Chapter Twenty-One – God’s Righteous Fury

Chapter Twenty-One – God’s Righteous Fury

“Car culture was a multi-billion-dollar industry before Samurai came about and introduced technologies that changed the way driving worked for everyone.

Now, car culture is a multi-trillion-dollar industry, with everyone from the super rich who want their Rolls Royce to be made to their exacting specification, to street punks who covered their beaters with wraps of their favourite waifus. Anyone can mod their rides to be just a little faster. Everyone dreams of drift-flying around the smoke-stacks in the factory districts of various mega cities.”

-J. P. Kafka on the evolution of car culture, Jan 2038

***

I wasn’t feeling my best as I rode the elevator down to the lobby. My clothes were in a bit of a state after Lucy’s very enthusiastic good-bye, and if it wasn’t for the guilt of knowing that some kid needed help, I might have called off the whole thing to take another long shower.

As entertaining as your distress is, it might be best if you focused a little.

“You think?” I muttered. I tugged my coat back on straight, then made sure all of my gear was in place. I had my Trench Maker tucked under one arm, my Whisper over my back. My back-mounted guns were tucked away, and my tail was casually whipping from side to side.

It was a lot of weaponry, and yet I still felt like I could have a bit more.

Still, it wasn’t worth losing points just yet, not if I could spare them.

The elevator slowed to a gentle stop and its doors opened. My freaky new ears almost immediately gave me an image of the room before I stepped out into it, and of the salesman in the corner whispering, “There she is.”

I walked fast. I wanted to duck my head down and try to be unnoticable, but there was no way that would work. My jacket, un-transparent as it was, looked a bit like the acid-rain proof long coats worn by some of the folk around, but my armour beneath sure didn’t.

Lucy had once told me that one of the best ways to get around was to look like you knew what you wanted and to move ahead with your head held tall and your back straight. It was good advice for an orphan on the streets.

“Myalis, can you send a warning to the idiots coming over?”

Certainly. Do you wish to see it first?

“Will you send something embarrassing if I don’t ask?”

Definitely.

I rolled my eyes, then blinked a few times to get over the still-strange sensation of having two eyes to blink. “Show me.”

I nodded after reading it. That was suitably terrifying. “Why’s it superimposed over a gif of kittens chasing a ball of yarn?”

That’s a live feed from the internet, actually. And I enjoy the juxtaposition. I think it makes it just a little bit more intimidating.

“Send it,” I said.

I enjoyed the way the morons coming at me paused. A few of them looked to each other, and one even seemed to be considering it, but then one scoffed and turned away, and soon I was across the room and the peer-pressure had them looking elsewhere for other people to bother.

Pushing through the exit found me once more on the landing just outside the hotel. This time, there wasn’t a shitty taxi waiting for me. Instead, with a familiar nun leaning against its side, was a boxy muscle car.

“God damn,” I said as I moved closer and took the ride in.

Flat black paint so dark it almost hurt to look at, a shell of thick steel with a sort of cage around the front and back. The car was resting flush against the ground, its turbines off and clicking as they cooled, and yet it looked like it was ready to pounce ahead at a moment’s notice.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

No windows, because those were apparently for lesser cars, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a turret emplacement on the hood. “God damn,” I repeated.

“Using the Lord’s name in vain is usually a sin,” Gomorrah said. “But that is the appropriate reaction in this case.”

“What is it?” I asked as I carefully reached out to run a hand over the hood. It was rough, coarse like sandpaper.

“This is what you can get for four thousand points and a tech-tree specced into hovercars,” Gomorrah said.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said. “I’m not a car girl, but still, damn.”

I noticed that she had built up a bit of a crowd, a dozen or so people blinking at us with the telltale look of someone using their augs to take screencaps.

“She goes from zero to sixty in point nil nil one seconds. So fast that anything organic inside is turned to mush. Max speed in-atmosphere is just shy of mach one. Point defence lasers, guided rockets, and a flame-thrower under the hood. Fully air-tight, of course. Oh, and there’s a fridge in between the seats. It keeps my soda cold.”

“Christ.”

Gomortah huffed and shook her head. I looked up to her, but her face was covered in that same emotionless white mask as before. Not much seemed to have changed with my favourite nun other than the car.

“Does she have a name?” I asked.