52_Brothers

The mechanoid city of Fencetown was in turmoil. Plasma fires raged, explosions echoed, buildings crumbled. And among all that chaos stood the towering death mech, otherwise known as Granny Qbita.

The powerful machine had finally stopped growing, and now was only the size of a three-story building. A rather timid size for a war mech of legend. Currently she stood still and watched the city below her like a hawk, her ancient sensors scanning the area for the two interlopers who destroyed her beloved kitchen and took the self-appointed title of queen away from her.

"Sigh... this is the fifth time this year," Mopo lamented to his brother Topo.

"At least all the people were saved." Topo replied, trying to cheer up his brother and general of Fencetown's mechanoid army.

"Oh, they know the evacuation routine better than their own names by now. They flee to the underground shelters as if it were just another Tuesday for them," Mopo said, shaking his head in distaste.

The two brothers walked together across the remains of the main square, deftly navigating around the bigger pieces of the rubble. When they saw their target, they both spread out to secure the area.

"So you know what caused the old bat to hulk out this time?" Topo asked as he knelt behind a sufficiently sturdy chunk of concrete.

"Does it even matter?" Mopo dejectedly replied, kneeling next to his brother and materializing his battle staff out of thin air.

"Sure it does. How do you expect to prevent these disasters if we don't know what actually caused them in the first place?" Topo reasoned, pressing his hands over his ears and ducking behind the concrete rubble.

"Sigh... It's the usual drama," Mopo replied, carefully aiming his metal staff at the damaged and very much undetonated plasma bomb at the middle of the square.

"Some new adventuring humans tried to do her quest again," Mopo mumbled under his black mustache, concentrating on aiming at the bomb.

Zzzap!

BOOOM!

The city trembled under the force of the plasma warhead. The few intact windows remaining shattered into fragments. The initial blast spared the two mechanoid brothers sheltered behind the concrete rubble. Moments later, the plasma inferno spread across the square and into the surrounding buildings, green fire seeping into every exposed surface and consuming everything in its path.

Among all that mayhem stood two unperturbed bots, both kneeling behind the concrete rubble and waiting out the inferno as if waiting for the bus on a Tuesday. Thankfully, General Mopo held his battle staff in one hand, its base pressed to the ground, while its top resembled a sci-fi fork projecting a blue shimmering lightning that coalesced into a geometric force field around the two bots, shielding them from the raging elements beyond.

"Oh, I didn't know there were more human adventurers left here." After their confrontation with Larry, they respawned all over Generica. And the remaining humans in the retirement homes are too... busy to deal with adventuring," Topo said diplomatically.

"Pha, "busy"!" Mopo exclaimed.

"I don't think I have seen any of them do anything for themselves for decades. Hell, they barely even blink, let alone do anything else anymore. Once humans go to one of those homes they might as well be considered dead."

"Did you know that one of them holds the achievement for longest person to continuously sit on a chair?! Just sitting, mind you, not doing anything else, but just... existing!" Mopo said, outraged at the mere concept of such pointless existence.

"Well... at least they aren't causing trouble," Topo said, yet again trying to see things from the most positive light.

"Urgh, I guess you are right about that." Mopo conceded as he flipped a switch on his staff and the lightning shield flickered off.

What greeted them was the same square more or less, but with the added feature of a small crater in the middle of it, plus the melted edges of buildings and debris around the epicenter of the crater.

"Well, that's done." Mopo said, standing up and firmly thumping the metal staff on the ground, assessing the scene with a sense of a job well done.

...

Suddenly, both bots stumbled to their feet as the ground shook again, this time with the all-too-familiar sound of a warmech rolling through the debris. The concrete and other stuff on the wide streets crumbled to dust beneath her massive armored frame.

"We surrender!" Both brothers shouted in unison, lifting their hands in the air to appear as non-threatening as possible.

The powerful plasma blasters, grav emitters, and an amalgamation of magical trinkets dangling on the warmech's massive body powered down.

"Oh, it's you two." Qbita said with a tinge of disappointment.

"Have you found any traces of that bald human and his fiendish AI companion?"

"I am afraid not, Ma'am." General Mopo replied.

"And you there, chief guardsman... Toto was it?"

"That's Topo, Ma'am." Topo replied as if addressing his commander and chief, though he did briefly wonder if correcting his name was worth the risk of getting disintegrated.

"Oh, right, right, and what about you, have you found the ones who insulted my honor?"

"I haven't been able to locate any sign of the intruders either, Ma'am. However, I wanted to talk to you about something else. My wife and I are retiring. We want to relax and live for ourselves for a decade or two. We found a nice spot in Marun Valley and we intend to..."

"RETIRED!?" The warmech shrieked in fury.

"Retired..." She said again, her voice much more contemplative this time, as if tasting the foreign word for the first time in her long, long life.

"Hmm..." Qbita mused, unconsciously powering up and down her massive arsenal of weapons and making the nervous bots metaphorically sweat with anxiety.

"Topo, you fool, what have you done! You know better than to excite her!" Mopo said in their private chat, so their commander and potential executioner might not overhear.

"You can't live in fear all your life, brother. Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself. Besides, what is there to fear? All she could do is kill us."

"Oh yeah, then why are you trembling in fear just as much as I am?" Mopo replied, sending a GIF recording of the shaking chief guardsman.

Before Topo could retort to his brother, Qbita finally seemed to have made up her mind.

"You know what, chief guardsman Topo, you might be onto something there."

"I have worked long and hard to better my mechanoid kin. I founded this city with my own two hands, a safe sanctuary for all mechanoids to live in peace. All my life I have fought for others, either in the humans' pointless wars or in the defense of this city and all it stands for. But perhaps, I have sacrificed too much."

"Yes, yes, it is time for a new beginning. It is time to finally live for myself. And who knows, maybe I will finally be able to find a husband as well." The war mech pondered with a tinge of hope.

"Mopo, you are in charge of the city."

"Don't fuck it up and make me come back."

"Good luck!"

And with those profound words, the ancient war mech rolled out, heading out of the city and towards her new retired life, all thoughts of revenge forgotten.

___

"My God, Topo, you are a genius! If I knew it would have been that easy to get rid of Granny Qbita, I would have done it years ago." Mopo said with unrestrained excitement and adoration to his older brother.

"Yes, yes, you said that already." Topo mumbled under his gray mustache.

"So, about my retirement?" He again asked, a bit annoyed that his questions had been ignored.

"Huh? Oh, yes, yes, of course, you have my blessing to retire from the chief guardsman's post. You and that wife of yours deserve a vacation more than anyone around here. Well, maybe except for Granny Qbita. Hahaha! I still can't believe you managed to convince her to step down. Topo, you are a genius, did I mention that?"

"Sigh..." Topo rolled his eyes as the two brothers walked through the rubble of the half-destroyed town.

___

After the two brothers had disarmed all undetonated explosives and deemed the town safe for habitation, the inhabitants emerged from their bunker shelters and began to restore the city in full force.

No one needed to be told what to do. Everyone worked together in harmony, even singing a few popular work songs as the machines happily worked. Digging, cleaning, rebuilding, all was done with a smile on their faces, as if they were on a picnic in the woods, and not restoring their nearly destroyed city. But if the mechanoids of Fencetown knew what to do, it was how to rebuild.

During their time on Earth, they had seen much horror and destruction. Later, after they arrived in the town, the occasional mental breakdown of their savior Granny Qbita seemed like a minor inconvenience compared to the atrocities of the real world.

If anything, they considered the regularity of rebuilding the city as a sort of mini celebration, a convenient opportunity to rearrange stuff and try new decors and coloring for their town.

"Hey mista, take this, complimentary sunflower seeds from our shop," a young mechanoid kid said as he passed a basket with fresh seeds to General Mopo.

"Oh Kapso, what happened to your shop's policy of no free samples?" Mopo asked in confusion.

"My dad said that since you are our new supreme overlord, it wouldn't hurt to butter you up a bit. Oh, now that I think of it, he also said not to tell you that..." The mechanoid kid suddenly remembered with horror.

"Please don't tell him I told you, Lord Mopo!" The kid begged on his knees, pleading to the supreme leader as if begging for his life.

"Get up, kid, get up before people get the wrong idea about me," Mopo hissed at Kapso as the mechanoid onlookers looked curiously at the scene. And indeed, some of them seemed pretty concerned as the poor kid sobbed loudly on his knees before the intimidating form of Lord Mopo.

Eventually Kapso was appeased and assured that the secret of his fumble was safe, though not until Mopo's reputation had taken a severe hit. Now every time he walked by other people, they would collapse down onto the ground, stretching their arms before them, foreheads pressed to the earth in full submission.

"I am really starting to regret this ruler business thing..." Mopo grumbled.

...

"So, what are your plans for the future, my lord? Conquering the internet, world domination, galactic supremacy?" Topo asked with a completely serious tone and an overexaggerated bow of his own, akin to a grand vizier bowing to his master.

"Stop that, you buffoon!" Mopo retorted, clanking his brother's head with the end of his battle staff. The resounding clank made all the mechanoids around them look in their direction, then bow down even lower in supplication at the display of power.

Mopo froze for a few seconds. How had things ended up like this? He knew these people, THEY knew him. He wasn't a supervillain or a dictator, was he? Had the power gotten to his head? Was he the... the bad guy here?!

Then he noticed that shrewd kid Kapso among the crowd of placated robots, the botling unable to restrain its grin.

"Wait a minute, are you guys pulling my leg here?!"

"Phahahah." The crowd of kneeling mechanoids rose with boisterous laughter, their previous timid and scared demeanor a thing of the past.

"Oh ha ha, very funny guys, I knew something was up. It's not like everyone here doesn't know each other and their grandma by now, this town isn't that big."

And with those words of revelation, the bots all came close to their new leader with cheerful smiles plastered on their face plates. All of them chuckled to themselves, patting the new leader on the back, and congratulating him for his new position before moving on with their work/celebrations.

"We had you going for a while there," Topo finally said as the commotion passed and the brothers continued walking on one of the fully rebuilt streets.

"You and your pranks..." Mopo said, leaning down and leaving his wallet in the beggar's bowl.

"Oh come on, it was funny, you had to see your face. Plus, organizing all that wasn't easy," Topo replied, also leaning down and placing his digital wallet in the bowl as well.

"How old are you anyway? You are at least a few decades older than me and you still act like a child sometimes," Mopo accused, leaving his prized battle staff on the ground in front of the beggar and then proceeding to deposit the contents of his entire inventory in the bowl.

Shake, shake, shake. A can of coins clinked, catching the brothers' attention.

"Would you spare some coin, good sirs?" The beggar, wearing a hood and patchy, torn clothes, said, avoiding their gazes and hiding his face.

"Oh, but of course, where are our manners?" Topo replied with genuine compassion, leaning down and placing the gift he had specially bought for Staple: a deluxe cookbook. For good measure, he then emptied the rest of his inventory onto the pile, which now concealed the bowl beneath the growing heap of junk.

The two brothers bowed low to the beggar and slowly left him behind, walking down the street.

"What were we talking about again?" Topo said, his mind hazy.

"We... I think we just gave everything we had to that beggar?" Mopo replied, though he wasn't very sure about it himself.

The two bots stood there for a while, looking lazily into the distance. Then, as if a switch was flipped, both of them looked at each other.

"Mind control!" They said in unison.

In an instant, they materialized Howdy Kitty pink helmets with the signature cat ears on their heads. The helmets protected their hearing and vision from mind attacks. This was a special and now mandatory piece of emergency equipment for each guardsman and soldier after the Larry disaster.

Next, they drew their swords and quickly rushed back down the street to confront the enemy.

"Who are you?" Topo barked, pointing the sword at the beggar's throat, his voice sounding metallic and modulated from inside the helmet.

"Reveal yourself!" Mopo said, his voice equally distorted.

The stranger tilted his head to the side, as if just now noticing the two bots, his face still obscured by the hood. He looked down at the pile of loot in front of him, then back at the swords pointed at him. Then he raised his hands and pulled his hood down.