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) - Ongoing

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

Chapter Fifty-Three - Give Me Libre

"Toddler cuffs (ages 3-4), never worn."

--Police Surplus auction listing, 2032

***

"Stray Cat," Crisis Mode said as she came right up to me. Her head turned slightly towards where Princess and Knight were, but other than a wave from the departing Princess, there wasn't much there.

"Hey," I said back. "You look tougher. Profitable morning?"

"You could say that," she replied. "I... helped, with some of the guns in the walls. The soldiers were happy to show me how. Then it was easy to collect a few hundred more points. That turned into more ammunition, and my own gun, and now... yeah."

"It does that," I replied. I was sitting on a tidy sum myself. After repairs to the MEOW I might have to take a few minutes to figure out how to spend it all. "It's not forever, though. We're on the front line right now, so there are a lot of things paying out, but once this is all done, we might not see more action for a little while."

"I know," Crisis Mode replied. "You were going to visit Libre?"

The change in subject almost caught me off guard. "I've got to. There's some fuckery going on with our supplies. We're supposed to be getting more ammunition and things on the front than we are. The army should have more set aside, so somewhere along the way, the ammo's not making it to here."

"I see," she replied. Even through her armour, I could see her tensing up a little. "Have you talked to Libre about it?"

"Not yet," I said. "Should I?"

"Yes."

Well, that was telling. "Okay then. Well... that's my ride over there. I figured you wanted to come with me, since you walked all the way over here?" I gestured up to the Bastion which was slowly hovering closer. The ship spun around a quarter-turn and gently dropped down even while one of its side bay-doors hummed open. By the time it landed the ramp into the hold was down and I only had to direct the MEOW forward to get into place.

"If you don't mind," Crisis Mode said. She sighed, then reached up and removed her helmet. Her hair was a matted mess, stuck to her forehead by a thin layer of sweat. "Sorry. I'm feeling less charitable than usual."

"That's alright. Wanna, uh, talk about it?" I asked.

I wished Grasshopper, or maybe Tankette were here. They had the right kind of vibe for this kind of conversation. I wasn't so good at it. Not that I didn't trust myself to manage. "Do I have to?" Crisis Mode asked.

"No," I said as I moved past her and climbed aboard my transport. "But it might make you feel better?"

She grunted as she followed me onboard. "Maybe," she admitted. "It's just... are you upset with Libre?"

"I've considered throwing him out of his little tower once or twice," I admitted.

"Well, that's not half as upset as I am. I saw Gomorrah working, you know? Hedgehog a little too. And you, though that was from afar. You killed a lot of them. Like, hundreds, maybe thousands of Antithesis died, directly because of three samurai."

"Yeah, that's our job," I said as I started to work on locking the MEOW in place. That required pulling out a few straps and making sure the mech's legs were in the right positions for the clamps built into the floor to grab onto them. "We kill aliens good, and get shiny little points for them. Pretty sure the points are all made up, too."

"Sure," Crisis Mode said. "That's not the part that's bothering me. It's just that... he's been holding us back. I get his plan. He's more than happy to explain it, and I suppose it makes sense. Hell, it might make more sense than using a Samurai and hoping that we make enough points to completely turn the tide, but also, it's not satisfying. We could do so much more. Just today, I earned as many points in a morning as I earned in the last week."

"We don't always earn so much so quickly," I said. "And not to defend the idiot, but gambling on one of us is kind of a risk. Gomorrah's strong, but if the problem can't be solved with 'more fire' then she's going to be set back. The others? Shy can punch above her weight class, and Hedgehog is capable, but they're all a little newer. It'll take a few weeks before they're up to a big challenge. Hell, I'm new too."

"I understand," she replied. "Are you defending him?"

"No? I'm not his friend. Just saying. We can turn the tide. But can and will are different, you know? I learned that one the hard way, a few times, even." I pointed to the front. "Come on. Sit?"

"Sure," she said.

It wasn't long before we were in the air again, and less long before I could see the off-white tower that Libre had taken over as his base of operations. "I think I get what he's planning," I said. "I've been thinking about it, and it makes sense. He wants to drip-feed the Antithesis new... I guess reasons to evolve? They adapt. But if we're slow and careful, they'll adapt to what we want them to, and then we can turn around and blindside them with something else. Gom's fire is a good example. If she fights one hive for a long time, I'm pretty sure they'll grow immune to fire. Or resistant to it, at least."

"I understand," Crisis Mode said. "But..."

"But it's stupid as fuck? Yeah. If we were just dealing with the army, then yeah, it'd make sense. But we can call in new shit to fuck them up with. And some of our shit's esoteric." I felt a little proud of myself for using that one. It wasn't a word I popped out every day. "Good luck evolving a solution to being turned inside-out, or being mulched by monomolecular strings, or having your atoms turned off."

"Atoms turned off?"

"I don't know, I'm not a scientist," I dismissed. "My point stands, I think."

"Hm," Crisis said. "Yeah. Actually, that's kind of what I've been thinking. He put a lot of thought into things, and then just ignored two huge factors. That doesn't make him a bad planner, or a bad person, I suppose. His strategy worked to stall them this far. It's just that I don't think it will win us the war, and I don't know if he's willing to change course. I... he would be the sort of man to sabotage other efforts, just to keep his own plan going."

"Well, that's fucked up," I said. "Because that would lead to some good people ending up dead."

"Exactly." Crisis Mode had her arms crossed and her brow set. "I'm tired of people dying. You... I don't know you, really, but you're not a medic. You're not the one healing people. You're not the one who has to decide which twenty-year-old gets to live, the one missing a leg at the hip, or the one panicking while trying to stuff his bowels back in. I don't think Libre has any idea either."

Didn't know what to say to that. Crisis clearly had an entire heap of trauma just waiting to boil over, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to be around when it did.

I brought the transport around and parked it on the same spot I'd used the day before. Then I grabbed my helmet and stepped out of a side door instead of opening one of the bays.

Crisis Mode followed, smuching her own helmet onto her head before she adopted a walk that wasn't too far from a stomp.

There were two guards at the entrance. They stepped aside when we approached and didn't even bother checking our credentials. Probably for the best, but also kind of lazy. I decided not to make a fuss about it, because in their place I'd be even lazier.

We moved in, beelining towards an elevator at the end of the lobby, then up several floors until we were on Libre's level.

The space was the same as I remembered it. A side room, with smaller rooms and spaces off to the sides, people busy at a dozen desks, though there was a noticeable uptick in the number of people in fatigues and army-officer chic. The space was relatively quiet, even though there were so many people moving around and talking at once.

This felt like the beating heart of a large, complex operation. And at the centre of it, standing so that he was half-shrouded by a hologram, was Libre.

"Oh, hello, I wasn't expecting either of you to come here," he said.

"And yet here we are!" I said cheerfully. "Wanna have a chat?"

***