Lunch was done, and Axl was cleaning up when Aaron came up to him. His headphones were resting down on his neck instead of on their usual place on his head. This was a serious issue, it looked like.

"Axl I need your help."
Ah, more serious that he had thought. Aaron hardly asked for help. Axl finished what he was doing before giving Aaron his full attention.

"With what?"

"I need you to get Robin out of the Fortrex for a while."
Axl paused, making sure he heard that right. "That's… that's it?"

Aaron nodded, "Yeah. Make him go and get groceries or something. If anyone else tells him, he won't go."

Well, yeah, that one made sense. But why was Aaron making such a big deal about shopping? And Robin specifically. Axl thought about what he needed to stack up on.

"Alright." Axl said, "Allie's been eating all the eggs again so I need more of those. And-"

Aaron held up a hand, "Ya gotta tell Robin, not me. And thanks for this, by the way. I'll explain later on. Meet me in the common room in about… I dunno, five minutes? Yeah let's go with that. See ya later."

Axl shrugged as Aaron walked away, then pulled open a small drawer where he kept his shopping lists. In a couple of seconds, the words "Eggs" was written on it. Another couple of seconds of thinking, and "Hide when brought back" was added next to "Eggs". The list was already long as it was, and these two extra things made it even longer. Axl did not want to be Robin when he had to carry all this stuff back.

He pocketed the list, and left the kitchen to make his way to the workshop. There he found Robin, busy working on something new. Axl tapped on his shoulder with one hand and pulled the list out of his pocket with the other.

"What is that?" Robin asked, frowning at the long piece of paper that had been thrust at him.

"Shopping list," Axl replied, "It's your turn to go get the groceries."

Robin's face scrunched up in annoyance as he eyed over the list. It looked like he had just licked a lemon. Axl kinda thought it was funny.

"Why is there so much stuff on here?" Robin grumbled, "Would it kill you to take some of this off?"

He pointed angrily at one thing in particular, "What the hell is a pitaya?!"

"Dragonfruit," Axl said, lifting Robin off of the ground with one hand to make him stand, "I like using its technical name. It's fun to say."

Robin rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything else. He only rolled his eyes and put the list into a small pocket on the front of his chest. As he made his way towards his mech, Axl could hear the faint sound of rubber bands snapping. He assumed Robin was doing that thing where he snapped the bands that he wore as bracelets against his wrist.

"That's a habit you need to break." Axl called up to Robin. Robin waved in response, almost as if shooing Axl away.

The top of the Black Knight closed, and then was out. Axl huffed. He needed to get the kid a tangle or something. Keep his hands busy when he wasn't working.

Axl turned to head out of the workshop, but glanced at what Robin had been working on first.

He couldn't exactly tell what it was, but it looked like the weapon that that weirdo villain from SpidersGuy had. All the arms. It was a little creepy.

Oh well, it wasn't his problem.

When Axl made his way into the common room, he found himself in the company of, well, everyone. Clay was leaning up against Merlock's old podium, Fletch next to him. Macy had her head on the podium where she sat next to Lance who was painting his nails a pink so bright that it shouldn't have been possible to see. The doors that led to the living quarters swooshed open, and in came the only person they were missing.

Aaron had Robin's helmet cradled against his hip, there the plume on the top swayed back and forth. With a dull thunk Aaron set the helmet down on the Fortrex's main console, right next to where Ava was working on pulling something up. She opened a small drawer next to her chair, and pulled out a thin wire. In half a second she had one end of the wire stuck into a hidden port on the helmet, and the other half into the console.

"Sorry for dragging you all out of your… activities, everyone." Aaron said, chewing on a thumbnail, "But since Robin is gone, we thought that now would be a good time to check this out."
Lance looked up, hand perfectly poised directly above the bottle of polish.

"Yeah that's great," He said, "But what is 'this'?"

Ava shot a glare at Aaron, to which he only shrugged. Axl got the feeling that this was a little more important than he had thought.

"We're getting to that," Aaron replied, "You all have noticed how weird robin's been acting lately though, right?"

A murmur passed through the group, and Ava finished pulling up what she wanted to show them.

"Right. Well, apparently Robin's been hacking into Ava's stuff, changing the coding, whole bunch of complicated stuff."
"He's stopping me from finding what Merlock left us," Ava huffed, annoyed with Aaron's terrible explanation, "And I've been wondering why. Then I remembered that he only started doing this stuff after you guys got back from the castle. So…"

She paused, letting everyone else fill in the gaps.

"So something must've happened there that he isn't telling us." Clay finished, "What I want to know is why he didn't tell me about it. He knows that anytime he needs someone, I'm there for him. I'm his brother, after all."

Fletch nodded, "And so am I, by default."

On the screen, a video started playing. Ava grumbled to herself and started to skip through it.

"Exactly." She said, "So I'm just gonna go through the footage from his helmet camera and see what happened."

((Title from Aspiring Fires by Mother Mother. I broke my "One song per band/writer" rule like a chump))