RE: [JMC_Blue_Dwarf] Dysart, Lester - \'Stop- or I\'ll Kung Fu you!!\'

<Snip>Dysart's holographic image began to flicker wildly. Held up by hisremaining arm, he felt his lungs burn while he gasped for air hedidn't need.Shakily he pulled himself back up, grabbing his lost arm, and then stumbled over to the slightly smoking man.His eyes zoomed into the small patient band around his wrist. "Lester 17.'Phelps'... JMC Technician 1st Class..." Then Lester's eyes snapped open.   <Up to you know Henry, where do we go from here?>
</snip>
Lester's eyes snapped open and he read the status report: neural injury repaired, power incompatibility absorbed. Standby.
Lester and Lester glared out of the same pair of eyes then both tried to speak at once.
 
"Gufrrnk men tat!" He paused, took a breath and tried again, "w-we've been shot! AGAIN! I can't believe it!" he paused and sighed, then carried on in a less whiny tone:  "Let me handle this."
 
"Of course," Lester replied to himself, "I'll j-just c-coordinate the nanites." Lester stopped, looking left and right then smiled at the injured Dysart.
"We're a fairly reasonable man," he said calmly, "so I am giving you to the count of three to give me a very good reason for shooting me in the head. If it's not an absolutely splendid reason then Lester and I will rewire your CPU so that your diagnostic resources attempt to calculate Pi to an infinite number of decimal places. You won't be able to stop it because it'll be your diagnostics doing the calcualting. Understand?" Lester looked seriously angry, as anyone shot in the head and electrocuted might, but it had been a funny sort of day already. Then his mouth, much to the annoyance of his eye said: "Actually, I'm not sure we can... Shut up!" Lester snapped at himself. Then he simply said: "one."
 
Dysart waved his severed limb, "would you believe my targetting system is a little off?"
 
"No. Two."
 
"All right, all right, I slipped. This is crap, this whole arrangement is smegging crap. I've been built on the cheap, I'm expendable. I'm bascially the bic razor of killer robots, OK? Happy now?"
 
Lester smirked, "happier than I was a second ago. Let us look at that arm." He reached out for it then prodded himself in the head, "oi, geek," he snapped. "What can you do with this?" Lester's eyes cast over the arm and then he said: "um, m-make an interesting bit of m-modern art? Are you trying to be funny? N-not anymore. Good. W-well I s-suppose I could bypass the linear actuator. Th-that would give a ch-chance for the automatic systems to start repairing." Having finished telling himself and Dysart what he could do, Lester looked up at Dysart as his holographic form tried to reassert itself. "Would you like us to do that?"
 
Dysart frowned, then shrugged, figuring he shot the guy and now he was offering to fix him, which, despite being out of his mind, made him a "Nice Guy". Or two nice guys.
 
"I need the neutron ram," Lester told himself, "is this it?" he asked in response, fishing a pen-like device out of his lab coat. "No, that's at positronic inductor. Well how am I supposed to know? Maybe it'll go quicker if I take over your hands. No way, get your own. But I just... Just what? How about I find a microwave and give my head a defrost? Sorry, ok, the neutron ram has a large bulbous end, in black, yes that's it."
 
It went on a while, Lester telling himself what to do and Dysart wondering why he had his arms and inner workings in the hands of a madman. While the connectors were re-knitting themselves, he told the Lesters how he came to be here. Well bits of it anyway, the classified stuff he left out.
 
"Funny," the one Dysart thought of as the "Smooth Lester" said, "I only came up here looking for a new suit. I figured Seymour Niples might have something halfway decent." Then the whiny Lester interrupted: "then the explosions happened and the decks came crashing down and then as we tried to get somewhere to hide..." Smooth Lester directed a glare at Dysart, "you shot us."
 
"Yeah, well I apologised for that," Dysart gave his arm an experimental move, "not bad, hey, that's slightly better than before."
"No-one had done a tertiary calibration of you endoskeletal motor actuators, it wouldn't take long to do a total calibration and diagnostic and then you might not shoot people accidentally," Whiny Lester said. "Later," his other self said firmly.
 
"Speaking of motor functions, that was some serious kung fu you pulled on me," Dysart stood up and helped Lesters to their communal feet.
 
"Yeah, not sure about that, just felt like the right thing to do at the time," Lester's gaze shifted to the non-descript middle-distance, "like a rehearsal for something..." He shook his head to clear it, "we've got angry bugs, captured Chryslers and I've got a figurative hole in my head. What do you say, Tin Man? Ready to risk life and limb to get a bit of peace and quiet?"
 
Dysart's hologrammatic eyes narrowed, "what do you have in mind?"
 
"And can I be excused?" Whiny Lester begged.
 
"No," Lester growled at himself, his face had hardened, becoming a solid, grim expression seemingly sculpted in marble. "We need to get to the Hymenoptera base-ship, that's where he'll have taken them all. Also, I seem to recall we need alcohol, lots of it. Come with me," he added to Dysart, in a way that brooked no discussion on the subject, "we're going shopping."
 
Two-hours of duct-crawling, climbing through wreckage and at one point, watching Lester kick a Hymenoptera creature in the head until it stopped moving, they were standing in the outdoor fun isle of ...
 
"Toys R Us?" Dysart turned on his heel, "the stop off at Parrots I can understand," he said hefting a bulging sack that clinked, "but why are we here?"
"Weapons," Lester said, ripping a box open. He raised a Super Soaker 9000, the deluxe model with laser sights, holographic HUD display and wind-speed/drift compensators. He tossed one to Dysart who then spotted the fluorescent yellow and green handles sticking out of his labcoat pockets and waistband. Lester began filling the tanks on every water-pistol with the Lambrusco, Cinzano and other remnant drinks that no-one had wanted from the bar. "I- I'm not sure of this," Lester quavered, "Oh what bloody now?" Lester retorted angrily, "c-can't we wait until it all b-blows over. M-maybe there's someone b-better qualified f-for this?" Lester considered this for a moment, hand on hip, the other hoisting a Super Soaker filled with Vodka onto his shoulder, "I honestly can't think of anyone better qualified than me. Sorry." Lester shrugged, but asked: "how do you know that?" Lester considere this: "I don't know." He strode past Dysart, out of the smashed toy store and began the hunt.
 
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