Chapter Sixty-Two – Back with Most of My Limbs

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Heart of Dorkness (A wholesome progression fantasy) - Completed!

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Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!

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Save Scumming (A time-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing

Chapter Sixty-Two - Back with Most of My Limbs

"Look, I'm not anti-borg, I'm just saying... I like women with a bit of meat on them. Besides, with all of those mechanical parts, I can't help but imagine my junk getting stuck in a joint, you know?"

--Conversation on the Monstreal STM2, 2039

***

Getting home took a bit of effort. First, I had to check and see who wanted to stay in Quebec and who wanted to come back to New Montreal. Shy was returning, but Princess and Knight had a hotel booked for the knight, and Hedgehog was going to stay with the army.

Crisis Mode... well, she lived here, so it wasn't surprising that she'd stay. I expected that to be it, but of course some other things popped up. Juno wanted some forms looked at, mostly after-action reports, and there were several hundred gigs worth of surveillance footage that used to be directed straight to Libre which was now being channeled over to Gomorrah and me. I didn't have the time or mental bandwidth to look over even a tenth of that, but it took a few minutes to give the right orders for the army to get their own info-parsing specialists on the job.

It was already an hour past sunset by the time I got back into the Bastion and took off heading home.

I cleared the flightpath with the local ATC and then gunned it, flying about as quickly as I could push my ship's thrusters. With two extra mechs inside weighting it down, the entire thing felt a little more sluggish than I was used to. Plus it was a flying brick, built with little to no consideration for aerodynamics.

It still only took an hour for us to be approaching New Montreal.

The NMATC greeted us warmly and cleared an entire flight level for us, which was nice... for us. The rest had to reroute their traffic and we probably caused a few hundred people to arrive ten minutes later to wherever they were going.

Oh well. I didn't have the energy to complain about the unfairness, not when it was to my advantage.

"Okay Shy," I said as I brought the Bastion down, slowing its flight speed to a crawl even as I aimed it towards the widest opening in the skyscraper I called home. "We're here. Belt sign is off, devices can be switched off airplane mode, and the crew warmly invites you to get the fuck out."

"Goodbye," Shy said with a small bow-like nod. "I'll be back in the morning?"

"Yeah, sure," I said. "I'll be heading out around... nineish?"

She nodded again, then walked off towards her little hovercar parked a ways down in the garage. I watched her go, then looked at my mechs.

I really had to give them all a cleaning, and bring them into the repair bay for some maintenance. I knew that if I started that, it would be a good five or six hours before I got anywhere with it, though, there was some damage that would need fixing, parts that needed to be replaced and... urgh. I was well past exhausted.

A problem for tomorrow, then. I closed up the Bastion and made my way home. It felt like I was heavier. I don't think that I had worked that much, not physically in any case. I had spent most of the day sitting in one mech or another. They all had comfortable seats and good ergonomics.

Still, I think the work was mentally exhausting. The kind of shit office workers complained about and good, sane people disregarded as the stupid ramblings of people that found staring at a screen harder than real work.

I was so tired that I found myself leaning back in the elevator, almost sleeping on my feet.

Then the doors whisked open, and Lucy was there. "Cat!"

I found the energy to smile, then I grunted as Lucy bumped into me, arms wrapping around my middle.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," she replied. "You smell like gunpowder."

"I might, yeah," I replied. "Sorry I'm late."

"You're back and still have most of your limbs, that's good enough for me," Lucy said. She pulled back, looking me up and down. "You didn't lose anything, right? I was watching the livestream..."

"I didn't," I assured her. "Wait, you were watching that? Hell, I forgot we were even filming."

"I could tell," she replied. "I set up a watch-along at the school. Got one of the bigger auditoriums for it. They were surprisingly accommodating, and the feed was high-definition enough that it didn't look like ass on the bigger screen. Good job, Myalis."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Good for morale. At least, I hope."

"Get out of your armour and everything else. I have dinner ready. It's nothing special but..."

"I love you," I told her.

Lucy grinned. "I know. It's because I'm the best."

I was laughing as I went to our room and undressed. There was a set of pajamas on the bed. Not exactly neatly folded, but they were clean. So, I tossed off my armour and undersuit and the rest of my gear, only really being careful with the guns and grenades. Then, because I was a little sweaty even with new skin, I jumped in the shower to rinse off.

Lucy hadn't told me to put anything else back on after taking the armour off... but I assumed that it was implied, so I reluctantly dressed, then slipped out into the kitchen where Lucy was glaring at some black, smoking husk held in what I think were salad tongs.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said quickly. The trash was opened and the husk dropped into it.

"Uh.. you sure?" I asked.

She looked away. "It was garlic bread."

"Garlic bread is usually bread coloured," I pointed out.

"Oh, shut up, I was trying to do something nice for you," she muttered. I raised my hands in surrender. "Here, it's still warm." She removed a large bowl from atop a plate. It was macaroni noodles and meaty tomato sauce and... I think that fake bright-yellow cheese powder.

"Oh, fuck yeah," I said.

"Canadian classic," she said. "And only mostly processed."

I dug in. I had been a little tired, but the shower and now the scent of good food was bringing me back around.

"So, how was your day?" Lucy asked as she leaned onto the counter across from me.

"Eh," I said non-committably. "I think we've saved the city, more or less. Libre is... a cunt? Bit of a massive dick, huge chip on his shoulder. Definitely has problems." I gestured to my temple with the handle of my fork and waved it around in small circles. "Guy is trouble. But once we decided to ignore him and his dumbass plans, it got better. Killed lots of aliens, got a new mech."

"I saw that! At least, before you guys headed out. The livestream didn't follow you. It stayed over the walls."

"Anything interesting?" I asked.

"The usual betting and stuff. I shut down any gambling that had to do with any of the samurai dying," Lucy said. "Made examples of the people that tried that kind of shit. Ah, otherwise it was mostly fun? I guess it looks almost like a game when you're so far detached from it all, you know?"

"I get it," I said. You could easily be raised to see horrors beyond comprehension for so much of your young life before you just got used to it. "The goal was to get the Quebecers to calm the fuck down. They were on the edge of rioting."

"It'll help," she said. "But you might have to go a few steps further than just circuses. Bread is also important."

"Yeah," I said. "Think you could arrange something?"

Lucy snorted, then she went pensive. "Maybe? I can definitely arrange something performative."

"What's that mean?" I asked.

"Get a lot of food loaded into a few flying delivery trucks, get you or Gomorrah to escort them to the city, and have volunteers unload it all. Honestly, it won't even be enough to feed one mega-building's worth of people for a day, but if people see that there's bread coming in, they usually calm down. It's like... waiting in line."

"Waiting in line?"

"You're a lot more patient when the line is actually moving," she said.

"Oh... I guess."

I finished eating rather quickly. It really hit the spot.

"Are you ready for dessert?" Lucy asked. She tugged the front of her rather loose shirt down, and like a cat noticing the red dot of a laser pointer, my eyes were drawn in.

"I could make room," I said. My mouth felt rather dry all of a sudden.

It took Lucy no effort at all to drag me out of my seat and across to our bedroom, then the evening became markedly better than it had been. I might have fallen asleep a little later than I had intended to, and a little more tired, but that was fine.

At least, it was, until I was awakened at nearly four in the morning by an emergency alert on my Augs.

It was from Hedgehog, and he had declared a code red.

We didn't have coloured coding, but it didn't take a genius to see that somewhere between last night and the early morning, some shit had hit the fan.

***

A note from RavensDagger

I, uh, forgot?