Chapter Eighty-Two – Till I Can Get Mine

Chapter Eighty-Two – Till I Can Get Mine

“Generally, over the course of a samurai’s lifespan as a samurai, you’ll see them shift a lot in their purchasing patterns, though some stick to a single pattern.

There are some who never have any points remaining, as they spend them as soon as they gain them. Others save them up, or try to reach a certain ceiling, then once they’re reached it, then cease all expenditure until they’re ready for the next leap upwards.”

–On the Spending Habit of the Samurai, Sixth Edition, 2054

***

The next day was… quiet.

It wasn’t like I could afford to do nothing, but nothing is exactly what I did. I think I slept a solid ten hours, grabbing Lucy close and not letting her go, even when she complained sleepily about having to get up.

I couldn’t sleep without her close, and… I didn’t want to admit it, but maybe that close call had rattled me a little. Having Lucy so close reminded me that I was alive. As long as Lucy was breathing then I’d be living too.

I still woke up early, at the kind of hour that Gomorrah would have praised me for. I got up, finally letting Lucy waddle off to the washroom with some grumbled complaints that had me smiling, at least a little.

Loading up on coffee as a decent replacement for breakfast, I slipped on some bunny-eared flip-flops, then made my way down to the garage. I’d ordered the cat carrier to bring my mech down there, with the help of my repair drone.

My mech was waiting for me in the corner of the garage. I stared at it while gently sipping at my coffee. “Yeah, still looks fucked,” I said.

It is in dire need of repair. But I am rather confident that you could do it. It would take a lot of time, and a lot of effort, but you could manage.

“I guess,” I said. I started to circle around the mech, eyeing it from different angles and making a mental tally of what needed replacing. It was… not as bad as it could have been. The frame was intact, the legs had a few scratches, but they were superficial. The body was mostly fine. A few bent bits here and there, but nothing expensive. The head was… fucked beyond repair. One of the Gatlings was just gone, and I wouldn’t trust the side-mounted guns.

So, just one big chunk to replace, which would probably require taking apart a lot of the front of the mech to manage. I’d need a sort of jack to lift the head off. Maybe I could sell it off to the Family or something? There were a few decent sensors and such tucked into the head that someone might be interested in.

“Myalis, how many points am I sitting on?” I asked.

Point Total: 72,417

That was… a hefty chunk of points. “How much was the mech again?”

You paid twenty-thousand points for the Mark IV Mechcatular Nyanzerfaust.

I had enough to buy two more mechs just like it. But that would be silly. “Okay,” I said. “Well, I don’t want to lose this one, it’s been good for me, but Lucy will get out the spritz bottle if I don’t upgrade again to be safer. This baby was good against stuff up to the twenties. I think I’ll see about fixing her up and using her for that kind of thing.”

A reasonable choice. It also has some degree of automation. You’ve used it from afar a few times to serve as a guard.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I said with a nod. “Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do… do I have a catalogue that has garages in it?”

You have a Defensive Structures Catalogue that does feature a few structures that could serve as a garage, but they’re more designed to be placed outdoors as temporary housing for vehicles.

“Yeah, I’m looking for something I can shove in here,” I said with a gesture to the garage’s rather bare wall. It was pure cinder block and cement, painted over with some thick off-grey paint. This floor was one lower than the offices where the prosthetics shop was set up, and one above Gomorrah’s floor. The far corner actually had some walls up, and it looked like Gomorrah had finished setting up that car lift.

Otherwise, it was a lot of empty space, most of an entire floor’s worth, though a few hover cars were parked off to one side. People visiting the prosthetics shop, maybe? There wasn’t much else for people to do here.

“Okay, what can I get for a couple of hundred points? I just want a nice space to park my mechs, plural, with space for tools and maybe a jack and some crawlspace underneath.”

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Hmm, I can see two ways to go about this. A Indoor Garage Catalogue for two hundred points would get you what you need. A space to place your mechanized vehicles as well as your bike, with plenty of storage, tool cabinets, lighting, and even some small equipment to manoeuvre larger parts around.