Another Crystal Caper
It happened again. Robbie was able once more to get his hands on Sportacus’s crystal. Stingy originally had gotten his hands on it again – how, no one was quite sure – but after Robbie offered him money (and a rather large stack, if that), the child willingly handed it over.
Robbie had plans to replace Sportacus’s crystal with a fake – something he had done in the past, but the plan backfired. He quickly set out on giving it another try – a task that didn’t take long at all, thanks to his genius inventions. However, it had an unexpected result. Opening the microwave-esque part of the device, Robbie stared in surprise that in addition to Sportacus’s original crystal, there were 8 clones of it. Unbeknownst to everyone, the malfunction was caused by Roboticus and RoboCrook messing with power supplies… and fiddling with Robbie’s inventions – activities that greatly amused the bots.
Robbie gathered the crystals, scooping them up into his hand, and rushing over to Carmen, excitedly showing her his cloned loot.
“I thought you were only copying it once?” she asked, a confused expression on her face.
“It was supposed to just make one copy, but eight copies came out instead! It’s like… vending machine luck!”
The villainess laughed. “Robbie, sweetheart… I just have one other question.”
“What?”
“How are you going to know which is the real crystal?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve mixed them all up.”
“That… was not my intention.”
Carmen took them from his hand, walking over to the countertop where the device was, setting them out in a line. “That’s the bad thing about your genius. You make them so perfect, you can’t tell them apart. Good for trying to fool Sportacus, bad when you’ve mixed them all together.”
Robbie sighed, looking at crystals. “Well, the only way we’re going to know is if something happens.”
“And the chances of that are slim. The kids are surprisingly behaving and staying out of trouble. Only way this crystal will do its thing is if two things happen; Mayor Meanswell nearly falls off a ladder again, or your brother manages to piss off the wrong person.”
“Glanni pissing off the wrong person seems like the more likely outcome. But then again…” Robbie trailed off, shrugging. All they could do was wait, then he could separate the real from the fakes!
