Chapter 269: (Lost Data)

It started out like a lot of things in late Pre-Glassing Terra.

As an InfoNet/SolNet joke on an image board. It spread to VR social media rooms, then to cosplay, then to fashion as it made the migration across SolNet. It managed to even do the most elusive of migrations, from SolNet insider joke to 'normie culture' until it was referenced in Tri-Vee and movies and even the news.

The Extinction Agenda Attack had left the majority of the TerraSol Colonies and Terra itself a dangerous wildland, full of aggressive and deadly plants, aggressive and deadly animals, all coded to find humanity a delicious source of protein.

It was an ugly time. Humanity retreated to fortress cities, hab-complexes, even domed cities. Resources had to be conserved, metered out, and carefully sheparded to ensure survival. Humanity did not doubt its survival, they put their faith in the human spirit, ingenuity, and scientific pursuits.

People found a way to grin, even if it was a grimace, during these terrible times.

It started out as a single image. A bit of dark humor after the loss of cats and dogs only a few decades prior. Someone had found it on one of the old archive sites that had scanned the internet and ensured that data wasn't lost. A feline in a mech made of boxes with the word "Mad Cat" on it. Then another image joined it, a cat in an exo-suit with a gun that read "Free to a Bad Home", then another cat image and another and another.

The laughter was tinged with sadness, but there was laughter all the same.

Since the Friend Plague nobody had dared to try hybrid splicing. Everyone knew the Dogboys had died enmasse, which had led to a deep mourning.

Still, someone will eventually try something even if it might kill them.

And teenagers, even girls, aren't exactly known for risk/reward assessment.

The teenage girl who succeeded quickly broadcast across SolNet which hybrid tweak she had used.

Thousands copied her as the clique spread from a few isolated individuals on SolNet to eventually normie media.

The movie "Reign of the Cat-Girls" was slated. The casting call went out and tens of thousands of teenage girls flocked to their Netcams to record a casting call answer.

The wealthy individual bankrolling the project to cater to his spoiled daughter made a decision that he would not survive to see the end result of.

He decided that rather than use computer generated crowds and armies, he'd hire all the cat-girls and have it be a novel work with minimal sfx-generated characters. The producers, directors, and writers tried to talk him out of it, but he offered to return them to Hollywood and drop them out of a shuttle where they could fight the plants and animals driven mad by the Extinction Agenda Attack.

They bowed to his whims.

After all, the wealth businessman had computed the cost and realized that it would be cheaper to pay for all of them to be hybridized and then do a thousand shoots than it would be to hire a professional sfx company to create them.

Word got around that Reign would be almost entirely live action. Only special effects where it was needed to protect the health and safety of the actors and actresses.

He sent one of his luxury liners on a swan tour of the Sol-System, gathering up the girls.

Fifteen thousand cat girls signed contracts, boarded the liner, had minor adjustment tweaks to their chimeric line, and were given voice coaching and acting classes. They were taught how to use the armor, which was prototypes the wealthy businessman was trying to sell to the Republic, during the months the vessel made its voyage.

Video of the cat-girls training in the armor hit SolNet and garned millions of views.

The business magnate had already made back the investment for the movie Reign on the ads watched by those who viewed the "Inside the Reign" webumentary videos.

By the time the ship reached the shining blue jewel of Ganymede, the business magnate had even made back the research and development costs for the power armor and weapons.

Personally, he wondered if perhaps he had been born to bankroll entertainment projects. The Republic had turned down his armor, citing that it was too bulky, too ugly, that focus groups preferred the sleek black armor of the Republic, the battlesteel loricated plate armor based off of the old Roman armor, rather than the heavy and ugly suits produced by the magnate.

So he decided he would clad the cat-girls in it, film the movie, and recoup all his losses. He had VR programmers making video games, had toys for the film, everything he needed.

The first few weeks of filming there were a few glitches. A few of the girls suffered horrific wounds from the chainswords. Crossing his fingers he offered them cybernetics and new parts.

They eagerly leaped on the offers.

His factories built them tanks and aerospace fighters. He even had four of his interstellar passenger liners, which were a total economic loss with the Extinction Agenda Attack and what was looking to be a revolt in the colonies, retooled for the movie.

The shots were breathtaking. Reality feeling more raw and more desired by the fans and the crowds.

The images of the lead cat-girl, half of her face replaced by cybernetics, giving a stirrings speech from the flag-bridge of her 'battle cruiser' had an engagement rate of over 70% for a period of a month. An unheard of amount of time.

He ensured he owned the patent of the chimeric genome tweak used by the cat-girls of Reign.

It was in the final phases of filming when it happened. The girls were in full armor, in their tanks, in their ships. Cameras were filming.

Plasma fire from the sky upon the cities, suburbs surrounding domes that were no longer needed.

The atmospheric membrane was punctured, the atmosphere largely vanished in a rushing howl. Millions vomited up their lungs and died as the atmosphere dwindled to almost nothing as the gravity generators were destroyed. The domes were destroyed by the orbital fire, the suburbs turned to flaming ash.

Worse was what came over SolNet, over SoulNet, and the devastating psychic assault. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, BILLIONS of death, pushed through SolNet and SoulNet, assaulting every surviving mind with screaming and death.

It hit the cat-girls, teenage actresses playing a part that they'd spent their lives preparing for.

In their defense, they weren't weak. They weren't. Not one of them was older than twenty, the youngest was twelve and played the youngest one, called "The Initiate" in the script. Their minds were assaulted by the death of billions, including their friends and family, from all over the solar system as the carefully timed attacks took place.

Their minds shattered.

The Mantid forces landed on what remained of Ganymede, gleeful for the slaughter that would take place, that would break the back of Terran Descent Humanity.

In their defense, the business magnate had been paranoid. The film had generated so much near-hysteria that he had to use military grade spoofing and security to keep orbital spies from seeing what was going on to the point that he even concealed the power supplies of the armor and vehicles.

The Mantid found themselves landing in the middle of an army.

An army driven mad.

An army of teenage girls, armored like a battleship and armed to the teeth, that had been driven mad.

The Mantid Warriors and Speakers charged. Republic armor, the thin layered lorica of the Republic's armor was easily penetrated by their bladearms and weapons. The crude looking armor worn by the youthful looking human-feline hybrids surely couldn't resist them.

Mantid weaponry only pocked divots into the heavy plates of the armor.

Their psychic attacks were met back with the enraged shrieking screams of enraged teenage girls.

The Mantid assault quailed for a moment in the face of unbridled fury.

The girls knew, at that second they knew, that the Mantid were responsible for it all.

The Mantid in front of them.

Screaming their warcries the actresses of Reign of the Cat-Girls charged the Mantids, their minds riven and shattered, their souls consumed with blood-lust.

The Mantid Thinkers in orbit watched with horror as the Mantid warriors were literally torn limb from limb by the armored hands of the Cat-Girls, who could only shout a few words, their minds broken by the psychic assault.

"NEKO NEKO NEKO!" was one warcry as the aerospace fighters launched. The weapons were only mockups, firing visual lasers only.

That didn't stop a half-dozen of the cat-girls from screaming out the second war-cry.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI!" they shrieked as they went to full throttle.

The ship's battlescreen resisted the first three.

The fourth got through and slammed into the center of the warship. The fifth hit the rear. The sixth plunged into the boiling mass of particles left by the fourth and exploded deep inside the ship.

"KAWAII!" a thousand throats roared out as the new star boiled in the sky for a few seconds.

Three hundred other aerospace fighters clawed for the cold darkness of space and the remaining battlewagons found themselves fighting for their lives.

They lost.

The war for Ganymede was one of the most brutal campaigns the Mantid ever fought. The cat-girls of the movie Reign of the Cat-Girls knew nothing more than war and savagery and horror. They burned the Mantid with flamers, tore them apart with their hands, ripped them apart with chainswords, shot them to pieces with mag-ac guns that had been props but were restored to working condition.

The tunnels below Ganymede were a terror. Mantid against armored Neko-Marine, as the Mantids had come to call them, although some of the infantry called them Dokigrrlz. The Mantid, who had been the lords of the tunnels, were pushed back by the furious assaults of the armored Neko-Marines. When the Mantids were pushed onto the surface, they found the Neko-Marines waiting for them, chainsword, flamer, and magac in hand.

Dokigrrlz who knew nothing but madness and wrath.

Whom the Mantid just couldn't seem to kill.

Three times the Mantid landed reinforcements as they continued to assault the Sol System, still intent on 'killing the queen' and breaking humanity's will to fight.

Three times the screaming warcry of DOKI DOKI DOKI heralded attack runs on the battlewagons by beings who weren't able to care any longer. The vehicles, the aerospace fighters had been restored to working condition.

The business magnate was targeted by the black mantid death squads.

It took fifteen tries to get him.

They did, eventually.

He died in the arms of the lead actress, known only as Joan. She could not remember her name. She could not remember his.

He was merely 'Father' and he bled out in her arms as her sister fell upon the black Mantid and tore them to pieces with their bare hands and sharp teeth.

She painted her face with Father's blood.

The Neko-Marines went crazier. No longer capable of speech, they burned the Mantid from the surface, the tunnels, the skies of Ganymede until not a single one was left. They boarded their ships, repairing them in their madness, and drove for Mars, helping liberate it.

The Mantid learned to fear them. They wielded psychic lightning in one hand and weapons in the other. They did not need helmets any longer, their armor oxygenated their blood and provided all the nutrients they needed.

They were fused to their armor, but they didn't care as they helped cleanse Hateful Mars of the Mantid.

The screams of "NEKO NEKO NEKO" and "DOKI DOKI DOKI" were enough to break the psychic control of some of the lesser Mantids and make them flee the field. Thinkers recoiled from the psychic assault that backed the screams.

Psychically transmitted madness. The death screams of a thousand thousand people backed by the rage of the Neko-Marines.

When Mars was taken, they forged more weapons, more armor, repaired and rebuilt their ships. Their ships were a reflection of their minds, shattered and twisted beauty.

The bridge of the flagship, the former luxury liner that had gathered them all, had a stained glass window of Joan cradling the dying bleeding body of Father and The Initiate slaughtering the Mantid assassins.

The mat-trans systems were installed aboard the great ships.

They often screamed, lashing out with psychic power, sometimes attacking one another. The nanites flooding their systems, their triple-strand DNA, their borderline illegal gene-mods from the chimeric alteration made it so they could sustain wounds that would kill anyone else.

They landed on Earth, taking part in the last year of fighting. Mat-trans took them quickly from battlefield to battlefield and they fought without tiring. Their gunfire was endless, their chainswords without mercy, and their psychic lightning thick and deadly.

Finally, Earth was free. They took the fires burning in the vast oceans of glass, took shards of lossglass with them when they left. They crafted torches for their armor, infused the lossglass fires into the fires of their flamers.

Their ships jumped, not into jumpspace, no, that would be too easy.

They chose Hellspace.

For six months they were missing, nowhere to be found.

Then the skies of Anthill rang out with the warcry as Hellspace breaches blossomed inside the resonance zone.

And the Queens knew fear.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI!"

--From "Reign of the Cat-Girls, an Oral History Transcribed"