Meltdown

"Are you working hard, Dexter, or hardly working?"

"Working hard, Mom. Mrs. Wolfberg likes to give out lots of homework."

Mom reached to ruffle his hair. "That's my smart boy. Dee Dee, hon," she called, "keep an eye on your brother, I need to run to the store for some milk."

"'Kay Mom!" Dee Dee chorused from the living room, cranking up the volume on the TV until the funky beats of a Groove Train rerun filled the entire house.

Dexter waited for Mom to find her keys and shut the back door, then he pushed his fifth grade homework, complete and corrected for mistakes, to the back of the table with a scowl. "I couldn't have planned it better myself. Of course I did have to finish that carton of milk, but with Mom out of the way and Dee Dee…" he glanced into the living room where his sister slid moonwalking across the carpet. "Hm. With Dee Dee otherwise engaged, I will not need to worry about interruptions of any kind." Dexter smoothed his hair, straightened his glasses, and tried to ignore the racing of his heart. In an hour's time, their rivalry would be over. For better or worse, he would never have to worry about Mandark's interference, would never have to think about him, ever again.

For better. Dexter checked the wristwatch strapped around his glove. Yes. It was certainly for the best.

-X-

Mandark checked the instruments mounted on the cockpit walls. All was in order, but that was no surprise. He had worked and reworked his giant robot every day for weeks, ensuring everything was in perfect condition, no, better-than-perfect, because he knew this day was going to come.

Still, he checked the controls again and again. He didn't need to be nervous. He was the best. He was gonna kick butt. He'd made sure of that.

He was almost embarrassed to feel a twist of relief seeing Dexter there in the middle of the street, tiny and fat and unarmed. And holding up traffic. The cars honked their horns as they carefully steered around him.

"Ah, Dexter," Mandark shouted into his mic, "so you finally show up after all! I'd begun to think you'd chickened out – but I should have known you are much too stupid to realize when you've been outclassed and outmatched!"

Funny he didn't bring his Super-Robot…or even his Dexo-Transformer. Upon occasion, he'd delivered a few good smacks with that. Standing there in nothing more than his school clothes and lab coat, Dexter looked ready to admit defeat. Could it be possible? Maybe this will be easier than I thought.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" Mandark called. "Any final words before I kick your butt and how you how a real genius triumphs?"

"Yes," Dexter nodded, raising his fist in the air. "Buckle up."

No no no no no no no.

Dexter punched a button on his watch and Mandark's stomach plummeted to the floor. It can't be! No! He couldn't have! But he could feel the vibrations rising through the street and into the cockpit as the giant Dexo-Robo clomped into view, great spectacled windshield glinting in the sun.

"There is no time for suiting up!" Dexter announced, clutching the handheld mic in the opposing cockpit. "But it's a small price to pay for a chance to see you squirm. What's the matter, Mandark? Not so self-assured now, eh?"

Mandark scrubbed the sweat beneath his flight suit collar and grit his teeth. "Forget you, Dexter."

"I think you'll find that difficult," came the reply, and then a blast of energy barreled straight into the center of Mandark's Astro-Bot.

Mandark reeled from the impact and blinked from the light, seizing for the controls as his mech doubled over and heaved backwards down the street, colliding heavily against a great MegaCorp billboard.

The hull was undamaged but it took him several seconds to right the machine, tall red boots grinding deep into the paved streets. The Dexo-Robo was upon him and Mandark struck out with clawed fists, immediately blocked by the strong heavy arms of his opponent. "That response time is impossible." Mandark chewed his lip. "Those are 100 tons apiece! What kind of system could power – "

"That's my little secret, Mandark. Yes, that's right –" Dexter clamped onto the red claw and twisted until the cables were crushed. "You were talking out loud, old friend."

"You are no friend of mine, Dexter. You're nothing, that's what – and I'm gonna prove it! Lock target!"

Mandark fired the electron laser but it missed its aim – the city bank was blown to rubble but the Dexo-Robo blasted high into the air. "Okay, run away!" Mandark cranked his jets to max power. "You won't get off that easy!"

Dexter roared skyward, plunging into cloud cover until the city below shrank to microscopic proportions. He had never achieved such speeds in the Dexo-Robo. He had made no alterations to the body and yet the giant robot sliced effortlessly into the sky, thanks to the energy of the powerful core.

Through the spirals of his exhaust Dexter could make out the red and white body of the Astro-Bot, stretched at full-length and gaining quickly. Almost too quickly – the lanky frame was upon him and the vicious claws were open wide.

"No – not the – "

"Laser cannons, activate!"

The green rays blasted forth and tore through the plating on the Dexo-Robo's chest, ripping away the trademarked "D" insignia. "Laser cannons? How could I forget the laser cannons?" Dexter growled, lunging to re-orient the bot in mid-air. "He never uses those! Hmm…maybe that's the point…."

Again the yellow-green light welled up in the barrel of the laser cannons but Dexter was ready. "Prepare arsenal!" The head of the robot shot upwards as Mandark's lasers fired between the tracks. "PEZ missiles, fire!"

Candy-colored missiles clicked up into place and Dexter could hear Mandark's hurried breathing and rapid commands as he searched for a means of escape. The missiles whizzed out, the Astro-Bot dancing along an evasive trajectory until the third and final missile clipped him in the "shoulder." The connection between limb and body exploded on impact and the claw went spiraling into space, smoke and wires issuing from the point of damage.

"Curse you, Dexter!" Mandark screamed into the mic. "You think you're so smart, ha! You don't know the meaning of it!"

"Don't lose your cool, Mandark," Dexter returned, rapidly dropping altitude until the city came into view. "This is just a game, remember? A game you're about to lose!"

Mandark practically choked with rage, and the Astro-Bot descended in turn, and surged forth until the pair were locked in a grapple above the city skyscrapers.

Dexter forced a false calmness as the Astro-Bot's remaining claw gripped onto his leg, whipping back and forth as though wielding a yo-yo. The Dexo-Robo tumbled head over jet-powered heels, and the next second his enemy's powerful arm shot forward again, coiling like a snake around the center of Dexter's machine.

"It's like the tough guys say." Dexter could almost hear his rival's grin. "I can beat you one-handed!"

"You forget, Mandark – you are not a tough guy." One colossal purple glove crashed down on the globular cockpit, the other aimed for the torso's giant "M". Both shocked the mech so that the telescopic cables retracted, and Mandark was once more hurling commands at the Astro-Bot's computer.

He's exhausted all his tricks. Dexter hit a dial and reversed course, back into the suburbs. Mandark followed in hot pursuit, and Dexter could judge his mental state well enough from the bot's erratic flight. True, his defensive abilities were strong enough, but the offensive improvements were the point of pride – and the same techniques that had destroyed his own bot in their last battle now barely made an impact at all. Dexter grinned to himself and cranked up his speed just for the satisfaction of leaving Mandark in his dust.

But Mandark had no intentions of being outdone. "If it's a dogfight you want, Dexter," he hissed, "it's a dogfight you are gonna get. Lock target! Activate….the big gun."

Mandark knew it would sap his energy reserves. No matter. Dexter needed a lesson.

Two panels in the cranium of the Astro-Bot slid aside and a humongous shattergun rose toward the heavens, looking as much like a gatling as a comic-book nerd could design. Mandark cackled as the Dexo-Robo halted mid-flight and turned heavily – he could have sworn the bot itself looked surprised.

"Fire!" Six blasts of concentrated energy exploded from the barrel like shells from a shotgun and the Dexo-Robo went charging skyward but was struck once in the leg, once in the chest, and once in the head that encased the cockpit. Dexter's heavy bot toppled over and over and Mandark darted ahead, filling the airwaves with gleeful laughter as he saw the damage the bot had sustained. What puny legs had the Dexo-Robo – the jet rocket in the left boot sputtered weakly as the electrical system beneath the shattered plating struggled under the robot's size. He could hear Dexter retching from the cockpit, barely recovered from the quake. And the damage to the chestplate was severe.

"Wait a minute." Mandark adjusted the dashboard display, zeroing in on the chestplate in the distance. What he'd taken for an electrical fire deep within the engine bay was nothing of the sort. It was a strange….green…glow. A green glow, unlike anything he'd ever seen.

Mandark shook his head, he could not keep distracted. Dexter's bot had sustained damage, but it was not quite bested – and his bot was losing altitude, fast.

"Give up, Dexter! Give up! Or do you want to see the other weapons I have in store?"

The Dexo-Robo charged forward undaunted. "Don't kid yourself, Mandark. Your bluffs are as weak as your eyesight. You can't even see where you are now, can you?"

Mandark frowned and pulled his gaze away from the cockpit ahead of him. "Oh, no. Oh no."

"That's right, Mandark. So wrapped up in your pathetic schemes, so many steps ahead of the game that you miss the most obvious maneuver of all!"

"No, Dexter, you wouldn't – "

"Do not tell me what I can and cannot do. I will no longer let you dictate my thoughts, my plans, my very movements!"

Mandark angled his windshield down, unable to breathe, toward the towers of his laboratory below the dueling bots. Unable to breathe, or move, or think, only beg, frozen. "Please, Dexter, please! You can't!"

"But I tell you, Mandark, with the power of my Neurotomic Protocore ," and Dexter raised his glove, gesturing to the green heart of the great machine – "with the power of the Neurotomic Protocore, I can."

He drew back, fired the blast glove, the unused blast glove - why hadn't he noticed? – and in the same moment Mandark rammed the joystick forward and sent his bot straight into the glove's path.

"Mandark you fool!" the Russian voice shrieked. "Don't!"

It was too late. The super-powered blast glove struck the Astro-Bot's torso, the bot was hurled backwards, and it crashed, down, down, down through all the intricate layers of Mandark's laboratory.

It was a chain reaction. Dexter watched in horror as the bot's fuel ignited blast after blast, and then, as it shook the ground in the family's backyard, as everything collapsed into metal and glass and fire, Mandark was flung from the robot's cockpit and went tumbling through the wreckage of the lab.

It took several minutes to land the Dexo-Robo and a few more to reach his rival. Dexter halted several feet away, suddenly struck numb with fear. Mandark's helmet was gone and he lay still on his back, eyes staring blankly into the sky. "Mandark! Mandark, you fool, say something!"

Mandark said nothing, but he turned his head to face his foe. Then he slowly raised himself upon his elbow, then to his knees, and took a look around.

"You idiot! You utter buffoon! Don't you realize your bot was no match for mine? My fire fists of fury were ten times as powerful, my Neurotomic Protocore made everything powerful! You could have been killed!"

Mandark climbed to his feet. His flight suit was burnt and torn. But that was nothing compared to the state of the laboratory. His ruined laboratory.

"Look around, Mandark!" Dexter continued. "You risked your life for this? Don't you understand? It's over, Mandark! You have lost! But at least, well, at least you aren't dead, because…because it is no victory to defeat an opponent who is – "

A hoarse scream split the air and Mandark ran straight at him, tackling him around the waist and bringing them both to the ground.

Dexter's lungs emptied and he lay gasping as Mandark bore down on top of him and tore his eyeglasses from his face. Then Dexter could breathe but he couldn't see, no, he couldn't see at all, but he could hear Mandark crying and sniffling and shrieking incoherently. And then he felt fists against his face, over and over again.

"Mandark, no, stop - "

"You cheater! You filthy cheater! I begged you!" Mandark seized him by the shoulders and shoved him back into broken tile. He pummeled him with all his strength. "I begged you and you didn't care!"

"Mandark – ugh – Mandark, please!"

"You are not the boy genius! You're not!"

"Okay, okay, Mandark – "

"You destroyed everything! It's all your fault!"

Dexter coughed and choked, shielding his face with his arm, but his relentless rival fought on, digging his nails into his arm through the mist of myopic fog.

"Mandark, I'm sorry!" Dexter screamed, trying to snake his fingers into his pocket. "I only fired the glove, I never meant for you to – AARGH!"

Stars flew into blackness as his head slammed against the tile, but his fingers closed around cold metal and he struck out blindly.

A shrill yelp and the weight on his chest was gone. Dexter tightened his grip on his wrench as Mandark wailed in agony, he stumbled to his feet, then found himself forced backward, something plastic thrust into his gloved hand.

My glasses. Dexter brought them to his face and there, unbelievably, stood his sister, pink ballet slippers braced wide as she kept him back with a swipe of her scrawny arm.

"Dee Dee! What are you doing here?"

"I heard the explosion and I – "

"Get out of the way!" both boys screamed in unison.

"No way! Do you know how mad Mom is gonna be if you come home with a black eye?"

"But he started it!" Mandark shrieked.

"And I'm finishing it! Dexter, come on. Oof – Dexter!"

Dexter lunged to escape her, wrench in hand, then roared with indignation as his sister grabbed him around the waist, yanked backwards, and brought them crashing to down.

"Let me go!" Dexter struggled and kicked, but her arms locked around him like a vice. "Dee Dee, release me this instant, I have to do this myself – "

Snot and tears poured down Mandark's bruised face as watched the siblings struggle, clearly in disbelief. "Why are you helping him?" he sobbed. "It's not fair! He wrecked my lab twice, don't you see? Why are you helping him, I have nothing, nothing, and it's all his fault!"

"That's right," said Dexter, "go ahead and cry about it like a stupid girl – see if I care! You would have done exactly the same, you're just mad you didn't get there first!"

"Stop it! Stop helping him!"

"Shut up, Mandark! Dexter, come on! Move!" Dee Dee hauled Dexter to his feet and towed him through the rubble of Mandark's laboratory without another glance. Oh, he wanted to break that idiot's nose with a blow of his wrench – but Dexter contented himself with the pathetic sobs as he was dragged away toward the safety of home.

-X-

"Thanks a lot, Dexter, I am going to get in so much trouble."

"Owwwww! Dee Dee, cut it out!" Dexter ducked and coughed as she hit him with a cloud of burning antiseptic. Almost every surface of his exposed skin lit up in pain. Apparently he'd been cut up even worse than he'd imagined.

Dee Dee let out a disappointed hiss. "Yep, just like I thought. You're getting a shiner."

"Whenever I get beat up at school," Dexter wheezed, "Mom always applied a package of frozen – "

"PEAS!" A freezing cold bag crunched against his eyeball. This would have made much more sense if they were in the kitchen and not his laboratory.

Dexter muttered relentlessly under his breath as Dee Dee plastered him with bandages from the lab's first-aid kit. At last, she was satisfied with her handiwork and sat back on her heels. "Y'know, I'm not gonna say I told you so, but….I totally told you so."

Dexter replaced the bag of peas with his eyeglasses so he knew where to glower. "Told me what?"

"I knew one of you guys was gonna get hurt. Look at you. It's like you got hit by a car!"

"I've gotten worse."

"I'm serious, Dexter! You really shouldn't be so mean. I know, I know, Mandark was your ninnie-sis or whatever, and he totally had it coming, but what's gonna happen when you get yourself in trouble and I'm not around to save you?"

"I have a feeling you are always going to be around," Dexter grumbled. "Whether I like it or not."

"Y'know what, Dexter?" Dee Dee planted a sloppy kiss right in the middle of his forehead. "You're smarter than you look."

Dexter swiped at her slobber but found, in spite of himself, a hint of a smile creeping onto his face. "I'll be fine, Dee Dee. I won. Don't you see? Mandark has no laboratory – and what's a scientist without his lab? He is finished! I will never have to see him, or hear him, or think about him ever again!"

"What are you talking about? Of course you'll see him. You go to school together."

"But it's more than that. It's over, Dee Dee. I am free to create, to enjoy the laboratory, without the threat of interference. I just have to worry about you. Ow! I've won, and you don't know how good it feels."

"But I do know it's almost 4:30." Dee Dee grabbed his wrist and pointed at his watch. "See? Time for TV Puppet Pals! Come on, let's go watch!"

"Okay. But there's something I need to do first. You run on ahead, I'll catch up."

"Promise?"

"Yes, I promise." Dee Dee crushed him with a hug, then skipped out of the laboratory doors.

Dexter eased himself from his stool, replaced his wrench in his lab coat pocket, and proceeded to Sector IV of his secret laboratory. He had fashioned a temporary hangar and it was there, in the darkness, his giant Dexo-Robo stood waiting.

The lift raised him to the level of the bot's battered chest. With his wrench, he pried open the hatch to the engine bay, gut there was no engine, no battery, just an empty space and the bright green atom pulsing like a heart.

Dexter took the core in his gloved hands, descended to the ground. "The all-powering Neurotomic Protocore. I have called many inventions my greatest work, but this, this is undoubtably my greatest creation of all. For without its birth, I could not have freed myself from the shadow of my rival, or preserved the safety of my lab. All would have fallen to wrack and ruin. But now I am free to create. From this one invention, many more will come to life."

Dexter stepped onto a special platform with a pedestal erected in the center of his laboratory. "A place of honor. The only place for such a thing as this. Ah yes, the Neurotomic Protocore. My ticket to the top. And I have only just begun to investigate its great powers. Hmm. I wonder what else it can do?"

-X-

Black, red. Black, red. There was a light flashing somewhere. A flare of scarlet color, illuminating the wreckage of his laboratory, then casting it into painful silhouette. The only thing in the entire space that had managed to survive.

Mandark sat on the ground, knees pulled tight to his chest. His lungs ached from crying and his throat was swollen from screaming. I wish I'd seen this coming.

He'd bruised his hands, he hadn't expected that. Of course, when you weren't thinking at all, blindly hurling blow after blow, he supposed you wound up in plenty of situations you didn't expect. He rubbed them to try to ease the soreness from the knuckles. I wish I'd hit him harder.

Black, red, black, red. It was as if he couldn't see anything else, peering through narrowed eyes and the cracked lenses of his glasses. He'd managed to extinguish the fires ignited by his robot's explosion before his folks got home, but there was no explaining the mass of shattered work. His model death star, crushed to pieces. Preserved specimens, now bits of bone and flesh. Papers and projects burned away, vials and beakers smashed, toxins and antitoxins evaporating in the breeze, everything he'd built up from the cradle ruined, gone, destroyed. I wish the crash had killed me, too.

Mandark jumped at the sound of metal clattering close behind him. He turned, savage, ready to strike at whoever or whatever approached. But nothing was there – a single can of spray paint clattered against the floor and rolled in a wide arc to rest at his feet.

"Gloss black enamel coating." It was almost full – no surprise. He hardly ever used black.

Then he turned again toward the tangle of broken and twisted metal, stretching away into the moonlight, and he realized where he'd seen that sight before: every time he closed his eyes, over and over in his nightmares. The lab of his nightmares. More real than any beautiful laboratory of his dreams.

Mandark rattled the can and shot. A stripe of inky black sliced across shards of glass. He swept his arm back and forth until whatever invention lay smashed beyond belief was covered in shadow. It could have been mistaken for a mass of ferocious thorns.

Thorns. Yes, thorns! Mandark reached out and heaved, trusting in the protection of his flight gloves to guard his hands against the sharp edges. He pushed until he'd made a heap of damage and struck with his paint, zig-zagging until he'd made a spiny tree of crossed-out calamity.

And suddenly all the wreckage looked like growth, somehow. Like it belonged, risen from the shadows, fresh and new. Mandark aimed and fired, marking out the shattered rainbow of yellow, red, blue, and green creation, until the can sputtered and died, and everything around him was black, whether the red light blinked or cast it into shadow.

I wish…

Mandark hurled the paint can down to the tile where it ricocheted, echoed, and rolled out of sight. "No. I don't wish anything." He drew his raw hand across his grimy cheek and choked a lump of sorrow in his throat. "No. Wishes are for weaklings."

Oh, how stupid he'd been! How soft and weak and stupid! A real boy did not trust in flimsy acts of faith! A real boy – a real man – took action. He got what he wanted. And he didn't care what he had to do to get it.

"I was after the wrong thing," Mandark whispered into darkness. "I wanted fame…glory. But I needed something else. What I needed was…power."

Mandark felt a grin growing on his face, something brewing in his chest. "I need – what was it called? The all-powering core. And once I get it, I will do what I should have done all along. Destroy Dexter's lab? Ha! Child's play! No – I must destroy Dexter. HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA!"

The End