Chapter 61 – Hugs and Explosions!

Chapter 61 – Hugs and Explosions!

Shatterstorm20444: yo have u heard of that sam in ns?

IAMTHEONE27: which one idiot there r like ten

Shatterstorm20444: the one with the weird aliens

BowToYourKing99: u mean Myriad?

Shatterstorm20444: dunno her name could be right tho

IAMTHEONE27: what about her?

Shatterstorm20444: i just saw that holo from her fight in the undercity that scorpion is hella awesome

IAMTHEONE27: bro thats like from days ago do you live on the moon or smth?

Shatterstorm20444: wow r u able to keep up with everything all at the same time? some ppl have lives dude

CuteyPie_R18_link_in_bio: <deleted message>

FulcrumIsBest: that scorpion is super cool tho ngl

Shatterstorm20444: ikr????

FulcrumIsBest: i heard that her entire swarm is like girls wish she would step on me

- Excerpt from the Samurai Forums

I had to admit, I was excited. Ever since Seraphine became a proper Hive-Mind, and I became aware, I wasn’t able to do much. The only thing I ever really did after the incursion, and the battle in the undercity, was the trip to the Inner City and the megashelter, when I transported Jenna and Seraphine there.

Not that I could blame anyone for it. I was a giant scorpion the size of a doppeldecker bus. Okay, I was bigger, my cephalothorax and opisthoma was the size of a doppedecker bus. If I included my three tails, my eight legs, my two giant pincers, and the long arms hidden behind them, I was closer to a navy patrol boat in size, probably even a tad larger.

Regardless of the details, the fact was that I wasn’t exactly made for every day tasks. And that was why I had kind of become the main node for the Burdened, archiving and organising any information we obtained, hosting maps and information for the rest of the chorus to access. Between all my upgrades that Seraphine had gotten when she first bought me, which in hindsight was a bit of a strange thing to say, it was the best way for me to contribute to the Hive. And I did my best to be useful.

But now I could finally do something else! I could move around and do something! Sure, in a way it sucked that the reason for that was that some idiot was dumb enough to antagonise Seraphine and the redlight district, and honestly, I wasn’t too big of a fan of fighting squishy humans, but at least I could get a workout.

Sort of. The task at hand wasn’t exactly demanding for me. Really, it was not much more than clean up.

Still, it left me with a giddy feeling, while I stood at the edge of the main hangar of the Bastion of Hope. I kept an open line to Evelyn, mostly to organise with her and strategize our approach. Evelyn was a bit daft, which, okay, she was a very low class AI. But it did make talking to her a bit boring.

By this point I knew nearly her entire response routine, even having taken the time to write up my own interpretation of the code that was responsible for her responses, with my own tweaks and ideas. It was just an idle side project, since so far I hadn’t been able to do much else. I had even sent it to Jenna and Cleopatra to check it over, and from what I could gather Cleopatra even implemented a part of it!

She probably had to rewrite it all, my coding skills were limited to what I knew from the Cyberwarfare catalogue Seraphine had gotten to help Sabrina. Kaysa had helped me a bit to learn more, but it wasn’t really a priority.

Kaysa was nice. I liked talking to her a lot, she taught me so many things and she even gave me my name! A really cool name, and one I liked a lot. Tiny was a very nice name.

Where was I? Oh yeah, standing at the edge of the hangar.

Rocking from side to side in anticipation, a bit reminiscent of a scene from a certain anime from like 30 years ago about a girl being reincarnated into the body of a spider, another of my past times, I let out a roar. Okay, to say that I roared was wrong. I had to do some rather complicated things with my internals to produce any kind of sound, since I didn’t have a speaker or vocal cords of any kind. That said, I did figure out that if I pressed air through my biomass and scrap storage at just the right pressure, it produced a rather terrifying sounding howl. And that was better than nothing.

And it was funny to see all the squishy humans run in fear. It made it so much easier for the rest of Us to clean up down there. It meant less dead.

That was a very unfun and sad experience. I didn’t like it when people died, and the stinging feeling I felt when other voices died made me shiver. Hopefully Seraphine could get that upgrade soon that meant that we wouldn’t lose anyone anymore.

I had taken great care to create nice memorial entries in our database for those we lost, making sure to include all the things they liked and putting up a chorus wide mental reminder to cherish those things on their behalf. Even now I was still polishing those entries, wanting to make sure I got everything just right and the way they would have wanted.

It did make me kind of pissed, though. Typically I thought of myself as a bit of a pacifist, at least that’s what I wanted for myself, but right now I had absolutely no compunctions about paying the idiots back that had taken those we lost away from Us. They were the ones to mess with Us first, and if they wanted to start a war with Us, a war they would get!

From my vantage point I watched the Bastion of Hope close in on Kanvai District. Being up this high made the difference in design for most of the building quite obvious. And I could also see all these tiny, squishy humans that were crapping their pants in fear. Not that they were much bigger when I was up close, considering just how big I was.

It took Evelyn a moment to find a proper landing spot. She didn’t actually land the Corvette, the thing was much too big for any kind of street to hold it, and the building complex she found to touch down on probably wouldn’t be able to hold the weight of the thing. But at least I could get out without needing to jump, demolishing a street, and probably a building or two, in the process.

It was nice to meet her again, though, and with a quick thought I sent her a call request. She was startled for a moment, before she picked up.

“Hello!~~” I said cheerfully.

“Hello?” Cheryl sounded a bit confused, looking around.

“I’m Tiny,” I said, giving her a wave with one of the lengthy arms that I typically hid behind my pincers. “Fortress breaker and protector of our Hive. I’m here, the giant scorpion!~”

Finally she turned and looked up at me. “Ah... Okay. A pleasure, Tiny. We weren’t sure if you needed help, but looking at things, I guess you didn’t.”

“We’re good~~ Really, it was easier than I expected. Then again, these are just gang goons, so they aren’t really a threat. Even if they probably got some drugs. That’s our theory anyway.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Cheryl muttered. “We’re gonna set up and secure the perimeter. Anything you need help with?”

Her question was underlined by the shattering of glass, a scream, and a body falling out of the fifth floor. One of Us appeared at the now broken window, looked down to confirm the guy she just threw out of it was dead, before she turned and vanished once more.

“We’re still clearing the building. So far, I don’t think we need anything else. Thanks for coming, though~~ I’d offer some tea, buuuut I’m not really made for that. Probably an upgrade worth considering for the future.”

“Yeah... Since I already got you on call, we finished getting everyone back to the redlight district. Castas and his boys have it all in hand, they didn’t lose anyone in the original attack.”

“Good to know! I’ll let the rest of Us know, once things have calmed down a bit. Seraphine is pretty pissy. Best not distract her~~”

I was distracted by a rather large explosion in the far distance, way past the district. Turning in the direction it came from, I saw a rather big pillar of smoke slowly rising into the sky.

“The hell was that?” Cheryl asked, also turning, trying to figure out where the explosion had come from.

It appears that Bahamut has just arrived near the Chasm. While I cannot give you any detailed information, according to popular Samurai sighting forums she was observed leaving the Inner City a couple of minutes ago.

“That is curious... Any idea of what she might be doing?”

None. From the reports she did seem rather agitated, however.

“Anything you know?” Cheryl turned back to me, looking up.

“Bahamut is busy doing things. No clue what, though. We’ll probably learn about it soon.”

Then I got a call from Snapshot. Well, okay, Seraphine got the call, but she forwarded it to the rest of Us, and since I was not doing anything else, I picked it up, adding him to the call.

“Hello~~ Seraphine is busy right now, dealing with some fuckwits. How are you doing, Snapshot?” I asked, cheerily.

“Uhm... Hey. Who are you?”

“I’m Tiny! I’m the big scorpion!”

“Ah... Okay. And who’s this?” The question was obviously directed towards Cheryl.

“That’s Major Cheryl. She’s helping Us in the redlight district. Now, why did you call?”

Snapshot paused for a moment, probably contemplating if he should speak with Cheryl present. Eventually, though, he sighed.

“I wanted to let you know that we found a lead on the whole lure thing. Bahamut is on it, said something about personal business. Not sure what exactly is going on, but if the data I got from her AI is anything to go by, XetaCorp, or at least some survivors that were part of XetaCorp, are involved.”

“Fuck... That probably means I’ll have to deal with more paperwork soon,” Cheryl muttered. “Well, nothing for it.”

“Lots of paperwork.” Bahamut did not look pleased when she left,” he said with a sigh, before returning his attention back to me. “Anything you figured out in the old industrial district?”

“Nope~ We had to pull our scouts out. Chloe said that she wanted to look into it tomorrow, since Seraphine will be busy with her job. Can’t tell you anything more, though, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Maybe Bahamut will have it dealt with by then. Anyways, good luck out there with whatever you are doing.”

“Just cleaning up a district and killing a couple dozen idiots who thought it was a smart idea to fuck with a Hive-Mind. Exciting stuff!”



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