Chapter Nineteen - Excuse My French

Chapter Nineteen - Excuse My French

Chapter Nineteen - Excuse My French

"The French Language is under seige!

We can't allow global unions and samurai guilds to dictate which language is standardized. We must carve out a space for French in the future, or else our language and culture might very well be lost.

Culture is more important than corporate profits!"

Translation from 'The Free Frenchman' newspaper article, 2032

***

Saint-Colomban of Medicorp was more of a shithole than aerial photography had suggested.

Getting to the town wasn't all that bad. There was a road from Saint-Jrome all the way over, and it was pretty much cleared of any obstacles. There was one minivan, turned onto its side with a model three ripping someone's days-old remains out of it, but otherwise the route over was quiet.

Seeing antithesis roaming around did mean that shit was still kind of fucky, though. "How long is it going to take to clear this area out?" I asked.

It depends on the amount of effort put into the task. It's very possible that it may take decades. There are some Vanguard who specialise in rooting out infections, but there are only a limited number of those. The current world-wide incursion is a result of not properly sanitising or containing previous incursions.

Right, that made sense. Unlike normal incursions, this one was all over and all at once. Old hives coming alive after probably growing real slowly for years and hiding away where they wouldn't be noticed.

If we didn't clean up after all of this, then there would just be more of those the next time this kind of incursion happened.

My bet was that there would be a huge push to clean, then the bills would come in and the embezzlement, effort-to-reward ratio, and the lack of urgency would eventually do the whole project in.

It wouldn't even be a question of shooting the right politicians to get it moving. Just plain old human nature in action.

"Fuck humans are stupid," I muttered.

Certainly not a top-percentile species. But you're not so bad. You're kind of cute. Like a child that's barely able to care for itself, but stretched out across an entire race.

"Okay, ouch," I said. "Not wrong, but still, that hurt. Humanity can't be the only awful race around, right?"

No, honestly, you're genuinely not so bad. Very middling in many ways. Physically, humanity is definitely in the lower percentiles, but you're relatively intelligent, have a capacity for empathy, and are moderately adaptable.

The mech's head swung open and I stood up with it. From up there it was easy to look down on the newbie and his entourage.

"Laisse-moi tranquille, clisse," he snapped at the people around him.

I blinked before my aug's, or Myalis' auto-translate kicked in and displayed a line of text on the bottom edge of my vision. Probably Myalis, because the translation seemed more... intent-based than literal. Leave me alone, for fuck's sake.

One of the chubbies next to the newbie patted him on the back. "Tu sais qu'on est juste l pour t'aider, petit gars." You know we're just here to help you, little guy.

Little guy (god, that'd be a terrible samurai name, the poor fuck) shook the hand away and walked closer to the mech.

The entourage didn't get the memo and stepped up after him. "Hey," I said. "I'm here to talk. Do you need this whole bunch with you?"

He frowned for a moment before shaking his head. "Non, j'suis bien tout seul." No, I'm fine alone.

"H, p'tit gars, on est l, t'as besoin de nous, hein?" one of the guys said. Hey, lil guy, we're here, you need us don't you?

I cleared my throat. I didn't have a great idea of what was going on here, but I had an inkling. The locals were being overbearing fucks. They didn't seem to get how samurai operated most of the time. And Little Guy here was too shy to shoot them about it.

"My French is a little rusty," I said. "But how do you put this... Dcalisse or I'll dcalisse you... uh... tabarnak?"

The village idiots looked at me a little gobsmacked. Then they took in the very large mech covered in very large guns and decided that the better part of valour was not getting fucked up. They backed off, though I noticed that they still lingered some two dozen metres off. Not close enough to overhear, but...

"Your fanclub is annoying," I said.

"C'est pas un fan club, c'est un tas de vieux envahissants qui pensent que j'suis le nouveau Jsus. Ils me cassent les pieds depuis q'tout a drap." It's not a fanclub, it's a bunch of overbearing old people that think I'm the new Jesus. They've been riding my ass ever since shit went sideways.

He looked at me, then gave me one of those guy nods, with the whole chin thrust.

"Pis, t'es qui et tu fais quoi ici? T'es un samoura, correct?" So, who are you, and what're you doing here? You're a samurai, right?

Fuck, I was regretting not paying more attention to the Frenchies around the city when I was younger. There were a lot of them around, and they were probably the second biggest group in the city, but I didn't run in the same circles most of the time. They were more common out east.

"Yeah, I'm a samurai," I said. "I'm Stray Cat, the one coming in behind me is Gomorrah. We heard that you were here and wanted to make sure you were managing. The army's sending some folk over to help, but they'll only be arriving tomorrow afternoon."

"Ah, bien, thank fuck," he said with the strongest accent I'd heard in a while.

***