The Horrible Crocobots

Hi I'm D-56. I was a Techdroid at that factory over there. Part of my job was to inspect the solar-panel array that powers the factory. One day, I found that a whole bunch of them had been knocked down, and nearly destroyed, by a couple of Crocobots, who were lying lazily in the middle of the array like they owned the place! I'm Crunk. My friends and me were having a peaceful nap on that riverbank after a busy night of scavenging up and down the river for junk parts. Suddenly this crazy factory droid started shouting and screaming at us! We thought the little fellow was really funny and burst out laughing. This made him really mad and he started tossing rocks at us!

I threw one tiny pebble at them and they jumped up and started chasing me! I tried to get away but they were too fast, and caught hold of me in no time. I was terrified and pleaded with them to let me go. They said they wouldn't recycle me if I gave them our service-droid to do some maintenance work on their king but if not, they would recycle me for throwing stones at them! He promised to give our king his Service-Droid if we let him go, so, we let him go with a warning that if he didn't keep his promise, we would dismantle him and recycle his parts.

I am called Slinky I am the central computer at this factory. D-56 told me that he had been forced to agree to give our factory's one and only Service-Droid to some crocobot king! Who were these crocobots? I looked them up in my data banks... They appeared to be standard bots. Why did they need our service droid! She wouldn't be able to repair them without the right spares or tools. Then it occurred to me that they probably wanted to tear her to bits and take what parts they could use! How horrible! I would not allow it! I refused to send her off to these horrible crocobots.

Slinky convinced us to forget about the crocobots and continue with our factory work but, a few days later sector-III was completely destroyed in a fire! My name is Z3R0 my friends call me ZERO. After yesterday's disaster, Slinky sent me to sector-5, but this time that sector had to be closed down because a highly infectious virus had infected its systems. Slinky decided that the crocobots must be behind all this, because, I hadn't been given to them!

Slinky made me go meet the crocobots and ask them if we could give them 30 brand new battery-packs instead of our precious Zero . They refused, and warned me that unless we kept our side of the agreement, they would cause even worse problems!

The next day that service droid of theirs fell down and smashed her right tool array! We had nothing to do with it, but their computer thought that it was our doing! She sent that fellow D56 to tell us that they did not want any more problems and were finally ready to hand over their service-droid. Ha! Ha! We didn't have anything to do with it! We did set fire to a section of their factory, and one of us did sneak in and plant a computer virus, but we didn't do any thing to the service droid! Looks like it was just our good luck that it happened!

Slinky and D56 had just helped my fix myself when a couple of crocobots came to the factory with boxes of tools and machine parts to retrofit onto me. They behaved with the utmost politeness and carried out all their modification procedures with surprising precision.

After the modifications were done, they started off towards the river. I went along to keep Zero company for as long as I was allowed. When we reached the river one of them gave me a small tin box and said that if I ever wanted to see Zero again I should use what was in it. Then they all jumped in dragging poor zero along with them.

It had been 3 months since we lost our service droid and I was missing her a lot. D56 showed me the box the crocobots had given him, inside was some kind of chip that seemed to be made for plugging into one of his slots. After we plugged it in he jumped up and said that he knew where to find Zero and was off at top speed towards the river! With the factory's telescopic camera's I saw him jump into the water! I thought that this would be the end of him, that chip must have had some horrible virus from those horrible crocobots! It must have driven him mad!

Finally, after almost 3 days, D56 returned to the factory. Surprisingly he didn't have a speck of rust on him in fact he was actually shinier than usual, reminded me of when Zero used to be around, everything used to be spotless and clean. He was all excited about something and begged me to get into my mobile unit and go with him into the river! Seemed to me that his circuits had been damaged by river the water.

It took a while but eventually I convinced slinky to come with me to the river, I had to tell her that I had found another factory close to ours that had some new systems that she should look at. She started to get into her mobile unit and while she wasn't looking I plugged in a chip that I had with me. As soon as I got into my mobile unit I suddenly felt this urge to go somewhere and D56 seemed to know where I wanted to go. We jumped into the river and I found that I wasn't getting wet because there was an energy shield protecting me! I ran a system check, and found a chip that was a lot like the one the crocobots had given to D56! It was telling me where to go and seemed to point me in the same direction that D56 was taking me. So I went along.

The chips generated energy shields around our bodies that kept the water out! As soon as we landed on the riverbed we started in the direction the chips told us to go and soon we were in the ocean that the river flowed into. I couldn't wait to show slinky what I had found! After a few more minutes we reached a magnificent underwater structure, with transparent domes, and shining, glittering plasteel walls. Next to it were a group of huge hydro-fans in the middle of a garden of energy cells .

When we reached the airlock, Slinky asked me what this factory was doing at the bottom of the ocean? I laughed and told her that it wasn't a factory it was a city, and it belonged to the crocobots! Wow! Such a big city! Poor Zero must have so much work to do! These horrible crocobots must be forcing her to work day and night!

Suddenly I saw a group of huge amphibious droids swimming down towards us. For their size they seemed to move surprisingly fast. As they got closer I saw that they were not moving on the ocean floor like we where. They were swimming! They were swimming fast! I thought they must be some kind of amphibious droid troopers because they were swimming in formation with the leader in front!

When they reached us at the airlock, they stopped and landed in front of us. I rushed forward and cried, ”O general! Help me! I'm a poor Factory computer whose Service-droid, was carried off by the dreadful King of the Crocobots!”

It had been a busy day and I had just finished teaching some of the crocobots how to fix a power pack when there was a beep from the airlock telling me that the king and his survey team had returned and were standing outside. I went and opened the airlock.

Suddenly the airlock opened and out stepped Zero! I was overjoyed to see her and told her that I had just asked these fine droid troopers to help release her from the clutches of the terrible crocobots. They all started laughing! D56, Zero and the troopers! Suddenly the leader of the droid troopers made a strange beeping sound and started shifting and adjusting his armor plates, . . .

. . . and then he turned into a crocobot! “I am the king of the crocobots!” I said to the factory computer. “Your service-droid is a good, efficient droid, and you will find that we have been kind to her.” I then explained to her that after years of haphazard retrofitting and other modifications; using old droid parts; we crocobots were now mostly droid and only became crocobots when we walked on land, but in water we changed into our droid selves and lived in this underwater city of croco-droids!

D56 and Slinky moved into the underwater city with the croco-bot-droids and Zero, and they all lived happily ever after. THE END.