"When samurai work together it tends to go one of two ways. Sometimes they mesh well, have their own niches, and form a coordinated squad that puts most PMCs to shame. Other times, its a bunch of goblins all doing their own wacky but deadly nonsense in vaguely the same area. At least in Cincinatti, its usually the latter."

  — Wanda 'Chaos Gremlin' Evans, asked on a livestream about working with the other local samurai.

  “So. What do we know about this hive?” Elliot asked the group of four other newbie samurai loosely gathered around him.

  Rex Dakka, who had this point slipped off his mount, lazed against its front leg. “Its got aliens, we shoot them till they die then blow it up.”

  Vixinertia sighed pointedly. “As mentioned the main body has dug in underground, but it’s been going for long enough to have a good chunk of models out and about, including a higher than usual set of bigger ones. It'll be a fight to get there and then a fight to root it out.”

  Elliot nodded along “Okay, so here's what I propose. Dakka and… Dog act as the tip of the spear, with Maiden and I right behind providing support. Dancer protects our flanks, and Vixinertia.. how much height can you get?”

  “Plenty” she replied, with a slightly preening tone “I can't fly, fly, but I can stick to the sides of buildings as long as I dont go to far up.”

  Elliot gave her a thumbs up “Then maybe we have you on scouting, and maybe fast response if something that needs to die quickly shows up?”

  The desi girl tilted her head, considering this. “Fine, but I want to get stuck in when we hit the hive. Speaking of, what's our plan then.”

  Elliot rescanned the group. “Rex, is Dog gonna be able to fit in there? Why is he called Dog, by the way?”

  Dakka grinned, a little too wide for comfort. “My boss always said it was a dog eat dog world when he was stealing credit for my work, I figured I'd prove him right.” He patted the beast’s leg, and it let out a chuff in response. “But Dog can shrink, and I can fight alongside her for the tunnels.”

  Elliot blew air through his teeth “Okay then, Quinn, you’ll stay up top and act as a big, stompy anchor point, the rest of us will head down and deal with the hive. Given we’re slanted towards closer combat, we’ll likely want to advance slowly and allow them to come to us for the most part.”

  Quinn realised she was attempting to scratch her head when her hand hit the front of the mech with a clang. Blade Dancer jumped high enough to leave the ground briefly, while Vixinertia just snorted.

  “Why would they fight me instead of defending the hive?”

  “I think he means the ones coming from outside to reinforce.” Dancer mumbled, wrapping her arms around her gun, hugging it to her chest with barrel pointed at an angle.

  “Oh. That works I guess.”

  “So, its settled then, everyone good with this plan?” Elliot glanced around, taking in an assortment of nods and thumbs up. “Let’s take two minutes to prepare, then get moving."

  Rex clicked his tongue twice, and Dog flicked an eye open before grabbing him gently by the shirt in its mouth and depositing him on its back. Vixinertia started pacing, twirling her hammer like a baton while silently moving her mouth, probably in conversation with her AI. Elliot gave her a smile and turned to do the same, but she noticed Blade Dancer was just awkwardly standing off to the side still, arms tucked in around her defensively.

  Within the mech, her features softened."Hey Irys, could you open up a private chat with Blade Dancer."

  "If her AI agrees, yes"

  A few seconds passed before another tab opened up in her.. well it wasn't in her augs as such given where she was, more like just in her mental awareness. Text chat in the mech was trippy.

  "Yes?" came the clipped immediate message from Blade Dancer.

  "I just wanted to see if you were doing okay? It just seems like something is bothering you."

  The message sat unanswered for nearly thirty seconds. In the corner of her 'eye' she spotted Elliot digging a bodysuit of sorts out of a newly materialized box before jogging around behind a nearby car with it.

  Her attention was drawn back to the chat as another message popped up.

  "I'm fine."

  And a few seconds later.

  "You wouldn't understand anyway."

  Before the chat was summarily closed. Quinn frowned, something was clearly bothering the girl, but she clearly wasn't wanting to talk about it here.

  Soon enough, the motley crew was prepared, Elliot having changed into the bodysuit covered in a number of tesselated armoured plates covering the majority of his body. Some sort of backpack sat on his back, exhaust pointing downwards and back. His revolver's holster seemed to just stick to the side of his leg. Quinn tried not to think too hard about how good he looked in his new getup that accentuated the muscles on his arms and legs.

  They ambled as a rough group towards the northern entrance of the intersection. Cracks sounded out as some of the PMC on the walls took potshots at a few wayward antithesis Quinn could see scurrying beyond the barrier. The streets beyond were shadowed by towering high rises that were packed into every city block. A hodgepodge of skyrise bridges, billboards, neon signs and windows made distinguishing between any particular building as more than a collection of chaos near impossible, and the concrete block type architecture was stark.

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  "Looks quiet out there" she noted, gesturing with one of her small arms.

  "Apparently that hive is mostly still pushing towards the capitol building" Vixinertia answered, float hopping onto the wall like she was in low gravity, not even disturbing the PMC soldier next to her as she landed. "It'll get rougher as we approach, there's definately a command model in there that'l react faster than a normal hive would"

  "How do you know all this?"

  The girl raised an eyebrow "I asked Synapse for his drone feeds. He's not focused on the area, but it was enough to get a gist."

  Ah.

  "Why the fuck are we standing around, there's points to earn." Dakka almost sneered into the call, before urging his mount onwards. The giant lizard shifted its back legs foward, wiggled its behind like a cat and launched itself over the wall, crashing down on top of an abandoned hover vehicle parked in the middle of the road.

  Elliot shrugged, and with a blast, jetted over the wall before another blast arrested his fall to touch down lightly on the other side. Dancer took a couple of running steps before launching at the top of the gate at speed, using both arms to pull herself over the rest of the height parkour style and dropping out of sight briefly. Quinn just sighed and carefully stepped over like a slightly awkwardly tall waist high fence.

  She took a few large strides to get roughly behind Dog, scanning her surroundings mentally via the 360° vision. Elliot fell in a few meters to her right, and Dancer's blades darted off to slice up a model-4 lurking in an alley nearby. Dog padded forward with predatory grace, occasionally lunging forward or to the side as a particularily brave antithesis charged, only to be summarily devoured. She caught a glimpse of Vixinertia flying feet first towards the side of one of the nearby highrises, briefly touching down entirely perpendicular to the ground before launching off towards another.

  About a block and a half in the antithesis finally decided they weren't standing for solicitors in their territory. One moment the streets were mostly empty, and the next a veritable wave of claws and jaws was pouring towards them over the pocked concrete. Three bursts of gunfire resounded out, quickly accompanied by bassy hums and cracks as Quinn's laser rifle spun up to full fire rate, shredding a line of model-3s and model-4s that were scurrying around Rex Dakka and Dog. Speaking of those two, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Rex was cackling maniacally while unloading his LMG full throttle into the horde, his only concession to accuracy was at least aiming in the direction of the horde while dog thrashed and snapped, shredding plant bodies with raw momentum more so than actual tooth and claw. The entire horde seemed to start to strain slightly as Elliot activated his wierd gravity bullshit, though clearly diluted in power as they slowed rather than stopped, while he fired careful shot after shot at models straying close to one of the less armoured samurai. Energy blasts rained from above as Vixinertia, once again running perpendicular on the sides of buildings, lept from one to the other, keeping a little ways ahead of the group. She caught occasional flashes of movement in the corner of her eye as tiny blades evicerated any models that snuck through the firing line. With a hum her plasma cannon began its charging sequence, she held it for a few seconds before releasing it with a deep, bassy splat as it spat out a frisbee sized disc of white hot death. It crashed into the the horde ahead of them, and with a flash reduced a several metre radius circle of them to mere ash, while terminally searing many times that number around.

  After a few minutes the swarm seemed to abate, giving them the opportunity to push forward for a brief minute. The highrises didn't dissapear, but as they moved into a more affluent area the buildings became more ordered, and corporate logos could be seen adorning many of the tops of them. They got a few blocks forward with minimal resistance until the next wave of Antithesis swarmed in. This set brought new challenges, as lumbering Model-6s poked above the mass of smaller models and murders of model-1s began to stream into the air and towards them. Elliot, apparently taking inspiration from her earlier purchases, stopped briefly to attach a pair of automatic flak cannons to his shoulders. They started thinning out the growing flocks above, moments before they dove down at the group. Rex apparently decided he was tired of reloading his gun every few hundred shots, tossing the thing to brain a swooping model-1 and summarily snatching up a multi barrel rotary gun that dropped into his waiting arms. She was a little worried about his defence against the murder birds until a box, syringe and stab into Dog's back was prompting a rapid growth of electric blue tipped spines that quickly started discharging blast of electricity at the nearby plunging model-1s, arcing between them and leaving them spiralling to the ground as twitching, burnt husks.

  She was keeping an eye on the less armored members of the group when she spotted a model-3 slipping out of an alley right behind Blade Dancer. Before she could shout a warning it was already leaping at the girl only for her to whirl round and chomp down on the model-3's neck. Grabbing its body, she ripped the things head clean off with a jerk of her neck to the side before biting down fully, letting the remains of its upper body drop to the floor. Dancer glanced around with a feral gleam in her eyes and razor toothed smile as she swallowed the mouthful, only to suddenly panic and wipe her mouth with a sleeve, glancing around nervously at the other samurai. Quinn pondered the scene, before deciding Dancer would probably prefer if she had pretended not to have seen, at least for now.

  The next wave upped the ante once again as Quinn felt something impact her left arm, sending a lance of simulated pain up her shoulder. The plasma cannon lost power and the disc that had been accumalating splattered, sending her sensors into haywire as the extreme heat partially melted her front.

  "FUCK, I'M HIT" she yelped, reflexively trying to shield her "face" with her three remaining arms.

  "Model 15, I got it!" Vixineria yelled back, before shooting off the building she had been running along in a two legged leap and rocketing towards the ground at an out of sight target. "Fucker's down!" she followed up moments later.

  She caught the sight of Elliot's full gravitic might unleashed as the horde went from scuttling to struggling to stay standing.

  "Irys, what the fuck why does it hurt!" she grumbled through a virtual grimace.

  "Because pain serves as a way to inform you of damage and also an incentive to avoid further harm if possible, Darling. Believe me when I say if similar damage had been done to your biological form it would hurt significantly more."

  "Just! Can you turn it off?"

  The pain immediately vanished, and after mentally shaking off her distractedness she resumed firing the laser into the incoming swarm.

  "Quinn Darling, You should consider deploying the repair drones."

  Oh right, she had those. She mentally felt around until she found the "muscle" that felt in the right place, giving it a tug. The drones popped out of the stunts on her back before quickly swinging around to her left side, one using little grabbers to lift the plasma cannon back into position while the other went at it with a welder. She felt the repair nanites move through her chassis like a soft warmth, and soon her vision in front was crystal clear.

  The group held their ground for a minute until Quinn felt the plasma cannon reconnect to her senses, demonstrating its return to functionality by obliterating a good chunk of the horde along with the street underneath it. With her full capabilities returned, Quinn pushed forward in a hail of lethal energy fire, pushing the group forward against the surge.