| IT'S ASS KICKING TIME! Schmendrics clambered to his feet, his small,dark eyes focused on Johnny Five's back. I'll hit him in the neck and smash his skull right off his shoulders, he thought, hefting his weapon like a broadsword. Or maybe I'll just land this bar on top of that flat head of his. I'll shatter his skull and keep his eyes as trophies. Schmendrics brought the crowbar hurtling down. "YAAAAGH!" Johnny Five moved his head. The crowbar missed. It almost struck his shoulder, but he caught the weapon easily in his open hand. The jarring impact was so hard Schmendrics couldn't let go of the crowbar. His mouth clamped painfully shut. He caught the very tip of his tongue between his teeth and tasted salty blood flooding into his mouth. "You rang?" Johnny asked sweetly. He didn't bother glancing back. Instead he gripped the weapon and flipped it forward. Schmendrics suddenly became airborne. He sailed gracefully over the robot's head, and slammed to the ground in front of Johnny's treads. "Urghk!" he gasped. He couldn't move, all the wind was knocked clean out of him. Johnny contemplated the dark thoughts of running Schmendrics over several times. Flatten his thick-boned skull and mushy brain into the mud. Maybe that'd increase his IQ and get him slightly above the level of Simian caveman. Johnny seized Schmendrics by the front of his soiled shirt and wrenched him forward until the human's face was an inch from his own. Schmendrics stared, terrified, into the robot boy's functional, red-tinged eye. "You nothing but a numb-butt pathetic zobo," growled Johnny. He tossed him aside like a sack of flour, straight into a pile of rubbish. Saunders stared in morbid fascination at this unbelievable turn of events. Oh ghod! He'll come after ME now! Maybe I'll get lucky and this'll smash his other eye out! He hurled his weapon at Johnny Five. Johnny expertly caught it in one hand, then bent the steel bar into the number eight. It looked like putty in his huge, suddenly dangerous, robot hands. Saunders watched Johnny's haughty display of immense strength and imagined fearfully, Johnny Five doing that to his neck bones. Or leg bones. Or maybe his backbone. Johnny threw the useless bar aside, and advanced menacingly on Saunders. Saunders quickly backed away from him. "Oh ghod, no!" he said pleadingly. "Please don't -" "Yeah, go Five!" Fred laughed, adding his own commentary. "You're the ma-" Oscar ploughed his fist into Fred's gut, putting his full weight behind the blow. "- Man? My ass!" he hissed. Fred instantly keeled over, eyes bulging out of his face. The ringleader left him gasping there and hurried away. Better get outa here quick! Saunders ain't no match for that freakazoid! I'll let him distract the fiend while I make my getaway. Saunders backed up until he was pressed against the fence. This bug-eyed freak is gonna beat me senseless! he thought, terrified. He heard a low snarl issuing from the robot's LED mouth. "I - I didn't - I mean, it wasn't my idea - it was Schmendrics, he wanted to beat on you! I had no choice, you gotta believe me! Oh, please don't hurt me!" Saunders raised his hands submissively and cowered down. But still Johnny crowded him against the fence. The robot boy studied the man for several curious moments. What a whimpering coward! I wouldn't waste my time with him! "Will you lower your arms, please?" Johnny asked. "Huh? Oh, s - sure," Saunders stuttered. "Thankyou," replied Johnny, in his normal pleasant tone. "Y- you're welcome," Saunders said in a small hopeful whisper. Johnny tore the chain links off the fence. It immediately rolled up, entangling helpless Saunders in it. Fred finally found his wind, and his voice. "...F.... Fiii - FIVE!" he bellowed between coughing fits. "Os- Oscar!" He pointed over his shoulder. "Rasco?" Johnny glared in the direction Fred indicated. His eyeflaps drew angrily together. "OSCAR! RRRRGGGHHH!!" A PUNISHMENT FROM GOD Now that Johnny had dealt with two of his antagonists, and now had just the ringleader to capture, he was suddenly aware that the pain and misery he'd suffered earlier was returning. The fighting steadily drained him of his energy, and his body ached horribly. The bleeding increased and he dripped blood on the pavement as he chased his target down the street. He knew he was doing too much for his damaged body to cope with, but he didn't have any choice. Luckily Oscar was fat and unfit, a real overweight slob. He didn't make much leeway before Johnny saw his fat ass. Oscar glanced back, saw Johnny, and increased his lumbering run. Panic galvanised him into moving faster. He struggled to ignore the painful stitch in his side and the sweat running down his face in streams. If the man was so unfit, Johnny was just as disadvantaged. Exhaustion krept into his conscience. If his body and mind was now so weary, how would he catch the greedy, lying, SOB? Johnny forced the growing fatigue into the darkest corners of his tired brain. "Give it up, Osar!" he shouted at the receding form of the portly man. "...Just wasting your time!" Oscar gasped his way onto the jetty that went into the lake. He clomped across the wharf, saw a speedboat, and shoved its owner aside, casting him into the water. I'll go by boat to the airport, he mused. The bug-eyed mecha-freak can't chase me across water. Unless it swims, and it don't look like it can. He spied Johnny's form rolling up onto the bank. Sparks flew in small showers from the young robot's chest. "So long, you pathetic robot sucker!" Oscar yelled, showing him his fist truimphantly. "You'll never catch me now!" Johnny bent his head forward. I'll stop him with this, he thought. His antenna ascended from his flat skull, but all it uttered was a negative whine. Johnny glowered darkly at the fat man as he fled the dock. Rats! Can't lock on frequency... I'll meet him at the head. The robot boy hitched a free ride on a truck with a canoe strapped to its roof, speeding along behind it. He didn't bother looking down at his smashed control panel with its damaged display grid. He already knew what it said. He had fifteen minutes left to catch Oscar. Johnny rolled quickly onto the docks. He saw the speedboat coming toward him. It was too far into the bay for him to reach, even if he had the capacity to swim - which he didn't. He hated water anyhow, hated being in it, even disliked the rain, which now came down in a gentle drizzle. It made his misery worse, causing sparks to explode while another of his systems overloaded and short circuited. Water dripped from Johnny's eyeflaps. He shook his head and water sprayed everywhere. I feel just awful! he told himself miserably. His neck piston blared with renewed pain and his headache pounded relentlessly, affecting his concentration. He forced himself to ignore his protesting body. His treads were slowing him down! Must go faster! he admonished himself fiercely. Move it! More sparks showered as something else vital to his functions gave up and shorted out. The rain came down. Oscar was getting closer. Up ahead, Johnny noticed the presence of a crane. He saw a long cable hanging from its top. Then he suddenly remembered watching Tarzan on TV, swinging on jungle lianas, swooping through the trees. With my grappling cable I could... Johnny hurried to get to it before Oscar overtook him. As he reached the crane ramp, he clearly heard Oscar's derisive laughter on his enhanced auditory receivers. "Forget it, you numb-arse machine! You can't swim!" Johnny ignored the malicious taunt and heaved a wooden pallet over. He used another to get himself onto the crane platform. He turned his head and concentrated his waning attention on the crane controls. The machine obeyed his kinetic command and started. It slowly rose into the air. "Go faster!" Johnny yelled, glaring up angrily and raising his arms aloft. "More... altitude!" Then he peered down and saw Oscar sailing on by. "Adios!" the fat man crowed triumphantly. "...Cocksucker!" Johnny's fury mounted. "Rrrgh!" he snarled. "OSCAR! You will NOT get away!" He raised his arms above his head, shook his fists, and roared his next words at the world. "Now I'm REALLY PISSED OFF!" The fat slob raised his middle finger in salute. Johnny heard him cackle as he went past. Johnny no longer possessed his deadly laser weapon (although at this moment he wished he still did), but he had his grappling cable with magnetic clamp. He saw the top of the crane, calculated the range, double and triple-checked the trajectory, and took aim. He fired, the magnetic clamp adherred itself to the crane hook, which was also suspended on ten feet of loose cable. It would give Johnny a few extra feet of swing. More than enough to cross Oscar's trajectory. Then he launched himself off the platform and hurtled down. His seven-hundred pound weight gave him enough velocity to slam into Oscar. Johnny briefly toyed with the idea of pitching him over the side, Van Der Veer jewels and all. Hope the prat drowned while the jewels dragged him to the bottom of the lake. Instead he uttered a wild Tarzan yell and swooped down on shocked Oscar. "No!" the horrified man cried. "NOOO!" Johnny whammed into him, almost knocked him overboard, but he firmly caught the fat man. He wrenched Oscar out of the still-operating speedboat and carried him high into the air. "Don't let me go! Please!" Oscar bellowed, flailing in a mad panic. He clutched Johnny's forearms. The sportsbag was pressed like dead weight to his chest. The robot boy couldn't help himself. This was the perfect opportunity to say it. "Me Johnny... you busted." They swung back toward the wharf, and went up high over a tarpaulin covering stacks of bales. Johnny detached his grappling cable and they both crashed to the tarpaulin. Oscar howled on his way down. Johnny fell heavily on his back. He didn't have the strength or will any longer to utter another of his smart ass remarks. The fat man heard the blaring sirens of nearing police cars and ambulances. He slumped, arms still wrapped protectively around his precious sportsbag. He wondered if he'd have the time to hide the bag, get a hired goon to come back and collect it for him later. Then he noticed Johnny watching him. The robot made no sound, he just lay there, staring quietly at the man. I'm finished! Oscar thought hopelessly. His great plan to emmigrate to Brazil, live like a king for the rest of his natural life, was over. Thanks to this... this STUPID bug-eyed GEEK! Then Oscar heard Johnny utter a soft groan. "You freakazoid B@STARD!" he foghorned. He turned to face the young robot directly. "You RUINED me! You ruined my LIFE!" He grabbed Johnny and wrenched him forward by his three-tiered neck gimble. He leaned right down into Johnny's face and bellowed, "ARE YOU LISTENING??" he shook him viciously. His only reply was an even weaker groan. Johnny could barely lift his head. His eyeflaps opened slightly wider when he heard Oscar's panicked, desperate roar. "...Ruin... you?" he asked softly. "...am... glad." Oscar finally released him. His shoulders sagged. "What are you?" he asked in a defeated tone. "...Punishment from god?" Johnny let his head fall back again. He no longer had the strength to answer. The robot boy didn't know how long he lay there, unable to move and speak. He didn't care any more. The pain came in disorientating waves and the rain continued drizzling down, drenching the poor creature. He couldn't find the strength to lock off his pain receptors. He closed his eyeflaps and allowed himself to sink into a bottomless abyss. But then he heard a familiar voice. For a moment he thought he was dreaming. It was Benjamin Jahvi, his friend and fellow-creator. The robotics engineer shoved past the police officers hauling Oscar to his feet to drag the fat man away. Ben dropped to his knees beside the young robotic lifeform. He stared, horrified, at the robot boy. He hadn't seen Johnny since he and Fred were locked up in the Do Wa Restaurant's freezer. The young droid was an utter mess. Ben wondered how Johnny could possibly still be functioning in the terrible state he'd been reduced to. He saw enough fatal damage to put a SAINT robot out of commission permanently. Meaning Johnny should've died hours ago. Ben glanced down at Johnny's control panel and saw the poor creature had less than a minute left before his memory totally failed. Johnny turned his head, widened his left eye flaps. "...Ben...jamin," he whispered. "What's happened to his auxillary power?" Ben shouted. Fred shook his head. "It's dead! He used it up!" He watched as Johnny tried to move his body. It looked horribly human and he turned away, unable to look any longer. "I TOLD him not to do this. But he wouldn't listen, I couldn't stop him -" Ben looked around desperately. He spied an ambulance officer racing over with a portable ECG unit. His eyes instantly brightened. He leapt up and grabbed the portable unit from the arriving medic's hands. "Give me that!" he shouted at the surprised man. "You should be doing your job right!" The medic had been forewarned over the RT that someone was badly hurt and required urgent medical attention. He expected to be saving the life of a human patient. Instead, he saw a huge, silver, alien thing that had treads in place of legs lying supine on his back. Judging by the half-dead way he lay there, the medic surmised the mechanical creature was the patient in dire need. "What the... HELL??" he wrenched the ECG unit off Ben. "Are you NUTS?" "Do not be stopping me!" Ben snatched the unit back. He raised his finger warningly at the medic. "Or I'll be beating the headlights out of you!" Sandy went from dumbfounded to confounded. "Ben, what are you doing?" she asked. Johnny barely heard the commotion. He didn't pay heed of it. He sensed his body shutting down, and had no way of stopping it. His weird pulse rate, odd enough when he was in full health, now became a continuous bleating whine that issued from his display grid. His vision faded and he shuddered. Water dripped down his face. He hated having the rain on him. "...Goodbye... Benjamin..." he found the willpower to utter a final whisper. Ben stared in surprise at him. Johnny's head fell back and his eyeflaps closed. His body relaxed. "Johnny!" Ben cried. "NOOO!" JOHNNY MEETS HIS NEW FRIEND AGAIN Johnny Five opened his eyeflaps. Aren't I supposed to be dead? he wondered briefly. He looked up and saw Ben shaking him desperately by his shoulders. Is this what Fred talked about? An out of body experience? He did a brief internal scan of his body, and discovered all his systems had flatlined. He was, without a doubt, clinically dead. He tried uttering meaningless words to the stricken Ben, but the man didn't, or couldn't, hear him. Then Johnny tried to move. He found himself completely incapacitated. For several moments he felt nothing at all, and then he felt odd prickings of his earlier pain returning. Shouldn't feel anything if I'm dead! Or maybe am not really dead yet... just stuck in limbo... like hell... The young robot shuddered and closed his eye. He thought of everything he'd done so badly wrong in his short life that deserved him an afterlife of eternal hell. Maybe because he was a robot - that could be why... Suddenly Johnny saw images forming in his mind. He was so bewildered he didn't understand what he perceived. There were nightmarish, fleeting visions of a new species of robot. He seemed to be responsible for it. He saw images of a SAINT, one of his siblings, and this confrontation was NOT a friendly one. He saw the curious faces of humans he didn't know. Or maybe hadn't met yet. He shook his head violently, using his headache to try and block the images out. But all that did was make his head hurt worse than ever before. Johnny's eye flicked open. His dull red iris cycled wide. What are these images? he thought desperately. What do they mean? Is this my mind playing tricks on me again? He focused again on the human faces. One face stood out from the crowd. Johnny's eye widened with instant recognition. He smiled. In his SAINT way, of course. It's... her! The angel... I think. She was no longer enveloped in a white aura. Johnny now saw her features clearly. Shoulder length dark hair, a heart-shaped face, gold-coloured eyes. Her figure was slim. She came from the hazy nothingness of the dark side of his mind, and kneeled on the tarpaulin beside him while Ben crouched on his other side, fighting to restart his mechanical heart with the defibrilator. Johnny looked adoringly up at her. "Who are you?" he asked while she leaned down to take his hand in hers. The young woman put her free hand to the side of his face. "My name is Ja`eda, Johnny." He frowned slightly. He didn't know any Ja`eda. But he gazed up at her and said, "You are like angel, Ja`eda. Are you my gaurdian angel? Is what Fred suggested. Also read it in books at the bookstore I trashed." She smiled fondly at him. "Something like that, Johnny." "Does it mean I am going with you now? You told me you'd come back for me, and you have." "You want to leave your body and this world?" she asked, surprised. "Yes," Johnny nodded his head. He didn't find anything odd in what he said. It sounded perfectly normal to him. "Is no place here for me now. Am just robot, machine to humans. But you, Ja`eda. You see real me. Why?" "I can see your life force," she leaned down so her face was less than two inches from his. She distracted Johnny from the pitiful sight of Ben begging him to wake up. "Your aura is beautiful, Johnny. It's gold-coloured and brilliant. It means you are a living, sentient being." "Aura...? Me...? But robot not have - " Ja`eda smiled again. "You're a lifeform, Johnny. You are as alive as these humans around you." Johnny began to understand the meaning behind the girl's words. "You're not going to leave me again, Ja`eda, are you? Don't want to be revived. Want to go with you!" "I know," she said. She knew she couldn't pull the wool over his eyes. "But I haven't been born yet. I want you to come with me. But you'll just have to wait, Johnny." "Been... BORN yet?" Johnny asked, incredulous. "Not understand!" "It would be much too difficult to explain." Ja`eda watched Ben, who zapped Johnny's unresponsive body again. He shrugged off the medic, who tried to grab the paddles from him. "It's been too long!" The medic argued with Ben. "Look, his heart won't restart. He's dead! Get over it!" Ben ignored the stream of uncaring words and grabbed Johnny's shoulders. He shook him fiercely. "Come on, Johnny!" "Your aura, Johnny," Ja`eda looked calmly down at him. "It's glow is intensifying." He couldn't see anything. All he perceived was her. She raised her hand to his chest and cupped something invisible in her palm. "I am holding the very heart of your lifeforce," she said. "It resides here." She took her cupped hand and placed it to a spot just above the top of his flat head. His blue iris followed the path of her hand, flaps wide in curiosity. "It contains everything that is you. Your personality, your experiences, everything. So you are not just a memory program imprinted on circuit boards, Johnny." She opened her hand and the bright gold light melded into the darker golden glow around him. "But if that gets stronger, it means I am reviving, Ja`eda!" Johnny raised his arms toward her. She nodded. "No! Please stay!" he begged. "Just for few more minutes! Want to know you better at least, Ja`eda!" She took his hands in hers, and while they stared at each other, Johnny watched her fade away. He saw her mouth form the words 'goodbye, Johnny'. As she disappeared, Johnny vowed to himself he would never forget her face. The first thing Johnny felt just before he regained consciousness was the painful return of his senses. He clearly heard Ben's begging voice, the pressure of something pressed against his lower body, and a sudden explosion of pain that made him jerk convulsively upward. His annoying, aching headache returned. Now he sensed his systems coming back on line, tentatively. He heard his mechanical heart pulsing again. It showed on the ECG unit. Ben and the medic stared doubtfully at it. The purpose of the machine was to stop the electrical charges coursing through an irregularly beating heart. It should also work for Johnny, his own heart functioned similiar to a human heart. The shocks would stop his heart, so it should restart on its own. In theory. Would a machine that worked to save human lives save his? Ben saw the control panel's display grid light up red. One systems function at a time. They stayed red. Now all Johnny's systems were on line. Ben saw Johnny's head move, he saw his eyeflaps flicker. He watched Johnny's eye open, the tiny iris yawn wide. The medic stared, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. "Oh my ghod!" said Ben, putting his hands together. Johnny could barely focus, everything came to him in misty shades of dull colour. He thought he recognised the shape of a human hand coming down to touch his face. Ben wiped the rain water from Johnny's face with his sleeve. More images steadily came into focus. Then Ben heard a barely audible whisper, he had to lean close to hear him utter the words. "Benjamin. My friend." "Johnny Number Five!" Ben responded, overjoyed. His hand touched the side of Johnny's head. "Are you completely operational? One hundred percent?" Another weak whisper. "Perfectly... KO." "Oh thank god!" Ben said. He could easily fix Johnny's scrambled speech program. When he was in better health, of course. He kept his face directly in Johnny's sight, the young robot had difficulty focusing correctly. Johnny's head fell back. He closed his eye. What a relief. "I have SUCH a headache," he moaned. Sandy smiled at Ben and Fred patted Johnny on the top of his flat head. "Welcome back, Five!" he said to the boy. THE END! YAY! GO HOME! |
 |