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Tiptron Mk. 1

A green reptile was marching around his room. He could feel fury growing inside of him over some stupid, earlier events, and all he did was push his glasses up as they were falling off his nose. He felt kind of… angry.

Alright, he wasn’t just angry, he was ticked.

He was reminiscing about her… That beautiful specimen of a butterfly, that gorgeous Francine…oh, how he missed her! She was such good company – she could even talk to him! Oh, how exciting was the prospect of having an offline friend. And now …she was gone. Gone, possibly forever.

Worse, he had made a complete idiot out of himself in front of his first (offline) crush, and then she beat him up by using some weird floating hand to send him flying against his own wall.

What had gone wrong? the chameleon asked himself. Hot babes are supposed to be playful, not scary and mean! They are certainly not supposed to wipe the floor with me; that’s low-technicaaaal.

He paced around his room anxiously. Thoughts were culminating in his head; insane thoughts. Could he track down those two girls somehow? How? Where were they now, and how could he find out? He didn’t have much speed – his species relied on staying still while being mostly inconspicuous to catch their prey, and as the battle with the hot babe (Peach, was her name?) proved, he was pretty bad at running. How would he get any idea as to where they were going? It seemed hopeless.

All I have left of my schweet Francine was that little powder left behind on her cage… he thought hopelessly.

But then, something a bit more hopeful crept into his head: Don’t you think that you could use the DNA in that little bit of powder to…find her?

Francis stopped pacing.

“Yes! Yes, it’s true! I’ll make some sort of device – I’ll make one that can search the DNA of everything around it to find where people go! It will work! I’ll make it work! And I can track her down – she’ll have to stay in one place eventually!” He was on a roll. “And even better – the tracking device will have an AI! Yes, nerr herr herr herr! It will tell me just where she’s gone! For SURE! Yeah! Schweeet!”

There was a small voice nagging him in the back of his head that this wouldn’t work, and that perhaps he had been watching too much TV. He didn’t want to listen to that voice; this was the Bitlands, and surely such an inane idea was possible! It had to be! Even though the X-Naut Starship series would be coming on soon, he would sacrifice it for this last bid at getting his beloved back.

It took him a while, but he was finally complete. He could finally say,

“I am a super-genius.”

Francis marveled at the creature that lay on the stand in his pink lab room. It resembled some kind of electronic, insect-like creature, just with four legs. He nodded. “Modding one of those outdated SecuriMeows was genius,” he decided. “With some tweaking, it became this hot thing!”

It had taken a few weeks for Francis to create this robot. Although modifying the AI was easy, and the outer shell was easily changed into a butterfly, making the insect fly was the hard part, and as the Chameleon swept his eyes over the triangular wings of the oddly designed creature, he briefly recalled the grueling process of making certain parts of the robot hollow to reduce weight. And of course, there was the worst part of it all – making the butterfly recognize Francine’s DNA and track the places where he put small traces of it was just living heck, or at least extraordinarily frustrating.

It was done now, and all that was left to do was turn her on.

“Our journey to track Francine,” Francis proclaimed grandly, “starts-“

“Starship X-Naut – The New Episode – Coming up Next on Sci-Fi-Hi!” the Television conveniently blared.

“Right, after I see what I’ve been missing on Starship X-Naut!” The chameleon sat down on his comfy Reclinatron 4500 and stared intently at the widescreen television mounted on his wall. As the opening credits scrolled dramatically onto the screen, thoughts passed through Francis’s head as slowly as the names of the actors passed through the screen.

Really, I SHOULD be tracking Francine now! Oh, this episode looks to be SCHWEET, but…it would be SO high-technicaaaal if Francine was here!

Then he just disappeared in a display of vibrant colors just as Grodus started to make a dramatic speech: “At last, you’ve been brought here! I’ve been waiting to see you!”

Everything was so very blurry. “Nerr…” he mumbled, “What’s going on?”

It was only black at first, but it cleared a little; he saw a group of people… and then… could it be Francine?

“Oooohhhh, it’s my schweet, schweeeeeet Francine!”

Suddenly, he saw four figures before him, but blurrier than before. Glasses must have fallen off… he crouched around and felt the ground for his glasses, felt them, and put them on. Crisp vision again!

“It’s…YOU!” cried Francine. She ducked behind a man with a moustache. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know!” he admitted. “I was in my comfy chair watching “Starship X-Naut”, then I warped here!” Seeing that the red-hatted man with the facial hair was unconvinced, he went on, “Maybe my Reclinatron 4500 extrapolated my dreams and couch-warped me to you!”

“What’s he doing here?! What is he?” the taller of the two men asked. He was clad in green and slim, unlike his shorter brother, who was portlier and wearing red.

He looked at his iridescent Francine, which nervously backed away. “Nothing is gonna take you away from me this time, Francine!” With that, he quickly faded out of sight, and started walking behind the man in green. He delivered a blow to his head, but it was very weak and only succeeded in startling him.

“Mario, why didn’t you tell me you fought an invisible lizard?!” the green man yelled as he looked around for the reptile again. The man he addressed at Mario adopted an annoyed expression as he started to spin around and disappear. Hot babe peach walked up to the green dude.

“Well, Luigi, we fought him once…”

From what Francis recalled, Peach also knew Mario and strangely enough, Bowser, though he wasn’t here now. He recalled that Mario could spot him when he was did his craaaazy flippy thing, and watched carefully to see that he moved quickly enough to confuse Mario. As he faded back into view, he spat his tongue at Mario, who narrowly jumped over it. He turned invisible again and sidestepped, leaving the hero to fall.

Nerr! That was SO low-technical! He almost hit me, and barely avoided my attack! Francis ran back behind Luigi, and he reappeared. The reptile reached for his – 20 petapixel – camera and aimed. Let’s see them avoid this when they’re all blind! He hit the take picture button and disappeared in a flash.

Francis’s plan worked: Everyone in the room stopped to rub their eyes. He reappeared and shot his tongue at Mario. This time, he hit his target on the stomach, and sucked him in. He could feel his mouth expand to fit in the hero, and started jumping and shaking to batter the hero against certain, tougher parts of his mouth. He could feel Mario wiggling inside, trying to escape, but he kept his jaw clamped down.

BAM!

A blow to the back took Francis by surprise and he spat Mario out. “Err!” he exclaimed in shock before his image became faint again. He turned around while invisible and saw that it was Peach who hit him, holding her parasol in a batting position, scanning the room for any odd effects.

Nerr, she looks so hot when she wants to attack people, Francis thought dreamily before remembering he was in combat, and decided to take that Luigi down first.

He crept up behind him. He felt he was too close to suck him in with his tongue, so he would have to find another form of attack.

Suddenly, the larger man turned around, holding what appeared to be a square with a fire harmlessly burning away. He was shaking it madly, closing his eyes, and concentrating very hard…

Francis realized only seconds too late that it was a Fire Burst as the fire within the square was released and aimed straight at him.

“THIS IS NOT SCHWEET AT ALL!” the nerdy creature shouted as he was set on fire. Being invisible is tiring enough and I’m on fire I should turn back and then put myself out THIS HURTS!

Sure enough, he turned back to his visible self, and started rolling on the ground. Lucky for him, the flames were soon put out, but not without inflicting a hefty amount of pain on him. Parts of his shirt were charred, and there was a particularly nasty burn on the back of his head.

“You guys are LOSERS!” he whined before turning invisible once more. Nerr, Alright, they have Fire Bursts…I should have some items too!

Um, my laptop? No, there are no Meowbots here to summon.

Francis sidestepped as Peach flew over him, with her high heels looking dangerously sharp…

Couldn’t I still have something from that tracking robot?! He thought frantically, and mentally ran over the list of things he used to physically build it: Flamethrower? I left that! Nerr, the ug…welder? No! Welder mask? What use would that be? Wrench…? While out of sight, he checked his fanny pack, and felt the shape of the wrench there. YES!

He turned back to normal just as Peach landed next to him. The tool seemed heavier now, now that he was a bit more worn out from the fight. Wielding the device, he swung it with all the energy he could spare, and it made a sickening noise as it hit Peach’s hand…

A deafening scream echoed in the chamber.

“Aahhh!” she moaned as she crouched over her wounded hand. Apparently, it had hit much harder than Francis intended; her hand or wrist appeared to be broken, and part of the wrench also caused a swollen red mark to appear.

Mario pulled Peach aside, and made a Super Shroom Shake appear out of seemingly nowhere. He forcefully fed the polka-dotted drink to her as she sobbed over her hand. He did this all while being mysteriously quiet, which really started to freak Francis out.

The freaked-out sensation fled quickly as he watched Francine flutter over to where Peach was and inspected her hand, and utter: “Ah, it’s looking bad now, but nothing that Shroom Shake can’t fix…”

He was tantalized by the poignant scene, watching how they stopped and aided each other…he could not recall a moment when anyone had willingly gone to help him, not because he had programmed it…

SHWAM – that Luigi fellow just jumped off Francis’ as he had let his guard down. It was a blow too much for him, and he just collapsed on the floor.

“Oh!” Luigi quivered. “Oh, I- I think I beat him!” Once more, Francis felt Luigi staring at him as though he was some sort of weirdo…once more, he was sobbing…but he wasn’t sobbing over his defeat, or the way Luigi looked at him…

He was weeping because he had lost another chance to rescue his precious Francince… and he felt he had messed up on his final chance…

With what remained of his strength, he pushed himself onto his sticky feet, and started shaking and crying.

“NERRRR!” he whined. “That’s impossible… My hi-technicaaaal battle moves failed me!” Sniffing loudly, he said “That’s IT! I’m going to run a simulation on my computer to figure out what went wrong!”

He sobbed a bit too loudly and decided that he didn’t want them to see him like this. He turned invisible, though he still moaned loudly. [i]Oh, how am I going to get home? Err… This is not cool! Um, how did I get here? Think about home. Home! Home sweet home, home is where the heart is, sweet home, Francis Castle, waaah!

He opened his eyes and saw that he was back in his Reclinatron.

Strange, that whole encounter was.

Even though part of Francis was relieved to be home in familiar territory again, he still felt distressed over the loss of his Francine- or, well, he may as well use her real name: Tippi.

“Franci- Tippi, can’t you just come here? It would be so schweet if I could somehow just…build you into something I could control…”

And then inspiration struck Francis like a hammer to a nail.

“That tracking device I had made…it looked like Tippi… it could think like Tippi with a few changes… it would be the most hi-technicaaaal companion ever… That’s it!

“Look out world: schweetness has a new name, and it shall be…

Tiptron Mk. I!”