Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Seven - Shopping Spree

“When you have some select people who can buy anything, suddenly the market for anything starts to look really interesting. From exotic weapons, to hyper-advanced engines for preformance cars, to literal alien pornography.

There’s a market out there, and we’re just trying to meet its demands.”

-- Interview with the CEO of Samazun, 2031

***

I had to sort things out one at a time. “Okay, okay,” I said. “First things... where did the token come from?”

You obtained your first token from saving over a hundred civilians. I thought it unwise to bother you with the announcement while you were in the midst of a battle.

“Cool? Next time just tell me.”

As you wish.

“Right.” I looked around the mobile armory and licked my lips. There was probably some good shit here. I needed a few things too. Pants, for one, and some boots that weren’t stained in alien goop. Maybe some socks too.

I started to search through the stacks as I thought. It was better to keep busy. I didn’t have forever to shop around here. It was only a few minutes into comparing pant sizes that I noticed that I wasn’t using my right arm at all. Weird.

“Let’s spend some points,” I said.

Wonderful! Might I start from the top?

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said. “There aren’t any cameras in here, right?”

There are. I can blur out your form for privacy, if you want?

“Please?” I asked.

Consider it done!

I nodded. I didn’t need anyone knowing the color of my intimates. Having two pairs of fingers make buttons so much easier to deal with. I had set aside a pair of thick cargo pants that had built-in kneepads.

From the top! Your current aug-gear is outdated, even by humanity’s standards. New gear would require that you unlock a catalogue and then purchase some equipment. Based on previous discussion, I’d suggest the Basic Cyberwarfare Class I catalogue.

“Alright. New aug-gear. Cool.” That could be handy. “Can we get something that’ll allow you to hack into stuff?”

Certainly. After that, I would advise that you improve your stealth-based capabilities. Even with your current points you don’t have enough to buy the kind of things needed to be a heavy-hitter.

I started to pull on a pair of nice boots, then paused. “Are there stealth clothes?” I asked.

Of course.

“Got any good boots?”

There are a few. Mark II Silent Runners would cost you two hundred points, but come with a lot of utility.

The same price as my arm? I tried to imagine boots that were that cool. “I’ll take them,” I said. “And something like a cloak... no, a trench coat. But stealthy.”

I... can find something like that as well.

I began to suspect that Myalis was either amused or confused by my sporadic purchasing.

“Awesome. And I need a gun. A bigger one.”

Perhaps a silent weapon? An overly loud gun would render a lot of your stealth capabilities null. A crossbow might do. You could purchase different sorts of bolts with unique payloads from your Esoteric Explosives catalogue. ṝÀƝǑᛒĘṥ

That sounded hot as fuck. “Deal,” I said.

Very well. Do you want to go over your purchases one at a time? We still have some moments to...

I felt a bit of a headache at the thought. Numbers were... not my thing. “Nah, I trust you.”

... Thank you. I would also suggest replacing your missing eye with a proper sensor suite. There are some available in your Sun Watcher catalogue.

Class I Basic Cyberwarfare Utilities unlocked!

Points reduced to... 2107

Class I Stealth Technologies unlocked!

Points reduced to... 1907

Class I Silent Weapons unlocked!

Points reduced to... 1857

Oh, my points were dropping fast.

New Purchase: Mark II Cyberwarfare Augmentation

Points reduced to... 1807

New Purchase: Mark I Decryption Protocol

Points reduced to... 1787

New Purchase: Mark II Silent Runners

Points reduced to... 1587

New Purchase: All Seeing Eye Mark I

Points reduced to... 1437

New Purchase: Optical Camouflage Coat Model G, Mark I

Points reduced to... 1237

New Purchase: Whisper Mark II

Points reduced to... 1037

The notifications flashing before my eye stopped. I let out a breath. Still a lot of points left, that was good.

Then boxes started to appear all around me. I clapped my hands, because that was something I could do now, then tried to decide which one to open first.

The augments and the eye first. They’ll take some getting used to.

“Alright,” I said. I found the smallest box and opened it up to reveal a pair of disks that reminded me of those fancy watch batteries. They had handy instructions written on them. PLACE NEAR EYE, and PLACE AT BASE OF NECK.

I did as they instructed, placing one disk next to my eye, then leaving it there as I placed the other near the base of my neck. “Okay? How does this- ahhh!”

I gasped. It felt as if someone had just pushed a wrapped popsicle against the side of my face and the back of my neck. Wincing, I reached up and touched the disks, but they were lukewarm.

My vision went wild for a moment, HUD elements winking on and off before everything resettled.

The new augmentation gear has been installed. You can remove the disks now. There shouldn’t be a large quantity of blood.

“What?” I asked as I tore the disks off. As she said, there was a bit of blood on their underside. “The fuck?”

The system unleashed a swarm of construction nanites under your skin. Some took over and rebuilt parts of your old aug-gear, the rest replaced it wholesale. You should be passing the unnecessary elements the next time you visit the facilities.

I blinked and tried not to think too hard on that. The new gear... looked the same? I looked at a bar-code on a rack across from me and a screen instantly popped open. No delay that I could see, and the resolution on the letters was incredible. No more pixelation.

“What about the cyberwarfare bit?”

That package is purely software. It’s been installed already. No boxes, I’m afraid. Unless you wanted the software delivered as solid media, which is an option.

“Like in a thumb-drive?” I asked. I’d seen those in text books before.

Or as another kind of drive, or a stack of CD Roms, DVDs, floppy disks or reels. I would advise against most of those unless you require ballast weight.

I moved onto the next small box.

It had an eye. I stared at it, and it, seemingly, stared back from within the confines of its styrofoam-like pad. Next to it was a tiny spray bottle, like one of those perfume samplers.

Spray that into your eyehole, then place the eye inside.

“Oh, hell no,” I said.

It’s a very advanced piece of technology. You’ll be able to see across a wide range of the colour and visual spectrum, with incredible accuracy over long distances. It will also interface with your aug-gear if you ever need it to. Placing the eye shouldn’t hurt.

I bit my lips and took the eye out with mechanical fingers that didn’t shake. I winced at the thought of shoving the ping-pong ball sized thing into my face, but, well, Myalis hadn’t fucked me over yet.

Opening my eyehole wide, I sprayed the spritzy stuff within and instantly lost all feeling on that side of my face. No wonder it wouldn’t hurt.

Shoving the eye in was an experience that I wasn’t keen on repeating, especially when it started to rotate around in my skull. And then, suddenly, I could see from both eyes again.

“Holy depth perception,” I said as I took everything in. My eyesight in my normal eye was fine. 20-20 or whatever, but now, when I closed it, it felt as if I was missing out on half the details available in the world around me. I could see the texture of cloth from across the room and motes of dust hovering in the air.

I would suggest the boots next.

Myalis snapped me out of my reverie. “Yeah, okay.”

The boots were... boots. They were neat, made of some sort of black material and reaching up to mid-shin, but they were just boots with some steel plates atop them and no obvious buckles or laces.

They’re auto-adjusting to fit, have an impact resist system, have self-adjusting friction, do not leave any footprints, can grip onto vertical surfaces, and don’t make noise when moving.

Well, that helped. I took off my dirty socks, winced at how messy my feet were, then used a t-shirt from a rack to wipe them clean before slipping them into the boots sock-less. “Oh, wow, that’s soft,” I said.

At the point-cost, comfort shouldn’t be negotiable. They are, of course, vacuum sealed once worn. Your feet will remain in an environment with optimal levels of humidity.

I stood up and bounced on the stop a few times. It... didn’t feel right. The lack of sound, the super light impact. That was going to take some getting used to.

The next box was the coat. It was, in a word, sexy. I was grinning like a loon as I tossed it on. There were slits in the back, covered by mag-strips keeping them shut, for the arms of my back-mounted weapons. The front had a tall collar that stopped just short of my nose, and a large, proper hood that could fit three of my heads.

The material was a flat black so dark it was almost fucking with my vision. Still, I could make out centimeter-wide hexagons all over it. It was stealth-bomber chic. The edges of it reached down to my knees, and the sleeves to mid-hand. It was a bit snug over my auto-loader, but not so much that it would be a problem.

Activating the coat now.

I didn’t have time to ask what she meant that half my body disappeared.

“Ohhh,” I cooed as I looked at my hand, and only my hand. My arm was just... gone. Wiggling it about showed the space where the room’s shadows hit the coat’s material just-so, but it was damned hard to make out. Looking down only revealed a few inches of leg and my new boots. “This is sweet,” I said.

It also interferes with electronic sensors and thermal vision, though some higher-tier Antithesis will still likely spot you, even with the coat.

A polite knock at the door had me looking up. “We should hurry this along,” I said.

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