Chapter Thirty-One - Sprout

“Samurai may have similar profiles with several commonalities, but it’s worth noting that every one is a unique individual, and applying the same brush across all of them will lead to errors in judgement and application.”

--On the Mental and Psychological Treatment of Samurai Patients - 2046 Psychological Profiling Database

***

I stepped out of the toy store and nodded to the nearest militia guys. “Place is clear for now,” I said. “Move on to the next place that needs you.” And with that said I grabbed onto the back of the pickup I’d ridden over and climbed onboard. “Intel, got any news for me?”

“Ohaio!”

I suppressed a full-body twitch. Intel-chan’s avatar now had a pair of cat ears on, both sticking out of a hairband of all things. “What?”

“Sprout-dono could probably use your help. He’s in bad shape. Not kawaii at all.”

I glared. “Are you getting worse?” I asked.

The avatar’s eyes widened into a look of pure, unbelievable innocence. “What do you mean, Stray Neko-sama?”

“Pain in the ass,” I muttered. “What’s wrong with Sprout? Is he alright?”

“He was injured while taking care of the other sneaky-sneaky hive,” Intel-chan said. “I sent more of our backline to the area to help stop the antithesis from spreading out from there.”

That was frustrating. “How’s the front-line?” I asked.

"So far so good! There’s less aliens than there were before!”

That didn’t sound right at all. “Myalis, what’s that mean?”

It either means that the nanomachine attack was significantly more effective than expected, or the antithesis are holding back for reasons unknown.

“Let’s assume that it’s the aliens fucking with us, that’s the worse possibility, isn’t it? Don’t they usually just charge in mindlessly? What’s keeping them back?”

Higher tier antithesis can sometimes display a certain level of tactical and strategic acumen. Lower-tier antithesis also tend to remain in the vicinity of their greater counterparts. It’s an instinct that presses them to protect the more valuable members of the hive.

So we were probably going to get messed up by some higher-tier aliens soon. “Intel-chan, keep an eye out for any models in the double digits. I want to be informed right away if we start seeing more of them.”

“Yes ma’am!” Intel-chan said with a sloppy salute.

“And tell the driver to get me to Sprout’s location. I want to see how badly he’s hurt, then we need to plug that hole.”

I got moving soon after, the militiaman at the wheel zipping across the city with no regard for any laws, which I supposed was only fair. We didn’t need to get too far before reaching the spot where Sprout was supposed to destroy the antithesis pushing in from below.

There were a dozen armoured trucks and a couple of APCs sitting around in two groups. Stacks of sandbags had been placed in lumps across the street with machine guns on bipods set up to aim at a single building.

It wasn’t all that big of a building, maybe seven stories high, with the kind of dull grey facing and squarish architecture designed to make your eye skim right past it. It barely had any ads on it too. An office building of some sort, then? Maybe a call centre or one of those places where a couple of hundred coders were locked into cubicles and made to write lines all day.

The first floor’s walls were covered in a spray of bullet holes, most concentrated around a nondescript doorway which looked like it had been smashed out. A few corpses--all antithesis--were splattered on the sidewalk, hinting at who had ripped the door out of the wall.

The pickup slowed to a stop and I jumped out, landing without any sound and just a slight bend to my knees.

Instantly, I noticed a dozen militia folk looking my way and I could see the tension bleeding off their shoulders. “Intel-chan, who’s in charge here?”

“That would be Sprout-dono, I guess. But if you mean for the militia, Second Lieutenant Hawke.”

“What’s with all of the second lieutenants?” I muttered. I’d seen more people at that rank than any other.

“There’s a big pay hike from second to first, so most people end up stuck as a second lieutenant forever. It’s not like the militia really needs people to be captains or whatever. An officer’s an officer.”

Ah, so it was capitalism. That made sense. “Tell Hawke to meet me,” I said as I searched for Sprout. I found him waiting at the back of an ambulance. The samurai was sitting at the back, legs just a little bit off the ground and back bent in the kind of posture that would lead to lower back pain in a few years.

He didn’t look like he was bleeding out and I counted the average number of limbs on him.

I walked over to him while glancing at the building a few times. No windows, so there was no telling what was going on inside. “Myalis, is there still power in there?” I asked.

There is, yes. Did you want me to plug into the building’s security network?

“That would be nice. Give us an idea of what’s going on without having to stick our head in,” I said. Then I came to a stop in front of Sprout. The man didn’t even look up, focused as he was on the ground between his feet. “Hey.”

Sprout looked up, mouth forming a little ‘o’ before he blinked and looked around. I’d seen the same expression on guilty kittens before. “Ah, uh, hi,” he said.

“I heard you got hurt, figured I’d come and see what I could do to help,” I said. I wanted to ask him why he looked so guilty, but sometimes it was better to let that kind of thing come out on its own.

“I’m... yeah, I’m alright,” he said. He tapped his chest, and I noted that he was wearing a suit of armour on. It didn’t look too impressive, a skin-tight suit which he’d thrown a surplus bulletproof vest over. A helmet sat on the edge of the ambulance next to him. Just a thing that would cover the top of his head and his ears. He had a satchel sitting next to him, a ruddy old thing that looked like it had seen better days.

“I...” he finally met my eyes, then he looked away. I had the impression he wanted to be angry at me but couldn’t muster up the willpower for it. “I went to see what I could do,” he said. “It didn’t work out.”

“Alright,” I said.

“I got chewed up. If it wasn’t for the militia people, for my armour, I’d be dead.”

I frowned, happy that he couldn’t see my expression at the moment. “What did you meet in there?” I asked.

“Just some model threes. Not even a lot of them.” He leaned forwards and cupped his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

That summed it up nicely, yeah.

“And now you’re like this because you couldn’t handle it?” I asked. It wasn’t nice of me, I knew, but damn if I didn’t have time to play therapist. “You know, it’s not all bad. You’re still new. Can’t expect to be great out of the gate.”

“I’ve been a samurai for three days now,” he said. “Johnny’s as new as me. He wouldn’t have any trouble. Manic... she’d enjoy it. I’m...” he shook his head. “I’m not made for this. I don’t know why I was chosen at all.”

“Hey, calm down,” I said. I placed a hand on his shoulder and tightened my grip. “Tell me what went wrong.”

“I told you,” he said.

“No, you told me what happened. Tell me what went wrong.”

He shook his head, but replied all the same. “I don’t know. I tried to not be noticed so that I could plant a few things, but my plants take a lot of time to grow. I thought I could just put a few of them down and let them grow to fill the hole. They’ve been good at stopping smaller models so far.”

“Alright, and what happened?” I asked.

“They attacked me. I couldn’t fight them off.”

I nodded slowly. “Do you have a gun?” I asked.

“I lost it,” he said.

I shut off the mic on my helmet so that I could let out a long sigh. This guy was... not front-line material. He didn’t have that edge, that willingness to jump into trouble and mess up the enemy.

Gomorrah had it in spades. She enjoyed seeing the enemy burn. Manic was as violent and temperamental as they came. Even Johnny, while he was more focused on himself, was willing to jump into trouble to punch it.

Sprout struck me as something of a pacifist, which was a fantastic thing to be, I was sure, but it was also not the best trait for a samurai to have.

“We’ll figure it out,” I told him, and I hoped I was right because I needed every samurai I could get right now.

***