Chapter 3

"You're too stressed out, Ashton," said Precis as she tucked the love of her life into bed. "You need to relax. Just lie there and listen while I tell you all about my newest upgrades to Bobot 3.0. You're listening, right?"

"Sure," Ashton mumbled, pulling the covers up over his head. "Talk all you want. Don't mind me."

"Great! See, you know how we've been fighting lots of fish monsters lately?"

Ashton did not reply.

"Well, we have. And what better way is there to kill fish than to fry them with high powered electrical attacks? Can you guess what I've done with Bobot, then?"

"What?" Ashton sounded groggy.

"I've installed an electro-gun, which I'm calling the Super Delicious Ultra Zapper, or S.D.U.Z. for short. Bobot will be even more helpful to us in battle now."

"Just be sure to take him apart before you go to sleep, 'mkay, darling?"

"Yeah, I know. I don't want either of us getting shocked in the middle of the night. No way."

"Great. Good night."

"Good night, Ashton."

XXX

Precis looked around the breakfast table at the people who had already begun to eat. She nudged Ashton and whispered to him that she hadn't seen either Rena or Noel all morning, but Ashton reminded her that both of the absentees were notoriously late sleepers and so she shouldn't worry. She was just about to begin picking at her bacon and eggs platter when something ran into the room and interrupted everyone's meal.

The something looked like an extremely pale bipedal, humanoid monster. It dashed into the dining room from the hallway with enough speed to both startle everyone and keep them from getting a good look at the invader. It moved far from silently; erupting from its mouth (if it was indeed a mouth) came an incessant stream of incomprehensible wailing, like it was in pain or afraid of something or about to kill its prey. At first, no one had any idea what species it could be.

Then, Chisato figured out that it was a native of Nede.

"Rena?" Chisato looked stunned. "What's wrong? And why are you naked?"

The blur didn't stop its wailing. Instead, it became more frantic and began waving its arms over its head.

"That's Rena?" said Bowman. "Wow. I never expected…"

Claude gave Bowman a dirty look, flipped his glass of orange juice over Bowman's head, and ran over to Rena. He attempted to restrain her wild arm movements while at the same time taking off his jacket in order to cover her up. He seemed to be trying to get her to calm down and explain what was wrong in plain Terran.

Precis knew something had to be amiss; Rena wasn't normally the type to streak through hotel lobbies. It was just beginning to dawn on her that there may have been another murder when she caught Ashton staring at Rena.

"Stop that, Ash!" She slapped him hard across the face.

"W-what?" Ashton snapped back to reality. "Sorry, I just…"

"There's no excuse for that. I'm the only girl for you now, and I don't want you looking at some tramp."

"I wasn't…"

"Don't lie to me, mister! I saw you."

"But I was just wondering…"

"What some other girl looks like when she's completely out of her mind? I told you…"

And then Claude spoke loudly enough to halt the rest of the room's activity. "The killer has struck again!"

Nearly everyone gasped.

XXX

It took a few minutes for Rena to calm down and put on a robe, but she eventually led the rest of the group to the new crime scene – the hotel's community bathroom.

"You see, I was just about to get in the shower," said Rena. "I reached in to turn on the water, and I saw that the tub was not empty."

"You don't mean…?" said Chisato.

"This!" Rena pulled aside the shower curtain, revealing a dead body. Noel Chandler, former biologist, slumped against the back rim of the bathtub, head lolling to the side and skin looking somewhat charred. He was by far the last thing anyone would have wanted to see in a bathroom.

"Eww," said Precis. "What happened?"

"Looks like he was electrocuted," said Bowman. "I've seen it happen before."

"Positively frightful," said Celine.

"I think you may be right, Bowman," said Chisato. "Look! Noel's not alone in the bathtub."

Indeed, a nearly inconspicuous wire ran out the end of the tub opposite Noel. Bowman slipped on a couple of rubber gloves from his pockets and tugged to see what was attached. It turned out that an electric toaster rested somewhere near Noel's feet.

"I think we have our cause of death," said Chisato. "Very gruesome."

"Looks that way to me, too," said Bowman. "What a way to go! One minute, he's lying back and enjoying a relaxing hot bath, and the next minute, our killer jumps out of nowhere and makes the bath a little too hot for comfort."

Chisato continued, "And then Rena came in for her own bath a little too late to catch whoever did this. She's lucky, though. She could have been the one killed."

"Hey, I was traumatized," said Rena. "A little sympathy, please?"

Claude drew her close and held her tightly enough to stop her twitching.

"Thanks, Claude," she whispered.

"So, Rena," interrupted Chisato, "did you notice anything out of the ordinary while you were gallivanting around the hotel in the nude? Some clue to our killer's identity, maybe?"

Rena's face turned bright red. "I didn't mean to do that, you know! I just… forgot that I, well, that I was getting in the tub. Seeing a dead body will do that, you know?"

"We understand," said Chisato. "Does that mean you didn't notice anything that could help?"

"Not so much. I didn't even know that anything was wrong until I opened the curtain, and from that point, you guys saw everything as much as I did."

"Did we ever!" said Bowman, prompting Claude to punch him in the stomach.

"Ugh. Yeah, I deserved that."

Chisato didn't seem to be paying attention. "If we don't have any clues yet, then we'll have to find some. Let's everyone get looking!"

XXX

"Ash, I'm scared," said Precis. "At first I thought someone just had a grudge against Leon, 'cause, I mean, who didn't hate the little brat? If the killer didn't kill him, I'm sure someone else would have. But now, with Noel gone, I don't feel safe anymore."

"You're safe with me," said Ashton. "Me, and Gyoro and Ururun. They can keep watch even when I'm tired, and you know I'd never let anyone hurt you."

"I still don't feel right. What if someone comes after me while I'm taking a bath?"

"Just don't bathe. It's not like you bathe all that often anyway."

"Hey, that's not funny!" Precis narrowed her eyes and pouted.

"I'm just being honest," said Ashton. "And besides, Chisato and Bowman will have this case cracked in no time. You don't have anything to worry about."

"I hope you're right, but I'd still feel safer if I could activate Bobot again."

"Oh, that's right." Ashton's face brightened up. "Was Bobot turned off during the second murder?"

"Let me check."

"If so, then I see no reason why you couldn't eliminate him from suspicion entirely."

"Drat! I knew I turned him off, but I must have forgotten." Precis smashed her hand against the floor of the closet. "He's sitting here, powered up, waiting for a command."

"Why not give him some commands to keep him busy?"

"Like what?" Precis looked confused.

"Well, we could use Bobot to keep watch for us, since he doesn't have to sleep. And you could even take him into the shower room with you."

"That's pretty slick thinking, Ash."

"Thanks."

"You know I love you, don't you?"

"I know."

"So, you wanna work with Bobot a little before we go to sleep?"

"What's tonight's project?"

"I'd like to practice Holo-Holograph a little more. Maybe Bobot can fight off intruders."

"Sure." Ashton pulled his swords from the closet. "I'll help however I can. That's the program where Bobot imitates my Sword Dance move, right?"

"Yep, it is!" said Precis. "We should just work on it for a bit, and then I'll have Bobot ready to slice and dice anyone trying to kill us in the night."

"You know," said Ashton, "I guess if Bobot were the killer, he would have gotten you already. It wouldn't have been hard."

"I didn't think of it that way," said Precis. "Someone should tell that to Chisato."

"Maybe tomorrow," said Ashton. "For now, let's get to work."