Chapter Twenty-Nine - Weaponized Cringe

“Stores slowly faded into obscurity as the 20s turned into the 30s. As we approach the 40s, an entire generation has grown up unfamiliar with the idea of walking into a retail location to buy anything more complicated than a frappuccino.”

--The Decline--Consumerism and the Future, 2036

***

I took a little breather next to the corpse of a model fifteen. Or at least, the head bit of the corpse. The rest of its body was buried under the rubble of what used to be the front of a building. The facade hadn’t taken kindly to my treatment of it, and I suspected the rest of the building would have to be taken down eventually because it wasn’t in that great a shape anymore.

What mattered was that the aliens hiding inside were dead. Or stuck under a few tons of torn up cement. In either case, no longer an issue for me.

The miniature tide of aliens in their area had crawled to a stop, so I figured I was good for a little break, at least until more of them tore their way out of whatever hole they were hiding in.

Of course, that’s when I received a call from Intel-chan.

“What’s up?” I asked as I connected to the... intelligence officer? What even was their rank? They must have been pretty good at their job if the militia endured their eccentricities.

“Oh-hiyo!” Intel-chan said as their avatar appeared in the edge of my vision, one arm waving over their head. “So, we’re kinda fucked back here, wanna help us, onegai?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to, not when I was being asked that way. “What’s the situation?” I asked as I stood up properly. All this fighting and stuff was really killing my back, even with the armour doing lots of the heavy lifting.

“Your girlfriend’s army is finally moving up to the walls to relieve some of our militia boys, but we’re spotting aliens on the inside of our defences. Particularly... right here, and here. I’ve got militia stationed around the area with some of our light assault vehicles, but LAVs can only do so much and I don’t want to send anyone into what might be a tunnel leading right into a hive.”

I checked the map and noted that Intel-chan had highlighted two spots. They were a block or two into Downtown, so well past the first walls we had, but still on the outskirts of the parts of Downtown where people were actually living.

“Alright,” I said. “How are things in River Heights?”

“Calming down on the alien front, doing the opposite on the people front,” Intel-chan said. “Want me to tell your girlfriend to get on it? She seems good at motivating people.”

“Hmm? No, it’s fine, I’ll see to it in a bit. Are any of the samurai free right now?”

“Sprout is,” they said.

“Cool, send them to the smaller of the two holes. It can’t be that well defended. And he needs the practice. Maybe send some of Lucy’s troopers with him, or some militia guys. I’ll plug up the other one myself.”

“Sending a message to Lucy-sama now!”

I frowned. “Do you... have a problem with Lucy?” I asked.

Intel-chan shook their head almost violently. “No way! I think it’s super cute! When I found out that you brought your girlfriend here, I practically sugoi’d!”

“Please, don’t... don’t weeb at me.”

“Hey! I’m a third generation weeb you know. We’re some of the most oppressed people in North America.”

I decided not to poke at that, if only to preserve my own sanity. “I’m on my way back,” I said.

So far, things have been going pretty well. Sure, new fires were popping up all over, but we were on top of them. Things could, and probably would, spiral out of control eventually, but eventually wasn’t right now, so I contented myself with what I had.

On the return trip to the wall, I flicked mines left and right, tossing them behind partial cover and through open, ground-floor windows and spots where I suspected a model fifteen or something might want to lurk in the future.

It was a worthwhile investment, I figured, to trap this entire corridor. Even if only a third of the mines I left behind me went off and took out an antithesis or two then I’d be in the black point-wise.

I reached the wall, searched for a way up, then noticed some of the militia guys pulling their gun aside in one of the openings so I went over there and swung my way through the entrance feet-first. “Thanks,” I said as I passed them.

The nearest of the holes Intel-chan had spotted wasn’t too far off. Still, I was happy when a lightly armoured truck came around and stopped next to me. It was a pickup with the body replaced by armoured panels and the cab reinforced to take some hits. The front had a nice cow catcher bolted to it, and the bed at the back housed a big old machine-gun on a swivel mount.

It needed a guy mounted on the gun to work, and I was pretty sure the truck was a plain-old commercial vehicle, but it worked, I figured, and was probably cheap besides. I grabbed onto the edge of the box and hauled myself into the back. Then I thumped the roof of the cab and we sped off across the city.

I checked my gun one-handed while hanging onto the back of the cab with my other. It didn’t take long before we reached a spot where the militia had created a temporary cordon blocking off the front of a building.

The cordon wasn’t anything too special. A trio of lightly armoured trucks, like the one I was riding on, and a couple of vans parked further back. Volunteers were stacking sandbags up across the street, creating a barrier onto which a team was fixing a machine-gun on a pod.

As soon as the truck stopped moving I leapt off the back and landed with a huff. I didn’t have much time to lose here. If I spent too long fixing this issue, three more would pop up while I was distracted.

The militia didn’t need me to micromanage anything, they were responding on their own, as were the people Lucy was directing it seemed, but I still wanted to be on top of things so that I could put pressure on the bigger problems before they got out of hand.

“Alright,” I muttered. “What’s going on here?”

I must have still been on the line with Intel-chan because they answered almost immediately. “The lieutenant in charge of that area forwarded reports of alien sightings to me, and I confirmed them. So we killed the loose aliens and traced them back to this one building here. They’ve been coming out from the ground floor, but this building has a basement. No one wants to volunteer to go check it out.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine why.”

The building in question looked like a toy store of all things, the kind of look-and-see outlet that let people interact with stuff before ordering it online. With the lights off inside and the barred windows at the front making what light did filter in strange, I wasn’t too keen on walking in there myself.

The dead alien bodies next to the entrance certainly gave the decor a certain flair. Blood didn’t go well with pastels.

“Right, I’m heading in. Quick-in-and-out,” I said as I started walking over.

“What’s your plan?” Intel-chan asked.

“Walk in, find the place the aliens are coming in from, plug the hole,” I said.

“You know, they’ll just make another hole,” Intel-chan pointed out.

I nodded. “There’s always another hole, if you’re willing to look for it.”

“Oh my.”

I rolled my eyes, paused by the entrance, shouldered my Laser Pointer, then toggled on my invisibility. I could have done it earlier, but I wanted the militia guys to know that I hadn’t just disappeared to leave them behind.

I stepped over the bodies by the entrance, then pressed in, eyes on a swivel as I ignored all the toys laying around.

The kittens would love this kind of place. Though they’d touch everything and catch every sickness left by the last batch of snot-nosed brats to pass by.

Maybe once this city was safe again, kids would be more concerned about toys than being eaten again.

But that would only happen if I didn’t suck at my job.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s find out where those alien fucks are coming from and put out one more fire, shall we?”

“I’m rooting for you, desu!”

***