Copy, (An Astro Boy Story)

Chapter 19: The End

Toby didn't really know what to do now.

For the boy who always had a plan and hated not having something in his hands, he had no idea what to busy himself with. Everything that had been flying through his mind to dabble in had mysteriously disappeared when the whole Astro affair had exploded.

Astro affair. Is that what he was calling it now? He'd only talked to his robot twin for maybe a half hour. In all practical aspects of the situation, he barely knew the kid.

But the time conversing didn't exactly matter. What did matter was that Astro had his memories – all of them – and he was the closest Toby had ever gotten to having a brother...even if it had been more of a fantasy in a few days of hoping than a reality.

So yeah, he'd hoped. Yeah, he'd admit it. He'd hoped that Cora's crazy plans – plans plural – would work. He'd admit that before all that he'd been jealous of Astro and his fame and his devoted (albeit totally nuts) Surface girl. But he'd changed his mind. Not by getting to know Astro, per se, but blissfully indirectly.

He'd changed his mind by seeing the affect one dinky little robot born of pain can have.

He wasn't one to be sappy, but he wasn't blind. Astro had transformed people's lives in a fraction of the amount of time Toby had been alive. Heck, it shouldn't even be considered a fraction the number was so small! Astro'd been alive for, what – two, three days before Toby'd popped unceremoniously back into the fray? And in that time he'd instigated a revolutionary step forward emotionally with his father (no easy feat,) created a bond with Elefun, brought about the adoptions of an entire orphanage, reunited a lost girl with her parents, acquired fierce and undying loyalty, friendship and love, saved the whole of Metro City, overthrew a dictator, became a celebrity/superhero, raised a robot from the dead and even turned an enemy into a friend.

And where had he ended up? That great hero that everyone loved and who had become so significant in such a small, insignificant amount of time?

Oh yeah. He'd landed in a pile of spare parts on the Surface: torn to pieces, memories ripped from his helpless brain and body hopelessly dismembered.

Toby's fingernails scratched the expensive leather of the limousine's armrest as his left hand curled into a fist. Orrin's head tilted toward him at the sound, but he continued to drive without a word.

The anger that suddenly gripped his heart like talons was unfamiliar to him, but familiar in another. His face in the review mirror was screwed up into an expression of pure rage and disgust – mostly with himself.

It was a look he'd seen on Cora's face too often.

He understood it now, that anger. Because where was he, Toby Tenma? He'd been alive - what, thirteen years now? And what had he done with his life? He'd created dangerous toys of mass destruction for his own entertainment. He went to school and openly flouted his intelligence and turned the entire student body against him. He'd consistently rewired his housebot - possibly his only friend - for his own gain. He openly discriminated against robots in public, disobeyed orders that almost got him killedand was damn lazy as lard, stupidly rich, stuck up and ignorant and useless and –

Thirteen years, and he'd done nothing with it but gel his hair and make himself into a cocky fool while his robot double made himself into the noblest being he'd ever heard an inkling of in three days.

Toby wasn't sure he'd ever figure out what sort of freak mixture of displaced grief and pure energy created that sort of humanity from a tangle of wires and metal, but he doubted he'd ever see anything else quite like it. Astro was one in a million.