Chapter Thirty-Nine – Getting a Clue

Chapter Thirty-Nine – Getting a Clue

“The Vtuber boom of the early 2020s turned into a strange phenomena. At some point it became relatively cheap for brands to have their own Vtuber mascot, either with a real person behind the digitised face, or a carefully curated auto-responding AI.

That led to an entire generation that grew up more comfortable interacting parasocially with vtubers than with real life humans.”

–Rise of the Anime Girl, a study in three parts, 2035

***

I took point, mostly because I was the more subtle of the two of us. Going invisible–after pinging Manic to get her augs to display my location–meant that I was… not visible to the aliens.

Whatever. Point was, I was better at the front than the rather loud Manic, who was even now blasting some music from some speakers built into her clothes. I wasn’t a music buff, but I recognized Fortunate Son when I heard it. I wasn’t sure if it was entirely appropriate to the context but I wasn’t going to start a debate I’d lose about music.

I checked my map as I walked down the side of a quiet street. The biggest confirmed group of antithesis was just a couple of blocks down, most of them gathering in a five-way intersection right on the edge of the fires that Gomorrah had started.

My plan had once been to take the aliens out while leaving as much of the city intact as possible, but that particular plan was several hours old by this point and with Gomorrah lighting everything up, it was kind of a moot point.

I’d hold back from the really destructive explosives, because the splash from those might hit Downtown and injure the folk I was meant to protect, but that still left me with more choices than before.

“Okay,” I said over the comms so that Manic could hear me. “I’ve got an idea.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m going to dip into the area with all the aliens, figure out which hole they’re crawling out of, then set bombs next to those. We’ll collapse the entire area down, then move in to mop up the survivors.”

“Sounds like there isn’t much for me to do in that plan of yours.”

“Would you rather hit up a group that outnumbers us a hundred to one head on?” I asked.

“Huh… alright, fair. Not quite at that level yet.”

“Me neither,” I said before shutting my comms off for a moment. “Myalis, can I have some resonators, maybe a few proximity mines, and… I guess some acid bombs. You know the ones that float up and rain acid down on an area?”

I’m familiar, yes. Are you getting these to prepare yourself?

“No, I’m giving them to Manic with instructions. If the aliens try to get at her they might cover her retreat.”

Manic didn’t seem impressed when I gave her the equivalent of a tupperware bin full of esoteric explosives, but she got the idea easily enough. “You just want me to cover my ass?”

“If you die while I’m a block away, it’ll look bad on my resume,” I said.

“I’m glad I matter so much to you,” Manic muttered. “These are some weird-ass bombs.”

“Hey, they’re creative. I thought you’d be all over that.”

“Blowing shit up isn’t art,” she said.

I stared. “Huh. And here I thought you knew something about art. Guess my impression was dead wrong.”

Manic rolled her eyes, then made a shooing gesture at me. “Go on, get to work, Stray Cat. But leave a few for me, would you?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said before patting her on the shoulder. I checked my gun for the third time, then started running off towards a nearby building. It had a bridge on its fifth floor that connected it to its neighbour and which should give me a nice view of the area where the antithesis were crowded.

I wanted a bird’s eye view of things before I got down and had to navigate around the xenos.