On A Bender
“Mpfhngg.”
Jack moaned lightly from his spread eagled position on his bed. Blearily he raised his head, wondering what the blaring alarm was all about. Bloodshot red eyes danced around the weakly, wincing at the stream of light pouring in from the window. He grunted and rolled over.
White skin flushed green as Jack groaned, his stomach curled in protest. His head pounded along with the blaring alarm. Muttering curses in Russian under his breath Jack opened his mouth to holler over the noise, throat scratchy and tongue feeling fuzzy.
“Security Protocol shut that goddamned alarm off your motherfucking horseshit of a program!” the young man roared, wincing. He raised a hand to massage at his eyes, pulling himself into a sitting position.
A computer along the wall beeped out an affirmative “Yes Master Jack” and the alarm cut off.
Jack continued to massage his head, trying to force back the pain of a raging migraine-hangover combination. He grunted lightly before calling out hoarsely, “Mary get me that hangover tonic!”
Outside the room a mechanical, but distinctly feminine voice, replied, “Right away Master Jack.”
“And someone contact Bobby! I want to know what the hell I was doing for-for-for however long I’ve been on this bender. Gods it feels like months…”
Jack groaned and crashed back into the bed, his head giving a rather angry throb at the movement. A second later the door opened with a mechanic hiss and Jack raised a single gloved hand up for the tonic, his eyes closed and his other hand still massaging his forehead.
A smooth glass was placed into his grasp. The young man sat up, pinched his nose, and downed the glass. He gagged lightly.
“Fucking shit stinks,” he muttered, relaxing as his headache began to fade ever so slightly. “Where is Bobby?” the teen asked after a second, cracking open an eye to lazily gaze at the maid before him.
“I’m afraid Master Spicer that you had reprogrammed him whilst on yet another one of your…trips,” Mary the Maid replied calmly. There was a faint mechanic tinge to words.
Jack arched an eyebrow, silently asking ‘really?’ to his maid. Mary nodded her head slowly. The young man sighed.
“Call him and initiate Return Protocol Alpha, make sure he understands the need to boot off any reprogramming and to recover anything that was originally lost,” Jack stated, able to think slightly more clearly. “After that begin to gather the archived footage of my…lapse in judgment and prepare a hot meal. Have one of the other Maids get me statements of my bank accounts, and all other status’ of my affairs in order for my perusal. I’ll be heading down to the lab. Oh…and prepare a hot meal. I’m fucking famished. What the hell have I been eating?”
“Pudding cups and bananas, Master Jack.”
Jack stared, and stared, and almost retched.
“I’M ALLERGIC TO PUDDING!”
“Sorry Xiaolin Losers, this Wu is mine!” the visage of Jack Spicer snarled, clutching the Chameleon Scarf to his chest. Suddenly he went stiff, much to the Monks surprise, and began speaking in a monotone. “Return Protocol Alpha engaged. Modifying hardware. Processing. Processing.”
“Um…what is RoboJack doing?” Rai whispered.
The next second the robot clone of Jack seemed to come back to life, blink, and then swore in German. Quickly he yanked up his arm, dropping the Chameleon Scarf, and tapped out something on the metal-skin.
The monks watched as the robots arm opened up and a holographic like screen emerged with the familiar symbol of Jack Spicer. It twirled around for a minute alongside the sounds of a phone ringing. In a short flash of pixels and a click the monks saw a strange face appear instead of Jack’s symbol.
“Bobby? Where the fuck are you?” the face snapped. Its voice was tinged just slightly with that over-the-phone feel.
“I’m sorry Master Jack, I did not check before responding to the Return Protocol Alpha. Do you wish me to check my inner GPS?”
“Fuck yes Bobby! I need you back here at the damn lab, you piece of scrap metal!”
“Master Jack?”
“Seriously…what the fuck was I thinking?! I have months worth of backlogged projects, backlogged finances…Bobby get your shiny metal ass back to my lab this fucking instant before I turn you into scrap!”
“I’m in Antarctica, Master, and I’m afraid my dimensional shift program has been deleted and is unrecoverable.”
“Seriously? Well…shit. Fine. I’ll send for a plane. Just…gods, don’t move too much then. Another thing to fix…what the fuck was I doing anyway…? And where are those security tapes?! MARY!”
“Shall I hang up then, Master Jack?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll work on you in a bit. Plane’s on the way. See you in ten, Bobs.”
“Of course Master Jack.”
The hologram cut out. With a metallic sigh Bobby sank down into the snow and stared up at the sky. As his sensors were heavily damaged, and so were his self-repair systems, Bobby did not even notice the Xiaolin Monks whom were staring at him in shock. Instead he went through the few systems that weren’t damaged or ruined. Facial plates curled into a wince.
“Master Jack’s not gonna be happy ‘bout that one…” he whined slightly, raising a hand to rub at his forehead. He frowned at the screeching noise the action caused, narrowing his optics slightly and shifting his hand more into his field of vision. “Paint…? No, metal flakes…oh fuck! He changed the face plate!”
With a disdainful moan Bobby closed his eyes and muttered short curses in German.
Across the field the monks glanced warily at the robot and the scarf. They wondered, as a group, if this were just another ploy. Kimiko hesitantly stepped forward.
“Um…excuse me?”
Bobby lifted his torso and opened his optics, blinking slowly.
“Oh, other life forces?” he muttered. “I apologize. I did not realize there were living…humans up so far north. I’m not encroaching on some sort of territory, am I? If so I swear I’ll be gone in a minute!”
Kimiko blinked and said, slowly, “You…don’t recognize me?”
Bobby mirrored the motion, followed by a tilt of his head. “Should I? I’m afraid the reboot of my system wiped any memory of the past few months from my hard drive.”
Kimiko stuttered, nervously, eyes wide.
Bobby narrowed his optics and accessed the zoom feature, just slightly, at the girl’s stuttering and blinked again. “Tohomiko Kimiko?” he asked after a second, facial plates going slack. “My, you’ve grown…big!”
“Um, what?!” Kimiko shrieked.
“Last I saw you, Kimi-chan, was uh…what, you were ten? What are you doing all the way out in the arctic? Oh don’t tell me I got reprogrammed as a kidnapper…Master will have a field day if I ended up kidnapping you! Gods your father must be worried oh I’m so—”
“N-No!” Kimiko waved her hands quickly, ignoring the faint sniggering behind her. “Y-You didn’t—I-I just—my scarf!”
Bobby blinked again, “Your whatsit, now?”
The explanation came out in a slightly panicked rush. Apparently, according to the young monk, she had dropped her scarf from her plane and hired him to find it. When he didn’t hand it over she feared foul play. So she came over to find out what had happened, was the deal off? Bobby just blinked as his systems processed the information. His lips curled into a smile.
“Aww, no, deal’s not off Kimi-chan!” he stated cheerfully. “Go ahead and take your scarf, I’m not gonna stop you.” A low rumbling reached his sensors, followed by a static-call from a rather familiar person.
“Bobby flare the damn signal your moronic asswipe!”
“Ah, there’s my ride!” the robot stated. “Auf Wiedersehen, Kimi-chan.”
Kimiko stared as the ‘bot stood and back flipped into the sky; a jet roared over head, swinging low. The Dragon of Fire raised her hand up, flinching into the sun. She could see RoboJack—Bobby curl and slip easily into the jet that dashed off almost instantly. Her hair ruffled, the Chameleon Scarf fluttering in her hands.
The others walked up to her and began asking questions. Kimiko just stared at the sky for a minute before turning her gaze down into the scarf in her hand. She clenched the fabric tight, confused, and wondering why she felt just a little sad all of a sudden.
It was like…she just saw a very good friend for the first time in years, only to lose them again.
Jack narrowed his eyes to slits and glanced at Bobby through the corner. He was surprised at the old facial appearance the mechanical creation of his had, and briefly noted the need to reupgrade the ‘bots systems. Still he was curious about a more immediate situation: namely the people he was able to see down in the arctic snow.
“What was that all about, Bobby?” he asked into his headset as they soared over the beautiful blue of the ocean.
“I am not quite sure,” the robotic creation of Jack uttered. “Tohomiko-san and some friends were in the arctic, looking for this scarf,” a slight holographic image popped up in Jack’s visor, complete with data statistics, “I don’t believe the story she spun about dropping it and hiring my services, I have no logged instance of such in my work-banks. Plus it was highly illogical.”
“You scanned the scarf?”
“Of course, and it only further brings to question what Tohomiko-san was doing in the arctic. This…is not an ordinary scarf, Master.”
“We’ll discuss the scarf and what you were doing in the arctic after I’ve fixed you up, then, Bobby. And after we’ve gone over what the fuck I’ve been doing. I mean…I made that fucking time machine!”
“Truly? I thought you scrapped that project?”
“I did.”