Jane volunteered to accompany Maria and I to the shelter. I’m sure she realised how awkward I was being. What I wasn’t sure about is whether she accompanied us to help decrease the awkwardness, or increase it.

Either way she was practically bouncing down the road as we headed to the Shelter site. “So, you’re the head of all the Samurai in the city? That’s cool.”

Maria seemed to be enjoying her enthusiasm. “Officially that's true, but in truth I'm more just the main contact for everyone. Directing Samurai is like herding cats, you hope they go where you want, usually they do what they want.” She glanced at the two of us, polar opposites, walking side by side.

“How do you know each other?”

“We grew up together on the street. We had a few people looking out for us when we were young, so now we keep an eye on a few kids ourselves.”

Maria turned slightly, “You grew up on the streets?”

I shrugged, “It’s pretty common down here. A lot of kids end up in gangs, others learn some sort of skill to survive. We just keep an eye on a few of the very young ones, to keep them from ending up like some people.” I pointed at Jane. Who immediately bonked me in return.

Maria smiled, “You both seem to have quite a positive outlook, despite being through so much.”

“We have to,” I said, shoving Jane away, “being negative won’t improve anything. We know we don’t have much, we just have to make do with what we have.”

“That’s a good philosophy to have,” Maria said, nodding.

“Soooo…” Jane started, a mischievous look on her face, “is our little Teddy one of the weirdest Samurai in town or what?”

“JANE!” I looked at her in mock horror.

Maria just laughed at our antics, “Not by a long shot. We have a data analyst that never leaves his room, a young boy who thinks he’s the main character in a mecha animated series, a surveillance expert that dresses like a squirrel, and I use bio-mechanical bugs. If anything, she’s relatively normal.”

“You haven’t gotten to know her yet,” Jane muttered.

I’d had enough of her attitude, so I began tickling. Jane tried to fight me off, while Maria stood by and laughed. It was the most normal I’d felt in a couple days.

***********************

By the time we arrived back at the Shelter things looked completely different. People were back on the streets, the market was already half set up, and there were some sort of giant machines cleaning up the site. They looked like unmanned bulldozers, but instead of just shoving the debris out of the way they were pulverizing and collecting it. The spectacle had attracted quite a few spectators already, and we had to push through to get on-site.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

We were briefly stopped by some sort of flying crowd control bot, it kinda looked like an oversized traffic cone, but it let us past when Maria identified herself.

In the middle of the Shelter was a gigantic truck, every once in a while one of the machines drove by and dumped their load into a hopper on the back. Somehow that hopper was breaking everything down, then spitting the raw materials into different containers on an attached trailer. Both Jane and I stared at the process in awe as we approached.

Maria waved at the man wearing a high visibility vest and hardhat standing near the track. “Jacob, I have someone to introduce to you.”

The man turned, and I got my first good look at him. He had a well managed brown beard, brown eyes, and was wearing construction attire. If he wasn’t working on a giant floating screen, and standing in front of a high tech truck, I would have thought he was just another construction foreman. He waved back, “Maria, who have you brought today?”

“This is Evelyn, our newest Samurai, and her friend Jane.”

“Nice to meet you, I'm Jacob Stevens, aka Barricade." He held out his hands and a set of hardhats appeared. He plopped them down on Jane and my heads. "This is a construction site, safety first.” He certainly had a friendly smile.

“Jacob here mostly works on rescue, recovery and reconstruction. Hence all the support bots and construction equipment,” Maria explained.

Jacob nodded. “A lot of us were shocked when we heard the Shelter down here was… missing. I came down here to help fix things, and Zetta is double checking the status of all the others.”

“You’re going to rebuild everything, yourself?”

“And I’ll be a lot faster than any conventional construction company,” he smirked.

I winced, “Well my AI Nyx has already, how did he put it, reallocated some funds from Indico’s accounts to pay for the repairs. I thought we'd just make them actually pay for the construction like they promised.”

Maria and Jacob exchanged a glance. “Although I don’t usually agree with ‘reallocating’ funds as you put it,” Maria started, “You’re not the first Samurai to take funds from a corrupt company to help people. Put whatever you can against the Shelter, then maybe make sure those kids are taken care of.”

Jacob nodded, “You can pay for the raw materials and basic furnishings if you want, but you won’t have to pay the construction costs.”

Spooky stepped forward, “Can you add some extra space for Evelyn to set up?”

Everyone looked at the bear, then at me, questioningly. “That voice is Nyx, my AI. He occasionally takes control of my bots directly.”

“I… could.” Jacob said hesitantly, “we can take a look at the blueprints later.”

Spooky nodded and walked away. I could feel Jane looking at the side of my head, judging. I chose to ignore her.

“I need to head back topside to let them know everything is sorted out down here. I’ll call you in a week or so to arrange a meeting with the rest of the Samurai in town, if that’s okay with you.”

I nodded, “It wouldn’t hurt, thanks for all the help.” Both Jane and I shook her hand before she turned away, the helmet closed and she just flew away.

“Impressive lady, right?” Jacob laughed. “I doubt the city would still be in one piece if it wasn’t for her. Too many strong personalities, and no one else wants to deal with them all.”

I didn’t answer, for a moment, I just watched her fly. “She is something.”

Jacob patted me on the shoulder, “Come on, let's see if you, me, your friend, and the bear, can figure out a good way to make enough space for you.”