Chapter 680: Chapter 680

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--Deus Ex, on first seeing on of her clones doing the dishes for her, 2054

I woke up on Monday morning to a flood of notifications and messages.

So I turned around and hugged Lucy closer and pretended that I hadn't seen anything.

Unfortunately, my brain was made of stupid, and after seeing that number of messages waiting for me, I couldn't quite get back to sleep. I sighed and flopped onto my back. I couldn't get up because Lucy was sleeping on my arm. Fortunately, the metal one, because it couldn't fall asleep.

So, I laid on my back and stared at the ceiling before I blinked a few times and brought up my messages. There were literally over a hundred of them, but most were from a conversation between three of my samurai friends, with others chiming in on occasion.

Gomorrah, Tankette, and Grasshopper were going over some details about the event next weekend. Princess wanted to know more about her role as well.

Shy had sent me a private message, asking to confirm that she wouldn't have any public-facing rolls to play. There were a few inquiries from the casino as well.

I rubbed at my face, then started to reply to what needed answering. "I think I'm going to have to skip school this week," I said to Myalis.

That's plausible. This event seems rather under-organized at the moment. If you don't address that, then issues will crop up later, and you might not have enough time to correct the issues without great cost.

"Yeah," I muttered. I looked over Gom's conversation with Tankette, and it looked like they were mostly trying to estimate the number of people that would be showing up. I winced a little as Tankette seemed to have expected it to be... about one order of magnitude less than the numbers Gomorrah was pulling.

Tankette could cook. Like, she was good, and she had the gear for it. I'd seen her take care of a line of hungry soldiers before. But there was a difference between that and handling a thousand-plus grumpy gangsters.

Mostly, Gom reassured Tankette who seemed ready to take on the challenge, but wanted some help.

It was all working out. Except for one small issue: Gom had a running list of pings throughout the chat, all aimed at me.

Gomorrah had a list of shit for me to take care of. I supposed it might have been revenge for pushing the entire project onto her in the first place. Or maybe she just honestly didn't have time to tackle everything herself.

In any case, I had a list now.

- 4 corporations want to attend. Discourage

- Meet with media. Do we want to have media presence?

- Organize Lucy's volunteers.Uniforms, security, passes.

- Warn the Family of the event. You did do this, right Catherine?

I groaned again, which made Lucy squirm a little. "Sorry," I said.

"Is everythin' okay?" she asked sleepily.

"Yeah, it's fine," I said as I turned over to hug her some more. None of those things were stuff I could take care of right now, so I went back to sleep. I woke up a bit later to Lucy stumbling out of bed, then I did the same.

After our morning ablutions, I found myself standing across from Lucy as she blew across a mug of warm coffee. "So, what had you bothered?" Lucy asked.

"Gom threw work at me. For the conclave. It's a to-do list."

Lucy snorted. "How familial," she said. "Was it a honey-do list?"

"Ha-ha," I said. "No, more of a list of chores that she doesn't wanna do herself. Which... fair, I think the logistics side of this is going to be messy enough as it is. Got some corps to meet with to tell them to fuck off, or at least see why they want to attend in the first place. The media... yeah, need to meet with some of them to politely tell them to fuck off. Hey, how ready are your Kittens?"

"Not very," Lucy said. "Some of the better ones are coming in from Burlington. I have them staying in one of the offices downstairs, actually. You said you had housing or something free, right?"

"Eh, sorta," I said. "Myalis, add that to the to-do. We'll see if we can't use some of the space in that mega building Gros Baton and Hedgehog freed up."

No one else was using it... probably. So it would be fine to temporarily occupy it. It would only be for a week or so, anyway.

"Hmm, okay then. Well, with the more experienced members coming down, I at least have some people to act as officers, of a sort," Lucy said. "Do you think we can visit the casino? As a large group, I mean? It'd be nice to have a practice run or two."

"Yeah, I can arrange something," I said. I sent a text to... wait, what even was his name? I found him under 'Casino dude' in my contacts. I guess that was close enough. Sent him a nicely worded message letting him know that we'd have people around the casino scouting the place out over the week.

"I'll try to get a group together for tomorrow," Lucy said. "I think my speech last week worked. We had a lot of interested people, so we just need to weed out those who won't be a hot mess from those who are and then we can split them apart from each other."

"What are you going to do with the messy ones?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Give them stuff to do that they really can't mess up too badly. Putting up posters and cleaning and like, hanging out but in cool places so that they'll be quicker about opening their wallets later."

"Alright," I said. "Well, I'm sure Gom will appreciate the help." I stretched. "You can take the Bastion over to school, if you want. I don't think I'm gonna need it today."

With that done, I had some quick breakfast, then stretched and headed downstairs. Gomorrah was probably awake by now. She had texted until like, two AM, but it was half-past ten and she struck me as the sort of nutjob that woke up early.

Still, because I was the best and most considerate friend ever, I sent her a text to see if she was awake and if I could stop over. Her reply was a thumbs up emoji, with little flames coming off of it.

Once I got to Gom's floor, I knocked. The door opened, and I came face-to-face with a pajama-clad Frannie.

"Hey," I said before looking her up and down. "Wow. That's a fit."

"Huh?" she asked. She was in mostly-black PJs, with a fur trim around the cuffs and lots of cartoonly little crosses all over it. "Oh, this? Yeah, I thought it was cute. Come on in. Did you have breakfast yet?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm surprised you're still in pajamas. Aren't you two the sort to be up at the crack of six-thirty, showered and all puritan'd up by seven?"

"Puritan'd up?" Frannie asked.

"I mean, I get that you and Gom have got this freaky kink stuff going on behind closed doors, but you're also both hyper-uptight, so I give it fifty-fifty odds that you shower half-dressed."

Frannie blinked at me, then blushed a bit before looking away. "No, nothing like that," she said. "We shower just like anyone else. Alone and with nothing but a cap on."

"Alone?" I asked. I sensed some teasing material and wasn't about to let it slip away. "I'll have you know that Lucy and I sometimes come out of the shower dirtier than we went in."

"And that's enough of that," Delilah said as she walked in. She had similar pajamas (black crosses on white!) and cute little flame-pattern slippers. "Good morning, Catherine. I see that God hasn't blessed us all by striking you down with divine judgement yet."

"So, I imagine you're here to complain about the list I sent you?"

I nodded. "That's exactly right. Not that I won't get to it, mind. I just need a bit more direction. Also, did you need me to hit it in order?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "But it wouldn't hurt." Mostly I was wondering about the corps bit.

"Four corps need warnings? What about?"

"Ah, that," Delilah said. "Come on, we were about to have breakfast. Did you want anything?"

"I'm good! I ate Lucy this morning." I hadn't, but I could have, which was close enough to use to tease the two of them.

"She made you breakfast, you mean?" Frannie asked.

I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

Frannie's freckles really did make her blushes much better. Delilah was a lucky gal. A lucky gal sighing with exasperation. "Just sit down and listen to me for a few minutes, then you can run off to have your fun."

A note from RavensDagger

(it has a kickass cover)

After failing out of law school and ending up working at an Amazon Warehouse in the mid 2050s, Life is pretty bleak for Quinn Takimura. Its been especially soul crushing since her permission to drive Cassie, her floors loader mech, got revoked over a misunderstanding.

Everything changes however when the merciless plant aliens known as the Antithesis launch an invasion on Madison. Selected as Earth's newest Samurai, she gains the ability to purchase advanced technology from thin air to combat the alien threat. Maybe now she can make a difference, if she can overcome the hordes of hungry aliens, scheming corporations and her own personal troubles.

- Kill aliens, acquire points, buy cooler mecha gear.

- A bisexual disaster of a protagonist.

- Both simpler action fighting aliens, and more complicated problems dealing with humans.

- Sticking it to the man.

Links: https://www.NovelHub.com/series/1841519/mechanized-union/

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/131737/mechanized-union