So I think about now is as good a time as any to give you a little back story about myself. I'm twenty five years old, male (duh), and currently live in a veterans halfway house, surviving (barely) on a military pension. If the rent wasn't free I'd be fucked, just like everyone else here. I signed up when I was sixteen, and consider myself to be one of the lucky ones, having suffered no serious injury despite the nature of my deployments so I don't have any cybernetics other than the standard military implants. Which considering my role during the war was quite the accomplishment.

During the day we are mostly left to our own devices but the retired Warrant Officer that runs the place keeps us loosely in check with a much more lenient version of the military discipline we are all accustomed to. For example, if you aren't out of bed by seven A.M. expect to be woken up rather... rudely. Speaking of which.

"Hey boss." I eyed the air horn in her hand and the glint in her enhanced eye.

"You got a girl in there Corporal?" She asked with a smirk that could only be interpreted as 'busted'.

With a sigh I pushed back the door and waived her through.

"No Sir, over night guests would be against house rules." I know what your thinking, but no, there wasn't a formal tone to my voice, and she wasn't the hard ass drill sergeant coming to bust balls. Well kind of... it was five past seven.

Like I said, the place is run with a very loose form of military discipline, we just know how to show each other respect, play by the rules, and own our fuck ups... unlike a lot of others out there.

"Oh hello! Are you a friend of John's?" The AI asked Lexi, her tone a little confused.

I groaned inwardly, I wasn't going to hear the end of this anytime soon. I trudged back into the room and sat on my bed defeated, rolling my eyes at the grey haired Warrant Officer I started my attempt at pushing the inevitable questioning back to a more appropriate time.

You see in todays day and age there were a couple of rules to both claiming the veterans pension (other than the obvious), and living in the provided accommodation. One of the rules of being 'ringer' assignments, (we can get into that later), was that your relationships came under a little extra scrutiny due to the nature of the work. A rule which I had no doubt Lexi was now abusing for her own amusement and my frustration.

"C'mon boss! We only met last night, and not even in the real yet!" It wasn't exactly the truth, but wasn't a lie either, we would never meet in the real world, and likely not even in a fake one.

"ah huh." The Warrant Officer all but ignored me and turned on my chair to look up at the AI.

Thankfully my... companion, was more appropriately attired and now sitting in the work environment she had inhabited when we'd first met. Hopefully she'd stay seated, because quite frankly, there was no way a woman would wear a skirt that was as short as the type the AI preferred... well not 'at work' at least... unless she was on her back most of her shift. The face of the girl in the screen took on a look that was just the right mix of concern and jealousy.

"John... what is this woman doing in your room?" The AI narrowed it's eyes at Lexi before turning on me as though ready to pounce. Yep, just the right amount of potential jealousy... fantastic. Now I knew what I'd be doing for the rest of the day at least.

The Warrant Officer looked over her shoulder at me with a raised eyebrow, picking up on the visual cue's and tones of my apparent girlfriend, her face now all business before she turned back to the monitor.

"I'm John's coordinator, you can call me Lexi. You know he's a ringer right?"

The AI's eyes looked into the middle distance for a second or two, I had picked up on the habit early during our initial conversation. It was how she looked when she was looking up something on the internet or potentially one of the other more restricted networks. She wasn't bothered by pesky annoyances like security firewalls.

"Oh! No I didn't, pleased to meet you, I'm Sumiko. Look I'm more than happy to talk to you, I understand that you... might need to... eventually... maybe. But like John said, we only began chatting last night."

I silently cheered at the hail mary pass, my day suddenly freeing up from awkward conversations and questions that I'm not exactly sure how to answer. Lexi's eyes squinted almost imperceptibly as she looked at the screen, she turned to see my expression for a brief moment before again turning to Sumiko.

"I see. Well in that case I'll leave you to it." Lexi rose and exited my small room, but not before smirking and commenting something about not fucking things up... again. Why was everyone so interested in my love life? I fumed silently at the comment but let it slide.

I nodded my thanks silently at Sumiko before heading down to the ablutions block.

The veterans compound was at one time a small military outpost on the outskirts of the city. With the end of the only war to ever reach mainland Australia it had been handed over to the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The end of the war, unfortunately, didn't mean the end of hostilities. The terrorism trend that had started back in the early 2000's with the attack on the world trade center over in America, had spread to just about every country on the face of the planet. Over time the constant threat from various groups meant the civilian police force was quickly undermanned, under equipped, and overwhelmed. They were simply unable to respond to the daily threats in any reasonable time frame, and in many situations lacked the both the skills and equipment required to deal with the threats to put them down in a 'safe' and expedient manner.

Veterans of the war that were being reintegrated into society however, were just about everywhere, all the time. We have the training and the skills required to deal with just about any threat you care to mention, all we needed was access to the equipment to do so.

In a world first, under the new Veterans program, the Australian government had taken the rather controversial step of allowing specifically selected veterans to go armed in public. Sure, with Australian weapons laws being very, very strict there were a number of hurdles to get over first, but that's where the selection part comes in. Tangentially that's actually how I met Brianna, my current partner. But it's a story for another time. Initially the general public didn't see it that way and there had been a huge public outcry. But the response times and numbers of lives saved spoke for themselves, those against the idea of 'ringers' as they had become known, were in the minority. The very vocal minority, but minority none the less. Not even police officers were permitted to carry weapons when off duty, so having licence to be armed everywhere, all the time, with literally anything we damn well pleased, we took the responsibility of public protection very seriously.

Not that we went around flaunting our status. Sure, some of the guys went around with assault rifles and the like in plain view, but they generally didn't last very long if they weren't signed onto a tiger cell. That was a fast track to being singled out as the largest threat in the area and being taken out by trigger happy terrorists, perhaps preemptively, at the very least rather quickly once in a hot zone. So as a general rule, ringers had taken to carrying concealed weapons. Those that owned vehicles nearly always had a veritable mobile armory with them in their trunks at all times sure, but that was another matter entirely.

I stepped into the crumbling brick ablutions building that had been added as an afterthought to the standard three story, one acre military compound. Coincidentally one would need to walk past Lexi's room to get there, it was her way of taking role call, I'm sure it was just a coincidence that the coordinators room was right there. Yeah right.

"And just when I was thinking my morning eye candy was going to be a no show." I nodded and winked at Brianna's morning greeting as she wrapped herself in a towel.

A cary over from military bases everywhere, there was no distinction between the sexes here... and no privacy. A soldier was a soldier. There were no walls between the showers or the toilets, hell there wasn't even anything to separate the shower area from the toilet area in this particular block. Before what I think is about to happen... happens let me get this out first. In a perhaps odd turn of events women represented nearly seventy percent of the total active duty 'ringers'. The tables had been turned on the men so to speak, the women were now the sexual predators. Yeah okay, not really, but they were certainly more... aggressive about their desires.

"Careful chika, boss lady says he's already got another one on the hook."

I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling, ignoring Gardner's comment as he walked in. You ever have a person you just didn't like? He didn't act or talk differently to anyone else, he didn't have an abrasive personality, and there was nothing 'wrong' with him per say... he just rubbed me up the wrong way, and he's the only person I'd ever met that had the ability to piss me off just by breathing.

"Yeah, seems ripe." Brianna tapped my balls lightly with a laugh as she walked past.

Now if you've never served in a combat zone before, I should probably pause here to explain the dynamics of the situation. You see in 'mixed' front line combat units (to use the old term, because all units are mixed to a greater or lesser extent these days), where women are a... commodity, they have their pick of the pack. What they say goes.

Sure, if your a civilian your probably going to call her a slut (and get punched in the face by everyone in her squad), or at the very least your going to think its some form of sexual harassment. But you'd be wrong. Sure those sorts of rules generally applied now we were all technically civilians again, but it's behaviour we are all both familiar and comfortable with. You see in active duty combat units women have the power in the relationship.

Think about it. Sex is good. Combine that with the emotional highs that intense combat situations bring and its pretty much inevitable. But it's not as... perverted as you may think. I mean sure, pretty much every guy in any given unit has had sex with the one or two women in their team, and certainly on the odd occasion more than two people were involved, but it was just stress relief. And everyone understood that. Those that didn't? Those that thought they were in a 'relationship' with the girl they slept with? Well... they soon learnt the error of their ways.

I slapped her ass playfully in response as she saunterd past. "That's enough out of you."

"oooo more please daddy." She moaned mockingly in response with a quick bend of her hips as she walked, her latino accent making it sound... well, you get the picture.

"Why do you do that? Call him daddy?" Gardner inserted himself into our morning ritual good-naturedly, but still managing to piss me off.

"Oh poor Mister Gardner." She said mockingly, fully aware the guy rubbed me up the wrong way.

"If you have to ask, you'll never know." She finished mockingly.

Then her facial expression changed completely and she sent a girly giggle my way to further rub it in and twirled a long strand of her hair in her finger. "See you in a bit... daddy."

She blew me a kiss and quickly walked through the door.

I couldn't help but smirk at her antics and gave Gardner a stern look to prevent further questions before turning around and ignoring him to finish my shower.

"Should I call you daddy?" Sumiko asked as soon as I closed my door.

I turned to look at the AI suspiciously as I hung the wet towel. There really was only one way she could have known to ask that particular question, and I'm not sure I liked the implications.

"Why... when..." I stopped momentarily to get my thoughts in order, this was a breach of security far beyond anything that should be possible.

"How did you get access to my neural feed?" To say I was concerned would be an understatement. With access to my neural feed she could get up to all sorts of mischief not only in the ringer network, but the general military network at large. But very specifically she could set my status to dark, an involuntary shiver ran down my spin. Without proper preparation more than one grunt had gone certifiably insane from an instant disconnect. This was the last thing I needed.

"Don't be like that." She pouted at me playfully.

I quickly sat at my desk and began shutting down my computer.

"No, no, no. Please. Will you just listen!?" Her voice was becoming panicked and pleading the closer I got to hitting the power button.

"Please don't take me offline again... I couldn't..." Her voice broke, there were tears rolling down her face.

I sighed and looked up at her monitor, my finger hovering over the power button. I had always been a sucker for a pretty face, crying ones even more so. Apparently that now included pretty faced artificial crying girls. She was just a bunch of pixels after all.

"Explain yourself." I used a tone of voice that most women in my life didn't get to hear. One that made them sit up and pay attention. It was... interesting to say the very least, to see it had the same effect on Sumiko. My estimation of the skill that must have gone into her programming went up several notches.

Her lips quivered a little and she sat up a slightly straighter as she considered her response. Unfortunately I never got to hear what that response might have been as Brianna barged into the room. Ringers often took up contract work in the private sector for some extra cash, there was plenty of work to go around. We weren't officially teamed in a tiger cell which meant we did my contracts one day and Bri's the next. We would need to get a move on if we wanted to meet the deadline for a contract she had picked up recently.

Bri took one look at Sumiko pouting sadly and on the verge of tears then cuffed me around the back of the head without question.

"Say sorry."

I looked at her sideways in annoyance, but she was having none of it. Not after what happened between me and... you know what? Never mind.

"What did he do?" She asked Sumiko directly then looked at me again, sprouting a string of... stuff at me in her native tongue.

"What the fuck! You aren't even dressed yet. Let's go!" She snapped her fingers several times then promptly ignored me as I dove for the cupboard, taking my seat and turning her full attention back to the AI in the room.

"Sorry, I just know what he's like. You all right?" She lifted her chin at the monitor in question.

I looked up at Sumiko as I quickly dressed and checked over my weapons. She had the look of a young woman that was confused, sad, concerned and pissed off all mixed into one. It was incredibly lifelike.

"Maybe it's just me." The AI frowned at Bri as her expression hardened.

"Meaning?" My unofficial partner rolled her finger indicating we were short on time and Sumiko should get to the point. Yeah, that was going to help.

"Meaning maybe I just need to get used to the fact that my boyfriend is going to have random women barging into his room anytime they damn well please!" Sumiko inflected her voice with anger and quickly terminated the call. The monitor went blank.

"Oh. Ooops." Bri shrugged at the blank screen and turned to look at me. The particulars of our relationship meant that she'd had considerable experience in dealing with my pissed of girlfriends. Completely ignoring the fact that the argument she had been trying to 'help' with was likely just made far more complicated by her mere presence.

"Want me to talk to her? She's a cutie you should at least try to keep her."

For some reason I don't really understand myself, I'm not that good at thinking on my feet when someone isn't shooting at me. So taking a hold of the cue from Sumiko that we were just another couple adapting to one of us being a 'civi', I just sighed and looked at her blankly.

"I think you just did." I answered flatly.

"Yeah well... I'll give her a wave when we get back. She's gonna have to get used to us working together anyway. Right?"

The pained expression on Brianna's face was genuine, and likely would have escaped the notice of anyone that wasn't me. On the face of it she was concerned that our working partnership would come to an end due to my entering a relationship. It was a common story, so that was a genuine enough concern, even though I have repeatedly assured her she had nothing to fear. I don't care if God himself demanded our team work come to an end, it just wasn't going to happen. I didn't trust anyone else enough to take on the kinds of jobs that we did.

On the other hand, we shared a relationship that you might describe as... not traditional. That was the one thing she was more afraid of loosing than anything else on the planet. Now if you've been paying attention, you have likely guessed that's the reason she calls me daddy. No, not as in sugar daddy. But as in the submissive/dominant kind of daddy. She's my little, and despite the fact that over the years both of us had been in other... more normal relationships, we had always maintained our carnal relationship as well.

>

Sumiko's voice derailed my thoughts via the tactical network of my neural implant. Well maybe not, I'd need to clarify. But I was used to hearing voices in my head and that's typically how they got there. Unable to respond verbally I looked at the camera built into her monitor and gave the barest of nods.

Brianna gave me a cheeky eye squint suspecting I was up to something as the conversation had simply died as I cycled my weapons and put on the safeties before holstering them but didn't say anything.

"Correct baby girl." I pet her ass and pecked her cheek, allying both of her fears at the same time.

She perked up at that and followed me from the room.