Here at Amazon Madison we treasure all employees like family. Rest assured that your place in this family is guaranteed for years to come. With the help of the local government we can assure you that only 65% of jobs will be automated. this may lead to some early departures, however, we can assure you that displaced family members will be relocated to new locations to ensure a continuous, cohesive and efficient workplace

  ~ Amazon HR, just after the Save Human Jobs act of 2035 was introduced in the Madison corporate senate

  Quinn realized she probably should have probably come up with a plan for this on the way over. Oh well, time to wing it and hope she didn't freak him out too much.

  "Hi Hayden, just call me Quinn. You ready to go?"

  He nodded "Yup, where are we going though? Nice ride, by the way."

  She gestured to the on ramp with an 'after you'. "Dunno, something I can fight effectively in my mech."

  He gave her gesture a confused glance, then started up the stairs into the drop-ship. She really needed to come up with a better name for it. "I see. Why invite me, though?"

  Quinn shrugged. "Figured it would be better to work together, did you not want to?"

  Hayden shrugged "No reason not to".

  They found Maia in the cockpit. "Yo, Quinn." They called out, sprawled over the pilot's chair in a way that had to be uncomfortable. "Can I come hang out with you cool kids up front for the next bit? Its boring back there all alone."

  Hayden gave Quinn a questioning look. "My friend." She explained, before addressing Irys subvocally. "Can we get a fourth chair in here or something?"

  "Installing an additional chair in here would be difficult without spending a decent portion of points. You could however purchase the equivalent of a bean bag."

  Quinn frowned. "Wouldn't that be unsafe in a moving vehicle?"

  "Its a protector grade beanbag, Darling. Its closer to a gel that adaptively sticks to the floor and its occupant when necessary. Its only a point too"

  "If you think its fine then, sure. Wait, don't I need a catalog?"

  "Its coming from your Yrassian Vehicular Utilities catalog. I'll go ahead and purchase it"

  New Purchase: Yrassian Adaptive Gel Cradle

  Cost: 1. Points reduced to... 3316

  A gel bag that looked something like Cassie's seat materialized in the corner of the room. Maia's face lit up and they shrieked before jumping into the gel.

  "Oh my god thank you sam sugar mama, I Love it!"

  Rolling her eyes somewhat at Maia's antics, Quinn gestured to the seat to her right and took hers in the middle. Elliot Was still in his to the left, watching Maia with amusement.

  Quinn flicked the driving AI on, deciding to let it handle takeoff this time. She spoke to Irys again, this time out loud. "So, where are we actually going?"

  "Synapse has gracefully provided a map of remaining antithesis hot spots. Based on that, my suggestion would be to head north, to the corporate communities being beset by attacks from hives in that direction."

  Hayden snorted derisively. "Prosperity? those morons, I'm not surprised living outside the city proper is biting them in the ass, just surprised it didn't happen sooner."

  Quinn just shrugged "Still need to save their dumb asses. Can you set a course there Irys?"

  "With Pleasure."

  The ship smoothly accelerated forward, and before long they were flying towards their destination. Quinn wheeled her chair round (A feature she'd just discovered) to vaguely face the other two Samurai. It was time to gently prod at Blade Dancer.

  "So, why do they call you Boy Scout?" Hayden asked as Quinn was formulating her approach. Dammit!

  Elliot cracked one of his usual smiles, though unusually this time it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Its a long and a little fucked up story, but I kinda needed to tell at least Quinn at some point." He glanced at her, as if seeking approval. She nodded, slightly confused as to why he was asking.

  He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. "So, you've probably wondered if I've seen combat before? If you have you'd be right. I used to be a part of a PMC, 'Impetus Solutions', who mainly worked out of the Rockies. It was a good job for a while, I liked my squad and the jobs we took on were above board. Then we got bought up by some venture capital firm, they kicked out a lot of the old leadership and started making questionable changes. Contracts got shadier and shadier. My CO left and I got promoted to take his place, wish I'd had the sense to follow him."

  He shuffled his seat before continuing. "Eventually we were on contract for some corp, wish I could remember who, protection detail for some exec. The corp was getting protested, and when some picketers were making going out the front slightly difficult the client tried to order our squad to go crack some heads. I told him to shove it, that we didn't do that sort of shit. He called our captain, who told us to shut the fuck up and do what we were told. I asked him what happened to the integrity of the corp, and he said 'Stop being a fucking boyscout, this is the real world.' Me and the entire squad walked."

  Elliot sighed, shifting to rest his chin in his hands. "I decided I was done with that life, managed to snag a ride out to Madison and found a job with Amazon. You know most of the rest."

  Quinn reached out and took his hand, causing him to glance up at her briefly but then accept the touch. He smiled back at her, this time it actually did reach his eyes, "I wanted to take the name Boyscout to show even an idealistic dumb-ass like me can do some real good. Seems to be doing okay so far."

  "Shit, that's a far deeper name than Blade Dancer." Hayden replied, looking somewhat uncomfortable in his chair. "I didn't realise I'd be digging shit up for you, sorry."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Elliot shrugged. "As I said, I was planning on telling Quinn about it in the near future, and I'm mostly over it by this point." he glanced at Hayden. "Don't feel obligated, but did something happen yesterday? You're much more talkative today." 'And you're not a girl' was left unsaid.

  Hayden bit his lip. "No, its fine. I am, was, a programmer for John Deere. "

  "The… tractor company?" Elliot asked.

  "Yeah." Hayden replied. "One of the seed pods hit the building. I Initialized when a model-3 jumped through into the cafeteria while I was eating lunch and started mauling a co-worker. Jumped on it and went ape-shit with a steak knife until it stopped moving."

  He paused, rubbing one hand over the other. "I was working my way through the antithesis when the building started collapsing, like real fast. Somehow the lower levels had caught fire, then hit something explosive along the way. Things were looking pretty dire, Mynerva gave me a few options to help survive. I ended up buying some sort of biological nanites thing that mutates you, and got it into me just as the entire building finally fell in. When I woke up I was tougher, fire resistant, could eat antithesis and… for some fucking reason it gave me a sex change as well."

  Quinn winced a little at the language, but jumped on the opportunity. "I can understand the rest, but why'd it turn you into a woman?"

  A stern woman's voice intruded into the call. "The bionites in question can be effected by the subconscious whims and desires of the user."

  Quinn made a show of frowning. "So you wanted to be a girl?"

  Hayden shook his head. "I mean I've always wanted to know what it was like, but I'm not trans."

  Maia piped up from where she was collapsed into her gel-bag. "Why not?"

  He took a moment before answering. "Trans people know when they are very young, they don't just feel like it sometimes, that's just normal for dudes."

  Elliot snorted. "Nope, pretty sure I've always wanted to stay a guy."

  Quinn shrugged. "I'm Trans, and I didn't know when I was a kid, took me until I was sixteen to figure it out."

  Maia chirped up again. "21 for me."

  Quinn suddenly realized she might have just come out to Elliot, glancing sideways at him. He just gave her a relaxed smile. She realized at this point they were still holding hands and looked away, blushing slightly.

  Hayden drew into himself, his tone turning defensive. "Well I'm definitely a Man. I've told you what happened, can we change the subject."

  "Of course!" Elliot jumped in. "So, what inspired you to do the whole floating blades thing?"

  Hayden immediately launched into a long explanation of an old mesh game he used to play with a women with floating blades, and it soon transitioned into gushing over Cassie's sword. Curious about potential use cases for defending herself at close range, Quinn asked about how the blades worked, to which Hayden explained they were essentially very pointy missiles, controlled by a drone system built into his armor.

  They chatted for most of the rest of the ride, talking about their old companies, samurai tactics and other things. Before long, Irys announced that they were drawing near to their destination, so Quinn took her leave and headed for the hangar.

  She stepped though the door, finding Cassie taking up most of the space. At a mental command the front opened up, before quickly hitting the ceiling just a couple of feet above with a clang.

  "Everything alright in there?" Elliot called in from the cockpit.

  "Yeah, just scratching the paint on the inside, its fine." Quinn yelled back, before sighing and moving over to the gap made. "Can we reconfigure the front to slide down or something?"

  "Yes, though I'd recommend doing so later, as that will spend energy the nanites might use to repair essential components."

  "That's fine." Quinn grumbled, squeezing uncomfortably through the small gap and flopping into the gel pilot seat inside. "This just kind of sucks to do."

  She wriggled around to situate herself actually on her back, then let the gel slide over her to hold her in place. She initiated the cerebral link, feeling her consciousness expand to her new, four armed form. It was a nice feeling, feeling like something greater than her usual, two arms two legs squishy meat suit.

  She activated the hangar door, and the world lurched slightly as she was swung down into open air, before being rotated towards their direction of travel. Prosperity, the stuck up name for the collection of company towns up this way, lay before her. The fighting had clearly been heavier and nastier here, with the burnt out husks of vehicles and bodies of antithesis and humans alike still dotting the street. Scarce patrols wandered, but otherwise they were still empty.

  As they approached the north edge the level of devastation increased. Downtown Madison had been bad, but here more buildings were half collapsed than not. A small collection of tents and armored vehicles sat behind what was, at least compared to the city, a paltry wall manned by a concernedly few amount of soldiers. The Skyhook dropped Cassie to the ground with a clunk and then set down a little further in.

  While Hayden and Elliot were still in the process of disembarking, a sweaty faced older man in officer like clothing stormed up to Quinn, a few men in suits watching nearby.

  "About fucking time you showed up. That other Samurai barely did anything yesterday before fucking off and leaving us out to dry ."

  Quinn just stared at him, though that clearly wasn't obvious to him as he continued.

  "Come to the command tent and Ill give you your orders. Chop, chop."

  She took a breath, reminding herself to be the bigger person, before following after carefully. Elliot and Hayden jogged up and joined them as the officer power walked over to a command tent like area.

  "So." Quinn's tone was icy. "You had orders for us?"

  Glancing back, likely to confirm what Quinn had noticed in that the suits had not followed, the man's expression went from arrogant to capitulatory in a moment.

  "I'm so, so sorry about that, they threatened to cancel our contract if we didn't 'aggressively ensure Samurai action'. I'm Captain Mercier, Listen we really need your help, without it the next assault is probably going to overwhelm us, and we don't have the manpower to survive an urban combat scenario. We're beginning to run out of ammo too."

  Elliot held up a hand. "Hold on. I'm lost. You're barely holding and haven't yet evacuated while you have the chance?"

  The man wrung his hands. "Exemplary won't let us, they just keep insisting we buckle down and get results to hold the walls. They just keep getting angrier if you try to tell them any different."

  Quinn mentally facepalmed. Who the fuck was this guy, why was he leading soldiers? He seemed to have two modes - aggressive jackass and sycophantic weasel and she hated both already.

  "Fine. Where are the antithesis you're worried about."

  He jumped up and sent a map over to them. It showed the edge of Prosperity along with a series of attack vectors, labeled with the order of antithesis attacks. It did look like they'd set up a hive somewhere to the north.

  "Do we have eyes on the hive? How far out are they?" Elliot asked, tone all business.

  "No, and we don't know, sorry." he paused for a moment. "Is there any chance we could get some weapons and ammo from you before you head out, just in case?"

  Hayden stepped in. "What's wrong with your current weaponry?"

  The Captain turned to Hayden, his eyes lighting up ever so slightly. "Well its only really basic peacekeeping gear, its not designed to handle Antithesis in any real number."

  Quinn subvocalized to Irys. "Is that really true?"

  "Not in the slightest." Irys' voice dripped with disdain. "Their weaponry is perfectly adequate for basic antithesis defense, he likely wishes to sell it. He is not, however, lying about running out of ammunition."

  Quinn sighed loudly, interrupting Hayden asking what sorts of armaments the PMC needed. "We'll purchase ammunition, and ammunition alone. Will 10 points worth suffice, Irys?" The light that had grown to a greedy glint in the captains eyes died out.

  "Yes, that will be more than enough."

  "Do it, then."

  New Purchase: Human grade Ballistic Ammunition package x10

  Cost: 10. Points reduced to... 3306

  There was a thunk to the right as a large pile of crates and boxes filled with ammunition arrived.

  Quinn turned back towards the Skyhook. "Alright, lets go find and kill this hive."

  Hayden glanced over at her, then the ammunition. "Don't they need weaponry too? What if the Antithesis attacks while we're gone?"

  Elliot laid a hand on his shoulder, gently guiding him to start moving towards the craft. "If we get going and take out the hive they'll be fine, and if there's an attack we'll see it on the way and can engage it."

  Hayden shot a confused look at Elliot but said nothing further. The Captain called out from behind them "And don't forget to be back here for debriefing in two hours." Quinn pointedly didn't react.

  She realized they hadn't spun up a call between the three Samurai, so she did so while the other two loaded themselves into the skyhook. As soon as they were inside she activated the sequence to pick her up.

  "Alright, I'm getting fucking tired of people. Let's go shoot some aliens."