Chapter Seventy-Three – It’s Always The Quiet Ones

Chapter Seventy-Three – It’s Always The Quiet Ones

“What about… Quiet? No, that’s too on the nose hmm? Oh! Lady Shylance? You’d need to pick up a lance for that.

Ah! Just Shy, then?”

–Recording of a conversation between Samurai Grasshopper, and a wall, 2056

***

“You good?” I asked before checking my mech’s scanners. There were a few living antithesis around, but they were flopped onto the ground, with hefty chunks of their bodies missing, and I figured that the whole ‘living’ thing would rectify itself soon enough.

I refocused on Shy. My guns were relatively silent…ish, all things considered, but they had shot right next to the samurai and I didn’t know if she had ear protection.

If she was shy by default, I couldn’t imagine how she’d be if I blew out her eardrums.

Stepping back very slowly let me see the woman a little better. Shy was a thin twenty-something in an all-black outfit wearing something like a long poncho with a hood and a sort of cloak bit at the back. Her suit was armoured from what I could tell. Her face was partially exposed. She had these sorts of large goggles on, which still let me see her wide-eyed stare. Her skin seemed a little strange? Motley. At first I thought she had burn scars like me, but it didn’t seem like that. That one thing where people’s skin was two-coloured, maybe? It started with a ‘v’ but I couldn’t remember the name.

“You good?” I repeated.

She looked down, as if checking herself, then let go of her gun. It hung off her side by a strap while she tapped herself all over real quick. Then she paused and shyly, slowly, looked back up. She nodded.

“Uh, yeah, good,” I said. “Can you talk? Or like, sign?”

Shy blinked, all without meeting my mech’s face with her gaze. She reached down towards her neck and… tugged up a piece of cloth that covered the few parts of her face that had been exposed.

I wasn’t getting the feeling that she’d be chatting with me anytime soon. Then I got a ping, from Myalis.

It seems as though Vanguard Shy wishes to forge a connection between her AI assistant and myself. I’m ambivalent about it.

I shut off the mech’s microphones so that she couldn’t overhead. “Is that dangerous?”

No.

“Uh, you sound sure of yourself,” I said.

Her AI is a thousand years too young to pose a threat to me. In any case, this isn’t too unusual. Vanguard who work together frequently sometimes do this. I’ve been in contact with Atyacus quite frequently, for example. Asking for this level of connection outright is a little strange, but not dangerous or a threat.

“Okay?” I tried. “So, what would that even do?”

Every Vanguard AI is already networked together, to some degree or another. This would merely allow you to hear what this Vanguard wants to convey through her AI assistant. In this case, in the form of text and sound-based communication.

“Would you say yes to it?” I asked.

It’s harmless, so I don’t see why not. I suspect that this Vanguard has communication issues and her AI is willing to assist.

I considered it for a moment, but then gave up on thinking. If Myalis said it was safe, then I could probably trust her. If the day came that I couldn’t, then I was fucked anyway. “Sure, patch them in,” I said.

Patching!

There was a small blip, and then text appeared at the bottom of my vision even as someone else spoke up. It sounded like they, he? Was standing right in front of me and talking with a rather posh-sounding accent. “Greetings! I am Latyns, Lady Shy’s personal AI assistant. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Vanguard Stray Cat.”

“Yeah, pleasure’s all mine,” I said. “So, any reason why Shy set this up?”

“Ah, indeed. Lady Shy is somewhat averse to speaking aloud with strangers, and so I have been tasked with translating her wants to you directly.”

“Right,” I said. I looked over to Shy who was… muttering something under her breath. She looked up for a moment, met my mech’s eyes, then she nodded her head low in what was almost a bow.

“Lady Shy thanks you for your assistance. Without your timely aid it was possible that she wouldn’t have survived this encounter with the Model Thirty-One.”