Chapter Fifty – Trash Panda Pondering

Chapter Fifty – Trash Panda Pondering

“You must choose one. Cut the general working’s salary. Or cut the security force’s salary. You absolutely cannot do both.”

–Lessons in Human Resources, Fifth Edition, 2038

***

The ride back home, with Rac clinging to me from behind as I rode my bike across the skies, was about as awkward as I expected it to be.

Probably more for me than for her, to be fair. She hadn’t done anything weird, just hung out with a boy close to her age.

Maybe I was reading too much into it. It wasn’t like I was her mom or anything. She could do what she wanted. I was pretty sure Gros Baton was like… seventeen-ish, so there wasn’t anything too weird there. He was definitely a better friend to make than the gang she’d been riding with recently.

Well, I guess mercs weren’t a gang, but Garter and his little buddies were bad influences.

A bunch of samurai were probably much better people to hang out with. Probably.

Samurai at least had the benefit of the Protector AI picking them out as ‘good enough’ folk. But I might have been a little biased there.

We swooped in towards the only building with a giant cat topping it off, and I brought my bike down for a gentle landing before the doorway. I could have gone into the parking garage, but the weather was actually kinda dry, for once, and I was too damned lazy to slow down fully and slip in. Plus, this spot was more fun to leave from in the morning.

“Alright, off off,” I said. Rac needed to hop off before I could swing my leg up and over. I bounced on the spot for a moment, then glanced over to Rac who was staring at me, hands in her pockets. “What?” I asked.

“It feels like you wanna say something,” she said.

“No?” I tried.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” I said. “So, uh, let’s go in? Unless you’re heading out again?”

She looked up. The sky was that deep bluish colour that came when all the nightly ads came on, with a few spots of purple and orange where some bigger signs caught the lower hanging clouds. “Nah. It’s late. I might load up the printer again. Uh, I’m running out of materials for it.”

“Ah, yeah, that’ll happen. I kinda put that out of my mind, what with Phobos and all.”

“Right. The end of the world is more important than that,” she said before shifting. “Kinda weird that we have to worry about that.”

“Heh, yeah, you tell me. You know, when I became a samurai, I thought I’d mostly be worrying about smallfry issues. A few aliens here and there, maybe a big hive to blow up. But mostly I expected to have to take care of me and mine and maybe the neighbourhood. This is… bigger.”

“I get that,” Rac said. She scratched at the back of her neck. “I wasn’t expecting to live much longer, you know? There’s only so long you can go, scrounging in the undercity. I had a good run at it, but you can only be so lucky. Never expected to be where I am now.”

“Hmm, yeah,” I said. “Uh… maybe we can do something to help others? Other Racoons out there, I mean. Not now-now, but it’d be nice. Once we have things settled. We can set something up. But first, you know, the world.”

“Save the world, worry about the little people after?” she asked.

“Pretty much, yeah. Come on, I’m starving.” I tapped her on the shoulder, then walked on home. The moment I was indoors I shucked off my helmet and tossed it onto the couch, then I flung my coat over the back of a chair that was supposed to be in the kitchen.

I wasn’t just going to leave my guns anywhere, though. I wasn’t that irresponsible. If I left them out, or my sword, there was a one hundred percent chance I’d be woken up by some Kitten crying because they shot themselves in the foot.

I took a deep breath, then sniffed the air some more. Something smelled nice.

“Cat!” Lucy said as she popped out of the kitchen. She ran over and crashed into me with a big hug.

I hugged back, of course, squeezing her closer and pressing my face against the top of her head. “Hi,” I said.

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“Hi,” she replied as she pulled her head back and craned her neck out to meet me in a kiss. “Mmm, good day saving the world?”

“Pretty good, yeah,” I said. “I’ll show you the footage later. We fired the Big Gun, it was pretty cool.”

“Oh, I bet!”

“Maybe I’ll have you come over? I don’t think there are any rules about who can press the big red button.”

“Is there actually a big red button?”