Chapter 10: What Goes Around...
Half a minute earlier…
As Cub and Thresher picked flowers with butterflies hovering around their heads, Sniffles was nodding to himself in satisfaction. Yes, things were going very well, very smoothly.
The robot shifted out of the way. Sniffles noticed a conspicuous mound of dirt close to the flower patch. He squinted closer at Thresher. A series of tiny dots were crawling up the side of the robot's head.
Ants! And they were probably the same little bastards that always seemed to be harassing him.
Sniffles got a twitch in his eye. Harassing him and giving him nightmares. The little sociopaths had done some crazy things to him in his dreams and he often woke up in a state of terror.
In fact, Sniffles had theorized that he'd actually lived previous lives or had dimensional counterparts. Regardless, at some point a version of himself was a target of pointless, seemingly endless torment and the only indication of this came from a shared memory reserve located within a space-time junction point only accessible through dreams.
But that was ridiculous. He lived a real life, not one of fiction.
As he was reminiscing, the little ant bastards infiltrated Thresher and hijacked the robot's central processing unit.
Thresher tossed Cub in the air then suddenly began seizing and twitching. The baby's squeal of delight was cut off when he slammed face first into the pavement.
With a gasp Sniffles took off all too late. The corrupted PDBot swiveled to meet its maker, switching out its right hand for a buzzsaw and raising it high.
Sniffles came to a sharp halt, stumbling back to his rear in a panic. The buzzsaw came down and nicked several inches of his tail off.
"AHHHH!" Sniffles screeched. Thresher swiped its T-Ball bat up and charged him.
There was only one chance at survival. Sniffles scrambled up the hill towards a tree, zooming forty-five degrees up its trunk. "Ah HA!" he yelled triumphantly. His robot couldn't climb!
Thresher arrived at the base of the tree and began slicing through the trunk with its buzzsaw. Well, that sucked.
Sniffles clung tightly to the branch as the world began leaning. Why did he have to give Thresher such a strong saw? In fact, why'd he give it a saw in the first place?
The anteater bailed as the tree crashed on its side and began tobaganning down the hill. A branch bashed Thresher hard in the head, knocking it into a stall.
Furious, Sniffles shook the robot to try to rattle the stupid little ants out. He'd forgotten how durable he'd built it to be.
Thresher jerked back to life, brandishing the bat. It brutally swung for the anteater's head, oddly (and luckily) missing despite their close proximity.
As he rocked the crying baby in his arms, Flippy was at an impasse. For one, Sniffles was running for his life again.
On the other hand the tree was picking up speed as it slid down towards the park river, which currently had an otter swimming in it. Poor Russell had no idea that a wooden sled of death was headed his way as he dove for coins.
Flippy had to go for the blissfully ignorant first. He dropped the baby off with his father and dashed to make his move.
Within seconds the tree violently crashed into the river, partially submerging. A moment later Russell popped up from the water, unharmed but rather annoyed that someone had thrown a tree at him.
He was oblivious to the real danger hiding in the tree's branches—a crazy little psycho squirrel. It wasn't Nutty suffering from withdrawals, though. It was a wild and rabid animal out for blood.
Russell screamed in pirate when the slobbering thing jumpscared him out of nowhere, ready to gnaw his face off. A sliver of silver caught the rodent midair and snatched it away.
The squirrel thunked to a tree branch, now headless and pinned in place by a throwing knife.
Nearby, Flippy was frozen in an awkward position near the riverside with his hand extended. He hadn't even been noticed. He had to leave Russell stewing in terror and confusion.
But on the way to help Sniffles he found Cub wandering away from his sleeping father again. Just as Flippy was setting him back with Pop, someone crashed into him.
"Oh, there you are," he said to Sniffles, relieved. Wait, that meant…he looked over.
Thresher was coming their way full tilt, wildly swinging its bat in the air. Its coordination and balance was noticeably janky.
"Up the hill, up the hill!" Sniffles cried suddenly.
When Thresher tried to follow them, it only got halfway before it knocked itself off balance with its crazy swinging. It ragdolled down the hill and landed hard onto the sidewalk.
Flippy got a good laugh out of that. Then he grabbed Sniffles, demanding where the off switch on the robot was. The anteater stared at him blankly.
"You didn't make one?"
"Um…no?"
According to Sniffles, off switches were for cowards. Flippy wanted to claw his own face off when he heard that.
Meanwhile Thresher was recovering from its spill. It threw the bat aside and drew its buzzsaw again, limping a little as it made more precise movements up the hill.
Sniffles wilted in sadness. He hated to do it, but he had to destroy his own creation to stop it. He dug into his pocket.
Flippy bit down on the pin to one of his grenades. He had his sights on Thresher, but noticed something long and angular pop up out the corner of his eye.
"Wha…" he started, then felt his heart plummet down past his stomach. Sniffles had a—
"Paintball gun!"
Sniffles was proud of it, even if his bank account wasn't. It was the latest, state-of-the art model which had the selling point of making opponents rage and cry. The anteater's plan was this: wait until the robot was near the top of the hill, splatter it with a headshot, and let it tumble all the way back down again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Not even Thresher could survive multiple blunt force traumas.
Meanwhile, Flippy's throat had gone dry and his knees were shaking. Yes, he'd heard that it was a paintball gun. But no, it did not look dissimilar to a real rifle.
CRACK!
When Sniffles fired the first round Flippy recoiled and buckled like he'd gotten shot himself.
A sharp spatter of red paint exploded across Thresher's face and its head spun on its socket. The robot twirled and tumbled back down again. Its circuits were frying and even more of its servos began to malfunction.
It still stood back up, cracking its neck one way then the other. Sniffles lowered the scope from his eye, impressed and terrified. Sometimes he made his inventions too sturdy for his own good.
Behind him Flippy was hunched on his knees, struggling. He was clenching inch-deep furrows in the ground with his hands. He had forced himself to look away at the last moment and thus, hadn't seen the robot get hit or the color of the paint. Even with his rationality he knew that if he had looked, he would have lost.
Sniffles was about to take aim again when the bear suddenly grabbed him. Sniffles balked, startled. Flippy's eyes were wide and bloodshot.
"Put it away," Flippy hissed, shaking him roughly. "PUT! IT! AWAY!"
"Wh-What?!" Sniffles cried.
Down below Thresher twitched and paused a little ways up the hill, abruptly losing interest in its current objectives. It began scanning its environment anew. By now The Ants had long ditched their wild joyride and had left the robot far removed from its original programming.
Thresher spotted and gained interest in a familiar, much smaller target. Maybe this one would be easier to eliminate than the other two.
"Eeeeeee!" Cub cried joyfully.
Flippy snapped to. He still held Sniffles, who was in tears by now. Slowly, the both of them looked down. Thresher and baby were about to clash and it was going to be bloody.
Flippy dropped Sniffles. No matter how fast he was he wouldn't make it in time. It felt like time was slowing. His heartbeat was the loudest noise of them all. He knew he was going to lose it—how soon that'd be, he didn't know.
An object flew from his hand; he'd picked up a rock. It ricocheted off the rougebot's head.
Thresher came to a casual halt. It rotated its head towards the direction of the disturbance and fired a bolt of electricity from its eyes. It struck Flippy head-on, locking him in place for the next long, agonizing seconds. He distinctly noted The Book of the World shuddering harshly against his back, like it was screaming along with him. Could it feel pain, too?
His scream of pain turned into masochistic joy. He clenched his hands, muscling through the dying waves of electricity. The tingling in his skin and the heat in his blood made him feel alive.
Thresher was almost on Cub when Flipqy crashed into it, stopping the buzzsaw before it went through the baby's head. The robot tried swinging its saw about, having lost form but not strength. If the bear hadn't pulled his head back he would've lost it.
Flipqy seized the saw arm. He laughed as he violently tore the limb off and flung it away. Thresher knocked him back with a hidden spring in its chest compartment.
The both of them recovered, standing up at the ready. Flipqy hunched, eagerly licking his lips…then Cub wandered into his view, interested in playtime.
The bigger bear snarled at the little one, slinging his beret in the infant's face and butting him away. Thresher was charging him.
Flipqy threw himself forward into a rough tackle, ramming it back. He stood, and—brack! He landed a punch, buckling the robot's exterior. Thresher's slightly unfocused eyes sparked angrily. It zapped the bear with a short but potent burst of electricity and lengthened its claws.
As they traded blows Thresher's power fluctuated but it proved its hardiness and tact. It slashed at Flipqy's hide with its sharp claws and took many more hits along its failing body, at some odd point appearing to stoop and pick something up off the ground.
Flipqy delivered a particularly violent haymaker while the robot was unguarded. Thresher's spine cracked like a gunshot and it slouched weirdly, paralyzed.
For yet another time Flipqy treated Thresher like a tackling dummy. He grinned, feeling the thud and crash, the cracking and breaking of hundreds of internal parts as they both careened into the park fountain. Water began seeping through Thresher's damaged hull.
Flipqy grabbed the robot by the head, twisting and yanking it. He was so busy that he didn't notice Thresher was struggling with something in its remaining hand…
Right before Flipqy tore Thresher's head off, there was a metallic pnk and a flash of silver glinted through the air.
The bear bristled and his vigilance exploded. He looked down closer and saw it—the robot had just pulled the pin on a grenade. Unbeknownst to Flipqy, his other half had accidentally dropped it earlier and it had rolled all the way down the hill. With a growl the bear hopped back out of the water, furious he couldn't finish dismembering the damn thing.
Cub was crawling near the fountain, half-blind with the beret covering his face. Flipqy snatched the baby up and bounded away just in time; the entire park fountain exploded in a mix of heat and water, spraying vapor high into the air.
Flipqy skidded to a stop on the sidewalk. He snatched his beret off Cub's head and dropped him carelessly in the flower patch. Nearby, Pop stirred on the bench but still didn't wake.
Cub sat up amongst the tulips, dizzy. A butterfly fluttered from the throng of flowers, followed by dozens more.
As Flipqy was creeping up on Pop the butterflies swept by, overtaking his sight. By the time the entire flock had passed, the madness was gone out of his eyes.
Flippy looked around quickly, not understanding at first. It was a mess but there was a gracious lack of blood and body parts. He was also holding a knife and reaching for the sleeping, unaware soul on the bench.
Flippy stumbled away from Pop, heaving in distress. The Book of the World shook for his attention and he took it out, opening it with shaking hands.
Yeah…we hit a rough spot there, it said. But hey, no one's died! Yet.
"R-Really?"
Sure, sugar. You can peek through me in a bit to confirm. We're close, but not out the woods just yet.
Keep pushing. This day's almost done.
But let remind you…go and take that pipe outta poppa bear's hand. It's been sitting long enough.
Right…of all things a pigeon would've swooped down, grabbed the lit pipe, accidentally fumble it onto the grass, and start a grass fire…Flippy just shook his head, putting the dead possibility out of his mind. He took the pipe and blew it out. Sniffles was coming down the hill slowly, wide-eyed and wringing his hands. Flippy guessed he'd seen some crazy shit within the last several minutes.
Flippy sternly told the anteater to watch Cub until his father woke up and began to go on his way. He would've stayed to clean up the mess, but as the day wore down, so did his time.
He pieced together that his other half had really gotten into it with Thresher. He ached all over, had been slashed plenty of times and walked with a slight limp. He had to force himself to pick up the pace; he was too close to missing an opportunity. It was near the park entrance.
There, Disco Bear was attempting to impress Giggles…again. She was trying to read in peace and didn't look impressed with his shadowboxing. Flippy pointed out the tree they were underneath, letting them know that there was a nest of murder hornets high up in its branches. Disco Bear had been getting awfully close to the tree with his lame kicks and punches and would've eventually knocked the nest down by accident.
But thankfully they believed him. Before then, Flippy never recalled seeing them run as fast as they had.
When did we have murder hornets in town? he wondered as he left the park. Well, then, he guessed, since they'd been written into existence. He wondered if the nest would disappear since it hadn't been 'used' for its purpose, but was too tired to go back and check.
Flippy groaned. His adrenaline had worn off and now everything was hurting three times as much. He had to get home and fix himself up.
His injuries spoke boldly. He hung his head, dreadfully upset with himself. He hated how violent his other persona was. Thanks to the Book of the World he'd seen that side of his and could be conscious of his state of mind more, but he still felt so, so detached in his own body.
I just wish I wasn't like this.
As he walked he daydreamed. His depressed train of thought was interrupted when something magical struck him, making his heart swell. The Book told him he could be an author and write things how he wanted them to be…
I could…remove my PTSD and my other personality.
That was it. That was the bizarrely unrealistic, but achievable fix. The sooner he could get it done, the better.
Yes!
The only thing was, where the heck had that quill gotten to?
He jolted at the screech of tires. It was Flaky again. For a moment, they just stared awkwardly as she kept pace with his slow walking.
"Um, s…sorry," Flaky finally stammered, "…do you want a ride?"