Word Oysters

Lachlan Howard (age 12)
[Credits To: Jon Howard, Nate Radburn]

PART 1

Contents
CHAPTER 1: Meet the Crew
CHAPTER 2: The Rook n’ Factories
CHAPTER 3: Voyage For the Stars
CHAPTER 4: Slip From the Raiders

CHAPTER 1: Meet the Crew

A few robots still remember what they did and realise there is no need for more death. Now there’s a band of bots, “The Resistance”. The Resistance contains the following:

TreadGear, a sniper in training, a leader. He carries an AWP sniper rifle, a Beretta pistol, and a knife. He went to the Multi Trainers Academy and had only two friends there, Tundra & Viper.

KYPOCAT, the crazy 6ft heavy machine with a mace for a hand.
He’s so crazy that his name is spelt with capitals. No one knows much about him or his history.

Quill, a trained medic. He trained at the Japanese medical centre. He has a welder on his left hand. Just after he finished training, he took on a big surgery where he had to transplant both air processors, but something went wrong and the patient died. He was kicked out and still blames himself for it.

Volts, an Electrocutor in training. He went to the Electrocutor Training Academy in Kenya. He has electric power emitters embedded into his hands. On the final training day when he was electrocuting a training dummy, his lasers shot back at him and the dummy exploded. Melted dummy spat all over him and everyone laughed. Out of humiliation and rage (built up from past bullying), he shot through 24 bots and most died. He ran away scared and with no friends, later to be found by TreadGear.

Viper, a driver in training. He’s made to speed across the battlefield. He carries a Tec-9. He went to the Multi Trainers Academy, was in a crash, and his human driving instructor died. He was bullied and beaten so he ran away later to be found by TreadGear and his crew.

Finally, TrapHook, once part of AIHR’s evil leaders; both his hands are grapple hook hands. No one knows how he became a leader, but it’s good he changed because he would have been really hard to kill.

As you can see, most of the bots were different to others: they were all bullied in some way but they all found their path. That’s what made them The Resistance.

CHAPTER 2: The Rookie n’ the Factories

Now let’s go back to when TrapHook changed.

TrapHook’s allies and other leaders thought he was no good seeing how he had changed. They kicked him off his chair.

So, he went to join The Resistance.

TreadGear wouldn’t let him join, as he hadn’t heard the news, thinking he was still a leader planning to infiltrate The Resistance. Therefore, TreadGear charged at him with an army knife with the intention to kill him. TrapHook only wanted to join them. TreadGear took the first move and barely missed. Then, KYPOCAT snuck behind TrapHook and bonked him on the head so hard that he passed out.

While TrapHook was unconscious, the others brought him into their hideout, tying him to a stretcher, not letting him leave.

When TrapHook woke up, they confronted him, and in that fight TrapHook told them what had happened and why he was there. Then he joined the team.

Later on, Viper took them all out in their Land Cruiser to look for supplies such as parts and plasma.

Once they got back, they assessed what they had. Plasma was vital as it was like food or water for them. Volts was especially low on plasma, so he got the most. As they were unloading their car, suddenly they were ambushed by a bunch of AIHR troops.

By this point, they had already passed lots of ambushes and decided they’d had enough.

They went to take down all three factories. The first one was easy seeing as it had been previously abandoned by TrapHook. They still had to defeat the troops; that was easy though. Next, they moved onto the second factory and crushed it because it had a skinny and weak leader, named Sculk. The third one was deadly, having the most powerful leader, HeadHunter. He was over 8 feet tall and had a huge bite used to munch his enemies’ heads off. He also had sharp claw-like hands. Once they had cracked the door open, HeadHunter said, “Mmmm, dinner”. KYPOCAT replied, “Mmmm, punch dummy!” They all charged at HeadHunter while Quill disabled his shields. HeadHunter easily stabbed Volts through the gut and sliced TreadGear’s right arm off. KYPOCAT heated his mace in the molten metal that was used to produce more troops. When it was red-hot, he busted right through HeadHunter’s chest like it was nothing. But not without paying a price… the molten metal melted off half of KYPOCAT’s left arm.

The Resistance got back home and Quill tended to them. For now, they were free from evil… (For now.)

CHAPTER 3: Voyage For the Stars

One morning when The Resistance woke up out of stasis mode, they realised Volts was gone.

They searched around their base for clues as to where he had gone. Soon enough, they found a dead fried alien body. That was when it clicked.

“He once told me that his mind was the key to space portals, but I never knew what he meant,” TreadGear said.

“Aliens may have kidnapped him for his mind. My calculations say it includes an execution,” Quill claimed.

So, they geared up to look for a spaceship. Viper mentioned that he had once seen an abandoned ship seven clicks away. They drove there and saw the ship was fine other than missing a booster. That was the new problem as they needed one to take off, so KYPOCAT and TreadGear went to look for the booster while Viper, Quill and TrapHook stayed to clean up the ship.

TreadGear and KYPOCAT found a sign at the entrances of a mysterious cave saying, “Parts for a brawl”. They went in and found hundreds of psycho punk bots yelling loudly for more plasma and blood to spill. Almost every bot that went in the ring died in pain.

TreadGear and KYPOCAT asked at the counter if they could get boosters there. The bots at the counter said that if they won a 2 versus 2 fight, they would get a booster, so TreadGear and KYPOCAT entered the ring with two of the deadliest punks there.

They were small and crazy! TreadGear picked up one in each hand and held them up for KYPOCAT to smash. The little punks were crazy because they were known for biting foes’ hands off and killing them. As TreadGear held them up, the one on the right started chewing his wrist. As KYPOCAT smashed the one on the left, TreadGear dropped the one on the right. TreadGear was kneeling down screaming in pain, gripping his wrist tight. KYPOCAT somehow grabbed the one on the loose and crushed him.

TreadGear and KYPOCAT won the brawl, and, as they collected their loot and were leaving, they saw another bot also looking for a booster. Her name was Kay. As TreadGear and KYPOCAT drove off in their car, Kay sneakily jumped in the tray. She was planning to steal their booster.

When they got back to the ship, it was looking fresh and the insides looked great. Viper and TrapHook installed the booster outside while, inside the ship’s med-bay, Quill fixed the pistons in TreadGear’s wrist. Kay snuck around to the new booster and tried to pull it off; TrapHook caught her and Kay immediately whispered, “shhhhhhhh! I’m trying to find my crew. I hate it here!”

 “It’s possible you could come with us. We’re going on a mission to save our friend,” TrapHook replied, then went to tell TreadGear.

“She can come as long as we get a full body search to make sure she’s not going to trick us,” TreadGear replied. Soon after, he accepted her into The Resistance. 

A few hours after preparation, they took off. Their ship was struggling to break though Earth’s atmosphere. The heat was so strong that all their cores heated up, causing a small amount of their plasma to dry up.

Once they were past Earth’s pull, they saw how beautiful their birth planet truly was. They all wished they could have stayed, but they couldn’t: the ship didn’t have enough fuel to get past Earth’s atmosphere again unless they could find more (or use a different ship).

Now they had to track the alien’s ship signal using their ship’s control panel. They saw that the alien ship was eighteen light years away.

The control panel managed to figure out the species of the aliens: they were “Vrall”.

By this point, the Androids had been travelling for a while and could now see a ship in the distance. Once they were at the ship, they secretly boarded and saw Volts being held prisoner, chains restraining his legs and arms. Volts saw them, got excited and started moving around, trying to get out. The aliens noticed him moving.

“Whaksha oomni remus umu,” said Alien1.

“Uka rumes lek,” said Alien2.

No one understood the aliens but other aliens.

A few minutes later, the aliens started to hook up a cord to the back of Volts’ head. He started screaming for help!

The others rushed in and TrapHook took care of one alien while Kay took care of another. Quill unhooked the cord from Volts’ head and TreadGear cut the chains. Viper stayed on the ship.

Volts, TreadGear, TrapHook, Kay, and Quill all rushed back to their ship before more aliens got into the room.

Once they were in their ship, they sped at full throttle away from the aliens. When they were far away, they ran out of fuel and crash-landed on a planet where a lot of other androids had also landed. Its name was Kypose.

After landing, they found that all of them had some kind of wound. TreadGear had got stuck in the front pilot seat. He managed to grab a knife on the table beside him and cut the straps. He fell forward and smashed his left leg. It crippled him.

KYPOCAT’s right shoulder pad had melted from the heat of the crash. Kay had a gash down her right arm. TrapHook’s fingers on his right hand had been knocked off from smashing into the walls. Viper’s visor had cracked due to gravity pulling him in all directions. And Volts’ power emitters had burnt the cables in his hands making him unable to move them.

Somehow, miraculously, Quill the doc was OK with just a few paint scratches.

Once Quill had tended to the others, they found the door was bent and broken. TrapHook grabbed the emergency grinder and cut his way out of the roof. He climbed out and helped pull the others up.

Once they were all out, they surveyed their surroundings and saw that, a few clicks away, there was a small makeshift town full of other bots who had landed there. For now, they stayed at their crashed ship waiting for others to find them.

CHAPTER 4: Slip From the Raiders

It had been one day since The Resistance had crash landed on Kypose. They had decided they didn’t want to wait for someone to find them, so they began the one kilometre walk to the small village.

Once they arrived, they found something was “off” about the town: no one was happy, and every single bot was hiding in little tents or buildings. They also saw that there were guards everywhere! They wore badges on their right pec, saying “Raider.” One of them jabbed Kay in the shoulder with the back of the stock on his rifle.

It was clear The Resistance were not welcome here. They soon found a small, hidden alleyway where there were five little market stalls. They went and spoke to the closest stall owner.

“Hey, young travellers, I’m Scralt. You lot new here?” the stall owner said.

“Yes, we’re looking for some shelter, a place to stay for a few days, and to refuel,” TreadGear answered.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a place for you, but I must warn you of the dangers here. His name is Suppressor. He came here a few weeks ago. He’s been torturing the town and killing some bots too. All the Raiders are his; they’re under his control,” Scralt explained.

“OK, thanks Scralt,” replied TreadGear. The Resistance walked off and suddenly seven Raiders grabbed them all. They were tied to iron bars in a prison cell. Each of them was getting tazed!

Viper managed to break the cuff on his right hand and quickly punched the Raider dead. Volts electrocuted three others and TreadGear broke free. He grabbed his pistol, shooting the three Raiders who were still alive. They were all surprised KYPOCAT couldn’t break free.

The day was ending, so they climbed up a building and set up camp there. That night they decided they would free the town.

TreadGear and Kay stayed up in case intruders came. Overnight,  TreadGear sniped fourteen Raiders with his silenced AWP. The others woke up out of stasis, fuelled up with some old jerry cans that were at the top of the building, and went out to hunt some more Raiders. TreadGear jumped from roof to roof with his AWP, while KYPOCAT, Kay, Volts, Viper, and TrapHook went down with their pistols and specialties. The plan was to clear the streets as they went.

Suddenly all the Raiders disappeared and a band of three girl bots jumped in front of them! Their names were Bunny, Pastel and Kyrie (the others didn’t know that). They all seemed to have some kind of mind control device on the back of their heads. All of a sudden, they threw one at Kay.

It was four versus six, but the four girls had better weapons.

Little did they know there was another sniper besides TreadGear. Until he shot his SSG 10 rifle at TreadGear’s scope on his AWP.

The sniper’s bullet went through the scope and into TreadGear’s face, shattering the right side of his visor and exposing his mono eye. He quickly grabbed a rag from a pouch on his waist and held it up to his face.

As soon as the mystery sniper’s rifle fired, the others down below the buildings started fighting. Neither The Resistance nor the sniper knew that they were, in fact, on the same side.

TreadGear took a spy glass from another pouch and used it to inspect the area from which the mystery sniper had shot him. TreadGear managed to find him. He was mostly covered in a tarp, but TreadGear could see the stencilled graffiti on the sniper’s shoulder. It was an AIHR symbol with an “x” over it. This meant he could be against AIHR too.

Without hesitation, TreadGear jumped across the two buildings. He snuck up to the mystery sniper, pulled a knife out of a pouch, and grabbed him in a neck lock with the knife pressed against his neck.

The sniper struggled for a few seconds but then noticed TreadGear’s off-colour arm. The sniper was mute, so he gave a hand signal that snipers were taught to use in situations like this.

“TreadGear! It’s me Tundra, we trained together!”

TreadGear cautiously let go. “Tundra? Is it really you?” He signalled with his hand. Tundra nodded yes; they grabbed arm to arm as a handshake. Quickly, TreadGear related the plan to Tundra.

They both went down to help, TreadGear with his Beretta and Tundra with his AR15. Their plan worked for a while until the real trouble began… Suppressor.

First, the others got Kay back and added Pastel to the group. They still didn’t have enough power to defeat Suppressor, so they retreated into a building and Viper got into the buggy parked out the front.

Viper acted as though he was dead, but he had his foot on the pedal ready. When Suppressor tried to walk into the building, Viper rammed the buggy into him, but Suppressor had his blade out so it shot though the windscreen and went into Viper’s left shoulder, piercing his left air processor.

“Aagghh!” Viper wheezed, panting. Unharmed, Suppressor got up and pulled out his blade. Viper passed out.

When he came to, he couldn’t move and heard gunfire above. He saw his friends dragging him out of the buggy. They carried him into a nearby building where Quill closed the wound. He got up, still in a bit of pain, grabbed his Tec-9 ready to fight again.

It was too dangerous to keep fighting, so they all ran out the back of the building where they saw a bot driving a convoy military truck. Viper snuck onto the step on the driver’s side, opened the door and shot the driver. He threw the body out of the vehicle, then hopped in while the others got in the back.

To be continued…

Keep an eye out for the second half of “Last Cognition” which will be published in Issue 4 of Word Oysters magazine (Summer 2027).