Stray Cat Strut Chapter Thirty-Three – Oh My God, Nya!

Chapter Thirty-Three - Oh My God, Nya!

"If you want to have a good work life, you need to be friends with your coworkers. It's ridiculous to think that you can spent twelve hours a day in one space and hate the people there the entire ti.

Yeah, life sucks, work sucks, and you're going to spend more hour there than anywhere else in your miserable life, so why do so many people make a point of hating the wage slave stuck next to them?"

--Post on WorkersOpinion blog, 2035

***

"OMGN!" Nya said with a gasp. "It has kitty ears!"

She was pointing at the top of the Bastion. I was pretty sure she'd seen it before, but maybe this was the first ti she noticed that the ship had two protrusions at the top and front that... yeah, they were cat ears. They were armoured, like the rest of the ship, but they were also definitely cat ears.

"Uh-huh," Lucy said. "What's OMGN an? I an, I know 'omg' of course."

"Oh my god, nya!" Nya said, and already I had had my fill of the woman. Buuuut Lucy seed to like her, and I supposed that if I looked past the wall of cringe, she wasn't that bad.

"Myalis likes sticking cat ears on things," I said. "It's her hobby, and who am I to question it but her pitiful victim? Anyway... you wanted to accompany , yeah?"

Nya nodded. "But I still don't know what you're planning to do!"

"Yeah, fair. I'm gonna load up my power armour into the Bastion, then we're going to drop Lucy off at school. I don't have classes today, but... look, there's a bit of a gang problem in New Montreal right now, and I think I want to see if there's anything I can do to calm it the fuck down. The last thing the city needs is open gang warfare on top of all the rest."

"I've dealt with yakuza before," Nya said. "They gave a cool sword once."

"Uh-huh," I said, but I did make note of that. If they gave her a cool sword, then maybe she didn't 'deal' with them in the normal samurai way and actually handled the situation with minimal bloodshed. Or sothing. I hadn't seen Nya in action yet, except for that one little scuffle we had.

I loaded my power armour into the back of the ship, then made sure there were a few guns around, just in case. If things really went to shit, then I had the M.E.O.W. ch in the back as well, but... well, if I needed a heavily-armoured warch to handle the gangs, then shit had really hit the fan. I was kind of hoping that it didn't co to that.

Lucy wasn't telling to hurry up, but she was shifting from side to side and giving a look that I knew ant that I was already late, and... yeah, she was right. So we got onboard the Bastion and took off.

Nya sat across from Lucy at the back, only glancing around once before settling in. "So, where's this gang?" she asked.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Our first stop's actually at the school. There's this bunch of students that have been studying gangs and stuff, and they probably have a pretty good idea of what's going on. They wrote articles about it and shit."

"Is it a student project?" Lucy asked.

"I think so? It could be tied to the... uh... anthropology departnt." I had to pronounce that one carefully. It wasn't a word I spat out every day. "Anyway, they wrote a whole article and so dia sort mucked it all up for fear baiting. There's an address to their departnt in the article, with emails and shit. Can't be too hard to track them down."

"Hmm, let know how it goes," Lucy said. "Oh! By the way, I've invited a few people from the kittens--the adult ones--over to our building. Not ho, but to one of the offices next to the clinic. We're setting up the New Montreal branch."

"Already?" I asked. "When do you find the ti for that?"

"Here and there," Lucy said with a giggle. "But it's not as hard as you think. You just have to find people who have that spark and who want to get sothing done, then point them in the right direction and give them a bit of encouragent. Mostly all I do now is act like the last word and kick out anyone too troubleso."

"Uh-huh," I said. Lucy was aweso. "Sure you don't want to be the new mayor?"

"I'm not one for elected positions," Lucy said.

We landed in Cial a few minutes later. They'd marked out the entire side of one street with black-and-yellow markings, with little signs saying 'Samurai parking' every three or so tres.

I parked on the other side of the street.

We got out, and then I went through the motions of giving Lucy a goodbye hug, a goodbye kiss and letting her grab my ass as a goodbye pinch, as one does.

And then it was just and Nya. "Alright," I said. "Now we need to figure out where the anthropology departnt is. Can't be too hard to find."

The school had a pretty decent interactive map app thing, and once I loaded it, let Myalis loose on all of the malware that ca with it, and bypassed the paynt options part, I was able to plug in what I needed and had a pretty decent idea for where to go.

As it turned out, it wasn't too far away from the place where Lucy and I had our politics class, just one building over.

"So, uh," I said as I started to walk over. Nya seed fine with the occasional long silence, but it was kind of bothering . "You like cats? Like, real ones?"

"Nya! I do! I only have seven!"

"Only seven?" I asked.

"Nya would like more, but I don't like being at ho all day. What's your favourite kind of cat?"

"My favourite kind of cat?" I asked. "Are there different kinds? I an, yeah, obviously, there's got to be fancy breeds, but it's not like dogs where they're real different."

Nya shook her head. "Sad. Very sad. I like bobtails. They are very pretty."

"I guess I like calicos? The colours are nice?" I tried.

"Oh, yes, very cute!"

We ended up talking about cats until we made it to the building, which included Nya sending a few terabytes of cat pictures and videos she'd taken over the last few weeks. It was kind of funny. I had my reservations about Nya overall, but the way her accent grew thicker when she got excited about cats was admittedly pretty cute.

The anthropology building wasn't called that. Instead it was the Applied Anthropology and Targeted Advertisent Departnt. The entrance hall had a few elevators and a map stuck to one wall that I stared at for a mont before figuring out. The students I was looking for had a small office on the sixth floor. It looked like it was not much bigger than a closet, but maybe that was enough.

"I'm not even sure if anyone is going to be here," I said. "They might have classes."

"Nya's good at finding people!" Nya declared.

"Yeah. Maybe we'll go snooping if they're not here."

The elevator stopped and we got out, then it was a short walk to the office. As luck would have it, there was soone there. A younger guy, maybe a few years my senior, with a well-pressed CIAL uniform and short dreads.

"Yo," I said.

The guy stared at . I was in my 'casual' outfit, which ant a trenchcoat and enough grenades to start one hell of a party. Nya was in a skintight armoured suit thing, with her tail swishing behind her and a dangerous smile on. We probably didn't look friendly.

"Can... I help you?" he asked.

"Yup," I said. "You one of the students that wrote that article, on the gangs of New Montreal?"

The guy stared so more, looked back into his little office space, then turned to . "No," he said. It was a lie. My augs had flagged his face and school ID already, and he was definitely in the little club that wrote that article, but I couldn't bla him for denying it.

It's what I would do if anyone showed up and started asking questions. Deny everything and hope for the best.

Still, I wasn't here to grill him. "I'm Stray Cat, this is Nya from Japan."

"Holy, you're that one samurai girl," he said. Then he eyed Nya, and didn't seem sure what to think. She had more body mods than the norm, and the quality was pretty up there, but it was possible she was just a rich eccentric. Which... she was, but still.

"Yup, that's ," I said with a smile. "Look, I'm not here to ss up your day. I've just got questions and I'm not fond of reading dry-ass articles, so I figured I'd just get to the source. You got a few minutes?"

"I've got class," he said.

"I'm sure the school will make an exception if I ask nicely," I said.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Teaching week, so 3 chapters this week!