then that Drew and Allison noticed that the room was now filled with heartsick roach-drones. "What the heck happened out here?" he asked.

The Silver Shell stomped over a few drone-husks, and jabbed an angry finger into Drew's chest. "I'll tell you what happened," he snipped, with a look of betrayal in his eyes. "You messed up and stuck my love poem for Jenny inside the Mindshatter virus! Now it's been copied into every drone-brain in the whole gosh darn Cluster! You know … I think you did it on purpose!"

But before an argument could get started, Allison diplomatically leapt between her rescuers, and surprised the Silver Shell with a quick, platonic peck on the cheek. "Your virus was very clever and … uhhunusual, Silver Shell," she smiled. "Thank you for helping to save me."

"Well, we're still not out of the woods," sighed Drew, as he looked around at the shambles that littered the Communications Node. Even with all the obstacles they'd overcome, they were still trapped deep inside the royal palace. "We've got to find a way out of this control room, and I think the only way is via that elevator shaft. Unless you know another way, Ally."

She frowned and shook her head. "I'm afraid there is no other way out, guys. Well, unless …"

Allison got an idea, and dropped down next to the motionless body of the Cluster warrior. She frantically patted down his large insectoid form, as if she were frisking him for contraband. "Robots of Warrior rank or higher are assigned a special kind of hyperwave communicator, for speaking directly to the queen from anywhere in the galaxy. But it's not just for speaking, it's … here it is!" A panel on the warrior's side slid open, revealing a rust-colored device about the size and weight of a large brick.

She activated its tiny screen, and a pair of antennas deployed with a crackling hum. "It's a transporter too," she continued. "It's only good for one use, but it can open up a small wormhole. Comes in handy when Queen Vexus wants to call somebody back to Cluster Prime for a royal butt-chewing."

Drew's eyes lit up, and it was all he could do to keep from breaking out into another dance. "And if this thing can transport someone across the galaxy," he grinned, grabbing the device from Allison's hands, "then we can use it to get ourselves back home! Hot diggety! What are we waiting for? Let's get this puppy fired up and get out of here!" He morphed a his index finger into a data connector, and plugged it into the bottom of the device to set the destination co-ordinates.

She glanced uneasily at the transporter's tiny screen. "Back home? You mean … back to Earth? But … well, yes, it could … umm, it looks like it's got a full charge. You just, um … point it away from you and press the button, and … um … Drew, I'm not really sure that …"

He hastily found a clear section of floor to stand in, and pointed the rust-colored brick towards the middle of the room. There was a blast of crimson light, and a chirping sound like an approaching horde of locusts. A beam of energy leapt from the device's antennas, and carved a hole out of the middle of the air that grew into a flickering portal, filled with vertigo-inducing swirls of color. Wild patterns of light danced over every surface in the Communications Node, and a tempest of winds spiraled towards the mouth of the wormhole, as if to encourage the three robot teens to hurry inside.

And as if to add to the urgency, the activation of the wormhole triggered a fresh set of screeching alarms and flashing red lights. Drew shielded his eyes, and waved his friends over to the wormhole. "Ladies and gentleman, Flight 36 with service to Earth is now boarding! Robots with medical needs or small children are advised to …" – then his joke trailed off, when he saw the expression on Allison's face.

"I … I can't go," she said, apologizing with her eyes.

He couldn't have heard her right. "What?" he gasped, as if he'd just been kicked in the stomach.

"I'm not going. I … I can't. Not now. Not like this. I have to stay here and …"

"Are you nuts?" he yelled, at the top of his voice. He grabbed her by the shoulders, overwhelmed with a dizzying surge of shock and grief. "Stay here! You can't stay here! We came to rescue you from here! It's crazy to stay here! This place is …"

"This place is my home," she pleaded. Alcohol tears streamed down her cheeks; she knew how much her decision was hurting him, for it was hurting her, too. "Drew, for the first time, there's a chance to make things better for all the robots on Cluster Prime! Vexus is missing, the drones are insane, and the Cluster is in total disarray! Who knows how long that will last? I can't just run away now that there's a genuine chance of helping out my robot brothers and sisters, my friends, my family. I … I have to try and do something, somehow. I want them to be as free as I am."

"But Ally, how can you …" – then his mouth hung open, knowing his protest would be in vain. He could see the earnestness in her eyes. He'd seen first-hand how much she hated Vexus. And as much as he wanted to throw her over his shoulder and jump through the portal, he knew he couldn't do that to her. For Allison valued nothing more than her newfound free will. And staying here was her decision …

The Silver Shell grabbed Drew by the arm, and gave it a good shake. "Hey, you guys want to hurry this up? It won't be long before a new batch of goons shows up to answer that alarm!"

Drew glared at the flickering wormhole, then the Shell, then back to Allison. She felt horrible for what she was doing to him, and horrible at being forced into such a cruel decision. "I … I'm so sorry," she wept, unable to look him in the face. "I wish I didn't have to say good-bye like this …"

He set his jaw, and made a decision. "You won't have to."

Drew lobbed the transporter device into the air, towards a very startled Silver Shell. The great robot hero panicked, and lunged to grab the device before it struck the floor – and didn't see a pair of silver-green arms stretch out to shove him, hard in the chest. He stumbled backwards into the shimmering mouth of the wormhole, and the Cluster Communications Node began to warp, and distort, and fade out of existence. The last thing the Shell saw before the rip in space closed up before him was two robot teenagers, wrapping their arms tightly around each other. Then he was engulfed by a psychedelic explosion of wild colors, and he was launched through a twisting cosmic tunnel at ridiculous speed, hurtling across the galaxy on a ride that would have put any water slide on Earth to shame.

And Sheldon would have thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen in his life, if he hadn't had his eyes clenched in rage, shouting … "Wait a minute – Drew, you rat! I never got my nanobots!"


Shouts of celebration roared up from the park, and soldiers tossed their helmets into the air with glee. Skyhawks and Space Fighters made flyovers of the Cluster starship, and snapped into dramatic barrel rolls to the delight of the crowds below. Cars and jeeps honked their horns in delirious joy, through the Starship Camp and the highways of Tremorton. For the word was beginning to trickle out, from radio announcers and television anchormen, and from hundreds of eyewitnesses who had watched the skies – a miracle had just happened, thousands of miles over their heads. The Earth had been minutes away from certain defeat at the hands of the Cluster War Fleet. And then a gigantic burst of energy had come out of nowhere, ballooning out to fill a quarter of the sky … and a moment later, the doomsday fleet was gone. Nothing left but clouds of scrap metal drifting through space. No sign of any hostile craft whatsoever. But no sign of a certain teenage robot, either.

Then all of the sudden, sputtering down to Earth under backup power, with helicopter blades deployed from her head, came the robot girl who had just saved the planet Earth, once again. Jenny's rocket fuel was exhausted, and she was down to ten percent charge on her batteries; but the battle was over, and she was already looking forward to a long night's sleep and a fresh power pack. She waved to the cheering soldiers and citizens as she fluttered overhead in a descending spiral, and felt a swell of pride in her circuits at the sound of so many safe, happy people. Then she revved her motors one final time, and flared to a gentle landing next to the camp's headquarters tent.

Military men and journalists rushed towards her, whooping and cheering ecstatically; even General Brohammer was clapping his hands to enthusiastically applaud her. Then a diminutive white-haired form pushed towards her, elbowing her way past men triple her size. "XJ-9 … XJ-9, are you all right?" Mrs. Wakeman ran up to her robotic daughter, her face fraught with worry. "We lost your signal after we saw that massive explosion, and after all the concern about the Z-Pack's instability, I naturally assumed that … oh, gracious heavens, dear, are you hurt? Are you …"

Then the doctor abruptly became self-aware of her emotional outburst, and regained her scientist's demeanor with an awkward cough and a shrug of her shoulders. She straightened out her bookish glasses, and clasped her hands behind her back. "Yes, umm, well … naturally, after such an intense period of combat, I am … concerned about your structural integrity, and systems efficiency. I believe it would be prudent to conduct a thorough diagnostic check-up later this evening."

"Oh, that sounds like a very good idea," said Jenny, fighting the urge to giggle. "And I'm looking forward to a nice, long, hot oil bath after we get home. Sooooo … you weren't worried or anything during the battle, were you, Mom?"

"Worried? Me? Balderdash," said the doctor, in a pathetically transparent lie. "After all, I designed you, built you, and I have an intuitive understanding of your combat capabilities. I knew you would defeat the Cluster all along."

"Sure you did," smirked Jenny, folding her laser-scarred arms across her dented chest. She gave her mother a knowing smile. "Never doubted me for a minute, huh?"

Mrs. Wakeman tried to maintain her stoic posture … the she broke out into a huge smile, despite herself. "Well, maybe just a minute," she said, as she wrapped her hand around her daughter's carbon-coated fingers. "XJ-9, I have never been more proud to be your creato … to be your mother."

Jenny beamed with daughterly happiness … just as Brad and Tuck came running up her, waving their arms with manic excitement. "Jenny, you did it! You saved the whole planet! Wooo hooo! I have to admit, I thought we were goners there for a second …" – without stopping, Brad flung his arms out so hard that he nearly dislocated his shoulders – "… and then you went and smoked the whole Cluster fleet, KABOOM! Ka-PSHHHH! Blammidy Blam! Man, when I said we wanted to see a really big explosion, I never expected something like that!"

"It was wicked awesome, Jenny!" shouted Tuck, as he punched the air with his little fists. "How the heck did you do it? Was it some kind of freaky new superweapon your mom built?"

"Nope. Just like Mogg said all along, I needed his Z-Pack to beat the Cluster." She giggled at her little joke. "That stupid hunk of junk has been driving me nuts for the last two days. Then it started going all 'Chernobyl' on me, and I thought my robotic goose was cooked! That's when I got the idea … if that Z-Pack could mess up my power systems, then it could really mess up Vexus' power systems! So I got into her flagship and hooked the Z-Pack into its hyperdrive engines ..."

"Creating an overload that fractured the space-time continuum!" finished Mrs. Wakeman. "XJ-9, I am most impressed! I had no idea you'd been studying up on your multi-dimensional cosmology."

"Um … multi-wha?" shrugged Jenny. "I just figured it would really mess with her ship."

"Hmmm, yes." Mrs. Wakeman shook her head, and gave her another smile. "It would appear that Mogg's infamous 'master formula' didn't account for your creativity in the heat of battle."

"I guess there's some things you just can't figure out on a calculator, Mrs.W," grinned Brad, as he slapped a hand on Jenny's shoulder. "But then again, we've always know that there's more to Jenny than just the sum of her parts."

Jenny couldn't contain herself any longer, and her arms ratcheted out to wrap around Brad, Tuck, and Mrs. Wakeman, squeezing them tight with a crushing robotic hug. A few bones cracked, and a few cheeks turned blue, but none of them cared at all right now – least of all Jenny. She knew she was a product of robotic engineering and scientific achievement; and she realized that many of the people cheering her even now saw her as a global defense unit, and nothing else. But surrounded by her loving family and friends, she'd never felt more human before in her life.

Then suddenly, the celebration came to a screeching halt, as a spine-chilling sound chattered through the air, like a swarm of demon locusts. Then a patch of sky erupted with a burst of dull, red light, and a hole ripped open in mid-air, forming a dimensional portal. Jenny and the boys gasped in surprise. The soldiers instinctively primed their weapons, and took aim. They heard the faint sound of someone hollering, and it quickly grew louder and louder …

And the Silver Shell plummeted out of the hole, sending people scrambling for cover as he pancaked into the ground with a mighty thud.

Jenny let out another squeal of joy, and rushed to the side of her fellow champion. "Silver Shell! Silver Shell, you made it back! We did it, we beat them! We defeated the Cluster! You're a hero!"

Jenny may have been bouncing on the tips of her toes, but the Shell seemed content to lie on the ground for a while. Then a sickly moan wafted up from his mouth. "Somebody … get me a barf bag …"

"Omigosh, are you all right?" She clasped her hands to her mouth in a gasp of worry, as a crowd of onlookers gathered around the huge silver robot. "Are you hurt? Damaged? Did you dent your bumper? Quick, somebody call a mechanic!"

"No, that's … nghhh … all right," sighed the Shell, dismissing her concerns with a wave of his hand. "I'm just going to celebrate by … lying here, and watching the fluffy clouds drift by."

"Well, whatever turns your crank," she said, feeling a small measure of relief. Then her pigtails shot up, and she grabbed the Silver Shell by the shoulders. "Shell, you were with Drew and Allison when I talked to you on the video-phone! You and Drew really did it – you rescued Allison! You've got to tell me all about it! Was there a big battle? How did you get inside of Vexus' palace? How did you get out again? So where are they? They're right behind you, right? Silver Shell, they're coming through the wormhole right behind you, aren't they?"

But the Shell wouldn't answer her.

Then a shrieking noise came from the mouth of the wormhole, and the hole in the sky began to shimmer and shrink. The tear in space healed itself back to normal, and the wormhole disappeared with a quick flash of crimson light.

Jenny stared up at the clear blue sky, and her pigtails slid down to her cheeks with a saddened whirr.


CONCLUDED in Chapter Eighteen