#-the elf saw a penis and started crying- IS ME RIGHT NOW

[epaily]

all the blocked nsfw tags in the world wont save me from the thing that just crossed my dash

[lookwhosfhtagn]

THE ADVENTURES OF ARGUS ARMSTRONGMAN - LONE STAR DETECTIVE

Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage, Second Degree Murder

Peoria was a nightmare hellscape: a bleak, spine-chilling expanse of crumbling urban overexpansion and atrophy. And while that description could have been applied a week before, the presence of mobile mechanical malefactors only magnified the menace. Drones from Pie in the Sky Pizza, Fat Don’s Sandwich and Stims, Nothing but Soy, and many more crossed the sky in a systematic grid, an aerial armada stalking the prey below. The thump and hiss of hydraulics came from the distance, among the building of downtown. A panicked figure darted from cover, only to be set upon by a swarm of robotic entities, ranging from cyberpets to load lifters. The poor bastard cried out in one single shriek and was silenced just as quickly.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Catrina Noire said, her eyes unreadable behind her Matrix shades. Her tone was cold and callused but I could see the faint lines of worry and dread in the corners of her mouth.

I pulled a deep drag of strawberry flavored vapor out of the slender mouthpiece, letting the drugs settle into my bloodstream before I exhaled and put the vape back in my jacket pocket. “We have to be here. I know the Tech Wizard had to have stopped here. I feel it in my gut. And if we can find his grandmother, we can find a clue where they went.” I turned to her and tried to engage her through those glasses of hers. “You hired me because you know I can find Dak, so let me find him.”

Our expensive sports car cautiously crept along the city streets. The retirement facility wasn’t far from away. In spite of the carnage that had swept the town, it looked like most of the conflict had shifted away, affording us a window of opportunity.

She crossed her arms and gave a petulant sigh. “I still think we should give Beans another shot. I-”

“We’re not doing that. Not until you and I sort out what we’re going to do with him.”

“It,” she corrected with a demonstrably confrontational tone.

I was about to argue with her, but before I could take the bait of her obvious challenge, the steering wheel wrenched from my grip. Rubber screamed out on pavement and the engine revved in a roaring call to action. “What the hell?” I blurted out, trying to process the events.

The screen of the car’s dash console went black. A waterfall of unspaced white text, scrolling down the liquid crystal display and proclaiming DEATHTOALLHUMANS. The speaker system joined in, crying out in a maximum volume the same repeated threats in digital text to speech tones. My ears rang out and I could see Catrina clamp both her palms over her sensitive feline ears.

“It hacked the car!” Catrina cried out, barely audible over the blaring sound system’s murderous mantra.

I struggled to regain control, reaching under the steering wheel for the emergency manual override. But by the time I pulled the handle and was able to control the vehicle again, it was too late. Even my wild swerve wasn’t enough to keep us from crashing into the side of a large decorative fountain. The front of the car crumbled like tissue paper, wrapping around the statue of a beautiful nude troll woman while also fracturing the sculpture into a dozen pieces. Catrina and I lurched madly, arrested by the seat belts and air bags. My chest and face ached from the force of the stop, but I was alive for now.

Staggering from the totaled car, I stepped out into the basin of the fountain, soaking my vintage Converse high tops. I heard the passenger door open, following by a splash as Ms. Noire fell to her knees, still staggered and aching from both the crash and the auditory assault. I hussled to the other side and helped her to her feet, practically dragging her through the vacant streets to avoid detection. “Come on!” I barked at her, hoping she wasn’t deafened. “We have to go!”  

Her Matrix shades were broken, each half dangling from an ear. The eyes behind those shades were wide and frantic, struggling to keep up with what was going on. “W-what?” she stammered, fighting to stand on her own and keep pace.

With my free arm, I pointed to the retirement home down the street. She nodded and put managed to support more of her own weight. Even in the middle of a robot uprising, I couldn’t let Dak Rambo out of my thoughts. If we didn’t find that old woman, all this was for nothing.

After what seemed like an eternity of awkward escape down the vacant streets of Peoria, we came to the large synthetic wood door. Our hands fumbled for the pull handle, only to find it locked. “God damn it,” I grumbled and slapped my palm on the door.

“Help! You have to let us in!” Catrina cried out.

There was a shuffling from the other side of the door, then a masculine voice spoke up, muffled by the door. “Um, actually, we don’t have to help you. I am under no such compulsion, either societally or physically.”

Catrina and I looked at each other, exchanging glances that were equal measures of disbelief and confusion at the obnoxious reply.

“Listen,” I said, my tone forced into the soothing register of conflict resolution. “We’re not robots. We’re humans who just came into town and our car tried to kill us. Please, let us in! If you don’t let us in, our blood is on your hands!”

Two voiced erupted into sardonic laughter from the barred sanctuary. I swore I could hear the clop of hooves before a feminine voice sneered at us. “That is quite literally an impossibility because you would be murdered out there. So, unless we went out later, found your mangled corpses, and rubbed our hands in your blood-”

“Or,” the male voice cut in, “there were some sort of outlandish method of execution employed by the robot which would send your blood through the door, onto our hands.”

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “Either of those would make your idiom honest. So, do you think your blood is going to end up on our hands now? Hm?”

Catrina began cursing softly. “What kind of assholes are these?”

“The kind of assholes who should open that door unless they want be guilty of impeding an official Lone Star investigation.” My voice was overly dramatic. “And that’s assuming I don’t just find another way in there and shoot said assholes.”

There was a pause, followed by a less confident quip from the female. “While you have no way of knowing we are centaurs, you should know that we are not assholes. Assholes can’t talk.” And then the door’s lock clicked open. The door swung open, revealing a fat centaur man and a younger female.

“I don’t know,” I said, shouldering past them. “Doors open and all I can see are assholes.”

Catrina followed behind, hissing ferally at the two centaurs and muttering curses in a foreign language I didn’t understand. As we strolled in, we saw a collection of about twenty to thirty survivors. Among the masses were a massively, almost grotesquely muscular woman, an elf that could best be described as masculine, and a dwarf gentleman who was covered in cybernetic augmentations. I was about to talk to someone when my eyes fell on a woman in the corner of the waiting room, kept in some advanced sarcophagus. Silently, I stepped over to the almost skeletal woman.

I cleared my throat and looked through the glass. “Excuse me, ma’am. Are you Marjorie Purpler?”

The husk of an old woman looked up at me, the whirring chirp of her respirator a macabre march toward mortality. Her eyes looked at me, falling on the Lone Star badge emblazoned on my jacket. Her halting mechanical voice croaked out. “And what do you want with my sweet Squirt, you jackboot bastard?” Her face twisted to an unnatural disgusting grimace.

“Listen, Mrs. Purpler. I know you son visited you.” It was a bluff, but it was the only card I had in my hand. “He’s travelling with a man named Dak Rambo. Trucker with tattoos, hat, and cat eyes.”

She peered into my eyes, sizing me up before she spoke. “He was a nice boy. What do you want with him?”

“That nice boy has a rap sheet as big as my…” I paused. “It’s big, ma’am.  And his latest crime is murdering a fellow trucker in cold blood.”

Her eyes darted back and forth, processing the information before warbling back in her fake voice. “Then I bet the fucker was a real bag of shit. Now, how about you get out of here, Lone Star scum?”

I had figured it would go like this. Her family had been displaced by Lone Star in the past. A lot of magic users had gotten the raw deal. It wasn’t right, but it happened. It was a scar that neither she nor those magic users would ever forget or forgive.

“Ma’am, I’m not trying to hurt your grandson. I’m just looking for Dak. He’s done a lot of things that have people after him. People who are dangerous.” I leaned forward and put a hand on the glass. “People who wouldn’t hesitate to kill Squirt just for riding with Rambo.”

Catrina put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. “Marjorie, we just want to bring a murderer to justice. We won’t hurt your grandson or the others. And if you help, we can even try to help Rambo. Keep him alive.” I tried to keep my hackles down at the notion of showing Dak mercy.

Her facial muscles shifted into an assisted look of dread and grief. I have no doubt if she could have, she’d have started crying. But she just frowned deeply and spoke. “If you hurt my Squirt, don’t think for a second me being in here will keep you safe.”

“I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, ma’am,” I replied, hoping my sincerity made it through the heavy glass barrier, “but I promise I won’t hurt your grandson.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t mean a thing.” She let out a forced hiss of a sigh. “I overheard them talking outside my room after they left. After a disturbingly long period of conversation about Squirts artificial penis, they mentioned heading west to Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles?” Catrina asked incredulously.

“Yep, Los Angeles.”

I tried to hide the nervous energy of the chase, stuffing it down into my gut. “Thank you, Mrs. Purpler.” I turned around just to see the wooden door splinter. The two centaurs turned, only to subsequently be crushed as the doors burst off their hinges, falling down onto the equine pair with a grizzly and shamefully-satisfying squish.

“Ow!” Cried out the male centaur! “Oh god! Oh god, I’m dying!”

The female centaur coughed. “Are…you speaking literally?”

“Of course I am, Little Sis. Of course…I…am…” And then he let out a soft death rattle.

“Good. Because I am too.” And she let out a similar death rattle.

The cloud of smoke and dust that billowed in from the shattered door frame slowly dissipated. There, floating before us on a litter held aloft by four drones, was a large vending machine robot. “No orders. No riddles. Only death.” And then a flurry of milkshakes, burgers, and cutlery was blast out of the service chute like a load of buckshot from shotgun.

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