Unit 5a23 awoke with his head lodged in the dirt, and his toaster dinging like crazy. His toaster?

Unit 5a23 didn't know he had a toaster with him. He pulled his head out of the dirt and looked around to try and surmise where he was. Everything was green, beautiful, and dangerous to an automaton like himself. Regardless, he had absolutely no idea where exactly he was.

Unit 5a23 tried to remember... something. What was the last thing he remembered? It was something about... entering a meditative state. Was he a meditator? He didn't really know anything about meditation, but for whatever reason, he seemed to have strong emotions flare up in his mechanical mind whenever he thought about it - or was it whenever he tried not to think about it? Regardless, Unit 5a23 knew for certain that meditation was in some way vital to his being, more specifically, to his well-being. Did robots have well-being? Unit 5a23 certainly felt so in this moment.

But that was enough introspection. Unit 5a23 hoped to use some outrospection in order to figure out just what in the fresh hell was going on here.

With that, he pulled the toast out of his toaster and observed it with his robotic eyesight. A small blue box popped up around one of the pieces of toast.

[Analyzing...]

[Analysis complete]

[Toast is perfectly cooked]

Well, that was certainly nice to know. So Unit 5a23 was excellent at toasting, was he?

Maybe that explained what he was. See, he had no idea what his purpose was. He could barely remember anything at all, except that his name was Unit 5a23.

But, what with the retractable toaster in his chest, and the great toast that he'd just produced, it seemed to him that he must've been some sort of cooking machine. Yes, that was it! Unit 5a23 could feel himself brimming with pride and excitement. Sure, he remembered absolutely nothig of his life, but if he could make toast this good intrinsically, internally in a way that was integral to his structural being, it was likely - no, it was certain - that he was none other than an amazing robotic cook.

He wondered how he got here in the woods. He didn't see anything, like a spatula for example, that would've been used to cook. He had no apron with him, nor did he have a chef's hat. And yet, it all felt just far too right to ignore. This much was absolutely certain in the moment - every fibre of Unit 5a23 was convinced that he was an excellent robot chef.

His mechanical mind began to dream up all sort of different scenarios wherein he could've ended up in this strange, wooded area. Perhaps he was the private chef of some eccentric, wealthy tauman family who was traveling around Nomachiato in a hot air balloon. Maybe he worked at a cruising airship, cooking the finest meals for the most spendy of clients, and found himself accidentally falling overboard. Maybe he'd been riding his jetpack out to work at a secret, hidden restaraunt that only the most exclusive foodies dined at.

Well, Unit 5a23 had no memories, so he had no real way of knowing. And he didn't really see any clues as he looked around the ground he'd crashed into - if anything, all he really saw was the deep indentation of his robot body in the ground. That was... really it. What a shame. If only Unit 5a23 had some clue, some clue other than his inbuilt toaster, but that would have to be enough to go on.

Then, Unit 5a23 realized, as he ran through for the millionth time all of his different fantastical scenarios (for his mind processed thoughts exceedingly fast, and thus he was indeed able to process millions of imagined scenarios almost instantly), he realized that half of them included his jetpack, or more aptly, the jets on his feet. Which meant that, Unit 5a23 had jets on his feet. As he realized and recognized his benefit, he used their respective [skill] to lift himself lightly above the air. He watched the grass and dirt buffet against the wind pressure as he lifted up into the air.

A thought occurred to Unit 5a23, a thought that almost, for a second, broke the fragile reality he'd constructed on the fly for himself. Why would a robot chef need jets in his feet?

Then again, he noticed he was able, by use of his [Robo-Blast] [skill], to charge and expel energy from his chest. It went out in the shape of a toaster due to his inbuilt toaster-appendage. This, as well, made him wonder if he was made for combat or something. But, all that said, he quickly dashed these thoughts against the rocks in his mind - the literal rocks, which were used to conduct his thought by magnetizing against one another and propelling wheeling, turning gears that allowed his cognition. There had to be a more logical explanation for it all. After all, sure, Unit 5a23 had a toaster built into his chest - this was not a theory, this was true. Which was harder to explain - powerful [skills] that could be used for combat or for cooking, or being a fighter robot with a random toaster souldered to his chest? Unit 5a23 knew which option sounded more ridiculous, and it wasn't the first one.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

With that, he decided that, since he couldn't remember any of his life, he'd just have to forge out and make a new one for himself. After all, if he really was as great a robo-chef as he knew that he was, it would only be a matter of time before whatever grand, glorious cooking thing he was on his way to do before he lost his memory jumped back into his lap on a gilded platter.

And so it was that, with a smile both inwardly and external - although his mechancial face was generally static save for the glowing orbs of his eyes - Unit 5a23 jetted off into the sky in search of civilization. In search of people to feed, like some sort of a gourmet superhero or something, he figured.

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Unit 5a23 started out in the back, washing the dishes in the resataurant called The Restaurant. It was a bit of a dive, and the entire interior was in complete disrepair. It was part of the Flungunglica franchise, his manager had explained, a franchise of a chain that started in the city of Gifflenberg. It smelled like old onion rings and saurkraut, but it already felt like home to the wayward robot. They had chosen to hire him over the other guy because Unit 5a23 could make toast on command, and it was always perfectly done, whereas the other prospective employee had failed to toast their toast properly. This was, of course, an importat aspect of the job, as fourty percent of the franchise's revenue came from breakfast foods. That being said, the unchosen candidate was extremely bitter, and went as far as to say that robots always won technical interviews. Which, of course, only made them less of an enticing candidate, as it painted them as a bit prejudiced and more than a bit petty.

Flungunglica was the first city Unit 5a23 encountered after he took to the skies in search of foodworthy occupation. Flungunglica was unique in a few ways. It was mostly swampy, so swampy that it was almost considered a semiaquatic living space. It was also home to a rare subsect of tauman elementals known as fungus elementals. Just as plant elementals held great dominion over plant life, fungus elemetals controlled, well, fungus - mushrooms and their ilk. Slime molds. Some people said that the Gharlique were originally a creation of the fungus elemetals five centuries prior, and that it was all the fungus elementals fault, and why had nobody done anything about the fungus elementals unleashing Curr upon Nomachiato, and that the fungus elementals were terrible tauman beings and that everyone hated them and that fungus elementals made everyone uncomfortable because they spread all those awful spores all over the place and messed with everyone's breathing and tried to control their minds. Ironically, most people did not dislike fungus elementals, and generally it was accepted that any and all of these bizarre things said about fungus elementals were beyond ridiculous and just patently untrue, and even further it was almost universally realized that people generally couldn't stand to be around people who said such wild things about fungus elementals because, in fact, they were the ones making everyone uncomfortable, and that they were - intentionally or not - trying to manipulate peoples' emotions much in the way that they purported fungus elementals did.

So, what did fungus elementals really do? Mainly, they meditated, and they ate lots and lots of different mushrooms prepared in all sorts of tasty ways. Sometimes, in fact, oftentimes, fungus elementals would do a bit of both at the same time. They would even eat mushrooms that would force them into meditative states every once and a while, just for fun and for practice. And really, they had enough trouble controlling their own minds, in fact they almost never could on account of all the comingling with different fungal cultures in their consciousness to the point that fungus elementals were almost thought of as just as much fungus as tauma, and all this was so much so that it was near impossible for them to do normal introspection on account of the fact that, literally, they'd have a thousand fungal minds interacting with their own at any given time.

Unit 5a23 did his absolute best to keep scrubbing and scrubbing the dishes, and indeed he was quite good at it. He was an automaton, after all. But despite getting the job thanks to his inbuilt toaster, he was not once asked to even so much as toast a slice of bread for The Restauraunt's clients.

Until one fateful moment. It was four hours through his first day on the job.

"Unit 5a23! Unit 5a23!" said a fungal tauman in short shorts whose name Unit 5a23 had forgotten. "Unit 5a23, do you have the ability to toast us some toast?"

With a pleasing ding, Unit 5a23 pulled the toast out of his inbuilt toaster nodded. "I am always ready to toast. It's who I am."

"Thank the gods! The famed fungal critic Viktor Viktorioso has just come in, and all he ordered was a single piece of toast, and all our toasters are broken!"

"Say no more," said Unit 5a23. He handed them his piece of toast. "This one's on the house, but any more will cost you extra."

"Whatever, thanks."

Unit 5a23 tried to stay nonchalant as the fungal tauman scurried out of the back room with his toast, but he was shaking in his robo-boots. Viktor Viktorioso? Unit 5a23 had no idea who that was, but he was absolutely terrified.

Soon enough, the fungal tauman came running back in to the room, adjusted their shorts - which had somehow ridden up - and addressed the automaton.

"Unit 5a23, wash your claws off. Viktorioso wants to meet you."