Stray Cat Strut Chapter Sixty-One – @-Everyone Assemble

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Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) - Ongoing

Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) - Ongoing

Love Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) - Completed!

Drear's Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) - Hiatus

Cinnamon Bun (A wholeso LitRPG!) - Ongoing

The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) - Volu Two Complete!

Lever Action (A fantasy western with cha!) - Volu One Complete!

Heart of Dorkness (A wholeso progression fantasy) - Completed!

Dead Tired (A cody about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) - Ongoing

Sporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) - Ongoing

Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!

Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the planet, and then try to fix it) - Completed!

Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) - Volu Two Completed!

Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) - Completed!

The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) - Completed!

Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) - Hiatus

Queen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) - Completed!

No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) - Ongoing

Save Scumming (A ti-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing

Chapter Sixty-One - @-Everyone Assemble

"If you want success, there's no better form of marketing than controversy."

--Henry Turnmore, presidential advisor, 2032

***

I was leaning back against the wall of so nice old building, waiting for Lucy's classes to finish, and trying my best to look casually intimidating, even though I was dressed in the school's standard uniform... plus a gun at my side and the ears on my head, but normal otherwise.

I had my arms crossed and eyes half-lidded. I had a couple of apps open at the mont, but shut most of them down. Sure, scrolling through an endless feed of kitty and puppy videos through one eye, while watching sexy thirst-trap videos in the other was relaxing, but I only had so many hours to waste in a day and I had a job to do.

A boring job, but it was my problem to take care of.

At the mont, I was trying my best to organize sothing for next Saturday, which ant getting into contact with everyone.

I'd drafted a short ssage explaining things, but before sending it, I figured it would only make sense to do so amount of work.

Mostly because I knew that if I just sent out a ssage that said 'hey, wanna go bug hunting?' all of my samurai friends would start asking annoying questions, like 'what sort of bugs' or 'when' or even 'where?'

I didn't want to have to be the one to provide answers, but I was the one sending the invite, so it only made sense that I'd take the effort to figure out the next step.

So, for that, I needed a map with known locations of Antithesis hives.

Myalis ca in handy for that part. While I was uselessly searching the net, she pointed out so sites kept up by the governnt and updated by the military. Sighting locations, locations of known hive activity, tilines and schedules for when special clean-up teams would be sent into low-danger areas to wipe out whatever remained of the Antithesis staying there.

It painted the countryside around New Montreal in hues from green to red, with a smattering of pins and dots where sightings had been made and where seismic activity suggested a hive was tucked away.

There was a lot more than I expected, actually.

Maybe I shouldn't have been too surprised. The aliens we were fighting were nothing if not persistent. Kill all but one and that would be enough to start new hives most of the ti. Wipe out a hive but leave a few tres of untouched hive material behind? Well, that might be enough for it to start growing again.

As long as there was biomass and so sort of energy, then the Antithesis would spread like so sort of god-damned virus.

I opened up a second map, then started adding pins on it matching the reddest areas on the map off the governnt site. Then it was as easy as plotting the shortest route between so hundred-odd points so that we reached all of them in the most efficient way possible.

Apparently that wasn't actually easy at all. Myalis actually went on to explain sothing about a traveling salesman, and route optimization, and how things only grew exponentially more complex when the mapped-out problem was simulated while taking into account additional factors, like... wind and shit.

I asked her for a solution, she made fun of , I drew a squiggly line through all of the points like a four year old that didn't understand how to play Connect-the-dots correctly, then Myalis grumbled and fixed the route so that it was actually optimized.

I was happy, in the end, because it looked nice and professional, and also because my incompetence had once again saved the day.

With that done, I checked the group chat that we'd used for the Phobos Incident, created a branch, then posted a ssage in it.

Stray Cat: @-Everyone Hey!

Stray Cat: Heading out tomorrow to do so field-work, gather so points, and cull the local aliens.

Stray Cat: Map attached.

Stray Cat: We'll be leaving from my place around noon. eting point is the parking garage

Stray Cat: Wait, shit, how do I add Nya?

Stray Cat: @-Nya?

It took all of twenty seconds for soone to reply, then a few more jumped in.

Princess: I'll be there!