"Berry!" Alice hissed at me — as always, in a catlike manner. "Stop getting ogled by whoever that is and help me hold this door shut!"

"Phbhhgbbhrht," I said, my cheeks and chin still being firmly grasped by Kari. "Pbhnhbhhhht!" 

Groaning, Alice chucked a coin in my and Kari's general direction. Not, er for combat reasons — she just threw it overhand at us. The thing plinked off of Kari's dumbfounded forehead. "You're a fuckin' android! Use your android strength, or something! Also, you do not have a mouth! You can most definitely talk right now!"

"Pbhthbh phbhhthbht pthhehthbh phthtbh!" I said, angrily. Not my fault that I didn't want to use my voicebox. In any case, though, she was right — I needed to get over to the door and help her, the door was starting to budge. 

"Hey, wait a second, what the hell is happening?" Kari looked between the two of us in confusion, doing a comical double take at my definitely-not-famous catgirl compatriot. "Alice Chance??? You know fucking Alice Cha — Berry?"

While her back was turned, I'd manipulated my way out of her grasp and had went to start bolting the doors shut with both my own body and some hardlight holograms. "Yeah?"

She looked between me, Alice, and the wall I'd been pressed up against. "Hey!? H-How'd you —What???"

Alice interjected. "Hardlight! I saw it from a mile away — now, whoever you are, either give me a good excuse to knock your lights out or help us with the damn door!" Kari blinked twice, then groaned and came over to also lean up against the door. "Right, Berry, we need exfiltration. Closest exit?"

Ah, that was easy! "Uh... good route, or fast route?" The banging on the door intensified, and Alice gave me a pointed look. (Kari, for her part, was still flabbergasted.) "Right, fast. Well, there should be some vents above us that lead to the neighboring bathroom. Then we break through the third stall in there — do you have a way to do that that's safe?" Alice shook her head. "Hope your upgrades worked. After we break through that stall, we should be in the maintenance areas: two lefts and a right, hovercycle the wall, escape. I've got everything recorded."

"How do we get up?" Ah... a good question from Alice. The ceiling was a good three or four feet above any of our heads — well, except for Kari, I supposed. "We have to keep the door closed. And I don't think your 'just chuck her in' thing would work. Plan?"

"Ah, shit, I dunno." This was about the extent of our practice in strenuous situations, and I began to fidget. "Um, do you think that my halos could get a good catch on the vent? Maybe I can tie a rope to it, or something?"

The banging started to feel more like ramming, and Kari made a noise not dissimilar to a growl. That is to say, she growled. I didn't know how to feel about this. "God, amateurs! Let me handle it." Without elaborating, she got off the door and sized up the vent cover above our heads. From out of her jacket's inner pocket, she pulled a paper-thin rectangle out and then folded it into the shape of a... well, basically a grapple hook without a hook. Rather than a hook, she attached some kind of stout canister to the front of the device; when she aimed and pulled the trigger at the vent's edges, little metal plates whizzed out at great speeds and sliced it apart. Kari gracefully dodged the falling vent cover, then attached a grappling hook in place of the canister-magazine-thing and shot a hook up that lodged into the vent's ceiling. 

Both of us looked on in awe for a second as she easily shimmied up the rope and into the vents. "Huh. Is it weird that, y'know, if she wasn't probably going to try and kill me later I'd want to recruit her?"

Alice shook her head, slowly. "Er, ahem. We need to get up there ASAP. How are you going to barricade this door?"

"Right, yeah. Uh... how many coins do you have? Could try melting a doorstop using the copper in them."

After a quick feel around in her pockets, she nodded. "I've got twelve, including the one on the floor. You make the program now, and keep that door shut!"

There was a tiny little microcontroller or something inside every one of the coins we had — they're how the sort of minibots or whatever inside the coin shaped the explosion to make a jet of copper. And, thankfully, I'd studied up on how to reprogram them; quickly, I got on reprogramming the coins in question to just melt. There was a bit of a lull in the banging on our bathroom door, and I heard some shouting from behind it: they were getting a battering ram, which boded poorly. Well, it would bode poorly for us if I wasn't ostensibly a military-spec android, but I figured the door would just get broken down and at that point it'd be really easy to pull me through it like a fucking... what, a Bo Peep gag? I dunno the official term.

Anyways, the necessary modifications were fairly simple to do. Every coin had been quickly updated, and with a quick nod of my head Alice lodged them into the cracks of the door; they quickly heated up and melted, causing smoke to curl around the edges of the frame. As coughing could be heard from the other side — and the fire alarm, actually — Alice climbed into the vent as quickly as she could and followed along behind Kari, with me not far behind. (Apparently, android strength did not come with android hyper-coordination.)

The sound of repeated metallic clangs against reinforced concrete came from up ahead, and as Alice and I fell out of the vent we were treated to the sight of Kari shooting her weird razor-gun at the wall several times. "Damn—cheap—goddamn—gah, fuck! Stupid fucking!"

Alice pulled her back from the brink of throwing her gun at the wall, as I started spinning up my halos. Thank GOD I'd been able to keep them — while the gun was a bit much, the ability to use funny glowing rings as a melee weapon was too good to pass up. The room filled with yellow light (stunning the indomitable Kari for a solid, like, three seconds), and then I activated my combat halo protocols and cut into the wall like it was fucking butter. Warnings flashed into view — accompanied by the sound of rushing footsteps as people finally realized we were in this room — but the damage was already done, and I kicked the wall section down hard enough to throw me momentarily off balance from the impact. Even as I was wheeling my arms about madly to keep my footing, Kari and Alice were already rushing through the makeshift door-hole-in-the-wall I'd just made. No thought given to robots off balance. Dicks, the lot of them!

I heard the door being broken down by the battering ram as I quickly scampered through the hole, locking the stall door behind me for just a bit more time and vaulting over the now-upended toilet like I was in a fucking parkour gym. Alice and Kari scampered and ran in front of me, sprinting the maintenance walkways that crisscrossed the building's internals at top speed. Alice had juuuuust about gotten to the end of the line when the hoverbike hidden in her metaphorical skirt burst into reality, grinding away at the wall and shaking the walkway in equal, screeching measures.

Kari tripped and fell forward, just barely managing to catch herself before she tumbled into the wall — I did fall over, but a barely-executed front handspring kept me at least moving forward a bit before I started to stumble again. (Thanks, mom, for the gymnastics I had to do as a kid?) It really had to go faster, honestly. Only now were we able to see a part of the building's external facade, and the rumbling of footsteps behind us were growing heavy enough to impact the wobbling walkway just the same as the gravitic generators on the hoverbike did.

"G-G-Gah!" Alice groaned as she shoved the hoverbike forward harder, scraping more building material into the ether as people started rounding the corner tens of yards behind us. "Wh-h-h-hat did they m-make this out of, fucking — graphene???"

Shit. Yeah, uh... they had. Graphene-infused concrete. I had no idea it'd cause this much issue.

I made my way over, intending to at least help with the effects of my blunder, but by the time I got there the shaking was almost getting too much to handle. Then, in a stroke of genius — and being heavily shaken by the catwalk — Kari spoke: "H-H-H-H-Hey, u-u-u-u-uh, why d-don't we just-t-t — w-why don't we get on the hoverbike and cut the s-s-suspension cords?"

Alice stopped the gravitic generator-spam for a second and stared in shock at Kari, some mixture of revulsion and extreme disappointment playing on her features before she hopped onto the bike, dragged Kari onto the bike's backseat, and pulled/kicked me onto one of the I-beams supporting the structure. "God fucking dammit. Berry!" Even while waving my arms around to keep my balance, I still turned to look in Alice's general direction. Sort of. "Shoot the cables!"

I could probably do that. Dragging my pistol into existence, I took aim at one of the supporting cables and fired with a BANG — a solid hit, as a twang sounded and the metal of the bridge leaned heavily. The people on the bridge started to fall backwards, seeing my plan, but the security guards surged forwards and kept up their hot pursuit. As I trained my arm on the other cable, they bore down on us in their black uniforms and shitty fucking rifles; the first shot barely missed, pinging off of the sloped metal behind it and leaving the sound echoing in Alice's unfortunate ears. The second didn't, though, and the catwalk overlooking an endless hall of facade servicing catwalks just like it started to groan and buckle under its own weight.

The security guards didn't exactly plunge into the depths, but most of them fell onto catwalks several floors below with very satisfying thuds. No deaths, probably, but none of us wanted to wait around for whenever the crowd a few meters away remembered they had shit to throw at us, so I fired up my halos again and started cutting through the wall.

It hurt. Like, a lot. I could feel components inside me straining to run calculations and keep the halo stable even as whatever it was made of sawed through graphene and concrete, burning like drinking boiling water without stopping to go, hey this is a stupid idea. But, y'know, needs must. I gritted my teeth hard enough to crack some, and then clenched them a bit more when I realized it was all a hologram anyways and I didn't need to worry about my dental. After several agonizing moments where I really did feel a little close to fainting or some shit, the hole was dug. Barely big enough to get us all through on the hoverbike, but certainly just about big enough to get us all through on said hoverbike. Which was what mattered, because the strain of the exertion made me feel so close to fainting that I fell forwards through it right after completion.

"Fuck!" was all I heard from behind me as I fell. Whether it was from Kari or Alice was, in retrospect, probably pretty obvious, but in the moment I was a little too preoccupied tumbling head over heels in midair to think about it much. Hell, the fall probably wouldn't even kill me.

It might not have even hurt. But I didn't get to know if it'd hurt, like, a lot, because instead of slamming into the ground I was caught and dragged upwards by Alice's hands around my wrists in a fireman's grip. Firecatgirl's grip?

"Er, thanks. Shit." For a moment, I marveled at how Alice was steering the bike with just weight shifts and leg power, and then I scampered up onto any available space we had. Y'know what, actually, now that the false adrenaline was wearing off, I thought it was probably a good time to get to business. "Uh... new passenger. Kari. Where do we drop you."

Kari was taken aback by this, apparently. "You — what?"

"I mean. We gotta drop you off somewhere." Alice nodded in agreement, but didn't speak. "Unless you, y'know, want to join." Alice stopped nodding. "Our, uh. Our charity." She looked back at me.

"You... run a charity."

"Yup." From my seat at the back of the bike, I could see Alice's completely dumbfounded and somewhat-annoyed face. Thankfully, Kari couldn't. "Um. We, uh. Are trying to take down Keizen. In a good way, like, in a way that'll distribute the wealth equally and shit. So everyone can live better. That's charity, right?"

With an angry catgirl looking close to spewing profanity over her shoulder, Kari... seemed to consider it. "I... guess? I've never heard of corporate dismantling described as, y'know, charity, before, but at least you're aware of it? It doesn't sound like a bad cause. What's in it for me?"

"...bragging rights? For no longer being a complete fucking dickwad who ostensibly enables the psychological restructuring of people on the daily... and/or dismantling Keizen?"

Alice slowed our pace, but still didn't interject. "I, uh, I don't... do that. You realize I don't... whatever you said that's not exactly what I do. You know that, right?" I gave her the most fucking condescending look I could, chances of recruitment be damned. "Well, I don't. Leebot, maybe, but, he's an android, I can't imagine he'd do anything too immoral? Isn't it, like... painless? And shit? Or at minimum it's not that bad. I mean, none of them complain. Most of the time they come out happier!"

"I'm not entirely sure myself, but—"

"It's that bad, yeah." Alice had turned away during our conversation, but cut me off even still. "They're all people, underneath the metal, and changing people is practically impossible without powerful tools or extremely long-term psychological abuse. The latter isn't even guaranteed to work."

The atmosphere dampened, and we both went silent. I did it mostly out of surprise, but I figure Kari's silence was more from shock. "B-But wouldn't they — wouldn't they speak up, or something, if..?"

Alice stayed quiet.

After a long ride through the streets of the city, zigzagging to avoid patrols and disguise the location of our base from our passenger, Kari finally spoke up again. "I think I would like to join your charity, maybe."

trigger7ff6

hey! so, it's been a while. a lot of this was just me taking a break over christmas and the like because of life getting in the way - i'm sort of kind of in school/college right now, so i had finals to deal with and my ability to write was starting to get burned out of me by force. thankfully i've taken a break and should be able to get back to consistently writing, though i can't promise anything. i love cyl and berry, though. we're gonna do our best :)

this chapter was pretty difficult to write, just because of what went into it. it's sort of the first REAL action chapter in a while that i've written, but it's also got a decent amount of just. Shit. happening. so it took me a while to figure everything out. also, i dunno about the pacing - it feels a bit fast. we're gonna go to a bit more lore before maybe doing some assorted fun stuff in the dystopian world of Earth But Cyberpunk, and will be hopefully updating more frequently.

as always, thank you so so so much for reading! any comments or interaction is highly appreciated and encouraged. i hope you enjoyed! :)