Plot Exposition in 60 Seconds
Some sort of aircraft zips out of the sky towards you. In the blink of an eye it twirls and turns in upon itself, and a robot is standing in the place where the aircraft was. "I am ScarStream. I understand you have met Omegatron, our 'leader.'" You can almost hear the quotes around the word. "One day, Omegatron, I will rule, and then you will see what the Fordbots can be."
"Huh?"
"Did I say that out loud? Nevermind. Here's the projection cube that OmegaTron--rackin', frackin', grumble grumble--ordered that I give to you."
The robot drops the cube and leaps into the air. Within seconds he's gone. What a weirdo, you think. But now for the cube. It's a milky translucent material, with a single black button on the top, labeled "PUSH."
You push the button. Light shines from the cube, and what looks like a 3-D movie is projected into the air in front of you. A deep, gravelly voice begins to narrate.
"An ancient world. Full of streams. Two types of robots, living peacefully side by side for millennia. Paddlebots and Ford-bots. Paddlebots row across and down the river, staying mostly out of the water. Ford-bots wade right through, getting plenty wet. Still, for millennia this difference means nothing, and peace rules the land.
"Then, on a day lost in the mists of time, a Fordicon called a Paddlebot a hydrophobic fraidy-bot. Or maybe a Paddlecon called a Wade-bot a 'moss-legged dampwalker.' Nobody can agree how it really started. But everyone agrees that the two factions have been at odds ever since.
"Name-calling escalated to newspaper editorial writing, fanning the flames of intolerance. There were arguments. Then protests. Then peace talks, which seemed promising for a while before a ranking member of the Ford-bots called the leader of the Paddlebots a 'rusty bucket of floating bolts' and the talks broke down. Then war. Then peace talks again for a few millennia. Then more war. Vicious, unending, civil war. Paddler against wader, robot against robot, brother against brother.
"Now their world lies ravaged, blasted. The many streams, from the mightiest of rivers to the daintiest of rills, lie dusty and dry. No bots paddle the waters anymore, no bots wade the barren streams.
"Thousands of years ago the Paddlebots launched a lifeboat of sorts into the emptiness of space, in search of a watery world where they could paddle again in peace. Their flight brought them here, to Earth, a watery paradise, a paddler's dream. But something went wrong during the landing (some whisper it was Fordicon sabotage, some believe it was utter incompetence) and the ship crash-landed in a cataclysmic collision, killing every bot inside and nearly demolishing the entirety of the ship.
Re-activating the portals, even after all this time, called both the Row-bots and the Wade-bots to this place, and now they both vie for control of the first stream either bot has seen for millennia."
Well, that explains things, you think. Kind of.
Note
Occurs after "A Bridge Over Troubled Waters" on fourth day of Fighting Robots.
