claw and took the switch-blaster from my tunic’s concealed pocket with the lower, right. I fired the toad sticker; its customized artificial lightning bolt cut across the shopping warehouse and struck the mercury-lead vapor lights above the robot. Glass, sparks, and a poisonous cloud descended on the mechanical. At that exact moment, I extended the switch blaster’s plasma-arc blade and cut the bottom off the extinguisher. Soothing foam blasted out in one big burp and my perception of time returned to normal. I felt like I’d been hit with the galaxy’s biggest banana cream pie, but the fire was out.
What was left of my tunic hung from neck like spilled Jell-O. If there was anything I hated it was running. The decadriod wasn’t pursuing me and had been taking wild shots. Robots are all logic, they can’t take wild shots; time to cut the power and meet the brain behind the brawn.
“Ahhh!” I shook as what felt like twenty-thousands giga womps coursed through my body. The stench and smoke of burning extinguisher goop overwhelmed my sensitive nostrils. I was in searing pain, unable to move other than the convulsions and vomiting, and effectively blind. And I had no idea why.
When it stopped I teetered, than toppled to the floor like a cut aluminum tree bearing ripe, metal fruit. Something began a hiss that slowly slid into a snicker. My eyes started to clear, but my limbs were still trembling uncontrollably.
There was a really long metal being leering over me. But it wasn’t really a metal being, it was something incased in metal. I could barely make out two large, yellow eyes staring down at me between thin slits in the armor’s helmet. The metal casing gave the taunting laughter a tinny, echo-ey sound. Whatever was inside had no legs, but did have a long tail dressed in many articulated metal plates. The tail twitched with anticipation, the metal plates scraped together with a mandible grinding screech that that made me forget all about the sibling simulator.
“Say good-night, Bugsssssss,” it hissed and brandished a double fang spear with a palmel mounted manual venom pump in two armor plated cybernetic arms.
Oh bug, this was going to hurt, but not if I hurt him first.
I was down but recovering quickly and I still had the toad sticker in the lower right claw—time to see how this tin-can-man liked a taste of his own medicine.
“Good night,” I weakly croaked and pulled the trigger. With an ear splitting crack and the smell of spent ozone the artificially generated lightning bolt leapt out of the nozzle and struck the sinuous knight smack in the center of the Clam Clan crest on his chest. The armor rattled and glowed brightly with half a million turbo womps shooting thought it.
Then the creep did something really unexpected, he started to laugh a long, smarmy, hissing laugh.
“Ohhh, that felt good. Do it again bugssssssss.”
I would have obliged him but the toad sticker was fresh out of charge.
“Ha!” the jerk spat out (literally, eeew) and raised the spear high overhead. Little drops of venom dripped from the pair of very sharp fangs on its business end. Then the whole thing began to hum with energy, and sparks of electricity zapped and crackled around its edge. “This is going to be funsssss.”
This was going to be a long and painful death.
But something slammed into the jerk with a battering crash and sent him sailing. “Sssssssshisssssss,” it hissed as it careened out of sight. I heard it smash into something and clatter down. It sounded like a gigantic stack of empty soup cans were tumbling down a cliff.
I heard a very familiar whirring and the suck of a vacuum generator powering up, time to move.
Down on all sixes like my ancestors of old, I skittered around the aisle. Taking cover behind an emergency loss of bowel control clean up kit. I stowed the spent toad sticker and raised the appropriate response, the bowling ball cannon. With a flip of the toggle the powerful vacuum generator howled to life.
That robot wasn’t the only one who could handle an Oric.
I glanced around the kit box. The robot had finally moved and was now in the aisle directly across from me. All dozen of its stalk mounted camera eyes were trained in my direction. As soon as I stuck my head out, it lowered the arm with the cannon and fired. I leapt back just as a bowling ball shot past me at high velocity. I glanced over at where my head had been a moment ago. The cannon had cut a hole straight through all the shelves and displays. Apparently Squiggly’s Squid Juice was on sale at the far end of the outlet, ten ink bladders for a Galactipus credit.
Turning back, I caught sight of the remains of my armored attacker. Its chest-plate was smashed flat across the ribs; a twelve pound bowling ball was nestled in the now c-shaped metal. The impact had knocked his helmet clean off. His long, wet tongue was draped out on the floor; his lifeless, yellow eyes were rolled skyward. That hideous mug couldn’t belong to anything other than an eel, but this one was big, twenty feet long at least, the biggest I’d ever seen. I would’ve loved to learn more, like how it was able to give and take such massive shocks, but a passing bolt of artificially generated lightning interrupted my investigation.
I ducked as lights shattered and packaged products exploded all around me. Sparks flew and glass and shards ricocheted off my exoskeleton.
Enough’s enough.
I drew aim and squeezed the trigger, firing off the cannon’s heavy load. With a thoom of air, a seventeen pound bowling ball shot with massive velocity across the wide main aisle and slammed into the robot.
Or it would have if the thing hadn’t been equipped with a personal power point force field projector. My ball bounced twice on the floor before rolling impotently away.
But I’d guessed as much and was already on the move. My claw feet were tapping loud against the outlet’s faux tiled floor in time to the sibling annoyance simulator. Another lightning bolt struck something behind me with a hair standing crackle, an explosion, and a smell of burning plastic. Several shots from a personal plasma pistol struck the floor and walls around me, and a sub contra E sonic wave blew a hole through the roof above me, but I just kept running.
When I reached the corner I turned and, having to risk crossing the main aisle, followed the outside wall. I barely dodged an exploding ridicule grenade but, just as I approached the next corner, I spotted what I was looking for, a large metal panel marked, Danger High Voltage.
Time to stop running.
I un-holstered my tuba blaster and drew aim on the metal box. I pulled the trigger and a sub contra E sonic wave emanated from the blaster’s big brass horn shaped nozzle.
The electrical panel exploded in a shower of sparks and, one by one, the lights went out and the place fell quiet.
By some unexplainable happenstance the tube of suspended Nevellian fireflies in my tunic’s breast pocket had survived the fire. I broke off the end cap, activating the reanimation sequence, and the fireflies flew out and circled around me with their asses all aglow. The hummingbird sized bugs, drawn to my insect pheromones, fluttered around my head and cast a glow all about me. Not that the light was completely necessary. The far end of the store was engulfed in flames; it seemed some dope had left a pile of oily rags out where they’d be susceptible to an unawares being with his coat on fire.
I was fresh out of bowling balls, had lost my bandoleer, and both the toad sticker and the proton blaster were out of charge so, with the tuba blaster in claw, I strolled up the main aisle and stopped in front of the now powerless robot. It looked like three trash cans stacked one on top of the other in a descending order of width with the largest one at the bottom. The whole thing was mounted on three small power drive wheels. The middle section was made up of a stack of ten thin, rotating sleeves, each equipped with its own arm, and each arm’s spindle held its own weapon. The top section was similar, except there were twelve sleeves and each of those had a shaft mouthed camera eye attached to it.
The whole thing hung limp and powerless now. I began to search it, and sure enough found an ammunition cache behind a hatch on its lower section. There were no seventeen pound balls, but I
was able to load two twelve pound balls into the Oric and snagged a freshly charged battery for the toad sticker before I heard the squeal of a starter followed by a large engine roaring to life.
“Frass!” I shouted and leapt just as the outlet’s lights began to flash to life. Despite the anti-privatized power production regulations enacted by the XXXonmobile act of 12,223B the damn place had a back-up generator.
With a whirr of servo motors the robot’s arms and eyes leapt up. Paper tape tickered, LEDs blinked, cylinders spun and in an instant all twelve eyes and ten weapons were trained on yours truly.
I’d have said goodbye but there wasn’t anyone who’d have missed me. Not that I cared.
But nothing happened. The damned thing just sat there beeping and chirping patiently.
The only thing I could think of that would have been more dangerous than moving was not moving. My ocellus was still closed up with the polymer, so I very carefully began to search around the floor with a claw foot.
I heard a familiar flapping, like an empty garbage bag hooked in a tree that’s caught in a strong breeze. Then I remembered—this outlet was all monkey business.
Sure as frass, the black-haired Batarangutan came flying over the tops of the display shelving. His skin-thin wings were mapped with red and blue veins and flapped in that