Chapter Fifty-Nine - Cause Player

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***

I snuck up to the next corner, back bent and body low until I was right up to the intersection. The buildings here were mostly homes. The sort of pre-built bungalow with a little picket-fence yard that a lot of people probably dreamed of retiring in.

It was just too bad that they were right on the edge of town. Well, maybe the owners had insurance. I didn’t know much about home ownership.

My ears did an alright job of painting a picture of what was going on around the corner, but that picture was... confusing.

Someone was fighting with a trio of aliens. Model Threes, the little dog-like ones with the spiney backs and mouths that were too big for comfort. The Model Threes were rushing at a man who sounded large and who moved with sharp, sudden bursts of speed to bring a heavy bar around.

The roar of a chainsaw didn’t leave much to the imagination as to what, exactly, he was using as a weapon.

I figured anyone murdering aliens in hand-to-hand was an ally.

I came around the corner and raised Whisper to take a shot, but before I could really get to aiming my new chainsaw buddy spun around, threw the corpse of one alien at another, then stabbed his saw into the third’s head.

Bits of antithesis splattered onto the ground, turned into so much chunky puree by the roaring blade.

The samurai was a tall dude, covered in plates of army-green armour that looked scuffed, and that left his biceps exposed.

He worked out.

Or maybe he cheated with the tech, but either way, the results were the same. His arms were as thick around as my head and looked like they were straining against his armour. The way his armour segmented over his chest gave the impression that he had abs too.

If I wasn’t gay, I’d think he looked pretty hot.

“Yo!” I called out.

The dude glanced my way, then completely ignored me as he walked over to the two alien bodies squirming a few meters away. One of them was still alive.

He dropped his chainsaw, and the weapon faded into motes before hitting the ground. A projection? Or maybe some sort of nano bullshittery? It was definitely some alien gear.

Reaching over his back, he closed his hand over empty air then pulled a shotgun from nowhere.

I wasn’t well-versed in guns, but even I recognized a double-barrel. His was cartoonishly large. He pumped it--why hadn’t he materialized it already loaded?--lowered the barrel to point it at the head of the last living Model Three, then fired.

I flinched back at the noise. I was used to gunshots. His shotgun was an order of magnitude louder than anything I’d ever fired.

It did the job though. I stepped to the side as a bit of Model Three rolled by.

The big guy shifted his shoulders, then turned to face me. “Sorry about that,” he rumbled.

I shrugged--realized he couldn’t see my shoulders--then spoke up. “It’s all good,” I said. “Came over to see how things were going.”

“So, you’re the backup?”

“I guess so? More like I’m the cavalry.”

He huffed, a sort of macho one-note laugh. “Right. Give me a moment.”

Turning, the big guy looked up just as a small drone zipped closer. It was a tiny golden thing, no bigger than a marble with a pair of little wings fluttering on the sides.

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The dude paused, then his shoulders slumped and he turned to me. “Okay, that’s done,” he said.

“You’re livestreaming?” I asked before I glanced around. We were standing pretty much in the centre of an intersection. The road past the samurai led off and out of town and into the woods surrounding Black Bear.

“Yeah, got to make a living, you know? I’m Cause Player.”

I stared at him. “Your name’s what?”

He shifted, shotgun dropping and evaporating before it even hit the ground. “I’m Cause Player. It’s... a name. I do cosplay.”

“Okay,” I replied, because what the hell else was I supposed to say? Lucy mentioned cosplay a few times. She followed some girls that dressed up... well, really, they weren’t usually wearing much, but what they did have on belonged to some game or another. “Are you cosplaying something right now?”

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“You don’t recognize me?”

I placed a hand on my hip. “Oh yeah, totally. I know all the macho armour-wearing shooty dude characters.”

I had the impression he wasn’t too amused. “This is Doom Guy.”

“Wow, that name’s worse than yours.”

“What are you here for? My ads are about to finish and I need to get back to work.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Alright, sorry. Uh, mostly here to figure out what’s going on. I haven’t been running into any aliens at all. You seem luckier than me.”

“I have a tool that attracts them,” he said. “It doesn’t work on most models, but these little ones will charge right over. I’ve been killing any of those that come into town. It’s been pretty quiet so far. Little groups every few minutes.”

“Huh,” I said. “Well, we evacuated most of the civvies to the company headquarters and armed it up. Cat mechs and all.”

“Stray Cat, right?” he asked.

“Oh right, yeah, that’s me. Just call me Cat. You looked me up?”

“I saw the memes.”

I paused, working over the implications of that. Memes? Plural? No, I didn’t want to know. “Okay then. So you’re going to stay here?”

“Around here? I’m patrolling to keep the area safe. Give people time to leave. I marked a few places where there were more people, and I sighted a Model Nine but it left before I could catch up to it. They’re fast little things.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen a Model Nine,” I said.

“That’s probably normal, they’re stealth models,” Cause Player said. “They look like long insects.”

“They going to be a problem?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said. “But I’m more worried about the other models. Not too many of them coming around, but there are enough that I’d rather stay on top of them.”

“Right,” I said. I eyed the street, then the woods beyond. They looked rather ominous, what with their trees and... plants and stuff. I was definitely not a country girl. “Crap, I’m not sure what to do from here.”

Cause Player shrugged. “There are some civilians around. You could help them. I’m more of a solo-player. And having someone else on my livestream might wreck the viewer’s immersion. So... yeah. If you want to help, maybe find the Model Nine’s mini-hives?”

“Mini-hives?” I asked. “That sounds like a nightmare.”

“They are,” he said. “Ask your AI. I need to get back to the show.”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Right, fine.” If he wanted to play actor for his crowd, that was on him. As long as he was still killing aliens I figured it wasn’t any problem of mine. Dude needed to make a living too. “Myalis, Model Nines, they going to be a problem?”

All antithesis models are problems on some level. Model Nines are, interestingly, the model that tends to irritate more veteran Vanguard the most. They are particularly adept at avoiding detection, and often require a ‘boots on the ground’ approach to be discovered and eliminated.

“Hmm,” I said before turning back towards Cause Player. “I’m going to head back to the headquarters then, maybe try to herd some civilians back that way too. If you need anything, you call me or Gomorrah, alright? She’s got a cool ride, and can probably be here in a matter of seconds.”

“Thank you,” he said. He actually sounded sincere there. “I should be able to hold my own for a while. This isn’t the best point farm, but it’s not all bad.”

“Yeah, cool,” I said. I saluted him, then stepped back. I really needed a better invisibility system so that I could just disappear entirely. It would make for a cool exit. “Think you could point me towards the biggest group of locals that aren’t safe?”

I can do that. I’ll try to verify if I can see any Model Nines moving into town. They tend to be difficult to find via artificial means.

“How come?” I asked.

Their skin and fur can change colours and textures, similar to the Earth-native chameleon, though they are significantly better at it. They can also change shapes thanks to the way their prehensile fur is made. They are cold blooded, so infra-red has difficulty seeing them, and they can release small spores from their down-fur that float in the air and will frequently give sensors false-positives.

Sounded like fun. “Let’s see if we can’t catch us a couple of them, then!”

***