Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Seventy-Three - It's Always The Quiet Ones

Chapter Seventy-Three - It's Always The Quiet Ones

"What about... Quiet? No, that's too on the nose hmm? Oh! Lady Shylance? You'd need to pick up a lance for that.

Ah! Just Shy, then?"

--Recording of a conversation between Samurai Grasshopper, and a wall, 2056

***

"You good?" I asked before checking my mech's scanners. There were a few living antithesis around, but they were flopped onto the ground, with hefty chunks of their bodies missing, and I figured that the whole 'living' thing would rectify itself soon enough.

I refocused on Shy. My guns were relatively silent...ish, all things considered, but they had shot right next to the samurai and I didn't know if she had ear protection.

If she was shy by default, I couldn't imagine how she'd be if I blew out her eardrums.

Stepping back very slowly let me see the woman a little better. Shy was a thin twenty-something in an all-black outfit wearing something like a long poncho with a hood and a sort of cloak bit at the back. Her suit was armoured from what I could tell. Her face was partially exposed. She had these sorts of large goggles on, which still let me see her wide-eyed stare. Her skin seemed a little strange? Motley. At first I thought she had burn scars like me, but it didn't seem like that. That one thing where people's skin was two-coloured, maybe? It started with a 'v' but I couldn't remember the name.

"You good?" I repeated.

She looked down, as if checking herself, then let go of her gun. It hung off her side by a strap while she tapped herself all over real quick. Then she paused and shyly, slowly, looked back up. She nodded.

"Uh, yeah, good," I said. "Can you talk? Or like, sign?"

Shy blinked, all without meeting my mech's face with her gaze. She reached down towards her neck and... tugged up a piece of cloth that covered the few parts of her face that had been exposed.

I wasn't getting the feeling that she'd be chatting with me anytime soon. Then I got a ping, from Myalis.

It seems as though Vanguard Shy wishes to forge a connection between her AI assistant and myself. I'm ambivalent about it.

I shut off the mech's microphones so that she couldn't overhead. "Is that dangerous?"

No.

"Uh, you sound sure of yourself," I said.

Her AI is a thousand years too young to pose a threat to me. In any case, this isn't too unusual. Vanguard who work together frequently sometimes do this. I've been in contact with Atyacus quite frequently, for example. Asking for this level of connection outright is a little strange, but not dangerous or a threat.

"Okay?" I tried. "So, what would that even do?"

Every Vanguard AI is already networked together, to some degree or another. This would merely allow you to hear what this Vanguard wants to convey through her AI assistant. In this case, in the form of text and sound-based communication.

"Would you say yes to it?" I asked.

It's harmless, so I don't see why not. I suspect that this Vanguard has communication issues and her AI is willing to assist.

I considered it for a moment, but then gave up on thinking. If Myalis said it was safe, then I could probably trust her. If the day came that I couldn't, then I was fucked anyway. "Sure, patch them in," I said.

Patching!

There was a small blip, and then text appeared at the bottom of my vision even as someone else spoke up. It sounded like they, he? Was standing right in front of me and talking with a rather posh-sounding accent. "Greetings! I am Latyns, Lady Shy's personal AI assistant. It's a pleasure to meet you, Vanguard Stray Cat."

"Yeah, pleasure's all mine," I said. "So, any reason why Shy set this up?"

"Ah, indeed. Lady Shy is somewhat averse to speaking aloud with strangers, and so I have been tasked with translating her wants to you directly."

"Right," I said. I looked over to Shy who was... muttering something under her breath. She looked up for a moment, met my mech's eyes, then she nodded her head low in what was almost a bow.

"Lady Shy thanks you for your assistance. Without your timely aid it was possible that she wouldn't have survived this encounter with the Model Thirty-One."

"Wait," I said. Then, realising that I could ask her directly instead of going through her AI, I flicked on my mech's mic. "Wait, you downed a Model Thirty-One?" I asked.

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Shy nodded slowly. She half-turned, then pointed back the way she'd been running from. I saw her jaw move a little before Latyns piped up again. "Lady Shy shot the alien out of the sky some half kilometres away from here. The model was injured already, but her final strike took it down. It is not yet dead, however, merely incapacitated."

I could leave Shy here. Let her finish off her kill now that there weren't as many flyers around, and she'd earn herself a nice heap of points for her troubles. On the other hand... I could already hear Grasshopper nagging me for not keeping an eye on the girl.

"Want me to give you a ride over to the Thirty-One?" I asked. "You can hop on top and I'll run over to where it landed."

Shy seemed to consider it, then she muttered something too low for me to pick up. Was she subvocalizing?

"Lady Shy would appreciate the assistance. She has some equipment that had to be abandoned at haste by the location where the Model Thirty-One crashed. She has two concerns however."

"Go on," I said.

"First, the Lady worries that your vehicle and presence might be somewhat loud."

"I can be quiet too, you know?" I said. A flick of a switch activated the mech's stealth functions, and it suddenly grew a lot quieter. Then it went fully invisible. Well, almost fully. Some panels were open at the moment, and the insides weren't covered in the same stealth-screen coating shit that made the entire mech transparent at will, but it was stealthier than just standing there as a giant mechanical tiger.

I saw Shy's big, expressive eyes blink. "The Lady is impressed. Her second concern was one of comfort."

"Comfort how?" I asked.

"Why, she wonders if two people will fit within your mechanised unit's cockpit."

"You want to sit in my mech?" I asked.

Shy stared. "Where else would she find herself if you were to carry her?"

"I mean, I was thinking you could hang on to the side? Or like, ride the mech on top? Like... a really big horse?"

Shy started up at me. She had some really pretty eyes under those tech-goggles. Grey-ish blue, and very soulful. Also, very disappointed.

"You know, for someone so shy, you seem real eager to get in here with me. Usually people wait for a few days before getting it on with all the skinship."

Shy leaned back onto her heels, then quickly shook her head. "Lady Shy wishes to clarify, with great enthusiasm, that you are inherently incorrect in your assumptions."

"Uh-huh."

"She has decided that walking back is acceptable."

Before I had time to reply to that, Shy spun around and started running back. She quickly faded from view, her poncho-cloak turning her invisible. So, another stealth specialist, then? Not that I had really been leaning into that lately. Stealth was cool when you were punching up, but once you have big guns it kind of took a back seat to just exploding your enemies.

Shy was a pretty quick runner. I might have lost sight of her, but Myalis painted an outline over her current position, so as I bounced up and after her, I was able to keep up without squishing her underfoot.

I split my attention between moving forwards and keeping an eye on my mech's readings of the area. Spending time playing mechanic hadn't been a waste. I knew more about how to pilot this machine than ever before, and that really let me use the whole of it.

"Model Ones ahead," I warned. "Might be a few of those flyers the Thirty-One spits out too."

Shy's hand appeared from out under her poncho and she gave me a thumb's up.

Right, working with her was going to be interesting, and maybe not in the fun way.

We shot past the backyard of an old farmhouse, then Shy leapt over a decrepit wooden fence and into a spot filled with younger trees. It had probably been a field just five or six years ago, but now it was well past overgrown and starting to become a forest of sorts.

My mech crashed through the smaller trees. Fortunately, they were mostly leafless, so it wasn't all that loud. It wasn't too subtle, either.

The aliens caught on quickly enough. We were going to have to ditch the stealth stuff, unless Shy wanted me standing atop her again to keep the birds off.

I didn't want to make a habit of it.

***

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