Chapter Thirty-Seven – A Genius Idea

Chapter Thirty-Seven – A Genius Idea

“There are several curated, quick, and even inexpensive services willing to teach a budding or even experienced samurai how to handle public-facing tasks.

You don’t want to have the public turn on you because of mismanaged PR.”

–Family Head of PR John J.J. Johnson, 2051

***

I could have very easily spent the rest of the afternoon trailing after Lucy and scaring people into doing what she said. In fact, I’d done that before and it was always very enjoyable.

I don’t know what it said about me as a person, but something about seeing Lucy go full girlboss on people, unleashing her barbed tongue then snapping around to being the sweetest, most angelic person in the world faster than anyone could blink really did it for me.

Unfortunately, all good things had to come to a crashing explosion of an end.

My comms spat on and I jumped as a voice blared into my ears. “Cat, where the fuck are you?”

That was Gomorrah, nice, proper-Christian-girl Gomorrah who didn’t usually swear. Which meant that things were probably not going so well.

“I’m here, what’s up?” I asked.

“I’ve been running around lighting aliens on fire for the last hour and every time I turn around there’s more of them. I don’t know if I’m going to get swarmed here, but if I don’t start getting help soon, I’m going to lose it.”

“Okay, right, I’m on my way. Can you hang on for ten minutes?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “I can hold on for ten minutes. I swear, if you spent the last hour goofing around I’m going to rethink all the nice thoughts I had about you.”

“Right, right, I’m coming. And I wasn’t goofing around, I was arming the people and getting things set up back here.”

“Uh-huh.” The line went dead, and I sighed.

Lucy waved the people she was talking to off, and they took the hint, leaving before Lucy had to really ask. She turned towards me, and her head tilted to the side a little. “You okay?”

“Yeah, need to run though,” I said.

“Oh, that’s alright,” she said. “I think I’ve got things handled here. The extra suits and gear will come in handy. I’ll try to stay on top of things, so if you can keep the aliens off our asses, then we’ll probably be fine.”

I nodded, then slid my helmet off, wrapped an arm around Lucy’s waist, and pulled her in close.

Myalis brought up a handy countdown showing me that I had under five minutes left to get to Gomorrah while keeping my word, so I reluctantly broke the kiss. “Okay,” I said once I caught my breath. “We’ll continue that later?”

“Oh, you can bet on it,” Lucy purred.

I grinned, then pecked her on the cheek before backing up and tugging my helmet back on. “Stay safe, alright?”

“I’m supposed to say that to you,” she said. “Go on, go save the day. I’ll be back here making sure there’s people to appreciate the saving once you’re done.” She winked at me, and I ran off with a bit of pep in my step.

Surprisingly, the militia technical was still waiting for me by the front of the mall. It seemed as if the driver had decided that chauffeur duties were either more fun or safer than whatever his actual job was meant to be. “Hey, get me to… uh…” I checked our map, spotted Gomorrah’s tag, then rattled off the name of the nearest intersection before leaping up onto the back of the pickup.

The world outside of our walls was on fire.

The technical slowed to a stop, mostly because a row of firefighting trucks was stationed on the edge of the street, hoses rolled way out towards the wall where guys in heavy flame-retardant gear and exo suits were spraying the inner side of the wall with water.

That seemed enough, for now, to stop the flames from crawling over the barricades and towards the people on our side. As I watched an alien–a model three–made it over the wall and tumbled down the other side, skin peeling and fur aflame. One of the firefighters turned their hose onto the alien, dousing them before a militiaman put a round into its head.

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I tapped my comms back on as I jumped down from the back of the truck. “Gomorrah, why is everything on fire?”

“Because the aliens haven’t figured out how to flameproof themselves yet, and until they do, this is the most effective way of keeping them away.”

“Yes, but humans are also not fire-proof,” I pointed out.

“There’s people keeping the fire contained. I fail to see how that’s my issue.”