Jim and I walked away from the longboat until we came across a hill like area. We both slid down the metal stump to the bottom. I looked at my arm when we reached the bottom and saw some blood slipping out between my fingers. "Jim..." I mumbled. He looked at me and saw the blood. He looked around and grabbed a fungi like leaf from the ground. Morph turned into a knife for Jim to use to cut a vine from a tree off. He came to me with the stuff.
"Move your hand." He said. I did so, seeing my palm coated in red. Jim quickly pressed the leaf onto the wound and used the vine as a bandage to keep it still. "It's just until we can find somewhere to hide, okay." I nodded. We continued walking through the jungle like terrain. While we walked, I kept thinking about Silver and his betrayal. I stopped walking, just staring at the ground feeling tears build in my eyes.
"Emma? Are you okay?" Jim asked. I looked at him and started crying. "Hey, what's wrong?" He said as he came over to check on me.
"Everything!" I said. "Silver, his betrayal, Arrow's death, everything! I-I trusted him a-a-and he backstabbed us! I-I saw him as my d-d-dad since I never had o-o-one! He even knew what S-S-Scroop did and let u-u-us take the blame!" I tried to wipe my tears away but more came. I cried harder than the night when I told him I was an orphan. It all felt like too much.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "It's okay, Emma I understand. I saw Silver as a father figure too. Look, I know it's gonna sound harsh but I need you to keep it together right now. I know you're taking a lot of pain in your heart but you need to stop crying now. I don't want anything bad to happen right now. You think you can hold it together until we find a hiding spot?"
I shrugged. I didn't know if I could keep it together. I took a few breaths to calm myself down and Jim wiped some tears away. After a while I put myself together. I nodded and we continued walking off through the wild. After a while it felt like we're being watched. We both scooted over a metal trunk as we heard something rustle in the bushes. I jumped behind Jim and pushed him towards the bushes. "You go check it out." I said.
"Did you really have to push me?" He whispered.
"You got the gun!" I hissed. Morph chittered in fear. Jim and I shushed him. He pulled the pistol from the back of his pants and turned it on. I held my hands out to Morph for him to hide. He zoomed into my hands and I clasped them around him. The brunette boy walked closer to the bush and looked. Something popped out from the bush with a scream, making Jim scream, which made me scream. Jim fell onto the ground with the thing on top of him. It was a robot with bronze like skin, thin arms,hands and legs with his torso, head, and feet a bit bigger, a compass on his chest and wires sticking from the back of his head like hair. I saw his pixelated green eyes as he examined Jim.
"Oh this is fantastic!" He said before opening Jim's mouth and looking inside it. "A carbon-based life form come to rescue me at last! I just wanna hug you and squeeze you and hold you close to me." The robot grabbed Jim and pulled him into a tight hug. At this point I let Morph go.
"All right. Okay." Jim said as he tried to get the robot off him. I giggled when he just jumped back on him. "Would you just let go of me?"
"Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry." He said as he let go of Jim. He then wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "It's just I've been marooned for so long. I mean, solitude's fun, don't get me wrong. For heaven's sakes after a hundred years, YOU GO A LITTLE NUTS!" His head jerked forward as his eyes and hair went crazy. He laughed and looked at Jim.
"I can tell." I said, making him look at me.
"Oh, I didn't know you brought your sister. Oh no, your arm."
"We're not related." Jim said.
"Yeah, no blood connections." I said.
"But you two look so alike, I guess it's a weird doppelgänger thing." The robot saw the look Jim was giving him and removed his arm from his shoulder, even fixing his shirt sleeve. "I'm sorry. Am I, uh, I am, um my name is uh..." He placed his hands on his head as he tried to recall his name. Morph now hid behind Jim's shoulder as he observed him. The blob turned into a miniature version of the robot, except his head opened to reveal a cuckoo clock bird, poking out and making its signature noise. Jim and I smirked at the image before Jim shut the head close, making the blob turn back to normal. "B.E.N!" The robot said. "Of course, I'm B.E.N. Bioelctronic Navigator." He tapped his compas but it fell a little. Thankfully he managed to catch it. "Oops. And you two are?"
"Jim." The boy said.
"Emma." I said.
B.E.N grabbed our hands and shook them. "Oh, what a pleasure to meet you, Jimmy and Emmie." He said. I pulled my hand from his cold one.
"Thanks?" I said, not really minding the nickname he gave me.
"It's Jim." The boy said as he pulled his hand from B.E.N's grip. He bent down to pick up the pistol he dropped.
"Anyway." B.E.N said as he leaned on Jim. The boy shoved him off.
"Look, we're kind of in a hurry, okay?" The brunette said as he pushed him off. "We got to find a place to hide, and there's pirates chasing us." We started to walk away but B.E.N came running in front of us.
"Pirates!" He said. "Don't get me started on pirates! I don't like them." Jim started walking away but I stuck by B.E.N, knowing he's about to drop a bombshell on him. "I remember Captain Flint. This guy had such a temper." Jim whirled around in shock from the words that came out of the robot's mouth.
"So you knew Captain Flint back then?" I asked as Jim came back.
B.E.N sat down on what looked like a rock. "I think he suffered from mood swings, personally. I'm not a therapist and anyway, but I... you let me know when I'm rambling." He said. Jim rolled his eyes at the mood swings comment while I chuckled silently.
"But that means, but wait but then you gotta know about the treasure?" Jim asked.
"Treasure?"
"Flint's Trove?" I said. "The Loot of a Thousand Worlds?" Morph turned into a treasure chest filled with gold and riches to empathize the point. B.E.N stood up from his seat.
"It's well, it's all a little-little-little fuzzy." His eyes went wide as he recalled something. "Wait. I-I remember. I do, I— treasure!" The pupils of his eyes turned into treasure chests filled with riches. "Lost of treasure buried in the centroid-centroid-centroid of the mechanism." His voice became deeper and his head hung low as he remembered this. Jim and I flashed each other confused looks before looking back at him. "And there was this big door, opening and closing and opening and closing." His pupils then turned into triangles and they opened and closed with the compass on his chest. "And Captain Flint wanted to make sure nobody could ever get to his treasure, so I helped him—" He started sputtering, sparks coming from the open part of his head. He screamed in agony. "Data inaccessible! Reboot! Reboot! Reboot!"
"B.E.N?" I said, getting concerned and worried. "B.E.N? B.E.N?!" Jim slapped him so hard that his head spun around until it was facing us.
"And you two are?" He said, forgetting about everything that happened.
"Wait, wait, wait! What about the treasure?" Jim asked.
"I want to say Larry and Vanessa."
"The centroid of the mechanism thingy?" I asked.
"I'm sorry. My memory isn't what it used to be. I've lost my mind. I've lost my mind. You haven't found it have you?" He pushed Jim against the tree and started patting him down. "My missing piece?" He turned around and pointed to his head. "My primary memory circuit?" He reached over to start patting me down but I slapped his hand away.
"I'm not comfortable with you patting me down." I said.
"Look B.E.N, we really need to find a place to hide okay?" Jim said. "So we're just gonna be, you know, moving on." He grabbed my hand and we started walking away from him.
"Oh uh, so well then, I guess this is goodbye huh?" B.E.N said, trying not to cry. I looked back and saw him fall to his knees in despair. "I'm sorry that I'm so dysfunctional. So, uh, go ahead and... I do understand. I do. Bye bye." I noticed that Jim stopped in his tracks and looked back too. He looked at Morph and I. Morph whined.
"Please?" I said. "Can he come with us?" I put on my best puppy eyes for this. We're the first contact that B.E.N has had in a century and it'll be hard to see that go away and thinking you imagined it. Jim sighed in defeat.
"Look, if you're gonna come along, you're gonna have to stop talking." Jim said. B.E.N leaped to his feet with a big smile on his face. He cheered that he could join us and ran over. He jumped into Jim's arms, making him carry him like a bride.
"Oh this is fantastic!" B.E.N said. "Me and my best buddies out looking for a—" He saw the look Jim was giving and pretended to zip his lips shut. "Being quiet." He whispered.
"And you have to stop touching me."
"Touching and talking, that's my two big no-no's." He jumped off of the boy.
"Okay. Now, I think that we should—"
"Say, listen, before we go out on our big search, um would you mind if we made a quick pig stop at my place?" The robot pulled some reeds back to reveal a large circular like structure. "Kind of urgent." He added, scrunching his legs like he had to use the bathroom.
"B.E.N, you just solved our problem." I said.