StarDestroyer43: No, the hardest part about being a samurai is maintaining a healthy, loving life.

  CasieBelfast: No, it is definitely fighting aliens that shit fucks you up.

  CrowSlinger31: Honestly, at this point, I believe the hardest thing for a samurai is resisting becoming a fox.

  CelestialElixer Fox? Are you high? I bet you half of them are about to have a mental breakdown.

  Dave: I mean, wanting to be fluffy might just be a coping mechanism.

  --Online samurai form discussion about samurai welfare

  Talking, that is something I can do for sure. It’s just the action of fpping your lips in a certain way to give it meaning after all. But st time I attempted to talk, both Maniac and Evelin were pretty disappointed with the result. Best to inform the wolf woman about that before she expects too much out of me.

  “I am not good.” I state.

  The wolf girl blinks at me, then tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Talking, I am not good at it.” I crify.

  “Clearly.” she says, the side of her mouth quirking upwards.

  That is good; at least she knows what to expect and won’t be disappointed with the results of this conversation. Let's hope she does not want to talk for that long; she is rather dangerous, and I would prefer to survive as far away as possible from her. To do that, I need to buy enough time for the nanites to repair my body.

  “So you are Maniac, then?” she asks, looking over me with her eyes,

  “No,” I answer, keeping it short, to not cause any misunderstanding.

  “You're not, but you have all of this equipment, which, as far as I know, belongs to Maniac.”

  “That is correct; most of this stuff belongs to her.” I helpfully supply.

  “Then why do you have it?”

  “Well, she is not using them at the moment, so I am borrowing them.”

  “And who might you be, exactly?”

  Ah, right, who am I indeed? That is a hard question, but I think I have somewhat figured out what I am.

  “I am a separate figment of thought created to protect a severely traumatised mind.”

  The wolf girl blinks “Huh. Wait, Maniac is plural? Nope, that can wait. Do you have a name?”

  Name? I don’t have one, not really. Evelin is kind of taken, and so is Maniac, so I am going to need a new name then, but what should it be? Evelin was our original name, and Maniac is a name we earned, so my name should be something equally meaningful.

  I thrust myself into our memories trying to find any name we have used before that I can use. I quickly consider Melody before rejecting it, that name is more like Maniac’s second name and I don’t want to cause any unnecessary confusion. Then I find it, when we were still a child we used to go online on hacker forums under an alias. One that we have not used since, but can be the perfect name as long as I shorten it.

  “I am Crow.” I finally answer.

  “Okay, Crow, tell me why you attacked us?” she asks, looking at the sword lying beside me.

  “I don’t understand the question, you attacked me first.” I say, looking at the sparkling pink girl standing a few meters away.

  “Right, fair enough I guess the better question would be, what are you doing here?”

  “We wanted to look at the damages we caused.” I say, nodding my head at a building that has fallen over.

  “We were counting how many people died or were just injured, though we have not found any of those yet.”

  “You did this?” she says, gesturing around.

  “Yes, that is what I said.” I confirm.

  “But why?”

  “Well, we were stuck underground with a lot of genetically altered pnts that tasted delicious, so we put down a device that could take down the shield. It was pretty expensive, actually, so it is a good thing that it worked.”

  The wolf girl stays quiet after that, her tail moving rapidly side to side in jerky movements. At the same time, the girl in pink gets closer, “So, you've been in the undercity this whole time without even sending a message?”

  “The shield blocked every message we tried to send, so I feel like we should be exempt from any guilt for that situation.”

  “Wait, hold up." The wolf girl finally comes back to us. "Did you say delicious?”

  “Yeah, they were modified for the purpose of being eaten. Most of the pnts taste good. Though I question the wisdom of making some of them taste like cheese.”

  “Why would you even eat them?” the pink girl says, crossing her arms.

  “They were genetically enhanced to taste good, so we got curious. We are up-to-date on our parasite vaccination, so I did not see any harm in it. I will say cooking them without burning them was more complicated than I thought it would be.”

  Before we can continue our conversation, if that is what you would call it, since it feels more like an interrogation, someone else arrives. With a loud arm, a red firetruck arrives. A girl steps out of the driver's seat, wearing dark blue overalls with pink lining, a gas mask slung around her neck.

  The girl runs at me, almost bowling me over, even though I was already kneeling on the ground. She grabs my face and kisses me. Her lips are soft and a bit wet, and the whole experience makes me feel a bit conflicted. It is not bad, necessarily; it doesn't hurt after all, but it doesn't feel good either. It makes me wonder why Maniac and Evelin like it so much.

  “I have missed you,” the girl says once she has released my lips, as tears start to form in the corners of her eyes. “Where have you been? I thought you were dead!”

  “Uhm, I was underground, after falling in a hole.” I say slowly.

  The girl looks at me with wide eyes. “What's wrong with you? You don’t look good.”

  I nod at the wolf girl, “Raksha over there threw me through a building.”

  The girl in my p turns around to gre at the wolf girl. The wolf girl just looks at me, confused, “Raksha?”

  “Character from the Jungle Book, since you have ears and a tail. I am pretty sure that we do nicknames. I am not that good at it yet, but it's good to practice.”

  “I see. Well, reunion aside, I would love for you to expin in some more detail why you caused all of this.”

  The girl in my p turns to me. “You did this?”

  I nod “Yeah, we were stuck in the undercity and the shield did not allow us to get out or sent any messages for help.” I look at the pink girl. “The underground was being filled with increasing numbers of antithesis, so we bought a device that could break the shield and blow up whatever machine created it, so that it wouldn't spring up again while we were evacuating the denizens of the undercity.” I summarize the whole experience.

  “Where are those people, then?” the wolf girl asks.

  “Oh, another samurai is escorting them to safety. I have a tracker on them. Do you want me to send it to you?”

  “No, that's fine as long as someone is helping them.” The wolf says.

  “Can I ask a question now?” I ask, having my own thoughts on this matter.

  “Sure, what do you want to know?” the wolf girl says

  “Why are you all here?” Getting so many Samurai in one location so quickly is kind of suspicious.

  “There was a global Samurai meeting here with about 350 samurai in attendance, and you just caused half of the city to colpse.” The pink girl supplies.

  I nod, “That's convenient.”

  “Convenient, how's that convenient?” she shouts at me.

  “Any xenos that escape will be easily killed and there are probably some samurai capable of stabilising the city,” I expin, hoping the pink girl understands the good fortune of the situation.

  “Why are you talking like that?” the girl in my p asks, looking at me with big eyes.

  “Talking like what? Is there a problem with the way I speak?” I thought I was doing pretty well at this whole talking thing, but apparently not.

  “Uhm yeah, you’re kind of emotionless, it sounds weird.” she says.

  So emotions are what the problem is, then. I quickly search my memories, but the concept of emotion still eludes me. I understand it is what my sisters use to make some, if not most, of their decisions, but how I would go about activating my own is something I don't comprehend. Then a thought hit me as I am looking at some of the memories of Maniac and Evelin talking to each other. ‘We make up for each other’s shortcomings.’

  “I see. That's a problem I can't fix right now, but I do have a solution, I think. Give me a moment.” I inform the girls.

  I close my eyes, focusing on our inner realm. There I locate Evelin, passed out in the closet I stuffed her in, when I took control of our body. I grab her, shaking her softly awake, before thrusting her in the driver's seat. With a shock to my system, my body starts to feel warm again.

  I snap open my eyes, taking in a deep breath at the sudden shock, then I notice the girl sitting in my p.

  “Cire?” I ask, a bit confused. "What happened? The st thing I remember is Magenta trying to kill me."

  Cire, for her part, blinks up at me. “You're back! How did you do that? Was that some kind of new drug? Because, I don’t think I like that one.” she says before giving me a few kisses.

  “I'm not sure. I just woke up from a really weird nap.” I say, as I look around, my gaze stopping on Magenta “You shot me?”

  Magenta at least has the good grace to look embarrassed about it as she scratches the back of her neck “Sorry, I didn't realise it was you.”

  “How? I do realise that a purple hoodie is not that unique, but still! Also, what has this other person done to deserve your ire like this?” I ask, feeling a tad bit pissed off, the earlier anger of waking up in a drug filled haze not having completely left me just yet.

  “Well, you see, when you disappeared, there were a lot of people using your outfit to commit crimes. With you not returning, and finding a body that mostly matched your specifications, we assumed you were dead. So. we basically put a bounty on anyone's head who would wear the outfit.” She expins, speaking faster and faster as she continues.

  “Well, please rescind those orders. I don’t really like the idea of being hunted for wearing my own clothes.” I say, slowly moving my sore arms to pull Cire off my p.

  “Yes, of course! I will do that right now.” Magenta says. “Still, I think it's better that you leave, there are a lot of samurai here, and I think that they're more interested in saving lives than reading any messages I send them.”

  I nod, I guess that's fair. I slowly get up, wincing at how painful everything feels. I slowly walk towards my mask, which somehow is floating mid-air, and grab it, trying my best to move it. When it does not budge, I finally remember that all our memories are recorded, and I quickly look through them.

  Wow, Crow is something, I guess. Compared to Maniac's fighting style, which feels like a combination between lethality and crazy chaotic showmanship, Crow doesn't have any of that; she just uses pure precision in an attempt to kill her target. I also find out why my mask is floating and turn to the wolf… ooh, fuck! That is Foxfire! What the fuck is she doing here? Shouldn't she be on the moon, celebrating her honeymoon or something?

  I turn to her and give her my best smile. “Do you mind?”

  She shrugs, and my mask is released from its stasis. I quickly put it on the side of my head and started to gather my weapons and put them back into my mask. They were expensive, and I would rather not buy them again. As I am gathering my thoughts on the situation, I make a quick decision.

  I turn to the other girls, “So I guess it's time for me to leave, but before I do, there is a sniper, a few buildings over, that I knocked out; someone should probably check on her. Preferably someone that isn’t me.”

  “Where are you going?” Magenta asks.

  I just shrug. “I have no clue, really. Home, maybe, if I can find a car somewhere. I am just really tired and could use some time to rex.” I say.

  “The Nachtw?chter Netzwerk has a base nearby, and you can rest there while we clean up here,so we can all go home together. I can give you the coordinates.” Magenta offers.

  “That will be nice, if they don’t mind me dropping in.”

  “I think they'd rather have you there than in this city running amok.” Magenta says with a smile.

  Suddenly, I get a ping of a location, and smile. Not too far away. I quickly walk back up to Cire and give her a kiss.“We probably have a lot to talk about, but first, go be a hero and kill some aliens for me, okay?” I punctuate the statement with another kiss. “Ooh, and if you see some of the smaller ones with pink spots on their back, save those corpses, those are the tastiest.”

  “Only if you promise me not to cause any more trouble." she says, giving me a weary smile.

  I put my hand on my heart in mock offence, “Me? Trouble? Never!” With that, I break away from her. After sending Katelyn a small status update just so she won’t be too surprised and cause a mess, I leave for the base.

  “If you want, I can tag along and make sure trouble doesn’t find you.” Foxfire offers, having recalled her army of bdes. “I do have some follow-up questions about the whole ‘Antithesis were created’ bit…”

  Her expression darkens.

  “Not that you’re in trouble!” she quickly adds, “I’m mostly just trying to figure out which company is going to be disappearing from the stock markets for good tomorrow.”

  Deep in my stomach i can feel Maniac growl. Okay i can work with this.