Once the secret base was rigged to blow, I found myself with not a whole lot to do. I tasked Juny with scanning the city for additional tunnels and headed back to the base to remove my armor. Deciding I was in a social mood, I headed down to the lounge on the rapid response team floor; specifically, the lounge dedicated to Alana’s squad, whom I’d been getting to know the most. No one was there when I arrived, but there were some gaming consoles set up, so I opted to play some games while I waited for someone else to show up.
I’d considered checking up on my mom, but she somehow had a date with Haverson already.
“How’d you do it!?” someone shouted around thirty minutes later, startling me so bad I nearly threw my controller. I was starting to think Alana had the right idea in putting her sensors inside her body instead of a suit. Turning, I found Jamal behind me, an excited look on his face.
“…do what?” I inquired, confused as to what he meant. I’d done enough things recently that it was hard to guess what he was referring to.
“C’mon, man! The armor! How’d you convince the LT to issue Halo-themed armor?” elaborated the sharpshooter. That made things click; I remembered his reaction to my own armor pretty well.
“I didn’t. I just asked to design the equipment and she didn’t ask any questions,” I replied with a shrug. “Don’t mention it to her- I want to see how long it takes her to notice all of our equipment is giving a huge middle finger to copyright laws.”
“Damn! You’re way braver than me. Just thinking about what she’d do to me if I pulled a prank like that is terrifying,” Jamal said as he circled the couch I was sitting on, plopping down on a nearby chair.
“Honestly, I don’t think she’ll care that much. She might even just be humoring me because there’s not a whole lot else I can do around here,” I responded with a shrug. In theory I supposed I could learn those sorts of administrative duties, but it takes longer to make an officer than it does to make a rifleman- and that wasn’t even factoring in the fact I’d need to know more than just how to lead a platoon.
“I mean, you’re kind of a one-woman army, so you’re probably doing enough as it is…” Jamal remarked, raising an eyebrow.
“An army is only useful when there’s something to fight,” I pointed out in return. “Until we know who to fight, I’m just an artist, and I can only spend so much time per day hunting through catalogs for things I can remodel.”
“How does that work, anyway? There’s not just video-game themed stuff you can buy, right?” Jamal asked, leaning back in his seat.
“Honestly, I’m not convinced our AIs don’t design half the gear themselves. I mean, it’s supposed to be alien tech, so why would it come in a form humans can use?” I posited. “Juny pulled the Eyebot design out of her robotic butt, so she could probably offer me nothing but equipment that’s already game themed if she wanted.”
“I assure you I do not have a butt!” the cheeky little thing living in my head contributed.
“Hush, you,” I replied instantly.
“I didn’t say anything,” Jamal pointed out, not realizing I was speaking to Juny.
“Sorry, Juny is talking straight to my brain since her drone body is busy,” I explained. Avoiding this situation was the entire point of the drone, but it couldn’t be helped since I’d chosen to get something with actual utility. “Anyway, I think Juny knows I like to model the designs myself, so she usually just redesigns something to fit the appearance I provide. I’ve been stocking up on designs in my free time.”
“You cooking anything up right now?” Jamal asked with a grin. I leaned forward, as if I was sharing a secret.
“Well, you know that first suit I bought? The armor is ruined, but the frame is still good. So I was thinking we could feed it to the fabbers and issue it to machine-gunners and the like. Since I won’t be the one wearing it, I’m going to nix the Mjolnir design and use something that’s bulky to begin with,” I told him conspiratorially.
“Nice. What’re you thinking, T-51b? Maybe CMC?”
“I’ve mostly been sticking to a Halo theme for weapons and armor, so I’m going to model it after the Hrunting/Yggdrasil. For the first iteration it won’t be able to match the performance, but we’ll probably upgrade the underlying hardware for everything as points allow, so we can get there eventually,” I shared as I watched someone sneaking up behind Jamal with a finger over their lip out of the corner of my eye.
“Oh, I like that. Too bad I won’t-”
“Sup, nerd?” greeted Haley as she slapped Jamal in the shoulder, eliciting an undignified yelp.
“Dammit, Haley!” Jamal yelled as Haley skipped around just outside his reach and settled on the couch beside me.
“The LT is always telling you to watch your surroundings,” she reminded her teammate.
“Not in the lounge!” Jamal argued back, rolling his eyes.
“To be fair, there were Antithesis on this very floor less than two weeks ago,” I pointed out, looking in the direction of the room I’d broken through the wall of. It still hadn’t been repaired yet. The bullet holes, at least, had largely been plastered over.
“It’s not like they just showed up out of nowhere,” Jamal countered. I decided the joke had run it’s course and decided not to pursue it any further.
“Come to think of it, how come you already knew about the new armor? I didn’t think anyone had it yet since Haley was still wearing her old gear earlier today,” I asked, setting aside my controller.
“I already got mine, but not everyone has yet,” Jamal replied a bit cagily. Haley snickered.
“Yeah, because the LT prioritized based on who gets hit the most,” she filled in with glee. I gave Jamal an odd look.
“…aren’t you a sharpshooter?” Considering his role in the squad he was the last person I’d expect to be taking hits. On the other hand, he was also the one that almost got turned into a pincushion by a Model Fifteen in the hangar battle.
“It doesn’t matter how far away he is if he forget to duck,” Hayley jabbed.
“Remind me: which one of us had been deployed to a sewer?” Jamal threw back dryly. I lost track of the conversation as the two began to bicker back and forth, seemingly throwing every bit of bad luck they’d run into since joining the Stalking Tigers at each other.
“Ah. I was wondering what all that noise was,” Huifang said as she opened the door to her room, which was catty-cornered to the lounge. Shaking her head, she walked over to take a seat on the chair to my other side, across from Jamal. “You made the mistake of letting them talk to each other, I see.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see the pattern,” I told her as I remembered our conversation in the cafeteria. “Are they always like that?”
“If I didn’t know any better I’d think they were siblings. So, yes,” Huifang replied acerbically. Clearly this was common enough that she was over it.
“Why join us in the lounge, then?” I asked curiously.
“Because I knew I wasn’t going to get any reading done anyway,” the muscular woman answered, making a tossing motion with one hand.
“Wanna have a match?” I proposed, offering her a controller. I wasn’t sure what else to say since I hadn’t spoken to Huifang much before and she didn’t seem like the talkative type. Wordlessly, she accepted the controller. Taking that as a yes, I went ahead and left the single-player mode I was in and started up a player vs player mode instead. Several minutes passed before either of us spoke again; our game was proving competitive enough that I’d locked in and forgotten to talk.
“How did you become a Samurai?” Huifang asked suddenly, just after getting killed in the game. Caught off guard, it took me a moment to process her question.
“Killed a few Model Threes with my hover car. Blew up the fuel-cell to kill one more. Next thing I knew there was a voice in my head and I had a little robot pulling shrapnel from my skull,” I recounted as I tried to find Huifang again.
“Hm,” she grunted. Apparently she didn’t have any more questions so I decided it’d be fair for me to turn that one around.
“Why’d you join the Stalking Tigers?” I asked.
“Big family, not enough money. Pretty typical story, I’d say,” Huifang dropped casually.
“I joined to get out of the undercity,” Jamal volunteered, apparently having tuned back in at some point. “It was all gangs down there so life was pretty rough. Learned pretty quick that I was a good shot though, so I figured I might be able to take those skills somewhere a bit more professional.”
“Damn, that’s rough.” I hadn’t expected such a heavy answer, much less from someone I hadn’t asked directly, but he didn’t seem to broken up about it so he must have made his peace with it.
“I just wanted to blow things up!” added Hayley. In the wake of that answer, Huifang got a free kill in on me while I side-eyed the demolition specialist.
“Would you believe this one’s an heiress?” Jamal followed up.
“Wait, seriously?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the screen this time.
“Yep. My parents run a pretty big company based in Raleigh. Not one of the major corpos, but big enough to be noteworthy back home,” Hayley affirmed. “I wasn’t all that good at the business side, though, so they were happy to let my brother take over instead. I’m way better at math and physics.”
“I figured out that much during our impromptu explosives lesson this afternoon.” At one point I’d asked Juny to check her calculations out of curiosity and discovered she essentially had the precision of a calculator when it came to determining how much C4 to use.
“Oh, god, you actually let her talk about explosives?” Jamal asked in horror. Even Huifang seemed unsettled.
“I made that mistake once. I realized my mistake about two hours in,” she recounted with a distant look. Taking advantage of her distraction, I managed to make up for the freebie she’d gotten from me earlier.
“Hey, I’m a great teacher!” the subject of the conversation objected.
“Honestly, she really was. I learned a lot. I’ll probably still need to rely on Juny for figuring out what yields I need, but I’ll need a lot less instruction on the more general stuff. I’m thinking of adding a grenade launcher to my arsenal,” I said in my teacher’s defense.
“Really!?” Hayley squealed in excitement. “Please let me use it. At least once. I know I’ve already got a Samurai-grade grenade launcher, but I bet whatever you get for yourself will be way cooler.”
“I’m seconding that. For her, I mean. She’s not going to shut up about it until she gets her hands on that thing now,” Jamal despaired, burying his head in his hands.
“I don’t have the points right now, but maybe after the next time I kill some Antithesis. Not sure when that’ll be, but Alana and I should be registered with the Family as available for mission now, so I’m sure it won’t be too long,” I assured the long-suffering man.
Ah. I died again. I need to focus before Huifang takes the lead.
Man. I miss couch 1vs1. Though I'm more from the Rock 'n' Roll Racing and the OG Super Mario Kart era. Shooters are for mice & keyboards, not controllers
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