Stray Cat Strut-Chapter Twenty-Two - Shy-Rise Living

Chapter Twenty-Two - Shy-Rise Living

"The definition of hikikimori is... hikikomori, a Japanese phenomenon, describes a condition of extreme social withdrawal where individuals, often young adults, withdraw from society and remain isolated in their homes for extended periods, sometimes for months or years.

S-so I'm not one of those, because, uhm... I go out. Sometimes."

--Shy, during her first and last live stream, 2056

***

I took a quick shower, with the water on cold. It was refreshing and I needed it to get my thoughts straight.

Almost as soon as I was done, I got into some clean samurai clothes, then jumped back into my power armour. The last thing I did before I was out the door was give Lucy a parting kiss. "Don't be gone too long, we do have school in the morning," she said.

"Yeah, alright," I replied.

It wasn't until I was in the Bastion that I realized I had something of an issue. "So... I'm supposed to check up on Shy, but where does she even live?" I asked.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't be able to tell you. There are polite restrictions preventing me from divulging the location of another vanguard, even if you were to suddenly ask nicely. However, Deus Ex's AI, Lynus, left us an itinerary but also a list of known housing locations. Some of the Vanguard have been informed that you'd be meeting them, including Shy.

"Oh," I said. "Well, that's moderately convenient. I'm still on the fence about doing this. I want to show the little gremlin up by not following her script."

That's well within your rights. She doesn't have authority over you.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Well, except the authority that comes from orbital bombardment, but I don't see her actually doing that. Like... fuck, I think I'll go along with it, because some of the people on that list I actually care for, you know? Shy... eh, she was nice enough, I don't mind checking up on her, but Crackshot? Tankette, even Princess and Knight? Gros Baton needs someone to kick him in the pants, and Hedgehog needs someone to remind him to live a little."

Then do this as an excuse to meet with allies instead of as a chore.

I nodded. Yeah, that was a nice way of framing it.

"Okay. Shy's address," I said. "Can you punch it into the navigation thingiewhatsit?" I asked as I took a seat in the pilot's chair. It shifted to accommodate my larger size in the power armour. The Bastion rumbled out of the parking garage and slowly rose up and over the city's traffic. I glanced at the navigation screen to my side and hummed.

Shy apparently lived near the city centre, where a group of nine big residential buildings were clumped together. They were some of the older mega buildings in New Montreal, but also pretty nice places to live.

The upper quarter or so of those buildings were basically their own sort of high-end living space, with bridges linking them all together. There were luxury shopping things and hospitals and all sorts of shit.

I'd seen some Living in Luxury style reality TV with Lucy that covered some people living in the topmost floors, in the big penthouses.

The rest of the building was... normal megabuilding. Maybe a bit old, but there were only so many ways to cram ten thousand homes into one building.

I flew across the city, then started to look for a place that could accommodate the Bastion. It was a bit big, but there were some parking garages in and around the mega building that Shy lived in.

It wasn't until I plugged in her actual home address that I realized something, though. Her address was in the single-digit floors. On a building as large as one of these, that was basically the basement.

Shaking my head, I moved to one of the top-floor parking garages. It was a high-end one, for the rich CEO types that lived in one of the penthouses. I flew the Bastion in past armed security and luxury super cars and found a spot not too far from an elevator bank.

"Alright, here goes," I muttered to myself as I stood up. I wondered if I should go in armed but... this was a house call, and Shy presumably knew about it. So I kept it to just my Trench Maker. I even left the Void Terminus behind.

The ramp on the side of my ride lowered, and I stepped out to be greeted by an unarmed security guard who looked nervous, despite his armour and gear. "Hello, ma'am," he said. "I've been told to welcome you to Parking Level Elite Premium Five. And also to ask if you're here to kill any of our VIPs?"

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"Huh? Nah, I'm here to visit the samurai who lives here."

The man blinked. "There's a samurai who lives in this building?" he asked.

"Never you mind that," I said. "Keep an eye on my ride for me, will you? Point-defence is on, so you might wanna let any rich kid who wants to take a selfie know that it's at their own risk."

"Y-yes ma'am," he said.

Poor rent-a-cop, I almost felt bad for him. I patted him on the shoulder on the way by, then made my way over to the nearest elevator.

Surprisingly, it led all the way through the building. I was used to seeing sets of floors separated with their own overlapping elevators, that way no one from the basement could just ride up to the CEO's front door and knock to ask questions without zig-zagging past a few security checkpoints. The building might have been showing its age. There were definitely signs. The floorboards were scuffed, and the ad screens in the elevator didn't all match. They were all functional though, so someone was paying for maintenance.

The ride down was quiet once I unleashed the full might of Myalis on the jingle-generators and shut them all up.

The elevator dropped, and dropped, the floors going from triple digits to double, then finally slowing down to a stop at the single digit mark. The doors opened, and I stepped out into a well-lit corridor, with... more or less clean walls and flooring that wasn't peeling too much.

The space was definitely residential. As I stepped out, I saw one door that had been left open leading into a tiny little apartment space. A living room, a kitchenette, a bathroom without a door, and a bed. All with a handful of square feet to spare and not a single window.

There were stenciled door numbers next to every entrance, so I started to follow them, slowly climbing towards the number for Shy's apartment.

I was kind of worried. What if Shy, who'd apparently been a samurai for two years, lived in a little dump of an apartment? I mean, more power to her, I supposed, but... it felt wrong for a samurai to be living in the dirt.

Not that we were so special we deserved ivory towers but... I don't know. I'd always pictured samurai alongside super celebrities, only instead of being made in Italy, their supercars were alien-made.

A poor samurai? I mean, I supposed it was possible if they were starting off. I was a poor-as-fuck samurai in the first week or so, but to stay poor? That would require some effort.

Shy didn't strike me as someone who'd want to stay that way, though.

I noticed as I went along that there were gaps in some walls where doors had been. They were covered by plaster and repainted, but some of the painting was cheap and I could tell where the doors had been.

And then I rounded a couple of corners and came up to Shy's door.

It looked like any other, though she had a doormat on the floor. Leave the Package and Run.

"Cute," I said before knocking.

The door opened almost as soon as my suit's knuckles touched it, and I flinched, almost reaching for my gun, but... well, there was Shy, standing in the entrance.

She was out of her samurai gear, mostly. A girl with long black hair and a pair of comfortable looking pyjamas with a loose top. The loose top had my 'logo' on it. She also wasn't wearing shoes, but I supposed that wasn't too weird in her own home. "H-hello," she said before making a weird flat-palm up gesture with her right hand.

Wait... was that 'welcome' in sign?

"Yo," I said.

"Come in! Please," she said before darting back and out of the entrance. "I... bought food. Uhm... I can't cook. But there's refreshments." She gestured to the side where there was a table. And it was covered in seven different flavours of soft drinks and a lot of snacks. Did she rob a vending machine?

The entrance to her place was... way larger than I expected it to be, actually. It looked like she had two floors. Even if they were the squished low-ceilinged floors of a mega building, having two of them and the space to leave one open made the room seem larger.

"Nice place," I said.

"Thank you," Shy said. And then she didn't say anything else. She just stood there, in her entrance room, barefoot on faux-marble floors, staring at me.

Why did I agree to this?

***