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Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) – Ongoing

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Love Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) – Completed!

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The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) – Volume Two Complete!

Lever Action (A fantasy western with mecha!) – Volume One Complete!

Heart of Dorkness (A wholesome progression fantasy) – Completed!

Dead Tired (A comedy about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) – Ongoing

Sporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) – Ongoing

Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) – Completed!

Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the planet, and then try to fix it) – Completed!

Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) – Volume Two Completed!

Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) – Completed!

The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) – Completed!

Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) – Hiatus

Queen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) – Completed!

No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) – Ongoing

Save Scumming (A time-looping system apocalypse) – Ongoing

Chapter Eighty-One – Pop Goes the Patella

“r/AITA

Hey, AITA if I used Hadegtainment’s inferior streaming service instead of Nimbletainment Stream Max Pro?

Hi r/AITA

Am I in the wrong for using an uncool, inferior product? My many human friends came to my location of housing today, and on opening my media streaming capable devices, they discovered that I was using a streaming service that was not Nimbletainment Stream Max Pro.

I have since been divorced, my parental figures have disowned me, I was fired, my life insurance was cancelled, and my dog was summarily executed.

AITA?”

-Botted subliminal advertising Readit post, 2028

***

This was not working out.

But it also wasn’t so bad that I was pulling out my very fresh and cool hair yet. I left Princess to act like mini-royalty for a bit while I got myself something to drink. Somehow, having me appear in the back areas of the casino and just ask around to find some coffee or something set a fire under the asses of the casino staff who were being difficult with the Kittens, and suddenly yes,there were spare coffee machines around and of course the vending machines could be brought over and set to be free for our wonderful staff of volunteers.

Why was it that people so often needed to face a threat first-hand before they started to act on it?

Then I noticed someone shyly walking up to me. That dude that Lucy had foisted me off onto. George or something. “Hey,” I said. “Sup… dude?”

“Paul,” Paul said. “And, ah, we have problems.”

“Yeah, of course we do,” I said. Standing next to a fold out table with coffee-making stuff on it in the back of a casino, surrounded by bare cinderblock walls and people hustling around, only some of whom seemed to know what they were doing was exactly how I imagined that this would go down. “What kind of problem?”

Paul swallowed audibly. “There was an issue with the catering.”

“Was?”

“Samurai Tankette showed up,” he said, brightening up a little. “She’s taken charge of that part of the event. She, ah, came in with her own methodology, that doesn’t quite match our plans, or what Miss Lucy had outlined.”

“Okay, and?” I asked leadingly.

“Miss Lucy said to cancel all of our plans and do whatever the samurai say,” he said.

That tracked. I took a sip of my coffee. “Probably for the best. Tankette seems like she’d be able to work things out.”

“Yes, I think things are going well with that. I can’t quite tell though, the, ah, systems we have in place to see if things are working on time were contingent on our previous plans, and now we’re ignoring those.” He looked at the tablet he was carrying, as if the glorified Excel sheets on there would suddenly vomit out the answer to life, the universe, and all the rest, conveniently slotted into little rectangles.

“Alright. That happens. Just trust Tankette. And I’m sure she’ll reach out if she needs help.”

“She set up a bakery,” he said.

“Cool.”

He stared for a moment. “It… was in a tank?”

“Yeah.”

He stared some more, then looked back down at his tablet. “Um, there’s more problems?”

I nodded, slowly. Paul wasn’t catching on as quickly as some others. Kinda weird how I missed some of the army guys. Some of them had been competent enough. I took another sip of coffee. I’d have to pace myself. Didn’t want to be on-stage with a need to piss. “So, problems?”

“Yes! The hotel that’s part of the Velvet Wheel is asking for reinforcements.”

“Like extra cleaning staff, or…” I asked.

“Security,” he said.

I finished my coffee, tossed it towards the nearest trash can, missed, then took off walking. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s going on.”

“Um, Miss Samurai Stray Cat,” Paul said.

“Yeah?”

He pointed in the other direction. “It’s that way.”

“Of course,” I said before spinning on a heel and walking the other way. Paul scrambled after me, working hard to keep up even if he had longer legs. We left the main lobby space of the conference hall and went up an escalator into another section of the casino.

There was a clear separation between sections, and clear signage pointing people off to one side and down towards the front of the building where the Conclave was being held. We didn’t want people circling around the back and avoiding the security check and badge pickup at the front. Still, no one gave Paul and I any trouble. I guessed that the casino staff all had some way of telling Samurai apart from normal folk.

Or they had passed around files to their employees. That would probably make the most sense.

“There, that man in the suit,” Paul said as he gestured ahead. There was, indeed, a man in a suit. He was a tall white guy, with slicked back hair and what looked like a permanent scowl in place. He was talking to a trio of others, casino employees.

When he saw us coming over, he stood a little taller and did a sort of nod-bow in my direction. “Miss Stray Cat,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied. “What’s the problem?”

He blinked, but I had the sense that this guy was on the ball. “A few clients are being particularly… rambunctious. It’s not usually something we have difficulty with.”

“But you’re having difficulty with it now?” I asked.

He nodded. “We are. Our security apparatus is stretched at the moment. We have every member working overtime and have brought in additional contractors, but even that has left certain areas undermanned, including our hotel services.”

“Alright, so what are these people doing that’s so rambunctious? Pissing the hotel pool and taking drinks from the mini-fridge without paying?”

He smiled slightly, not actually finding me funny, but kind of silently agreeing with the general vibe of jokiness. “If only. We have contingencies for that. Most of our patrons are here to gamble or attend one of the events or concerts we hold. When they are angry, they’ll more often than not call their lawyers first. Or they’re drunk.”

“Right, and I imagine that your security team can handle the average drunk dude pretty well,” I said.

“Exactly. We try to treat them with some amount of dignity, seeing as how they might be repeat customers once they sober up… and after they pay the additional fees. In any case, the current patrons are a little more dangerous than what we’re used to dealing with.”

“Like tatted up gangsters and the like?”

“Surprisingly easy to handle. Mostly those sorts didn’t book a room overnight. No, the ‘gangsters’ that we’re having issues with are of a higher class of criminal. And they mostly have issues with each other. There have been more violations of our on-site weapon rules this weekend than in the rest of the year combined.”

“Right… okay, so how bad is it?” I asked.

We both paused as a few distant pops went off.

“I’m going to hope that those were firecrackers,” I said.

He pressed a finger to an ear, tilting his head a little. “Ah, one of our guards is down.”

“Right,” I said before sighing. “Stay here, Paul, I’ll be right back. Cats, follow me.”

The two cat drones stalked after me as I made my way down a carpeted corridor, then into a larger lobby space with some stand-up desks and elevators and a trio of guards. Two of them were holding riot shields and a third was bleeding behind said shield. He looked like he’d be alright, though, it was a leg wound.

So I turned my attention to the most probable asshole. It was some twenty-something in a nice suit. Not like a nice suit off the rack, but a nice suit. Shit looked tailored. He had some guys with him who were clearly goons.

“Okay, what’s going on here?” I asked.

Moron A in the nice suit half-turned towards me, then raised and pointed a gun in my general direction. “More of them?”

“Them?” I asked.

“Miss, stand back,” one of the security guards called out.

“No, no, I want to see what he does. Like, is he gonna shoot me? That’d be interesting. Myalis, would that work?”

If he aimed at some precise locations between joints in your armour, the rounds that kind of gun hold could penetrate and injure you. Nonlethally, but it would make a mess.

Huh, well, that wasn’t good. “Who even are you?” Moron A asked.

“Someone very tired. Can you put the gun away, please?”

“Fuck off.”

“Okay then,” I said.

This suit of mine had some nice back-mounted guns. I’d used those a ton early in my career… a few weeks ago. I knew how they worked. Moron A didn’t, because when the guns flipped up and over my shoulders he didn’t react.

When they fired and ripped apart his kneecaps, he did react, a lot, mostly by screaming a whole bunch.

“You guys looking to lose your kneecap privileges too?” I asked Moron A’s goons as they reached for their own guns.

They actually paused. Smart goons, those.

“Alright. Security, put him out of the building. Someone call his parents and tell them to come pick their kid up, or something.”

“You have no idea who you’re threatening!” he screamed from the floor.

I made a sort of lazy half-shrug. “No? I mean, obviously. I hope you’re not in charge of your gang.”

Right, that was one problem moderately sorted, right? Hopefully the blood stains and bits of kneecap all over the place would be a good reminder to behave in a more civilized way.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Like I mentioned previously, next week is vacation week… but it’s also the week where SCS’s current volume ends?

So I’ll probably be posting 5 chapters of SCS next week, and then none the week after to give me a break to start on the next volume. Might take 2 weeks off? I’d like a week to build up a backlog, since… ya know, 80% of my income is people signing onto the patreon to read ahead, and I’ll have no ‘ahead’ left. 

Hehe?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep