Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So, I just want to put this out there:  I don't like rebooting.

It usually happens right as I'm in the process of exploding, so I'm already dealing with that, and then my mind gets ripped out of my body, sent back through Boxmore's network, pulled apart and processed and reconstructed from scratch inside my server.  And then I'm just plopped into the next shell to come off my assembly line, without even a chance to un-scramble myself before I'm automatically routed to my default respawn point.

And it always ends the same way, every time, in Dad's office, with him at his desk, clicking that old stopwatch in his hand.

"Three minutes, thirty seconds exactly."  Without bothering to glance up as me number 1205 rolled in on the conveyor belt, he quickly jotted my time and a few additional notes down into a small notebook, at the bottom of a long list of combat trials.  "Definitely an improvement, survivability-wise. I'll go ahead and approve the new upgrades on your production model."

My sister, who had rebooted a few seconds before I did, sat on his desk, and with the claws on his left hand he reached up and gently patted the top of her head.  She always was his favorite.

"Can I go attack the plaza again, Dad?  Please?"

The big robot finally looked up at me, his single eye studying my face, as if to determine whether I was serious or not.  He cleared his throat, leaning forward a little, right behind a big metal plaque bearing the name "Ernesto," but to me, "Dad" always felt more appropriate.

"You just finished, Robbie.  Why don't you two go play for the rest of the day?"  He let Sara roll away from him across the desk, and she giggled as I scooped her up.  "We've got a few more upgrades in the pipeline you can test next week, I'll send you back over then."

"But...I want to go back now."  I formed my arm cannon, not to use it but more to confirm that, yes, the changes Dad had made to it were no longer there.  "That power boost was really great, and I think I got close to finally wrecking the place this time!"

"Testing your new blaster was the point of you two attacking today," he explained, patting my head and running his claws back through my hair a little, in that way he always does whenever he knows he's shooting me down.  "Not wrecking the place. It's just bad for business, son."

Business.  It's always about the business with Dad, the self-proclaimed "Boxmore Business Bot."  Of course, no matter how many times I ask to keep fighting those heroes, he's always going to say no.  But, another angle, maybe?  

"Can I at least go get a smoothie at the bodega?"  It wasn't a fight, but anything to get out of the factory for a little longer.  

Dad mulled over the request for a few seconds, and sighed, finally just handing me a ten techno bill.  "Take your sister with you, and stay out of trouble. I mean that, no fighting this time." 

"Okay, okay!"  I lightly tossed Sara in the air a couple of times, just enough for her to get a half-second of hangtime before she fell back into my hands.  Her giggling got louder, and as I caught her and looked down she gave me a big puppy-dog eye, begging me to keep it up.  

Man, even if she is Dad's favorite, I would die for her.

"And do not graffiti their sign again, Robbie," he called out just as I started to slip out the office door.  

"It was one time, Dad!"

"Well if it happens a second it's coming out of your allowance!  That's not cheap to fix, and it's horrible for our company's PR!"

Again, it's always about the business.  

"And Robbie, I know I'm hard on you, but..."  Oh great, here it comes. Dad pushed out his chair, following me across the purple carpet that matched his outer casing almost exactly, to put his hands on my shoulders.  "...we all just want to raise you to be a respectable villain, alright? Can you promise me you'll at least...try?"

"...Okay."  I shut the door behind us so Dad didn't see me roll my eyes at him.  Third time that week he'd pulled that word on me, and it was only Monday.

"Respectable," I practically spat into Sara's face as I held her up to face me.  She just looked confused, probably wondering why I wasn't tossing her around anymore.  "You think Grandpa ever said that to any of 'em?"

She just groaned, sadly.  And I did too.

---

There had been only one Lakewood Loser to stop us that day, the cashier with the pink hair, Edith.  I liked to think of her and her coworker as my best friends. Also, my only friends. Also, my worst enemies.  I really don’t know a lot of people outside of my family, and especially not anyone I saw as often as those two, so those labels overlapped more than one might think.  With the day’s fight over, I waved as Sara and I ran right for her, watching her gather up our scattered remains all over the plaza parking lot while we crossed the street.

"Robbie, hey!"  Sliding a few stray bolts and cogs across the asphalt with a slightly-singed boot, she greeted us in a much less hostile manner than she had only a few minutes earlier.  "Don’t tell me you’re here for another fight?"

"Dad said not to..."  I tried to cross my arms, not easy when you have to hold your sister too.  The safety shutters still covered each and every window across the front of the plaza, though strangely, the front doors of Gar's Bodega were already wide open.  "Are you guys reopened yet?"

"Dude, I'm still cleaning you up..."  Edith stuffed a dead Sara shell into the can, motioning towards another at my foot.  "Can you throw me that one? That'll be the last of it."

At that magic word, "throw," Sara started bouncing out of my grip again.  "Sure thing, here she comes!" I yelled, throwing my ecstatic baby sister like a basketball while I kept her empty shell to myself, kicking it around on the pavement.

"Whoa!"  Thankfully, Edith caught her instead of letting her fall right into the can.  Sara didn't mind, as usual -- she just started laughing excitedly, asking us in her own way to do it again.

"Geez, he's really the worst, huh Sara?"  She held the baby bot up to stare at me, waving her around a little as she spoke in a silly impression that sounded absolutely nothing like her.  "Wow, Big Brother, you weren't really gonna throw me in the garbage can, were you?" Sara babbled along to the words with an unknowing smile, while I finally just kicked the shell into the can.

"No, I wasn't," I admitted, taking her back and freeing Edith's hands for the trash.  She ran it over to the junkyard, and while the three of us walked inside I felt my phone buzzing inside my casing, but whatever it was could wait -- that smoothie machine was calling my name!

Well, it wasn't actually calling my name.  In fact it was making a very different noise, kind of a gurgling and fizzing, as a purple and blue smoothie-covered Brad just kept banging their fist against the thing, to no avail.  

"Help."

At the sight of her coworker, Edith just facepalmed.  "Another one for Mr KO to deal with when he gets back from his secret mission?"

"You think it can even wait that long?"  They released their telekinetic grip on one of the levers for only a second, and a mass of pink, strawberry-ish goop spilled out, right onto Edith's boots.

"Oh boy, uh..."  She thought for a second, then powered up, melting the smoothie off, and quickly roundhouse-kicked the machine, her fiery feet melting the plastic nozzles just enough to stop the flow.  "There. Now it can."

Finally able to let go of the thing, Brad also released the breath they'd been holding in relief.  "Thanks, I been fighting this thing since my shift started. Really wish we could just replace it already!"  They examined the mess all over themselves, and sighed. "You...didn't want one of these, did you Robbie?"

Edith turned to me, hissing a little through her teeth, but I just held up my hand, rocking Sara in my other, more to calm my nerves than hers.  I came in for a smoothie almost every other day, and was really looking forward to this one...  

"Nah, it's cool.  We'll figure something else out."

Letting the heroes get back to work, I fished out the ten techno bill Dad gave me again.  Not a lot else it would buy, except...

Sara started chirping excitedly, tugging a little in my arms towards that old POW card machine at the back of the store.

"That thing ate our money the last three times you tried to get a pack, little one," I reminded her, but I set her down onto the floor anyway, letting her roll to it -- it was surprising just how mobile the kid was even without any limbs to speak of.  "And before that, you got that glitched Squeezo card that said he was level -100."

She still begged though, trying her best to bounce at my feet, so I just sighed and stuck the bill into a slot on the front of the machine.  It accepted the cash, and there was a loud grinding from somewhere inside as the dispenser mechanisms turned, but of course, the tray at the bottom remained empty.  No POW cards, again.

I couldn't let my baby sister go home empty-handed this time, though.  "Okay, what was that thing the cat cafe guy showed me last time we were there?"  I searched through my hivemind for the file. Drive F, sector 0x5d, there it was.

I made a fist, tried my best to tense up my lower back springs, and reeled back, giving that machine a good smack!  Right away it dropped six whole packs of cards, which Sara happily snatched out of the thing with her teeth!

Hopefully Mr KO wouldn't notice the new dent I'd made.

Sara shook herself rapidly, trying to tear open the card packs right there, but calmed down as I picked her back up.  She let me take the cards, and wipe off the industrial-grade robotic saliva substitute #3 before opening up my outer casing to tuck them into a slot just inside, along with my phone, to open once we got back to Boxmore.

Shoot, my phone!  I swapped it for the cards, checking the text I'd gotten earlier.

"Need you home.  Now." It was from Dad.  

Without any other business at the plaza now that all our money was gone, I hurried back out of the store, waving at Brad and Edith as I passed.  Sara and I didn't really bother to wait at the crosswalk before just rocket-boosting over it, to her amusement. To my surprise, as I crossed the other parking lot towards Boxmore I noticed a car sitting by the door, with one of my moms and another one of my dads standing next to it, watching our approach.  They were home SUPER early.

I call Ernesto my dad, but truthfully, he wasn't the only one who designed, built, and coded me, or Sara later on -- Boxmore has quite a few more employees and residents than just its CEO, and all of them worked together to create us as a team.  And of course, since they never could come to an agreement on which one of them would be our parent (not everyone is as good at being siblings as Sara and me, Dad always said), pretty much all of them share the role. Confusingly, I eventually realized that meant all six of our parents were technically also our aunts and uncles, but in the end, it didn't really matter what I called them, since they all cared for us, and loved us.  

Family is family, even when it's a little complicated, and even when most members happen to be mass-produced killer robots.

"Hey, what'dja get?" one of those killer robots asked as we got closer to the car, and I handed Sara off, letting Mom playfully hold her up above her head -- sometimes she was Mom, sometimes she was Aunt Shannon.  "I know that look, your big brother got you some more POW cards, didn't he?" Sara laughed in approval, as her mommy bounced her around a little in the air, exactly as I'd done earlier.

I let them go for a second, turning to the other robot.  "Coach, what are you guys doing here already?" I used to call him Dad when I was little, like Ernesto, but he always lit up with pride when I called him Coach instead, so I just kept it going.  Though, it helped that he volunteered to literally coach my soccer team every few weeks.  

He pulled his guitar out of the trunk and shut it, ruffling my hair with his free hand.  "Oh, we just finished up early. Our elder brother wanted us all home for some reason."  

He looked up at Boxmore's office windows, and scoffed, covering his angular face slightly with his claws.  "Probably just another of his team huddles about not leaving dirty dishes in the sink."

I turned back to Mom, who seemed absorbed into a "conversation" with Sara, imitating her babbling.  "So, what did Dad want us home for?"  

"Hey, we'll know when you do."  She held up her phone, showing the exact same text I'd received.  "I guess Ernesto's got something really important going on, if he pulled us away from taping."

Still cradling Sara in her arms, she leaned down a little towards me -- I'm not that short anymore, but it still seemed to be a habit for her.  "Well, how'd your fight go? Did you destroy anything today?"

"Yeah!  Sara took out a letter on the sign, and I smashed a few cars up really good before they destroyed me!"  I pointed across the street at our work, smoke from one of the pulverized cars still wafting through the air, and Mom smiled at me, her signature mischievous grin.

"Ooh, not bad for a product test at all!"  She laughed, letting it grow into a cackle as Coach and I followed her inside the factory.  "Next time I bet you can take out ten cars, no sweat!"

"Yeah!"  I copied her laughter, bringing up my fists.  Some days I wished she actually had the authority to send me back onto the battlefield, my mom always had my back when it came to causing mayhem.

As we reached the factory conference room to wait for the others, Coach tapped my shoulder, pulling me aside while Mom and Sara sat down.  "Robbie, let me show you something, before your next fight." He led me to an open space off to the side and set his guitar well away from the incoming combat lesson, making sure he had my full attention before continuing

"You can't just go charging in with your arm cannon, that leaves you open for retaliation!"  He formed his arm cannon, much larger and spikier than mine, but let it hang at his side, sweeping his other arm dramatically across his chest and pushing his shoulder out in front of him.  "Try to lean with your shoulder, like this, get a bodycheck in to stun them before you start firing. And then, when they get up and come back at you, make sure you don't leave an opening in the front.  Sometimes the best offense is a good defense!" He changed positions again, this time planting his feet and pulling his arms up to block. I did my best to imitate his poses, bringing my fists up just under my snout like Coach did.

"But, Coach, then I can't get as many hits in!  What if they just don't stop, and I can't put my arms down?"

"Well, if they try to break your block, use it!"  He moved in front of me, his arms still up, and motioned for me to take a swing at him.  I did so, but almost immediately he activated his rockets, thrusting his whole body forward -- thankfully, though, he stopped before he could do more than just shove me a few inches.  He caught my arm as I wobbled a little from the hit, and ran a claw over his pompadour, ensuring that the sudden movement didn't spoil his looks.

"Use everything they give you to your advantage, Robbie.  Remember that you've actually got the edge, their simple organic brains versus your processor."  He tapped that claw to the side of his head, flashing me a confident smirk. "If they hit you, turn it back on them before they can react.  If they block your hit..."

"I kick dirt in their eyes, right?"

"Kick dirt in their-"  Coach looked down at me, shocked, then at Mom, who had begun snickering at the table.  "What in the world has Shannon been teaching you this time?"

"How to kick dirt in peoples' eyes, obviously."  Mom sat Sara next to her, letting her roll up and down the long table as she pleased, and leaned towards us.  "Robbie, you come from a long line of petty villains, don't you listen to these clowns about being all respectable or flashy about it."

To illustrate her point, she popped her wrist open, pulling out a sawblade.  "Sometimes you gotta play by your own rules, give 'em no mercy. Just fuck their shit up!"

"Sister!"  Coach clapped his hands onto the sides of my head, over my auditory sensors, though since they were internal the action did nothing to muffle any sound.  "He just got his teen upgrade! We aren't teaching him to swear yet! "

"Hey, I started when I got my preteen upgrade."  She crossed her legs as she leaned back in her chair, snatching a completely oblivious Sara as she rolled back around and holding her tightly on her lap.  "He's a big boy now, he can handle it."

Coach glanced back down at me, a serious look in his eyes.  "Don't say 'fuck' yet. Okay?"

"Okay."  I thought a moment.  "Can I say 'shit' though?"

He sighed.  "Only in front of Shannon and myself.  The others would absolutely crash if they heard it."

As if Coach had summoned them with that remark, the other robots indeed entered at that point, Dad in the lead.  He held the conference room door open for Uncle Jethro and Aunt Mikayla as they followed close behind -- now that I was actually older than them, it just felt really weird to still think of them as my parents, even though they'd helped in my creation just as much.  Uncle Jethro especially insisted on his title, as the youngest of his own generation.

"Okay, now that everyone's here..."  Dad scanned the table, noticing the anxious expressions on all our faces -- he secretly loved calling these surprise meetings, but it was rare that they were ever good news.

This one, though, was different.  "Don't worry, everyone, I just have an announcement to make."  He clasped his hands in front of him, injecting a bit more enthusiasm into his normally-dry tone.  "I just got off the phone with Lord Boxman. He and Professor Venomous will be stopping by the factory for a visit this weekend!"

Wait, my grandparents?  Coming to Boxmore?

"And, since I knew that this weekend was Darrell's time with the kids, I spoke to him and he'll stay with us instead, and the Professor even mentioned Fink may be able to make it.  This weekend will be a whole-family event!"

I barely listened to the rest of his words, though.  My grandpas were coming! I glanced across the table at Sara, who didn't seem to understand the full meaning of it all, but seeing the excitement in my expression she mirrored it, giving a giddy, high-pitched laugh.

"You couldn't just include that in the text?"  Mom stroked Sara's head encouragingly in response to her laughter, but frowned up at Dad, who seemed to just barely blush across his featureless face.

"Well, I mean, I thought it'd be best to have you all here for it..."  Deflated, he tapped his fingers together nervously.

Well, since no one else was excited, I jumped up onto my chair.  "This is gonna be the best!!" Next to me, Aunt Mikayla yelped in surprise, holding up her claws in case I fell, but I wasn't in any danger.  Sometimes I doubt she ever stopped seeing me as her tiny, helpless kitten.

"Well, I'm glad someone's excited!"  Dad smiled down the table at me, obvious even with no mouth.  "We'll have a lot of things to prepare before they get here, so I want everyone to do their part, and make sure Lord Boxman sees how good we've been running Boxmore for him!"  

Then, he slammed his fist down onto the table for one last item.  "And on that note...for the love of Cob, can we please stop leaving dirty dishes in the sink?  What is wrong with all of you!?"

Chapter Text

The week after Dad's announcement felt like one of the slowest ones in my entire 6-11 years of life.  Especially without any fighting at the plaza -- that upgrade he was preparing had to be a big one, if the work was taking this long.  

Of course, Sara and I spent most of the week in our playroom, where we were usually left to amuse ourselves while everyone else was busy.  

"Okay, so you want it here?"  She grunted, unsatisfied, so I pointed to another part of the paper, sat out in front of us as we laid on the floor.  "Here?"

Her expression changed to something a little less sour, so I had to be getting close.  "What about here?" Bingo, she smiled, and with a yellow crayon I drew a small portrait of my baby sister onto our canvas, right above a crude drawing of Dad.

"Now, where do I put me...?"  Every member of the family, including our grandpas and Aunt Fink, were present, making the page pretty crowded already, but there was a little space off to the side, behind Aunt Mikayla...

"Fridge check!"  

The door slammed open, and Coach sauntered through, holding Uncle Jethro in one of his massive hands, who greeted us with a quick "Hey there!"

The much larger robot sat his little brother down onto the couch and knelt beside me, his eyes fixed onto the paper.  "I thought I heard you drawing in here. What have you got for us today, Champ?"

"It's not done yet!"  Coach tousled my hair, roughly, while I groaned, still trying to finish my masterpiece.  I swapped my yellow crayon for the blue I'd used for Jethro, and with all five of the others' eyes on me I quickly scrawled out the rest of my own features -- it looked a little rough with the extra pressure, but the results were still impressive, as Coach then confirmed.

"Ah, impressive!"  See? I passed him the drawing to examine it more closely, and he in turn held it up for Uncle Jethro, who gave a thumbs-up in approval.  "I'll find a spot for this one on the fridge right away!"

"Is there even any space left?"  The fridge in the factory kitchen was always completely covered in crayon drawings, practically a time capsule of our entire lives, since Coach NEVER took any down.  He bought magnets in bulk, though was always careful not to get any stuck to anyone.

"I'll make space, don't you worry.  Your art is always worth displaying!"  He patted my head, and then Sara's, as he left.

Still on the couch, Uncle Jethro grinned down at us, at least in his own way, since like Dad he lacked the facial features to really do so.  "You really are gettin' good, Robbie! Those stick figures looked just like us!"

"That's what I was going for!"  I grabbed another piece of paper from the small stack next to us, but after about thirty seconds of just tapping my crayon I gave up, completely art blocked.  

"You guys really can't wait for tomorrow, can you?"  Jethro carefully dropped from the couch to lean over my head, taking full advantage of a rare instance in which he was taller than someone else in the factory.  "I saw you had the whole family in there."

I rolled over onto my back to look up at him, passing my crayon to Sara, who gripped it in her mouth and started aimlessly scribbling in my stead.  "When are our Grandpas gonna be here again?"

Uncle Jethro just laughed, and started tugging on my arm to try and pull me up, though I ended up doing most of the work as I followed him back to the couch.

"Your grandpas are both comin' tomorrow morning, and so's Darrell."  He shuddered. "And probably something...horrible, with him."

"He was growing mutant sunflowers last time we were there," I chimed in, and Sara started giggling at the memory of those things.  I noticed her scribbles started taking on more flower-like shapes.

"And your Aunt Fink will be here...a little while tomorrow too."  He sighed. "Probably a lot later though. Her gaming league's gearin' up for the next tournament, so she doesn't get a lot o' time to herself anymore.  But she said she'd at least make it for dinner."

"It's okay."  Sara's scribbles started looking a little rat-like.  "...How long until tomorrow morning?"

He laughed again, but if there was anything I could depend on, it was him answering every single one of my questions, no matter how silly they got.  "You've still got a while to go. None of us can wait either, Robbie, but we're all gonna be patient, okay?"

We watched Sara continue to draw, now moving on to extremely rough depictions of Uncle Jethro and me among the rats and sunflowers, and what I swore had to be Lakewood Plaza Turbo off to the side -- it was really hard to tell, but I think I had my arm cannon out.  My eyes occasionally drifted up to a large portrait of Grandpa Boxman above her, one of the last left in the factory now that it belonged to Dad, and the rest of us robots.

Grandpa's portrait gave a pretty frightening scowl, an expression I'd never actually seen on his face in person.  For a few years, between that expression and his age, I didn't even recognize it as him.

"Hey, Uncle Jethro," I started again. "How many times did Grandpa send you guys to attack the plaza?"

At my unexpected question, he tapped his fingers together, with a faint groan coming from somewhere within him.  "Oh geez...it was a lot." For a few seconds he tried to come up with an answer, but eventually just shrugged. "I really don't know, kiddo.  We attacked the plaza every single day, for a long time. I didn't really keep a count."

I gasped, finally tearing my eyes from that portrait.  "Every day?" We were lucky when we got to fight every week!  Well, I was, Sara was mostly just along for the ride. "But...why?"

"I never really understood it myself.  He just...really wanted the plaza destroyed, and since we never managed to do it, he never stopped, until...you know.  We took over." He suddenly snapped his fingers, remembering something. "Oh, maybe Ernesto kept track of it all. If nothin' else, he could come up with a good estimate!"

Of course, my thoughts had progressed pretty far beyond that already.  "What if I finally destroyed it, next time I attack? You think that would make Grandpa proud of me?"

At that final question, Jethro closed his eyes and sighed.  "Hey, Robbie, let me tell you somethin'."

He reached up and poked me in the chest, just under my reboot button.  "We all pitched in to make you. So, you've got a little of all of us in there somewhere."  

Pfft.  "Except Ernesto," I replied, though Uncle Jethro didn't really react.  

"He's in there too, kiddo.  Probably just somewhere ya haven't looked yet!"  His tone softened. "Point is, though, we all made your grandfather proud of us, not by destroyin' that plaza, but in our own way!  So you shouldn't worry about anything, because he's already so proud of you too, for just...bein' you."

"But I wanna make him more proud!"

We were interrupted by Sara suddenly spitting out her crayon, babbling a little to get Uncle Jethro's attention.  

"Give me a second, okay?"  He hopped down from the couch, leaning over her.  "Aw, sweetie, you did so good!"

With her permission he gingerly picked up her drawing, his expression as excited as he could get it.  "Let me hurry and get this to Raymond so he can put it on the fridge too!" He dashed out of the playroom, leaving the rest of us kids on our own once again.  Sara didn't seem to mind the abrupt exit though, still basking in praise as she rolled around the floor with a huge smile on her face.

"Sara...do you think we could destroy the plaza for real?"  I picked her up as she rolled close to the couch, and she stared at me, surprised.  "Like, for Grandpa, while he's here tomorrow. I bet we could do it if we try!"

Sara whimpered, all the joy completely drained from her.  I could tell she didn't like my proposal, but you know, even siblings don't really have to agree on everything.  

"I just wanna make our grandpas happy, okay?  Are you in?"  

Her expression didn't change, so I lightly tossed her a couple of times in the air.  Sure enough, that brought her smile back.  

"Do it for me, Sis?"  Cradled in my arms, she finally chirped a little, in reluctant approval. 

---

I'm really not sure how we managed to sleep in the next morning; probably stayed awake later than I'd realized.  Oh well, it wasn't like the two of us had to work that morning or anything -- Sara and I were allowed to do a few easy cleaning chores around the factory whenever we begged enough, but all of my parents insisted on keeping tons of their own spare bodies active to do the real labor.

But, with the big day finally arrived, I woke up right away when Dad barely tapped my shoulder.

"They're on their way, Robbie."  I looked up at him, with Sara just as groggily snuggled in his arms.  "You two probably shouldn't still be in bed when your grandparents get here!"

"Dad, what time is-"  I didn't even need to finish asking, nor did I need to check my internal clock -- one glance out the window told me enough.

"Make your bed," Dad ordered as I shot up and took Sara from him, lightly shaking her awake as well.  "Just in case either of them, or your other dad, or whoever decide to come in here." He scanned the rest of our disaster of a bedroom, sighing, but didn't remark on it as much, taking it upon himself to pick up some scattered toys and my discarded soccer uniform from the floor while I did what he asked.

As I straightened out the blankets on my old hand-me-down racecar bed, and even in Sara's crib, Dad kept rambling, anxious.  "Professor Venomous has been texting me all morning, there's been a lot of traffic but he thinks they'll be here in about a half hour..."  Another text arrived, and he pulled out his phone, eye widening at the latest one.  

Grabbing my shoulders, he gently shoved me towards the door.  "Okay, never mind the beds, just go brush your teeth and meet us outside!"

"Do we have to?"  

"Yes.  You do."  Raising his voice, he shooed us out again.  "Remember, you'll need to look respectable!"

Ugh, that word again.  I mean, yeah, toothpaste tastes pretty good, but I couldn't really see how scrubbing that stuff onto my newly-manufactured titanium-alloy teeth made me look even slightly more respectable.  But, it gave us an opportunity to go over our plans once again, as Sara and I left him behind to straighten up the room a little more.  

Slamming my sister onto the edge of the sink, I locked the door and pulled out the piece of paper I'd tucked into my casing the night before.  

"Okay, so…"  Sara rolled right down into the sink basin, and I replaced her onto my lap as I sunk to the floor.  "Step one, we gotta steal those new upgrades from Dad. That'll make us even more powerful, I think, and will make destroying the plaza a lot easier."  I sighed; if we hadn't slept in, we could have snuck right into the lab and done it that morning, before anyone even got here.

Sara babbled a little, glancing up at me with a concerned look in her eye.  

"What's wrong with that?"  Sometimes I had no choice but to guess what she was trying to say.  "Hm...it might be a little tough to get away and do that while our grandpas are here, but I'm sure we can still figure something out."

She didn't seem reassured, though, and tried to roll away, but I firmly held her in place and continued reading off the list.  

"And then, step two…"  I pulled out another crayon-marked piece of paper, that I'd tried to fold as nice and neat as I could.  "This letter will tell Grandpa to look out the window towards the plaza, while we get to Dad's office, push the button on his desk, and get sent over there in our box."

I grinned down at her.  "And step three...showtime!"  I couldn't help but laugh a little, and Sara copied me as usual, adding some of her own -- we were born villains, after all, and a perfect scheme like this deserved evil laughter!

We were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.  "Are you two done yet? They just got here!"

Ugh, of course, there was one element we forgot to consider:  Dad.

"He...didn't hear any of that, right?" I whispered to Sara, as I grabbed our toothbrushes.  The task didn't take long to finish, even when I needed to handle Sara's toothbrush for her, but we still took a few extra seconds to try and figure out how best to distract him while we put our plan into motion.  It wouldn't be easy -- this was Dad's factory, and he was all over the place, literally with his hivemind. Though, I ultimately couldn't think for long, as what he had actually said suddenly took up my entire processor.  

They were here!

With Sara still securely in my arms, I hurriedly swallowed the toothpaste and ran through Boxmore's mazelike hallways, past tons of Lesser Ernestos, until I reached the parking lot, where all five of the other robots already held our grandparents in a tangle of metal and robo-limbs.

"Ah, there's my babies!"  Grandpa Boxman slowly wriggled free, leaving Grandpa Venomous to turn a deeper shade of purple under all their weight alone.  As I stepped through the doorway he caught me in a tight hug around my waist.

"You’re getting so big!" he shouted, for once looking up at me instead of down; I forgot that he hadn't seen my robo-teen upgrade yet.  "Just how many birthdays did I miss this time?!"

I just laughed.  "You didn't miss any, Grandpa.  You took me go-karting for every single one, remember?"

My other grandpa finally managed to untangle himself, taking a few deep breaths as I passed Sara to him, at her insistence. 

"Still don't think...I'm getting used to that."  He gently rocked the tiny robot, a sad look in his eyes.  "She’s still so small, Boxy..."  

“Oh, I know!”  Despite their sudden mournful tone, Sara laughed, delighted, and I stepped aside to let her have all the attention she wanted.  My turn as the baby of the family was definitely over.  

“You okay there, PV?”  

“I just...feel like I’m going to break her.”  

“Well, throw her to me then!”  Grandpa Venomous gently, carefully placed Sara into his hands, ensuring she didn’t so much as shake.  “Hello there, my precious little grandbaby! Can you say ‘Hi, Gwampy?’ Or...you know, anything like that?”

Sara just smiled vacantly up at her grandfather in response.

"She still isn't speaking yet, Father," Coach explained, approaching from somewhere behind us. He patted the top of her head, letting Grandpa keep cradling her.  "We're waiting until she's ready, just as we did with Robbie."

I snickered, drawing attention back onto me.  "Coach, you guys didn't wait until I was ready at all…"  One big advantage of being a robot: having a computer brain that automatically backs up to my server, from which I can access every single one of my memories, even my earliest ones.  "Every single day you kept trying to get me to talk!"

Mom laughed.  "Oh, yeah, we did.  And after all that work, he finally said his first words on Darrell's farm, with none of us around to even hear it!"

Geez, I remember that perfectly too.  I was hanging out under a tree while he worked in one of the nearby vegetable patches, but when I demanded to play inside instead he immediately dropped his tools and obliged.

"Well, we got even with him on the first steps, though."  She sighed, obviously accessing those memories from her server as well.  "Speaking of Darrell...He promised he wouldn't be too far behind you guys.  Wonder what's taking him so long."

Grandpa laid a hand on her shoulder.  "Shannon, don't worry about Darrell too much, he'll get here eventually.  The highway from the country was pretty packed."

"Yeah, he could be held up because of that," Dad added, but then a slight shiver seeped into his voice.  "Or maybe he also decided to bring more of his...genetically modified 'evil produce.'"

Mom nodded, grimly.  "...Anyone wanna take bets on what's gonna try to kill us all today?"

No less than thirty minutes later, she passed Uncle Jethro a few techno coins.  "Man, you were spot-on."

Out in the parking lot, Coach and I stomped the last of the life from a bunch of tentacled sunflowers while the robot who had delivered them stood nearby, scratching his glass braincase underneath his cowboy hat.

"I'm...really sorry, guys.  They behaved on the way here."

Grandpa Venomous picked up one of the bright yellow petals, still wriggling as he turned it over a few times in his fingers.  "Are you sure you don't want me to give you a few pointers on that old bioengineering equipment, Darrell?"

"Nah, I'm okay.  Still just learning as I go."  He finally shifted his attention in my direction, his enthusiasm from before the sunflowers had attacked returning.  "And was that a new blaster I saw?"

There was only one name I could ever call the robot whose arms I rushed into for a hug.  "Sure was, Daddy!" He squeezed me tight, even lifting me a few inches off the ground despite not being much taller than I was.  

"That was the coolest fight I've ever seen!  Robbie, you did so good, and I'm so proud of you!"

"Daddy…"  He definitely tended to be a bit much sometimes, especially when Sara and I first saw him on our weekends together, and I already felt my face overheating a little in embarrassment.  

He greeted his little cowgirl as well, and looked up at the factory, sighing, but then quickly replaced his smile as he turned to Mom.  "Even with the kids telling me stuff, I still feel like I miss so much. What's been going on here?"

"You know, same as usual.  Had Joe Cuppa on the show again, not gonna make that mistake a third time.  I've been doing a bit more singing, and Ray's been dating the cat cafe guy…"

Grandpa Boxman suddenly interrupted.  "Wait, dating? The cat cafe guy?" He glanced at Coach, shocked, while the robot sputtered, his synthetic face turning bright red.

"W-We are NOT!  Sister, you have no idea you're talking about!"  

"Coach, we all know," I added, noting Mom's amused look as I took her side.  "You took Sara and me to that cafe three times last week as an excuse to see him."  Sure, we loved playing with all the cats, and the strawberry frappuccinos were great, but Coach just wasn't subtle about anything.

Next to me, though, Daddy was laughing hysterically.  "Geez, I didn't know! I thought you were just gonna crush on him forever!"

"I was not crushing on him either!"  Coach practically snarled at his brother, and the blushing intensified.  "I merely appreciated him as a rival, whose hotness level happens to match my own!"

We all just rolled our eyes.  Like I said, he was never subtle.

Coach led us back into the factory, still fuming, and Daddy and my grandparents kept chattering away with the rest of the family, catching up on all they'd missed.  Back in my arms, my sister followed every single word, bouncing and bobbing in excitement at the things she understood, and even the things I was pretty sure she didn't.  I tried to slip away to the lab at a few lulls in the conversation, but she pulled me right back, clearly much more interested in our visitors than the plan.

And when she wasn't in my grip, my grandparents kept a tight hold of her, cradling and cooing at their tiny granddaughter, and they stuck to my dad like industrial adhesive -- I could only count down the hours and calculate our lowering chances of successfully slipping away to carry out the plan, as Dad droned on and on about the newest factory improvements and sales figures, to even their boredom.

More than once they tried to get me to spill who exactly the "cat cafe guy" was, as a way of changing the subject.  Of course, though I'll never understand why all my parents insisted on it being such a secret, I kept my mouth shut, since according to Coach if Grandpa Boxman didn't know, it was because he shouldn't know.

Finally, after a long day of bonding and incredibly dull business talk, Dad finally asked to speak to Daddy in private about something, and the rest of us all piled into the kitchen to prepare a big family dinner, where I finally found our opportunity to slip out unnoticed.

"I think they'll be talking for a little while longer..."  I tossed Sara up and down a few times, careful to catch her in my chest as we dashed down the hall towards the factory proper.  "...so, I think we'll be able to get to the lab, grab and install my new upgrades, go defeat those heroes and destroy the plaza, and make Grandpa proud of us.  We can do all that in like an hour, right?"

As I caught Sara again she gave me a strange look, struggling in my arms a little to wrench herself free, and I sighed, turning into one of the factory's main assembly floors.  "Okay, but maybe we can still do some of it before-"

Sara's eye suddenly widened, and she seemed to point me towards the other end of the floor, where I barely heard a sharp banging coming from the door in the loading dock, almost as if someone were knocking at it.  I stopped for a second to listen, despite my sister's unease, as a second bout of knocking echoed through the room, and slowly answered the door.

"Oh, Robbie, you are a lifesaver! "  Aunt Fink rushed past me through the doorway, breathing heavy and looking as if she'd run a lap around the factory -- this was probably at least the third door she'd tried knocking on.  She retrieved her phone out of a large laptop bag slung over her shoulder, holding it up to show a blank screen. "I tried calling to tell you guys I'd be late, and then my phone died, and this factory's so big none of you guys were around to answer any of the doors, and..."

She caught herself mid-rambling, and huffed.

"Anyways, how've you two been!"  She pulled me into a side-hug, and took Sara from me with her other arm, holding her close as well.  "Hey, you stream, right?"

"Uh...not really."  I had an account on Social Media, but nobody ever watched whenever I livestreamed my DJ mixes, or even followed me at all, except for my family.

Still, Aunt Fink reached into her bag, pulling something out and slamming it over my head before I could really see what it was.  "Well, I bet you could use these anyway. I won't need 'em anymore now that I got a new headset."

Immediately, I removed the rather large pair of pink, squarish headphones to examine them.  They weren't a color I got anything in too often, all anyone ever bought me was either blue or yellow to match my casing, and I accepted the gift, slipping them back onto my head and smiling up at her.

She gave me a thumbs-up.  "Lookin' good, Rob!"

The sound of heels clicking across the factory tiles interrupted us, and my aunt's grin grew even wider as Grandpa Venomous approached.

"Fink!  I was about to send the robots out on a search party," he said, hugging her, and then turned to us. 

"Same with you two, really, not like you to sneak off like that when Boxman and I come visit."  He smiled, slyly. "I bet I know what you're up to..."  

No, Grandpa, you don't.  I worked really hard to keep our plans secret!

"You've got a little surprise for us that you were sneaking out to work on, huh?"  Shoot.

"I, I, uh..."  I wracked my processor for a way that Sara and I could get away again and continue our mission without giving everything away, but Grandpa held his hand up to stop me.  

"It's okay, I'll still be surprised.  But, can it wait for a little longer? Dinner will be ready soon, and we don't want you two to miss it."

He gently led us along with Aunt Fink back to the kitchen.  Thankfully, it hadn't caught on fire yet while we were gone, but it was pretty impressive how close Grandpa Boxman had gotten.

"I can add just a few drops of motor oil instead of olive oil, right PV?"

He shared a worried look with his minion before Dad finally stepped in to assist, motioning for us to sit with the rest of the family as dinner was served, sans-oil.  Just as Fink took a bite of her meal, though, her phone vibrated loudly on the table, with a flashing alarm showing on its screen. "Oh crud."

She hurriedly wolfed down a few more bites, before just grabbing her entire plate and starting out of the kitchen.  "I forgot I had a stream scheduled tonight. I'll be back for dessert, though, I promise!" She dashed towards the playroom with her food and laptop bag, leaving the room behind her silent, save for a long sigh from Grandpa Venomous.

"I thought she said she'd reschedule that…"  

My other grandpa patted his back.  "It's okay, she's a celebrity now, and sometimes a commitment's a commitment.  I'm sure she'll be here for the next family dinner."

The room echoed my grandparents' sudden change in mood, with even Sara seeming to detect everyone's disappointment and mirror it on her own little face.  That just wouldn't do, not that weekend.

Holding up my phone, already on my aunt's channel, I tried to speak up.  "Why not this one? She's streaming, right?"  

Daddy practically jumped out of his chair, excited.  "Robbie, that's such a good idea!"  

Everyone packed tightly around me to try and get a better view of the tiny phone screen as the channel finally went live, displaying her game's title screen and her facecam in the corner.

"Hey there F1nknatics!  Sorry, got a little caught up with family dinner night and forgot about streaming…"  Rather disgustingly, she didn't bother to mute her mic as she kept munching. "So, I guess bonus ASMR stream tonight too.  But, let's get started!"

She wasn't playing Northfight, like usual, but rather some new fighting game that I hadn't seen before.  We had pretty different tastes when it came to videos game, so I admittedly didn't watch her stream often -- it was almost always Northfight, or Uberguard, or sometimes Crimeraft arena maps, but at that point I was more into Untitled Mongoose Game.

Fink lost to her first opponent by only a small sliver of health, and with a few of my parents nodding in agreement I threw a couple crying emoji into the chat for her.  They scrolled up out of view almost immediately, as many of her other viewers did the same, but a few seconds later a notification popped up across the screen overlay, "Welcome back RottenREKR203X!"  I saw my aunt's face light up in the corner, recognizing my username, but as the next match was already starting she didn't have time to verbally react.  

Several matches later I was pretty bored, letting Daddy take my phone so he and the others could keep watching as I hurried to finish my dinner.  As cool as fighting games are, in theory, I'd rather go beat some heroes into the ground on my own, and their distraction meant another chance to get my plans to do so underway.

"Okay, done!"  I tossed my empty plate right into the sink, to Dad's silent irritation, and started to lift my sister from her high chair.  "There's something we gotta do now, so we'll see you guys later!"

Despite my obvious rush, though, Grandpa Boxman tugged at my arm, looking up at me dejectedly.  "It can't wait for the muffins I brought for dessert?" He held up a big plastic container that smelled a little like strawberries.

Anything can wait for my grandpa's strawberry muffins.

---

I couldn't believe all it took to successfully slip away from my family was offering to take Aunt Fink her dessert before she left for another league practice the next morning.  Though I had to leave my phone behind, and ultimately Sara, since my baby sister was just enjoying the stream too much for me to interrupt her, I finally made it to Dad's lab.

According to a big digital clock on the wall (a holdover from when the lab belonged to Grandpa Boxman, and he needed to be reminded not to work for several days straight), it was definitely too late to attack the plaza that night, but I could at least find and install my upgrades.  And that wasn't hard, since one of my unused bodies was propped up onto a raised platform right at the back of the room, connected to a nearby terminal by a number of tangled cables. The terminal had been left running, showing that the upgrades were finished, to my relief, without much more work to be done except to activate it and load myself in!

Unplugging all those cables and flipping a few power switches, I felt a new connection in my hivemind, and concentrated hard on that one particular shell, enough that if I did it just right…

I opened my eyes, looking at the other Robbie staring blankly at me in front of the platform I stood on.  The other me moved aside as I carefully stepped down, getting used to my new legs and eyes -- the fluorescent lighting in the lab was much brighter than Dad's office, and it stung a little at first -- but like all my reboots, I adjusted pretty quickly.

To my disappointment, this new body didn't feel any different.  I checked and rechecked my weapons, my power systems, even my reflexes and physical strength, and the only changes I found were a very slight reduction in the time it took to download data from my hivemind, and that the rocket boosters hidden in my feet had been moved just an inch forward.  They weren't even combat upgrades at all!  

For a brief moment I considered returning to my old shell and just putting the new one back, but ultimately decided to keep it -- I'd come this far, after all.  But that still meant that the old body had to stand in for it so Dad didn't suspect anything, and I allowed myself to power it down and replace all the cables into the correct ports, and try to place it back onto that platform, a much more complicated process than taking it off.

"Ugh, stupid thing…"  I tugged at one leg I'd accidentally gotten tangled up in those cables.  Despite my efforts to keep quiet, though, while I did so I backed into a nearby table, knocking a few tools and an empty coffee mug to the floor, and paused, listening to make sure no one heard the horribly loud noise that rang throughout the silent lab.

No heavy robotic footsteps of someone investigating the sound, so I sighed in relief, picking up the thankfully-unbroken mug and replacing it as well as Dad's tools, exactly as they'd been.  

"Mikayla?"

I jumped, as Aunt Mikayla poked her head out from behind one of the big lab terminals, her entrance having gone completely unnoticed.  She curiously glanced up at the deactivated robot tangled up in its own cables, and at me, trying my best but clearly not quite able to hide my own guilt.  "Mikayla…?"

"I was just, uh, this is..."  I still held that one leg in my hands, and Aunt Mikayla quickly sniffed it, then me, detecting a difference between both shells that wasn't obvious just by sight.

"Mmm, Mikayla."  She squinted up at my face, grunting and whipping her tail around in agitation.  "Mikayla!"

"Okay, yeah, I transferred to my new body," I admitted.  There was just no way I could argue, especially when my aunt took that accusatory tone.  "But I promise I'll be careful with it!"

"Mikayla!" she bellowed in response, stiffening her posture and straightening the spikes along her back, growling and seeming to make herself larger despite still needing to look up at me.  Even if that trick wasn't as effective as when I was little, it definitely got the message across: I was in serious trouble, and so were my plans unless I acted fast.

"I'm sorry, I'll put it back and explain everything to Dad tomorrow.  But can I please have it until then? I won't hurt myself, I promise!"  Her growling ceased, though she still kept her intimidating stance as I spoke.  "Just...please don't tell anyone, okay Aunt Mikayla? Please?"

No change, so I tried my last resort tactic, putting on my best sad kitten expression and even raising my synthesized voice an octave, similar to how I sounded when I was much younger.

"Please...Mommy?"  

"...Mikayla."  She finally averted her eyes, her "ears" flattening in defeat.  Worked every time; if it were up to her I could probably get away with almost anything.

She gently grabbed that leg I was having trouble with, helping me finally secure my old body in place, as if I hadn't taken the new one at all.  With the evidence of my scheme hidden, she turned again to me, squinting her eyes and bringing her tail back up.

"Mikayla.  Mi. Kay. La."  She jabbed at my leg with her claws a few times to punctuate the statement, and I just sighed.  

"Okay, if that's what it'll take for you not to tell anyone..."  Mikayla smiled, and bringing her claws up to her mouth she loudly whistled, or at least made a high-pitched exhaust noise through her teeth that was close enough.  

Immediately Double Beat waddled in, looking as if she'd been rudely awakened from her eighth nap that day -- the old robo-dog was pretty overdue for her maintenance, but she was still going strong, despite being older than even Aunt Mikayla!  She drowsily looked up at me, the only thing betraying her excitement being her little metal tail wagging furiously, and Mikayla dug in the nearby desk drawer and retrieved two leashes (which, I have no idea what they were doing in the lab, but okay, whatever.)  

"Just one lap around the factory, okay?"  Clipping the leashes onto both animal robots, I let them pull me out of there, and the three of us set out on a late-evening walk.

At least, if Dad suspected anything about the state of his lab tomorrow morning, Aunt Mikayla had given me an excellent alibi.

Chapter Text

I woke up early the next morning; it was funny how hearing Daddy snoring all night from the guest room next door put me right back on his farm, and into early-riser mode, even though we were still at Boxmore.

"Sara..."  I tapped her forehead a few times, rolling her around the blanket nest I'd made around her in her crib the night before.  Eventually she stirred, looking up at me with no small amount of annoyance showing in her eye.

"Wake up, today's the big day, remember?"  She groaned as I picked her up. "Well...the big day 2.0."

I tucked the letter for Grandpa into my chest casing again.  Somehow, I had to get it to him, and finish the rest of the plan, before he left that day.  It was still doable, I thought, we just had to get the right opportunity.

Grandpa Boxman's loud voice rang through the factory as we approached the kitchen, and I hesitated a little just outside the door, listening to what sounded like a heated business conversation between him and Daddy.

"They just keep putting in orders, it's actually getting kinda hard to keep up!"  There was a thud, as if Daddy had leaned back in his chair to lay his heavy cowboy boots onto the table, as was his habit.  "But, the board's pretty impressed by what I've managed to do with the evil produce splices, it's a market that's been really dry since you got out of it, Professor Venomous!"

I heard the two of them laugh, and then Grandpa Boxman started speaking again.  "You know, Darrell, I have to admit, I was...worried, a little, about you going out and doing all this on your own.  Guess I forgot how well you ran the business here for all those months..."

"Feet OFF the table!  This is Boxmore, not Darrell Acres!"  Great, Dad was there too. I poked my head in to see him set a few plates of pancakes in front of him and my grandparents, and he noticed me, his tone suddenly doing a complete 180.  "Oh, good morning you two, come in! I'll get your breakfast right away!"

"You know, it's not like I'm hurting anything, Ernesto.  I do keep my boots clean," Daddy replied as he shoved a whole pancake into his mouth.  I knew not to get in the middle of any of my parents' sibling squabbles, but it was true, I'd even caught him showering in them once before.  

Dad sat down some more fresh pancakes in front of me, with a spoonful of strawberry jelly on top just as I liked them, and started to prep Sara in her high chair.  "I don't care. You can set whatever rules you like on your farm, but you know we have different ones here."

Grandpa Boxman chuckled, finally interrupting the argument.  "Yeah, we all know, Ernesto. And you've done such a good job keeping that up, even if some of us have different things going on..."

"Well, I do try my best!"  Dad audibly smiled. "After all, it's important for the kids to have a wholesome family environment with good role models, just like we...eventually had, after the...incident."

Grandpa Venomous' face turned a very pale shade of lavender, as he quickly gulped down the rest of his glass of milk.  An awkward silence filled the room after that, with all of us concentrating more on our food than the conversation -- for some reason, everyone but Sara and I tended to get really uncomfortable when that topic came up.  Always got the feeling there was a lot more to it than they let on, something about living their "best lives" and Grandpa Venomous making a big mistake, but whatever it was, it was just one of those family secrets I wasn't in on yet.

"Anyways."  Grandpa Boxman stood.  "Ernesto, I trust that the little boys' room is still a little boys' room?  Instead of, you know, a little bots' room?"

"I cannot guarantee that, Lord Boxman."  Dad barely looked up at him as he jogged out of the kitchen, busy trying to get a spoon of shredded metal-based "oatmeal" into Sara's mouth.

I finally saw my opportunity.

"Dad," I started, "I'm done with mine, but aren't you gonna eat breakfast too?  You forgot to make yourself some again."

He got the spoon into its mark, but paused at my words.  "Oh...I guess you're right. Thank you for reminding me, Robbie!"  Exactly as planned, he turned back to the counter, leaving a disappointed Sara behind.

"And, Grandpa Venomous..."  I tapped my fingers together, doing my best to disguise the schemes racing through my processor as I whispered behind Dad's back.  "You remember...what you said to me last night? When Aunt Fink got here?"

He stared at me for a few seconds, confused, but then winked as the memory finally came back.  

"Sure, I think so.  The 'surprise,' right?"  Across the table, Daddy perked up, clearly quite interested.

"Well, Sara and I gotta go do something, can you and Daddy..."  I motioned towards Dad. "...help me with it a little?"

The two of them glanced at each other, but then nodded, turning back to me.  "Sure thing, you little scamp. We'll keep him busy."

"Thanks."  Retrieving Sara from her high chair, I quickly followed my other grandpa's path towards the bathroom.  Thankfully, he had paused just outside it, and nervously scanned the room, muttering to himself.  

"He did turn it into a little bots' room."

"Grandpa, wait a second!"  

"Oh, Robbie, I, uh..."  Watching my approach, he quickly replaced his anxious expression with a wide grin, though there was no hiding the sweat on his brow.  "I might be here a little while, go ahead and tell the others not to wait on me..."

No, this was on the other side of the factory from where I needed him to be!

"Before you do anything...here!"  I shoved the letter into his hands.  "Make sure you read this, okay!"

I didn't wait to see his reaction as I dashed down the hall, with Sara held tightly in my arms.  Now that step two of the plan was almost finished, time was of the essence, and I needed to start step three as soon as I could.

With most of the rest of the family still asleep, it wasn't too hard to make it right to Dad's office, avoiding all of his patrols.  I always found the place even more unsettling empty than with Dad at his desk, but it didn't stop me from rifling through it for that 'Attack' button, which I found safely tucked away in the top drawer.

One last thing to take care of before we boxed ourselves, though.  I held Sara up so that her eye was level with both of mine. "You ready?"

She groaned, knowing exactly what came next as the little red gem right on top of her head opened, and I gently tapped her exposed reboot button.  Instantly her core destabilized, and she rebooted and teleported right to her spot within my arm cannon, her gem replaced with a long red fuse. Infinite Saras, literally at my fingertips and ready to fire!

She peered up at me, an extremely sour look on her face.  Sara's not a fan of rebooting either, I don't think.

"Showtime," I whispered down to my sister, smiling.

She whined, sadly, as I slammed the button on the desk, and the usual big purple box appeared at my feet and folded around us.  I just hoped that the loud sounds as it sunk into the office floor and descended across the street didn't draw any attention, especially from Dad.

After a rough landing, as usual, since you don't exactly get much padding while crashing down into a parking lot inside of an otherwise empty metal box, some circuit inside me tightened as I emerged to see Brad and Edith already waiting for me.

"Hey, Robbie," Brad started, readying themselves for battle.  "Finally replaced that old smoothie machine. It's been a while, so you can come over once we're done and grab one, our treat.  'Kay?"

Okay, play it cool, Robbie.  You're here to destroy these Lakewood Losers, once and for all.

I didn’t respond beyond just staring them down, my cannon humming with anticipation.  Sara looked up at me from its end, her face unusually solemn for a plaza attack, but I kept my composure, and my expression as blank and...well, as robotic as I could.

Edith squinted, a worried look in her eyes that almost matched my sister's.  "Robbie, you okay? We've never seen you this serious about a fight!"

For just a moment I glanced back towards Boxmore, towards the office window situated in the skull section’s right eye.  I saw a rotund but otherwise person-shaped silhouette standing there, watching me, and gulped; it was indeed showtime, but for whatever reason, all the confidence I’d had since the day before was quickly fading from my processor.

"I, uh...I’m here to…"  Mentally smacking myself, I tried to keep up the cool killer robot act, but it just wasn’t happening anymore.  None of this was happening the way I’d seen it in my head, but fortunately, my preparations hadn’t stopped at just a three-step plan and a letter.  I pulled out my emergency backup notecards, with a short script to follow in case of situations just like these. "M-My name is....Robbie, and I’m here to…"  

I checked my cards again, and held out my cannon, with Sara at the end forcing an uncomfortable laugh.  "...destroy your plaza."

The heroes blinked, confused.  "...Okay? You, like, do that a lot," Brad finally responded.

There was nothing more on the cards, nothing else I could think to say.  There was nothing left to do but fight. Even with my nerves maxed out, I took a few nanoseconds to calculate the optimal first move that might catch them off-guard, to make up for not having the upgrades I’d wanted.  Hivemind Drive C, sector 0xff, I brought up a file that was sure to start me off strong.  

With my new rockets active, I dashed forward with my shoulder out, catching Brad in the chest and stunning them before they could react.  I immediately swung my cannon back around and fired, Sara unable to help but giggle a little as soon as she was airborne, even without much distance to fly.  As was her programming, the kid’s fuse lit, turning her into a bomb that exploded the instant she touched the pavement, and the still-stunned Brad bounced a few feet across the parking lot from the impact.  

"Dude!"  Edith jumped out of the way as I doubled back towards her, her boots already kicking up a few embers.  "That’s it, you wanna get serious, let’s get serious!"

She widened the gap between us, with her feet flying as she sent a few fireballs right for my head, though they were easy enough to dodge.  She managed to get behind me while I did so, though, and got one more kick to my back, the metal sizzling as she knocked me off-balance.  

Sara respawned within my cannon already eager to attack again, though my second shot missed Edith and instead sent the tiny robot flying towards a parked car, which quickly rose up in a pinkish glow.  Sara’s impact merely made another small crater in the sidewalk, as Brad chucked the car my way, giving Edith another opportunity to catch me from behind as I was distracted.

With my processor racing to try and deal with opposition from both sides, I just ducked, letting them deal with each other instead.  I turned to Brad as the car caught Edith and sent her flying, their fingers still glowing with residual energy, and sighed.

Of the two heroes, Brad was definitely the one I liked fighting the least; their favorite tactic was always sending the Saras I shot right back at me with their telekinesis, so I usually targeted and took them out first.  Ranged attacks just weren’t an option, and to my sister’s disappointment I unloaded one last copy of her onto another nearby car and retracted my cannon, bringing up both fists instead.

As I’d hoped, Brad gave up on using their powers in favor of throwing a punch right to my face, though it wasn’t hard to calculate its path and bring up my fists to block.  Realizing that I’d left no opening in the front, though, Brad immediately opted for a jab at my side with their knee, and I tried to counter with a barrage of punches and kicks, at one point even jabbing at them with my snout (not a very dignified move I’ll admit, Coach would scream if he saw it, but then not every fight has to be dignified.)  

While I got the odd hit in, it wasn’t enough to take them down for good, and of course, they just had to respond with the other tactic I hated most.  My joints suddenly locked into place as they used their powers to stop me dead in my tracks, effortlessly lifting me above their head and flinging me right into the bodega sign, snapping the giant acrylic letter R in half.

I looked down at Brad from over what remained of that letter, watching their face suddenly drop as they realized I was out of reach, and exactly where I wanted to be.

"Oh, shoot."  

"Don’t mind if I do," I whispered to myself, summoning my arm cannon, and Sara, once again.  Right away I shot the S next to me, then the A, and finally the G, and kicked down the rest of that R, letting all four giant letters crash onto the pavement below, with my sister(s) ensuring plenty of debris.  And for that final touch, I loaded up one more Sara, aiming for my feet as I jumped clear of the bodega’s roof -- her core explosion was enough to blow a large hole through into the store below, circumventing all the blast shields across the windows to scatter dust, debris, and random merchandise across the floor tiles.

One store down, we really could wreck the whole place at this rate!

I landed just as a well-aimed fireball connected with my path -- Edith was already back on the battlefield, and she was furious .

"I just pretended to clean up the place!"  She sent another volley of fireball kicks my way, which were much less well-aimed.  "And now I gotta do it for real?!"

At the edge of my visual range I noticed Brad hurling pieces of that broken sign at me as well, one of which I caught and slammed right into their chest, taking them back out so I could focus on their coworker.  

Catching up with Edith I decided to show off a little of my own footwork, bringing one of my heavy feet down onto her head, though she blocked it and threw me right off.  I backed up to send a few Sara explosions her way, but she effortlessly kicked those aside as well, and blocked punch after punch, giving me no opportunity to even get a hit in until finally I gave up, taking a different approach.  

Without warning I swept my foot across the ground -- there wasn’t much dirt to kick up, to my dismay, but there was still enough to kick right into her eyes, sending her back to the ground at my feet, blinded.

Edith was a sitting duck, and there was no way Brad could pull her back to safety.  The whole plaza was ripe for destruction, with the damage we’d already done to Gar’s Bodega giving us a head start.  Sara and I were about to win, with the only thing left to take out these pesky heroes for good.

"What the heck is your problem today?!"  She squinted up at me with tears running down her face, having barely managed to clear some of the dirt from her eyes.  "We're your friends, we just...play-fight sometimes. None of this is supposed to be this real, dude!"

I kept my cannon pointed right at her, and Brad off to the side, despite Sara starting to whimper nervously again.  "Of course it's real. I told you guys, I'm here to destroy your plaza!" I could feel a sadistic grin spreading across my face.  "And you being my friends makes no difference!"

I fired.

Or, I tried to fire, but nothing happened -- my arm cannon just refused to respond.  I noticed Sara looking back at me from its end, frowning.

"Sis, come on," I whispered down to her, but it only seemed to upset her further, and she used whatever limited connection our shared weapons systems gave her to jam my circuits up more.

"Sara!"  I shook my unresponsive arm cannon a few times, to no avail, and brought my baby sister up to face me.  "Stop it, we have to do this! We have to...kill them."

Geez, even I started to realize how messed-up that sounded -- I was a villain, not a monster.  Sara stared back at me as I started to back away from Edith and Brad, and very gently shook herself back and forth -- even without knowing how to vocalize it yet, her message was a clear "No," and I couldn't help but agree with her.

This wasn't right.  None of it was right.  With my friends still in my sights, I took a few more steps back, and ran into something hard, and quite tall, and...muscular?  In the middle of the parking lot, where I was sure nothing had been before.

The thing cleared his throat, and I slowly looked up, dread filling every one of my circuits.  Sara just dropped from my cannon, her fuse unlit, and she rolled herself around to take in the massive figure towering over us as well.

“M-Mr…KO…”  I couldn’t help but lock my red eyes onto his glowing purple ones.  He grabbed my shoulder before I could run, fully turning me around to face him.  " Shit. "

"Language, Robbie."  With a single power fist to the jaw, my rampage was over.  Shell 1206 terminated.  

Program recall complete, reconstructing.........Reconstruction complete.  Shell 1207 initiating...

The conveyor deposited me into the office, as usual, but instead of Dad and his stopwatch I emerged to see Grandpa, leaning back against the edge of his old desk as he stared out the window towards the plaza, watching Mr KO and his employees clean up the mess I'd made, starting with my old body.  

That punch had really spread me across the parking lot.

"Grandpa, I...I..."  My speech synthesizer failed me once again.  "I thought...I could..." Grandpa didn't even turn towards me, keeping his gaze across the street as another bell sounded.  I stepped off the belt as it activated again, with Sara rolling into the office behind me, already looking up at me with tears in her eye.

I couldn't resist hugging her close, though thankfully she seemed to forgive me pretty easily, nuzzling into my chest as I tried again.  "Grandpa, I'm sorry. I...still couldn't do it."

"I watched the whole thing, Robbie.  Just like you asked me to." He crumpled the letter in his hands, tossing it over his shoulder, and then finally turned to me, a sad smile on his face.  "I almost thought you were gonna win, that you would destroy those heroes, and the whole plaza this time."

My own tears started to fall.  "I really thought so too." I had failed, again, but seeing my grandfather's smile instead of my father's disinterest made it feel so, so much worse.  Shifting Sara into one arm, my other shot up, barely hiding my face as I tried to resist breaking down. I failed at that too, though, and felt Sara being gently pulled out of my grip and placed onto Dad's desk, and my face pushed down into Grandpa's sweater, which absorbed my tears right away.

"Robbie…"  He spoke calmly, keeping his mismatched eyes fixed onto my face as I finally recovered enough to pull away and give him an explanation.  "Why'd you attack the plaza?"

"...I really thought I could destroy it this time."  Tapping my fingers together, I tried to make the words happen.  "I wanted to, for you, Grandpa. Because you always wanted it destroyed."

"This was really all for me?"

Now that I had gotten a few words out, I went from not knowing what to say, to having so much that I wanted him to hear.  "You used to send all the other robots to destroy the plaza, but none of them ever did it like you needed them to, and I wanted to finally do it so you'd be-"

He stopped me right there, laughing.  "Robbie, I didn't attack the plaza because I needed to!"  

I blinked a couple of times, confused.  "Then...why'd you do it?"

"Because I wanted to."  I just stared back as he smiled, seeming quite amused by his own non-answer, and my inability to process it all.

"But what's the difference?"  

"Robbie, Robbie..."  He laughed again, softly.  "You know...you really remind me of Ernesto sometimes.  Asking questions, making all those complicated plans and schemes, worrying so much over all the little details, and forgetting to just...have fun."

Wait, did he really just say I have something in common with Dad?

He motioned towards the window.  "That plaza's been destroyed so many times over the years I can't even remember them all, even if it never was me who actually made it happen.  But the good part is, it always comes back, ready to be crushed again! That's the beauty of it!"

"But..."  I glanced over at Sara on the desk, as she looked up at me just as confused as I was.  "That means that we'll never win. That...you never won."

"Nope, I lost every time.”  Grandpa shrugged. “Villains never win, kid.  It took me so long to figure that out, but it's the truth.  I can tell ya this, though: Heroes don't get to have nearly as much fun as us!"

He pulled me into another hug, finally wiping away the last of my tears.  "But...I'm proud of you for trying anyway." He scooped Sara up into our hug as well, with the little girl babbling in delight.  "Both of you."

"ROBERT JOHN BOXMAN!!"  My dad's booming voice echoed down the hall, and sure enough the big robot stomped right in, his normally red eye lit a much brighter shade in his fury.

I was so discontinued.

The rest of the family followed shortly behind him, led by my other grandpa and a teary-eyed Daddy, who quickly mouthed a "Sorry" as they entered.

"We couldn't keep him from looking out the windows for very long, especially once he heard that box come down," Grandpa Venomous explained.  "And once he got going, well…"

"Do you have any idea how much you’ve set back our pipeline with that stunt?!"  Of course, it was always about the business with Dad. "And stealing an unfinished prototype aside, that unauthorized plaza attack completely violated every battle arrangement I have with KO and his staff, and the damages that I now have to pay for add up to at least…"

He paused to look out the window, mentally counting it all up, and his shoulders sagged.  

"...Did the upgrades function well, at least?"  Dad’s notepad was laying out on his desk next to his old stopwatch, and he grabbed a pen to jot down what notes he could.

"I didn’t really get to test them," I admitted, and he sighed, rubbing his claws across his face.

"Well, either way, once everyone leaves tonight you’re grounded, for the next... until I say so .  And I hate to do it, but Sara, you are too."  My baby sister’s face dropped; I don’t think she even understood his exact meaning, but she knew it wasn’t fair.  A few tears welled up in her eye once again.

"Now, come on, Ernesto, don’t punish Sara.  She didn’t have anything to do with this." Grandpa took her back, drying those tears with his sleeve, and nonchalantly pointed a chicken claw at me.  "I mean, it was all Robbie’s fault."

I groaned, betrayed.  "Grandpa…"

"Hang on, don’t complain just yet."  He winked his mechanical eye at me, then turned back to my dad.  "Look, I can help rebuild that prototype if you want, and if there’s anything you’ve got to pay for the damage, PV will handle it."  

"Wait, what?"  My other grandpa perked up for a second, but was ignored.

"Robbie did all this to impress me, and you know what, I am impressed!  My grandson’s already turning out to be a respectable villain in his own right!"  Huh. I guess Grandpa did say that word to the other robots after all. "So, just let ‘em both off easy this time, Ernesto."

"But, Sir!"

"That’s an order, Ernesto 5301."  He smirked at Dad, who finally relented.

"Yes Sir, Lord Boxman…"  He stood, placing a hand on my shoulder as he took a few seconds to reconsider my punishment.  "You’re grounded for three days, and then I want no complaints about thoroughly testing some non-combat upgrades.  As well as a written apology to Mr KO for wrecking his store. Deal?"

I smiled up at my dad.  "Deal."

"And Sara's off the hook completely."  He sighed, gently cradling her as she got passed on once again.  "Your grandfather's right, none of this was your fault, Sweetie, I'm so sorry I grounded you…"

Accepting his apology, Sara snuggled deeper into his arms, making it clear she didn't plan on leaving them anytime soon.  Dad always was her favorite.

As all the tension in the crowded office finally died down, Daddy slowly made his way to the desk.  He tapped his brother's shoulder, and spoke to him in a hushed voice.

"Hey, Ernesto, I forgot to mention earlier, I got all the bugs in Teagan's initial blueprint ironed out.  Just like you asked." He pulled out his phone, tapping a few times to bring up an image, but even before he did so Dad's eye went wide.  

"Darrell, not here!  We haven't told anyone about Teagan yet," he whispered back, loud enough for us to hear anyway.  The whole room got quiet, with everyone staring at the two of them, until I finally broke the silence.

"...Who's Teagan?"  Next to me, Grandpa Boxman covered his mouth, hiding a tiny gasp.

Suddenly uncomfortable with all the staring, Daddy hunched his shoulders, as if to shrink away.  "I...I thought that's what this weekend was for? That we were all getting together to reveal the next production model?"

"You glass-brained moron!! "  Mom slapped him, snarling.  "Of course we haven't told Daddy and Professor Venomous about Teagan yet!"  

"Yeah, the plan was, we were gonna wait 'til next Shucksgiving," Uncle Jethro added, his hands situated approximately where his hips should be.  

"Mikayla!"  

"Who is Teagan?!" I cried out again above all their voices, utterly lost.  Grandpa Venomous placed his hand on my shoulder, while Mom finally just sighed and passed us Daddy's phone, letting Grandpa Boxman scroll through a bunch of blueprints that depicted a cone-shaped robot with an electrode on top of his "head."  Eventually a few tears fell from his organic eye, and though he still held his hand up to block it I could see a huge smile spreading across his face.

Taking in the blueprints as well from behind us, Grandpa Venomous smiled down at me.  "It looks like you and Sara are getting a little brother soon."

"Excuse moi..."  Leaning against the wall, Coach suddenly cleared his throat, holding up a crayon sketch of another robot, shaped a little more like a much larger Uncle Jethro.  "We're going ahead with the Teagan model? I thought Boxmore's next product line was going to be Gaston!"

"RAYMOND!"  Now Coach was on the receiving end of the others' wrath, with even Daddy screaming at him for ruining yet another surprise.

"...Two little brothers."  My grandpa patted my shoulder a few more times, and then moved to steady his husband, who had gone from shocked joy to looking like he was about to suffer a full-on system crash.

---

With loud music playing through my new pink headphones I almost didn't hear the short metallic knock on my door, and I panicked as I quickly replaced the blankets on my bed and slammed myself on top just as Dad peeked inside.

"Robbie, it's Sara's naptime.  Can you be quiet for her for a little while?"  He held up my baby sister, whose excitement to finally see me was interrupted by a yawn.  "Oh, you've got your headphones, I guess you'll be fine."

I nodded, turning down the music so that I could hear.

"I am proud of you for staying in here all three days, son," Dad remarked as he sat her in her crib and gathered the blankets around her into a loose nest, not as good as I usually do it but close enough.  He glanced up at me as if seeking my feedback on whether it looked right, or perhaps to even invite me to assist, but I stayed put on the bed.

"Are you...proud enough to un-ground me a little early?"  I smiled as sweetly as I could, but Dad's eye narrowed as he saw right through it.

"You're un-grounded at dinner, Robbie, not a nanosecond before."  Dad finished tucking Sara into bed, and stared down at me expectantly.  "And if I'm accessing the right memory file, your punishment had a second component, correct?"

"Oh.  Right."  Cautiously, I reached into the blankets underneath me, searching until I found the right folded sheet of paper, which I pulled out and passed to Dad.  He flipped it over a couple of times in its claws, skimming the letter's contents and ensuring it was properly addressed to Mr KO.

"Wait, can you give this to them too?"  I pulled out another letter, this one addressed to Brad and Edith, which Dad accepted.  He hadn't asked for a second one, but I just felt it was the right thing to do -- I had come closer than ever to actually killing the two of them, after all, and I knew that among organics that was considered pretty rude, so an apology seemed appropriate.

Dad seemed a little surprised, but still smiled, or at least I think he did.  "I'll be sure they get it, Robbie. Thank you."

He closed the door behind him as he left, and I immediately tore the blankets back off of my bed, though still being careful not to disturb my sister as she began to doze off.  Spread out across the sheets in front of me were dozens of pieces of paper, on which I'd scrawled out detailed plans, diagrams of Lakewood Plaza Turbo drawn from memory, and new moves and strategies of all kinds, some of which were admittedly lifted right from one of Aunt Fink's videos game.  With not a lot else to do while being grounded in my room for three days, I had gotten a lot of work done.

Even if it wasn't solely to make Grandpa Boxman proud, someday I would destroy the plaza.  I didn't need to; Boxmore just didn't have that kind of relationship with its neighbors anymore, Dad wasn't as interested in that kind of reckless petty villainy as his fathers had been.  And besides, even if Edith and Brad and Mr KO, and sometimes the cat cafe guy and the fitness dojo ladies, were still my mortal enemies, I had friends there, the only people besides my family I cared about.  It might have been coming so close and failing, or a desire to finally realize my true potential, or even just a deep, unused part of my base programming finally kicking in. Whatever, I understood my grandpa's actions better than ever.  

I didn't need to destroy the plaza, but I really, really wanted to.