Chapter Fifty-Eight - Gimmick

“Not all samurai have a gimmick, but nearly all of them do. These sometimes form from necessity or preference. A samurai adopting a certain kind of weaponry might specialize in that. Others prefer taking a certain role, and will purchase equipment according to that.

Still others will find a theme, and over time, will push and develop that to its sometimes illogical extreme.”

--Fa-Fa-Fashionista, On The Evolution of Trends, 2057

***

“Cat?”

I jumped a little at the sound of my name. It didn’t take much more than a second to place the voice though. Gomorrah, talking to me through my augs. “Yeah?” I asked.

I was stationed just outside of the headquarters in the middle of town, watching the last of the civilians running over. A few other families, and the rare single person, had been joining the file of people filtering into the big building behind me.

That meant that there were probably still hundreds of people in the town. I’d need to figure out a way to gather them all up and bring them over to the headquarters. Easier said than done, I figured.

“Cat, I found the third Samurai. He’s livestreaming things from the east-end of town.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s where the antithesis are mostly coming from. It’s probably for the best, actually, the headquarters aren’t too far from the eastern edge of the town, so anyone who wants to find cover will have him between them and most of the aliens.”

I nodded along. “We still need to let people know.”

“I’ve been working on it,” she said.

“Really?”

“Do you think I’ve been sitting up here enjoying the Fury’s AC and twiddling my thumbs? Atyacus and I broke into all the televisions and phones and augs we could reach in Black Bear and have been directing people over to the company headquarters. I might have to swing around to escort some of the groups closer to the edges, they’re too far to be able to run over here.”

“Right,” I said. It was easy to forget that I wasn’t the only samurai around. “So now what? We sit pretty and snipe at any aliens coming our way?”

“I was thinking you could head over to our new samurai friend. We both know how great you are at making nice with people,” Gomorrah said without a hint of sarcasm. She was pretty good at the whole deadpan thing, though.

I nodded along. “Fair enough. It’ll mean being closer to the action too. I’ll leave my cats here to guard the headquarters. Worst case scenario, none of us should be too far away. Do you think Atyacus and Myalis can work together to keep an eye on the civvies?”

“They should be able to manage. Especially if your drones are around to see any antithesis before they cause any trouble.”

“Right then.” I shifted my shoulders and looked about. Most of the civilians on the street were running over. The last of the line had filed in and only the stragglers remained. The cops had mostly gathered out by the front of the headquarters, some of them were passing out riot armour and shotguns and such. They were gearing up for a protracted siege. I bet there were a few folk in the headquarters who would be willing to volunteer to man the walls as it were, but so far there hadn’t been all that many aliens to deal with.

“I had some time to look things up. In situations like these, with a stealth hive, there tend to be some patrols of lower-level antithesis on the fringes. Then a lot more stronger ones closer to the middle of the hive. We might have trouble later.”

“Would they even come this way?” I asked. “Sure, there’s people for them to eat, but that’s it. Aren’t trees and grass and shit like that on the menu too?”

Myalis was the one that replied.

The antithesis tend to prioritize things. First taking out any threats, then subsuming any local biomass that isn’t dangerous. It’s why they tend to attack people in an area first before focusing on retrieving bodies and other sources of biomass. A stealth incursion tends to function under similar rules, though with a much greater degree of restraint and subtlety.

“Can’t say I’d call the antithesis subtle about anything,” I said.

They might surprise you, then. And that surprise may well be deadly. I would encourage you to be more careful than usual, but your usual level of care is nearly nonexistent.

I snorted. “Fine. Gomorrah, I guess I should head out and meet our new friend first. Maybe we can create a barricade or something to stop the aliens from coming this way.”

“Our goal is to kill them, not just keep them out of the town,” Gomorrah said.

“We can go around murdering them after the town’s properly secured,” I said.

“That’s fair, I suppose. I’ll be moving around and watching over the last civilians moving around. Keep in touch if you see anything strange, or, god willing, a miracle happens and you have a good idea.”

“Thanks,” I muttered in reply. “If you’re done being snippy, I’ll let you go.”

“Are you admonishing me for being snarky? It’s half your personality.”

I huffed. “Yeah, it’s my gimmick. Yours is being a sexually repressed pyro-nun. You don’t see me rubbing myself on people and then lighting them on fire while reciting verse, do you?”

“That... is a lot to unpack,” Gomorrah said. “But I think a blanket ‘fuck you’ would work as a reply.”

I laughed as I cut the connection. I’d have to think of some more insults as I walked. I stretched my back one way, then the other before finally setting off and around the headquarters’ fence.

“Myalis, can you connect me to... uh, do the corpo cops have a number I can text?”

They do. Here, most of them are connected to this chat system.

My augs shifted and a chat box appeared, hovering before me. Plenty of chatter between different people, all of them with names like A-Green and M-Armstrong. I was tempted to snoop, see what they were saying, but all I could see were status reports and a few questions and answers being fired back and forth. Real professional stuff, without even a meme to liven it up.

S-Cat: Will be heading east to meet other samurai and aliens. Keep me informed. Cats staying near headquarters.

I waited until I got a few affirmatives, then minimized the chat box so that it was out of the way.

It was time, at long last, to be stealthy.

I shifted my Icarus grenade launcher so that it was tucked under my long coat, then I brought my Whisper around so that the crossbow was cradled against my chest. And then I activated all of my stealth things.

My coat warped then went invisible. I was now little more than feet and hands and a big crossbow. Presumably a head and helmet as well.

I tugged my coat on tighter and kept on walking. From the glimpses I caught in the windows of the homes and little businesses I passed, I wasn’t impossible to notice, but I certainly wasn’t as visible as I would have been otherwise.

“Not as stealthy as I’d want,” I said.

You could be better, yes. You’re mostly hidden, visually, but the parts of you that aren’t will give away your position. You can also be identified using other senses. Many antithesis can sense changes in air pressure, others can sense heat, and of course acute hearing is quite common across many models. And that only covers some of the more basic senses.

“Hmm,” I muttered. “Yeah, I guess that’ll be the next step. I’m sure there’s shit for that?”

Of course. The solutions that cover every possibility do tend to be a little more expensive. Unless this incursion is far more profitable than I predict, I don’t think that kind of expense would be in your best interest.

“Bit by bit then,” I said. “We’ll patch whatever holes we find as they come up.”

I shifted Whisper so that it was tucked against my shoulder and approached the next corner a little more cautiously. The streets here were vacant, some ads behind glass storefronts still playing, and the single red light strung over the intersection blinked, but otherwise there wasn’t much of note.

Black Bear felt weird. Maybe that was just me being a city girl though. The place was more open than I was used to, with no hovercar traffic and buildings that I could look up to without craning my neck back.

I kind of expected to see cows or whatever there was in the countryside, but I figured this wasn’t quite that kind of place. “Myalis, can you slip into the town’s cameras and such?”

There isn’t much as far as security infrastructure goes.

“That’s alright. I just want to have more eyes around us. Do you know where that other samurai is?”

The Vanguard is just ahead.

My ears twitched as I started to hear something. It was... music.

Heavy metal music, interspersed by the grumble of a chainsaw.

I started to feel somewhat concerned.

***