Robotnik jr's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Robotnik jr had six days to win the galaxy's biggest fashion contest, and he owned nothing worth wearing. He stood in his cramped apartment and read the entry ticket again. "Most Stylish Icon of the Virial Lands," it said. He looked down at himself. Yellow and red shirt. Black pants. Round blue sunglasses on his little bald head. The same outfit he wore every single day. He pressed the ticket flat against the window. Outside, the metal apartments stacked up in bright bands of color. His neighbors leaned from their balconies to watch. One woman laughed. She wore a gown that glowed like liquid glass. Robotnik jr stepped back from the window and closed the blind. He emptied his closet onto the floor. Three yellow shirts. Two red ones. A pile of black pants. Every piece looked the same. The judges had crowned a winner last year in a coat made of moving light. Robotnik jr owned nothing that moved. He owned nothing that shined. He sat on the floor and held his knees. Then he saw the box under his bed. He pulled it out and blew off the dust. Inside lay his father's old tools. Wire cutters. A soldering iron. Spools of thin copper. His father had built machines in a lab across the district. Robotnik jr had never touched the tools. He was not a builder. He was a small man who wore the same shirt every day. But he was also his father's son. He picked up the wire cutters and turned them in his hand. If he could not buy a stylish outfit, he could make one. He looked at his plain red shirt on the floor. He looked at the copper spool. An idea grew. He worked through the night. He cut copper into thin threads. He stitched them across the red shirt in tight rows. He wired a small battery into the collar. His fingers bled. He burned his thumb twice. Near dawn, he pressed the switch. The copper threads lit up. Light ran across the shirt in waves, red to gold to white. The whole shirt glowed like his neighbor's gown. Better. Robotnik jr stared at his hands. He had built it himself. He pulled the shirt on over his round belly and stepped to the mirror. The light danced across his blue sunglasses. He looked like an icon. He looked like a winner. Then the collar sparked. A thin line of smoke curled up. The battery hissed against his neck, hot. Robotnik jr yanked the shirt off and threw it down. The copper threads still glowed, but the wire had melted through the fabric. His only stylish outfit smoked on the floor. He had five days now. He knew how to build the coat. He did not know how to keep it from burning him alive on the judges' stage.