Unit 5a23 blasted a ray of blue energy out of his chest at the consumer, but the beast simply reverted from a skeletal shape to a pile of bones for a moment until the blast's radius dissipated, after which it quickly resumed its bipdal form and begun to taunt him.
"You may not be alive in the traditional sense, Unit 5a23. But I'm not Curr, new or old - I am here to consume you, and soon after, all of Flungunglia!"
"NEVER! I'll NEVER let you take away my home!!" cried Unit 5a23 as he toasted some bread far too long - so long that it was blackened beyond belief - with his inbuilt toaster and hurled them at the consumer like flying stars.
One struck the foe and lopped off a boney arm, but the consumer simply knelt down and reattached its fallen appendage. "Nice try, you silly little robot. You are nothing compared to me!! HAH!"
The consumer leapt towards Unit 5a23 as it summoned up ball lightning in its skeletal hands, gripped onto the robot's shoulders, and charged him full of electricity.
"HAHAHAHAHAHHAAAHAHAAAAAAAA!"
Unit 5a23 jittered and twitched as the electricity coursed through his circuitry, shocking and overheating his system over and over again in rapid succession in a manner that mimicked in a way the effects of a miniature seizure on a tauman mind.
Unit 5a23 watched as reality slowly but surely seemed to lose its footing for a bit, colors got all out of whack, and everything looked like he was staring through a funhouse mirror. Of course, there was indeed the ever-present smell of burnt toast, however, this was not because of the consumer's attack so much as it was the fact that Unit 5a23 had recently and intentionally burnt some toast.
"Unit 5a23! Please tell me you're okay!" cried Shammy as she hid under a large stack of posters emblazoned with Unit 5a23's robo-face. She was crying, and her heavy mascara was so smeared by tears that she looked akin to a drowning raccoon.
"Okay as ever, baby!" said Unit 5a23 in a deep, heavily inflected voice that, as soon as he heard it, made him jump in surprise. He'd never had a voice that cool. Obviously, the charges of electricity had unintentionally rewired or otherwise tripped something in his circuitry, and suddenly instead of cold and atonal Unit 5a23 sounded cool as Hell.
On realizing how cool as Hell Unit 5a23 sounded, Shammy sighed and swooned. She tumbled to the floor on her side, unconscious with a breathy sigh and a hand over her forehead.
Unit 5a23 looked at Shammy with sorrow. Then, his head quickly swiveled 90 degrees to look right at the consumer. He pointed at the foe and laughed a breathy laugh. "Now, time to deal with you, sugar!"
"Sugar?" replied the consumer with confusion.
"Yea, sugar!" said Unit 5a23 as he soared over to fight the consumer with a powerful blast of his jet feet. He landed half an inch from the consumer's face. He raised his claw hands and backhanded the consumer across the face one, two, three, and four times in rapid succession. "Suck on that sucker, baby!"
"Oh my gods!" groaned the consumer as it quickly charged up its boney arms with electrified energy. "Why won't you just get bricked, you stupid mess of circuitry and unoptimized programming?"
"Unoptimized? You think I'm unoptimized, baby?" Unit 5a23 laughed a deep, hearty laugh as he pulled out a duck skeleton from his restaurant's sink and started beating the consumer over the head with it. "Funny you'd say that seeing as I'm optimized to whoop your ass, sugar!"
While all this was taking place, Stheven Stheveneson, the newscaster that had originally been there to report on how successful Unit 5a23's restaurant was and how amazing the toast was, was absolutely losing his mind. He was doing his best to capitalize on this happening by showing off his [Reporting] and [Coverage] [skills].
"And it's Unit 5a23, Unit 5a23, is stepping up to land another round of bodacious punches and smacks on the boney, skeletal figure that we here at Station 2.4 have nicknamed 'Funnybones!' And so it is that Funybones seems to just be absorbing blows left and right like some sort of a skeletal punching bag! It's at once disturbing and also incredibly impressive! Oh! Looks like Funnybones picked up a spatula, electrified it, and is trying to swat at Unit 5a23 like he's a gnat. Good thing our resident Flungunglian robo-chef knows his way around this particular piece of kitchen equipment, as he seems to be evading every strike from Funnybones without incident. His movements are almost rhythmic, like it's more of a dance than it is a fight, although he definitely isn't pulling any punches today! Well, okay, maybe that's not totally true, he's pulling some punches back... But only in order to power them up and punch Funnybones even harder. For more coverage of this fight, I'm going to hand off the mic to my co-reporter, Sharah Sharason, as I've got to use the little toadstool's room!" With that, Stheven passed the microphone like a baton to a lady tauman with some blue mushrooms growing up on the living wood on her face. She was wearing a tight, black and white bodycon dress with stripes that made her look kind of like either a grime, which was a type of Nomachiatan clown that never spoke, or a thebra, which was a four legged creature with a zigzag pattern on its skin.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
"Hi, Flungunglia Station 2.4, I'm Sharah Sharason and I'm here to continue your fight coverage at Unit 5a23's eatery, where only moments earlier we were waiting in anticipation for the famed food critic Viktor Viktorioso to swing on by the restaurant and try out some of Unit 5a23's duck toast! That all changed, of course, when grumpy old Funnybones came into town and threw his dukes up! Now, you'll notice right now that Funnybones is slapping Unit 5a23 with an electrified spatula - yes, that's right, Funnybones is finally landing a hit - but even with that, Unit 5a23 still looks quite ready to fight. It's almost like he's drawing power from the electrical attacks instead of taking damage! I'd clarify that if I had a system, although unfortunately I do not - let me know if you have any dragons for me to [pair] with, though! I'm kidding, of course, that was a joke, I'm just kidding."
It was not long before Unit 5a23 sauntered over to Sharah Sharason as he continued to punch and slap at the consumer with his left claw arm. "Hey there, baby!" said Unit 5a23 as he spun his head three hundred a sixty degrees.
"Now there's a robot that can give me head!" said Sharah Sharason with a wide smile and no hit of irony or embarassment. "Say, Unit 5a23, I know you're fighting the skeleton right now, but can I ask you a question?"
"Absolutely, sugar!" said Unit 5a23 as he gripped the consumer's electrifiec spatula with his left claw, absorbed the electricity, and then shot it back out at the skeleton in a huge burst, sending the foe into a convulsing mess of electrified bones. "What a silly fella. He genuinely wants to kill me, and probably all of you here, but don't you worry. I won't let that happen. Now, what's your question?"
"I just wanted to know what inspires you to cook," replied Sharah.
"Oh, great, great, thank you baby, thank you very much for asking that question," said Unit 5a23 as he grabbed the mic with his right claw and spoke way too closely too it, muffling his voice and creating lots of audial feedback. He started to gyrate and thrust his hips in a certain rhythm. This certain rhythm was the same one to which he punched the consumer with his left claw. "See, I remember when I was a little bot. I was just a happy kid who played with nuts and bolts, alright? Alright. Alright, now. Well, when I got older I got really bored. So bored, I stared at the ceiling. And now I've been told if you stare up long enough them you might just lose your mind, your mind, oh yea. Yea. But instead what happened was that my neck got dry, my neck joint, my joint, oh yea. So, I needed to oil it because I'm a bot, but I looked around the shop and didn't find any oil, oil, any oil. So then I went into the kitchen found some olive oil, poured that right behind my neck and then my whole life changed, it changed, oh yea. See the olive oil shocked my circuitry somethin' real bad, so bad I thought my parents would be awful mad they would, they would, oh yea. But then I saw this book just sitting there on the shelf while I was standing there contemplating trying to kill myself and it called out to me like an angel yea it did, it did, oh yea. So I opened the book full of recipes, but the only thing that really sorta stood out to me, was one that told me how to make toast real good oh yea and don't you see, you see? That’s me - that book saved me. The chapter that I read it was the joy of toast and it was something that I found that I just love the most and now this skeleton wants to kill me but now his ass is toast, is toast, oh yea."
"Did you just rhyme toast with toast?" growled the angry, beaten Voice of the consumer.
Unit 5a23 blasted the consumer backwards against the wall with a burst of energy from his chest and leaned back over to the mic. He looked with his glowing blue orbs into Sharah's glowing amber eyes. "Does that answer your question, baby?"
Sharah pulled out a hand fan and cooled herself rapidly. "Y-yes, it does, thank you." She looked like she was having trouble standing upright, and indeed her eyelids were fluttering like butterflies having an aneurism.
Suddenly, with an explosive burst of flame, the side wall of Unit 5a23's restaurant blew open and a tall tauman with a flaming arm sauntered forth with a grim look on his face.
"Alright, everybody stand back, I've got an evil asshole to capture!"
Unit 5a23 just laughed, sighed, and did a hip thrust in the air. "Omar! So good to see you again, sugar!"