Droid Hunter - Part 1

[ButchyBoy]

This opening chapter and the one to follow is as much Taryn's as it mine. Enjoy!

So this is what true love is all about," Cricket Lang thought as she moved through the crowd at the Old Chicago Marketplace. "Not making up crazy ways to save your husband from certain death by GlobalCon, or vice versa, but simple little things that I can do that can make him smile. Like making dinner for him tonight!" she said to herself with a bright smile on her face.

Others there who paid attention to notice, saw simply a lithe girl, obviously around nineteen-or-twenty-years-old but rather short and with the body of a gymnast, dressed in a rather cute-looking pair of overalls and a frilly white t-shirt, with her blond hair tied up in two tight pigtails, winding through the throng of people that milled about the open farm stand. It was one of the few left on the continent, let alone the world, and Cricket only wanted the best for her husband, Harry, with whom she ran an increasingly more renowned detective agency. Technically, she was superior to Harry in almost every way, but it was doing small things like this, cooking a nice, fresh dinner tonight to surprise him after he came home from doing the boring day-to-day work of the agency, that brought the brightest smile to her youthful face.

Cricket hadn't always been so lucky. She'd been as close to death as a robot can be when Harry had found her, fought off her attackers and brought her back to his home and repaired her. And Harry treated her just like any other human girl, with the added benefits of marriage, of course, and that suited Cricket just fine. She thought back to that first meeting with Harry, her barely hanging on to life. Her head drooped for a moment before she rose again with a resilient smile. "No need to dwell on that painful memory; just look at all the good it’s brought you," Cricket said out loud to no one in particular.

Soon enough, her thoughts changed to happier things; the look on Harry's face when she presented him with the meal she'd be cooking; the enjoyment they'd have eating it together; and, maybe, some enjoyment they'd have together afterwards, too!

She rode the elevator up to the top floor to their apartment, a bag of groceries under each arm, large grin firmly planted on her face. And that grin didn't even falter when she noticed that the door to the apartment was ajar. It didn't even falter when she entered and realized the apartment had been broken into; it wasn't uncommon to have an occasional robbery outside the domes. Her grin quickly faded, though, when she realized that the apartment was completely ransacked. Furniture was thrown everywhere, pictures knocked down from the walls and broken glass underfoot, both from the pictures and the busted computer screen. It looked like the kitchen cabinets had been emptied of all their contents and they'd been used to implement even more damage. And yet, nothing had been stolen. She called out Harry’s name more than once, hoping he might be able to explain this. It was then she saw the envelope.


It was large, rather plain looking, with the name “Mrs. Lang” scrawled across, in large, rather sloppy handwritten letters. It was taped to the video flat screen, strangely enough, one of the few things not damaged in the apartment. Cricket opened it rather carefully, not knowing what to expect. Cricket gasped her hand to her mouth in shock when she saw what was inside. It was a picture of Harry, and he looked very badly beaten. Touching the back of the picture had triggered some sort of voice card, embedded within. The voice was male and very sinister in nature. “Save him……if you can!” the voice said. Also in the envelope was a DVD simply labeled, “PLAY ME”

Acting more on instinct than anything else, she popped it into the player underneath the set. It was now clear to Cricket why the TV screen hadn’t been damaged, but what was this all about. She would soon have her answer on that screen. It came in the form of a slick looking, rather handsome man with jet black hair. He was dressed in a blue powdered tux, holding a lit cigar. His voice matched the one heard on the picture of Harry.

"Well, hello there, Mrs. Harry Lang! Now maybe you recognize me, and maybe you don’t. Either way it doesn’t matter, so let me introduce myself. My name is “Sparkling” Stan Sterling, and I host a little TV show you may have heard of, called "Droid Hunter". And, you know what? It's sweeps week! We need a draw to get viewers, so I want *you* to appear on my show! I've heard quite a bit about you, and would love to see how you'd fare against Hugo, our Droid Hunter!"

"I'll never appear on your show, you half-wit! What have you done with..." Cricket stopped herself when Sterling’s voice interrupted, and she realized she was shouting at a pre-recorded message. What the robot girl saw next caused her to slowly back away from the TV numbly, falling into what seemed the only unbroken chair in the apartment, placed squarely in front of the TV.

"Now, just in case you answer is no," came Sterling's voice off-screen, “I’ve taken out some, well, insurance on my investment of you appearing. As you can see, here is your precious husband. He put up quite a fight, and I’m afraid my boys were more than a little rough bringing him here. Nothing life-threatening, you realize, but I'm betting he's in quite a bit of pain..." The image on-screen was like a larger-than-life version of the picture Cricket had in her hands, only worse. This Harry was moving around, occasionally calling out her name with intermittent moans of pain mixed in.

The camera panned back to Sterling. "If you want to see your beloved Harry alive again, you'll come to our studios here in Omega City, tomorrow at nine am sharp, after a full night's charge, prepared to play our game. If you win, both Harry and you go free. If you lose...well, it's your loss! But I give you my word of honor as a television host I'll still set Harry free. Is that a deal? It better be, or you'll see Harry in much worse condition, up close and personal." His voice took on a more sinister tone at the ending, “And don’t even think about trying to sneak in making some sort of rescue attempt, because the micro-second you’re detected…..detective, you can kiss Harry bye-bye.” Sterling took a big puff on his cigar. “You have a nice night now. Sweet dreams sweetheart.” The image blinked off, replaced with text directions to the GTV Studios where she was to report. As soon as she instinctively memorized the directions, it seemed the DVD player had a small malfunction; it exploded in a small puff of smoke as the disc self-destructed. Cricket didn't even notice.

She stared straight ahead at the screen, her eyes boring a hole through it. Feelings and emotions she'd never really felt suddenly came surging through her, but her body showed no outward signs of this. Her head jerked a few times to the right as she mumbled over and over to herself, "This can't be happening...this can't be happening..." As she repeated her mantra, her hands gripped the chair tighter and tighter, and her legs wrapped around the chair tighter and tighter, and soon the chair started to splinter and fall apart. She got up with a start and flung what was left of the chair at the TV and it shattered in a sea of sparks. "No one messes with me *or* my husband. Let's see how sparkling this Stan Sterling is when *I'm* done with him" she said, with an ominous tone in her voice.

She quickly composed herself, and found her personal headset, and dialed for Dr. Betty Stevens, her close friend.

“Betty, it’s Cricket. Can you get over here right away? I’m…..I’m going to need some things.”


Next: Off To Beat The Wizard

[DollSpace]

Mmm..nice beginning ^_^ I look forward to reading more of this story

Rynnie