Yes it's been forever! I know! I should have updated sooner! Things have been…
You've all been so patient!
On with the story!
Astro was lucky that he didn't have much atmosphere to slow him down. He was flying fairly fast…maybe a little too fast. Not that he could allow himself to slow down, this was an emergency!
In a swift movement he touched down on moon's dry surface and ran the rest of the way until he reached the air lock. Why did this thing take so long to open?
Once he was inside, he nearly ran past Dave in his mad dash.
"Astro, what is it?"
"Rusty told me to come back here, and to warn you! There's a ship, and Rusty got scared, and-"
"Whoa, slow down a minute. What ship?"
"The ship said…"he paused for a moment trying to remember. "Populuxe."
The color drained from Dave's face.
"Dave?"
He shook his head and turned away. "I don't believe this."
"Dave? Hey wait, where are you going?"
"He thinks he can just come back here and- Astro, come with me."
They headed down the hall, Astro managing to keep up Dave's strides. He stopped at a door and hit a few buttons, the door slightly humming as it slid open.
"In here!"
Once they were in Astro looked around. One wall was lined with tools and another with shelves of boxes, crates, and quite a few other things. They were in the workshop….why where they in the workshop?
Dave finally broke the silence. "So I take it Rusty told you? About Christoph?"
Astro nodded. "He says he's dangerous."
"Did he go into any details?"
"Not really, he just panicked."
Just like last time…
"He had every right to…" he trailed off.
Astro noticed Dave's weary tone, it was quite unlike him. "It doesn't sound like this is the first time he's been here."
Dave chuckled. "Oh no, Cristoph and I go pretty far back. Actually when you think about it…we're not all that different.
Trust me; he's someone you don't want to run into! Rusty's words echoed back through Astro's mind.
Dave noticed the look of surprise coming over Astro's face.
"No, not like that. Neither of us are too happy about all the robots up here collecting dust, but…" Dave turned and hit a switch. "we have different ways of going about it."
Suddenly, Astro felt something pulling him back, by the time he registered what was happening, he was stuck.
"Hey!"
Dave had magneted Astro to the wall with the rest of the tools!
"Why are you doing this?"
"Astro, let me ask you something. How many pieces do you want to be in when you get back to Earth?"
Now it all made sense. "He's…a scrapper?"
Dave nodded sadly.
"See that's where we're different. I do everything I can to send robots back in one peice. Christoph...not so much."
Astro's eye widened. "He would do that?"
"At least. It's sad really; he'd see your heart of gold and only see dollar signs. Money's the only thing he sees at all these days."
"But wait, I can help! If we can just reason with him."
"It's not him who's the real threat. He's annoying but he's relatively easy to scare off. He's got these…henchmen, you could say. Awful things, they destroy everything in sight. You know this base used to be bigger? They tore almost half of it down!"
"So you're going out there by yourself?"
"It worked last time."
Astro had never seen Dave look this serious, and frankly, it scared him.
"Relax Astro, I'm only going to talk to him." Though the tension in his posture suggested otherwise. "I only hope I'm not too late."
"Dave, NO! DON'T-"
But just like that he was gone, and Astro was alone. Stuck to a wall, and alone.
This chapter was brought to you by the new Astro Boy fridge magnet! (Astro: "It's not funny!") Oh, I'm terrible :)