Liberty and Death, Chapter 63
The cleanup inside Luxholme wasn’t difficult. With Cora, Kyra, and Hawk in the mix, the Links, Chain-heads, and Chained fell in seconds, and the long process of harvesting and rebuilding began.
Alongside the even longer process of reclaiming a sense of security.
By rights, this should be seen as a victory. They hadn’t lost anyone. They’d had injuries, sure, but between tech and having two people with potent healing abilities in the [Household], those barely mattered.
But that almost just seemed like luck. Some of them were tough enough that a stray bullet wouldn’t have taken them out, but most weren’t, and god forbid a Chained had made it past the defenders into the barracks. It would have been a slaughter.
Worse, they hadn’t taken down anything that couldn’t be replaced, save maybe the Shimmer Titans. Cora had to believe those hadn’t been easy to get. But the man using them, and the absolute Powerhouse commanding the attack? They’d both escaped.
And Cora wasn’t even sure why on the last one. Sure, she’d gotten one good hit in, and maybe all of her combat personnel working together could have taken him down, but shit she honestly wasn’t that sure of that. He might have been able to kill them all personally.
When she’d sat down next to Hawk on the office couch after the cleanup, the big girl had casually pulled Cora into her lap, and Cora hadn’t resisted for a second.
She rested her head on Hawk’s new perfect pillows, and talked to Lux.
“Alright girlie, what do you have for us in terms of defensive upgrades?” Cora sighed.
‘I’m… afraid not a great deal, at my current level Mistress,’ the house responded, and Cora immediately felt worse for making Lux take a conciliatory tone.
“It’s fine, we haven’t been feeding you like we should. That changes now. Whatcha got?”
‘Well, the one big one I can do immediately is [Integrated Stone], but it’s pricey. 100000P and 5 Shimcores. However, I should point out that unlike Shimcores fed to me at a subsistence level, Shimcores used to upgrade me do count towards upgrading my level,’ Lux said, not needing to sell to Cora, but trying anyway.
“Dope, what’s it do?”
‘As it says, it integrates the stone of the [Household] this is already somewhat true, as the walls repel Monster attacks, but this will infuse them with my own Shimmer supply, and make the very stone stronger than steel, more or less immune to mundane attacks,’ Lux explained.
“Do it,” Cora commanded. “Ask Jocasta to feed you the reagents.”
‘Of course!’
“What else?”
‘Hmmm…. Not a lot at my current tier…. [Households] aren’t meant to be fortresses at baseline, mistress, I’m sorry!’ Lux sounded like she was about to cry, which both sucked, and seemed like it risked water damage.
“No need to apologize Lux, that [Integrated Stone] should help a lot, especially if they keep shelling us. Anything you can do about that?” Cora asked, trying to keep her voice soothing.
‘Noo…. Wait, [Big Sys] is saying something.’
‘Mhmm.’
‘Mhmm.’
‘OH! Great news Mistress! He’s cheating!’
“Oh yeah?”
‘Yes! He’s linking some of his Node upgrades to me! Those shouldn’t be accessible by, well, anyone, but I’ve begun to feel as though the normal rules don’t apply to you and, by extension, me!’ Lux gushed. As ever, her excitement was infectious, and the child-like glee she seemed to be taking in bucking the System appealed to the rebel in Cora that would never die.
“Sounds dope, for sure, but what’s it mean?”
‘Right! Well, his Grove shield for one! We can grow it!’ Lux exclaimed. Cora remembered the mortars bursting on the air above the Grove like nothing more than clouds of smoke.
“Oh FUCK yes!” She said, really sitting up straight now. Losing safe access to the Courtyard, with the Grove and its Facilities would be a huge loss for training and morale purposes.
Hawk implacably pulled Cora’s head back to her chest. She’d begun playing with Cora’s hair, and Cora got the feeling it was just as soothing for both of them.
“Can we make it cover the whole compound?” Cora asked.
‘Hmmm… at this stage, no. The whole Courtyard though!’ Lux reported.
“How much?” Cora asked, wincing, then biting at Hawk’s fingers when she tried to pull her lips back up into a smile.
‘A little more than the first one, I’m afraid…. 7 Shimcores, and 110000P,’ Lux said.
Cora hissed. That would clean them out, basically, at least of the stuff they had prior to the attack. The fact that this had probably netted them a ton of resources was the only real upside to the strike.
“Do it,” Cora sighed, “security is priceless.”
‘I’ll instruct Jocasta,’ Lux said, with the air of an attentive maid receiving orders from a beloved master.
‘Will that be all? I can… turn my attention elsewhere….’ Lux said, and suddenly, Cora was very aware of where she was.
The stress, the pain, the exhaustion, seeing Hawk take that hit… well, she’d fallen back into old habits. Just a pussy in someone’s lap, once again.
But god it felt good.
She knew Hawk could hold her here, if she wanted to, but she wasn’t doing it now. She was gently, lovingly, running her enormous fingers through Cora’s hair. Through her good little kitty-kat’s fur.
Cora reached up, taking her wrist, pulling it off of her as she stood.
She looked back, afraid of what she would find. Rage? Mockery?
No. Disappointment, and a little hurt.
It's okay to be a kitty-kat for some people, right?
She forced her sub-conscious down, but couldn’t do it entirely. And she couldn’t leave Hawk with rejection as a reward, after how well she’d been doing.
So, keeping Hawk’s wrist held to make it clear she didn’t want to be pulled into it any further, she leaned down and kissed her.
Soft. So soft. It wasn’t fair, that Hawk got the body of a demon, but the lips of an angel. The hardness of one just served to accentuate the softness of the other.
“Good work today, big girl,” she said, after what was really a pretty chaste kiss, but had left her heart hammering.
“No need to leave me alone, Lux,” Cora said, leaving the room. “While we’re investing in you, any other suggestions you’d like to make? You’ve probably got a better idea of what we can afford than I do, if [Auto-Accounting] has been updating.”
‘Hmmm… well, you could upgrade [Auto Accounting] pretty cheaply, though it really is only an improvement of convenience. You’d be able to store and access all your funds from the Inventory pocket dimension,’ Lux suggested. ‘However, if I were to choose, I’d take a [Luxuries Vendor].’
“What’s that, and are you only suggesting it because of the name?” Cora asked, wandering the corridors, both to clear her head of Hawk, and to see if anyone still needed help cleaning up or even just some reassurance. She’d decided to stop trying to change the Guard Dog feel of her aura. If these people were going to be a target, they needed to be reminded they weren’t an easy one.
‘Hah! I do like it, I admit! But no. It is slightly selfish, as it will eventually beautify me significantly, but it is the most direct way I can give back to these residents who are treating me so well, even if it will come at a cost. It is essentially a kiosk that will, as the name suggests, allow [Household] members to exchange ‘Trish for luxuries. Anything from treats to blankets to clothes. I believe it will do wonders for morale, and also remove the need to leave for the weaker residents to spend their money,’ Lux explained.
Cora came across a group of women working at getting rid of a truly heinous bloodstain, like someone had popped. A smoking hole at the end of the hallway implied that this was likely the doing of Trish’s new railgun. She grabbed a wet rag, and knelt down to help.
“That does sound nice, but it also sounds unfortunately close to a company store,” Cora said, half-remembering the term from high-school social studies. One of the more insidious types of worker control from the early industrial revolution.
‘Oh no!’ Lux gasped, ‘no, there is an option for that, but it’s very clear you wouldn’t welcome the ‘Contribution Kiosk’. This store accepts the local currency, so no chaining people to this place.’
Some of the girls perked up at that.
“Whatcha thinkin’ on, Cora?” Lane asked. She was one of the rescues, the mother of the girl that Tania had taken under-wing. As such, she didn’t struggle around Cora anywhere near as much as the women that had lived with Linnea.
“We’re finally investing in our sweet-as-sugar talking house,” Cora said, as the stain started to lift more easily, like it was literally being pushed out of the floorboards. “Gonna have some major defensive upgrades soon, but Lux is trying to sell me on some stuff to make life better for y’all. Lux?”
The house explained her proposition to the women, and they were absolutely all for it.
“Gods yes, that would be nice!” Lane exclaimed, “I don’t really understand your holdup, Cora. I don’t think any of us really fancy leaving here as it stands, and while I appreciate your generosity, the chambers are… well…”
“Oh they’re absolute shit,” Cora agreed, “I think they were designed to be uncomfortable. This wasn’t a good place. Still, seems fucked up to pay you, then have you pay to make your situations here better.”
“Wouldn’t be much different than if you didn’t pay us, then made everything a gift. Better this way, like Lux said, this way, we ain’t chained,” Lane poked, and while she was parroting the thoughts out of Cora’s own mind back to her, she’d needed to hear them out of someone else’s mouth.
Cora sighed, standing up after getting rid of the last of the stain.
“Thanks, Lane. Good point, Lux?”
‘Yes Cora?’
“What’s the price on that Luxury Vendor?”
It wasn’t expensive, just a single extra Shimcore. It also turned out that Cora didn’t get the proceeds to it. Neither Lux nor [Big Sys] were certain what actually happened to the money, just that they were hardcoded to require it for the Vendor’s operation.
After Cora announced it, there was the expected rush of women spending a bit of Trish on blankets, sheets, anything that would make their spaces just a little more comfortable.
The Vendor itself was an odd looking device, looking like nothing so much as the touchscreen Omni-Soda cloacas that were a recent addition to most theaters. It was, like those, sorely lacking in personality.
No more than a half hour after that initial rush, with some loving attention from Tinny, Tania, and Tania’s protege Sill, that lack of personality had been rectified.
A soft red and orange color scheme had been applied, with a portrait of a warm, smiling, even softer woman emblazoned on the front. She looked almost exactly like the ideal 50’s housewife, without the sadness behind the eyes that implied.
Above her head, just above the touchscreen, Lux’s Luxuries! was written proudly in flowing, jovial script.
Usually, it was tough to tell where Lux ‘was’ in the house. In many respects, she was everywhere. But for hours that night, and many of the house’s quiet moments to come, you could feel her there, staring with all the emotions a machine could feel at Lux, and her Luxuries.