(Rewritten) Ch. 17 – Leah I

"Fruit pie. I have no fucking clue what they put in it, but it's the most addicting shit I've ever tasted! I can't stop eating it! It's sooo good! I fucking hate it!"

– Leah, with slices of apple pie in both hands

***

Leah had to pee. She really, really, really had to pee. The model Three she was chasing didn't care.

She didn't know why it was running away from her, with that stupid teddy bear hanging from its jaw. But she still had to catch the damn thing so it wouldn't hurt the little ones.

"STOP RUNNING, YOU SHITTY RENDITION OF A FLEA BAG!"

They'd been surprised by five Antithesis, and Leah was the only one who'd seen real ones before. So she'd acted the firstest and the fastest, and hit them the mostest. A climbing pick actually makes for a pretty nice weapon, all things considered.

As long as you hit right. The one she was chasing, the one that had her nearly peeing her pants instead of sitting in orgasmic rapture on the toilet emptying her bladder, that one she hadn't hit right.

The other four dog-like murder-plants she did, and that's why they were dead with nice big holes bored through their alien bone-wood-whatever skulls.

And this fucker, this little piece of shit, KEPT FUCKING RUNNING!

Leah ran through some fairly complex algorithms in her head. To throw or not to throw? Which one was more likely to see her pee sooner?

"GET BACK HERE, YOU AMBULATORY CACTUS!"

The thing was leading her in circles. Fucking circles. Around their campsite. She needed rope.

If she had rope, she could toss her pick and retrieve it if she missed. Or just dig out the fucking gun. The damn stupid piece of plant excretion didn't lead her the right way.

Why the fuck was it running?! Weren't they supposed to be psychotic killing machines after every bit of flesh they could find?

After the fifth circle, it dawned on her. She'd hit it across the top of its head and from the way it looked, she might've ruined its hearing. It was running exactly along the tracks she'd left during the last few circles.

Of fucking course. It was chasing her, while she was chasing it. It just didn't realize she was right behind it, barely keeping pace, because it couldn't hear her stomping after it.

Muttering curses, she slowed at the next big tree, and thought for a moment how she might best attack it on the next pass. Climb the tree and Death From Above the thing? There were some lower branches she could easily pull herself onto.

After the one attempt nearly ended with her peeing herself as she put pressure on her bladder, she just stayed at the bottom and peeked around the tree, to where she knew the murderous weed fuck would appear.

Still grumbling deprecations and shifting uncomfortably she finally spotted the beast, sniffing the ground, following its nose towards her hiding place.

As with the first four Antithesis, she positioned herself half-hidden behind the tree so that the monster could come at her only from where she was ready for it. She held the ice pick high with both hands, and focused on the right spot on its head where she'd guide the point through so that it would impale its brain.

When it finally saw her, it charged at her. When it finally jumped, just two meters away, she yelled and rammed the weapon into the model Three with a quick motion, hard enough that it flipped over, even as it bashed off of the tree.

It lost its grip on the teddy bear, the oculars of which recognized a human being in front of them, and waved an arm at Leah as it spun away. Leah waved back.

The Antithesis also sailed past Leah, and crashed a few steps away, twitching and scrabbling with its claws jerkily. She hurried to rip the pick out and drove the spike into its head one more time, killing the damn piece of mulch, just fucking die already for good.

Then she took off running through the middle of the camp, whining slightly under her breath with that tension all children are so familiar with, while the other adult and the three children they'd been taking care of during this hike, were still hiding up in a tree.

When the woman saw her and opened her mouth, Leah yelled, "Toilet!" and kept running through the camp.

She tore open the door of the potty, dropped her pants, and squatted down.

Pure bliss. Relaxation.

Blackness, vertigo, a splitting headache, and a hot poker through her hindbrain. Leah cried out in a sudden shock, confused and panicked. Almost instantly, the pain, blindness, and heavy wooziness was gone again, and she heard a polite little girl's voice chime through her mind:

System Initialized!

Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Ypsilon. I will assist you to uplift humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!

Rise, Leah Neverstrait, and become a protector of the weak!

Still holding her head, Leah barely kept her peeing balance as she gave a bewildered, "Huh?"

Hello. My name is Ypsilon. I think I'll shut up until you're done. I'm very polite, after all!

"Uh. What?"

It only took her a second to catch up. Leah wasn't slow, or dumb. She'd always been a quick study. Very quick. She found herself laughing her ass off, urinating in a rickety bathroom stall in the middle of a forest, with a voice in her head and a message she'd heard of before. She was a samurai now. In a fucking toilet.

Who the fuck would become a samurai whilst nearly pissing themselves?!

***

Three months later, Leah was back in New Montreal, when the incursion happened. She didn't have many points and stuck to protecting a few children hiding in a small shelter. They were on the very outskirts of the invasion and didn't see much action.

She'd spent the very few hundred points from that, from the initialization freebie, and from the daily allowance, on a cybernetic eye to replace one of the two she'd lost to an ambushing model Four, a cheap aug that was at least more reliable than her own, and a few weapons. Enough to keep herself and her charges safe.

But she wasn't really making much progress.

Just enough for some to realize that she'd become a samurai. Just enough for the wrong sort of people to notice.

The day that she and the children finally left the shelter and Leah entered her home again, alone, a taser caught her by surprise. Only a split second later, just one panicked beat of her heart, blackness took her with the sting of a needle in the nape of her neck.

***