I wanted to answer, but I could feel the weight of my failure threatening to crush me. With monumental effort, I began to speak. "Oh.. well, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. You should probably get out of here, if you can. Some of the buildings are still unstable."

She seemed to pick up on my sadness, and offered up a small smile. "What happened?" She asked again. "You can talk about it. I'll believe you, I promise." she stated firmly.

"I... kind of caused all of this, on accident. I was trying to get this guy to join my organization. He wanted me to help him with some family issue, and then... this just sort of happened." I motioned toward the crumbling cityscape.

"How exactly?" she asked.

I recounted the tale, from start to finish. I even ended up rambling a little about Behemoth and the Champion-Ship... basically, I sort of just told her the story up until now.

She regarded me for a few moments, before holding out her hand. "You got two dollars?"

My heart sunk. Of course, at the end of all of this I meet some bum from the Junk Block that just wanted money for drugs or whatever. Still, I was curious about why she'd ask now, after listening to my spiel.

"Why?"

"I'll help you. Hell, I'll join you. But I want two dollars. One, for you taking up my time with all that rambling before I even became a member. And two, my personal fee for joining. Two dollars, and I'm all yours." She said with a wink. "By the way, my name is Deborah Scott."

"What can you even do? My team is for -" I got interrupted, but I was extremely confused. I never asked her to join me, and I didn't even really want her to.

"Yeah, yeah, I don't need that long-winded explanation again. I get it, alright? I'm saying, I want to help you. And it sounds like you could really use me. That metal mutant guy you mentioned shouldn't get to boss you around like that, just because he's so tough. You want someone strong in your corner? You got me!" She said.

I still wasn't super convinced, but I also didn't really want to be alone. I had planned to just Superspeed over to the town Behemoth told me about, but I didn't feel like I was in a position to help anyone right now.

"Alright... I guess. I don't know. I also keep getting beat up by that guy, Super Semicolon. Maybe I shouldn't eve-" I began to say, but she cut me off again.

"Super Semicolon? Pshh, that guy won't bother you while I'm around. I promise."

I felt a strange comfort from her words. It was definitely just that I felt so useless here, and didn't even get to fully recruit Gary. I closed my eyes, and willed my armor to dissipate, like before with the chains. One it was gone, I reached into my pocket and fished around for the money. Luckily, I did have two dollars.

"Alright.. here. Please don't run away with it." I half-joked, and she chuckled in response.

"Wouldn't dream of it. What do we do now? You said you had business in the other town.. what town was that, exactly?"

"I don't know. Behemoth always tells me to do these things, but never gives me the most critical information about them." I replied. Still, I did have a way to figure out what to do, which I presumed was why Behemoth didn't tell me.

I closed my eyes, and sure enough I felt an odd "Universal Connection" to something... or someone, pretty far away. It was to the northeast, but the connection was very faint. I also felt dozens of other connections, but most of them were a lot more dull than this one was.

Maybe I should get to the root of all of those connections, if they're all future team members. It'd save me a bit of time.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"We have to head northeast... I guess we could just walk."

The woman reached into one of the many chests on her belt, and withdrew what looked like a folded up map. She opened it, and held it out so we could both see. She put her finger on the place we supposedly were at, and traced it up a little trail to the nearest town.

"That'll be a long walk. We'll have to hike through the forest, a little... and the terrain looks pretty rugged. This realistically might take a week... how did he expect you to get there?"

"I have Super Speed. But.. well, since I have a teammate again, I can't exactly use it." I realized that might have sounded harsh, so I tried to backtrack.

"Not that I-"

"Nah, I get it. I don't want you leaving me in your dust. Hmm... what to do... didn't you say Behemoth could teleport?" She asked.

"Yeah, but he doesn't teleport me anywhere, unless there's some kind of emergency. It's pretty annoying." I replied. I really didn't sound like a Team Leader here, but this was my situation.

She looked around, seemingly deep in thought. Suddenly, I felt kind of bad that she was going to all this trouble.

"Hey... you don't have to do all this. Look around, I caused so much damage here.. and I'm probably just going to keep making things worse. Besides, Behemoth didn't tell me to recruit you... maybe that's because I'm better off alone right now."

"Behemoth can go to hell. This is your team, right? And you're just learning the ropes. I told you, I'm here and I'm willing to help you. I'm part of your team too, now. i know what I'm getting into, you don't have to worry about it." She replied, kind of annoyed. I decided to stop pressing her about it; if she wanted to help, why not let her?

That's when I looked over to my right, and saw the remains of the Cool Bot. The Old Man was sitting next to the robot's giant arm, and sobbing into it. "Hey, I think I just had an idea." I said, before heading over to the Old Man. Deborah nodded and followed me.

Upon reaching the Old Man, I said an obligatory "What's wrong?"

"My... Oh.. By god.. Blast it.. My.. my poor..."

"Your..?" Deborah asked, and at the sound of her voice he looked up,

"Wh- who is she?" He asked, wiping a tear from his left eye.

"Not any of your concern. Why were you crying?" I replied.

"My.. Cool Bot... you got him killed. He's dead, you understand? My.. my pride and joy, I loved him more than my own grandson.. How could you?" he asked, his voice thick with accusation.

I didn't reply right away. Instead, I regarded the giant robot, deep in thought.

"What if I could fix it?" I asked, and he scoffed in response.

"Fix it? You have liquid nitrogen on hand? Supercharged Radium? You.. you.. wait, you made my Freeze Ray out of nothing, didn't you?" He asked, realization dawning on him.

"Yep. Teach me exactly how to repair it, and I can probably get it done before the end of the day. I'll do it on one condition, though."

He looked at me skeptically, his eyes rife with distrust. "What? I'm not doing anything illegal." That was funny, coming from him. I think it was a joke, but even now I'm still not sure.

"Let us ride it for a few days. There's somewhere we need to be, and at the moment it's pretty much the most convenient means of travel." He thought about it for a few moments, before nodding. "Done. Now how exactly are you going to fix it?" He asked.

I pressed my hand to the robot's arm, and closed my eyes. "Tell me exactly how it's made. Go over it multiple times, just drill it into me. Deborah, you might want to get comfortable.. this might take a while." When I began mentally reaching out to the Primordial Energy around us, my armor materialized around me again.

Over the next few hours, The Old Man Who Once Possessed a Ray Gun led me to different parts of the Cool Bot, and I used my forging ability to repair the robot as best I could. It seemed that since the parts were attaching to a larger machine, they didn't dissipate after I'd made them and hadn't touched them for a while.. I assumed that's what kept happening to all the thrown spears.

By the end of the day, I'd fully repaired the Cool Bot. Me, The Old Man and Deborah all stood in the room I'd commanded the machine from. I walked in place, moving the Cool Bot forward, and slowly took us toward our destination.

As we walked, I thought back on what I'd done that day. It was true that I should have been more careful.. a lot more careful. And maybe I deserved that beating by Super Semicolon. But part of me was grateful that I'd made those mistakes, since I was determined not to make them again.

I thought about how when Super Semicolon first attacked me, way back before i met Blur- he was careful not to smash any shops. Sure, he'd knocked me into that one shop earlier today; but that was an evacuated building that I'd already partially destroyed, that would need repairs anyway.

Or when I'd chased down Blur, my Superspeed nearly sent me careening into another shop- but Blur stopped me. I needed to treat my surroundings with that level of care... and focus on keeping the city safe, not necessarily just "taking down the bad guy". I was determined to take these lessons to heart.

I just hoped that in the process, I wouldn't have to fight Super Semicolon again. That guy was crazy.