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Cats Dig Giant Nanobots

It started as a perfectly ordinary Saturday with an orange werekitten sitting on a couch watching Saturday morning cartoons dressed in just his fur. The small kitten had a box of cereal next to him as he shoveled food into his mouth watching the television with a glazed over look on his face. Slowly a shadow crept into the room behind the kitten and seemed to vanish. The kitten shook the glazed look from his face and looked around as if suspecting treachery before shrugging and turning back to face the TV. Then the shadow slowly rose above the kitten to stand behind him. It was a gray wolf in a fedora and a trench coat over his business clothes that towered above the kitten. In one swift movement he reached down and grabbed the kitten beneath the arms and lifted him in the air.

"GAH!?" Calex gave a shout as he was lifted up by the wolf and began to squirm. "Treachery, deceit and other words that mean bad things!" The kitten let out a cry. "Someone help!"

"Whoa! Whoa!" The wolf struggled to keep the squirming kitten in the air before he managed to shift a hand to grab onto the kitten's scruff and hold him out at a full arm's length. After a couple more minutes of squirming the kitten eventually went limp in the wolf's grasp completely powerless while his scruff was gripped. "There, calm now?" Odin asked.

"Odin!?" Calex stared at the wolf through narrowed eyes. "How dare you!? Why would you interrupt the sanctity that is the time that is Saturday Morning Cartoons?"

"Isn't this a rerun?" Odin turned to look at the TV. "I swear this one has been on at least twenty-seven times."

"Twenty-nine," the kitten corrected. "But Saturday Morning Cartoons are serious business. They are not to be interrupted lightly." The kitten's tone was grumpy as his ears lowered against his head.

"Oh?" The wolf smiled slyly. "Not even for... Adventure?"

"Adventure?" The kitten's ears perked up and the tip of his tail twitched as the magic word had been said. "Wait what kind of adventure?"

"The kind that involved untested scientific inventions!" The wolf replied.

"Oh! I love untested sci-" The kitten stopped mid exclamation. "Wait, are you just trying to get me to waste Saturday Morning Cartoon time to test some random invention you made."

"Would saying it involves giant robots in any way influence your-" The wolf started to ask only to abruptly stopped as he noticed the kitten was no longer held in his hand. Instead the kitten was now perched firmly atop his head and pointing excitedly in the direction of Odin's study.

"Well why didn't you say so!?" The kitten shouted. "I mean I've seen this episode 28 times already anyway! Onward to adventure, and robots! Do I get to punch a robot!"

"No!" Odin replied, "at least not unless things go absolutely wrong."

"So..." The kitten thought on this, "a most likely."

"Shush," the wolf reached up a hand and scratched the kitten while he carried him out of the living room and into his study. The wolf sat the kitten on a desk in the room next to a small device that looked like a hairdryer with a TV antennae plugged into it that was sitting next to microscope.

"Odin..." The kitten looked around the room confuse. "I don't see any robots."

"They're in here!" Odin said as he held up a small Petri dish that appeared to be empty. The kitten peered down at it with an annoyed look as he caught the wolf's meaning.

"I thought you said they'd be giant robots!" The kitten complained.

"Give it a moment..." The wolf set the Petri dish down on the table as he slowly picked up the hair dryer looking device and then pointed it at the kitten.

"Huh what's that?" Calex just managed to ask.

ZAP!

A green beam shot forth from the hair dryer and struck the kitten on the table squarely in the chest. A green aura now radiated around the kitten as he suddenly started to shrink in size.

"Gah mrowl!?" The kitten shouted in surprise as everything around him started to grow bigger. "What gives!?"

"Oh well thought I could test the shrink ray too!" Odin said with a smile. "But you see the robots aren't giant yet because you're too big! So had to fix that to! Come on you're not upset about this are you?" As the kitten decreased in size it was soon no bigger than a squirrel or a rat and the wolf was able to easily lift Calex up by the scruff with just a few fingers.

"Well..." The kitten tried to look angry but he couldn't. "Alright no." He said as he continued to shrink now down to the size of a small mouse.

"You can run around and have plenty of room in the Petri dish to play with the new robots!" Odin explained. "And I need someone to test out their features! The idea to build these occurred to me after... Some previous small adventures we've had..."

"You're talking about the time you shrunk us smaller than a quark aren't ya?" The kitten asked now no bigger than an ant.

"That could have been anyone's fault!" Odin held the kitten closer to his head so he could hear him. "But the point is! Those kinds of misadventures seem to happen a lot more than they should, which is to say at all. So I've taken counter procedures against them!" At this point the wolf turned and revealed a set of slides set up on an easel next to the desk. As Calex was now about as small as a flea he had no way to actually see or comprehend these so the presentation seemed to just be for Odin's own sake. "I've invented a small army of nanobots armed with some very powerful sensors." Odin pointed at a picture of a small cylinder shaped object with six legs and a head on his slides."They can find and locate anyone who's been shrunken even when they're on the subatomic scale. Then the nanobots can retrieve them and store them inside a cargo hold to bring them back to a safe place to unshrink them, or change their size right there if needed. This ensures that in the event we're ever stranded in the microverse again they can locate us and return us safely to our normal size."

The kitten responded with something but due to his small size Odin couldn't make it out.

"I'm going to assume," Odin said, "that you made some comment about taking the fun out of it. Some of us don't want to worry about getting stuck that way; but I digress we can't have a conversation quite like this." The wolf moved his hand over the Petri dish and quickly dropped the orange speck that was the kitten into the dish before moving it underneath the microscope and watching through there.

The kitten shrunk smaller and smaller into an alien landscape. The Petri dish had been kept sterile and free of too many outsider materials but it was still a bizarre landscape made of strange colors and blobs of objects. As the kitten entered the microscopic world he looked around trying to find the nanobots. He turned around as the green aura around him faded and he stopped shrinking; He was soon face to face with one. A silver colored round object with six legs and a head connected by a thin pipe. It was roughly the same height as the kitten as he looked at it.

"Huuuuh," the kitten stared at the nanobot and tapped a paw on its head. "I expected something more grandiose."

"Well!" Suddenly Odin's voice echoed through the area. "I'm working with very small parts! I can't quite make it as fancy as I want! Anyway, can you hear me fine?"

"Yeah!" The kitten looked around excitedly. "How am I talking to you?"

"Every nanobot is equipped with a very tiny radio and transmitter. I can talk to you through the nanobots. Now let's see if we can test this thing. Hold still please!" As the wolf finished talking the head of the nanobot moved as if it was looking at Calex. A moment later a green light surrounded a small antennae on top of the head and jumped forth striking the kitten. The kitten suddenly started to grow in size until the nanobot was only as tall as his ankle.

"Awwwww," the kitten pouted and got down onto all fours to look at the nanobot. "A growth ray? Why would you go and do something like that?" Calex continued to pout. "That's boring and now it's so small; you promised me giant robots."

"The whole point," Odin spoke through the nanobot in the tone of one trying to lecture a child, 'is that these can find us and grow us back to normal size when we're too small to interact with the normal world. But, there's always the possibility of someone being incapable of being unshrunk at their current location but too big to move; so if you really want a giant robot." The antennae on the robot glowed and aimed upward at the kitten. Again the kitten was struck by a green light and again he began to shrink. This time he shrink in size until he was much smaller than the nanobot. The kitten stood only halfway up the nanobot's leg.

"Whoooooooooooaaaaaaa!" Calex shouted. "That's a much cooler feature! How small can it make someone!"

"As small as need be," Odin continued to speak through the transmitter. "This thing is made to be able to hit and pinpoint all the way down to smaller than a Planck length." Despite Odin speaking to the kitten through a speaker Calex couldn't but feel as if the wolf was somehow giving him an accusing look through the microscope.

"Whaaaaaaaat!?" The kitten asked looking upward in the direction he assumed the wolf was watching him from.

"Like you don't know," the wolf said. "Alright I just wanted to run tests. I'm going to switch on the nanobots' AI and they should grow you back up here."

"Awww, already?" The kitten asked.

"Science is not playtime," Odin chided.

"You don't even believe that yourself," the kitten replied blowing a raspberry to the heavens.

"Well either way!" The wolf said, "I need to test the AI anyway! So flipping the switch! Alright! It should be growing you back now."

The nanobot instead just proceeded to stand there towering over the kitten completely motionless. The kitten looked at it quizzically before walking up and poking it with one of his forepaws.

"Odin it's not doing anything except..." And as the kitten started to talk the antennae on the nanobot lit up again and zapped the kitten with another green light. However instead of getting bigger the kitten proceeded to shrink even smaller until he was practically a speck in comparison to the nanobot. "Oh we're going down in size?"

"Down in size?" The wolf had seen the interaction through the microscope. "Uh oh that's not right... Um let me shut off the A.I. real quick." The wolf stood up from the microscope and started digging through his coat pockets.

"Um hey Odin!" The kitten tried to interrupt him.

"Not now Calex," the wolf replied. "I need my emergency shut off switch. I had it made cause well, it turns out anytime you make any kind of artificial intelligence there's a 50% chance they'll rebel against their creator. I don't know why it's just a scientific law. I made an emergency shut off switch just in case though."

"But Odin I think-" Calex started.

"I'll deal with it in a moment!" Odin finally produced a small black remote from within one of his pockets. There was a red button underneath a glass shield in it that required a key to unlock the latch. He quickly shoved the key into the slot on the remote.

"But I thought you should know the nanobot is pointing its antennae up at the sky!" Calex said.

"What?" Odin asked blankly. Suddenly the green light of the shrink ray fired upward out of the Petri dish past the microscope and struck the wolf. "Ohhh no." The wolf tried to turn the key and open the remote but he was already shrinking. His shirt and coat started to sag on him as his hat flopped over his head. The emergency shut off remote fell from his hand and landed on the ground shattering as the wolf's clothes began to fall to the ground. "Oh nooo, no no no noooo." At this point he couldn't reach the device at the microscope to use the communicator to speak to Calex and he was only about as tall as the table. He remembered his size ray was still on the table, if he could get to that!

The wolf grabbed a hold of the side of the table. As he did he felt the weight of his clothes trying to pull him down as they seemed to grow to impossible sizes on him. He forced himself to hang on for dear life as his pants, shirt coat and hat all slid off the side of the table and onto the floor leaving the wolf naked and dangling from the table. With great effort the wolf now less than a foot tall pulled himself up onto the table and looked across at the ray. He looked down at himself realizing he was still shrinking fast. Even if he got to the ray right now there'd be no possible way to point it at himself and fire. He needed a new plan.

Odin thought quickly. The only other size ray around would be... Would be on one of the nanobots! He thought about Calex down there on the Petri dish by himself. He couldn't leave him there, and if he could get to one of the nanobots he could try to rewire their ray manually and change both of them back. Odin ran across the table to the microscope. He was less than four inches tall by the time he reached it. He climbed up onto the side of the microscope losing those inches fast. He was just shorter than the rim of the Petri dish as he reached it. Jumping he managed to grab the edge with his the tips of his fingers. As he continued to shrink he tried to pull himself up, but his bare feet couldn't get a hold on the smooth surface outside the Petri dish to lift him. He had to rely entirely on his arms as he slowly pulled himself up and them tumbled over the edge of the Petri dish. He fell downward into the Petri dish shrinking smaller and smaller as he soon entered the microscopic landscape.

Odin landed with a thud on his back inside the Petri dish. It was a lucky thing he was so small or the force of impact from that fall would have hurt a lot. He got up to look around and felt something prodding at his foot. Looking down he saw his kitten companion, currently about as tall as his ankle. The wolf quickly scooped him up and then turned around and saw the nanobot. Odin had stopped shrinking finally but as he looked the nanobot was more than ten times his size. He looked down at the kitten he had cupped his hands then up at the nanobot.

"So what part of the experiment is this?" Calex asked looking up at the wolf. "I didn't know you were going to shrink yourself too!"

"This..." Odin looked at the nanobot towering above them. "Is not part of the experiment! Right now, it's time to run away!" Cupping one hand over the kitten to make sure he didn't lose him the wolf turned and ran away from the nanobot. The nanobot gave chase on all six legs, its antennae lighting up again to fire another shrink ray. "No no no no no no no no no!" The wolf ran as fast as he could but the beam struck him squarely in the back. He started to dwindle in size as the orange kitten in his hands started to get heavier by comparison. After a couple seconds the wolf was no longer carrying the kitten but was instead clinging to the tail of a much larger feline.

"Huh Odin!?" Calex spun around once he realized he was no longer being carried. He looked up at the nanobot as it stopped towering over the orange kitten who was still no more than a speck compared to it. "Odin where'd you go!?"

"Woooooooof," Odin whined extremely disoriented. Having been shrunk to be no bigger than one of his feline friend's toes he was desperately clinging to the kitten's tail and being thrashed around as the kitten tried to find him. "Caaaalex!"

"Odin?" The kitten came to a sudden stop as his tail lifted upward and twitched hurling the wolf into the air. The wolf remained airborne for a few seconds before falling downward and landing on Calex's muzzle. "Oh there you are." The kitten looked relieved then noticed the disheveled look of the wolf. "What did it do to you!?"

"Woof." Odin replied his head still spinning from having been thrown around by the kitten.

"YOU!" The kitten pointed a hand at the nanobot which was watching them ominously. "How dare you! I was having fun up until now! But I won't forgive anyone who tries to harm Odin!" The kitten lifted up one forepaw and gently lifted Odin up off his muzzle by the tail before placing the wolf atop his head. "Hang on tight. Things are about to get bumpy."

"Because they've been so smooth," the wolf whined at this but he was enough of the way there to grab two handfuls of the kitten's head fur.

The nanobot raised up a single one of its six metal legs before looking down at the speck of a kitten and even smaller wolf before slamming its leg down. The kitten didn't even attempt to dodge and only smirked as suddenly the nanobot became very confused when its leg stopped moving.

"Honestly," the kitten smiled as he held back the enormous metal leg with one paw. "I feel like you're not taking this seriously. This will be easy enough without you trying to give me a leg up."

"Calex!" Odin shouted horrified. "That pun was terrible!"

"Like you're one to talk," the kitten huffed. Then with a single motion the tiny kitten flung his arm up and with it the entire nanobot was thrown high into the air high above the kitten. The kitten kicked off the ground to jump an incredible distance into the air (though it may have actually been less than a micrometer) and wound directly above the nanobot. "Take this!" The kitten started rapidly punching a small segment of the nanobot's back with both of his forepaws in a motion that soon became a blur. While the area of impact was small the nanobot physically shook with each punch as the kitten gave a shout, "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" As the kitten smashed into the tiny section of the nanobot cracked formed along its body before it was sent hurling away from the kitten into the ground and shattered into several pieces as the kitten landed in the middle of the debris.

"Was the 'nya nya nya' really necessary?" Odin asked as he gripped to the kitten's head fur tightly.

"Absolutely!" The kitten replied with a big smile, I had to add extra emphasis! And with that the fight is settled!"

"Well... There's um," the wolf hesitated. "There's still one small problem." As the wolf got the sentence out another nanobot appeared on the horizon coming towards the wolf and kitten. A few seconds later a second appeared, and then a third and then an army that seemed to blot out everything in the distance. "These things exist on a nanoscopic scale," the wolf exclaimed. "Inside the Petri dish there are hundreds of thousands."

"I see," the kitten swung his arm in a circle to stretch. "This could be fun."

"Fun!?" The wolf asked exasperated.

"Just fighting bad guys," the kitten started. "I always have to hold back. It's one thing to knock a bank robber into a wall, but if I knock them through the wall I could break every bone in their body or do something worse. I can never just let loose without having to worry about the safety of villains, people standing by, or even just buildings and objects. However, if we're this small and just fighting robots," the kitten gave a predatory smile. "Then I can finally give it all I got. You're gonna wanna hang on."

The kitten propelled himself toward the army of nanobots by kicking off the ground again. At his current size he couldn't run faster than them but with his strength he could launch himself through the air far faster than any of them could move. He lunged into one nanobot's head ripping it off from the sheer force of impact and rode it into a second nanobot. Three nanobots all moved around him and fired their shrink rays at him. The kitten kicked the broken nanobot head into the body of one as it ricocheted into the others downing all three while Calex launched himself into the air again to avoid the shrink rays. The rest of the nanobot swarm did not miss the opportunity to fire their shrink rays straight up at the kitten deciding it would be better to send him to the subatomic scale rather than fight him.

"Calex!" Odin shouted. "Those rays are all gonna hit us!"

"Wait for it," Calex remained calm.

"Any second now! Do something!"

"It'll be fine!"

"Calex! Somehow! Find some way! DODGE!"

"But I already have," the kitten replied still in the path of the shrink rays. Before they struck the head he had sent bouncing between nanobots flew up into the air directly in front of the kitten. The shrink rays struck the reflective service of the nanobot head and were reflected away from the kitten. Where the shrink rays would land neither wolf nor kitten could see, but they only had to assume they went safely outside the Petri dish and didn't cause any harm; especially not to any bunnies or snow leopards that happened to be walking by the house window at that point.

"Did you plan that?" Odin asked genuinely impressed.

"Don't tell anyone," Calex said as he landed on the ground. "But that was mostly luck." He ripped off the leg of one of the fallen nanobots. The kitten looked absurd as he swung it around; like an ant trying to swing a skyscraper by its base. Yet he was able to wield it and spun it around as the nanobot swarm descended on him. Using the broken leg the kitten beat them back; breaking straight through their metal bodies leaving only a mass of broken parts and wires behind. After the leg he was wielding broke he launched himself off the ground again, dodging shrink rays and robot limbs as he impacted directly into the side of one nanobot before bouncing to a second and then a third and continuing on destroying each one upon impact. After breaking more than the kitten could count he landed on the ground again and stopped as it seemed the nanobots were retreating.

"Huh I think I scared them off," Calex watched them go. "Well I guess I am pretty fierce."

"That's not it..." the wolf watched as the robots all gathered into one place. As the engineer who had constructed them he knew every feature they had and every capability. For that reason he knew the nanobots had one final trump card to play as they all assembled into single mass and then began to form together.

They merged into an enormous bipedal figure. The new larger nanobot made of the others was like a mountain standing before a grain of sand as it towered above the kitten. More remaining nanobots formed into an enormous sword for the giant nanobot to wield as it stared down at the menacing kitten.

"Odin?"

"Yeah Calex?"

"Why," the kitten's voice was very flat. "Why would you give nanobots intended for search and rescue the ability to form together into a giant fighting robot?"

"Well," the wolf explained, "is there ever any reason for any group of robots not to be able to assemble into a giant fighting robot regardless of scale?"

"Fair enough," Calex conceded. "Fair enough." The robot swung his sword downward at the kitten and wolf. The kitten barely avoided it kicking off the ground and landing a bit to the right tumbling as he did.

"Holy carp!" Calex shouted. "It's a lot faster like this! You still with me Odin?"

"Ooooof," Odin winced. He was currently hanging upside down from Calex's head fur but still there. "Barely."

"That thing is pretty menacing, but by combining it made a huge tactical mistake," he smiled. "Which means this is our chance to finish it off."

"A mistake? It's finally fighting back!" Odin said.

"Yeah," Calex said. "Each individual nanobot didn't stand a chance. However there were so many that if they continued to swarm even I could have been overwhelmed eventually. By combining like this though they've all assembled into one large target. If I smash them now they're all gone."

The robot responded by stepping away from the kitten speck to keep its distance but giving another slash of its sword aiming to cut or crush the two shrunken animals whichever came first. The sword impacted the ground sending a tremor that wasn't noticeable to anyone unable to make out this scene without a microscope. It lifted the sword a moment later to examine its work not seeing the orange speck anywhere in sight. For a brief moment it appeared to have crushed the kitten and wolf out of existence.

"Ya know," the kitten's voice suddenly alerted the giant nanobots. "Swords aren't the most practical weapons against something this much smaller than you. Really, you should have tried a hammer or a mace." The kitten was standing atop the edge of the sword. He was easily small enough to run across it without hurting himself and had dodged by leaping onto the sword as it came down. "And with that the fight is over." Being at the tip of the sword that was currently raised in the air the kitten was above most of the nanobot's arm. He dove off the arm doing a dive kick the wrist of the giant nanobot shattering its hand and forcing it to drop the sword. As the sword fell the kitten launched himself off the remains of the nanobot's wrist and towards the sword. Then with a single kick to the hilt of the sword he sent himself flying back to the ground while the sword flew into the giant nanobot slicing it in two down the center. The kitten landed on the ground, shifting to a slightly more bipedal form so that he could land on one knee with his back to the giant nanobot as the two pieces and sword fell in opposite directions and then exploded into rubble.

"And that's game." The kitten stood up and brushed his hands off. "Alright! I believe that's all whatever hundred thousand of them!"

"Well that seemed to go according to plan," the wolf beamed.

"Wait what?" The kitten plucked the wolf off the top of his head and held him in his palm so he could look him eye to eye.

"Oh well!" Odin started to explain, "I mentioned that anytime you develop an A.I. there's a 50% chance of it rebelling against its master. With my luck I figured that chance was closer to 99; So I designed a situation so that once the nanobots rebelled they'd wind up in a battle with you. I figured after you gave them the beating of a lifetime they'd think twice about trying to violate the first law of robotics again!"

"So wait..." Calex looked at the mess of smashed nanobots, then at himself, then at the tiny naked wolf in his hands. "This was all intended?"

"Well..." The wolf sighed. "This wasn't my favorite of all possible outcomes, but yes this is a contingency I was prepared for! Now all we have to do is use one of the size rays mounted on a nanobot and we can change ourselves back to normal!"

"Um... Odin..." The kitten looked over the wreckage. "I was pretty thorough in my smashing. They're... All kinda wrecked."

"Oh..." The wolf turned in the kitten's hand to examine the wreckage. "Oh. Ohhhhh." He looked up at the kitten. "I guess... we'll have to repair one. I mean we should have plenty of spare parts, it shouldn't take that long." As soon as Odin said that he knew it wasn't true. He could repair one from what was leftover of Calex's work; that part was true. However Calex was barely more than a speck compared to the nanobots and Odin was much smaller. Unlike Calex who had a supernatural source of strength Odin was in fact not made of magic. There was no possible way he could work with let alone even move any of the nanobot parts to work on the size ray; Which meant the one who would have to do the repairs...

"Hmmmm, while we're down at this size, wanna camp out for the night?" Calex asked out loud. "I wanna see what kind of nocturnal life we get inside this Petri dish!"

Calex would have to do the repairs. If the wolf gave him careful directions then the kitten would be able to pull it off. The problem, is that the kitten was very easily distracted and prone to chasing whatever random thought popped into his head. Combine that with the how badly the nanobots were wrecked and it meant that repairing even one nanobot enough to unshrink the two would likely take days.

"Ugh," the wolf sighed. "I guess we can, but only if you're a good kitten and do your chores during the day!" The wolf figured this was the best approach. If he could make it seem like the kitten was getting a treat he might get a stronger work ethic out of the little... big... guy.

"Awwww, do I have too?" Calex pouted.

"If you don't, then I'll make you go to bed early and you'll miss it all!" The wolf crossed his arms. Despite his smaller size he was giving the kitten a serious business look. "And the first thing we gotta do is get part of this mess cleaned up."

"Fiiiiine," the kitten sighed giving in. "But I wanna stay up super late!"

"Sure why not," it wasn't as if the wolf could tell what time it was inside the Petri dish anyway. He just reminded himself once these nanobots were fixed and their new programming was set up he'd never have to worry about this type of situation again. Nothing like this would ever happen again. Not ever.

Odin really wished he could believe that.