Stray Cat Strut-Chapter Thirty-Nine - Trash Panda Woes

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Trash Panda Woes

"Va...cation?

Oh! You mean like taking time off of work to get more work done? Yeah, I do that!"

--CrowClaymore, during a 2025 Q&A

***

The next day came, and I found myself back at CIAL again, this time back in uniform for another set of classes.

It went pretty well. Professor Rogers knew his shit, and this time Nya stayed... actually, I didn't know where she went, but she didn't show up at my class to beat the shit out of the lot of us.

I noticed that a couple of the students had new cyberware. There were often little cats embossed into the metal, so it wasn't hard to guess where that had come from.

Hadn't Nya promised to replace any cyberware she broke? I supposed she'd kept to that promise. Judging by the way the guys with new ware were rolling back sleeves and showing off the new gear, they were pleased about it, and I could get why. They had samurai-tier shit now. Probably nothing too special, in the grand scheme of things, but it was a damned sight better than what most people got, probably comparable to the very highest end corporate stuff.

In any case, I was a smidge distracted through the lesson, but the exercise bit felt kind of nice. I was getting used to working out a bit more. Given another six months, I was sure I could be rocking a six pack, which would be kinda badass.

When class ended, I headed out, followed by a trail of gawkers and weirdos, including Olivia who really couldn't get a clue. I met Lucy by her class, then escorted her to the Bastion.

"So, what's the plan for today?" Lucy asked. She was carrying a small plate with plastic-wrap over it that smelled dangerously tempting.

"Uh, I guess I'll continue to do that chore Deus Ex gave me. Might as well, right? That means hitting up Gros Baton next."

"Oh, Rac's little crush?" Lucy asked as she sat down.

"Rac has a crush on him?" I asked.

Lucy grinned. "She complains about him, and spends time around him, and they seem to bitch at each other a lot."

"I thought he mostly lived way to the north of the city?" I asked. I was earmarking a solid half-hour to flying to... whatever the name of that small town he was from was. Saint something or other.

"He moved in to New Montreal," Lucy said. "At least, I think? You'll have to ask Rac, I doubt she's flying out all the way to wherever."

"Makes sense," I said. "I'll fling her a text, see what she has to say."

Once I had us airborne and the auto-pilot engaged towards home, I opened a texting app on my augs and found Rac's name.

Cat: Hey, Rac

Cat: Got a minute? fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Cat: I need to check up on all the local samurai, because some little shit can't handle responsibility.

Rac: Hi? I'm free.

Rac: I'm not a samurai tho?

Cat: And next on the list is Gros Baton. Heard you were hanging out with him a bunch.

Rac: Oh, yeah. I'm helping him.

I felt my eyebrows rise at that. Helping him? With what, exactly? Or was that just a euphemism? I decided not to think about it too hard.

Cat: Cool. You free in 20?

Rac: yeah, I can be

Good enough. I took over piloting controls for the last little bit, guiding the Bastion into the parking garage without scraping any paint, then settled it down nice and easy. "I guess I'll be switching uniforms," I said.

"Really?" Lucy asked. "I think the schoolgirl look kind of fits you, though I wouldn't mind seeing you in a skirt."

"Eh," I said. I'd worn skirts before, obviously, but they always left me feeling kind of exposed, especially when they were as short as the skirts Lucy preferred. She had nicer legs than me, though, so they suited her better.

I gave Lucy a goodbye kiss, then headed up to our room to get changed, passing Nya by in the living room as I went. She was lounging on the couch, completely knocked out under... a standing sunlamp? That hadn't been there before.

A few of the kittens gestured for me to be quiet as I passed, fingers over their lips. Had Nya told them not to make any noise or something? I sure as shit couldn't get them to be quiet without mortal threats, yet here she was napping while they kept their little mouths shut.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I got changed, slipping into a skinsuit, then stepping into some heavier armour. I didn't know what Gros Baton was up to, but I got this tingly feeling that it wasn't anything good.

It's why I returned to the Bastion in a hurry, which is where I found Rac waiting for me. She looked decent enough, in grease-stained overalls with an armoured jacket on top. She had a piece tucked in under her arm and a knife at the small of her back, hair tucked into a baseball cap with little ear-covering flaps. "Yo," she said.

"Hey," I replied.

It was weird, but Rac looked... halfway competent, dressed as she was. "You needed me for something? Something about Gros Baton?"

"Yeah," I said. "I figured there was a decent chance you'd know where he is."

Rac made a face at that. "Yeah, he figured you'd ask eventually. I was thinking it would take longer than this, though."

Now I was really worried. "Right, so, where is he, exactly?" I asked.

Rac blinked. "You don't know?"

"No, but I bet you do," I said.

She stared at me for a while, and I could tell she was doing some mental calculus. I don't know what the math looked like, but I could tell the result fell into my favour when she sighed. "Fine. He's at this old mega building on the outskirts of New Montreal."

"New Meowntreal!"

I jumped a little, but Rac jumped a lot.

Nya was standing nearby, looking properly smug. "Nya thought of the name, and that's what you should rename the city. Tell all the ronin here to be cat-themed too. Then we can have a full orchestra instead of a band!"

"A band?" Rac asked.

Why did she fixate on that? "There's no band," I told her. "And we're not renaming the city just to fit a stupid pun."

"Nya thinks that it's a very smart pun, actually." Nya stepped over, then stretched. "Where are we going?"

"To see a young Samurai called Gros Baton," I said. "He's a little French-speaking twerp, about this high. Actually, he's an alright sort."

"Nya likes working with new Samurai, it's easier to guide them towards a proper cat-like future."

"Has that ever worked?" I asked.

"... Nyot yet?"

"I can see that," I said. "So, Rac, what's he doing there that he didn't want me to notice?"

Rac worked her jaw, then crossed her arms. "If I tell, do you promise you won't tell him what I told you?"

"I can't promise that, I can't even remember what I had for breakfast."

Rac stared, then let her arms fine. "Baton found this building a few days ago? Like, four, five days back? Well, it wasn't just him. That Hedgehog guy too. Anyway, it's a mega building like, six blocks over from here. Um... that one."

She turned and pointed out of the still-open garage door. I followed her pointing finger towards... well, there were a lot of mega buildings around, so I didn't know exactly which one she was pointing to.

"It entered lockdown at the start of the incursion, and the lockdown never went down. Gros Baton and Hedgehog are clearing it out, floor by floor."

"Of antithesis?" I asked. "What about survivors?"

"It's been three weeks since that incursion. Not the global one, the other one before that."

"Oh, shit," I said.

So a building locked up for almost a month.. Yeah, there might be survivors in there, but it was damned unlikely. "It's filled with aliens. Not a lot of them, though. Just enough that you can't exactly send normal people in to live there."

The clean-up expenses for something like that would be insane. But for a new samurai, it was basically a free points buffet. I could see someone like Hedgehog wanting to keep that to himself, actually. Gros Baton struck me as the sharing sort.

"And you've been visiting him there?"

"He's an idiot," Rac said. "Barely remembers to eat."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Well... I guess there's no harm in checking in on him. We're pretty close, so if something goes wrong, we'd be the first to respond, which is a good reason to know what the layout looks like too."

"I told him as much, yeah," Rac said. "But he wanted to keep things quiet. Come on, I'll show you his 'camp.'"

***