Chapter Twenty-Four - Rude, Crass, Common

"You either fashion, or you fashoff, right boss?"

--Emoscythe Mordeath Noir's former personal assistant, first (and lasy) day on the job, 2053

***

“So, what do you think of Cat’s image problem?” Lucy asked.

Emoscythe, or Audrey or whatever, frowned and looked me up and down. We weren’t the only people on the shopping floor. Far from it, even, so the crowds walking around had to part to make space for our slow asses.

“It’s clear that so far her AI has been making most of the stylistic choices for her, and the rest has been more or less instinctive.”

“Hey now,” I said. The way she said it felt like how someone might say ‘her mom picked it out for her’ and that hurt a little. Even if it was mostly or entirely true. “I’m not that bad,” I said.

“No, you’re really not,” Audrey said. “You could be substantially worse than you are. I’ve worked with plenty of samurai who have no idea how to manage their own image, and while you don’t seem to be invested in the process, your looks fit with that kind of casual dismissal. You genuinely have a good instinct for this, Catherine.”

“Yeah, you’re hot,” Lucy agreed.

I pushed back the flush that was trying to overtake me. Compliments weren’t my forte. “Alright, so we’re good, then?”

“Oh no. An instinctual understanding isn’t a firm one. You still have a long way to go before I’d say that you’re an expert with image.”

I sighed. “Fine. Just, point out some clothes from here and I’ll wear that.”

Audrey blinked. “Oh. No, I think we’ve run into a fundamental misunderstanding. I don’t care what you wear.”

“You don’t?” I asked.

She relented. “I supposed I care a little. How you dress is obviously an important part of your image, but it would be foolish to assume that it starts and ends there. And I don’t just mean posture and physical appearance. Image is more than just that. It’s about how the world at large perceives you.” She glanced past my shoulder, and I had the impression she was looking at something I couldn’t see. “Follow me,” she said.

Audrey didn’t wait before stepping by and walking off, which meant that Lucy and I had to move quick to catch up. “She’s weird, right?” I asked.

“She’s a little intense,” Lucy said. “Bit too... top for me? Still, kinda hot though.”

“I mean, yeah, but I was talking more, you know, personality wise?” Emoscythe was pretty attractive, but that was part and parcel of being young, fit, and having the ability to murder things with ease.

“Oh yeah, totally unhinged, but in a super-focused way. She reminds me a bit of Grasshopper, but less intense?”

“You two know that I can hear you?” Audrey asked.

“We do!” Lucy chirped. “We didn’t say anything too bad, did we?”

“No, I suppose not. Being compared to Grasshopper is actually quite nice. She’s a good woman.” Audrey brought up to the edge of the market and to a space where the stalls weren’t quite as corporatized. They were more often simple, plastic tables with a few banners, some basic dividers, and racks full of clothes for sale. Deeper in, closer to the outer edge, were some stalls where the merchants were making clothes live, some of them with a small audience. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

I refocused on the stall Audrey had stopped before. It was a semi-circle of tables with a few walls that had bars sticking out of them from which t-shirts hung. That was all they sold here, shirts and more shirts. There was a machine in the stall that was printing something on a shirt while the stall keeper and someone that was presumably a client waited.

“What am I looking for... oh,” I said. There was a row of shirts that were me-themed. Or Stray Cat themed? I hadn’t noticed, but nearly all of the shirts here were samurai merch.

There were a few that I didn’t recognize, and plenty more that I did. Pouty-faced Deus-Ex’s, some chibi art of Grasshopper next to some very bright shirts with Neon Girl Happy-chan. Some locals that had passed away a while ago too, or that had probably left Earth. Emeraude was there, and I knew they were a New Montreal local once. It was strange thinking that I’d actually met some of the people on those shirts.

The row with my own image was the weirdest of all.

There was an anime-style image of me in a cool pose shooting someone that was probably the mayor with “Shut up!” written above it in big bubbly letters. The rest of the art tended towards darker and grittier though. Lots of “Get fucked” and art of my cat-logo with bleeding mice in its mouth.

Also, a lot of the art had my gear stripped down to little more than my helmet and a bikini bottom, with a strategically placed Void Terminus to cover the chest. “I’m buying these,” Lucy said.

“No,” I shot her down as I reached over and plucked the lewd shirt from her hands.

“Aw, but Cat! It’s sexy! Look at how big they made your breasts!”

“No,” I said. I got up to the tips of my toes and hooked the shirts on the next rack up, just out of reach of Lucy’s grasping fingers. “Is this what you wanted me to see?” I asked Audrey.

“Yes,” she said. “Look at how artists have decided to portray you. That’s your image. These are what people who support what you do will wear.”

That put a new spin on things. The art, big-tiddied versions of me aside, were almost all gory and violent and gritty. It wasn’t necessarily bad. But it didn’t feel right either. I wasn’t exactly a bastion of hope and fuzzy feelings, but I didn’t think I was leaning so hard into the heavy-metal band aesthetic either.

“Once an image becomes rooted in people’s minds, it can take a lot of effort to change it. You’re still early in your career as a samurai. You still have time to change and shape what you do.”

“That’s going to take more than just dressing in brighter colours, isn’t it?” I asked.

“A lot more, yes. Though it is a start, if that’s the direction you want to go in. Clothes maketh man, but gear maketh samurai. The equipment you use and how you appear will change your image to some degree. Deus-Ex is still considered disarming, even though she could easily level a city. Some samurai are considered threatening even though they’re not nearly as powerful. You’re starting to inch your way in that direction. Your image is of someone dangerous. Not necessarily in a bad way, but still dangerous.”

I chewed on my lip. “And that means that from here on out, people will treat me in a certain way.”

“Yes. The same way that you might approach others based on what you think of them, they will approach you based on what they think of you. It’s how humans function,” she said.

I nodded along. It was all common sense shit, wasn’t it? But it was also common sense shit that I hadn’t spent any time actually thinking about until now, and that was starting to show my lack of thought, that was. “This is going to make some of my projects harder, isn’t it?”

“Projects?” Audrey asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got this whole thing I’m setting up, getting cheaply printed prosthetics out to people that need them. Mostly the people I’ve rescued here and there, but also anyone else that needs it.”

“That’s kind of you,” she said.

“Cat’s good at being nice,” Lucy said. “She’s less good at looking nice.”

Audrey crossed her arms and scowled at the floor for a moment. “That puts a certain spin on things. You were easily willing to kill a politician, at least as far as the public is concerned, but you’re also doing charity work. You did some work in a position of leadership in Burlington as well. Huh, that’s an interesting angle to work on.”

“Angle? I’m a little bit lost,” I said.

“She wants you to go full Robin Hood,” Lucy said. “I think you’d look great in tights and with a cloak.”

I snorted. “I’m not exactly... well, I have stolen from the rich, but I mostly just use that to fix the shit they should have been fixing themselves.”

“That’ll still count to most,” Audrey said. “Yes, I can see that working. A rude, crass, common sort of girl that’s righting wrongs where she sees them, taking from those in power and using what she takes to correct some of the problems they’ve caused. It’s a nice narrative.”

“Hey now,” I said. “That sounds a bit too fictional, no?”

“All images are fictional. It’s about image not about truth. But don’t worry. Truth tends to shine through, to some degree or another. You’ll manage. Now... how do we make your image and style reflect your actions?”

***