Obvious Disclaimer – The characters in this story are from the cartoon "My Life as a Teenage Robot" and I am blatantly stealing them!  Blatantly, I say!  My sole creation is the character of Drew, a human high school student who was accidentally turned into an android by Cluster nanotechnology.  It's explained in my first story "Android Scam".

I'd like to give special thanks to everybody who's ever submitted a review to one of my stories.  They're really appreciated, and they're real morale boosters when you're wondering whether anybody is actually reading these things.

One more quick note, as an experiment, I'm going to try writing shorter chapters, which means there'll probably be more of them.  Hopefully this will make the story easier to read.

DIAMONDS ARE A ROBOT'S BEST FRIEND

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter One – The Right Place at the Right Time

Brad fiddled with the camera's zoom and focus, until he got a nice, close-up shot of Jenny's face.  "Come on, smile!  Do some super robot stuff.  Shoot down a UFO or something!"

"Point that thing somewhere else," she scowled.  She was not in the mood.

Brad clicked off a few pictures, to Jenny's disgust.  "Hey, how am I suppose to learn how this thing works unless I actually take some pictures with it?  Lighten up!"  He chuckled, then pointed the camera at her again.  "This is your star reporter, bringing you the story on Tremorton's very own teen superhero, Jenny Wakeman.  What makes this robot girl tick?  I'll have the exclusive for you on the front page of the Sunday edition!"

Jenny shook a fist at the camera.  "Maybe I should remind you, I had a rather unpleasant experience with mudslinging news reporter a while back."

"Hey, careful Jen, this thing's expensive!  I have to give it back at the end of the week."

"Well, the end of the week can't get here soon enough."

"Speak for yourself," grinned Brad.  "Career Week is going to be awesome!  Drew, you agree with me, don't you?"

Drew had his face half-buried in a photocopied map, trying to make sense of the directions as they walked through downtown.  "I'll tell you, when I find out what it is I'm actually supposed to be doing."

Indeed, it was Career Week at Tremorton High, a time when local businesses cooperated with the high school to give teenagers a taste of what life in the working world was going to be like.  Students would spend a week, after school, working as interns.  They'd write a report for class, and get some good-looking extracurricular activity for their school transcripts.  While the school tried to match up student requests with available slots, more people naturally asked for the exciting, glamorous, "cool" jobs.  So some students didn't get their first, or second, or third choice, and were assigned careers at random.  And there are lots of jobs in the world that aren't that cool - as Jenny knew painfully well, now.

"I can't believe I got … auto mechanic," she moaned.  "They probably thought I'd like it because I'm mechanical myself.  Gee, what girl wouldn't love a week cleaning up power steering fluid and rotating tires?"

"That's not so bad," said Brad, consoling her.  "Lots of guys would think that's pretty cool."

"Hey, just think," added Drew, "all the oil you can drink.  Sounds like a sweet gig."

"Ha, ha.  Brad's got the sweet gig.  How did you ever get to work at the Tremorton Tribune?"

"Clean living, and my winning personality," he grinned.  "This is going to be so great!  I actually get to work at the newspaper after school every day this week, with real newspaper writers!  I get to write a story and take pictures, and it's going to get printed in the Sunday paper this weekend.  How cool is that?!?"

"That sounds majorly cool," sighed Jenny.  "You get to write for the newspaper, and I get to change mufflers.  Drew, what are you going to be doing?"

"I still don't know.  It's some big office building down on Washington Boulevard.  Brown, Brown, Brown and Smith.  That sure sounds exciting.  I'm guessing that they're probably not test pilots."

Washington Boulevard was just one block away, so Brad and Jenny kept Drew company while they walked along the busy business district of downtown.  A few people turned and stared at Jenny - some even gave a friendly wave.  While Tremorton was getting used to its most famous teenage robot, almost nobody knew about its second one, Drew.  And that was perfectly fine, as far as he was concerned.  Since he'd learned to shape-shift, it had been easy to look like his old self again; blond hair, blue eyes, jeans and a t-shirt.  Just another teenager here, folks.  He felt a little guilty doing it around Jenny - she still had to put up with gawkers.  But just a little.

"What's the point of Career Week, anyway?"  Jenny threw up her hands.  "It's a big waste of time.  Besides, duh, I've already got a career.  I fight crime and save the world!  It's what I was designed to do.  I should know, my mom reminds me at least twice a day."

"Choosing a career is important, Jen!" explained Brad.  "In a couple of years, we're going to be heading off to college, and we'll have to pick something to do for the rest of our lives.  The people who start getting ready now will get to be doctors, and lawyers, and astronauts.  Those are careers.  The people who don't get ready will have to mop floors and fill vending machines with little twinkie cakes.  Those are not careers.  So it's important, Jen.  We're not all robots, programmed to know what we're supposed to do."

Drew gave Brad a funny look.  "You know, I'm a robot, and I don't have a clue about what I'm supposed to do."

Brad rolled his eyes.  "All right, you're a bad example."

Something Jenny said had stuck in Drew's head.  "Jenny, you said your mom designed you to fight crime and save the world?"

"That's right," she nodded.

"So when you were first activated – what, five years ago?  You knew what you were meant to do.  You knew what your purpose was.  From the moment you were switched on."

"More or less.  Of course, it's not like Mom ever gave me much of a choice."

"Yeah, but you save people and save the world.  You really can't do any better than that.  You never had to worry that you were making the wrong choice."  Drew had a stressed look on his face.  "I have absolutely no idea what I want to do.  Especially now."

"Well, you're a robot like Jenny," said Brad.  "Maybe you could save people too."

"Please."  Drew rolled his eyes.  "Sure, I'm a robot.  Maybe it means I wind up on an assembly line in Detroit, painting cars.  Jenny was meant to be a superhero.  I'm an accident.  I'm just lucky I didn't wind up in an underground government lab at Area 51, or something."  He laughed, and looked up at a street sign.  "Here we are.  Washington Boulevard.  And there's the office building."  An ordinary-looking, fifteen-story steel and glass building rose into the sky, with a large polished marble sign out front reading Brown, Brown, Brown and Smith.

Brad grabbed his camera again, trying to figure out the switches and buttons.  "Hey, Drew, go over and stand in front of the sign.  I'll take your picture.  'Robot Teen Takes Business World By Storm!'"

Drew sighed.  "Brad, these guys are probably accountants or insurance salesmen.  Yawn city.  You're not going to see anything here that's more exciting than a paper cut."

An alarm pierced the air with a shrill ring.

Jenny's pigtails perked up.  "That sounds like it's coming from right next door."

Curious, Drew wandered over to the storefront next to the office tower.  "I don't see anyth-"

The huge plate-glass window exploded outward with a deafening roar, showering him with razor-sharp shards.  The force of the blast flung Drew backwards into traffic and directly into the path of a city bus.  The driver slammed on the brakes, but he didn't have enough time.  With a moist thud, Drew splattered into a thick, silver-green paste on the bus's grill and windshield.

"Drew!" screamed Jenny.  It was a reflex - a human would never have survived a collision like that, and she still thought of Drew as sort of human.  But, of course, he wasn't.  The bus driver stared, stunned, as the silvery glob on his windshield pulled itself together.  A metallic head and neck formed, and an arm stretched out to wave I'm okay.  Stunned, but okay.

A large, dark figure lunged out of the window of the shop, landing on the sidewalk concrete with a crushing thunk.  It was a robot, over nine feet tall, with a lean build, painted pitch black with red trim.  Dim red lights glowed in its eye sockets, a thin antenna stretched from the top of its head, and it clutched a large metal box to its chest.  It quickly scanned the sidewalk and street, as people jumped back in fear, and cars screeched to a halt.

The black-and-red robot took notice of Jenny, and decided that she was a threat.  A pair of rocket motors deployed from the back of the robot's back, and blasted to life.  Jenny and Brad shielded their eyes as the cloud of exhaust washed over them, and the robot thief climbed into the sky.

"It's time for a little career development," Jenny grinned.  "Get your camera ready, Brad!"

Jenny's pigtails flamed to life, and she shot into the air in high-speed pursuit of the thief.  It might have thought that it could outrun her, but it was wrong.  Jenny was smaller and much faster than the black-and-red robot, and she caught up to it six hundred feet in the air.  It tried a couple of high-speed turns.  Didn't make a difference.  Jenny pulled into a loop and came down on top of the thief, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"All right, whoever you are, you're coming with me and you've giving back what you stole!"

But the thief had other ideas.  His right arm deployed a short, wide cannon, and spun around to point directly at Jenny.  Before she could react, it fired a blob of smooth, white foam directly at her, like a giant ball of shaving cream.  Within seconds, it started to expand and harden, and suddenly she was trapped in a solid cocoon of plastic.  The thief broke away while Jenny plummeted towards the ground, struggling to escape.  She was only seconds away from slamming into the sidewalk …

But she worked her pigtails free, and slowed herself to a stop with only three feet to spare.  Now she could focus on getting loose.  She flexed her arms in the plastic prison, and blasted a pair of holes in the cocoon from the inside with her palm lasers.  With one more burst of robot strength, she broke free, shattering the plastic into thousands of tiny pieces.

Now she was ticked.  Once more she rocketed into the sky, and closed in on the escaping black-and-red robot.  She didn't plan on giving it a chance to run away this time.  Her right elbow cracked open, and she deployed her laser limb.  For a shot this far off, her right eye telescoped outward, its sections clicking together to focus on her target, like a sniper.

"Turnabout is fair play," she smiled.  "Let's see how you like skydiving."

Jenny squeezed the trigger on her laser, and a pair of pencil-thin blasts shot towards the black-and-red robot over a mile away – neatly slicing off his two rocket engines.  The robot flailed its arms and legs wildly, and started to fall towards the earth at over two hundred miles an hour.  It still clung tightly to the heavy metal box that it had stolen from the downtown store, though.  It must be something awfully valuable to worry about it even now, Jenny thought.

She thought about just letting the robot smash into the ground – would serve him right for getting that foamy goo all over me – but that wasn't the way her mom had programmed her.  Twenty feet before it smashed into the rooftops, Jenny caught the red-and-black robot, and set it down gently … while grabbing the large metal box from his claws.

"Okay, what's the big idea?" she asked.  "I mean, it's stuff like this that gives robots a bad name."

The robot didn't say a word.  Instead, it just stood straight up.  Its eyes started to blink, slowly, then faster, and then the tip of its antenna shone with a bright red light.  A high-pitched scream started to come from its chest.

"Yikes, that can't be good."  Holding on tightly to the heavy metal box, Jenny jumped off the rooftop … a split-second before the black-and-red robot self-destructed with an air-shattering blast.  She landed gracefully on the sidewalk below, and looked over her shoulder at the fireball that mushroomed towards the clouds.  Bits of black metal, nuts, bolts, and springs fell from the sky.

Jenny flew back to the store, to the cheers of onlookers and the store employees themselves.  Brad clicked away with his camera as she drifted down gently with her anti-grav gyros, and handed the large metal box to a well-dressed woman standing in front of the store's front entrance.

"Thank you, thank you, young lady!" she gushed.  "We simply can't thank you enough!"

"It was no biggie," smiled Jenny.  "I've sort of made a career out of stopping bad guys.  It's all in a day's work.  What did he steal, anyway?"

The woman turned a combination lock on the metal box, and for the first time, Jenny noticed the ornate label engraved on the box's lid – Marquis Diamonds. 

The lid popped open, and Jenny's eyes grew wide in delight.  The box was filled with diamonds – the most beautiful, sparkling, glistening blue and white diamonds she'd ever seen in her life.  The dazzling shine from the gems was almost blinding to the store manager herself.  Jenny couldn't pull her eyes from the glittering jewels.  "Oooooooh ….", she finally managed to say.  "They're so pretty!"

"They're lunar diamonds," boasted the store manager.  "Very rare.  Very beautiful.  And you just saved a box of lunar diamonds worth forty million dollars."

Brad almost choked when he heard the number.  He snapped a few pictures of the lunar diamonds and patted his best friend on the shoulder.  "What a great story this is going to make for my Career Week project!  Super teen robot saves forty million bucks in moon diamonds!  Woohoo!  You should get a reward, Jenny!"

"Why, that's an excellent idea," said the store manager.

It was a tempting thought, but – "No, that wouldn't be right.  That's not the reason I chased that crooked robot.  That's very kind of you to offer, ma'am, but I'm just happy you got your diamonds back."  She found herself staring again.  "Your shiny … sparkly … gorgeous diamonds."  Jenny managed to turn herself away from the alluring gems, and waved to the store employees.  "We'd better get home, guys.  Good-bye, everyone!"

Jenny and Brad walked over to check on Drew, who, by now, had gotten himself back into android form – but not without drawing a few horrified stares from passers-by.  Nobody was the worse for wear though, and now they had an exciting story to talk about as they made their way back to their homes in the suburbs.

While her employees got back to work, the store manager lingered at the front of the shattered display window of Marquis Diamonds, watching Jenny walk away.  "Oh, but you should be rewarded, young robot," she purred to herself.  "Mister Marquis will insist on it."

Continued in Chapter Two

Shameless plug time – I tend to doodle and sketch when I'm plotting a story, and I've started posting some of my MLaaTR stuff over at DeviantArt (under the same name, 'coyoteloon').  Hopefully it doesn't stink too much.  I might put some sketches up to accompany the story as it progresses.