It was Ricky's voice. Tapper had almost reached the tangle of people to help Ricky out from under the metal leg currently pinning him, the need to rescue his proprietor outweighing any burgeoning sense of self-preservation. But the direct order changed that, and without a word Tapper spun on his treads and sped out of the warehouse. Any onlookers still milling about in the street scrambled to get out of the way and avoid any direct confrontation with the miners, so Tapper had a clear path to round a corner and recollect his thoughts. Even with all his programming to read social cues Tapper had no idea what had just transpired in the warehouse; at first it sounded like a simple matter of paying off a debt, but it seemed that every word that Miss Uxral and Mister Belvidere shared had a double meaning that only they understood.
Attempting to decode the conversation was such an arduous task that Tapper didn't notice the commotion inside the warehouse had died down. What he did notice was the lumbering machine as it tore around the corner, drill hands still spinning fast enough to tear through any wall or structure that it accidentally touched. Tapper had just enough processing power to realize that he shouldn't have taken Mister Ricky's orders so literally before he turned around and resumed escaping at full speed.
Unfortunately for Tapper, a body designed to spend its entire service confined to a bar was not made with speed in mind. Fortunately for Tapper, a robot designed for mining and made from mismatched parts was also not built for speed, so in that regard they were pretty evenly matched. If getting caught didn't mean a quick and painful demise for Tapper, it would have actually been fairly comical to watch the two robots slowly and awkwardly chase each other around. But for all their lacking grace they were equally relentless, so after several twists and turns failed to lose his pursuer Tapper instead decided to focus less on where he was going and instead put all of his processing power towards getting every ounce of speed that his treads could manage. It did help, just enough for him to pull out of reach after a stumble, but it also meant his pathing defaulted to the same destination he had been habitually visiting for the past two weeks.
Almost nothing remained of Rethar's former home. Both the bus and the hole had been completely camouflaged with trash, the sort that told everyone it had already been picked through and nothing of value could possibly remain. Phanya had plans for the bus to become an office for their mining operation, but right now Tapper could only hope that it would serve as a good hiding spot. It didn't occur to the robot that this camouflage was not meant to be easily accessed, like their clubhouse, and he wasted the precious little lead he had in attempting to clear an entry into the bus.
Drillbert lunged for Tapper the instant he was within range, the straight jab instead contacting the bag of trash that Tapper just happened to be holding. The drill hand pierced the bag without even a hint of resistance, but it caught on whatever wet and rotten contents inside and sent the whole bag spinning with the hand. The force easily sent Tapper reeling, and despite his best flailing the bartender fell prone on his back. Luckily Drillbert was preoccupied with trying to clear the blockage on its hand, so if Tapper was ever going to go on the offensive then now was his shot. Or at least, offensive enough to distract the mining bot and resume his escape.
Propping himself up on one hand among the garbage he had fallen on, Tapper pointed the other hand at Drillbert and willed the energy within into a single point. "SPRAY!" The logic was actually pretty straightforward, activating his vacuum would likely have only pulled him towards his assailant and the Track spell would probably just make his caterpillar tracks more efficient — Tapper chastised himself for not realizing that earlier — but spraying Drillbert with a torrent of whatever remained in his tank should at least slow it down.
The energy welled and shot a line up his nozzle spindle, followed right on its metaphorical heels by an immense buildup of pressure on his tank that would have meant a catastrophic failure under normal circumstances. He even received a mundane alert that his tank was about to rupture, but the pressure vanished as soon as it stormed down the spindle and found escape through the nozzle. What hit the other robot was a jet of some murky and vile liquid that stuck to whatever it hit and left a mild sizzling sound, but unlike the vacuum this spell shut off almost immediately. There was a hard thunk from his back, a mundane error message about a clog, and then the power really did start to build up.
The backlash hit Tapper like a headache and he wailed about in confusion, so he didn't notice Drillbert also reeling from being shot in the face and left perfectly distracted. Eventually one of them had to recover, and Tapper looked up just in time to watch Drillbert tip over and send the still active drill hands straight through the false floor of garbage they were both standing on. With a crack the flimsy structure collapsed and both robots were sent tumbling down the secret tunnel.
Tapper was the first to regain their bearings, his eyes popping to full brightness for the illumination of a rather expansive cavern. Countless layers of trash were compacted and deformed past the point of recognition, all the way to a high ceiling of flat gray stone. Perfectly flat like asphalt. Before the implications of an asphalt ceiling could hit Tapper, several more mismatched spotlights added to the illumination as Drillbert wiped the rest of the goop away from its face and garbled something out of its broken speakers.
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That was the first time the robot had tried to actually speak, sparking a tiny spot of hope within Tapper. Maybe this wasn't a mindless automaton after all! "Excuse me, what was that? Can you understand me? Maybe we can talk out a way around our orders so you don't have to mine me and I don't have to run away from you!"
Again, incomprehensible static and pops was Drillbert's answer. Both hands were still in full mining mode and it swung one with so little grace that even Tapper could dodge it. The bartender powered up his auditory processors and sensitivity to max and listened as closely as he could manage, the miner seemed to be repeating phrases… Eventually something emerged from underneath the static, a looping tally of error messages with codes for an engineer to diagnose. Nothing that would indicate any degree of self-awareness.
This gave a strange sense of melancholy that Tapper wouldn't be able to identify until a future moment of introspection, but he didn't let it deter him from resuming his escape down the cavern. This time, he remembered to try casting Track on himself and the surge of energy did fill his treads, but there was no noticeable change to his speed. Tapper didn't feel any difference whatsoever, until he looked down and realized a bright green trail was being left in his wake. The perfect means to track exactly where he had gone, including murderous mining automatons. The bartender had his first thought regarding luck, and how rotten it was, as he approached the end of the cavern where several different tunnels branched off, and no matter which he picked it would be easy to follow.
Just like in town Tapper had to focus on speed above all else. He split off as much processing power as he dared on trying to end the magical trail effect, but the additional focus may have inadvertently prolonged the spell instead. Eventually something popped inside his mind and Tapper was relieved, despite the pain, to see a pop up that his Track spell had fizzled out. All the while he had been randomizing his route and taking sudden turns in a desperate attempt to shake off the hulking robot, sometimes doubling back and at one point crossing his own glowing green trail that still hung in the air.
The terrain in the tunnels of trash was rough yet strangely consistent, his ocular sensors casually reporting that every branching path was approximately 20 feet across with very little variation. Despite the danger Tapper couldn't help but feel mildly curious about this factoid and it almost distracted him while taking a sharp turn. Right in the middle of the tunnel was an octolusk egg sack, sharp reflections bouncing off the baron's jam in the dark, and Tapper's treads spun almost halfway up the tunnel wall as he narrowly avoided the treacherous mound. Just as he started to feel proud of his uncharacteristic reflexes there was a deafening BAM! and Tapper flung forward.
He didn't receive any damage but it was enough to bury his head in the ancient trash wall, and when he looked back he saw Drillbert picking itself up with baron's jam spread all over the robot and every surface in sight. Including Tapper's own back, with a chill the data streams reporting the organic matter came crashing in and threatened to overwhelm his processor again. In hindsight it was incredibly lucky this wasn't the first time Tapper had been covered in goo, it allowed his meager willpower to hold on and activate the Suck spell on himself while also urging his treads into motion. He did think to also keep an eye out for any attacking octolusks, but none showed and once the chase resumed he had actually gained some distance against the other robot.
The chase stretched into an hour, and then multiple, and then time got fuzzy. Identical tunnels stretched and split without end, Tapper's internal compass was useless this far underground and save for the occasional octolusk egg sack there was never anything approaching a landmark. Unfortunately Drillbert seemed to recognize them as hazards after the first encounter and never hit a second, despite the bartender's attempts to steer his pursuer into danger. After an age of just barely keeping out of reach Tapper made his first mistake when he looked back to verify how much distance he had from the miner. The distance was enough, but the mistake was timing it so that Tapper didn't see the floor suddenly give out in front of him.
Again Tapper tumbled down a sharper angle of trash, this time stopping when his treads caught on the lip of something metal. All he could see was that he was spread out and mostly upside-down on the side of some kind of smaller metal box, but before he could even start to rouse the assailant robot was on top of him. A panicked scramble shifted Tapper just enough that a downward stab of a drill missed his chest, instead slamming directly into his treads.
Pain. Insurmountable pain raked over Tapper's mind and blanked out all his higher-level processes, scrambling his sensors for a brief moment. When his sight returned Tapper almost wished it hadn't, all he could see was the monster that was slowly killing him. Drillbert was too big to fit through the gap into the metal box, but one normal hand was holding Tapper by the leg strut and the other was methodically mining away at his treads, one layer at a time.
It was surprising how calm Tapper felt about the fatal encounter. The program interpreting tactile feedback had frozen and crashed, so he didn't feel pain from the damage he was suffering. He couldn't feel anything whatsoever, and the gap in input data left him with a calm sort of detachment. The rain of finely shredded rubber and metal bits that used to be his treads were just another data point now, and the cracks forming in his leg pole were something to note for later.