Chapter Ten - Marketing Your Way Home

“Work sucks.

A lot of people say it, but it’s not true. Work itself isn’t awful. It can be satisfying; it can be something you look forward to. Working with others you enjoy, creating something that will go down in history, becoming better and earning enough to live a comfortable life. There are a lot of reasons why work can be an enjoyable, fulfilling activity.

The problem is that in order to create work like that the entire system needs to be willing to take big steps and make big sacrifices. Those cut into a company’s profits, and a company only exists to generate profits.

So yeah, work doesn’t suck, but yours probably does.”

--Precision Headhunter Co. CEO, teleconference on the joys of work, 2024

***

I crashed into Lucy and pulled her to me.

My worries crashed into her too, like a freight-train barrelling down a slope at full speed, then meeting the face of a mountain.

She grabbed me closer, returning the hug even as I buried my face in the big mess that was her poofy hair. “I love you too,” she said. As far as greetings went, it was just about perfect.

“Mhmm,” I agreed. I pulled back enough to press my lips to hers. It wasn’t a sexy kind of kiss though, just contact, a reply, I guess.

Look, I was never good with the romance stuff.

“So, uh,” I said. “The museum’s a house now.”

Lucy laughed. “Is it? You picked the giant cat shape, right?”

“It’s kind of iconic,” I said.

“Ironic, more like,” she shot back before spinning out of my grasp. A few of the kittens were milling around. The Twins were in the kitchen space, barely visible over the island, and a few others were in the living room, a movie blaring on the big screen.

“Do you have a lot of things to pack away?” I asked. “The kittens?”

“A few things,” she said. “You want to move us over?”

“Right away,” I confirmed.

Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Yeah. There’s aliens on the edge of the city already. I don’t know if there are enough soldiers between them and us for me to be comfortable. The museum... ex-museum’s probably safer than the hotel. Or it will be soon enough.”

Lucy nodded. “I’ll wrangle the kittens. It shouldn’t be too hard, you know how kittens are when you show them a new box. We didn’t come here with much.”

“You're saying we won’t strip the entire place for everything it’s got?” I asked.

Lucy tapped her lower lip. “Do you think we can leave with the bed? And should I tell the kittens to leave anything that’s nailed down?”

“I want the TV,” Nose shouted from the living room. The little shit was listening in, huh?

“We can’t sneak the TV out,” I called back. “It won’t fit in any bag... also, we don’t have bags to begin with.”

“I’ll call the staff,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty sure they have a sort of lost and found with old luggage we can take.”

“They’ll probably be happy to see the back of us,” I said.

Lucy shook her head. “Oh no, no way. They’ve been using you for advertising since you got here. Bet the mid-lister management types are going to cry when we leave.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

She shrugged. “They’ve been tasteful about it. They don’t name you but it’s like, really obvious it’s you. Plus their media feeds have been linking over to some paparazzi sorts that did take pictures of you. You know, hashtag, StrayCatWasHere.”

“Oh fuck me,” I muttered. I squeezed the bridge of my nose while shaking my head. In the end though, it didn’t really matter much. Corpos would corpo. “Well, whatever.”

“You know, we could use that to our advantage,” Lucy said.

“How?”

She gestured around the room. “This place is furnished. Ours isn’t. Not much, anyway. We need beds, and a few appliances, entertainment stuff, tables, chairs, couches. You know, house stuff. The hotel happens to have a lot of that stuff.”

“Alright, so we steal it all on the way out?”

Lucy giggled. “I was thinking more about getting them to deliver it all for us. Maybe use some of their designers or whatever to make it all nice and neat at home.”

“Uh,” I said. “That sounds expensive.”

Lucy nodded. “I bet. Millions, at the minimum. Probably more than we can afford. But, you have something they want. The credibility of a samurai. And with the city about to get attacked, all those bougie rich sorts living on the outskirts will want to move inwards to where it’s safer.”

I caught on. “I help them run an ad or something, maybe use my image, and they can claim that the place is safer. Then they’d help us get furniture and shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “I... have no idea who you’d need to talk to to work all of that out, but it’s an idea.”

“It’s a brilliant idea,” I said.

For multiple reasons. It would keep Lucy busy and safe at home while getting us what we needed without spending points for it. I would even likely have a few extra turrets in a few days. I bet the hotel would be all over those.

“Yeah, that could work,” I muttered. “Okay, we still need to move the kittens over, and sooner rather than later. Can you do that?”

“I’ll have to rent a car or two,” Lucy said. “We’re not going to take the metro all the way over, are we?”

“Oh fuck no,” I said. Using public transportation was asking to get stabbed, or to lose a kitten somewhere along the way. Especially if news got out that the Antithesis were around and ready to chow down on some nice juicy civilians. Having the kittens caught in a panicking mob wasn’t something I was keen on. “I’ll give you a heap of money, just find a moving company, or rent a bus, or get like, ten drivers to get the kittens and all the stuff over.”

“If you’re giving me the money,” Lucy said. “That means that you’re not going to be here.”

I worked my jaw. “I mean, I guess I could stay,” I said.

She shook her head, hand touching my arm carefully. “It’s fine. Well, fine-ish. I’ll still worry, but I know you well enough to know that you want to be out there. You’ll stay safe?”

“I’ll probably be working with Gomorrah,” I said. “Maybe some of the other samurai I met today. We’ll watch over each other’s backs.”

“Alright,” Lucy said.

I didn’t tell her that I didn’t even have an inkling of what the long-term plan was. The way things had been laid out had been almost entirely responsive, relying on defending the city instead of attacking the root of the problem.

That didn’t bode well, but then, I probably didn’t have the rank or power or whatever to casually fly around and take out entire hives.

I pecked Lucy on the cheek real fast. “I’ll head out again, alright? I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Text me if anything comes up. Anything at all. And feel free to remind people that if I have to fly back here, that means removing a samurai from an active battlefront that’s literally on their front door, and that I’ll probably not be in the best of moods.”

“Oh, you can come in, all pissed off and covered in alien gore, then be all sexy at them,” Lucy said.

“Uh,” was my reply.

Lucy nodded. “You know that righteous fury is kind of hot, right?”

I cleared my throat, pretended not to feel the warmth of my cheeks, and slapped my helmet back on. “Anyway, I need to head out,” I said.

She grinned, because of course she did. We hugged again, then Lucy gave me a farewell smack as I walked towards the door. “Be safe, alright?” Lucy asked.

I nodded. “I promise, I’ll be as safe as I can be.”

“You’d better,” Lucy said. “I have an in with Gomorrah, she’ll tattle on you if you do anything too stupid.”

“Hey! I never do anything stupid,” I said.

Lucy smiled. “I love you, even if you’re a bit stupid sometimes.”

I left with a grin that wouldn’t leave and a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest.

“Myalis, can you bring up that map?” I asked.

My vision split, part of it turning into the overhead colour map of the region. More and more yellow stains were appearing around the city, mostly deep into the countryside. A few notes were already pinned on the map. Requests for people to guard convoys of evacuees or supplies being pulled out of distant warehouses.

That one section that had gone red was back to being just yellow. I guessed that Grasshopper had arrived a while back and was taking care of things.

That still left a whole lot of work available.

I dialled up Gomorrah and she answered before the first ring. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she replied. “Done taking care of your girlfriend and many children?”

“They’ll manage without me for a few hours,” I said. “So, want to burn up some xenos?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

***