Woodsman. 2057, Bothell, Cascadia Megacity, Cascadia Free State. Two months before the Montreal Incursion.
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*Orca whales are animatronic substitutes. Crab availability subject to environmental conditions and not guaranteed. Antithesis security insurance is available but not included in all guided tours. Please ask your CFS-approved tour guide for available security options.
* Tourism brochure published by the Cascadia Free State Tourism Bureau
Bothell was on fire. One of the affluent suburbs in the old Seattle metro, the “historic” homes of the area had fared far worse than the megastructures of downtown when push came to shove. Turns out, wood doesn’t do too well when exposed to high explosives and flames. Even when the rain wouldn’t stop the conflagration. But that was a problem for city authorities - when they eventually show up.
At the foot of the road up into the Hollyhills low-income neighborhood, a figure in a green cloak stood. Black boots, green pants, and an orange top rounded out the outfit of a well-built, bearded man in his mid twenties holding a bow, with a wicked-looking handaxe at his hip. The man pulled back the string of his bow with blinding speed, a glowing yellow arrow materializing in its proper place and rocketing forward with a thunderclap towards a mass of what looked like faceless gorillas and wolves with strange, multi-hinged jaws running down the hill towards him. When that yellow streak ended in the head of one of those gorillas, it vanished. But it wasn’t the only thing which did.
In a spray of ichor, dozens of bodies behind his target simply vanished. The man’s arm blurred through drawing his bow again and again, more yellow streaks flashing out from his bow and detonating, some in the bodies of the screaming monsters which ran towards him, and some in front of them. All left a scene of carnage in their wake, and within five seconds, a horde of hundreds had been reduced to so much mess.
A gruff voice rang out. “Syntant, I think the new frag arrows are working. Do me a favor and remind me to play with them in the Mesh later. I’ve got some wiggly kinks to iron out.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Woodsman shouldered his bow. Okay, it wasn’t really just a bow at this point, much like his arm really wasn’t his flesh any more, but it looked like a bow and worked like one when he wanted it to. An incursion had hit the suburbs of Bothell and Woodinville, and it wasn’t a fun one for him or the two other mid-level Samurai who had been left behind when the upper crust took off for Mars.
A clear, high-pitched voice piped up beside him. “You know, Jake, only crazy people talk to themselves. You might want to get yourself checked out.”
Woodsman jumped. “Holy shit, Urchin. Warn a guy next time. And why the hell don’t you have Leyhma pinging your location to Syntant? I could have hit you with one of my arrows by mistake.”
“Nah, big little bro. You’re too slow. Couldn’t hit me. Anyways, I’m going up the hill. Gotta stomp the nest. Leyhma says it’s in the old Hollyhills Community Center. You good to stay here till the lazy corporates show up to clean the streets?”
Woodsman sighed. “Yeah, Urchin. Whatever you say. You taking the big idiot?”
Urchin blurred and vanished in a flash of movement. From the other side of him, a streak of red nailed an alien which was twitching on the ground. “Yeah, I’ll take the meat shield. He’s good in this kind of thing. You just take out anything which comes down the hill, and make sure the civvies in downtown Bothell don’t get splattered.
The cloaked man sighed. “Yeah, I can do that, Urchin. And Urchin?”
“Yeah, Jake?”
“Don’t call me Jake. I’m not your personal assistant any more. I’ve been a Samurai for six months now.”
Her only response was a giggle as she vanished from his sight and hearing. Over the hill, he could hear a roar which could only be Mekka Stompa as the brute of a man forced his way up the road on the opposing side, moving towards the clubhouse. Jake - no, Woodsman now, turned back towards downtown, and saw some military style vehicles finally pulling up. It had been days since the incursion hit, and the political infighting over jurisdictional disputes within the corporate council that ruled Cascadia in fact if not in law had delayed an effective response from local mercenaries. Woodsman, Mekka Stompa, and Urchin had been stamping out Antithesis hot spots all over the suburbs Northeast of the old Lake Washington since the initial incursion hit, supported only by a few local militia groups, a couple of new, low-level Samurai who didn’t even have names yet, and the local cops.
Samurai were great at taking out hordes of the aliens, but this incursion was acting unusually smart, and Jake didn’t like it. They kept finding small hives in suburban areas Northeast of Seattle, from Gold Bar to Bothell and in the woods which still existed in between, and without the support of the local PMC’s, there was simply no way to make sure another one wouldn’t pop up. But now, with the full deployment of PMC support, the end was in sight. He'd been running on the alien equivalent of amphetamines for days, and it felt like his skin wasn't his any more.
Woodsman needed a nap. This nap, of course, was probably going to take sixteen hours, at least.
A few kilometers away, a small shape moved slowly on four legs towards a lake through a thicket of trees, with a barely-mobile, pigeon-shaped figure behind it. It moved slowly and haltingly, leaving a faint green trail behind. With eight eyes and a hard carapace covering, and an unusually developed mind for the plant-based aliens, the Model Seventeen knew that it had a biological directive to both survive the purge and to grow a hive. Hopefully, the barely-alive Model One it had taken control of would provide the seed.
Without a noise, the hard carapace body slipped beneath the waters of the lake, and the remaining blood was washed away in the rain, with a small bird gripping onto its back. No one noticed.