Chapter Sixty-Five - Your Average Roleplaying Group

"The average samurai isn't so different from the average person, I don't think. But... you know how there's perhaps one person in a thousand who's spectacular? They're a genius, peerless, insane in a way that leads to greatness? Within the ranks of the samurai, these geniuses make up something like a quarter of their number. Sure, the average is still average, just people tossed into tough situations and given great power. They're above-average in all respects, but they're not so special."

-- Excerpt from Deus Ex's Sleepy Time Blog, 2056

***

"So, what are we looking at here?" I asked.

Gomorrah was leading me through the crowd of soldiers and support personnel around the temporary base. "That surprise attack this morning is delaying things a little. We need to move up some road-clearing machines from the city."

"Road clearing?" I asked.

"Snow plows," she explained. "To ram through all the corpses."

I nodded along. "That makes sense, yeah. Surprised we don't have anything fixed to the front of a tank or something."

"I think that exists, but we don't have it on hand. Snow plows though? There's some coming up the road at full-speed, we'll have them here within the hour then start moving out." Gomorrah turned her head my way. "Which happens to leave us with just enough time to meet the new samurai."

"Oh boy," I muttered. "What are we talking about here? That was plural, so at least two?"

"Four," Gomorrah said. "We know one of them already. Crackshot Cowboy."

"Oh!" I said, cheering up a little. Crackshot was actually a pretty cool guy. He had helped on the wall when defending New Montreal a while ago. Had a huge--understandable--crush on Emoscythe. "His whole thing was being super accurate with that old gun of his, right?" I asked.

"I think that's still his specialisation," Gomorrah said. "Long-ranged single-target attacks. He'll fit in nicely with the two of us if it comes to a fight."

"And the other three?" I asked.

"I haven't met them," Gomorrah said. She sent a file my way, and I poked it open. It had some information on the people we were heading out to meet. Not much, but it was there.

"Princess and Knight, Hedgehog, and Tankette?" I asked as I read the names. "Gomorrah, that's four, and with Crackshot... four plus one is five, right?"

"Yes, Catherine, four and one make five," Gomorrah agreed. "Those lessons with Grasshopper are paying dividends. Knight isn't a samurai," she explained.

I frowned, but decided not to question it. We were heading out to meet them anyway.

The first I saw of the new samurai was a middle-aged woman that looked like she was very much in the wrong place.

She was kind of cute, in that pudgy motherly way. A woman maybe in her early forties or so, with brown hair cut into a bob and the kind of simple blouse-and-jeans outfit that was more suitable to sitting at home than out here on the edge of a battlefield.

If we weren't here, with a whole ass army around, I might have dismissed her entirely. She had some aug that looked decent, and a few ports on the side of her neck. Her hands were all silver on the inside. Smart palms? She had a ring, too.

The tank she was sitting on kind of made any uncertainty about her samurai-ness disappear.

This had to be Tankette, because that's what she was sitting on. The tank was minuscule, about three quarters the size of a luxury hovercar, with four tracks on each corner that looked like they could all turn independently. There was a turret in the centre of the tankette, with a stubby box of a barrel sticking out of it and pointing ahead. A panel was open on the side, and I caught a glimpse of the interior.

Tankette had to be a small woman, because anyone taller than five foot six wouldn't be able to fit in that tiny cockpit. Still, the interior looked high tech. It reminded me a lot of my mech's cockpit, with screens all over and a yoke for controls.

I nodded to Tankette, then glanced around, looking for the others.

Crackshot was sitting on one of my mech's feet, his long rifle leaning up against his shoulder. He was still in jeans and a redneck-chic kind of shirt, but the quality had taken a leap upwards, and I suspected that it was tougher than it looked. Otherwise, he looked much the same as usual, a crooked-toothed guy with a friendly smile and sharp eyes.

"Heya, Cat," he replied with a tip of his hat.

"Hey," I said with a return nod.

I glanced to the right, where I found the two that could only be Princess and Knight. Those names had to be taken.

Princess was probably the teen girl in the poofy pink dress with some armour slapped on. She waved excitedly my way, but didn't step out from behind the one that I guessed was Knight.

Knight was wearing armour. All metal, all shiny, all very dated. But they... she? Yeah, that was a chick. Anyway, she had a rig on, with a radio and some nades tucked away. There was a longsword hooked on her belt across from a knife while a hammer sat on the ground next to her, its haft pointed skywards.

"Where's the last one?" I asked. Then I spotted a ripple and glanced over to what I'd dismissed as some trash. The trash stood up, warped a little, and came to reveal a man in black fatigues with some pretty fancy armour on.

His front was only covered by the basics. An armoured vest with some rigging over it, some crap over his knees and elbows. The kind of gear that a mid-tier PMC would have. Where he stood out was the helmet and most of all his... was it a cloak? He had a few thousand spikey strands pouring down from the top of his head all the way down to his ankles, the cloak-thing shimmered a little, copying the colour of the ground beneath.

So, that's where he earned the name Hedgehog, then.

Hedgehog was armed with a pretty standard looking bullpup rifle, and looked like he could have been just another soldier. A well-equipped one, but nothing too outstanding.

"Show's yours," Gomorrah said.

I scoffed. "Yeah, right," I said before I spoke up so that everyone could hear me. "Alright. My name's Stray Cat, this is Gomorrah. We're not the boss of anybody, so feel free to tell us to piss the fuck off. But somehow we're the ones in the know, so listen up a bit. If we're gonna work together then we might as well not accidentally blow each other up. I'm not big on show-and-tell, but I think we can all tell each other the basics. Gom, you can start, since you're in charge."

Gomorrah shook her head, but she did speak up. "I'm Gomorrah. I'm the second in command of the samurai-side of this operation, behind Stray Cat. I'm a fire specialist. I burn things. When I'm not, I watch over our logistics."

I rolled my eyes, then gestured to the lady on the mini-tank. She pointed to herself, then smiled. "Oh, hello everyone. My name is Heather, but people have taken to calling me Tankette. I, ah, am not much of a fighter. This is Baby Girl, my tank." She patted the armoured vehicle she was sitting on. "We get up to a bit of trouble together. Oh! And the AI in my head's called Tynker!"

"Pleasure," I said.

"I'm Princess!" the girl in the dress said. "And this is my big sister, Knight."

"Sup," Knight said.

"We're going to be the best samurai you've ever seen," Princess said.

Crackshot chuckled. "Well, she's enthusiastic, at least," he said. "I'm Crackshot Cowboy. Howdy. I shoot things good. Gimme a target and I'll poke a hole in it like a ripe melon."

Hedgehog was the last, and we all turned his way. He started to salute, then paused halfway in the act. "I'm Hedgehog," he replied. "I work for a certain group as a private military contractor. I happened to become a samurai over the course of my duties. I'm here to grow and improve my skills."

"Cool," I said. "So that gun's not just for show?"

"I've been in active service for six years," he said.

I nodded. "Cool. Can we depend on you for all the army-related shit? I'm god-awful at that kind of stuff, even if Gomorrah keeps throwing me at it."

One of his eyebrows rose, but he nodded anyway. "I'll do what I can to help," he replied.

"Thanks. Anyway, like I said, I'm Stray Cat. My job is to be loud here, and sneaky out there. I blow things up. Pleased to meet you all. Now, who wants to murderize some aliens, eh?"

***