Chapter Twenty-Seven - Three Star Pull


    Chapter Twenty-Seven - Three Star Pull


    "Introducing, from The Family, the latest and greatest gacha game ever!


    Pull from actual, real-life Samurai! Collect your favourite waifus and husbandos! Listen to real lines, equip them with real gear!


    The most state-of-the-art gacha to ever go live!"


    --Initial ad for the Family Gacha, 2057


    ***


    The nameless intern led Rac and I deeper into the Family HQ while also slowly pissing me off. I asked him how the sewer situation was going, and he had no idea. I asked him if more Sewer Dragons were being referred to my clinic, and he didn''t know anything about that. I asked him what the plans were for keeping humanity from getting dinosaur''ed and he didn''t have a single clue.


    But one question from Rac about that stupid gacha game and he went on a five minute tangent about it.


    Apparently I was a three-star pull, whatever the fuck that meant.


    The intern kept drawing us deeper into the HQ until we reached an elevator guarded by a pair of mechs. They were androids, but not the sex kind. These were four-legged, squat robots with humanoid upper torsos and enough guns to start a small war. They had heads, in that they had a bunch of sensors and shit in a boxy thing at the top that stared at us, but I was pretty sure they could live without.


    "This is as far as I can go, Miss Stray Cat," he said with a nod. "Your guest pass should allow you access, Miss Raccoon, but please don''t, ah, stray too far? The pass will buzz a warning if you reach a zone you''re not allowed to be in."


    "And if she keeps going?" I asked.


    "The security system does have some non-lethal options," he said. "After that, the lethal options kick in. There''s really not much time between, so please listen to the pass''s instructions. And with that, I wish you good luck." He bowed, then scampered off.


    I stared at his back for a moment before shaking my head. "You know, last time I came here, they used a honey pot on me?"


    "A what?" Rac asked.


    "It''s when you deal with a corp or something and they send someone hot to handle you. They''re all flirty and shit? Like, imagine if you had to deal with a company and the rep they sent looked like that Garter guy but... with a nicer chin or whatever floats your boat."


    "I think I get it," she said flatly.


    I shrugged, then walked past the androids into the elevator. Rac followed and the doors closed. There was no button panel, instead, the elevator just started to drop slowly.


    "So, we''re going to be meeting with a bunch of Samurai?" Rac asked. She sounded just a pinch nervous, which was kind of fair. If someone had dragged me to meet a single samurai just a month ago I would have been shaking in my running shoes. I wasn''t one to fangirl either, the shaking would mostly be worry.


    Samurai were still a little scary. I could readily admit, having met my share, that we weren''t the sanest, most level-headed bunch around. And we all did kind of have that level of personal and political power that let us get away with shit.


    "Am I interrupting a meeting or something?" I asked.


    "You are not," Grasshopper said. "Hello, Rac the Racoon, how are you doing?"


    "I''m fine," Rac said. "I''ve been doing the things you told me to... when I have time."


    Grasshopper smiled. "I know. You''ve been a very good pupil. I appreciate that you have a busy schedule and yet you still find time to do your homework. Isn''t that laudable, Stray Cat?"


    "Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, good job, Rac," I said without meeting Grasshopper''s eyes. So what if I had a few gigs of homework to do. I''d get to it eventually, when I wasn''t worried about saving the world, or sleeping in, or spending time with Lucy. I had other priorities than learning math.


    The door behind us opened and I turned to see a tall woman step into the room. She was armoured, like really armoured. A long skirt of interlocking metal plates, shoulder pads that were exaggeratedly huge, a chestplate that wrapped around... I don''t know if the English alphabet had enough letters to describe the size of her. There had to be some gravity tech fuckery going on because there was no way anyone could move with those.


    Her face, when I finally dragged my eyes up to stare, was encased in more steel, shaped like a pretty but blank woman.


    "Hey," I said.


    LaserJack finally twigged on to something happening and looked up from his laptop. "Ah, Jolly Monarch, good."


    That was Jolly? The weird guy with the LARP costume and the drones?


    My confusion might have been obvious because Sam-O-Ray laughed. "He''s up around Mars or thereabouts, this is one of his Queen drones."


    "An old one," the Queen drone said with a slightly distorted but very much masculine voice.


    "Should I feel something about the, uh, shape of the drone?" I asked.


    "It was the only way to fit all the weapons I wanted," he said with a sigh.


    "Uh-huh."


    The Queen''s shoulders sagged, which made other things... I shook my head. "No one believes me," he said. "Which is why I never use this drone. It''s three years old besides. I have far better now, but it happened to be on Earth and I didn''t want to waste points."


    "Hmm, I never thought about it, but is this literal objectification?" Grasshopper asked.


    "Everyone," LaserJack said. "Let''s focus. Monarch, what''s the plan?"


    "Ah yes, the plan. The plan is that no one has a plan and we''re all going to die."


    ***