Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Seventy-Six - Maximum Clonage

"You are condemned to be yourself."

--A tombstone in the New Monteal Veteran cemetery, 2056

***

There was a weird feeling in the air, and I wasn't sure I could really describe it well.

It was a sort of... anticipation?

I stuck to Lucy's side as she stepped out of the Bastion and walked like someone with a mission. Ten steps out and she was already being accosted. The people out here were Kittens. Lucy's Kittens. They were mostly dressed in business casuals, lots of sweaters and pleated pants and longer skirts. Office wear, basically, only they had badges with their pictures on them and a STAFF designation.

One of them handed something to Lucy, which she took and pinned to her own jacket. Lucy Leblanc, ORGANIZER.

I flushed a little, then took a deep breath and recentred myself before Lucy could notice. She turned to me, all business, and handed me a small badge of my own. "Here," she said. "You'd think the samurai wouldn't have to wear one, and I guess you don't need to, but it'll make things easier."

"Sure," I said. Mine had my face on it, looking straight into the camera, ears perked... I had not taken this photo, ever. The tag read SAMURAI in large, bold print. "When was this photo taken?" I asked.

I provided it to Lucy.

"I mean, yeah, sure, but this looks very real. I mean... I guess you would know how to generate an image well."

Obviously. But whose to say I didn't just take a photograph of one of your clones.

"My whats?" I asked.

Don't concern yourself over it.

I was, in fact, feeling a bit of concern. She was probably just fucking with me, though. That would track.

I took a moment to scan the area. There was a faint drizzle coming down, because this was New Montreal and going a day without rain was uncommon, but it really wasn't all that bad. Just a faint misting, and a glance at a weather app on my augs showed that it would be clearing up around noon to just cloudy. More rain tonight, but whatever.

The misting made everything slick and wet and it helped push away the suds of cleaning chemicals being sprayed around.

The casino had staff moving all over the place. We were still outside, of course, standing right next to the road. The road which was blocked on both ends at the moment by tall orange cones. Security was tight on either end. I watched as they scanned a box van up and down and around before letting it pass. It came to a stop nearby and a few kittens jumped out and started carrying gear out of the back.

It looked like there were banners, signage and some kiosks going up all over the just within the casino.

Most of that seemed to be there to create a sort of funnel? At least in the lobby area.

The casino looked to be cleared out, at least on this end. No gamblers... and for that matter, no gambling stuff. Had they moved all of the tables and machines out of the way? Damn. That was actually kind of impressive.

I couldn't remember who had decided to do this here, or if we were just using the place because it's where the gangs did things normally, but it was a good move to have the conclave take place here again. I was patting myself on the metaphorical back as Lucy turned my way.

"Need help?" I asked.

"No, I should be alright," she said. She looked bright-eyed and pretty happy with herself. "You should set your mechs out now, while the area is cleared. There should be room inside, in the main show floor."

"Right, I can do that," I said.

It wasn't a bad idea. I'd kind of forgotten how big the Velvet Wheel was. As impressive as my mechs were, they were dwarfed by the size of the building. Maybe I could use that one decoy catalogue that I rarely touched to buy some fake shit to sprinkle around and give the gangs pause? Only... eh. Too much effort, and it would be hard to justify the cost in points to myself afterwards.

What would I do with a decoy mech? Park it on the roof at home?

Better not.

I ordered my mechs out, sending the Nyanzerfaust off to one side, where it could stand imposingly where no one should be walking close enough to see the patchjob I'd done on its legs, then I sent my tankier MEOW mech within the casino.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

It only barely fit through the wide double doors at the front, but once it was standing in the centre of the lobby area, gimbal-guns scanning the room and turret slowly panning left and right... yeah, that was a good centrepiece. I dug it.

"Stray Cat," Gomorrah said as she walked over. She had pulled up a hood against the rain, so her porcelain-looking face mask wasn't entirely covered by a wet sheen.

"Yeah?" I asked. "Anything come up?"

"Maybe," she said. "We're not expecting anyone to show up for a while, but we've already noticed something," she said.

"We?" I asked.

She nodded. "Grasshopper agreed to help, though she won't be here in person on account of some prior engagement."

"She had something come up?" I asked.

"She does field trips with impoverished children every other weekend," she said.

... Yeah, okay. That tracked.

Why was it that some samurai actually made me feel a little bit back about being a bitch? Mostly that was Grasshopper, but still. "What'd she notice?" I asked.

"She did a sweep of the footage, looking for anything strange, and noticed something in the basement. Would you mind going down and seeing if there's anything wrong?"

I blinked. "Can't we send one of the newbies?"

"Please?" she asked. "Besides, they're not here yet."

"Yeah, probably still sleeping. It's... six twenty. At best someone might be awake at this hour because they haven't gone to bed yet. Anyone else who's awake now is a psychopath."

"Yes yes, you didn't get all the sleeping you wanted to do in. It's very sad and distressing and we're all overjoyed to hear you complain about it. Now, can you look into the basement to see what triggered the security system there?"

I really wanted to glare and throw a fit, but... yeah, okay, that was fair.

"Alright. How can I get there? And what'd she see, anyway?" I asked.

Gomorrah shrugged a shoulder. "I didn't have time to look over the entire report. Believe it or not, this whole event has me quite busy... speaking of which, you are ready for your speech, right?"

"Yeah yeah," I said.

I was not.

I was kind of hoping that I could just wing it. That felt far more reasonable than slaving away at making some half-baked speech or whatever. More earnest too, or something. Also, I just didn't wanna. Besides, I had hours left until the event started, right?

"Who do I see about basement access?" I asked.

Gomorrah half-turned and pointed across the room. I noticed a familiar figure in the distance, a shorter, stouter man, in a nice suit and surrounded by people obviously bothering him for answers, though he was handing them out almost as quickly as they came, so it was like he was the centre of his own hub of bouncing figures.

"Oh, him," I said. I recognized that guy. He was the dude we'd met when we booked the place a while back. Uh... shit, I was sure he'd given us his name, but for the life of me I couldn't remember it. "Cool. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you," Gomorrah said. "I'll... God, give me strength, I have a lot more to tackle."

"You'll do fine," I said before giving her a pat on the back and walking past. I was pretty sure that at this point things had been prepared well enough that things would flow smoothly. Gomorrah was just worrying over little imperfections.

We could have pulled this stunt off in an empty field somewhere and it would have been just fine.

I walked over, and it was like parting the red sea or something, the little white-collars all skedaddled away and let me get right up to the big boss. "Hey," I said.

"Samurai Stray Cat," he replied. "A pleasure to see you this morning."

"All mine," I replied with my cockiest grin. "Business going alright?"

"Surprisingly, yes. The Velvet Wheel has never had this big of an impact on social media before. The shareholders are happy, as long as we don't mess it up."

"Oh, hey, that's cool," I said. "Maybe we'll make a yearly thing of this, huh?"

I think he just about popped a vein at the idea.

"Anyway. Heard there was something fucky going on in the basement. Figured I'd give it a look-see, yeah?"

"Certainly. Here, let me call security over, and they can guide you there. Hopefully it's nothing."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," I replied.

***