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

Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) – Ongoing

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

Dreamer’s Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) – Hiatus

Cinnamon Bun (A wholesome LitRPG!) – Ongoing

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 Twenty-Eight – Enjoy The Show

“For fans of Yuri Baiting everywhere… Introducing… Actual Yuri!”

–Actual Yuri All Girls Gacha announcement, 2045

***

I had this long, kind of awkward moment all to myself once Gomorrah left. The others were heading out as well, but since I’d parked the Bastion so far off, and had ridden over in the Nyanzerfaust, I had to leave all on my own.

I wasn’t super fond of that. Being on my own, I mean. It left me alone with my thoughts.

So I did something about it.

The phone rang twice before Lucy picked up. “Cat?” she asked. “Are you about to call me to give me your final words or something?”

“No?” I tried.

“Cool. Gimme two mins.”

I blinked, then continued to ride the mech forward in complete silence. Damn, not even a radio, though I could hear Lucy’s breathing a bit, then she was speaking to someone, telling them that she’d be right back.

“Okay! Sorry about that,” Lucy said. “You caught me in the middle of class with Professor Roswell. You know how she is. Had to make excuses to be able to leave class. What’s up?”

“Can’t I call just to hear your beautiful voice?”

“Hah! You’ve heard my pretty voice plenty,” Lucy said. I could tell she was flattered though. Flattery worked on Lucy, maybe a little too well, even. “But really, what’s up?”

“Ah, well, I need some advice, maybe? Gomorrah wants me playing PR rep for the samurai out here. Got a camera drone and everything. Quebec’s got these riots starting up and people are pissed off, and I think the plan is to distract them as much as we can while showing them that we’re doing something, you know?”

“Oh, okay,” Lucy said. “So you’re the circus. What’s the bread?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a political thing,” Lucy explained. I could almost imagine her sliding on a pair of glasses and adopting a teacher pose… fuck, I had to get Lucy some cute glasses, a tight skirt, and a ruler one of these days. She continued before my mind could wander too far. “It’s generally accepted that people will riot for a whole host of reasons, but the top two are boredom and lack of food. The boredom one is a bit more complicated.”

“Okay, go on,” I said.

“So, the idea for that is that… well, it’s less actual boredom, and more a lack of things to do. Like, people will put a lot of energy into all sorts of stuff if you let them. Sports, media, games, whatever. But if they don’t have those things to suck their energy, then they’re more likely to make things themselves. You know, cause trouble on purpose.”

Right, I could get that. I used to cause trouble on purpose all the time. It got a lot better once Lucy and I discovered that kissing was a more fun way of spending time.

“Give people something constructive to work towards, or at least something big to distract them, and they’ll spend a ton of energy on that. And if they’re spending energy on that, then they’re not rioting in the streets.”

“Alright, I get it. So I should what… play it up?”

“Nah, that’d be unauthentic,” Lucy said. “People can smell that. Just be yourself. Show some cool tech, blow up aliens. Maybe if you want to drive up recruitment, show off the militia or army in a good light.”

I could work with that. “And what about the riots that are already going on?”

“There aren’t too many ways to handle those, but most of the time, rioters run out of energy after like, a day or so. Then you can continue doing whatever. If you want to stop it long-term, then you’ll need to address their base issues. Did you look into it?”

“Nope,” I said. “I have some ideas, but nothing concrete. Could be anything, really. There’re a lot of reasons why they might be throwing their weight around and rioting on the streets.”

“Well, find out,” Lucy said. “I’d pop over and help, but I’ve bitten off more than I can chew already with the Kittens. Maybe ask someone else who knows politics to help?”

“Who?” I asked. I ran through the short-list of Samurai I knew in my head, but most of them… yeah, no, keeping them away from politics was generally the way to go. I don’t know how someone like Grasshopper would handle politics, but I can’t imagine it fitting in well with the current system.

“What’s that guy you worked with for a while, with the prosthetics?” Lucy asked. “He was nice?”

“Silverbloom? Peter?” I asked. He was pretty good with community stuff, and had a few toes dipping into politics. “Yeah, I could give him a call. He might not know as much about Quebec-specific stuff.”

“Yea, but he might know people who do,” Lucy pointed out.

That was a fair point. “I’ll call him. Might call Birringham too. He was a bit of a douchebag, but like, pretty low on that scale for a politician. He’d probably jump on the opportunity to help in Quebec if we gave it to him.”

“Mhm!” Lucy hummed an affirmative. “Ah, do you need anything else?”

“No, no, thanks Lucy, you’re the best.”

“I am!”

We said our ‘I love yous’ and ‘goodbyes’ for the next three to five minutes it took me to reach the Bastion then I hung up for real. The conversation did give me one idea. The samurai with me were probably not too savvy, but Knight might be. She had been raised for some sort of office, and her dad had been the mayor of a city a big bigger than this one. If anyone on the team had an idea of how to handle things, it might be her.

I pushed that concern aside as I climbed out of my mech and then locked it into place. Then I walked to the cockpit, strapped in, then took off.

It wasn’t long before I was flying above the north-eastern wall of the city.

There was a section of the countryside past the wall that looked like it had been flattened a long time ago, and now there were fields of solar panels set up for a few kilometres. Those had been blown up recently, and even from afar I could tell that the maintenance that probably went into keeping so many panels running was lacking.

Hmm, maybe that was contributing to the riots? People running out of power? I could remember a few times when the orphanage went without electricity for a few days. No one made candles anymore, and flashlights only lasted so long. Also, it was cold as balls in the winter.

I shook it off and found a place to land on the inner-side of the wall. The traffic in the area, both on the ground and in the air, was pretty bad. Lots of army trucks, a few tanks, and plenty of hovering transports were moving around.

It looked like Tinwhistle’s crew were setting up some mobile artillery pieces as well in a wide field with yellow tape around it.

Some AA emplacements were going up as well. If anything flew over the wall, it would have to deal with a fuckload of flak, but the fact that so many were being set up kind of suggested that the aliens would make it over.

Not a good sign, that.

I left the Bastion with both mechs following me. I was going to leave the Nyanzerfaust here for the moment. The MEOW was a tougher, more powerful mech for holding a single position, so I’d rely on that for now.

“Alright,” I said as I stretched. “Myalis, can you take over the, uh, PR drone?”

Certainly. Are you ready to start filming?

“Almost,” I said. “I feel like I ought to start with a speech or something, but I’m ass at those.”

You could be worse.

“Thanks, very encouraging,” I said. “Think you could write up a nice, inspiring speech for me?”

I could, but I won’t.

I sighed. Yeah, figures. “Okay then… how are we going to get people to actually watch this?”

I set up a livestream about half an hour ago on the top-ten most viewed services in the city. There are currently sixty-two thousand actual viewers waiting for the show to start.

“I… don’t recall asking you to do that,” I said.

You’ll be amazed to learn that I can do what I want.

“For… fuck it, start the recording. Or the live whatever,” I mumbled. The camera drone, fully visible for the moment, spun around me, and a green light flicked on its side.

As good a sign as any.

“Hey, Quebec. I’m Stray Cat, from New Montreal. We figured that we ought to let people know what’s going on, but none of us have the time for a cute little presentation, so you’re going to have to live with this. I’m about to head over to the wall, where an absolute fuckton of very hungry aliens are rushing over to eat your asses. If you want to help, then join the militia, otherwise… fuck it, enjoy the show.”

I was so good at this.

***

 A note from RavensDagger

:3

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