Honey, I'm Home!

This story has: cyberpunk worldbuilding, mind control, stepfordization, and trans orc girls. Hope y'all like these things as much as I do!

Anyways, enjoy the completed fic! Hope you dig it.

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"I'm beginning to think that we might have gotten in a bit over our head," Morsel whispered as the third Blackstar Security operator in as many minutes swept a gun past her hiding spot.

"This is your operation!" Vixen replied, stabbing a finger into the Goblin woman's digiplate vest. It was talking all the self control that the Orc had earned in a lifetime of 'running to keep from losing her cool. "You said it would be a tutorial level!"

The two were face to face out of necessity. Morsel's stealth field clung to her diminutive body and could only be extended by a few feet, so the pair had spent an awkward, frustrating amount of time staring at each other in very close confines. It might have been romantic had the circumstances been different, but a high risk tryst was just about the last thing on Vixen's mind. If she was going to do anything to the Goblin decker, it would be toss her from the nearest window.

"No risk, no reward," she rattled off. "Sure we might have tripped a few dozen more alarms than I had expected, but I don't see what you're complaining about. We got the package."

Vixen rolled her eyes. "That's not the point! Any boot can steal something. Getting away with it without getting your ID burned is what professionals do. Something we," she pointed back and forth between the pair of them, "Should be doing."

The footfalls grew louder, and Vixen fell silent. With it being the only audible noise, each slam of heavy boot on the cracked linoleum floor sounded like the death knell for them both. A casual eye would see them for what they wanted to be seen as: hard customers in red and gunmetal armour, the five-pointed star of their namesake emblazoned on their shoulders and chests, places where the plates were thickest. If you'd served, like Vixen had, you could see them for what they were: rentacops.

Rentacops with a ludicrous budget for firearms, however.

Hushed voices, followed by more footsteps. With a sense of visceral relief for the pair, the steps were heading away from them. The Blackstar boys had found a lead, or another one of Morsel's decoys, and were out of their hair. At least for the moment.

Vixen took the opportunity to stand up and stretch. At 6'3, she was almost double the height of her Goblin companion. Crouching down behind the service counter to be within her stealth field left her back and knees sore. She was pushing 100 after all, though she didn't look a day over 25 in human terms. Perhaps she was getting too old for this stuff.

"Okay," Morsel began, "So I know that there've been some hiccups along the way. But-"

The glare Vixen shot her could melt tungsten. "The moment we fence this thing, we are never working again. I can't believe I went in for this in the first place. You are the worst thief I've ever worked with."

Morsel frowned, actually looking hurt by the statement. "Alright, alright, I get it. But, keep in mind, we stole this." She pushed at a little button at the nape of her neck, and withdrew a slim wafer from her internal rig. It gleamed with a chromey-blue colour, the fractal veins of quantum circuitry pulsing with stored battery energy. "You know how much this'll go for? Chameleon Chips are rarer than diamonds! Once you load this in, any hacker worth their motherboard can blend seamlessly into any system. Corpo, mil, doesn't matter. ICE can't touch you, and other hackers'll slide by like you're a basic batch file. It's the find of a century!"

"And now we have to keep it. Won't matter how much it's worth if we get ventilated before we can fence it. C'mon." Vixen led the way out of the ruined storefront and back onto the street. It was almost always dusk in the Dayshen, the ground level slums far from the sunlight globes one got to see if you lived on the high rises closer to the skybox. Neon signs and flickering street lamps burned in perpetuity, some dating back to when Unity had been a nice city. A prosperous town built out of the hopes and dreams of two congloms finally working together instead of blowing up each other's tunnels. Not a rat's nest it was now

Beneath the wealthy olegs, beneath the civil servants, beneath even the wage slaves, the dregs of newmanity lived, worked, and tried to stay alive. Being down here reminded Vixen that she hadn't risen that far at all. Hopefully, this score would be a part of her ticket up. Maybe high enough so that she didn't have to smell the garbage.

They took the less traveled alleys, the ones you'd half expect to see chalk outlines of bodies like a pre-Sunfall detective story. More than once they had to cower in among the detritus or against a doorway to let a searching drone pass by, its spotlights stabbing into the near pitch dark like a hunter's spear. Once in a while they'd slide up against a shambler or some poor homeless fucker. Like the eye of a jealous god, the light would lock on while its origin point ran through a battery of sensory tests. Then, inevitably, it would move on, its subject spared a shot from a taser baton round or a blast of flechettes.

They rounded a corner, coming back onto one of the major thoroughfares in this part of town: Garnet Street. The place to come if you wanted to blow a week's wage in a night. Bars, chiplines, portholes, holosuites, grindhouses, even honest to goodness brothels lined the road. Some joker had actually set the lights in this part of town to a dim reddish hue. Importantly, there was plenty of foot traffic. Between the drunken patrons stumbling between establishments and the sex workers on e-cig breaks, they shouldn't have a problem getting lost. The only problem was-

"Looks like we gotta ditch the equipment," Morsel whispered.

Vixen wanted to argue, but the little Goblin had a point. There were people wearing all kinds of outfits on display, but none were exactly equipped for combat. With their tac gear, they stuck out like a sore thumb. To blend in, they'd need something a little less threatening and a lot less tasteful. She snapped her fingers, pointing across the street to a storefront with a flickering overhang. The embossed words read "Nocturnal Technicians", while a neon outline of a scantily clad bot let them both know just what kind of operation it was.

"We go in there. Grindhouses have all kinds of outfits for their bots, right? Bound to be something at least mildly inoffensive."

Morsel snorted. "Yeah, like a secretary! Or a maid, a teacher, a clumsy nurse..."

"Not a fan of it either. At the very least, it gets us off the street."

Getting in was easy enough. There was a troll at the front door with his head buried in a tabscreen who gave them a cocked eye. A few creds his way and he let them through with a weary "stay out of trouble or I'll haul your asses out myself." They both nodded and hustled on through the entrance, barely missing an inquisitive drone's searchlight.

The inside looked like the lobby of a dingy 2D theatre if you squinted. At the back was a bored looking Elf teller at a sales desk. The screens above her head displayed a rotating assortment of images pulled from some purely fantasies. Cheerleaders, superheroes, wealthy businesspeople, anyone you'd ever want to plow or get plowed by, it was all on offer. Either side of the lobby led to wings of doors with coded locks, each nondescript. The only indication as to just what lay behind each was a ticker screen above the door. Some were pretty obvious, others frustratingly vague. "Pleasure Palace" was pretty descriptive, but just what the hell was "Best Day Ever?"

As Morsel checked for the least offensive option, Vixen's ears caught a voice.

"Hey, buddy," the bouncer at the front said, "We don't do combat shit. You want bloodsports, the Colosseum is down the road."

A snide, nasally voice replied. "We're not here for recreation. We're looking for two women-"

Vixen grabbed her Goblin companion and yanked her down the hallway to the right. She was practically carrying the short woman, much to her chagrin.

"Hey! You know I hate being carried!"

"Sorry, no time. New plan: hiding! Can you get one of these doors open?"

Morsel wiggled out of her grasp. "Only if you set me down first!"

Vixen did so, setting her down. The Goblin pulled out slicing gear from a pouch, plugged one end into the rig port in her neck. The other went into the access port next to the nearest door. Morsel looked up at the screen listing the name for this room, rolled her eyes, and got to hacking. The argument at the lobby door grew heated, and Vixen got fidgety.

"Hurry the fuck up..." she muttered, hand falling to her pistol. It wouldn't stop mercs in heavy body armour, but it might slow her down. No way she was getting sent to corpo jail. No way, no how.

A click. The door in front of them released. Morsel withdrew the cable and motioned for her companion to follow. Vixen took a moment to look back up at the room's title.

"'Home Sweet Home,'" she read aloud. "How messed up could it be?"

***

The door opened onto a monochromatic kitchen. The grey-scale colours made it seem like the projection was malfunctioning, but looking down on her hands, Vixen realized the holos were projecting the same lack of colour onto her own features.

"What the hell?" she asked, turning her hand over and seeing her skin rendered in a dull grey. Footsteps made her pull her gun from its holster and bring it on line with the source of the noise. A brunette woman in a polka-dot dress walked into the room, apron around her waist and with her hands in oven mitts. She smiled an impossibly white smile.

"Goodness me, honeys, I didn't expect you home so early!" she said sweetly. She pulled the mitts off one by one, revealing immaculate nails. "How was your day?"

Vixen turned to Morsel, her eyebrow quirked. "Honeys?"

"It must be programmed for the option for multiple partners. Hmm...I'll deactivate her and give us some room." She squinted at the wall next to the doorway they entered through, her AR implants seeing through the illusion enough to find the access port on this side. She plugged in and sent the housewife back into the other room, humming a pleasant tune.

"What now?"

"We hide, I guess...wait..." Morsel held up a finger. Her eyes focused on some point a thousand miles away. After a long, held breath, she snapped back into focus. "Fuck."

"Fuck?"

"Yes, fuck. They're running a deep scan. They'll find us in the system as interlopers and...and..."

Vixen exhaled. "Fuck."

"Exactly."

The Orc sat herself on the kitchen counter. She checked the mag in her pistol. 14 bullets. Wouldn't be enough...

"Well, I'd say it was a pleasure working with you, but that'd be a lie. Still, you're a good hacker, Morsel. Shame to see you get the slammer."

The hacker opened her mouth, then closed it. Vixen caught her unsure expression, motioning for her to spit it out.

"There...might be a way to hide." She pulled the Chameleon Chip from her neck port. "The system scan's gonna pick us up as interlopers. Using this, one of us can use this to hide from the scan, but the other is going to need a chip from within the system. Something that'll let them blend in..." Morsel's eyes drifted over to the humming domestic in the other room.

Vixen laughed. First a gentle chuckle, then a hysterical peel. By the time she realized that Morsel wasn't kidding, there were tears in her eyes and she had buckled over. "You gotta be fuckin' joking me. I'm not plugging some fetish computer into my brain!"

Morsel shook her head like an exasperated teacher. "It's perfectly safe!"

"Well if it's perfectly safe," Vixen said, her laughter fading, "You do it! This is your dumb plan."

Morsel tapped her chest. "Unless you know how to integrate bleeding edge tech into your rig with on the fly mental adjustments, you're shit out of luck."

"Mental adjustments?"

"To manage the CPU load. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

"I think you're full of shit."

Morsel stormed into the kitchen in a huff. She led the bot away to a closet, asked her to kneel, then poked at her neck.

"Shutting down, sweetie!" the bot said, followed by a clicking noise. She pulled her hand back and withdrew another chip, similar in shape to the Chameleon but a sickening pastel pink colour.

"Look. We either hide here, or we get captured. I've offered a solution. Now, as far as I know, you should suffer no ill effects. We just need enough familiar programming to trick the building's systems into thinking you're Mrs. Johnson over there."

Vixen stared at the chip in the Goblin's hand like it was a poisoned chalice. "And if someone comes in wanting to test the merchandise?"

Morsel puffed up her cheeks. "Whelp, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

A desperate last stand with her holdout pistol didn't sound too terrible at the moment. But if this meant that they had a chance to ride out this manhunt, they had to chance it, right?

***

Crane entered the grindhouse holosuite with the same enthusiasm as the last sixteen he'd entered. A low level projected glamour rendered him in black and white. Great, not only was he treading through someone's wank fantasy but they had to have been a century old. He brought up the customer settings to turn it off, but stopped when that window opened in his AR contact lens.

"'Honey I'm Home' is a nostalgic and tantalizing rendering of one of the pre-Sunfall periods of Normerican media. The partner available, designated Honey, is a docile and obedient servant yet always ready for action! Use the special command word 'Sweetheart' to activate the obedience program."

More puerile nonsense...but not unappealing. His boss might have his ass for delaying slightly, but he was already hours deep into a search for two people he doubted were dumb enough to stick around. He could say he got detained. Yeah. There were some other criminals hiding and they led him down a false trail. Only needed to be for a couple minutes, just needed to lose some tension.

With a smirk, he hollered out: "Honey, I'm home!" and waited to see what would happen.

***

"What the fuck do we do now?!" Vixen hissed.

"Well? You know! Go out there and pretend to be her!" Morsel replied, jerking her head toward the deactivated bot in the closet with them.

"No! Fuck that, you do it."

"You know many 3 foot tall sexbots?" Before the Orc could reply, she held up a hand. "Okay fair. But I need to keep my eye on the Chameleon Chip. And besides, you're closest to a human in size. It'd look weird if I came out as the default housefrau, y'know?"

"And I wouldn't?" Vixen asked, pointing to her face. Although the black and white filter concealed her light green skin, the fanged mouth and pointed ears meant her newmanity would be hard to overlook.

" I can get the holos to cast a partial glamour to make you look all human-y. But hurry up, he's getting suspicious!" Morsel practically pushed out her teammate, but then halted. She looked down at the depowered domestic droid. "Wait, fuck, I almost forgot!"

***

He was just about to put in a query request when the denizen of this particular fantasy world emerged from around the corner. She was pretty tall for a woman, easily 6 feet tall, but that put her about an inch underneath Crane. She wore a simple knee-length dress, one he hadn't seen outside of a history book. And though this era was renowned for its repression, he couldn't help feel a small part of him liberated by the sight of this gorgeous woman wearing such a cute little number.

"H-hello, honey dearest," the bot said in halting, nervous tones. That made him raise an eyebrow. Pretty advanced programming for a simple loadbot, he mused. Almost sounded like actual nerves. But why would this program code that in?"

He performed a full scan of her, bringing up several off-the-shelf options and a military grade analysis engine to do it with. The civilian ones all pegged her as the bot in question, but the mil-grade software picked at some frayed edges around the identity. It looked like someone had done a quick hack job of something and sanded off the rough edges.

He approached, eyes roaming around the "wife". Her dress, though certainly flattering, didn't quite fit her height. She was barefoot, not unexpected given the scenario, but she had outlines of impressions that made it look like she had been wearing tight boots. But with the readout of a standard grindhouse sexbot coming in, it could only mean that she had some kind of chip that bounced that back toward him. But if she hadn't firewalled herself correctly...

"I'm looking for two women. One of them a Goblin hacker who goes by Morsel, and another woman," he let the words hang in the air as he watched for a reaction, "Who goes by Vixen. An Orc mercenary. Seen them, by any chance?"

She shook her head. "Nope! I only have eyes for you, dear."

Crane brought up the list of commands again. "Are you sure about that...sweetheart?"

The woman posing as a bot squealed, her muscles locking up. Her eyes, large as dinner plates, flashed and turned a warm pink colour. She jammed them shut, but the tension gradually melted from her body. When she opened her eyes again, they were joined with a placid, authentic grin.

"Oh hello there, honey! Do you have time for some pie?" she asked.

He laughed. Maybe later. But first, I need your help dear. Do you know where I could find another person in this house...say, a Goblin about yea high?" He held a hand parallel to the floor at his waist.

She smiled blandly. "Of course! She's right back there, in the closet."

Muffled cursing ensued. Before Crane could fetch her, however, the other fugitive dived out of the closet and held up a taser knife. She was indeed a Goblin, with the pointed ears and diminutive stature of the species. Her face was freckled and cherubic, giving her a 'girl next door' quality that was strangely appealing. Even with all her tactical gear, he could see her prominent curves. In terms of shape, she resembled some ancient fetility fetish, and his mind started to wander onto just what he could make her do.

"You let us go, rentacop, or it's null signal for you!"

He smirked. "Nice to finally meet the both of you." So if she was here, her rig was somewhere within the system hiding itself. Some kind of advanced stealth tech? Didn't matter. Now that he knew what to look for, it was only a matter of time before he uncovered her. He decided to stall for it.

"So you're the two everyone's looking for. I expected you to be harder to find."

Her scowl, already impressive, somehow grew tighter. "And I expect nothing more from someone working for the olegs. What, did they promise you a tasty new bone for tracking us down?"

"Cute. I have to say your partner is much more agreeable." He turned to the woman in the housewife getup. "Tell me dear, what's your name?"

"Well, my runner name is Vixen, but you can call me Honey if you want! My real name is-"

Crane held up a hand. "Better stop you there, I don't need to know. What I do need is that chip I'm supposed to be getting back for my employers. Don't wanna know what's on it, don't really care. Give it to me and I say you got lost to the wind."

"Not gonna happen. We busted our asses to get this out, and we'll be damned if we're just gonna hand it over. Hold on Vix, I'll get us out of this!"

He could feel her trying to push into her compatriot's programming, questing digital fingers trying to pull out the digital spell she'd been put under. But as she did, Crane could source where her signals were coming from. Active probes were creating holes in the advanced chip's stealth tech. And if she was tethered to Vixen, that meant that he could send the same sexbot counterprogramming over to her rig.