[Diamond18]

Skittles slipped unnoticed through the darkness like a dark, unnoticeable slippy thing, till at last she reached the hall in sector 17 where her electronic doppelganger lay in a rather destroyed state. The hallways was otherwise unoccupied, which was fortunate for those who might have been occupying it, seeing as how seeing the damaged doppelganger did not put Skittles in a very charitable mood.

She hefted the life-sized Skittlesque machine over one shoulder and looked both ways before crossing the hall. Presently, she came across a confused and deserted Igör, who had inexplicably been left to his own devices whilst Maika, Dracomir, and Lola disappeared into the bowels of the mountain. Skittles first instinct was to eliminate the witness, but then she got a better idea, and grabbed Igör by the scruff of his neck with her free hand. "I need your help!" she declared, dragging the oddly complacent man-thing along with her.

They came to a door marked Top Secret and Skittles entered a secret code into the keypad beside said door. Then she had to undergo a retina scan and a fingerprint test, before the door finally hissed open in a hydraulic fashion. Tediously, they had to pass through three other such gateways before reaching the Top Secret Automaton Laboratory where Skittles was, oddly enough, chief robotics engineer.

Igör gaped at this information, and Skittles said, "What? I can't have hidden depths?"

She lay the robot out on a cold steel table and assembled various surgical tools and supplies. Then she washed and sterilized her hands, which Igör found somewhat odd, but did not comment on. "What did you need my help with?" he asked, helpfully.

"We must repair the creature's brain," Skittles said solemnly. "Or make it a new one. You will be my assistant. You may call me 'master'."

"Is that last part optional?"

"I suppose so," Skittles relented. "Forceps."

"Pardon me?"

"The forceps. Hand me the forceps."

"Oh." Igör studied the array of tools. "Which is the forceps?"

Skittles pointed at a power drill. "That."

"That looks like a power drill."

"Excuse me, but who's the chief robotics engineer here and who is the hunchbacked assistant?"

"Okay, fine." Igör handed her the drill.

"Be a doll and plug it in, would you?"

Igör did as bidden, and the two of them spent another hour or so drilling, cutting, and generally doing vague things to the head of the automaton.

Finally: "It's not use!" cried Skittles overdramatically. "The brain is ruined! We must find a newer, better brain!"

Igör considered pointing out that the brain had been in better shape before all the drilling and cutting, but forebear, and simply said, "Yes, master. I mean, Skittles."

"But where will we find a newer, better brain?" Skittles mused, tapping her chin.

"Perhaps in there?" Igör pointed to a door marked 'Newer, Better Brains.'

"Brilliant! Go fetch me one!"

Igör sighed, but went off obligingly. He opened the door and peered into the darkened room. It smelt vaguely of formaldehyde and elderberries. He groped around finally happened upon a light switch, but not after seizing hold of two mice (one dead), a spider, and several cans of processed cheese.

Dim light suffused the storage room, and revealed several rows of Mason jars lined up on dusty shelves. Igör read the labels curiously. There were Elven brains, Hobbit brains, Dwarf brains, Orc brains (shockingly tiny, those) and Human brains. There were geniuses, pretty-smart-chaps, average thinkers, and complete-dodos. There were right-sided thinking brains and left-sided thinking brains. There were male brains and female brains, fat brains, skinny brains, brains who climb on rocks, tough brains, sissy brains, even brains with chicken pox.

"Abby Normal," he read one label. "Sounds fitting." He carefully picked up the jar (coughing a bit from the dust cloud) and carried it back out to Skittles, who had grown bored and was contemplating amputating the robot's legs. Luckily, she had only gotten as far as drawing lines on the thighs with a pencil.

"Excellent," she said, opening the jar. "Perfect! Superfluous!" She dumped the brain into the gaping cavity that was RoboSkitt's skull. Then she patched up the forehead and reapplied the skin (which was two shades darker than the rest of the robot's skin, since they seemed to be out of 'deathly pale') and declared it done.

"Step back," she instructed, whipping out a pair of defibrillator paddles and rubbing them together gleefully. Then she administered a jolt to the robot's chest. It began to violently twitch, and Skittles cried, "It's Alive!!!!!!!"

"Yes, mas... er, Skittles."

The robot got up from the table and said, "Konvey! Konvey! Konvey!"

Skittles gave it a kick, and it settled down. "Hello! I am RoboSkitt 2000™, how may I serve you?" it chirped.

"I don't know," Skittles admitted. "I have no idea where this plot-twist is going."

"But... what's it for?" Igör asked, scratching his head.

"Chaos, confusion, distraction."

"Isn't that what you're for?"

"Yes, but RoboSkitt provides double the chaos and double the fun!"

"I'm the statement in the great mint of Robomint Gum," offered the robot.

"Precisely. And pretty soon every chief war advisor will have one." Skittles turned the robot toward the door and said, "Go, little one, go create madness until I think up a good use for you!"