Stray Cat Strut

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Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) - Ongoing

Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) - Ongoing

Love Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) - Completed!

Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) - Hiatus

Cinnamon Bun (A wholesome LitRPG!) - Ongoing

The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) - Volume Two Complete!

Lever Action (A fantasy western with mecha!) - Volume One Complete!

Heart of Dorkness (A wholesome progression fantasy) - Completed!

Dead Tired (A comedy about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) - Ongoing

Sporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) - Ongoing

Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!

Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the planet, and then try to fix it) - Completed!

Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) - Volume Two Completed!

Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) - Completed!

The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) - Completed!

Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) - Hiatus

Queen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) - Completed!

No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) - Dead

Save Scumming (A time-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing

Chapter Sixty-One - Going Gravitic

"Following an extensive period of multidisciplinary research, iterative experimentation, comprehensive market analysis, and the expenditure of financial resources considerably exceeding our initial estimations, we have arrived at a conclusion supported by statistically significant bodies of empirical evidence.

The incorporation of sexually suggestive elements into commercial products and associated marketing materials demonstrates a consistent and measurable positive correlation with consumer engagement, purchasing behaviour, and overall revenue generation."

--2051 Long-term Marketing Study

***

I was genuinely curious about what that bomb did.

Like, call me a bit of a weirdo if you must, but I liked bombs. They went bang in a satisfying way, and did fun stuff to my enemies. The spike bomb wasn't something I'd ever seen before. I might have dinged it a little when I got tired of watching the others struggle to move it and did the job myself, but I think it was still functional.

A good bomb was any bomb you could knock around a little and still have it go off when intended.

I was pretty sure that if I ever spoke that aloud in the vicinity of a bomb squad I'd be shot.

In any case, once the spike bomb was sent tumbling down into the crevice the hive was in, we retreated in good-ish order. Gomorrah and I stayed behind for a bit, mowing down the tide that came out of the crevice while those on foot ran downhill and away.

Then we followed, catching up to them at the base of the hill. "Setting it off?" I asked.

"No," Hedgehog said. "We're still well within minimal safe distance. Let's get back to the air first. We can detonate the bomb from afar."

"It's more fun when you're close up," I said.

"The first rule of explosive handling is: distance is safety," he said.

"I thought it was 'have fun?'" I asked.

I grinned as I heard his breathy sigh over the comms. For some reason, Hedgehog was a lot of fun to tease. Probably because he came across as so uptight all the time. It made seeing him annoyed fun. I decided to can it for a while though. There was such a thing as going too far. I didn't need to have the guy actually dislike me or anything.

We kept moving, the way back being somewhat easier than the way over. There was far less resistance on our return to the Bastion and Gomorrah and Hedgehog's rides, but we did have to handle having a large force of enemies at our back the entire time chasing after us.

That meant frequent stops to turn around and cull the tide. Good for points, but rather annoying all the same. I decided to focus mostly on the flyers, since the others didn't have quite as many options for Model Ones and the like.

We made it to the ships, and Gomorrah parked her mech in quick, followed by the BOBCAT, then we were both sliding out of our rides and meeting up while the rest covered for us.

"That went well," I said.

Gomorrah nodded slowly. "It did. Did that feel too easy to you?"

"Like, because we were in giant killer robots the entire time?" I asked.

"No. Though I suppose that might be a factor. I meant more because... I don't know, exactly. The level of resistance we faced wasn't that high. I've been to other hives before to destroy them. They go all out once you're at their doorstep, and here, it felt like the Antithesis' all out was anemic."

"Yeah, I suppose," I said. "I didn't see any of those three-bodied ones, the hive defender guys. For that matter, I didn't see anything like a Model Ten."

"No models in the double-digits at all," Gomorrah said. "I think we might have the wrong hive."

I shifted uncomfortably at that. "You sure? We traced the lines back up to here."

"I'm not," she admitted. "The Seraphina has good scanning systems onboard. I checked the depth of the hive and it's a rather deep one, multi-layered. It could have produced the entire force that attacked the city today."

"But we didn't see anything like the artillery bugs or the ones that made that smoke screen. And definitely nothing like Libre's white whale," I said.

She nodded. "Exactly. We do know that there are other active hives around."

"Yeah," I said. "Look, let's get to the air, blow this one up, and then see what to do about the next one?"

Gomorrah hesitated a little before nodding. "It's getting late. We have all of ten minutes before the sun starts to set, and it would take longer than that to reach and find the next hive."

"Did you want to fight it at night?" I asked. I wouldn't mind that much, I had one eye that had fantastic night vision, and the sensors on my mechs could handle low-light just fine. But I did have a long day weighing down my bones. I could use a rest. Hell, I really just wanted to go home. Getting a hotel room here or sleeping at the army base camp sounded awful.

"I'd rather not," Gomorrah admitted, though it was with some amount of reluctance.

"Cool. Then let's get this over with. Tomorrow's another day, right?"

Gomorrah walked off to her Fury and the rest of the crew boarded the Bastion. We had spent a good bit of ammo, so I made a note to replenish things once I got back, but overall, I was very much point-positive today, at least if I didn't count the purchase of the BOBCAT.

I got the ship up and into the air, then wheeled us around while Hedgehog and Gomorrah took to the air as well. "Alright, Hedge, we out of the danger zone now?"

"We should be. Setting the timer for ten seconds. And... mark."

"What kind of bomb is a spike bomb anyway?" I asked as I turned the Bastion around so that the front was facing the distant hive. Shy and Knight and Crisis Mode were all crowding into the cockpit to see.

"Gravitic," Hedgehog said.

Gravitic? What did that even mean?

The answer came about two seconds later. The Bastion rocked, and I felt myself pushed down into my seat very slightly. I heard Hedgehog mutter a curse through the comms.

Ahead of us, the space around the crevice went weird.

About a dozen explosions rocked out of the ground, but the blasts of dirt and stone, each of which was at least a couple of hundred metres long, froze a split-second after they started.

It was like someone had set off the mother of all bombs, then locked some of it in place. Dirt and dust still fell, but some of it was falling upwards and away from the massive pillars of dirt caught in place.

Then the entire hillside started to slowly flow upwards, and sideways, and around. The pillars broke apart, and everything within them started to spin, creating massive vortexes of crushing rocks.

The bomb wasn't directly destructive the way a large explosion would be. There wasn't much of a shockwave, or like, direct heat and energy. Instead, it ripped things apart by switching which way 'down' was over and over again, across seemingly random spots.

Tiny 'points' appeared where everything around was sucked in, then they'd snap apart a moment later and all of that flying debris would be pulled to another point as if tugged along by an overstretched elastic band.

The bomb lasted all of thirty seconds, and when it let go several thousand tons of rock and earth and churned up Antithesis bodies came crashing down.

"Not bad," I said.

"I question how good that was for sterilization," Gomorrah said.

That... was probably a fair point. Blending the Antithesis did a good job of killing them for the moment, but they had a nasty habit of unblending themselves.

"I accounted for that," Hedgehog replied. Two missiles flew from his little hovercraft, darted up, then came smashing down atop the pile of rubble where the hive had been. They both detonated a few dozen metres above the ground, sending a wave of heat and fire down that immediately ignited the air. "Microwave missiles," he explained.

"That should do it," Gomorrah said. "I'll still mark the area for later observation. The army can send in a cleanup crew."

"Ah," Shy muttered. "I used to do that a lot."

"Cleanup?" Knight asked.

Shy nodded. "It was... long? Not too many points, but it's safe... most of the time."

I waited for Shy to continue, but she didn't, and instead we all got to enjoy several long seconds of awkward silence before I clapped my hands together. "Welp! We're done here, aren't we? I'm turning this one around. We'll see if the army feels like spotting some more hives."

"That's the plan for tomorrow?" Gomorrah asked.

"Exactly. We find the hives, then pop them. Nice and aggressive and it means lots of dead aliens, which is exactly how I like them."

"I approve," Gomorrah said. "Let's head home everyone, we can call this one a job well done."

***

A note from RavensDagger

Hm...

Look:

I think this might be the final cover? Or maybe not? I have another in the works by Sloth, so we'll see!