Chapter Four: Fight Club for Babies

Brass marched over to Coyle, who was tapping away at her phone like usual. "How's progress? Are you almost done?"

"Mm." She responded simply.

"...You don't look like you're working." He grunted through his teeth.

"Godddd, get off my back already." She bit back, rolling her eyes. "I'm taking a break. Aren't I allowed a break? This is like the most stressful age there is."

"You wouldn't be in that stressful age if you found the cure ."

She flicked her eyes back up at him. "Can you just piss off already? You're totally killing my chill here."

He inhaled deeply. "Coyle. I need you to find a cure for this. There's no way I could-"

"Gooooo awayyyyyy." She moaned, eyes on her phone.

"Arghhhh!" He grunted loudly. "Alright, that's it, give me your phone! "

She scoffed. "Ha! No. Not gonna happen."

"You wanna be a child so bad I'll treat you like one - Give. Me. Your. Phone. You are grounded until you sort this mess out."

She glared daggers at him. "Um... You do know you're not in charge of me, right? If you don't seriously piss off soon, I'll tell the wholeeee worlddddd that the person you married only just turned sixteen."

He hung his mouth open in shock. "You were an adult when we got married!"

"Don't gotta mention that part in the headlines, though." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Bye bye~"

Without much other way to react, he turned his back on her. God what a pain. How the hell is any of this going to get resolved? ...Ah!

Nearby, Master Mummy was writing into a stack of papers. Seems like he was working pretty hard there - a good five or six pages in already, for sure.

Brass approached Mummy. "Master, you are my saviour here - how far along are you to finding a cure?"

"Hm?" The mummified nerd before him looked up from his papers. "Oh, uh... Yeah I'll look into that soon. I'm just writing some stuff for Coyle first - she wanted to know what my top five horror movies are, so I'm doing a bit of an essay on it. Currently halfway through the second entry, which is about Creep From the Deep , a pretty unknown German film about a sea monster rising from the depths of-"

"Enough!" Brass interrupted. " Please , you can do that later if you want but right now we really need to find a cure!"

"Ah, sorry... You're having trouble with the kids, yeah? Well we could put a movie on for them if you want. That could calm them down!" Mummy got up and went to the nearby shelf, where various movies from the ARMS Lab staff were stacked left-to-right. "They've got Terror of the Clownmen here. That's gotta be in my top ten, at least!"

Brass looked at him like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "We are not putting a HORROR MOVIE on for a bunch of children!"

Lola, nearby, heard this commotion and began to chant to the others. "Movie! Movie! Movie! " Before long, everyone was following her in tandem.

"NO!" Brass shouted to them all. "We are not watching a movie! The only stuff they have here is horror flicks and medical dramas. There's nothing any of you would enjoy here."

"The clown one sounded fun." Lola shrugged.

"I wabba watch Fwozen!" Ribbon Girl dribbled.

Brass's head pounded. "I just want everyone to behave ." He grunted, before suddenly seeing Kid Cobra from the corner of his eye. He had somehow gotten up to the light fixture on the other side of the room, and was in the process of slipping off. Not again!

Without time to run across the room, Brass instead chose to uncoil his ARMS and catch Kid Cobra from afar. He gently put him down on the ground and retracted his ARMS again.

...Uh? What the...? Why were all the children staring at him so wide-eyed?

"Yikes, shouldn't have done that..." Coyle mumbled from her phone.

Huh? Shouldn't have done what? He just used his ARMS to-

Suddenly the toddler Ribbon Girl uncoiled her ARMS and grabbed the toy BARQ from across the room, bringing it closer to her so she could hug it.

The toddler Kid Cobra seemed to recognise his ARMS ability at the same time, and he extended his ARMS over to Min Min, snatching back Ribbon Girl's Ribbon instantly, which sent her into an angry wailing.

ARMS began to fly all over as they all at once remembered they had them. A fight broke out between Min Min and Kid Cobra. Ninjara suddenly poofed into place on one of the kitchen chairs, causing Misango to screech at him, and attempt to start a fight between them too. Lola used her ARMS to drabbled empty candy wrappers around BYTE, leading him in a never ending circle of rubbish pick-up. Somewhere in the corner, Spring Man extended an ARM up and snatched Helix back, instantly putting him straight into his mouth.

Total. Chaos.

Brass stood and watched, wide eyed as it all fell apart before him. Punches began being thrown - some at Brass, even, which felt rather remarkably hard considering he was used to fighting their adult selves. Children do tend to have very little self restraint, though.

Amongst all the comotion, an ARM swung past Brass and smacked squarely into Springtron, who was doing his best to shield Mechanica. The knock was enough to wake her, however, and she began to cry in a heavy wail.

Springtron's back straightened. He looked at the room and targeted the child responsible for waking her... Min Min. Without warning he suddenly struck an ARM out, grabbed her by the neck, swung his ARM up and-

"SPRINGTRON, NO!" Brass screeched, terror in his eyes.

Springtron slammed Min Min down to the ground, echoing a sickening crack around the room as she suddenly became limp.

Brass ran over to her immediately, picking her up and looking over her. His lip quivered as his heart broke in his chest, as he looked over the-

His heart stopped. Mechanical wiring and shards of metal struck out from the gash in her head. No blood, no mussel... Just machine.

A voice came into the room from over the intercom. "Well done Brass, ya got one of 'em killed." Coyle chimed from above. "That's a failure there. Ah well - test over. "

He stood motionless, still cradling the strange toddle Min Min robot, as all of the other children in the room immediately fell limp and clanged to the floor.

From behind a nearby one-way wall, Coyle stood with a clipboard in her hands and Mechanica by her side. "ARMS News Weekly lists Brass as being 'Most Likely to be a Good Father'... Incorrect. " She scratched her conclusion on the page.

"Um..." Mechanica began nervously from beside her, having watched the whole display with less of a gleeful look on her face than Coyle had had. "Doesn't this just prove he'd only be a bad father if he had to take care of fourteen children who already had the ARMS ability...? And some of them are robots? And-"

"Look, kid, what's the first rule of the ARMS Lab?" She interrupted.

"Um... The focus must always be on the betterment of ARMS, understanding of ARMS, or research of ARMS?"

"Oh, yeah, right." She remembered. "Okay, well, what's the second one?"

Mechanica sighed slightly. "...If it inconveniences Max Brass, it's a valid experiment."

"Good girl!" Coyle smiled. "Whelp, go gather the remaining machinery bits. Can't let them go to waste. All that Helix-Goo Mk. 8 is probably not gonna go back to its good form though, so just throw all the fake skin out."

Coyle pressed the button for the intercom again.

"You can go home, Brass."

He continued to remain where he was, kneeling with an inactive toddler Min Min bot in his hands, as he just stared into the distance.

Damn it, Coyle.

And that concludes this story!

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