"Listen, most of the humans we initialize are terrified and bleeding to death. If we didn't put on a friendly face half of you would die before we could convince you to accept our help. I really don't get why you're all so upset about this, humans tailor their personalities to other humans all the time, but suddenly when we do it its "creepy" or "manipulative". This is why I pick vanguard who will just do what they are told."
— Protector AI Erastyl, in an interview he demanded be titled "Yelling at dumb monkeys for their own good".
“System Initialized!
Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Irys. I will assist you to uplift humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!
Rise, Quinn Takimura, and become a protector of the weak!”
The voice in her head transitioned from a rote, call center script tone to a more impassioned concern, shocking Quinn from her fugue.
“Quinn, as much as basking in your impressive victory might be good for your mental health, you are currently bleeding to death”.
“Do you have a British Accent?”
“That’s really not important right now Quinn. Now, you have your starting stipend of 100 points, in addition to the 80 you received for vanquishing eight model-3s leading up to your initiation. I would highly suggest purchasing the Class I Medical Utilities and then immediately following that with a Woundstop. It will seal your midriff wound promptly to allow us to discuss further purchases in a moderately less perilous situation”
Quinn heard the clatter of a pipe as Elliot dropped his weapon and began scurrying around looking for something. An old net meme involving a specific clattering pipe sound rose to the front of her mind unprompted and she snickered.
“Hold on Quinn, We’ll find something to make you a bandage and get to the shelter, you’ll be fine!” Elliot’s voice wavered, clearly struggling to believe his own words.
“Quinn darling, please focus. I need your assent to purchase the woundstop, I cannot purchase .”
“Fine, whatever” Quinn grumbled, lids dipping slightly as a wave of fatigue washed over her.
“No need for the attitude darling, I’m just trying to help you survive the next five minutes. Though given your state I’ll excuse it for now.”
Class I Medical Utilities unlocked!
Points reduced to... 130
New Purchase: Class I WoundStop
Points reduced to... 125
A plastic box, looking kind of like a shitty first aid kit, was just there in Cassie’s left hand where just a moment ago there had been empty air. Quinn blinked, not quite sure she was still in her right mind.
“Quinn, what is that, where did you get it?”
“That’s the woundstop. Take it out of the box and apply it to your wound, darling. Or ask Elliot to do it for you”
“The voice gave it to me, says its a wound stop” Quinn muttered in response to the both of them.
“Voice..?” Elliot trailed off, before coming to an realization “Fuck Quinn, did you just get Samurai’d?” He scrambled to grab the box out of Cassie’s hand and ripped it open, producing what looked like a novelty oversized turkey baster if it was made by Apple. “How do I use this?”
“Instruct Elliot to insert the aperture into your wound, then depress the button on the other end”
“Wait, you can hear him?”
“Saving your life first darling”
Quinn mumbled something approximating the provided instructions out, and regardless of what she actually got out it seemed to be enough. There was a searing pain, which forced out a whimper followed promptly by a distressed “Sorry, Sorry!”, then what felt like sand being blown into her. A moment later and the pain just kind of, blew away, like it had barely even existed. She caught a glimpse of Elliot very explicitly not looking at the location of the wound. Oh, she was probably flashing him some somewhat bloody underboob with the state her clothes were in.
“Okay Darling, you’re in much more hopeful condition, but not out of the woods yet. I’d suggest a prompt purchase of a Class I Nano-Regenerative Suite and Hemo Restore, at 15 and 5 points respectively. The former will aid in repairing your... slightly damaged internals, while the latter will aid in restoring some of your lost blood.”
“Fine, yes buy those for me” Quinn added an afterthought “Thanks, Irys”
“You’re welcome Darling”
New Purchase: Class I Nano-Regenerative Suit
Points reduced to... 110
New Purchase: Class I Hemo Restore
Points reduced to... 105
Elliot perked up as new boxes made their silent appearance in the plant sap stained palm of Cassie’s hand. He glanced up at Quinn briefly before tearing them open as well, extracting a tube with arrows and a stopper as well as a sleek white inhaler. He pressed the inhaler to Quinn’s mouth and pushed in the top with his thumb, his eyes studying her with barely disguised worry. It felt like drinking a glass of static electricity as she breathed it in, jerking in a much deeper breath than she intended at the unexpected feeling.
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“The hemo restore just needs to be placed against your skin to work”
Quinn fumbled her hand over Elliot’s wrist and couldn’t help a blush rising up unbidden. She directed it down to her exposed navel, and felt a tiny pinch as the cool metal touched her exposed skin. Maybe it was just placebo, but she immediately felt her mind clear a bit, bringing her situation back to her in terrible clarity. Her eyes wildly darted around, looking for the inevitable tide of antithesis that was clearly bearing down on them at this very moment.
“Easy Quinn.” Elliot was there pushing her back into Cassie’s seat. “I can’t see or hear anything right now, so we have a moment. Maybe ask.. uh, Irys for some weapons?”
Quinn blanched at the idea, she couldn’t stand the thought of wielding a weapon personally. Maybe she could buy one for Elliot?
“Quinn darling, I suspected this might happen when I chose you. Not to worry, I came prepared. Would you like to hear the selections of autonomous weaponry I prepared for the occasion?”
No, no weapons. She couldn’t hold a weapon, not again. But she needed something, or if they did run into more antithesis on the way to the shelter they might not get as lucky as the first time.
An idea sprung to mind once more. Cassie. She’d defended herself with Cassie once, maybe she could do it again?
“Can we repair Cassie? Maybe make her better, help protect me more?”
“Well, Darling, we could, but why not just use an autonomous weapon? You wouldn’t have to swing or fire it..
“NO.. just, no. No weapons. Cassie, please?”
If AIs could sigh, Irys was probably doing so, as her tone shifted from doting to that resigned motherly tone when one just has to let a kid make a mistake on their own.
“Very well. Repairing the loader fully is a little beyond your current means unfortunately, but we can patch Cassie up a little to keep her running while you earn some more points. However, you would not be able to afford a weapon catalog, which would leave you dangerously exposed if you were to be swarmed, you will have to be careful.”
Quinn nodded indicating for Irys to continue.
“Unfortunately acquiring a general catalog for vehicles would be too expensive, so the next best thing I would suggest would be purchasing a civilizational catalog, which while narrower in options within a given category comes with a wide variety of items and, more importantly, is cheaper. The Oslong Catalog, for example, comes with a number of biomechanical options for patching the damage done to Cassie’s mechanisms”
“Wait, Biomechanical as in fleshy bits?’
“Exactly right Darling. I can assure you they are just as functional as pure mechanical components”
“No, no fleshy bits. I cant deal with that either”
This time Irys actually let out an audible sigh, a deliberate choice given her utter lack of respiration.
“An alternative then. The Yrassian Conclave developed Nanites designed specifically to mimic and replace mechanical components. You do not have enough points to purchase a permanent hive, so you’ll have to make do with a temporary swarm. In addition, you’ll require a way for it to understand the design of the machine. I’d suggest purchasing the Yrassian Conclave Mechanized Warfare Support catalog for 70 points, and then we can squeeze in purchasing a Class I Basic Yrassian Adaptive Nanite Repair Kit and Class I Yrassian Repair Scanner for a total of 15 points, together they will be able to analyze the structural integrity of the mech and replace damaged components with nanite constructed replacements. This will be a very temporary fix however, the replacements will break down in a few hours at most.”
Quinn mostly listened to the explanation, but was trying to fight down a rising wave of panic. Only a couple of minutes into being a samurai and already her mental hangups were sabotaging her chances of survival.
Quinn nodded her approval, and another box appeared, this time on her lap. She hopped down from Cassie, still a little bit unsteady, with Elliot with his head on a swivel. It took her a moment to realize that Elliot seemed… way too calm for the situation at hand by this point. She was going to have to figure that out later.
New Purchase: Yrassian Conclave Mechanized Warfare Support Catalog
Points reduced to... 35
New Purchase: Class I Basic Yrassian Adaptive Nanite Repair Kit
Points reduced to... 25
New Purchase: Class I Yrassian Repair Scanner
Points reduced to... 20
Taking instructions from Irys, she took a small tall hexagon like device out of the box, and pulled it apart with the handles on either side to reveal a data pad like structure. After running it up and down the length of Cassie, Irys let her know to pull the small spray bottle out, before pointing it at the mech and pulling a handle on the back. These Yrassians loved their tactile handles apparently.
It wasn’t immediately obvious anything was happening other than a fine mist of the liquid spraying out onto the mech, but after a short while she caught a glimpse of the liquid moving up in one of the revealed gaps in Cassie’s chassis and flowing over the mechanical components, revealing new matte black shapes as it solidified.
“Now, to buy a weapon for you, and your friend if you should be so inclined”
Quinn paused getting back in the cockpit. “I thought I couldn’t afford a weapon catalog.”
“You cannot, Darling, but you can buy tier zero equipment without one. It will only be equivalent to what your race can produce on their own, but its better than going unarmed. Given the crudeness of such, I’d suggest a bludgeoning melee weapon for yourself, and an automatic rifle for Elliot”
Quinn hmmed, slightly disappointed “Why a blunt weapon and not like.. A cool sword”
“Edged weapons require a degree of skill you unfortunately do not currently possess, especially when commanding a quite clumsy machine. We can discuss rectifying that issue in the future once you have a stock of points, but until then a bludgeon will be less likely to fail to damage at an inopportune moment. It will cost 3 points for one appropriately sized to wield while operating the mech.”
"Makes sense, get it for me."
New Purchase: Tier 0 Mechanized Suit Sized Kanabo Club
Points reduced to... 17
A three meter long metal pole, thicker at one end with innumerable metal studs, landed balanced between Cassie’s two open hands. Quinn eyed it, then gave it a few practice swings. Moving it at all gracefully was hard, but she could do wide, sweeping attacks that hopefully wouldn’t require much finesse easily enough.
She looked over at Elliot, who was still diligently keeping watch “Did uh, you want a gun or something? I don’t think I can afford a super high tech one, but something like a modern normal gun?”
He glanced back at her, raising an eyebrow at the giant club hefted between two loader mech hands “That’s fine, I can cover you with a service rifle.”
She did not know that term, thankfully Irys apparently did
“I can buy something that meets that specification for anything from 3-5 points”
“Uh, make it five, and an extra ammo clip as well?”
New Purchase: Tier 0 Scything Wind Mark 3 Automatic Slug Thrower
Points reduced to... 12
New Purchase: Tier 0 Scything Wind Mark 3 FMJ Magazine x 5
Points reduced to... 11
Within a few moments Elliot had extracted a short, almost ovalish weapon with smooth curves in a pleasing dark blue. He gave it a quick once over before slotting a contrastingly straight magazine and putting another few in various pockets.
“We should get moving, what did you want to do, get to the shelter or go earn some more points?”
She’d.. Completely forgotten about her other coworkers. She was noticing the horribly mauled bodies of people she worked with not ten minutes before. A wave of self loathing rose, how could she be standing here complaining about what Irys was offering her when there were people dying right now and she wasn’t doing ANYTHING. Were her roommates even okay? Had they made it to a shelter? She hadn’t even thought about them until now.
“We’ve got to get to the shelter, make sure everyone is okay. Fuck we needed to go immediately, they could already be dead!”
“And if they are they are. You were on the edge of dying until a minute ago, and functionally unarmed at that. Running in and dying because you didn’t prepare will save less people. Now focus, we have a job to do.”
The hard edge in Elliot’s voice, entirely different from the Elliot she thought she knew, somehow broke her out of her spiral. She took a deep breath. In, and Out.
“Okay, lets go.”
