Chapter 6

Armadi – Two days later

11:39 AM

"I brought something for you to eat, since you probably won't make it to lunch again," Maya said to Sissera as she set a bowl of soup on her nightstand. She looked her in the face a offered a smile. "Are you feeling any better? We've still got a lot of ice cream left if you want me to bring you some."

Sissera groaned and tried to sit up in her bed. She took the bowl of soup and replied, "That's okay. I finally got some sleep last night, but every cricket chirp still feels like someone is stabbing me in the back of the head."

"Well, at least you're doing a little better. We were so worried about you when Kyros got back. No one knew what to do."

"Everything over the past few days is still somewhat hazy, but I guess it could have been worse. I'm just a little banged up."

Maya took a seat in a chair by the bed and replied, "Yeah, but I feel so guilty over this. I don't know how I got the job of sending you all off to get hurt, but I don't think I'm cut out for it. After you and Vladimir got hurt I just don't know anymore." She sighed and looked away.

Sissera took a sip of soup and weakly replied, "It's not your fault, it's Robotnik. I should have been more careful anyway, I mean we brought the EMP charges to prevent this sort of thing."

"Don't beat yourselves up over this," Seltic said from another room before entering. "We should just be thankful that something worse didn't happen."

Maya took a deep breath and looked up. "I guess so. Did you at least manage to recover any information from the surveillance data?"

Seltic cut his eyes to the floor and admitted, "I'm afraid not. I wasn't able to get much info while we were there, and what I've got shows nothing more than SWATbots marching around. From what I gather, the system Sissera was heading to was the one that monitored the important areas."

"Well, excuse me." Sissera replied, cutting her eyes to him.

"So, we've got nothing to show for our efforts over the last two missions other than you getting hurt. Maybe it's just bad luck, but I keep getting the feeling that we are dealing with a much more serious threat this time."

"It's just that, bad luck. Vladimir and I will be fine, and once I'm back on my feet we can get back to work."

"Have you scheduled anymore missions yet?," Seltic asked Maya.

She sat it thought for a moment before replying, "No, not yet. I haven't thought about it, but we are going to have to go back eventually. I think everyone has earned a few days off."

Sissera balked at her soup, prompting Maya to quickly ask, "Something wrong?"

"Just a little hot, it tastes great," she replied. "Don't worry yourself so much."

As Maya returned to the settlement's cafeteria, she tried to clear her mind. Things were getting bad, but as Seltic and Sissera said things could be much worse. They would certainly get worse whenever Robotnik finished working on whatever he had in store and unleashed it on the planet. She could be thankful that Robotnik at least rarely concerned himself with them specifically, but anything that threatened the world threatened them regardless.

She brushed a fallen leaf from her sleeve and opened the door to the kitchen. Inside, Marcus was anxiously milling about. "Marcus dear, what are you looking for? Are you hungry yet?"

He spun around to face her and replied, "Oh, miss Maya! No ma'am, I was just looking for you, Stanley wanted to know when lunch was going to be ready."

She smiled and shut the door. "It's ready now, so you can go tell everyone to come eat if they want."

"Okay," he replied before looking away. From the look on his face, Maya could tell he had something else on his mind.

"You have something else you need to ask me?"

He shyly looked up and nodded. "I just wanted to ask you something about... Dr. Robotnik."

She raised an eyebrow and replied, "Alright, what did you want to know?"

"What is he exactly? He's big and scary like a bear, but I mean he doesn't have any fur or anything."

Maya looked on in surprise for a moment before realizing that Marcus was too young to remember much about the world before Robotnik took over. She pulled out a chair and motioned for him to sit. "You might want to have a seat."

He obliged and sat down, looking to her intently.

"Robotnik is something called an overlander. A long time ago, back when I was just a little girl, overlanders lived with us without too much fuss." She smiled at him and continued, "Hard to imagine, I know."

"What happened?"

"Well, for some reason the overlanders got where they didn't like us too much. They all moved into their own cities and for the most part stayed away from us, which was fine. A few years later though, things got a good bit worse. Some overlanders got where they would attack and kill anyone they found by themselves, and the overlander government didn't seem to care."

Marcus silently listened, captivated.

"Everyone was scared back then. I remember my husband telling me to stay indoors all of the time. Everything was getting bad when King Acorn united all of our nations together and started to fight back. Everyone for the first time in years felt safe, and we thought that life would return to normal.

"It didn't though, and the overlanders began to win the war. We had lived peacefully with them for generations, and the violent overlanders had much better weapons than ours. I think nearly a million people were killed in the wars that continued for years. Warlord Kodos did everything he could, but we just couldn't hope to stand up to them. But that's when Julian came."

"You mean Robotnik?"

"Yes, but he called himself Julian Kintobor then. He was an outcast from overlander society, and begged for us to all allow him refuge. King Acorn reluctantly allowed him to stay, provided that he told us everything he knew about the overlanders. Julian eventually showed himself to be a brilliant scientist, and masterful tactician, and before we knew it he had convinced King Acorn to promote him to Warlord, replacing Kodos who had been killed sometime before.

"We were all skeptical about Julian, but beyond belief he actually turned the tide in the war and allowed us to eventually grab victory from the overlanders. Julian provided us with many technological marvels that the overlanders kept secret, and with our greater numbers and new technology we were able to force the overlanders to surrender. By then Julian was a hero to us all, even me. We thought that perhaps not every overlander was so evil, and that he would be our savior.

"With the war over and the overlanders surrendered, life started to return to normal. Julian was appointed to the Ministry of Science, and continued to dazzle us with his knowledge. He helped Sir Charles develop the first roboticizer, but then we didn't know how it would come back to haunt us.

"One day, Julian lost his mind and turned traitor. He turned everyone in Mobotropolis into robots, including the king and his family, and set out to do the same to the rest of the world. After only a few days he managed to roboticize almost everyone around here, and he began turning the once beautiful Mobotropolis into his own personal garbage dump. Shortly thereafter, he turned his attention away from roboticizing people to something else entirely.

"Using the most powerful weapons left over from the war, he killed almost every overlander left. No one knows why he chose to do that, but now he and his nephew Snively are just about the only ones left. Well, as far as I know." She looked from the floor to him and asked, "Well, that was a bit long, but did it answer your question?"

Marcus nodded and replied, "Yes ma'am, I think I understand. But, why were the overlanders so mean? Why does Robotnik want to turn us all into robots?"

She sighed and said, "I don't know either, dear. I've asked myself that question too many times to count."

Although she had been anxious to get out of bed earlier in the day, Sissera found herself too tired to even make it to the cafeteria for dinner. So, to help her feel better everyone had decided to eat leftover soup at Seltic and Sissera's house. She was thankful for the company, but felt a little awkward having everyone change their agendas for her.

"Is the soup alright?" Maya directed anonymously to the gathering. Everyone nodded or offered a bland "Uh-huh."

"So, you feeling any better yet?" Kyros asked Sissera after an awkward silence.

"A little," she offered.

"You're lucky to be alive," Tantalus added after slurping from his spoon. "I mean, if one of those bots got the best of Vlad, then they could have wiped the floor with any of the rest of us."

"I know," she said. "I still can't believe it, and don't really remember what happened."

"You were mumbling an awful lot on the way back, seemed to remember a good bit then" Kyros added as he finished his bowl.

"It's pretty common with head injuries... I may or may not ever remember what happened."

"Alright everyone, stop hounding her," Maya said, raising her hand to quell everyone.

"Aw, come on, talking about it always makes it better," Stanley jested.

"Yeah, it's alright," Sissera said.

"I just wish I was there when it happened," Seltic directed to the floor.

"And what? You're not exactly the one I'd expect to make a big difference," Kyros joked.

Seltic sighed and looked away. "And you would have?"

"I didn't say that, but let's just say that another plasma gun going off randomly wouldn't have helped a whole lot. I mean, she burned herself a little with her own gun, just imagine two of those things going off at the same time. It'd have been a-" Kyros continued, cut off by Maya raising her hand in his direction.

"Sissera, dear, are you alright?" she asked the hedgehog after quieting Kyros.

Sissera, who had been staring off somewhat blankly for a moment blinked and replied, "Oh, uh yeah. I'm fine, it's just that I'm starting to remember what happened."

"You got hit by an exploding robot," Kyros added sarcastically.

"No, no. I mean I remember exactly what happened now," she continued. "It was so odd."

"What do you mean?" Tantalus asked between sips.

"It was the robot itself, it just acted so strangely," she said before becoming visibly shaken up. She remained silent for a moment before finishing, "It... he begged me not to kill him."

Everyone grew silent and exchanged curious expressions. Seltic, particularly interested, edged her on. "It... asked you not to kill it?"

"Sort of..." she replied after a moment to collect her thoughts. "I was walking along a factory or something, when it spotted me. I-I tried to get away, but of course it... he chased me. I managed to get my plasma gun out and run into an alley. When he came around the corner, and stared down my gun's barrel, he was afraid."

"We've all seen the robots be startled by stuff before, but that's nothing new," Kyros said.

"No... he wasn't startled, he was... terrified. Scared to die. But, it was too late, and the gun went off and hit him."

"When did he, err, it ask you not to kill it?" Seltic asked, intently listening.

"Well, the plasma shot didn't really hit him squarely and didn't do too much. It knocked him down and tore his arm off, but he was still alive. When I found him..." she replied, setting down her bowl of soup. "He looked up at me in horror, and begged me to forgive him, and not to kill him.."

"And you still did?" Maya asked, now greatly interested.

"No! I mean, I didn't mean to. The blast damaged his reactor or something, and it exploded. That's when I lost consciousness."

"You mean his reactor exploded? Wow, there was an awful lot left of him for that," Tantalus said, placing his empty bowl on a table.

Seltic immediately glanced over to him and asked, "You saw it? How much?"

"His head and body. His face was banged up pretty bad, and he was missing an arm and both legs, but there was still a good bit there."

Seltic raised his hand to his chin and grew quiet with thought. Kyros crossed his arms and asked him, "You can't possibly be thinking about trying to find it and bring it back here, can you?"

"There's so much that I might be able to learn if we could... I mean with a little work I might be able to figure out a tremendous amount about the roboticizer, and maybe a way to get the other robots to act normal again."

"There's no way the robot would still be there by the time we got back," Stanley said.

"Well, Robotnik has been way behind on stuff like cleanup since he started the construction projects, so there's a small chance. I'll take what I can get. Maya, when is the next mission?"

She looked at him and replied, "Well, I don't know. We've had a few days to recollect ourselves, and we do need some things. Maybe tomorrow or the next day."

"Great," Kyros said.

Sissera looked down and yawned loudly. Maya placed her hand on the tenrec's back and addressed everyone, "I think Sissera is getting a little tired, so we should probably leave her alone for now."