Chapter Thirty-Three - The Art of Being Fashionably Late

"Arriving early is so gauche. You either arrive on the tick you're supposed to, proving that you are a professional with a masterful control over your own time, or you arrive when you arrive, usually some ten to fifteen minutes later, letting the other party know that your time is valuable."

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"Did you still wanna come?" I asked Rac. We were stepping out of the gym and into the great outdoors. Well, the lower outdoors, I'd parked my bike near the ground level, between two megabuildings. There wasn't much sunlight down here, and the locals were... more interesting than usual.

Still, they'd given my bike a wide berth, probably because I'd parked it on the roadside and all of the corpo-owned self-driving delivery cars were making a point of going around and slowing down on passing it.

Also, my bike looked awesome and I trusted it not to be stealable. There were some serious perks to being a samurai that didn't get included in all of the interviews and shit.

I mean, some downsides outweighed it all, like the crushing realization that if I fucked up the entire planet might look like one of those watermelons in a video where someone irresponsible was given access to anti-materiel guns.

"I guess I'll come with you," Rac said. She'd taken long enough to answer that I almost jumped when she spoke.

"Oh, cool, yeah," I said. "Come on, I'll present you to this boy, he's... cute, I guess?"

"You guess?" Rac asked. "Wait. No, don't play match-maker with me. Lucy tried already."

"She did? And you're not happily married already?" I asked.

Rac made a face, and I laughed as I got on the bike. A few minutes later we were riding up and through the city's skyline. I turned us northwards, then took off towards Saint-Jérome. I set the bike to auto-pilot while I made a call. I didn't need to be distracted and run headlong into a building today.

The line rang once before it was picked up on the other side. I had the option to turn it into a video call, but didn't because I wasn't some old zoomer. "Miss Stray Cat?" Lieutenant Moreau asked.

"Yo, LT," I said. "I'm heading to Saint-Jérome right now. Need to chat with the brass. Think you could arrange a meeting for me?"

"Of course. With all of the officer corps?"

"Everyone worth having, the topic will probably end up classified."

"I... see, I think I can arrange that. And the other samurai here?" he asked.

"Get them in on it too if they're around," I said. "Are they around?"

"Yes ma'am," he replied. "Princess and Knight have been assisting in the city with clean up, Crackshot and Hedgehog have taken to hunting smaller pockets of antithesis--I suspect that they have an ongoing bet--and Miss Tankette has been, uh, raising morale with the troops."

I paused for a moment. "Can you go over that last one?" I asked, carefully.

"Pardon? Oh, she's been working in the canteen. The food she's serving is non-regulation, but... well, none of the officers have the heart to stop her, or the authority, or the good sense to put an end to something everyone is enjoying. It might well lead to a riot."

"Ah, yes, okay," I said. "What about my new little French friend?"

"The as yet unnamed samurai has been assisting with the cleanup around his township. Did you want me to pass an invitation to him as well?"

"Sure," I said. "Tell him he can ride the mech back. On top."

"I'll relay that to him. Was that all?"

"Yeah. HQ in the same place?"

"No ma'am, we've relocated to the Saint-Jérome hospital. The building was previously evacuated, but it's centralised, close to the civilians, and relatively secure."

"Alright, see you there in... call it half an hour?" That'd give him time to sort things out. And it meant that we had a bit of time to get there. Too much, actually. I hung up and half-turned to address Rac. "What kind of fast-food you like?"

"Anything?" Rac said. "I'm not a picky eater."

Figured as much. Rac came from the same school of 'wait, we have food?' as I did when it came to tastes.

Anything is what we got. I flew down to the nearest automated fast food place with a drive-through and only winced a little when the price came in for our order. Still, it was more of a habit wince than something actually painful. I'd grown somewhat rich recently. A few burgers and fries and some sides wasn't going to sink me too badly.

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I regretted getting a bike instead of something a little more comfortable, since eating while sitting in tandem was less than ideal, and there was no protection from the weather, so I had to set us to hover under one of those huge billboards tilted back at a 45 degree angle to better splash the cars zipping above.

It was, of course, raining.

We ended up with a handful of trash, and while I was really tempted to just toss it off into the void below, that would have set a bad example. So I stuffed it into a small compartment on the bike. I'd dump it later, when doing so wouldn't make me look like a slob.

"Alright, that should give us just enough time to make it there and not be any more than five minutes late," I said.

"You want to be late?" Rac asked.

"If you start showing up early to things, people will start to expect it from you," I said. "It's customer relations one-oh-one."

"I don't think that's how it works," Rac said.

"Nah nah, trust me," I said before laughing. "Or maybe I just like sleeping in and making up excuses after the fact. Who knows?"

"That sounds a lot more likely."

The flight over to Saint-Jérome was pretty quick after that. The smaller city really wasn't all that far from New Montreal. I did slow down a little so that I could peek over the side of the bike and take in the ground flying past. I wasn't sure I'd be able to see any antithesis from the air, but there might be signs of their presence.

The only interesting thing I saw was a convoy of military trucks heading back to New Montreal at a pretty good clip. Another supply run?

I'd have to keep that kind of thing in mind once we got things started. Soldiers would be coming and going, and we couldn't reasonably keep things to ourselves or discreet if we had people leaving.

Fuck, we'd have to pay some guys extra to stick around.

We made it to Saint-Jérome in short enough order. The city was a little more lively than the last time I'd flown over it. There were large crowds of people from the camps on the southern end of the city moving into row and being guided on foot through the city. It looked like the city was secure enough that people were allowed to go back home.

Or it was cheaper to allow people to go back home, and if they discovered some aliens the army missed, their panicked screaming would be enough to let the army know where to start looking.

I was hoping that I was wrong about that one.

I noticed a few trucks with AA platforms on top of them on the outer edge of the city. The automated guns spun around and tracked us across the sky. It sent goosebumps across my new skin, but none of them opened up on us. I was pretty sure if they did I'd be kind of fucked.

But no, we came to a nice, safe landing in the parking lot of the Saint-Jérome hospital. My cat mech was sitting there and... moving its massive head as if it was licking its front paw?

"Myalis, why is my mech doing that?" I asked.

PR.

"Don't just give me a two-letter answer," I grumbled.

'K.

I closed my eyes for a moment. Was Gomorrah's AI like this? Atyacus always sounded proper and put together. Maybe a little pyromaniac, but I could grow to like burning things, I was sure.

The mech being here meant that my favourite French boy was probably around too. And I decided never to speak those words aloud after thinking about it for a fraction of a second. "Alright, let's go see where the others are at."

"Can I be at this meeting too?" Rac asked.

"I mean, I can't see why not? The last two meetings you were at were a lot more secretive."

"One was in a lounge, the other in a gym. I don't even know if that one counted, you were panting half the time."

"I'm not that out of shape," I defended.

Rac didn't respond to that. "This meeting will have important army people, no? I don't know if they'll like me being there."

"Just don't say anything and look disinterested, you'll pass as someone who's meant to be there. If they ask you a direct question, try to sound smart."

"How do you even do that?" Rac asked.

"See, it's working already."

"Huh?"

"Or maybe not," I relented.

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