flick of his nubby thumb he activated the whirling lotto-ball scrambler. Balls of assorted colors churned around in the weapon’s transparent chamber.
“Blast him, bug, go on, show him how it’s done!” one voice squealed.
“No! No, don’t do it, you’ll get in big trouble if you do,” another little, purple voice shouted.
Good thing I didn’t have a brain or I’d have been getting a headache.
“OK bug, time to take a ball!” the Napoleoparte shouted and pulled the trigger. His ping-pong ball bounced off the top of my head and set my antennae vibrating. Then it ricocheted off a bottle on a shelf behind me. Swalla’s sticky tongue lashed out, caught the rebounding ball and snapped it back. I heard him swallow it with a gross gulp.
“Ha ha ha!” the Napoleoparte was laughing louder than called for. This twerp was really, really proud of himself.
I didn’t have the patience for this, especially as he now had a few friends with him. So I lifted one of my foot-claws, which was nearly as long as he was tall, and gave a good kick. But the claw went right through him and I stumbled forward.
“Ha!” the Napoleopartes shouted in an echoy chorus. “The bug’s strunk, the big dope, watch this.” They raised their launchers and took aim.
“Buzz off, jerk. I’m in no mood,” I said and raised the claw-foot again.
“Ha ha! The bug can’t even see me, let alone hit me!” they shouted in a chorus, dancing around, taunting me and taking their time with their aim.
“Hit the one on the left!” one Tiny Purple Ricky shouted from my shoulder.
“Yeah, the one on the left, do it, do it,” about a dozen of the squeaky voices sang out.
“The left, huh?” I struggled to get my complex eyes to stay focused.
“Ha! The bug’s so strunk he’s see’n Tiny Purple Rickies!” the Napoleopartes shouted. I got my eyes to focus on the Napoleoparte on my far left and kicked. “Sacrebleu!” He shot across the room like a ping-pong ball in fancy dress and crashed through the big, front window with a shattering of shield-projector glass and some dame’s high pitched scream.
All his pals vanished as well.
“Oh yeah! All right!” The imaginary people started jumping up and down on my shoulders and slapping little, purple high-fives.
I spun around on the stool. “If you don’t want anything or anyone else damaged Swalla, I’d bring me that drink now.”
“Sure thing, PeeDee3, sure,” he croaked and hopped over to mix my drink. Right then I caught a shimmer of blurry light to my right—or was it my complex eyes that were blurry? Well whatever it was had nothing to do with me, and, since I had to wait for those contractors to finish repairing my office, I had some serious drinking to get back too.
“Jeez Louise,” one of the violet variety of Rickie cooed in my ear hole. In the mirror’s reflection I saw him leaning a hand against the side of my head as he polished his fingernails against his chest. He whistled through his tiny purple teeth. “Check out the Curvaceous Hot Model #57, wowie-zowie, hotsie-totsie and how.”
“Quit imaginarily purring in my ear, sprite.” I winced my head away from him and shifted to the far left edge of my stool.
“Oh momma,” one of his look-a-likes said from the top of my nogg’n. “No, no, not so fast giant, gross, and gruesome, you gotta check this out. You’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”
“Nah,” I said and polished off another drink. “I don’t go in for mechanicals. I’d pay for a GMHo (Genetically Manufactured working girl) over the machines any day and twice on Merpsday.”
“I know you dig those mousies, bug, but if you don’t slide this mech your credit stick you’re going to regret it,” another one said and tugged on my neck-joint hairs, trying to turn my head as if my complex eyes required head turning to see to the sides. Even my imaginary beings were dopes.
“No, I won’t. Besides, I can’t regret, Kacekan remember?” Even as I was speaking I started focusing on the retinas on the side of my right eye. Directly beside me was the usual space of empty stools, and just beyond that was a grimy line of drunken and strunken skum-bags, Swalla’s usuals. The Rickies were crazy, there was nothing to see.
Then I caught a sexy hiss from a hydraulic cylinder. I looked closer. With the sultry hum of a high-pressure pump, a Highnnz Curvaceous Hot Model #57 slid off a stool and out of the line of bar-leaners. With a whirr of servos she straightened up her posture, showing off her well-designed lines like she was still in the showroom. Her artisan blended titanium/carbon fiber/silk-lace plating shimmered in the smoky light and my hearts started beating faster.
For once the Tiny Purple Rickies were dumb-struck. Not surprising, the #57 line were equipped with fanning pheromone distributors designed to drive soft on the outside males crazy with lust. But her alluring perfume wasn’t designed with Kacekans in mind and usually only managed to make me sneeze.
So then why was my lower complex nerve plexus tugging at my abdominal plating?
Every retina in my complex eyes was planted firmly on her aerodynamic, titanium blended shell, but her eyes were fixed straight ahead. Then, with a click of solenoid valves and a woosh of high pressure fluid, she spun her torso around, giving me an uninterrupted view of all four of her variable-size breasts. These were breasts engineered by the good folks at Playtex Designs for the sole purpose of pleasure.
Then I caught her eyes—I didn’t know that mechanicals had eyes. She was staring in my general direction with a pair of life-like camera lenses the color of spicy mustard.
My left leg was quivering so hard that my plating started to buzz.
I looked all around, trying to gam out who she (or whatever pronoun you use for a mech) was gamming at. Then, rotating her lower body in line with her torso, she started strutting my way. Her shell was polished to a bright, gleaming sheen. She walked with her hydraulic hips pumping in a way that set all four of her breasts into a hypnotic sway. Only I can’t be hypnotized.
So why couldn’t I look away?
She strutted right up to me and set a metal hand to the side of my exoskeletonized head. The lights in her yellow-brown eyes dimmed and she shot me a smile created by the shifting of a couple dozen, intricate metal plates. She traced a finger down my neck and ran it along the gap in my shoulder plating.
I shivered. Not many beings know that’s an erogenous zone for bugs, and we aimed to keep it that way.
One of the Tiny Purple Rickies sighed, fainted, dropped off my shoulder and plopped onto the filthy floor.
She turned and, with her metal buttocks shifting with a force like quaking tectonic plates, sashayed to the door. She turned, shuttered one of her laser eyes at me, and left.
My lower nerve plexus urged me to chase her down and show her why you shouldn’t taunt a Kacekan, but my upper nerve plexus refused to give in to the week urges of lesser beings. I was, after all, PeeDee3, badass bug assassin.
That’s when I felt a powerful urge to hit the can.
Holding onto the bar, I managed to stumble up standing as one of Swalla’s weaselarians passed carrying a tray of quasi-clean glasses. “Who was that dame?” I asked, pointing at the door with an antenna.
He set the tray down and wiped his crafty paws on his filthy apron. “Who was who, mister?”
“That mechanical, the #57 that just left.”
The weasel’s big eyes blinked and his whiskers twitched. It was kind of gross. “Swalla don’t let mechanicals in here. They broke from the local Bangers Union and he don’t like that they undercut the market.”
I had a strong urge to grab the rodent by his tail and see just how far it would stretch, but I had other business to attend to. “Forget it, I gotta take a piss.”
I was just sober enough to navigate my crusty carcass to the gents’ door when this big, round muscular ball bounced over to me. “Hey bug,” he shouted in a gruff voice. “That bathroom’s for real beings, you gotta use the little bug’s room.” He pointed with a bounce at a small, crooked do
or in a dark corner of the bar. It was crawling with flesh boring leach-worms and soaked with filthy water.
I looked out at the lounge. When I did all of the eyes, flids, and infrared organs that had been watching this exchange quickly and nervously looked down. I could feel the tension in the air.
“Whatever,” I said, shooting the bouncer four simultaneous middle claws then wandered to the bug designated bathroom. I really didn’t care, it was safest anyway. Kacekan urine is a powerful acid that can eat through most non-bug excretion capturing appliances. Besides, the bouncer, now the size of a beach-ball, used to be three times bigger. Seemed he’d gotten smart with me once before and I had to let some of the air out of him. He knew which of us was top being.
On the third attempt I managed to mount my stool. As soon as I had, Swalla hopped over and set the foaming drink down in front of me. “Here, PeeDee3, a large Kitty Litter supreme with a Pepto-Bismol chaser, just like you ordered.”
“Like I said, Smart Frog.”
“I don’t know,” a voice slurred from my left. “I never thought of Swallatikitiki as being particularly intelligent.”
I spun around and grabbed the human sitting next to me by his loose collar and tie. “Hey, are you reading my non-existent mind, because telepaths can’t read bug’s minds, but if you are reading the mind that I don’t have and that can’t be read then I’m gonna open up your head and we’ll all take a look at what’s on your brain.”
“Oh hell, I’m not even making sense to myself.”
The shiny-haired human, his martini still in hand and somehow un-spilled, patted my exoskeletonized torso. “Hey, you’re making total sense to me, pal.”
I dropped the drunken jerk and slumped against the bar. “How? How was he reading my complex nerve centers?”
The human looked around, his perfectly coiffed, greased black hair stood out against the expensive, wrinkled suit that looked like it had been slept in. He glanced left and right, then leaned in close like he was about to tell me some great secret. “Well, I’m not see, because you’re inner-narrating out loud.” He tipped his glass to me and, with a wink, swallowed his drink. Then, taking the olive from his toothpick, set the glass down, whirled a finger in the air and then pointed at his empty glass.
“Yeah, dude,” a tiny little voice said from my shoulder. “You’re talking out loud.”
“I must have been strunker than I’d ever been because I never narrated out loud.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, I looked over at the human.
He nodded his head; creepy how his hair never moved. “Yeah, that was out loud, and in past tense—so weird.” Tipping his head back and opening his mouth, he tossed the olive up. It bounced off his forehead but he just kept looking up and waiting, mouth open.
“Frass.”
Swalla came over and set another martini down in front of my bar mate, and then glanced at my untouched glass. “Something wrong with your drink, PeeDee3?”
“Nah, it’s fine,” I moaned, starting to not feel so well.
The human stirred his drink with a finger. “What’s Frass?” he asked, then sucked the finger clean.
My exoskeleton can’t shrug, but I would have if I could have. “You know, like excrement. Like the most wretched, disgusting, unwanted substance you can imagine.”
As he took a long sip his bushy eyebrows rose up with realization, “Oh, you mean walmartium.”
“I guess,” I said, fondling my glass with a claw.
“Go on PeeDee3, go on and drink it, you’ll feel better if you do,” a close voice squeaked.
I glanced in the mirror at the Tiny Purple Rickie sitting on my shoulder swinging his little feet. Another one, standing on the other shoulder, tugged at my ear-hole hair. “No! Don’t, you’re all ready too strunk.”
“Aww, leave him alone. The bug works hard and just wants to relax,” a Tiny Purple Rickie said as he swung back and forth from antenna to antenna.
I slammed a claw on the bar, setting the whole place rattling. “Shut up all of you before I lose my temper…or the contents of all three of my stomachs!” I shouted then belched.
A little self-conscious that I’d shouted at imaginary beings, I looked to my left, but the human appeared to be in a conversation with someone to his left, only no one was there. He saw me staring, hard to miss my complex eyes as they occupy the greatest portion of my head, and smiled at me with a hint of embarrassment.
I tipped my head back, unintentionally sending the Tiny Purple Rickie swinging from my antenna flying across the bar room with a little squeal. All his friends started laughing. “Little purple people?”
“No,” he said, looked into the mirror and attempted to straighten his tie. “Large, pink elephant.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, and then tipped his prominent, cleft chin toward my shoulder. “Really?”
I leaned the upper elbows on the bar. “Really.”
“Hey, aren’t you going to have that drink?” a little voice squeaked.
“Yeah, go on, drink it, you know you want to,” the little fella on my left shoulder said.
I looked down at the highly antiseptic beverage and ran my tongue over my mandibles. Bug, it did look good. I reached a claw up and flicked the little guy off. “I hate you frass’n bugs,” he squealed as he sailed across the room and ker-plopped into some dude’s ale. I stood up.
“Hey pal, you didn’t finish your drink,” the human said in a slur and pointed a finger in the wrong direction.
“It’s all yours, I’m gonna catch a nap.”
I stumbled my way out the door and heard sighs of relief as I left. Using four claws and both walls, I managed my way into the alley. I started kicking over trashcans, boxes, and other collected garbages. Having a love of filth they usually lurked around bars, filling stations, gift shops and porta-johns so I kept looking. I chased up a wear-cat and a little family of fieldmouseketeers who instantly broke into a musical rendition of, It’s a Really, Really, Phony Propagandist Universe After All. I spit and, with a flick of my handy pocket lighter, set the little singing rodents on fire. Kacekan spit is highly flammable and I hate musicals.
I kicked a sleeping weaselarian awake and sent it scrambling. Just as he stood I saw a little, furry guinea pig shaped rodent burst from under the weasel’s ratty mattress and scurry for the back of the alley.
I sprang into action as much as my strunken state would allow.
“Damn it!” I jumped for it as it raced up the back wall, but it was already out of reach. Frass’n naps are hard to catch and can stick to nearly anything.
I drew the Drilling, antique triple barrel rifle/shotgun, aimed as best as my blurry vision allowed, and pulled both shotgun triggers. No matter how strunk I was, the spread of the primitive weapon wouldn’t miss.
Sure enough the little nap let out a loud squeal and fell. I moved to catch it, but it dropped at my claw-feet. I snatched it up, holstered the shotgun, and, with it squealing and wiggling in my claw, tossed it in my mandibles. I chewed and swallowed, then leaned back against the brick wall and slid down to the ground. I just needed a minute.
Too bad I didn’t have one.
I heard a blaster hammer click into place, then smelled the release of ozone as the trigger was drawn back and the weapon fired. I rolled over and the blast caught me broad across the back. I felt my exoskeleton crack and smelled burning cotton and bug. I rolled over in the alley, trying to snuff the flames, but had lost total sense of up, down, left, right, and even zwerpt.
Smoldering, I toppled on my back and looked up into several dozen angry turtle faces, all brandishing fully charged proton blasters with multi-port nozzles. Ya know, I’d always wanted one of those.
I head one of them re-cock their weapon. “Oh you’re going down bug, going down hard.
I had to keep him talking, give the nap a chance. “Why?” I managed to spill out. I was strunk and reeling in pain. I let my head drop back against t
he paved ground and started drawing deep breaths.
“You damn well know why you...you filthy bug you!” he shouted. Bug, this guy was pissed and was doing his best to insult me. “And now you’re gonna die, wiggling on the ground like the pathetic insect that you are!”
“Wait,” I said, holding up a claw. I tried to stand, but my head swam and I collapsed back down. I was still hurting from the blast, but my vision had started to clear as I was seeing fewer and fewer turtles. I could feel the nap gurgling in my primary stomach.
“Ha!” he shouted and I heard him step closer. “Don’t even try to beg, because I know that my brother begged for his life right before you shot him with that bowling ball cannon of yours, I know because I was there.”
“I shook my head and felt my antennae swinging back and forth. “I’m not begging, I’m offering you a chance.” All the remaining turtle faces in front of me began to turn and swirl, then gathered together until they were just a pair of turtle heads, one sneering at me with hate burning eyes, the other limp, its tongue hanging out and flies buzzing all around. And it stank something terrible.
“You’re beyond pathetic, you know that? You, offering me a chance, when I have the business end of this blaster set to the side of your brainless skull! Don’t make me laugh because I’m in no mood to laugh!”
I didn’t have the energy to tell him that I didn’t have a skull.
Then it hit me, hey, I knew these guys, Timmy and Tommy, the two-headed turtle. I’d been hired by a family of dimensionally nomadic amphibinauts to hit Tommy Turtle, it seemed he’d eaten some of their tadpoles and they took it personally enough to hire me.
“Any last words before I do it, bug?” he growled in my ear-hole.
“Just one,” I said. I could feel the nap’s energies flowing through my veins. All at once the pain ceased, my head cleared, and I felt completely re-toxified. I grabbed the blaster out of his hand with my upper-right claw, leapt to my feet and drew my tuba-blaster, a red-herring grenade, and my trusty Oric, Whispersonic 3000 Bowling Ball Cannon and aimed them at his head—the one that was still alive.
“Ahhh!” he shouted in a high pitched squeal, and, raising his arms, ran out of the alley with his dead brother’s head bouncing against the back of his shell.
“Go on PeeDee3, shoot the little jerk, he shot you after all,” a little voice said from my shoulder.
“Nah,” I said holstering my weapons, including my new proton blaster with multi-port nozzles. “Don’t feel like it.”
Then a second little voice whispered in my other ear. “So why not get another drink then?’
“Now that sounds like a good idea, come on,” I said and, with the shreds of my burnt trench coat dangling from my scorched plating, took us all back inside Swalltikitiki’s Tiki Bar and recovery Spa.
So maybe I was still a little strunk, it didn’t stop me from chase’n that dirty turtle off screaming. When I sat down my drink was still waiting for me. I threw it down in