"Ouch!"
"Well, who fucking told you to shove your finger up my ass!?"
"Jenna did!"
"Ever wonder why she's got BROKEN FINGERS?!"
"Noo…?"
– Kanchō, as per the fine art of Japanese pranking
***
Leah waited for Sun, Jem, and Sister Lana to join the call. She'd decided to turn her avatar off for this one; her friends and colleagues would probably appreciate a more direct face-to-face, and the pod did allow for it. She'd even stored her prosthetic arms, too.
"Leah." Lana's voice filled the pod with her womanly contralto, sending the usual involuntary shiver through Leah, who smiled wryly. That woman would always have an effect on her.
Then she thought of Tinea, with that hidden rasp beneath the gentle soprano.
Leah's smile grew softer, with more amusement dancing through her chest. Maybe Lana wasn't the only one, after all.
She studied the Sister for a moment. She was extremely beautiful, or perhaps more accurately, so innocently attractive it bordered on sinful, and very stereotypically Russian. Blonde hair that reached past her lower back, generous curves, with aristocratic cheekbones and a fine aquiline nose that elevated an otherwise sweet face into young adulthood, and a very bright complexion.
Usually. Today, Lana had slight bags under her eyes. But the glow of her bright smile completely negated any signs of exhaustion as she tilted her head and studied Leah in return.
Leah chuckled, perfectly aware of whom she got her head-tilting habits from.
"Hi, Sister." she said, waving with her stump.
Lana's eyes bugged out and her hand reached up into the view of the camera.
"Боже мой! What happened?! Your arm!" Her eyes shot to Leah's other shoulder, and her Russian accent grew heavier with concern. "Both your arms! Leah?! …" Lana didn't quite know what to say and her hands wavered helplessly about.
Leah giggled and said, "Don't worry. I'm fine. I've got great samurai replacements too, they're just stowed away. I'm in a personal vehicle."
"How…?" The Russian Canadian had calmed a little and gotten a hold of herself, but a frown still marred her beautiful face.
Leah sighed and closed her eyes, as her lips twisted. She'd kind of not dwelled on the subject, for obvious reasons. But Lana…was Lana. Safe.
So, Leah risked speaking.
"Well, the people who kidnapped me wanted to make sure I wouldn't be able to free myself. I…woke up like this." A certain painful helplessness welled in her as she waved her stumps again.
Lana's eyes grew stormy with raw anger and had just opened her mouth, when another window popped up and Leah's friends and colleagues Jem and Sun joined the conversation. They were both sitting together on their couch, flushed and sweaty and rumpled clothes, and Leah beat down the anxiety in favor of smirking as she saw the corner of an unmade bed behind them.
"Well, welcome you two. Looks like I should've called a little later, huh?"
"Oh, shush." Sun rolled her eyes at Leah with a slight blush almost hidden by her milky-olive skin.
Jem arched his brows at her instead. "If you hadn't always had a knack for inconvenient timings, I'd accuse you of spying on us with your samurai gadgets."
Leah shrugged with a cheesy grin, but the movement drew attention to her stumps again. Jem froze, and Sun's hand tightened on his arm.
"Ah… Leah?" Unusually blanched, Jem pointed at Leah, a shocked question on his face.
Once more she sighed and shook her stumps. "Don't worry about it. I'm…not exactly good." Flashes of endless helplessness ran through Leah's memory, the pain of unhealed wounds and cold air where eyeballs should have been.
And the warmth and releasing embrace of Tinea, who nursed her back to health both figuratively and literally. A gentle smile stole onto Leah's face before she replied,"but I am surprisingly fine. We'll talk about it when I'm back, okay?"
Jem wasn't exactly blind, and his eyebrows jumped with intrigue when he noticed her expression. He pursed his lips, but instead of grilling Leah, he forced himself to relax and leaned back, dragging Sun into his arms. He smoothed his hand down her shoulder and arm until she softened, too.
Leah was looking alright after all, and willing to show her injuries instead of hiding behind an avatar.
The Sister wasn't quite pacified, however. "Leah, you seem…awfully blasé about things, on some level. Are you sure you're fine?"
"Mhm," she nodded. "I'm managing. I'll make it. I'm a samurai. I've got…options."
Eventually, Lana sighed and nodded as well. She trusted Leah to be smart enough to come home in one piece. More or less.
"Alright, guys," Leah smiled, "I've missed the lot of you and just wanted to talk to you, but I also wondered if you've come across any new information?"
"Regarding your kidnappers?"
She nodded.
"No." Jem shook his head, but Sun continued, "They were too careful. We've both been around your place and Jem installed a few small cameras just in case, but there hasn't been any suspicious movement so far, not inside and not outside. But…" She looked at her partner with uncertainty coloring her expression, who picked up the conversation.
"We did find something else entirely. Haven't dug much further into it, since we can't tell if we've got any spyware sneaking into our aug-gear."
Don't worry! I already checked!
"Oh!" Lana grinned happily. "Hello Ypsi!"
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Hello, Sister Lana! I killed a few trackers and viruses. You can talk freely!
Leah chuckled and said, "Well, you heard her. What have you got?"
"Here." Jem tossed her a data packet with a motion of his hand, and a photo of a woman roughly Leah's age drew itself across the iris of her left eye.
Leah blinked in surprise. She had exactly the same rich red hair as Leah did.
Ah, but her face was very different, too much so to be a relative. Darker skin, and she had a much bigger bust, especially since she seemed to be below average height, unlike Leah.
But that hair…
"Huh. Looks like I might have a clue to find the place that edited our genes." She looked back up at Jem and Sun. "And you didn't look into it further, right?"
Sun shook her head. "No. Some social media algorithm happened to insert that into my feed, and the metadata is mostly corrupted. But it looks like you might pick up the trail in Europe? France."
Leah nodded again. "Might not even need to go there to start digging, what with being a samurai." Another reason to make points, she figured. "Well, thanks for catching that, Sun, Jem," she said, still studying the picture. It'd be fantastic if she could dig into the customer files of whatever place did the edits…
The pod suddenly jerked, and Leah hurriedly checked her surroundings to find that Tinea had just coupled the cannon's rear to it. It looked like she'd added two copies of her ATV's turret, and moved over the original, too. The artillery piece had gained a new cowl to cover up the bent spike plates and make travel easier. It even had handles designed for the grippy arms of the gantry.
"What's happening, Leah?"
Sister Lana's voice shook her out of her ruminations and from the corners of her eyes, Leah saw both Jem and Sun shiver. She suppressed another smirk, knowing exactly what was going to happen after the call.
It was kind of a regular Lana-hazard, after all.
"Tinea's packing things up. We'll begin moving south soon. A few more hours at most."
"Oh!" Lana bounced slightly on the spot, which caused certain assets of hers to draw every eye in the call, and amusement flashed through Leah again as Lana continued, "You did mention Tinea last time. Fellow samurai who likes killing Antithesis!"
"Indeed she is, and indeed she does. She's probably the main reason as to why I'm doing as well as I am despite everything. And she's as adorable as she's deadly."
Sun grinned at Leah's description.
"But I'll properly introduce her face-to-face, okay?"
"Okay! Will you make it back today?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure. Might be tomorrow."
"You're that far?"
"Yes, a bit more than four hundred and fifty miles, actually. In the toxic crater."
"That place?! Are you safe?"
"Yeah, no worries. We'll be well protected before we get close to the water. But it'll be a good long journey home. Bit hard to predict, Incursions and all."
Lana sat back and wrung her hands just a little. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
Leah smiled at her and nodded. "No worries. Really. We've got it."
The Sister finally returned the smile and unwound properly.
"Alright." Leah looked around again, checking on Tinea. "It's about time for me to go. Are you guys doing okay? Is that new corporation being stupid again?"
Sun waggled her head sideways. "They're kinda picking up the harassment, but it feels like they're being careful about it, testing the waters." She chuckled as an evil smirk crossed her face. "They really didn't like the media attention last time."
Leah groaned. "But they just won't give up either, huh?"
Then she continued, with narrowed eyes, "I'm about done giving a fuck, Sun. I don't think they've figured out yet how I was able to mess with their PR and tank their stocks, but they will this time."
"Is that smart?"
"Yeah." Leah gave a satisfied grin. "They'll be shitting their pants once I get back and they connect the dots."
Sun giggled as Lana smiled and said, "I'm looking forward to it."
"Alors!" Jem clapped his hands. "Time to move for all of us, I think."
Leah saw his slightly flushed face and sniggered, "Sure, sure. Time to move."
He waggled his eyebrows at her, and Sun ended the call with a slight flush.
Leah laughed and turned to Lana, who smiled gently as she gave a wave.
"Well, until tomorrow, Lana."
"Until tomorrow."
Leah stretched her spine and let out a breath as she closed her eyes.
They looked good! Ypsi chimed happily. And all safe.
"Yeah." Her eyes stayed closed as her lips curved happily. "They did."
"So!" she continued as her eyes popped open. "Tell me. What corp did we fuck up by hogging their bandwidth today?"
***
"Yup, that looks fine. Buy it please!"
Understood.
Purchased:
- 6 pts x 1; Class 0 Cowl, customized
- 75 pts x 1; Blueprint: 'The Long Hand' Long-Range Carrier Missile, 20x350mm
- 100 pts x 1; Nanites, organic matter decomposers, 100 L plug-tank
- 350 pts x 1; Class I 'Raptor's Dance' Mark XXIX Rocket-Powered Javelin, reactive spatio-kinetic anchor
Total cost: 531
Remaining points: 3093
Three items popped into existence before me: a large army-green hard plastic covering I tossed at the gantry, which got busy attaching it to the underside of the cannon's towing tail; a long, silvery-white stick with crystalline blades that hovered vertically on rocket engines, barely, maybe, touching the ground with one spear-tip in a display of exquisite control; and a new plug-tank full of flesh-eating nanites that I immediately slotted into my battle skirt's shapely posterior.
Then I stepped forward, and gently grabbed the floating weapon by its middle handle. There was just a moment of resistance, as though I was tugging the flying spear from a rack, and then the engines dropped to idle, barely fast enough to generate power for the integrated systems.
I would need to refuel the javelin every other day, but continually operating motors meant they could react in milliseconds. That mattered when my own, enhanced, reaction time could be measured in the same.
Grinning, I studied the elegant weapon that rested in my hands.
It had a very faint pearlescent shimmer along the haft, and the blades on either end looked like crystals carved from pure ice, with edges so thin they disappeared into thin air. An ethereal hologram fluttered just beyond, like a gleaming corona of quicksilver moonlight, painting the physical boundaries of the monomolecular blade.
The crystal was ever-growing, and with every strike, a layer would ablate to reveal a fresh and unchipped edge too fine to see.
One method to deal with fragile blades, huh? Inspired by feline claws, maybe? "Do alien cats exist?"
Indeed they do, Tinea. Including sapient ones with their own catalog designs, just like the Moonsingers. They're specialized in stealth and assassination.
"Huh."
The shaft morphed under my hands, resizing and reshaping as my stance shifted, always giving me perfect balance as I slowly sank into strikes and flowing movement memorized and practiced in dreams.
I executed controlled slashes and stabs, each one accompanied by a growing resistance that suddenly resolved at the terminus of each motion, so that the blade snapped forward at the very last moment. The spear's spatio-kinetic anchor parked a shunted mass at the origin of each swing, and the energy stored in the dimensional tether increased with the resistance I overcame, until the anchor rebounded and imparted an extra…kick.
I giggled at what was basically a samurai-tech rubber band, perfectly suited to exploit the combination of my enhanced strength and the leverage of my traction claws.
Slowly, bit by bit, I gained more confidence with the spear. I connected to it through the Quanta, sensed how it would react in the next split-second, and deepened my grasp of it as AI-I took a qualitative step forward and enhanced the interaction between the spear and myself.
My motions smoothed further and further, swings turned into lilting flourishes, and then…
Then I danced.
***
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