Chapter 67: Friend or Frobo?

This was supposed to be our day off! The harvest is done, there's no farm chores to do, we basically had nothing to do until planting time.

HP and Marcy decided to spend that downtime at the seed store, and knowing them, they were gonna be in there all day. Big pass on that. Me and Sprig decided that we were gonna just chill in the cart with a little Super Custom Robo on my phone (not to brag, but I've gotten to the prestige class tournament). Polly wanted to drag us into whatever pranks she was panning, but Sprig and I, we're just too mature for that sort of thing.

So what does Polly do? She dives into a big sack of seeds, sending them shooting all over the place so hard that they embedded themselves in the walls and ground. And guess who had to clean up after her. Go on. Guess.

Yyyyup.

Being mature kinda sucks sometimes, dude.

So, that was pretty much our morning. While we were stuck cleaning up Polly's mess, we heard a series of loud noises coming from town, but honestly, we didn't want to deal with it at the moment. We were just looking forward to being done with everything. And, to be fair, loud riots are pretty standard for Wartwood, like the big Cavefrogs vs. Astrofrogs debate from last week that degenerated into a crosstown bare-knuckle brawl (especially weird because Amphibia is a few hundred years away from a space program). So finding some sort of huge commotion going on was something not fully unexpected.

You know what we absolutely wouldn't expect? A robot.

So, as we were finishing up, what do you think was going on?

That's right, a robot! A huge, metal, frog-shaped robot with laser eyes on a full-blown rampage across town. We jumped in to fight it... dumb ol' Anne's chronic hero complex kickin' in again… and we got our butts thoroughly kicked.

It was bearing down on is, about to blast us to atoms. Who knew it was going to end this way? Seriously? A robot frog? Who could have predicted it?

And then, get this… Polly jumps in front of us, and manages not only to talk it down, but take full responsibility for the trouble it caused. Polly. Taking responsibility for trouble. Being responsible for trouble, sure. She's that all the time, but taking it?

*sigh* My baby sister's growing up.

But I'm kinda burying the lede here, because we have to discuss FROG ROBOT!

[drawing of Frobo doing a friendly pose)

Polly named him Frobo… short for "Frog Robo". Kinda on the nose. I would have gone with Amphibitron, or [Austrian voice] The Kerminator. Nobody would get the reference, but who cares?

Y'know, when he's not destroying the town, my dude's actually kinda cute! Look at that friendly smile, those happy yellow eyes… just don't laugh in his presence. He'll try to mimic it, and it's… it's not pretty.

Okay, so here's what happened according to Polly… she was ditching us after sticking us with cleaning up the mess she made, and she finds the robot in a pile of trash… you know, as you do.

The robot was pretty much a blank slate and imprinted on Polly, kinda like a baby duck almost. So, Polly takes him under her flipper and the two go all around town doing the usual pranks and stuff, and because one of them's a robot instead of a tiny little tadpole, they cause a lot of damage and even wind up flooding the town when Polly cannonballs into the town fountain and Frobo mimics her. The town, as it usually does, goes into panicked mob mode and in the chaos, one frog accidentally hurts Polly.

You remember that scene at the end of The Steel Colossus when the kid gets hurt and the Colossus just goes absolutely berserk? Yeah, it was exactly like that. The robot really bonded with Polly.

Did I mention we're keeping him? HP was a bit wary at first, but he came around pretty quickly when he learned that we now had a farmhand that worked for free and didn't need to be fed. I think he adopted him even faster than he adopted me. Not that I'm bitter or anything…

That just raises the question: what the heck is a robot doing in Amphibia? The only thing even close to that level of technology that I've seen here was that weird factory that we found just outside of the valley. Actually, I was kinda thinking that maybe the robot was built in that factory, but that doesn't make any sense. The factory was asking for raw materials, and we never gave it any, and it blew up only minutes after we found it. Not nearly enough time to build a whole robot! And even if it had, and that robot somehow survived the factory explosion, would it have been able to make it all the way back to the valley and get buried in a pile of garbage?

…it's funny though, after the factory, I did sometimes get this weird feeling that something, or someone, was following us. I never saw any sign of anything, and chalked it off to paranoia (after all, something usually was out to get me). But… what if…?

….naaaaaah.

A.N,: Short one this time, the next two will probably be short too. Not a ton to work with here.

Jose: For folks who form angry mobs at the drop of a hat, they're pretty easy to pacify.

Gloyd: It does feel weird how easily they warm up to Sasha in that episode, considering she held the town hostage and was fully on board with killing Hop Pop.

Next: Toad to Redemption