Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Five - Air Superiority

“The field of psychology has always been keen on studying Samurai, not just because of their celebrity status, but because their entire way of life is so different from the norm. They’re normal humans until something triggers and they gain the ability to become more.

The most interesting cases, though, usually revolve around the younger Samurai. Children, young teens at best, who gain powers and abilities that set them apart from the rest of humanity.

What’s a parent to say to a child to whom the law doesn’t apply? Can you force them to go to a normal school when they’re essentially celebrities? And when they reach the end of the second phase and their ties to humanity, as demonstrated by the Petra-Karpov effect, start to break down?

It’s a murky, and rather terrifying scene to behold.”

--Cynthia Eastwood, head psychologist, New Burkely U. 2051

***

I stared at the sleek platform, then at the girl standing with hands on hips before it. “You want me to what?” I asked.

She flicked a thumb over at the hovering machine. “Sit your ass down on that, and hang on.”

“That doesn’t seem safe,” I countered. I’d just gotten a new limb, I didn’t want to have to replace the rest of them when Little Miss Pouts-a-lot crashed into the side of a skyscraper. “Do you even have a driver’s permit?”

She blinked. “No, no I don’t. I don’t have a permit for the anti-tank laser cannons either, but most cops are too busy shitting themselves to ask. I know you’re a total newb, but seriously, what gives?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“Nah, I’m just, uh.” I looked at the platform she wanted me to sit on. It looked like the rear end of an old F1 racecar. All sleek, molded metal and not a handhold in sight. “How do I hold on?”

She sighed, then a few sections slid open on the back of the platform and a pair of wrist-thick tentacles slid out. “They’ll hold onto you,” she said.

“That is less reassuring, not more. How old are you to be going around with a tentacle machine?”

For a moment, Deus Ex’s expression shifted into the sort of juvenile disgust I was used to seeing on the kittens whenever Lucy and I did a bit of recreational tongue jousting. “Longbow said you were a newbie, not a fucking perv.”

“No worries, you’re not my type,” I said.

I think I reached the end of her patience because she stomped--cutely--over to me, tugged my wrist forwards, and bodily flung me onto the platform. There was no way a pipsqueak that small had that kind of strength, but Deus Ex seemed to give no shits about my expectations as she pushed me into the arms of a couple of mechanical tentacles. “I’ll make it easy on you,” she said. “So shut up, and you get to sit down and enjoy the flight back. You mouth off like some punk, and I’m delivering you to the FOB gift-wrapped. Your choice.”

“Fine, fine,” I said. I didn’t want to admit that the girl scared me, but, well, she scared me.

“Good.” She huffed, arms crossed over where her suit said her chest should have been. “I can’t stand folks who talk shit without being able to back it up.”

I wanted to point out that I could totally back it up, but a pair of tentacles grabbed my arms just above the elbow and then wrapped around my waist. In no time, I was pressed, sitting up, onto the hood of her platform thing. “Uh, I surrender?” I tried.

“Don’t try being cute,” she warned.

“That’s your corner of the market?” I asked.

She glared.

It had about as much effect as a Lucy glare.

Deus Ex decided to take the high ground of ignoring me. She glanced around, took in the few forms flitting about, then looked back at me. “How long have you been a Samurai?” she asked.

“About... three hours? Four?”

She sighed. “Fuck me sideways. Look, I’m going to be the adult here--” She ignored my aborted snort. “--and try to help you, alright? That’s what we do?”

“Help people?” I asked, just to make sure.

“No. Fuck people. I mean we help each other. You’re a Samurai now, which makes you, I don’t know, a cousin or something. Even if you’re an impolite burden that I had to fly ten minutes out of my way just to save from some Model Ones.”

“Hey, I would have been fine,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. She started running towards the edge of the roof, cannons lining up next to her.

“H-hey!” I was about to protest some more, but between one second and the next I was jerked forwards and found myself gripping onto the edge of the platform and holding back a cry. The building wasn’t under me anymore. In fact, there was a lot of nothing under me.

“You’re pretty low on points, right?” Deus Ex asked. She seemed perfectly okay with the idea that she was just hovering in the air and telling gravity to fuck right off.

I couldn’t answer because I left my heart somewhere on the roof she just casually ran off of.

“Please don’t piss yourself while sitting on my gear,” Deus Ex said. “If you do, you’re cleaning the entire thing off yourself.”

“You could give a girl a warning!” I shouted when my senses returned. I was a little busy burying my fear in a nice heavy layer of indignation.

She looked over her shoulder at me, and then we dropped.

Whatever was keeping us afloat clicked off and I screamed as the ground rushed up. Deus Ex’s long hair trailed up and I felt my stomach doing flips until we started to slow down and came to a hover some two dozen feet off the ground.

Deus Ex’s helmet slid shut and she looked out ahead. “Got any sort of AOE weapon?”

I swallowed and slowly loosened my grip from the edge. My flesh and blood fingers hurt they were so tight. “AOE? Yeah, yeah, I have bombs.”

“Good. Look at all the xenos.” she gestured to the hundreds of monsters on the street, many of whom had paused to stare at us. “That’s a lot of points. I’d kill them all myself on the way back, but I don’t see the harm in letting a newb make a few points. You’ll need them for later.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Just bomb them. It’s not exactly rocket science. Just be fast about it.”

She turned back ahead and started to fly forwards at a leisurely pace.

“Myalis!” I said. I didn’t know why the pipsqueak was being so generous, but I wasn’t about to say no. Every dead alien was one less people had to deal with later. “I need grenades, and fast.”

Of course! Might I suggest Mark I Hyper Compressors? A little indiscriminate, but effective!

“Anything!” I said. We were already moving past a whole lot of them.

Deus Ex sigh, spun around, and brought her legs up to her chest. “Lock on--fire,” she said. Her clunky boots unfolded and a hundred-off beams of light flashed across the road we’d just flown down, frying every last alien there. “Hurry up,” she said.

Two grenades popped into existence in my hands just as we rounded the corner. Simple things, which only needed a flick of the thumb to activate. I flung both towards the biggest gathering of aliens, then, because I could, I let loose with my shoulder-mounted guns. They had ammo to spare still, so it wasn’t a loss.

The Hyper Compressor grenades beeped once before sucking everything around them into a ball the size of a melon. I’d seen vacuum seals at work before, and these seemed similar, if a whole order of magnitude more bloody when they caught a few aliens.

“Keep going, newbie,” Deus Ex said. She folded her hands at the small of her back and began sliding her legs back and forth as if she was figure skating over thin air. “So, pick out a specialty yet?”

“I, I don’t know?” I said. “Myalis... my AI said I should go for explosives and stealth?” I flung a few more bombs down and marvelled at the glory of having aerial superiority.

“Huh. Not something you see often.”

“A stealth bomber?” I asked.

“Stealth period.”

“If you saw it often, it would defeat the point,” I said.

She giggled, caught herself, then chuckled in a faux-mature fashion before looking over her shoulder at me again. I couldn’t see her face under the mask, but I swore she was glaring. “We don’t have a lot of stealth specialists in the region. You might fill a niche.”

“What’s the region?” I asked.

“Hrm? I’m part of The Family. We’re about five, maybe six hundred members. Not the biggest, but we’re up there in numbers. You should look into joining.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. There was no way I was joining something called ‘The Family.’

She shook her head. “You’ll figure it out. Or die. Or get stuck with some corp that’ll hound you for years.”

“I just want to make sure me and mine are safe,” I said as I tossed out more grenades off the side. Myalis was giving them to me almost as quickly as I could fling them.

“You were protecting that caravan, right?” she asked.

My heart seized. “Yeah,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ll get Lynus to make sure they’re set up well. Least I can do, since you’ll be busy the rest of the day.”

“What?”

But instead of answering, the girl bolted ahead and took a corner so fast I was afraid I’d get whiplash.

Ahead of us, blocking off the entire road, was a barricade of soldiers and tanks, and a sea of dead aliens.

We were safe.

***

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