Chapter Sixty – Bobcating Around

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

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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 Sixty - Bobcating Around

"Sure, modern LLMs and ML and other AI will steal most jobs... but some jobs are eternal.

Have you considered becoming a politician?"

--Mayor Bedard of Quebec City, 2037

***

Gomorrah's last words had me on edge. She was right. The biggest Antithesis I saw was a bulky Model Six, one of those six-legged tanky guys with the ugly flat mug. Hedgehog spotted the bastard too, and soon there was a foot-long spike jutting out of the alien's forehead. And when that didn't do anything to slow it down, the spike was joined by a half-dozen more until the Model Six crumpled.

Where were the bigger aliens?

There had been plenty of those artillery aliens at the wall, the Model Fifteens. From the looks of it, we had hit the hive that they were coming from because they were literally lining out of the space and walking towards Quebec.

"Did the hive produce the bigger models as a batch?" I asked.

"That could be the case," Gomorrah said.

"Yeah," I replied. "Let's just keep an eye open, I guess. That's what I usually do."

"Is that a one-eye joke?" Gomorrah asked.

"Sure is! You've got to make the best of it, sometimes. You know, roll with the punches."

Gomorrah was quiet for just a moment too long. "Because the punches come in from your blind angle?"

"Does Fran laugh at your jokes?" I asked. I was just teasing. Most of my attention was on the BOBCAT's instrumentation. It was laid out a little differently than what I was used to, so I kept having to look for things. Similar UI, though so that was nice. The 90mm guns were tracking from side to side, giving me a pretty good view all the way around. I kept turning most of my attention back onto the other Samurai.

Hedgehog was making up the middle of the group. He had a big gun with him, one that had a sort of tripod on the end that let him use it while standing up. He'd pick it up, set the feet, then take a few shots that left needles poking into the enemy.

Crisis Mode, in the meantime, was staying close. She wasn't fighting in any sort of fancy way. She had a rifle and was tagging anything that came close with some quick and deadly burst fire. It was efficient.

Knight and Princess were moving around a lot more. Princess had her multi-armed system sticking out of her skirts and was using it to move around and to shoot plenty of small-arms fire into anything that reached the middle distance. Knight took care of the small fry that got closer, slicing them out of the air with a large sword that casually cleaved through aliens.

I wasn't sold on the idea of being a melee-specialist. It was 2057. Humanity had had guns for like, two hundred years, at least. The time for swords was long past.

And yet... there was an appeal to chopping a motherfucker up with a long, sharp piece of steel.

As for Shy, she kept showing up as a blip on my sensors then disappearing. She was also literally disappearing. She'd appear off ahead of us, usually near a group of enemies,then blast the shit out of them from up close with her multiple shoguns. Then she'd dart away before disappearing again.

That was actually kind of concerning. "Shy?" I asked over our shared comms. "Do you have any sort of active IFF? Don't want to tag you by accident."

"Oh," she replied. It took twenty seconds or so, but there was a new signature. It happened to be behind a few bushes, and I saw a faint blur when I zoomed in there. Shy, her long black poncho entirely-see through, but her armour beneath wasn't quite as invisible, just hard to make out against the background. She had a tag on her, relaying her location.

"Thanks."

"Uh, you're welcome."

That was a good way to reduce the chance that we'd catch her in the AOE of something explosive.

With that taken care of, we continued to move. I took a few potshots with the BOBCAT's bigger guns, mostly testing out their range and punishing any Antithesis that made the mistake of grouping up too much. I was also looking for any spot where a few of them happened to line up, so that I could get a neat multikill with the railgun, because... well, because it made the little happy chemicals in my brian go off to see two or more aliens crumple from a single shot.

It wasn't long before we were climbing a hill and finally meeting some proper resistance. Aliens came pouring over the top, and our formation tightened.

Gomorrah unleashed a wave of fire, though she was careful not to spray any close to the others, for good reason, too, because it straight up melted the first Antithesis to run through the flames.

The others gathered up. Hedgehog continued to take out anything that stood out, and Crisis Mode never stopped her precise, fast fire. Shy, Knight and Princess took out the closer ones... then they had to really get to work because the flood didn't stop.

"Damn, that's a lot of Model Threes," I muttered as I set the BOBCAT's smaller guns to auto-fire. I started to look for bigger concentrations of them to pump my 90mm guns into. It was effective, sending legs and heads flying.

I was starting to get worried when the flood didn't let up. We killed well over a hundred of them in the first minute, then another hundred in the next. The push was ground strong enough that we even started to back away, which was when the flyers came out to play.

I cursed as a wave of Model Ones rushed out over the lip of the hill, all of them pouring out of the hive's top. It reminded me of something I'd seen once, some old documentary where they filmed thousands of bats coming out of some South American cave.

I shifted my guns upwards. "Myalis, switch to flak," I said.

Noted.

I fired faster, then when the BOBCAT's guns ran empty, I bought flak shells. Those had a bit more impact, but it didn't stop the wave.

Shy jumped back, then rolled across the ground as a few Model One smacked into her. Knight ran over to help, but that left Princess alone. She panicked, firing wildly into the flock with her many smaller guns. That actually did help a little, but it only went so far.

Then Gomorrah aimed upwards and lit the sky on fire.

Cooking bird corpses started to rain all around us.

Which meant that the main thrust of the enemy wasn't being forced to one spot.

"Shit," I swore. The saving grace here was that neither Crisis Mode nor Hedgehog panicked. They simply started to walk backwards, laying down constant, precise fire. It gave us the time we needed.

There were so many bodies crashing into the ground around us that it looked like black hail. The ground, already dry and with little vegetation left under the Antithesis' care, turned muddy with alien blood, and the entire area by the hive's entrance was churned up by constant fire and the grinding of alien bodies.

I was just starting to feel the first inklings of real worry when the swarm slowed down. There were still more coming, but instead of cresting the hill by the dozens, it was in groups of three and four.

I swallowed and forced myself to relax. I wasn't time to panic and it certainly wasn't the time to let the adrenaline get to my head.

"I think we should push in," Hedgehog said. "Shy, status?"

"F-fine!" Shy said. "I'm fine. Just, ah..."

"She got spun around a little," Knight said. "No injuries."

"I'll be the judge of that," Crisis Mode said. "Do you really want to push in?"

Hedgehog nodded. "If we stand here, we'll just give them the chance to do more. They haven't deployed their hive-protection units yet. Give me two minutes to buy and arm a bomb, and we can toss it in and leave. Whatever's left can be taken out from the air."

I liked the sound of that. "What kind of bomb?" I asked.

"I have something special that I've been meaning to use," he said. "I think it has a good chance of being effective."

That sounded fun. I considered the situation for a bit before issuing orders... or rather, strongly-worded suggestions. "Gom, protect Hedgehog. Crisis, check on Shy. Princess, Knight, keep those two safe. I'm going to go to the back and provide overwatch."

Simple was best, right?

Hedgehog bought his bomb, and I couldn't help but stare. It was a beige and gunmetal thing, as tall as he was and twice as long, but only because the core of it--not much more than hip-high--was covered in massive spikes that jutted out of it in every direction.

"What in the fuck is that?" I asked.

"A spike bomb," he said.

Well, that didn't explain shit. But I was down to see what it did to the aliens.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Hi...

you should read Black Apron... it's funny! 

/collection/2375053

It's also free? It'll be going up on RR in November, but you can read ahead on my Patreon <3