(Rewritten) Ch. 4 – Samurai Toy

"But sometimes our newbies get a little lucky.

You survived whatever crap you went through, you have enough points to buy something good right off the bat. Everything's weirdly quiet and you're in this isolated bubble where nothing's going to mess with you.

When that happens, the first toy's actually a little special. I got lucky like that, but it's rare."

– Road Rash, during an interview with Samulyfe, January 2049

***

An ugly, broken splat just behind me had me whirling around, and there I found my answer. A Three had impacted the ground, and its head and shoulders had…exploded. The reek of cut grass and moldy juices rammed itself through my nostrils.

The thing was only a meter and a half away.

I stumbled away, and jumped when a second beast fell where I'd stood. It hit the asphalt fangs first and its jaws split open, pancaked against the ground. I heard the pling of teeth ricocheting against metal as they broke off and were flung free to hit the side of an abandoned car.

Above! my brain screamed.

My head jerked up and adrenaline spiked my heart. I saw the gullet of yet another Three as it plunged towards me. The ghastly, staccato echo of my spine shattering rushed through my memory and I threw myself to the side.

I automatically curled around the rifle and rolled as I had hundreds of times before. The knee and foot of the Sleeve scraped across the ground with the momentum of my lunge, as I came up again stabilized my entire frame to brace the gun.

The tiny mound of loose cartridges that the little girl had made for me earlier was right in front of me, and before I'd even processed it, my hand had already grabbed and chambered one.

My spine crawled from the sound of alien limbs breaking against the ground. It made me want to hyperventilate. But the muzzle was right where I needed it to be, and the bright ringing of a supersonic bullet smashed through my mind instead, and pushed away the memory of my spine shattering as it broke the skull of the monster just like the fall had its legs.

I knew this. I knew my gun, I knew the fight. If I can see 'em, I can kill 'em. If I can move, I can hurt 'em, said my childhood voice.

My hand automatically grabbed the bolt and pulled it back and up to eject the spent brass. The chamber's extractor claws engaged with the casing's rim, and the ejector pushed the hollow tube through the port, to plink away. And as I had so many times before, I shoved the next round into position and let the bolt chamber it.

And still I had to force myself to breathe through the echo of shattering bones.

That'll take me a while to get over, huh?

I sighed, stood up, and looked around myself. I studied the divot and reassured myself that the rifle was in proper shape. Tension flowed from my shoulders, and there were no hints of more aliens on any roofs.

Better get under cover, though.

I quickly picked up the last box and the rifle's old case, and moved them into the ground-level corridor of my condo and onto the bottom stairs. I lifted the box's lid and admired the adapting sidearm, before turning it around in my hands.

It was boxy, all angles and interlocking panels. Very compact. The whole thing was about thirty centimeters long, and the barrel poked out for the last ten of those. No stock, no grip, no trigger and I didn't see any rifling on the inside.

It did have a square scope that I'd expect to see on a much larger weapon…with an attachment point on top of it?

Tynea did say the Sentinel was supposed to attach to my rifle, I thought, my eyebrow rising.

I turned the weapon over multiple times. Still no trigger, or anything that I could actuate.

Still. Cool as fuck, I grinned. I'm a samurai, bitch!

"Wow, okay, how do I use this exactly?"

Please swap your current scope with the Sentinel. It will ease explaining it.

I hummed, took my rifle, and removed the scope as well as the red dot before placing both into the dinged-up case. Three hinges were a bit bent and the lid didn't close properly anymore.

Probably gonna have to replace the case, huh?

I grabbed the Sentinel again and found I only needed to touch the Sentinel to the rifle's rail for it to lock down.

And then, I held a rifle with a square tube of a scope that had a metal tumor slightly smaller than itself on top, from which a short barrel stuck out, parallel to the rifle's much longer barrel.

The panels at the bottom of the scope started shifting. A thin arm stretched down next to the rifle's trigger and copied its shape.

That'll be your trigger for the Sentinel. Try guiding it to where you'd like it. The Sentinel is set to full automatic fire, and currently unloaded.

I tugged on the new trigger and it stretched like putty.

"Huh. Um…"

I tilted my head as I regarded the thing. Then I massaged it with shaping strokes to be right below that of the rifle and formed it such that it was out of the way of any action on the top trigger.

When I assumed a shooting stance to test the setup, I heard a quiet, electric crackle and found the squishy metal had turned stiff. It made a satisfying click when I depressed it.

"Yup," I nodded, "that looks good."

Barely had I spoken, and a second arm from the Sentinel to attach itself to the rifle's bolt. This one didn't mold itself, though. It was just a tiny, mechanical robot lever-arm. It looked a bit like one of those archaic steam engine rods that turned the wheels.

You will no longer need to chamber manually. The Sentinel is designed to manage your primary weapon for you, which should drastically increase your rate of fire.

Uff. That was good, but also, the heat would only build up faster. Hmm.

I scratched my chin in thought, but the foreign feeling of the Sleeve distracted me until Tynea continued speaking.

The magazines I ordered are thrice as large as your old ones. It will even switch the magazines for you. Please take the magazines for the rifle and press them to whichever side of the Sentinel you'd like it to switch the rifle's magazines from.

I picked up another two magazines and held them to the new scope's right side. The thing clamped them both to itself with short metal claws that had previously made up part of the paneling, just like the little robot arm. I figured they wouldn't get lost, since I couldn't wiggle them even a little.

Now touch the magazines for the Sentinel itself to its top, please.

When I did so, both were grabbed and emptied into the top panels. These kept shifting taller as more and more rounds were fed into the gun, until the emptied magazines themselves were pulled in and…shredded?

"Uh?!"

The Sentinel cost you eighty points. That is extremely expensive for a sidearm's purchase. And worth it. It will gather all spent brass and turn it into new projectiles for itself. Because brass is not magnetic, it needs to add steel structure from the recycled magazines to accelerate the brass rounds. The Sentinel's caliber is adaptable, allowing you to shoot anything up to forty millimeters. It can fire cartridges, but also accelerate inert rounds via electro-magnetism.

"It's a railgun?!"

A small one, yes, and a coilgun, too. The barrel is not particularly long, as such the magnets' combined output is limited. But it'll spray the inert rounds like a shotgun, three thousand per minute. Great for taking out large numbers of model Ones. It's enough to shear smaller tentacles off of a model Four, or push a model Three away by virtue of mass, but you'd have to get very lucky to get a kill on them.

"And forty millimeters? Can this thing lob grenades?"

Yes, though you only have access to various explosive bullets from your ammunition catalog at this time. For fifty points you could unlock one of the Class I Single-Use Explosive Devices catalogs for proper grenades and still have twenty-three points left.

"Um. Earmark that. I want to see what those bullets can do first."

As you wish. Please be aware that the rounds with guidance will necessarily have less space left for a payload. Bad for primitive explosive payloads, but compatible with some of those esoteric options I mentioned earlier.

"Okay. We'll get to those as I need them. My timer tells me I've been down here for ten minutes, and I've barely seen any Antithesis. Is the incursion already over?"

I'm afraid not. If you gained vantage again, you would see that your nemesis has only focused its forces towards the larger city.

"Oh, okay." I got up and moved to climb the steps. I was entirely focused on adjusting to the dulled ersatz-proprioception Sgt. Stabbington fed me, so…it didn't hit me until I opened the door at the top that I was going to be up high.

My breath caught in my throat with a strangled gasp and I nearly slipped off the stair backwards. Sweat slicked my face and I felt faint.

Aden? Your vitals indicate a strong stress reaction.

"Uwww…" I shook, shut the door, turned around, and sat down on the top level of the stairs, put my elbows on my knees and covered my face.

After breathing deeply for a few seconds, I said, "I think I might've developed a bit of a problem with heights. Might have something to do with jumping off a roof." My arms shook again.

***