Hank would like to argue that he was a person of logic.
Feeling bad? Head to Jimmy's bar. His robopartner was working overtime? Head to Jimmy's bar. A bloody apocalypse was scheduled for tomorrow? He'd bet his ass he'd be heading to Jimmy's bar.
After all, he wouldn't end up at the top of his class if he lacked in the deduction department. He's so good at this. He could convince a glass of beer to agree with anything that came out of his mouth.
"If fuckin' android's really a 'buddy I could drink with'…" Hank began to reason with the glass of alcohol in his hand. "…Then he'd be sitting right here. Beside me." He made the glass nod like an understanding friend before tipping it over his lips.
Cheers to his infallible argument.
"Hello, Lieutenant. I see that you've relapsed after weeks of abstinence from liquor," greeted the annoying voice from Cyberlife.
Apparently—Hank thought as he flinched and choked—he could now summon Connor at will. He must secretly be an android. Able to wordlessly communicate his deepest desires for companionship and all that shit. Not that he'd ever admit it out loud.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," Connor apologized, hand reaching out as if to steady him.
Months ago, Hank would've chalked this level of concern as part of some kind of brown-nosing program coded into the guy. Turned out that the RK800 had always just been sincerely remorseful when he felt that he was in the wrong. Hank had caught Connor apologizing for getting in the way of a suspect's roomba of all things.
"S'fine, s'fine, just…order something. Beer, whiskey, blood. I don't know. Something you could lick? Just…please…not in front of me. My treat."
Connor retracted his limb and gingerly put it onto his lap. The portrait of a well-behaved schoolboy. "Captain Fowler assigned us a new case. He was insistent that we solve it together and I quote, 'Kidnap Anderson. Tie him up if you have to! You've gotta solve this asap, you hear me?!'"
If Connor weren't solving cases, he'd fit right in as a messenger parrot. The last part was even delivered in Hank's colleague's voice. Wonders of technology.
Hank scowled at him after hearing the unfortunate news. "Oh Connor, you're not m'fave android anymore. I'll be filling the hole you left behind with my vacuum at home. Least that could suck up spilled beer from the floor, fuckin' android.
Connor sighed and tried to bribe Hank. With a drink. Again. Like that'd work the second time around.
"You're always saying tha' stuff's bad for my liver, you hypocrite." He ignored his partner's puppy-dog eyes. They were unquestionably adorable, yes. But Hank had a personal mission. "Cyberlife designed you to be the 'ideal partner.' And you've implied while we were on that bridge that you could drink. Drink it yourself and I'll count this as a session."
The android had the audacity to sigh again. Deviants should really be banned from showing such dismay. Fuck android rights.
Connor downed the entire thing in one gulp and appeared disgustingly not drunk.
"Atta boy," praised Hank, because he's not a heartless person who deprives puppies of their well-earned reward.
Connor leveled a sad look at him and declared, "This is android abuse."
"Everything I make you do is android abuse to you, Connor."
.
.
"Connor."
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"There are two girls making out at the back of my car."
"Yes."
"Tell me. Why are there two girls making out at the back of my car, Connor?"
"Because they're in love, Hank."
"No, try again. They're making out…at the back. Of my car. Because…?"
"Because…they're in love…Hank?"
Hank reminded himself that he was a professional. Hank did not contemplate the benefits of strangling a certain someone's neck.
Hank knocked on the car window instead, intent on telling the girls to buzz off and get a room. All he received was a matching pair of middle fingers when he got them to notice him. Unbelievable.
"Those two androids from the Eden Club?" He whipped his head to gap at his android partner. "Why are they here?"
Connor blinked innocently. "We need them."
Hank reeled back, horrified. Jeff's instructions suddenly making a lot of sense. "Jesus Christ, Connor. Do I even wanna fucking know what this case is about?"
"…I'll explain inside." The corners of the little bastard's mouth twitched. Hank sighed. Android thought the situation funny. From whom did he even get his sense of humor?
"Blair and Traci, you might remember Lieutenant Anderson," Connor introduced as soon as Hank had begun sulking in his seat.
He turned to acknowledge them with a nod, noting how they'd manage to get rid of their Eden Club 'uniforms' and replaced them with Halloween-themed sweaters instead. They'd even got combat boots with skulls on them and everything. "Right. Which one's Blair?"
In response, the short-haired Traci pecked the blue-haired one on the cheek.
"Ah," he said, recognizing Blair as the one who had tackled and nearly whooped his old ass back then. Good times. "Nice to see you again, I guess. Least we're not arresting you this time."
"Thankfully not," Connor said, starting the car and pulling away. Thankfully, I did not kill them, Hank decoded the subtext. "They volunteered to go undercover with us into an android-fighting arena. The details on its existence and nature we have managed to retrieve from battered androids that were able to escape and crawl all the way to the police station just this late afternoon."
"Jesus Christ." Hank was seized with the urge to backslap that dead look off his partner's face.
"Unfortunately, there seemed to be a program installed into them that erases the exact location of the arena, along with other potentially helpful information. Like whom are the people involved."
"…Of course."
"But I managed to narrow down the possible bases of operation through their remaining memories. The Eden Club we had investigated happened to be included within the radius I've set."
Ah, impressive as usual. Pulling something out of almost nothing. Hank recalculated his possible retirement day to an earlier date before going back to the task at hand. "I see. Then you remembered how the pair of androids who weren't mainly programmed for fighting nearly overpowered us. While they were wearing heels."
"Precisely," Connor confirmed. "It appears that the club operator had regularly sneaked Ms. Traci out to enter her into android fights for extra money. That place was also where she first became deviant."
"Club operator thought I looked 'fierce' enough for battle." Traci sneered, speaking for the first time. "The escapades only stopped when I put myself in a situation where I came close to damaging my neck."
Her girlfriend groaned. "I wish you wouldn't retell it so lightly, my love."
"Fucker had it coming. Nearly gave him heart attack with the threat of damaged equipment," Traci said bitterly. "'Course, I had returning in mind. I won't leave you alone."
Blair reached and carded her fingers through Traci's hair. Evidently, they had entered their happy place, so Hank respectfully threw his gaze back to Connor instead.
"I would like to add that there are pieces that fit together like a puzzle and there are some that don't," Connor said, still in briefing mode. "There are images of streets in the memories that doesn't seem to be in Detroit."
"Fuck. Of course, there's more than one arena." The entire thing was a business. Figures. Capitalism. Evil. Blah blah blah…Hank had heard it all before. "I was wondering why we're undercover. We're gonna hunt for the big boss! And what could possibly be my role here?"
"You'll be acting as the human who owns these 'non-deviant' android fighters."
"Ah splendid." Hank nodded his approval. "I've always wanted to act as the human."
"The captain has assigned 'Hank Hardwood' as your undercover name. Your backstory is that you have bought too many androids after losing your entire family to the 2030 International Crisis, and thus you've subsequently continued collecting unique androids to fill the void in your heart."
"Jeffrey's imagination is one fucked up piñata."
Without warning, Blair's bright blue head butted in the space between them. "Um, hey, sorry to interrupt this but, Connor, may I inquire as to how quick this mission is going to be? Traci and I need to be back before Terry's bedtime."
Hank raised an eyebrow at her. "Who's Terry?"
Traci squeezed her face in, smiling wide. "Our son!"
And just like that, the whole car was suddenly flooded with pictures featuring a black android boy. Hank grabbed one where Terry was using the biceps of his mothers as his own personal gym bars.
"Isn't our son adorable?" Traci squealed. As in…actually squealed.
"I know, my love." Blair smooched her on the cheek and then shoved another stack at Hank. The first picture was of Terry sleeping, and the one behind that was another picture of Terry sleeping. The third's same, fourth's same, fifth, sixth…
"We found him after the battle of Detroit," Traci relayed. "We took care of the human bullies harassing him. But he hid himself and we finally found him sobbing in the trash can."
"Still a smart kid to have survived that long," Hank complimented, knowing that how difficult it was at that time for androids to hide and escape from the nationwide collection and disposal of their kind.
Blair had then directed her girlfriend's attention to yet another picture, so Hank leaned his head near Connor's.
"You're scowling, Lieutenant," Connor whispered before Hank could say anything. "That is even worse than your usual frown."
"They have an adopted son, Connor." He checked the mirror to see if the couple had noticed them and saw that they were now busy cooing at the pictures. "They may have volunteered for this droid fight but we can't let anythin' happen to them, alright?"
"Don't worry. You're only to enter them into tag team battles where knockouts are prohibited and the winning team is decided upon by the judges using set criteria. I'll try to complete my information gathering as fast as I can so as to limit the number of battles they would need to compete in."
"Great."
With that out of the way, Hank prepared himself to endure more of those cutesy noises that the androids behind them were making. It would've been fine. Except the cooing became unbearable when Connor got ahold of one picture.
"Connor, the traffic light's gone green twenty seconds ago."
"But look at him learning how to bike, Lieutenant!"
Alcohol, face battles, and—oh God—the cooing. Hank could say with absolute conviction that this was a wonderful start to their mission.
.
.
"What's the password?!" demanded a nasally voice from the other side of the underground entrance, which was hidden at the back of a second-hand suit store in an unpopular mall. Connor had reported to him that there was actually more than one entrance, and all the stores in the mall were all just a front. In the middle of the building was the nesting place of the arena.
"I definitely know the password," was Hank's response to the doorman and he was definitely not stalling at all. He crossed his fingers, hoping that Traci had lied about the arena's password-of-the-week. "It's the starting lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody."
"Yeah?" continued the nasally voice. "Well? Sing it. Punk."
His android partner coolly cleared his throat, which was how Hank knew that Connor was trying very hard not to burst out laughing.
Hank raised his middle finger and held it in front of Connor's impassive face as he chanted, "Is this the real life? Is this just fan-ta-sy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from re-a-li-ty."
"That sounded more like a robot singing, man," said Nasal, which was what Hank was gonna call the doorman from now on if the guy was gonna insist on keeping the stick shoved up his ass shoved in. "Come on! I need some amusement!"
Hank was about ready to punch his way in (he's an old man who runs out of patience quick, surely he'd be given a pass?) when Connor opened his damn mouth and started to fucking sing using Hank's fucking voice.
He couldn't decide which was more hurtful: the fact that Connor sang it pitch perfect using his voice, or that an android sang more like a human than him.
"Alright, I got us in," Hank asserted pointedly as they entered through the sliding metal doors. With open arms, he addressed Nasal (a short guy with long hair and smoker's breath). "Where do I enter my rare and highly-prized androids so that they could be smashed to pieces?"
Yeah, that collector cover story Jeffrey had suggested to Connor contained some loopholes. But Hank was having too much fun these days. Having a spry but emotionally naïve deviant partner around was doing wonders for his health. The healthy lifestyle said deviant imposed on him had nothing to do with it at all. Nope.
Nasal locked the door and measured him with his shifty eyes. He glanced at Traci and Blair, glanced at Connor, then back at Hank. "Who told you about this place, old punk?"
"The Devon Bros. You might know how they are." Hank knew dogshits about any Devon. But if Traci told him to say that name, then who was he to argue?
"Urgh. The Devons." Nasal wrinkled his nose. "It's a miracle we haven't been arrested yet. Always yapping about this place to people they meet at sex clubs."
Hank suffered another sizing up from the man before the topic of conversation turned to the androids. "Where're the girls' LEDs? They deviants? Because we can't have deviants, man."
"It makes the illusion that they're human believable." Hank gave the guy a wink after suppressing a shudder at what he just said.
Nasal made another disgusted face. "Dirty old man. And what about the male? Why's he got his still?"
They were saved from more questions when someone knocked on the doors again.
"Right," the guy said finally. "Go on straight then left and you'll enter a huge room. We call that the Labyrinth. You'll be checked for any possible affiliations. Your fighters will be registered and uploaded with our fighting program in case none of them are fighters yet. More will be explained there yada yada, shoo."
Hank ushered his companions to their destination. "Sorry about that," he apologized to the couple. "It might've made you feel uncomfortable."
And then in no time, they were there. Stepping into the capacious mouth of hell itself. Flickering yellowish lights punctured the dimly lit space before them. The gasoline smell of blue blood in the cold air.
Cages crowded with collared androids lined the walls on all sides. People were huddled around large lexan enclosures equally distanced from the middle, passing money around, cheering for those they betted on. From the center of the dome-shaped iron ceiling hung four large screens featuring four of the eight matches going on at once: a black male thrashing around another black male, a brown female slicing the head off of her Japanese-looking male challenger using the chainsaw attached to her arm, a white male delivering a spinning kick to the wide nose of a dark-skinned android, and two female children (with an Afro and a bald head respectively) swatting at each other with sticks.
"Connor, Traci, Blair," said Hank, who wasn't impressed at all with the match-ups and with some of his fellow countrymen by extension. Rallies calling for the prohibition of producing androids of color came to mind. "We're gonna bring this place down. Hank Hardwood is in the house."
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