The Bratt-bots walked up to the door in front of them and knocked. A moment later, the door opened to the tune of a Cyndi Lauper song. Clive rolled his eyes. "Does EVERYTHING this guy does have to be from the 80's?" he complained.

The Bratt-bots glanced at each other. "YES," one of them insisted.

"But that doesn't matter right now," interjected another. "Right now you're going to see Bratt, and if you complain about how terrible his music is one more time, we're going to turn you into scrap metal."

"Fine," Clive said. He felt butterflies dancing in the pit of his stomach. He really, really didn't want to see Bratt at all….and yet, there was a tiny part of him that was absolutely thrilled to see the guy again. He didn't know why. Was this perhaps a part of his past programming coming to the surface?

Clive rolled into the room and looked around. "Nothing's changed," he said before clapping his hands over his mouth. Where had that come from? It seemed the closer he got to Bratt, the more old memories he received.

Before Clive had a chance to think that one over, he found himself tackled by Bratt. Clive gagged-the guy reeked of week-old bubblegum and sugary kids' cereal. Bratt didn't seem to care. He just lifted Clive up and spun around the room with him.

"Stop that! My head is spinning!" Clive complained.

Bratt laughed and put Clive down. "I'm sorry, pal, I'm just so happy to see you!" Bratt said. "Do you still remember me, or do you need a little help getting your memory back?"

"Uhh, I-" Clive began. He never got a chance to finish, because Bratt grabbed a hammer wrapped in leg warmers and lifted it over his head.

Before Clive could even scream, the hammer came down on him. The last thing he saw before the world disappeared in a bright white flash was Bratt saying cheerfully, "Hope this works, pal!"

A few moments later, Clive found himself lying on his back on the purple fuzzy carpet, staring into Bratt's eager face. "Ow." Clive winced. His head felt like it had been put through a blender. Stupidly, he reached up to feel for a lump and found nothing more than the tiniest of dents.

How did Bratt do that without busting my head open? Clive wondered. But that wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened. The weirdest thing was that...he remembered Bratt. He remembered where he was. He remembered why Bratt was so excited to see him….and he even knew who Clive was!

"I'm Clive?!" Clive sputtered, unable to believe his revelation.

Bratt giggled. "Who else did you think you were? David Bowie?"

Clive sat up and shook his head, his mind still blown. "I...I really thought my name was Ninja and that the Grus had owned me forever! I'm so sorry! I can't believe I was so stupid!"

"Oh, who cares?" Bratt laughed. "The important thing is that you're back again and we can go on heists together!"

Clive's mouth opened in shock. Heists? Really? "I, ummm...I'm not so sure I'd like to do that anymore," Clive said with a nervous laugh.

"Don't worry about that, 'cuz you don't have to do any heavy lifting anymore!" Bratt said mysteriously. He snapped his fingers, and a door opened to reveal a huge robot with an angry scowl who resembled Clive in almost every way. "I'd like you to meet your brother Andy!"

Clive stared, mouth still open. Bratt frowned. "Don't you have any manners, Clive? Say hello to Andy!"

Clive forced a tiny smile onto his face and waved. "Hi, I'm Clive! I was born in 1985, I was made in Japan, Bratt rescued me from the set of some silly TV show and-"

"Nice to meet you, Clive," thundered Andy. The huge robot reached out one of his pincers, as though to offer a handshake. Clive rolled up and stuck out his own pincer. Immediately, Andy grasped it and shook it so hard that Clive thought his arm would fall right off.

"Thank you," Clive gasped. He whirled around and squinted at Bratt. "Excuse me, sir, but why did you make Andy? You seem well-off enough with your army of Bratt-bots and all…"

"Well, I needed someone to get things done while you were gone," Bratt insisted. "Besides, I was always considering you an upgrade someday, but since you were with the Grus for so long.." Bratt stuck out his tongue in disgust.

"They weren't that bad!" Clive said. "One of his daughters was really nice to me while I was there."

Bratt chortled. "Give me a break! The Grus are nice? Yeah, right!"

Andy snorted. "Nobody who wrecks a robot Bratt spent his life building can possibly be nice. And by the way, I heard you got stuck in that thing! Pathetic."

"Oh, yeah? Who gave you the right to remind me of that?" Clive screeched. There's NO way this guy is related to me whatsoever.

Andy snickered. "Whatever, buddy. Bratt personally told me that he likes you better than me. And this was after he said I was way cooler than you ever were! So you know what? GET OUT OF MY WAY, WIND-UP TOY."

Bratt separated the two robots, who were by now ready to trade blows. "Hey guys, calm down! I don't even care which one of you is better. As long as both of you play heist music and get rid of weird guys in short-shorts who want to marry me, I am totally cool with you!"

"WHAT?" Clive exclaimed.

"Maybe I'll tell you about that...some other time," Andy sneered.

Clive grumbled. Getting kidnapped was worse than I thought. And now that I have my old memories back, well...what am I supposed to do?

…...

"Oh no," Gru moaned.

Dru was hanging precariously from the Rubik's Cube-shaped fortress, swaying in the breeze like a yo-yo. "Errm, brother, can you get here a leetle faster? Zese pants can't hold me up forever," Dru called.

"What kind of pants are those?" Lucy asked.

"Who knows?" Gru replied. "But no matter vhat zey're made of, ve have to hurry, or I von't have a brother much longer!"

Lucy pressed a pedal on her watercycle and sped furiously towards the fortress. Gru sped after her, even though he wasn't sure how exactly they were going to climb to the top. He'd brought along the special suits he and Dru had used to invade the fortress before, but they'd be no use against the spikes surrounding the island.

"Lucy, vhat's your plan of attack?" Gru shouted.

Lucy grinned like a maniac. "This," she said. Pressing a button on her watch, she encased the first spike in a ball of epoxy, then hopped on top of it as though it were a stepping stone. "Coming?"

"Zat...zat's brilleeant!" Gru said. "I should have thought of zat myself!"

Gru waited until Lucy had encased the next spike and jumped on it before hopping on to the first one. Lucy continued to convert the spikes into stepping stones until they had reached the base of the fortress. When they finally reached the end of the spikes, they dropped into a small space behind the last spike and quickly changed into the suits. Then they began scurrying up the wall towards Dru.

Dru checked the seat of his pants and realized that they were beginning to slip. "Uh, guys, zese pants are starting to slip! Hurry up!"

"Ve're trying our hardest!" Gru said. He and Lucy were only a little over a third of the way up the tower and still had a ways to go.

"Vell, try a leetle harder! I don't vant to be a sheesh-ke-bab!" Dru complained.

….

Inside the tower, Bratt noticed tiny black-and-white shapes scurrying up the base of the tower. "Son of a betamax! It's them again! AFTER THEM!" Bratt swore, pointing at Clive and Andy.

"Sir, we can't go after them," Clive pointed out. "We'd just fall onto the spikes."

Bratt tossed a pair of suction cups at him, then another pair at Andy. "Then use these! I don't care what you can or can't do; just GET THEM!"

Andy grinned and got out his chainsaws. "Right on, boss!" he said as he stuck the suction cups onto his feet.

Clive gulped and copied Andy. "I don't know if this is going to work…." Clive trailed off as he looked at the stomach-churning drop out the window.

"Oh, go on! You're not chicken, are you?" Andy taunted as he shoved Clive out the window.

For a few moments, Clive screamed as he fell headfirst in a dizzying freefall. Then he remembered the suction cups and tried desperately to stick to the wall. It didn't look like it was going to work. He was too far away from the wall to even be able to touch it anymore. Horrified at the gruesome death that awaited him, Clive felt himself start to pass out.

That is, until Andy bumped into him and knocked him against the wall. "Thanks, Andy!" Clive cried as the force of the bump stuck him onto the wall.

Andy snorted as he started to crawl down the wall towards the suited-up figures. "I saw you fainting back there," Andy grunted. "That was humiliating. I wonder why Bratt likes a girly coward like you better?"

Clive blushed. "I-ummm….I had a malfunction! I wasn't fainting!" he defended himself as he followed Andy.

Andy smirked. "Whatever you say, Clive. Whatever you say."

Clive was about to argue with Andy again when he suddenly noticed who was in the suits. That's Gru and Lucy! Oh no...what am I going to do?

Andy didn't seem to be distressed at all. In fact, he looked quite thrilled at the sight of Lucy. "Hey gorgeous! What're you doing with a guy like him?" he said as he pointed rudely at Gru.

A dart flew through the air and pierced one of Andy's eyes in response. "Ow!"

Clive laughed. "Who's the embarrassing one now?" he teased as he got out his hammer and drill. He didn't know exactly how he was going to use them without hurting Lucy or Gru, but he was going to make sure no harm came to his former owners.

"Shut up," Andy hissed, clearly mortified at his own blunder. He ripped the dart out of his eye without so much as a grimace before flinging it back at his tormentors. "Take that!"

Clive closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to see the results. He heard a loud scream and winced. He hoped the dart hadn't landed in anyone else's eyes.

"You're fainting again, aren't you?" Andy asked.

Clive's eyes flew open. Tentatively, he glanced down the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. The dart hadn't landed anywhere near Gru or Lucy. Instead, it had fallen harmlessly between them...but they'd had to jump to avoid the dart, and now they were hanging on by just their fingertips.

Clive felt his stomach twist and turn. "I think we should leave them alone," he whispered to Andy.

Andy looked betrayed. "What? You're just gonna let them escape like that? Just whose side do you think you're on?"

"Y-you're right," Clive said as he readied his weapons. "How do you suppose we take them out?"

Andy smiled sinisterly. "With THESE," he said as he rushed at the duo with his chainsaws whirring.

Clive's heart felt like it had frozen. "NO!" he screamed as he threw himself between the AVL agents and Andy.

Andy paused just inches from Clive, his chainsaws slowly winding down. "Clive, get out of the way! They're intruders!" Andy snapped.

"But we can't kill them!" Clive insisted, still in a state of shock. He looked back at Lucy and Gru, who were looking completely confused at Clive's act of heroism.

"He still cares about us?" Lucy said.

"I guess so," Gru said. He looked at Dru, who was looking more panicked than ever at his pants' failure to hold him up. "But what do ve do about Dru?"

"We do this," Lucy said. Without warning, she grabbed Gru by the arm, took out a gun, and shot a grappling hook towards the ledge where Dru was hanging. With a "YEE-HAW!", Lucy swung them over to the ledge and yanked Dru up beside them.

Dru looked at his pants in dismay. "My pants! Zey're stretched beyond repair!" he sobbed. "And zat vas my best pair!"

Gru tried not to laugh. "Vell, you can get a new pair vonce ve get you back home."

Andy shook his fist at the Grus. "Get back here! Balthazar won't let you get away with this!"

"We'll see about that," Lucy retorted. With another blast of her grappling hook gun, she swung Gru and Dru to a safe spot on the spiky beach near the watercycles.

As she hopped onto hers, Gru looked at Dru and asked, "Vhat do we do about Dru? Zere's no space for heem."

Before Lucy could answer, a VHS tape flew through the air and hit Dru on the head. "NOT AGAIN!" Dru groaned as he rubbed his head.

Clive couldn't help but giggle. He giggled even more when Gru picked up the tape and exclaimed, "'LAST EPISODE OF EVIL BRATT'?! Seriously?!"

As Gru swung onto his watercycle and shoved Dru in behind him, he heard Bratt shout cheerfully, "Make sure everyone in the whole world sees it!"

….

"Have you ever actually seen the last episode of Evil Bratt?" Andy asked Clive as they sat in Bratt's bedroom, taking the suction cups off their feet.

"Yeah. Once. It wasn't all that great," Clive admitted. He frowned and pulled harder, only to be knocked backwards as the suction cup finally came off. "Ooof!"

Andy tilted his head to the side. "So if it's not exactly great television, then why is Bratt so obsessed with it? I'm pretty sure I've only been around for a month and a half, and he spent hours every day talking about his stupid show."

Clive dramatically put the back of his pincer to his forehead. "Because Bratt is a maniac who thinks his show was the best thing in the world!"

"He's a nut all right," Andy agreed.

Clive sniggered. "I think that's the only time we've actually both agreed on something."

Before Andy could come up with something nasty to spit back, Bratt danced into the room. "Woohoo! My totally bodacious plan actually worked! Now everyone can see the masterpiece that was the final episode of Evil Bratt!"

Clive couldn't even bring himself to fake a smile. "Good. Now, can we do other stuff that isn't related to Evil Bratt?"

Bratt looked scandalized. "Clive, are you saying you don't like my show anymore?"

What Clive really wanted to say was, Yes. This entire time, I thought your show was awful and now I'm not afraid to say so to your face. But he didn't want to hurt Bratt's feelings, so instead he said, "It's a great show. I don't have a problem with it. It's just that you're...the tiniest bit...ummm...over-enamored of it."

"I am NOT! Evil Bratt was the best show on the air!" Bratt insisted.

Andy leaned in towards Clive and uttered, "You're right, Chive. He's a total mental case."

"My name is actually Clive," Clive corrected him, trying to hide his glee at the fact that for once Andy wasn't arguing with him.

"Besides," Bratt added. "If they don't air the final episode of Evil Bratt, I'm gonna build my robot again!"

Clive went cold. "Please, sir, don't do that," he pleaded.

"Yeah, you're gonna make poor Chivey faint again," Andy snarked.

"My name is Clive," Clive said. "And I don't faint! You try being trapped under concrete and burning wires for thirty minutes."

Bratt laughed. "Suit yourself! I know for a fact that Andy here would be more than happy to accompany me."

A look of suspicion flitted across Andy's face for the briefest moment. But then he swallowed and nodded. "Yeah, of course I'm going with you. Besides, I'm bigger and stronger than Clive ever was!"

"That's my boy!" Bratt clapped Andy on the back. "Now to procure the materials…"

When he was sure that Andy and Bratt weren't looking, Clive let out a sob. Do you think that the Grus would be willing to take me back?

…...

"Zat's eet?" Gru asked as he and the rest of the AVL finished watching the tape Balthazar Bratt had given up. "No secrets? No code? Just a...a normal televeesion show?!"

"I'm afraid so," Valerie Da Vinci admitted. She clenched her fists by her sides. "Just when we were so close to finding something….we get this-this utter piece of garbage!"

A guy in the back row cleared his throat nervously. "Ummm, Valerie, aren't you being a little harsh? I mean, Evil Bratt was a big show back in the day…"

Valerie glared at the guy for three minutes flat until he slunk down in his seat. She paced back and forth, rattled by the lack of clues the tape had revealed. "So besides this tape, there's no leads on Bratt or where his location is. I'm going to have to think about this one for a while." She clapped her hands sharply. "Meeting dismissed!"

"I'm not surprised that nothing came of the tape," Lucy said as she and Gru prepared to leave.

"You're not?" Gru said.

"Yeah," Lucy replied. "I figured Bratt just wanted to come to a kind of closure on his show, you know? Like, since he was so upset it ended and all, maybe he wanted to have some sense of control over it."

"I never thought of it like zat," Gru said. "But zere vas something he said….'make sure ze whole vorld sees it'. Vhat if he finds out zat we're not releasing ze tape to ze public?"

"Well, I don't know!" Lucy said. "Who knows what he's doing out there? He could be building another giant robot for all we know!"

"Speaking of robots…" Gru frowned. "How do ve tell ze girls about Clive?"

"Ummm…" Lucy trailed off. Gru waited for her to finish her sentence, but she never did.

"I know, I know," said Gru. "I don't know vhat to tell ze girls either! But Edith knows zat something ees up. She's been asking us for days vhat happened to her robot. She's not going to be happy when she hears zat Ninja ees working for Bratt now."

Lucy slipped her hand into Gru's and squeezed it. "I guess we'll just have to do the best we can."

"I guess ve vill," said Gru.

…...

"I don't even know where you would get purple shiny paint from," Clive remarked as he looked at what seemed like thousands of cans of the exact same shade of purple.

"And I got a discount too!" Bratt crowed. He danced around one of the cans for a bit before picking up two of the cans by their handles. "So, who's ready to help me paint?"

"Paint what?" Andy complained.

"Paint my brand-new giant robot, of course!" Bratt said.

"Y...you made it that fast?" Clive asked.

"I got the Bratt pack to do it practically overnight," Bratt explained. "In fact, I think they're still working on it right now!"

Andy grimaced. "Why can't they do the paint as well? We can't possibly reach that high. You built us so close to the ground!"

"Andy does have a point," Clive said.

Bratt frowned and stroked his mustache. "Huh...you're right," he muttered. "But it would still be fun to paint with you guys! Are you ready?"

Both robots just stared at Bratt.

Bratt sighed. "Fine. I'll get the Bratt pack to do it," he said. "You guys are just afraid of some brotherly bonding, aren't you?"

"I just don't want to get paint on me," Andy said.

"And I don't want to paint with Andy," Clive added.

"Good, because I don't want to paint with you either!" Andy said. Clive watched as Andy angrily rolled out of the room. What's with him? He's so angry all the time. Is that some kind of programming mistake? Or does Andy have some kind of problem with anyone who isn't him?

"How long do you think it will be until you're ready to launch your new robot?" Clive asked.

"A few weeks," Bratt replied cheerfully. "Besides, I still have to wait and see if the AVL releases my tape to the public or not!"

Great. Just a few weeks until I get crushed by rubble again, thought Clive.