"A
robot! We are helping a robot!" Steve thought as they drove back, "HQ is gonna hold us as traitors for
this!" He glanced down at the metalic dragon and the boy hugging it, "I'm gonna tell the others about him. I don't care if he's good! He's a robot, and is probably programed like the kid says so he can get into our
strongholds! I'm not falling for
it." Steve tried to ignore the
thing for the rest of the trip, but between the glare it gave off from the sun,
and the fact that it took up most of the room in the cabin, he found himself
loathing it by the time they got back.
Emergency power
activated... Back-up
systems online. Babe opened
his eyes to see the words sliding across his vision. It took him a moment to remember what had
happened, "I shot at another
robot... something hit me in the
back!" He sat up after the
memory returned to him, "Where am
I?" He asked. His optic sensors hadn't come fully back
online yet. All he could see was a bit
of light, and fuzzy blobs that kept moving around, which he presumed were
dragons and griffins. "Jimmy?" He felt something hug him. "Where
am I?" "Cleave! You're
awake! Mom wants you to come back!" Babe smiled down at Jimmy. "I--I
don't know if I can, Jimmy."
"But you've got to! We miss you...
Not just me and mom, all of the kids...
Won't you come back with me?"
"Look, Jimmy... I want to
and all, it's just that--I can't explain it to you yet Jimmy. I'm still trying to figure it out." "Please?" Babe found it hard to resist Jimmy's pleading
stare. He remembered how all of the kids
had treated him, how they had accepted him where everyone else shunned
him. He longed for friends again, but
couldn't bring himself to make any. It
would only hurt him more when he watched them all grow old and die.
"Look,
Cleave..." Jesse still found
himself trying to get over the name. It
sounded so normal! It didn't seem like
it should belong to a robot. "I can take you back. Nearly every stronghold has heard of
her... It wouldn't be too hard to
find." "NO!!! I made a vow... I'm not supposed to make more friends... It hurts too much..." Jesse exchanged a startled look with
Steve. He decided to try a
question. "Hurts too much? What
hurts?" He was sure it was his imagination,
but he thought he saw a tear slide from the robot's face when it answered. "I
watch them all die... They get to grow
old and die... I'm stuck in this damned
robot body for eternity!!!!!!"
The robot slammed a fist into the seat he was on, leaving the area he'd
hit with a large hole. Jesse watched
with renewed interest. "He really does seem normal. No robot can fake being that
angry..." He thought. Out loud he spoke to Steve. "Let's
take him back. He's just like the rest
of us. He won't do any harm to
us..."
Steve stopped their vehicle. "You
want to deal with him, fine! I'm not
going to risk getting killed because a robot acts like it's still alive!" He jumped out and grabbed a few weapons
before turning his back and walking the rest of the way back.
Jesse watched his friend leave. "Well,
looks like it's just us now... What say
we head back to your mom, eh?"
He was rewarded with a smile from Jimmy, but Cleave seemed to hate the
idea and drew into himself, if that was possible for a robot. "C'mon
Cleave, lighten up a bit. This kid and his mother both think you're
great. I'll believe them, but you sure
aren't making it any easier." "Leave
me alone..." Cleave curled up
into a ball and sat like that the rest of the way back to Jimmy's home.
----
Dana threw the curtains aside again. Jimmy was out there somewhere, and she
couldn't do anything about it unless she wanted to risk killing herself. She had already decided to go out and look,
but the rest of the village had closed her in, and since she had no wings, she
couldn't fly away, making it extremely easy for them to keep her in her
house. "Jimmy, why did you leave?! Why
did you run away?" There was no
one to talk to in her house, but it felt good to talk. "I
wanted Cleave to stay as much as you did, but even you know it's too dangerous
to go out there alone! You can't even
protect yourself by transforming... Now
I'll probably never see you again!"
There was suddenly a huge comotion
outside. It had appearantly
gotten everyone's attention, for the people gaurding
her door ran to see what was going on.
She slowly opened her door, and walked outside. There was a tank now parked in the center of
the village, and climbing out of it right then was... "Jimmy!" Her son looked up and waved. Behind him was a light brown colored griffin
talking to someone still inside the tank's cabin. Dana ran up to her son and hugged him tightly
to her chest. "Oh, Jimmy... I thought I'd
lost you back there... Why did you run
away like that? I thought we'd gotten it
straight that you were never supposed to go outside without an adult!" She cried as she spoke, too overcome with
emotions to think straight. Jimmy pushed
at her and wriggled to get free. "Mom, let go! I want to show you something! C'mon mom, you're emberrassing
me! Mom!" She eventually let go to see what Jimmy was
talking about. She jumped slightly when
she saw Cleave slowly walking up to her.
"Cleave?.. You... you came back..." She put her hand to her mouth, remembering
what had driven him off in the first place.
"I thought tha--" Cleave gently put a hand
up. "Just
don't do that again, Dana... It's too
complicated..."
Babe hated what he was saying, but he knew he had to
if he was going to keep his vow. "You know we can't... I'm sorry." Warning!
Emotions error! The words
flashed across his eyes like always. He
lowered his head. At that moment he made
a decision. "Dana, can we go inside? I
need to talk to you..." More
than half the entire village suddenly shifted position to stand between him and
Dana. She shoved a few aside and
motioned toward her house. When they
were inside, Babe sat on the couch to get himself ready. "You
asked once why I was so different... I
want to tell you." Dana gasped
a bit and sat down. Babe began to tell
her his closest secret. "I'll start with my name. Promise you won't laugh?" She looked at him oddly, as if she didn't
quite understand what he was talking about.
"Dana, will you promise? Cleave is my surname! Not my real one..." He watched Dana flinch slightly as she said
yes. He sighed. "Thank
you. My real name is Babe. When I had family, I was Babe Cleave. My story, in a way, starts with my
childhood." He glanced at her
once more to make sure she was paying attention. She couldn't have been concentrating on him
any more unless she had been forced to.
Babe cleared his throat and kept talking. "My family--had problems.
My parents were constantly fighting during my childhood, and back then,
my family was the most important thing to me..." He swallowed as the memories started coming
back. "I didn't want to hear them fighting like that all the time. I... I
broke down and started taking drugs.
Years later, when I was... It's
been so long now I can't really remember my actual age... I think I was seventeen then. I had a friend named Kit back then who was
taking drugs like me. He died one day
when he'd taken an overdose... It
convinced me that I had to stop. I
turned my back on the drug dealer.
Thought I'd be free once I did that.
I told my family about the drugs and asked them to help me get over
them. Once I was finally free of the
drugs, I was allowed to go back outside.
I saw an ex-girlfriend the same day I got back outside. Her name was Kia... We walked to a beach to catch up on old
times... I hadn't known it then, but the
drug dealer I had turned my back on had kept his eye on me... He hired someone to kill me. I got shot in the back." Babe took a moment to stop some tears from
flowing, then decided to just let them fall. "I
was supposed to have died then. Oh,
things would have been so much better if I had!
Instead, they saved my life, staged my burial, and turned me into this! I was supposed to become the first perfect
killing machine!" Babe clenched
his fists as he remember the Razor that had been his
'creator'. "They made a mistake and didn't get rid of my emotions... I was still me!!!!! Do you remember the legends?" Dana nodded.
"Mm-hm. the Protector was
one of my favorites." Babe
sighed again when Dana stopped talking. "The Protector was no legend,
Dana. He was real. He was me..." Dana was so absorbed into the story that Babe
had to wait a few seconds before she fully understood what he was saying. "I
had found something to keep me going, Dana.
It was all I had. It was all I
could use to keep myself alive... A
friend of mine named Bill became my mechanic.
Not long after that I met Sarah...
It was one of those love at first sight type of
deals. We became unbelievably
close. We would have been lovers,
probably married if I hadn't become this robot!!!!! Do you understand me, Dana? Do you know why I can't have anymore people
to love?! I watched her and everyone
else grow old and die while I stayed seventeen!
I was alone... So alone..." Babe couldn't keep going. The tears on his face became a trickle as he
sat and cried one hundred and fifty years worth of tears he had held back.
Dana stayed by his side and comforted him the best
she could. She was about to say
something whe she heard Jimmy yell at her to open the
door. She told Babe where she was going
and walked to the door. The griffin
Jimmy had come with was standing by her son.
"Thank you for bringing Jimmy
back, sir. I don't know what I would
have done if he had been--killed."
The griffin smiled back at her. "The pleasure was
mine, and call me Jesse."
They shook hands, then Dana invited Jesse
inside. He followed her to the kitchen
but stopped when he heard someone crying.
Dana pulled him the rest of the way into the kitchen. "What
happened to him?" Jesse
asked. Dana put her hands on her hips
and frowned. "He just told me a story that is one hundred and some years
old! He's exposed his soul to me just
now! Leave him alone. He needs time to himself..."
----