Chapter Twenty-Seven - Three Star Pull

"Introducing, from The Family, the latest and greatest gacha game ever!

Pull from actual, real-life Samurai! Collect your favourite waifus and husbandos! Listen to real lines, equip them with real gear!

The most state-of-the-art gacha to ever go live!"

--Initial ad for the Family Gacha, 2057

***

The nameless intern led Rac and I deeper into the Family HQ while also slowly pissing me off. I asked him how the sewer situation was going, and he had no idea. I asked him if more Sewer Dragons were being referred to my clinic, and he didn't know anything about that. I asked him what the plans were for keeping humanity from getting dinosaur'ed and he didn't have a single clue.

But one question from Rac about that stupid gacha game and he went on a five minute tangent about it.

Apparently I was a three-star pull, whatever the fuck that meant.

The intern kept drawing us deeper into the HQ until we reached an elevator guarded by a pair of mechs. They were androids, but not the sex kind. These were four-legged, squat robots with humanoid upper torsos and enough guns to start a small war. They had heads, in that they had a bunch of sensors and shit in a boxy thing at the top that stared at us, but I was pretty sure they could live without.

"This is as far as I can go, Miss Stray Cat," he said with a nod. "Your guest pass should allow you access, Miss Raccoon, but please don't, ah, stray too far? The pass will buzz a warning if you reach a zone you're not allowed to be in."

"And if she keeps going?" I asked.

"The security system does have some non-lethal options," he said. "After that, the lethal options kick in. There's really not much time between, so please listen to the pass's instructions. And with that, I wish you good luck." He bowed, then scampered off.

I stared at his back for a moment before shaking my head. "You know, last time I came here, they used a honey pot on me?"

"A what?" Rac asked.

"It's when you deal with a corp or something and they send someone hot to handle you. They're all flirty and shit? Like, imagine if you had to deal with a company and the rep they sent looked like that Garter guy but... with a nicer chin or whatever floats your boat."

"I think I get it," she said flatly.

I shrugged, then walked past the androids into the elevator. Rac followed and the doors closed. There was no button panel, instead, the elevator just started to drop slowly.

"So, we're going to be meeting with a bunch of Samurai?" Rac asked. She sounded just a pinch nervous, which was kind of fair. If someone had dragged me to meet a single samurai just a month ago I would have been shaking in my running shoes. I wasn't one to fangirl either, the shaking would mostly be worry.

Samurai were still a little scary. I could readily admit, having met my share, that we weren't the sanest, most level-headed bunch around. And we all did kind of have that level of personal and political power that let us get away with shit.

Mostly nice folk, though. "If it helps any, I think Grasshopper will be here?" I said.

"Oh," Rac said. After a long pause, she nodded. "I like her."

"Yeah, kind of hard not to, she's just like that," I said.

The elevator slowed to a stop, then the doors opened. There were more androids waiting for us, but past them was a plain corridor. There were washrooms to the left and right and a large pair of double doors at the end.

I stepped out cautiously, eyeing the space. No cameras that I could see, but that didn't mean anything. Rac might have sensed my nerves because she didn't say anything as we crossed the corridor to the doors at the end. They opened with a hiss, leading into... a lounge?

There was the ubiquitous large, round projector table that everyone seemed to have these days, but otherwise the room felt like a... how could I put this. It looked like what a person with corpo brain rot thought a living room should look like.

Big couches with hard angles. Parts of the room were a step higher than other parts. Everything faced inwards towards that projector, but there was also a large screen on the far wall. One corner had a minifridge next to a small kitchen set up with cupboards that probably had cheap snacks and there was an automatic coffee machine back there too.

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A table in another corner had square-angled chairs around it and there was a shelf with generic boardgames sitting on it, and by the door there was a stand with little paper pamphlets with shit like suicide prevention hotlines and the usual shit people would waste ink on. "How to tell your parents you're a furry" and "Both my moms are straight, what do I do?"

"Wow, this place looks tailor made to suck the joy out of everything," I said as I stepped in.

The occupants glanced my way, and I took them in as a group.

Sam-O-Ray was occupying all of one couch. The big guy was grinning. His armour was standing behind the couch, all pure white and covered in samoan tattoos that I noticed were reflections of his actual tattoos... well, the suit's glowed, but that was a given.

Grasshopper was in one of those shitty chairs from the table in the corner, sitting with perfect posture in her many-limbed insectile armour. She was holding onto three cups of tea with her three right hands, each one with a different tag dangling from the side.

And LaserJack was sitting on the couch opposite Sam-O-Ray, a laptop on his lap and his suit looking a bit crumpled.

"Hello, Stray Cat," Grasshopper said.

"Yo, little sister Cat!" Sam-O-Ray said. He bounced off the couch and was in front of me in a matter of seconds. I braced for impact, and he might have noticed because his touch was gentle, a careful grasp of my shoulder coupled with a massive, sparkly-teeth smile. "It's been too long," he said.

"Yeah, it's been a minute," I replied.

"Who's this little sister?" he asked as he leaned to the side to inspect Rac.

"That's Rac. Or Racoon if you're being formal. She helps me around my place. Great little tech, can shoot things good too."

"Ah, well, any little sister of Cat's is a little sister of mine!" he said with a wide grin. "Come! The couches really do suck, but they're better than standing around. We're waiting for one more."

"Am I interrupting a meeting or something?" I asked.

"You are not," Grasshopper said. "Hello, Rac the Racoon, how are you doing?"

"I'm fine," Rac said. "I've been doing the things you told me to... when I have time."

Grasshopper smiled. "I know. You've been a very good pupil. I appreciate that you have a busy schedule and yet you still find time to do your homework. Isn't that laudable, Stray Cat?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, good job, Rac," I said without meeting Grasshopper's eyes. So what if I had a few gigs of homework to do. I'd get to it eventually, when I wasn't worried about saving the world, or sleeping in, or spending time with Lucy. I had other priorities than learning math.

The door behind us opened and I turned to see a tall woman step into the room. She was armoured, like really armoured. A long skirt of interlocking metal plates, shoulder pads that were exaggeratedly huge, a chestplate that wrapped around... I don't know if the English alphabet had enough letters to describe the size of her. There had to be some gravity tech fuckery going on because there was no way anyone could move with those.

Her face, when I finally dragged my eyes up to stare, was encased in more steel, shaped like a pretty but blank woman.

"Hey," I said.

LaserJack finally twigged on to something happening and looked up from his laptop. "Ah, Jolly Monarch, good."

That was Jolly? The weird guy with the LARP costume and the drones?

My confusion might have been obvious because Sam-O-Ray laughed. "He's up around Mars or thereabouts, this is one of his Queen drones."

"An old one," the Queen drone said with a slightly distorted but very much masculine voice.

"Should I feel something about the, uh, shape of the drone?" I asked.

"It was the only way to fit all the weapons I wanted," he said with a sigh.

"Uh-huh."

The Queen's shoulders sagged, which made other things... I shook my head. "No one believes me," he said. "Which is why I never use this drone. It's three years old besides. I have far better now, but it happened to be on Earth and I didn't want to waste points."

"Hmm, I never thought about it, but is this literal objectification?" Grasshopper asked.

"Everyone," LaserJack said. "Let's focus. Monarch, what's the plan?"

"Ah yes, the plan. The plan is that no one has a plan and we're all going to die."

***