Chapter Eighty-One – Pop Goes the Patella

Chapter Eighty-One – Pop Goes the Patella

“r/AITA

AITA?”

-Botted subliminal advertising Readit post, 2028

***

This was not working out.

But it also wasn’t so bad that I was pulling out my very fresh and cool hair yet. I left Princess to act like mini-royalty for a bit while I got myself something to drink. Somehow, having me appear in the back areas of the casino and just ask around to find some coffee or something set a fire under the asses of the casino staff who were being difficult with the Kittens, and suddenly yes,there were spare coffee machines around and of course the vending machines could be brought over and set to be free for our wonderful staff of volunteers.

Why was it that people so often needed to face a threat first-hand before they started to act on it?

Then I noticed someone shyly walking up to me. That dude that Lucy had foisted me off onto. George or something. “Hey,” I said. “Sup… dude?”

“Paul,” Paul said. “And, ah, we have problems.”

“Yeah, of course we do,” I said. Standing next to a fold out table with coffee-making stuff on it in the back of a casino, surrounded by bare cinderblock walls and people hustling around, only some of whom seemed to know what they were doing was exactly how I imagined that this would go down. “What kind of problem?”

Paul swallowed audibly. “There was an issue with the catering.”

“Was?”

“Samurai Tankette showed up,” he said, brightening up a little. “She’s taken charge of that part of the event. She, ah, came in with her own methodology, that doesn’t quite match our plans, or what Miss Lucy had outlined.”

“Okay, and?” I asked leadingly.

“Miss Lucy said to cancel all of our plans and do whatever the samurai say,” he said.

That tracked. I took a sip of my coffee. “Probably for the best. Tankette seems like she’d be able to work things out.”

“Yes, I think things are going well with that. I can’t quite tell though, the, ah, systems we have in place to see if things are working on time were contingent on our previous plans, and now we’re ignoring those.” He looked at the tablet he was carrying, as if the glorified Excel sheets on there would suddenly vomit out the answer to life, the universe, and all the rest, conveniently slotted into little rectangles.

“Alright. That happens. Just trust Tankette. And I’m sure she’ll reach out if she needs help.”

“She set up a bakery,” he said.

“Cool.”

He stared for a moment. “It… was in a tank?”

“Yeah.”

He stared some more, then looked back down at his tablet. “Um, there’s more problems?”

I nodded, slowly. Paul wasn’t catching on as quickly as some others. Kinda weird how I missed some of the army guys. Some of them had been competent enough. I took another sip of coffee. I’d have to pace myself. Didn’t want to be on-stage with a need to piss. “So, problems?”

“Yes! The hotel that’s part of the Velvet Wheel is asking for reinforcements.”

“Like extra cleaning staff, or…” I asked.

“Security,” he said.

I finished my coffee, tossed it towards the nearest trash can, missed, then took off walking. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s going on.”

“Um, Miss Samurai Stray Cat,” Paul said.

“Yeah?”

He pointed in the other direction. “It’s that way.”

“Of course,” I said before spinning on a heel and walking the other way. Paul scrambled after me, working hard to keep up even if he had longer legs. We left the main lobby space of the conference hall and went up an escalator into another section of the casino.

There was a clear separation between sections, and clear signage pointing people off to one side and down towards the front of the building where the Conclave was being held. We didn’t want people circling around the back and avoiding the security check and badge pickup at the front. Still, no one gave Paul and I any trouble. I guessed that the casino staff all had some way of telling Samurai apart from normal folk.