Tales of Arcadia: Mordred's Curse

Part 1

Cara climbed in Krel's window, early on a clear, warm summer Saturday. She plopped down on the bed. "Hey."

"It's five am," Krel groaned.

"Town's on fire."

Krel grunted.

"Looks like Akiridion tech. "

"Oh, great Gaylen," Krel muttered, rolling over. "Why is it always us???"

"Actually, from the looks of the hole in the wall of your lab, right now it's just you!" Cara noted with passive-aggressive cheer.

"I already took the liberty of raiding your lab for all the tools I thought you'd need," Cara said, pulling a bag out from behind her and handing it to him with a cheeky grin.

"What HAPPENED again, exactly?"

"There's some sort of Akiridion robot rampaging around town. It looks like it broke out of your lab," Cara clarified.

Krel groaned again. "Get up, you're on the blanket."

Cara got up and stuck out a hand to help him to his feet.

He accepted it, and the two-headed out, bound for the main part of town.

The raging robot was... SMALLER than expected.... it... kinda looked like...

"Aw," Cara mumbled when she saw it. "You miss Luug?"

Krel looked away. "Come on, I've got a shutdown switch for it."

Cara took the lead, as she always did in combat with him, darting to the forefront.

The little robot dog shot FIRE at her like a dragon.

"KREL," Cara yelled, "WHY CAN IT BREATHE FIRE?"

"... the real Luug can fart fire, it needed SOMETHING..."

"It REALLY DIDN'T!" Cara disagreed, rolling out of the way of another blast.

She managed to get close and grab the little robot, but not before it could let off another burst of flames.

Krel wrestled its head down and slipped a data chip into a slot in the back of its neck.

"Okay, maybe it wasn't my best idea."

"Definitely not," Cara agreed. "Next time you feel lonely, come over and hang out with Tibi, okay?"

"Tibi scratches me..."

Cara frowned. "Then you can come hang out with me and play with my hair or something instead of nearly getting my hands Katara-ed."

"Katara-ed?" Krel asked, puzzled.

Cara held up her left arm. Her forearm was covered in burns from the robot.

Krel went wide-eyed. "Oh, kleb-" he took her wrist and elbow, where she wasn't burned, trying to get a closer look.

"This looks bad," he fretted, unsure what to do (being royalty, he and Aja had never been seriously hurt before coming to Earth).

"Only about second degree, actually," Cara noted through gritted teeth.

"Second of how many?"

"Uhhh... three or four?"

"Kleb," Krel repeated. "Come on, we have to get you home- your mom can help, right?"

"I don't know, she just has healing abilities and decades of nursing experience, she MIGHT be able to help," Cara snarked, getting up.

"Cara."

"Sorry, get sarcastic when I'm in pain- let's go, please."

Krel took Cara home, him fussing over her and her trying to hold it together.

Sofia Hall herself opened the door to them and quickly sighed. "Not again, mi hija..."

"It was my fault," Krel defended her. "One of my more dangerous inventions got loose and she was helping me shut it down."

Sofia narrowed her eyes slightly at the King. "... that's the third time... this month."

"Maybe you should stop adding flamethrowers to your projects, Krel," Cara commented dryly as Sofia began to work her healing magic on her arm.

"Sorry," Krel said quietly, looking chagrined.

Cara hissed softly as her mom got to a part of the burns that was blistering.

Krel flinched a little.

Sofia looked at him. "We need to talk, boy."

Krel swallowed a bit. "Yes ma'am."

Sofia finished up with Cara's arm and took Krel aside.

"You should know," she said in a low voice, "that for the most part, Cara chooses good friends, and we trust her judgment."

She shook her head. "And then she met you, and I can't help but feel that you're a bad influence. She's talking back to us, coming home late- and recently, you keep bringing her back injured."

Krel blinked. "Coming home late? But she always leaves before 9..."

Sofia paused. "Alright, I'll ask Cara about that part later- but my biggest concern remains. She's my daughter and I'll always heal her, of course, but I'm starting to think she'd be better off without you."

Sofia sighed a little. "So, I'm forbidding you two to spend time together."

The wave of distress the statement caused Krel surprised him. "What?!"

"For now. I want you to be more careful with your inventions and deal with the things that have hurt Cara before. Once you can assure me your machines won't hurt her anymore, I'll reevaluate whether or not you can see her again."

With a degree of horror, Krel was reminded of the sheer number of dangerous failed projects stashed in his lab and... all over his house, really.

They were all deactivated or nonfunctional, of course, but nevertheless...

"... yes ma'am," Krel said quietly, turning to go.

"And, Krel?"

"Yes?"

"If one of your projects hurts her again, you will not see her again. Understood?"

"Yes... Ma'am..." Krel said quietly, almost getting the urge to repeat himself in case it was too quiet.

The young King went home and began gathering every project he could find, searching corners and closets he didn't remember ever leaving things in, just to be sure. The robots and inventions piled up on the table in his lab, and as the stacks got higher, his mood drifted lower. Fixes that Krel estimated would take minutes added up to hours, and then weeks... there was just so much...

Eventually, he sat down and rested his head in his hands. Ricky and Lucy were rounding up the last of the abandoned tech, and he had a second to think.

What he was thinking wasn't good. There was so much to deal with and so many ways someone could get hurt from these half-formed inventions and machines... he didn't know how he could deal with every possible problem.

... sometimes being this good at engineering and doing it so often really came back to bite him.

He was tired from lugging robots around, the pile seemed to get bigger the longer he looked, and very, very slowly, he felt his hope fading. He wanted to talk to Cara- to complain, ask for help, anything at all-but he couldn't, and somehow that made it all seem so much more tiring.

... maybe Sofia had been right about not letting Cara hang out around this much-advanced technology. If he DID fix everything he had now, there was no guarantee that some new project wouldn't backfire in the future and hurt her, and then he'd never see her again regardless...

He shook his head. Step one was to disassemble things that hadn't functioned the way he'd designed them to, so the materials and parts could be reused.

He got up and got to work.