Babe let go of his breath when Max came by. "Thanks
for the help." "My
help?! You're the one who saved
Jesse!" "Yeah, but I wouldn't
have lasted much longer if you guys hadn't started firing, and I wouldn't have
gotten Jesse to the ground if you hadn't fired that rocket." Warning. Energy levels at 30% Babe
jerked. He'd used up THAT much?!!! "Max,
I need sugar. I've only got ten percent
left before my system starts shutting down." Max looked back at the ruins of the
fortress. "Well, we can search, but I really don't think we'll find
much..." Babe flew over to the
wreckage and started digging through the rubble. He smiled when he found what he was looking
for. "Max,
where's Mitchel?" "Chris is
looking for him. Why?" Babe pointed to the opening he'd made. "If
I can't have sugar, then you guys are gonna need some heavy firepower. I think I've found Chris' tank!" Babe watched as Max's eyes widened. There was a digging team there in five
minutes. Babe sighed and sat down by the
crew. One of them, a razor, looked over
at him and whispered something to another worker. Babe heard him. "Hey,
isn't that one of the robots?" the gryphon beside him glanced at Babe. "Yeah. Didn't you hear? They found a way to control that one. He won't hurt us at all." Babe smiled and spoke. "Correction, sir. I won't hurt you so long as you don't make
fun of me." The workers gasped
and pulled out their guns. "Oh come ON you two. If I'd wanted to hurt you, don't you think I
would have by now?!" The gryphon
hesitated, but brought his aim back up. "Just think of me as your
Protector. I was the one who found the
tanks, you know." This time the
gryphon let his gun fall all the way. "He's wise-cracking us!" Babe laughed.
"It took you THAT long to
figure it out?! The anthros that I used
to know were at least TWICE as smart as you.
Wise-cracking was a hobby back then!" The gryphon chuckled slightly. "You
know, if he wasn't a robot, I'd SWEAR he'd make the perfect teenager."
The razor just frowned. "Whatever. I don't trust ANY robot." Babe glanced away. "Good
for you then. I wouldn't trust me either
if I didn't know a FRIEND when I saw one.
I won't hurt you. I
promise." The razor tightened
his grip. "Want me to make sure you KEEP that promise?" Babe looked back. "You
know, I wouldn't mind that at all. In
fact, I'd thank you." "What the--what the hell?!" The razor's gun dropped from his hands. "You--you
WANT me to kill you?!" "Yeah. Is there
a problem with that? Why else would I
make you angry? I was hoping you'd hate
me enough to just shoot me now..."
The gryphon kneeled down by Babe.
"What is WRONG with this
robot? He actually sounds like he's
still himself!" Babe started
crying. "Damn it. Did you HAVE to
say that?" "Huh?" "I AM STILL ALIVE YOU DOLTS!!!!!!! I'M STILL ME!!!!! I LOST EVERYTHING YOU TWO TAKE FOR GRANTED
150 YEARS AGO!!!!!!!!!!!" Babe
broke down where he sat and let himself cry.
"I--I JUST now found my
famiily again...do either of you know what that's like? Losing everything, then
finding something more important than the world?" The razor kneeled down as well. "Are
you alright?" "DAMN IT,
NO!!!!!" Babe half-swung at the
razor, making him step back a little. "Just TRY thinking about it. I have lost everything except my life! That's the one thing I don't want right
now... My family, my friends... They were ALL gone! I've had to live like this for 150
years! I can't even REMEMBER what normal
food tastes like!" Babe
breathed deeply. He had to remember to
conserve what little energy he had left.
"I can only have damned SUGAR
to keep going. I got tired of it after
the first week." The gryphon
and razor looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Babe grimaced. "Oh,
forget it. Get back to digging so you
can have your tanks back. You need that
more than me shouting right now."
"Actually..." The
gryphon motioned for the razor to go back to digging. "I
find it's useful to tell someone about your problems. Do you need to talk?" Babe stared at him angrily. "I've
tried that HUNDREDS of times. It can't
work for me; my problems'll NEVER go away.
You have the chance that they might vanish." The gryphon shrugged. "I
just wanted to help. If you ever want to
talk about it, I'll be waiting."
He got up and went back to digging.
Babe sat there, alone with his thoughts.
"Why did I just do that? What's the use of trying to make new
friends? For all I know, they might not
make it past tomorrow. I'm just as bad
as they are..." "Babe!!!!!!!!" Babe looked up to see Jimmy running toward
him. "Babe,
Jesse's waking up! C'mon!"
Jesse whimpered when he woke up. The pain in his back was still there, though
it wasn't near as bad as it had been. It
hurt to move, shooting pain to his back whenever he tried to. "Jesse?.." He
opened his eyes at Dana's voice. She
wasn't above him, so he looked around for her.
They had put her in a wheelchair and she was sitting by him. It looked like she'd been crying. "Dana, what happened ou there? I remember getting picked up, then it's all a bunch of confusion." He didn't mention the fact that he was afraid
to look at his wings. Dana choked down
more tears before she answered. "Jesse, are you going to be
okay?" "I--I think so. Why?"
"Look at your arm Jesse."
Jesse glanced down and saw pink flesh.
There were scabs all over his upper half, like he'd been bleeding nearly
everywhere. He started choking on his
own tears. "So it wasn't a nightmare...
The fortress is--"
"Totaled." Max cut
in. "Babe
found the garage and we are trying to dig out the tanks we can reach. While you've been out, I've made a list of
everyone who got out safely. All of
those in intensive care, every doctor, scientist, and mechanic made it
out." Jesse winced as more pain
shot from his back. "Who else?"
"All of the children, thank god. Most of everyone else. We lost a third of our personel. Most of that had been on the top floor when
the giant blew it off. We found that out
from the ONE survivor of that attack."
Jesse shook with fear. "Someone SURVIVED that? Where are they?" Max hung his head before he spoke. "I
don't think you understand. They
survived the BLAST. When we found him
and he told us, he was on the verge of a heart attack. He died while he told us what
happened..." Babe and Jimmy
came up to him as he heard Mitchel's voice.
"You found him? Where was he?" Jimmy crept behind Jesse and whispered. "By the garage. He didn't look very happy." Babe was frowning. "I
can hear you just fine, Jimmy. You don't
need to whisper. Has anyone seen
Chris?" "Right
here." Chris said as he
jumped out of Babe's tank. "I dropped by to see how you were doing
before I left to help the diggers. What
is it Babe?" "I still need the
sugar. I'm going to start shutting down
any second! My energy levels are down to
25%!" Mitchel sounded surprised
when he spoke. "25%? Why's that so bad?" "I shut down at twenty
percent." "What? Babe, come with me. I still have some tools that I can use."
Babe awkwardly followed Mitchel. They walked to the tank garage, where the
diggers had almost opened up a hole big enough for an
adult to slide through. Mitchel shoved
everyone out of the way and went in.
This caused quite a panic among the diggers, who redoubled their efforts
to open a hole. Minutes later, Mitchel
popped back into view holding a small metal box full of tools. He grinned at the diggers. "Get
digging. I went down there and NONE of
the tanks look like they've been touched!" The diggers cheered and went back to
digging. Mitchel then walked to a grassy
spot and brought out some tools. "C'mon Babe. It
won't hurt." Babe hesitantly laid down in front of Mitchel. "What
are you doing, exactly?" "I'm
going to see what it is that can be changed to give you more power longer. No offense, but when I saw you go up against
that robot who'd shot at Dana, you were pitiful. I can tell you right now that you need better
armour. The basic robots use the stuff
you've got." Babe gulped. "Mitchel,
I'm at twenty-one percent. I'm going
tooo shuuuut dowwwnnnnnn..."
Babe felt his systems go off line.
Mitchel shook him a few times before Babe felt his chest being opened.
----
Mitchel could hardly believe how badly Babe had been
made. Five minutes into the work and
he'd already found several things that were useless now. Mitchel carefully took those out and replaced
them with better devices, leaving barely anything that had once been part of
Babe's original system. When he was done
rewiring and replacing the basic parts that just kept Babe running, he turned
to the weaponry. He slowly worked on
Babe's cannon, adding more power to it for half the price it used to take for
him to fire. The claws that were in
Babe's other arm were removed, replaced by a special tool Mitchel would show
Babe how to use when he woke up. The
tail laser was the only thing that Mitchel didn't mess with, since the parts
for it were too small to replace without the use of a lab. It took a little time, but Mitchel eventually
found some stuff in the wreckage of their base to use as Babe's new
armour. It would only be temporary, used
until they had a lab to work in. The
mechanical wings were something Mitchel could easily upgrade, putting the
levitaion gears they used on the tanks onto Babe's feet and adding that much
more fuel to his wing rockets. He had to
change the way the levitation gears worked, but that only took a few
minutes. Mitchel closed the chest up and
went back to the wreckage in search of the kitchen. There was one spot in all of the wreckage
that had anything close to food in it.
He started digging there, looking for the sugar
that Babe said he ran on. Jimmy saw him
and walked up. "Mitchel, what're you doing?"
"Looking for some sugar for Babe." Jimmy gasped when Mitchel told him. "Mitch,
there should be a glass container about half-full in there somewhere! I brought it with me when we first got
here." Mitchel stopped digging
and looked up. "Really?"
"Yeah, I brought it for Babe!"
"Then let's get looking!"
Together, it took them about an hour before they found it. Mitchel held it up before him, looking very
pleased with himself. "Way to go, Jimmy! C'mon.
I can't WAIT to see what Babe thinks of what I did to him!" They brough the sugar over and poured a
little into Babe's mouth. His mouth
closed, swallowing the sugar. He sat up
and ate the rest of it there. Mitchel
high-fived Jimmy as Babe smiled at them.
Babe stood up. "Okay Mitch, what'd you do to me?"
Babe did his best not to stare at the strange armour
he wore. It covered large sections of
his body, looked like it had been welded on in some places. "First
off, explain these." He flicked
a square plate that protected the outisde of his arm. Mitchel smiled. "Sure. That's part of the material my dad made. Since the whole place was smashed, I figured
it wouldn't hurt to put it back to use."
"Okay, but why did you weld it on?" "Because the next time we get to a lab,
I'm going to give you a full new suit of armour to use. It'll be way stronger than this. I promise." "Right..." Babe fingered the plates that covered his
body, making him look and feel like some goalie in a hockey game. As he did so he saw a small mechanism on his
arm that hadn't been there before. "What's this?" Mitchel got real excited when he pointed to
it. "Babe, that is the weapon I gave you instead of those claws
you had." "You took out my
claws?!" "Yeah. They wouldn't do much now anyway. Look at this!" Mitchel tapped the mechanism. there was suddenly a
glowing replica of his claws. "This device will change into almost
any weapon you can think of so long as it doesn't fire a thing. It's made of loose electrons, so though you
could wave your hand through it right now, you can use it in battle." Babe looked at the see-through claws. "How
would THESE be any use in battle?"
"Tap the mechanism again and the elctrons will solidify, allowing
you to cut through anything. The best part about these things are that they take the electrons
from the air! You don't waste a single
drop of energy with these!"
Babe suddenly liked the new weapon.
He checked his cannon. It looked
the same... Mitchel jumped over to it
andstarted talking again. "I fixed up your cannon too. Now you might do some damage to that robot
you fought last time." "What's
different about it?" "It uses
half the energy it used to, and has nearly double the
power!" Babe stared at his
cannon in awe. "Is there anything else I should know about?" "Yeah. Your boots don't waste your fuel anymore. They run like the levitators on the
tanks. I had to rewire your entire
system to make it all work."
"YOU DID WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!"
Mitchel laughed a little. "Hey.
I made you better. You had tons
of stuff in there that you don't need."
"But now I don't know what I need to keep undamaged! I have no idea what my weak spots
are!!!!" "Babe, you had more
to begin with. Now you don't have to
worry about being taken down in one shot."