mechasegagenesis-blog

[mechasegagenesis-blog]

Freelance Somethings

Hello, here is my first Tumbler post. I tried my hand at a Sam and Max fanfiction. It cuts off mid-sentence at the end not because of a typo, but I thought perhaps that was the funniest place to end it. Perhaps I could be convinced to continue this if there proves to be interest (I doubt it, somehow).

#SamandMax #FreelancePolice #freelancepolice #fanfic #fanfiction #firstpost #itsbeenyearssinceivetriedwritinganything #freelancehusbands

The air was dry and hot, making it stuffy in the cramped office. 

"Can't we open a window or something? The last time that we were cooking this badly was when we visited the literal center of the earth!" Max said, fanning himself with a large brochure for Stinky's Diner, that had been haphazardly folded into a makeshift fan. Sam, the six foot tall Irish Wolfhound anamorphic dog, panted, "We should consider ourselves lucky they let us back into the building at all, little pal." The pair had been stuck living inside their iconic 1960 De Soto Adventurer since their last adventure three months ago, and even their nightly ritual of tongue baths had lost its appeal. The minute they got the notice that the work on the building had finished, or at least enough so they could access their shower, Sam had wept for joy. Out of the pair of them, he was the one who had looked more grungy at that point, with his normally neat noir-style suit wrinkled and stained until it was a whimpering mockery of its former self. Sam himself had not been much better. His fur was matted in several places, and he had a constant itch that he associated with bedbugs. His partner Max had somehow not looked so worn down, even though he had gone through the same experience. Perhaps always going without clothes meant that roughing it was always part of the equation. His white fur still looked just like it always had, and he didn't have large bags under his eyes. That first bath back from what felt like the brink of madness was nothing less than heavenly, for the two of them. 

Max groaned in response to Sam's observation, letting himself fall comically backwards onto the uneven wooden surface of the office floor. His lagamorphic, rabbity like body had many utilities, but cooling off was sadly not part of the repertoire. He and Sam were miserably roasting in their fur as the merciless summer sun beat down on them from the windows of their workspace, which was currently doubling as their sleeping quarters. Outside, they could hear the car horns of exasperated drivers who were stuck in the slog of the traffic below, half suffocated between the smoke exhausts and the interior of their coffins on wheels. 

"No use trying to take the De Soto out today," Sam said, tugging at the collar of his gray suit. He had already given up on wearing his customary oversized striped tie, and it was thrown haphazardly over the desk lamp where it lay limply, as if having given up. 

"But I'm starving, Sam! How's a guy supposed to survive on just frozen pizza and leftover stale Mcguffins?!" Max wailed, tossing an unfortunate Mcguffin into the air, where it made a beautiful arch across the room and landed with a hearty splat somewhere left of the trash can. 

"Take courage, Max. Nothing like braving the storms of wartime derelict to make steely the nerves of vengeance," Sam said, giving up on his skinny detective hat and tossing it aside as well. 

"That was beautiful, Sam. If only our rations were as filling as your poetic lexicon," Max said, sadly. "I can't stand it! I'm cooking in my own skin! Lapin à la crème just standing here!" 

"I prefer a nice hasenpfeffer myself," Sam said, smirking. 

"Very funny," Max said dryly. "As if you wouldn't make a nice taco filling yourself, big boy. With a little marinating, and spices, I bet we could barbeque ourselves a nice berrio enchilada a la perro."

Sam shrugged, casually indifferent to his friend's concerningly specific plan for consuming him as a meal. 

Max hopped up, excited. "Let's order us up some dinner. I hear Jimmy Two Teeth is a FoodFast delivery driver now. We can work his tiny paws to the bone for our amusement!"

Sam shook his head sadly. His snout came just shy of hitting the corner lamp. He pulled his wallet out and opened it, to reveal...mothballs. Max shrugged his thin shoulders. 

"So we're a little short on cash. That's never stopped us before!" Max said confidently. "Let's break into our emergency savings and have a real feast tonight!"

Sam pulled out their piggy bank, which was shaped like little froggies playing as a Mariachi band. (They had only just discovered last week that it could hold coins. For years, they had just thought it was a cool decoration for the top of their file cabinet.) He uncorked the big sombrero of the first frog, and upturned the item. Nothing came out. He repeated the action with the frog on the other side. The same result. 

Max's shark-like grin faltered a tad, before he waved it off. "No biggie," he said. "I still got winnings from this last Poker Night at the Inventory we attended," he said, and dashed away to go get the pillow case that he hid them in. Sam waited nervously at the door for his return. He had used the last of the pillow fund on the latest repairs of the De Soto, and hadn't gotten around to telling Max yet. 

"Uh, little buddy..." he started, awkwardly, only to be interrupted by Max launching himself into his arms. "Sam! We've been robbed! Oh, this is horrible! They've taken everything! There's nothing left! Oh woe is us! Oh woe is me!" 

He flopped dramatically over the side of Sam's arms like a weird ragdoll that Sam had to strain to hold onto. "Max. Max, I don't know how to tell you this." Sam said carefully. "We haven't been robbed."

 Max lifted his head so suddenly that Sam almost dropped him. "What do you mean?!" 

"I mean I didn't have the heart to tell you that the pillow fund is also gone," Sam said in almost a whisper, as if he was ashamed of the words coming out of his mouth. "I used it all up, Max. I'm so-"

"No, you walnut! I mean our bedding! Our blankets! Our pillow fort! Mr. Cuddles, my bear! All GONE!" Max wailed. 

"What?!" Sam cried, and tossed Max behind him so that he could take a look inside their shared bedroom. Now it was Max flying in a beautiful arc across the room landing next to the Mcguffin. It's true, everything they owned had been whisked away, the imprint of them still fresh in Sam's mind. They left a physical imprint too, like a wierd cartoon shadow of "here is where the bed was, here is where the dresser was," etc. In fact, if this was a comic, that's exactly how the panel would depict the event. 

"Holy heaping helpings of leftover Yorkshire pudding handwrapped lovingly in Grandma's tupperware to take home-it's true! Now who on earth...I mean, why on earth...I mean, what on earth...?" 

"When you've finished forming a thought," Max said smirking, "I found something. Is this useful?" He was holding up a sealed envelope. 

Sam grabbed it out of his outstretched little white paw and tore it open. 

"If you can read this, it's already too late. Get out. Now."

Max looked as confused as Sam felt. 

"Whaddya suppose that-"

A horrible smell hit his sensitive dog nostrils like a blast of hot air. At first he thought it was Max, but realized almost immediatly after that it was a thick green gas, that was quickly filling the office with a scent similar to rotten eggs mixed with gutter runoff. Sam coughed and covered his nose with a sweaty sleeve, just in time to see Max pass out next to him. "Max!" he tried to say, reaching towards him in alarm. Before he could take hold of his little buddy, the black spots forming in his eyes overwhelmed him as well and everything turned to darkness. 

Chapter Two-The Sub Basement of Solitude

"So you guys failed that test spectacularly," Sam heard a sarcastic, familiar voice proclaim before he even opened his eyes.  'Geek!" he grinned and sat up, blinking in the semi darkness. 

Darla, also known as "the Geek" stood above the prone pair, her childish hands on flat hips. She shook her orange bangs to see the pair. She looked like she was trying hard not to smile at the two. 

Max sat up with a dramatic gasp. "Where? Who? What? Tell me which way to swing, Sam!"

"Physically, or sexually?"

"I'm a wild CANNON!" Max shouted, leaping into the air. 

"Watch out!" Sam said, plucking Darla up by the back of her shirt just in time to dodge a rampaging lagamorphic missile. 

Max hit the wall with an astounding speed and force, bouncing off like a spring board only to land rump-first on the cobbled basement floor. Undeterred, he gave a wide sideways grin at the pair and said, "so why the sudden death lightning round anyway? Not that I'm complaining, by the way. The last time I got smoked so hard was-"

"There's no way to end that sentence without getting demonetized," Sam said. "Let's move on." (A/N: I'm not getting paid.) 

"You guys are getting rusty," the Geek said with her half closed eyes squinting at them in disapproval. "The last time I timed you at this emergency drill you had me by the throat in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes." 

"Must be the sardonic embrace of old age, our technically proficient friend," Sam said, brushing off his lapels. 

"We age like a fine wine, Sam. Or in my case, like a fine musty Italian cheese," Max said, producing a round of cheese previously unseen on this realm of existence. He took a comically large bite, rind and all, as Sam's sensitive dog nose wrinkled in both disapproval and disappointment at not being offered any.

"Any-way, I need you two lugheads help with something," the Geek said, leading them towards her overly large computer monitor. On screen was an image of an island, with beautiful valleys and scenic waterfalls. She zoomed out to show that a literal ring of fire surrounded it, growing by the minute. 

"Now I'm not one to make assumptions, but that ain't a pile of whipped cream we're looking at here," Max said. His voice had followed camera perspective towards the screen, but then-

"No. It's a Fudgsicle Sundae," Sam said, mouth thick with rich decandant ice cream. He put down the dessert and refocused on the plot that was being introduced since the sundae had only been used as a visual gag to divert audience expectation. 

"I'll pay each of you ten dollars not to make a Ring of Fire joke," the Geek pleaded. 

"Too late," the two idiots said in unison. The song was already playing. 

"God I hate that song," the Geek said. "I always have. But anyway. I have a friend of mine on this island. An old professor buddy of mine who used to have some interesting thoughts on nuclear physics and so on, until he got hit with a Dracon beam and went crazy. Now he lives on this island claiming the island clams are infested with sea slugs, or something like that. I need you guys to bring me his briefcase. The one with a sticker of a rubber duck on it. Got it?"

"Rubber duck. Crazy man. Comprendo." Max listed off as if the audience already needed a recap. "Why?"

The Geek looked a little guilty, like she had been caught in a little white lie. "I might have. Um. Snuck a uranium capsule into his carry on when we were traveling together? It was a while ago, for that Scientists for Humanity convention. I didn't want to pay for shipping." 

Max wagged a furry white finger in her direction and tut-tutted like disciplining a child. "What have we always told you about thieving?"

The Geek crossed her arms and looked away, her ears reddening. "To never leave any evidence," she grumbled. 

"No-o. Never leave your stolen possessions in the hands of a crazy mad scientist. Sheesh! Pay attention for once!" Max said. 

So with that last thought, they pulled a lever and down a trap door, leaving the Geek wondering how she ever got involved with these two. 

Chapter Three-Our Boys Search For the Island, the Plot, and Who Gives A Hoot 

"Well that sure was a hootenanny of a good time, I'd say." Sam said, twirling a toothpick made of a wheat stalk. 

"I was especially impressed by our laxidaisical and entirely unorthodox method of resolving the conflict nicely," Max said. "I'm sure that will satiate the audience, with a dramatic climactic battle drawn in such magnificence and glorious detail that-"

"Sorry to cut you off there, little pal,' Sam said. "Methinks I just remembered that we're not being drawn at all at this particular juncture."

"By golly you're right, Sam! My inability to pretend the fourth wall means anything is acting up!" Max cried dramatically, clutching his throat in mock horror and alarm. 

The truth was, as soon as they zoomed away from the Geek's place, they had already forgotten what their goal might have been. They were standing on an island, sure. Ring of fire. Right. There. Nice, neat conclusion to the story probably waiting with a nice bow and a cocktail in hand, ready to be delivered to hungry online audiences everywhere, at least for the duration that they could keep their attention span focused. But their back was to the island, in fact, to the entire potential storyline. Deliberately. Back to the camera. No consideration for