Anti-antithesis

I must also shout out Lucykitsune, the author of Foxfire, for the Epitaph, as well as her general assistance in my writings as a whole.

How did we miss this, Black Log? The Bestlé situation is frustrating, sure, but this?

No idea, Doma. Trig, Eye, and myself are scouring everything, and we can confirm that there has been nothing indicating any of this nonsense from before you and the others left.

Yet, the data those kids pulled indicate these plants have been active in my city for weeks, at the least. Sigh, I have to go. I want this to be your top priority going forward. You have my permission and authorization to do whatever it takes to root them out.

-Conversation between Samurai Black Log and Samurai Doma over the mars communication buoy, locked behind the highest authority level, 2057

The family gathered pretty soon, with Buddy having brought in a bunch of fried food and burgers, which was disseminated both amongst the family as well as the owls and Ravens. Cody looked around, eyes still very tired, as he took a bite of his burger. “Hey guys. Sorry for the short notice, but I had some things I wanted to go over. And by me, I mean Bahamut will be explaining for me while I take a quick nap.”

Roger patted Cody's back. “Go ahead, bro.”

Cody proceeded to curl up in his chair and passed out near instantly while the rest of us looked towards Bahamut.

“To catch everyone up to speed,...”

*********************************************

Jill turned to look at me, eyebrow raised. “You think we can trust them?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I feel as if Miranda is, at least. As far as the others? No idea.”

“While public records indicate each PMCs track record in terms of job satisfaction ratings,” Outsider spoke, “I could find nothing concrete about their commander's temperaments.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise at that admission. “Do they not even have socials? Crumbs?”

“While they do have a social media presence, they are obviously corporate controlled and managed.” She explained. “I could not even find any internal conduct reviews that said anything more than how effective they are at maintaining revenue and keeping their reviews high.”

“What about Ephemeral Gravitas?” Buddy asked, polishing off a basket of fries. “Is their information also just as unhelpful?”

Bahamut nodded. “Interestingly, yes. It seems to be a common fact amongst the upper tiers of PMCs in the city.”

Cari sighed and leaned back a bit more, squeezing me like a pillow. “And may I ask how you obtained internal conduct reviews from these PMCs and not anything else of import?”

Outsider wiped her mouth daintily, looking closer to a noble lady than the eldritch entity she cosplayed. “There are different levels of information security, and things that are to be sent or viewed by shareholders are less than secure, as these items are basically public knowledge anyways. Anything of more importance would require sneaking something physical on site to access their internal network.”

Cari nuzzled into my head. “I keep forgetting you guys grew up disregarding information privacy rules.”

Roger chuckled as he tossed a chicken tender into the air, having it land perfectly into his mouth. He went to speak, but one of the mannequins turned towards him, the threat of Baba Yaga's wooden spoon hanging physically in the air. He swallowed quickly. “We were paid specifically to disregard it, even. Has Vic told you of any of the jobs where we had to find information on close friends or acquaintances of managers or CFOs in order to use them as weak links to gain access to critical information?”

Jill scoffed loudly as she leaned back and kicked her feet up onto the war table. “Sands, I hated those missions.” She grumbled before pointing at Cari. “Don't get me wrong, we were very good at those, but they were so boring! Having to guard a sniveling civi ‘cause they had resistance to the drugs we had, or because we couldn't use drugs for the job ‘cause our injector shit itself…”

Jill trailed off as Cari's face slowly filled with concern. I shook my head as I patted her tail. “I only told her of some infiltration missions we did. I hadn't had the time to go over some of our more ‘involved’ jobs.” I exhaled heavily. “Well, that and the hospital job in Flagstaff, but that one was… necessary to talk about…”

Roger nodded in understanding while Buddy and Jill leaned back into their chairs.

“Sands below, guys.” Cody said, yawning. “I closed my eyes for a bit and this is all you have talked about?”

That got a chuckle out of some of us while Cari continued to use me as a body pillow. Cody sighed as he changed the war table screen to shouted world, rather than just New Phoenix. “If all I called you here to do was to discuss the mercenaries, this could have been an email. No, there are a few other things we need to go over, all of which are problems that can't exactly be solved with heavy ordinance. First, the closest threat, the cult. We received an update from Black Log and his ‘Brothers in Info’ and they are very concerned about what we found.”

A few pictures popped up, showing the speaker guy from the group Leman killed in the undercity as well as the guy Roger vaporized outside of town.

“Um, question?” Cari said, raising her hand slightly. “Why do these people have wires and vines connected to them?”

“That is the concerning part.” Cody said. “These things are variant model Seventeens, a parasite type that wears a human to blend in. They have three main abilities, and all of them are of the extreme risk variety. The first is a specialized pheromone, designed to cause humans to see them as normal people, brushing away their very obvious flaws, such as their mannerisms, speech, and uncanny valley effect. The second is a hypnotic effect in their voice, one designed to make humans more susceptible to verbal commands. Finally, the ability to spawn and control a special variant of Model Seven, one that doesn't kill its host or multiply itself, but rather makes the host loyal to the Seventeen and easily controllable over long distances.”

“Goddess above…” Cari whispered. I could feel her heart rate spike in anxiety.

“The good news is that anti-Seven pills are still effective against the variants, but the only protection against the others are Class I filters and noise protection.” Cody continued. “While The Family has begun the process of outfitting their agents with updated gear, it is unreasonable to outfit the entire population of New Phoenix, let alone Arizona, with such gear.”

“Not to mention,” I said, “doing so would cause mass panic, as any reason we could give would cause riots and major pushback. After all, sending out a PSA saying ‘Please wear these masks and headphones until further notice’ could only end well.”

Cari giggled at my bad sarcasm while Cody nodded. Sands, he really needed to go to bed, those badges under his eyes make it look like he was punched. “True. It's also why The Family has put this as a top priority and under the highest confidentiality possible.” The war table showed a few dots on the global map around North America, with various profiles attached. “They have called in a few more investigative type Samurai in order to run down more leads and a few ‘discrete’ combat types to work with them. Hopefully, by the time we leave for Japan, this whole mess will be over with.”

Cari tensed at the mention of our trip. As I was unable to shift around to give her a hug, I had to be content with hugging a large section of her tail, causing her to hug me tighter briefly.

“Speaking of Japan,” I said, “love, we should probably go over what you want out of the trip. While I have spoken to Susan'o and gotten their blessing to hold a meeting with them to, hopefully, end our ill fated relationship peacefully, your opinion and goals matter just as much.”

Cari took a few deep breaths to compose herself, and I could probably understand why. After all, they killed her house AI, Clive, as well as actively tried to kidnap her not too long ago. The only reason I was so calm about this was because they hadn't actually touched her yet. If they had…

“I… I have read the transcript of the conversation you had with Ronin Susan'o,” Ronin? The hell was a ronin? “And I agree that it would be better for us to try diplomacy. However, I have no intention of assisting them. Mother fled from them over twenty years ago. And from what I have heard of that family from her, they do not deserve anything from me.”

A few new files appeared on the war table. Old news articles, a few very old internal documents, and some family dynamics, with the last one obviously being written by Tsubuki, personally.

“These are some things Mother gave me a while back, in order to help me understand why she left.” Cari explained.

As we looked over the information, I could see Buddy grow agitated, yet the rest of us remained calm. Slavery, human experimentation on drug trials, a stranglehold on the local drug trade, and plenty of other acts that, I had to admit, were par for the course in comparison to what we had seen.

“So,” Roger said while looking at Cari, “you don't want to help them. Sure, that's a good bottom line. Do you want them gone, though? Erased from public record, even? Or do you want them to simply fuck off and leave you alone?”

Cari took a deep breath as she adjusted her hold on me, placing me to her side instead of on top of her. “That… I suppose that is an understandable line of questioning. Hmm… I don't know how I feel, condemning an entire family to death, not to mention the hundreds of other people that work for them. Mother didn't seem to hold any hate in her heart towards them, only sadness. And, considering how you all reacted, I don't know if these documents are reason enough for that-”

“Hm? Oh, no, these are.” Jill said, causing Cari to look at her in surprise. “Like, definitely the doctors and directors of these projects. The notes here indicate that these people were kidnapped with the intention for them to die eventually. Not to mention the drugs being circulated. This one, Zirno… Glamour, is definitely banned in North America due to them having a one hundred percent fatality rate. As are a few others here.”

Buddy nodded heavily. “While they may not still be partaking in such actions these days, these drugs have caused no end of grief for too many families and corporations. I'm sure the Keiretsu would be able to sanction them, maybe even put them under their heel.”

I leaned my head onto Cari's shoulder. “You can decide later, love. We have two months before we are set to arrive in Japan, and then a few weeks before we are scheduled to meet with the Mikosano family. You can even hold off on a decision until the meeting itself. I'm sure Roger simply wanted to have you start thinking about what you want to do, love.”

Cari nodded slowly as the sounds of eating died down. “But what about the trip itself?” She muttered. “I know Outsider and Bahamut have worked on the route, but how long will it take us to get there? And… how long do we have until we get to my relatives?”

Outsider waved her hand and two lines appeared, connecting New Phoenix to Sopporo, Japan. “There are two routes we could go, the faster route over the ocean will take us four days and five hours,” I could feel my heart rate jump at the thought. “or the longer route, which takes us over the western seaboard through Cascadia, past the remnants of Alaska, East Russia, two of China's Samurai’s provinces, and entering Sapporo from the west, which would triple the travel time and expose us to the hundreds of hives that dot the landscape along that route. Not to mention requiring permission form the dozens of cities, factions, governments, and corporations to fly past them with minimal resistance.”

“I would recommend the Ocean route,” Bahamut said, ignoring the fear I’m certain he could detect from me, “as it is both faster and safer.”

“How the fuck is the ocean safer?” I grumbled. “Who the fuck knows what's in those depths? We would have no back-up from any other Samurai should something go wrong, not to mention who knows what monstrosities exist in the sea? At least on land, we can see what's coming!”

Jill raised her eyebrow at me. “What, like how we knew what was in the two hives you found. By accident?”

Cody nodded tiredly. “Plus, the Void Watcher sensors are capable of scanning through the ocean waters far better than ground.” He smirked at me. “So we can get plenty of high quality scans of any leviathans to send to The Family, the Keiretsu, and the Australian Government. I'm sure they would be thrilled to learn more about what's in the Pacific Ocean.”

I grabbed a fistful of fries with my Collection Swarm and threw them at him, making sure they hit him. He just cackled at me as Buddy glared softly before shaking his head. “I, too, will advocate for the ocean route. We would have to leave considerably earlier to make it on time with the land-based route, which would mean our troops would not quite be ready for full deployment to protect the city once we are gone.”

Roger nodded thoughtfully. “And that's three out of five with me also voting for the ocean route. Besides, we will be in the stratosphere, miles above the ocean. No way those plants will be able to target us from that far up.”

I simply grumbled and cuddled further into Cari and her coils, causing her to giggle softly and place a kiss on my head. “It will be okay, love. Morrigan will have upgraded the armor by then, not to mention whatever other weapons she will cook up in two months time. Plus, we still need to work on hiring and vetting our staff for the Pandora. You won't be alone, and we can simply not go to an observation deck.”

Mollified for now, I glared at Cody. “Anything else, or are we done here? Jim and I have something we have to do today…”

“Actually, we do have one more thing to discuss.” He said, taking a deep drink of his fresh coffee. “We need to discuss Bestlé.

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