Part 1: The War is Lost

Without All Our Pieces

"Chiro? Antauri?"

He finessed the dials and spoke into the Super Robot's communication system again.

"Nova? Sprx?"

No good. Otto sighed and stroked his chin. "I'm still getting nothing. Skeleton King's gotta have some kind of dampening... Gibson, what are you doing?"

Gibson didn't turn to face Otto, absorbed with the data on his own console. "I-"

Rrrrrr...

Gibson and Otto froze and clung to their stations as the floor beneath them shook with the ground outside. Stabilizers were an energy-using luxury that they could not afford outside of emergencies right now and, like the others before, the most recent earthquake left them both unscathed.

"I'm trying to figure out what is causing that."

They waited a moment for aftershocks, and when none came their work took back its priority.

"Chiro! Sprx! Nova! Antauri! Come in!"

He paused for a reply. Still no good. Otto's grip tightened on the dials.

"I... I don't like this. I don't like earthquakes and not knowing if the team is okay after the earthquakes."

He turned to Gibson, who still didn't turn from his work. He might have turned to face his friend if he'd seen that Otto was holding back tears, or he might have become all the more focussed on the space in front of him.

"And I don't like being split up!"

Gibson sighed. "I don't like it either, Otto, but we need to remember what Antauri told us."

"The thing about all of us having our own jobs right now?"

"Yes. And the thing about trusting one another to stay safe."

It wasn't that Otto didn't trust them... He just...

Otto I... no longer sense Chiro's presence.

I pledge myself to a greater power!

We can't just leave her out there!

"..."

We're gonna miss you, Antauri.

"...I just... Everybody's-"

"Alone?"

Otto looked up to find Gibson smirking at him.

"I wasn't going to say alone!" Otto huffed and crossed his arms.

Gibson smiled and turned back to his work. "Good. I'd think you'd know better by now."

Not that Gibson wasn't worried to. Not that Gibson wasn't putting on a face for Otto. Not that Gibson was happy he wasn't by himself because he knew what Otto was trying to get at: how much better they worked with all their pieces as Chiro had rather eloquently put it. Not that thinking of Chiro didn't make Gibson wish he could contact the boy because Dear Shuggazoom Chiro is still only a child and Skeleton King wants him dead and if Antauri got separated from him...

It was just that the last thing the team needed was another idiot leaving their guard station to search for somebody else. In the name of instinct, no less. Gibson massaged his brow.

"You alright, Gibson?"

"Hmm? Oh yes. Just trying to understand a rather frustrating anomaly."

It was nothing less than a complete and absolute mess in the city's outskirts, and the ooze everywhere made it hard to tell many places apart.

Earlier, Sprx had been able to tell his direction by his distance from the Super Robot, but even that beacon had gotten harder and harder to find. It became something Sprx could squish between his finger and his thumb. After that, a pixel in his ocular interface, which eventually blinked out completely.

And he still couldn't find her, as it neared 48 hours since she'd vanished.