After awhile Max fell asleep. Out of the corner of his eye Astro could see the rise and fall of Max's chest slow with the deep breaths of sleep. Astro looked back to the sky, slowly it faded from a bright blue to a soft purple. Even though it was summer, Astro's sensors indicated that the temperature was dropping dramatically with the nightfall, and would soon wake Max. So Astro rose to his feet quietly and gently scooped the boy into his arms, being very careful not to wake him. He crept down the stairs from the roof, examining each step to make sure it would not squeak, and slowly headed toward Max's room. Astro lightly pushed on the ajar door with his back to open it and make a gentle spin around on one foot to face the room. It was dark, except for the faint light coming through the doorway. Astro saw the walls completely bare, a simple twin sized bed with a black and blue streaked comforter messily pushed down at the foot of the bed. On the right of the bed where a few boxes waiting to be unpacked, their lids partially open. The left side of the bed was almost identical except for the big blue machine that could probably eat three Maxs and still have room for more. Astro set Max down on the bed and approached the coblat blue monster. He scanned the robot up and down, searching in his data banks for more information on it. Oh my gosh, he realized it's a. . .

"That's my boxing robot." Max finished Astro's thought. "His name is Atom actually, kind of like you." He mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

"Boxing robots?" Astro replied, unimpressed. "This is just a generation 2 sparring bot, not to mention robot boxing fell out of style in 2030."

Max gave the smaller robot a weird look, like he had grown an extra arm or something.

"Ummm Astro, it's 2021."

Astro, who had still been examining the sparring bot turn toward Max his eyes going wide, his face contorted with a frown as calculations whizzed through his head. He burst out laughing.

"Oh I get it, your just pulling my leg. Got it." He said, and smiled wide.

"Um no, actually, I'm not. Today is June 24th 2021." Max insisted.

Astro took a step back, like he had just taken a punch to the stomach, he looked at Max's face, trying to see if he was lying or not, but Max wasn't lying. Then something clicked in his head.

"That crazy bastard did it." he muttered.

"What?"

"Tenma, he fixed that stupid time machine!" Astro yelled, frustrated, looking like he might punch straight through someone's head.

"Astro! Calm yourself! I would really like not to have holes in me or my room. What's going on?" Max said.

"That stupid time machine, if this is 2021 you're 76 years older than me."

Max squinted for a moment, trying to do the math in his head. He may have been a robotic genius, but he didn't like math.

"So. . you're from 2085? How did you not notice that this wasn't 2021 earlier?" Max questioned, super confused.

"I guess I didn't realize because I've never been to America, or really paid attention to it before."

"Never been to America? Then where are you from?"

Astro just stared at him for a long minute, then glanced at himself, then back to Max.

"Really? REALLY? How could you not tell I'm from Japan? I'm from 80 years in the future and even I know Americans think we're nerds!"

Then Max chuckled, and laughed so hard he fell back onto his bed.

"What's so funny?" Astro asked defensively.

Max slowly stopped laughing and rose to his feet.

"It's just, I mean, really? You're wearing red boot that come up to your knees and that hair is. . . far too, interesting. Duh we think you're weird." Max stuck his tongue out at the smaller robot and continued "Not to mention all the return label on your crate said 'Tokyo, Japan'."

"What?" Astro yelled

"Jeeze! Yeah, that's what it said, why?"

"Because from where I'm from, Tokyo was destroyed..."

"Tokyo gets destroyed? How?"

"Let's just say an geek with too much funding took the Godzilla movies too seriously." Astro said with his head in his hands, trying to hide from the stupidity of it all.

"Oh, but why wouldn't the post mark be from Tokyo?"

Astro lifted his head from his hands in a quick jerking motion, realizing something.

"THAT BASTARD!" he screamed, Max stepped back just incase he deiced to explode or something.

"What?" Max asked nervously.

"That means he's here, which means he's still messing with me, not just getting rid of me."

"But what about-" Max was cut off with Charlie entering the room, he stood there awkwardly for a few, terribly long moments.

"Just making sure you guy's where okay." He finally said "And Max, did you forget? We have a match tonight!"

Max face palmed. "No! I fell asleep and then me and Astro where talking. . ."

"You have a match? At 10:37pm?" the small robot asked.

"No, at 11:30 actually, but they're usually this late." Max replied as he walked over to Atom and turned him on. The sparring bot lit up, glowing azure blue, then rose to its feet and stood there.

"Let's go!" Max said in a mix of a sing-song and yelling, excitedly.

He stood not far above the rink on a rickety service catwalk, he leaned forward on the old rusty rail to look down below. Tenma, a ghost of a smile on his lips, as he saw Astro flinched away from every hit thrown in the merciless battle between the boxing robots. He had good reason to send Astro into this robot boxing time, but it was an added bonus that he hated it. Tenma had three robots out amongst the crowd, a boxing robot waiting for the next match, the "human" controlling the boxing bot, and Astro. The fight ended between the current two contenders, so the next match would start in ten minutes. Just enough time to get . . . a better view.

The crowd grew louder with people placing bets on which robot to win. Astro shoved his way through the crowd with Max, trying to get to Atom and Charlie before the match began. When they reached the rink Max ran to Charlie and they immediately began testing all of Atom's functions and combos. Astro stood awkwardly on the side, people staring at him. He was new to everyone here, the guy nobody knew with the (almost) world champion famous. He was thankful Max had thought to lend him some cloths, so he wasn't wandering around basically naked, wearing dark blue boot cut jeans and a gray v-neck, but his "hair" stuck out like a sore thumb. Astro was shaken form his thoughts when music began to blast through the speakers as Max and Atom made their famous appearance dancing into the ring, the crowd going bazerk. The music was cut off as Max hustled out of the rink and the match begun. Max stood next to Astro as Charlie started yelling orders through the headset.

"RIGHT! LEFT! DUCK! NOW SMASH HIM!" Charlie screamed at Atom.

The other guy must have heard him, because the other robot, 'Thunder', dodged right then landed a punch right into Atoms stomach, the sparring bot fell with a BOOM. The ref began to count

"1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . ."

"Get up Atom! COME ON!" Charlie yelled, half begging.

"8. . .9. . . 10! The winner is Thunnnderr!" The announcer proclaimed.

Charlie threw the voice command headset to the ground, kicked at the table in front of him, running his fingers over his buzzed hair and letting out a frustrated sigh. . He faced Max and hotly pointed at the ring.

"There is no way Thunder took down Atom that easily, he should have been able to get back up." He yelled angrily, pointing toward the ring. Charlie jumped up on the table and made his way into the ring to talk with the referee.
Then everything happened at once.

Then Astro heard it, breathing, his breathing. He whipped around and saw a blur of faces everywhere.

Then, him.

Everything seemed to disappear, and all Astro could see was him, and his accompanying twisted smile. He looked the same as he always had, even back into the Tobys memory. He had his dark curly hair that stuck out on the sides of his head and his absurdly long goatee, he wore the same dark trench coat that was 3 sizes too big and a pin striped fedora that covered his eyes. He had both hands hung at his side, but one held a small remote. Tenma finally looked up, deep into Astros eyes, his smirk widened a bit. Astro saw his hand flex and before he could react he heard a loud BANG! right behind him. Astro spun around to see the ring had fallen inwards, people running away, panicked. Astro looked back at Tenma, who had already begun to walk away. Astro ran toward the collapsed ring, the floor completely missing from it. He began ripping away the siding like tearing a piece of paper, easily flinging it behind him, to discover a large dark hole in the ground. Astro could sense Max standing next to him, he turned to look. Max looked at the hole, then to Astro, then back to the hole, his mouth gaping.
"Max?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't follow me." At the last word Astro took a step forward and fell into the hungry darkness.

Sorry this chapter took so long guys! I thought with spring break (way back in April) I would just whip out another chapter (ha). Life has been super crazy the last couple months with no free time to write. . . but I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

R&R! you know you want to!

Now. *death glare*