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  - Ad for Parrot.AI, aired ten days after acquiring BetterHelp

  By the time we had gotten the new carburetor in the bike, the sun had long since set and we were left in the rapidly cooling darkness of the desert. The group said that they were already overdue on the shipment and hence lost their commission fees, so they decided to stay the night in the desert with me. It made sense; who would willingly pass up time with a Samurai?

  We had turned it into a party of sorts, me bringing them back to my campsite and having us all huddle around my synthetic campfire. I had been looking for an opportunity to use that thing anyways, so getting a chance to cook sausages and talk shop with someone was a great excuse to do so. I liked my solitude, but actually speaking with a real human being face-to-face was something sorely missed.

  “So, what brings y’all out to the desert?” I asked, slowly rotating my marshmallow-clad skewer over the flames.

  “Work,” the tall one said. Stephen, I think his name was. “Have to deliver some important documents down to Phoenix from Denver. Some people still love having physical documentation after all, with any script kiddie or Sam’ being able to leak digital info and all that. We made a pit stop in New Salt Lake for a different order, then it was straight south from there.”

  “Just you three? I can tell you just north of here was swarming with xenos not two days ago, mainly because I was the one who cleared it.”

  “Mmm, just another trial in the life of a dust runner and all that.” He took a sip of a can of beer, one that he had pulled out of his own bike’s cooler. “At least Mauvika’s got sharp eyes so we can avoid all the nasties.”

  The woman in question took a much heavier chug of her own beer, and when she came out of her can for air it was hard to miss her face being noticeably more flush. “Y’know, I’ve always hated the name ‘dust runner’. Always comes off so…dystopian.”

  “Better than the others,” Diego replied. “Courier’s ok, but I would never want to be called a delivery boy.”

  “Preachin’ to the choir here regarding names,” I said, moving my close-to-carbon marshmallow out of the heat. “Out of all the cool Sam’ names I could have gotten, Death Punch had to be the one that stuck. I’m getting used to it, but…bleh.” I stuck out my tongue.

  “Being a Sam’ must be cool, though, killing xenos and talking with your dope ass AI and shit.”

  The silver skull in my lap took that moment to respond to the compliment. “By most internal metrics, at least using data on Earth, being a Vanguard is near-unanimously agreed to be ‘extremely cool’.”

  “It is, bro! Way cooler than this job. It's hard to be excited by it when the whole family is in the business.”

  “Family business? “ I asked. “So like your family owns it and stuff?”

  “No no no, family in the business,” Diego corrected. “Different thing. Company is owned by some white guy in Calgary. We all just got in it through each other. It’s uhh…nepotism, I think it's called.”

  “Nepotism isn’t good, though.”

  He smiled. “It’s good for me.”

  Mauvika gave a snort. “Well, at least you don’t have to go by the name Death Punch all the time. How much of a simp for anime girls do your parents have to be to willingly name their kid after one? Fuckin’ Genshin.”

  “Could be worse,” Stephen replied. “You could be that kid whose billionaire father named them some incomprehensible math shit.”

  “True enough. Plus leaning into the whole look has earned me some interesting…opportunities.” She made an explicitly lewd motion with her hands. “Helps that this job keeps me looking decent.”

  “Whatever pays the bills and helps get your fills, I guess.” I smooshed the marshmallow against the square of cracker and chocolate and turned it into the unholy dessert abomination called a s’more. I took a very sloppy bite of it, and my mouth was assaulted by the avalanche of sweet, processed flavors. I didn’t hate it; far from it, in fact. “Whoa, this is actually pretty good.”

  Diego gave a nod, the marshmallow fuzz remaining on his lip from his own mess of melted sugar. “The real ones are goated, yeah. None of that fake flavored stuff matches it.”

  A ping came up in the corner of my vision combined with a soft ringing. Alongside appeared a green triangle as the ID for the caller, one that I recognized immediately.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Oh shit, gotta take a call real quick,” I ended up blurting out, hastily standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

  Stephen gave a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry, we won’t do anything you wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah, and that list is much shorter nowadays.”

  Sauntering off into the darkness of the desert, I hustled out far enough to make sure no one would hear what I was saying, just in case. I doubted he would call me with something confidential directly, but I may as well treat it with respect. Unless this was kind of a courtesy call, in which case I would feel pretty stupid.

  I accepted the call and immediately was greeted by the enthusiastic, slightly nasally voice of Phoenix’s resident hermit. “Yo, DP!”

  “Yo, Trig.” The Samurai liked to shave down his name in casual conversation, I’d learned, as he thought the full name of Trigonometry was a couple syllables too long and not exactly easy on the tongue.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he asked. “You took a little longer than usual to respond.”

  “Kind of, but nothing pressing. The group can wait a few minutes for a work call.”

  “Made some friends, did you?”

  “Yeah, met them out in the desert today after one of their hoverbikes broke down. We fixed it up, and now we’re just chillin’ by a fire roastin’ marshmallows and stuff.”

  “Mmm, sounds nice. I really should go camping sometime, it’s been too long. But I’d have to make time, and the megacity doesn’t exactly like giving out vacation days for our ilk, y’know.”

  He cleared his throat. “Anyways, onto the reason I called you. First off, thanks for taking care of those hives up north. The cleanup crews haven’t reported any issues past the usual Model Three or Four that slipped through, although you beat down those hives way faster than expected so they are stretched a bit thin. Obviously we have to handle them before they get too old, but you can take a few days on those if you really need to. They’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  I gave a shrug. “Yeah, but I needed something to do on a Tuesday.”

  I heard a huff through the line, but it came off more entertained than anything. “Fair enough. But what I really called you about wasn’t the hives.

  “You see, every year a high-tier Samurai by the name of Scurvy likes to swing by for a day or two for a little bit of a meet-and-greet, usually with all the new Sams around Phoenix and the like. It’s kind of turned into its own event actually, which we’ve just started calling Scurvy’s Soiree. Most of the old dogs don’t ever show up for it since it's a little too…flamboyant for their taste, but a bunch of the younger guns tend to make an appearance.”

  Scurvy. I rolled that name around my tongue, and while pirate imagery followed I couldn’t put a face to the name. “Is Scurvy famous?”

  “Yes, but less celebrity status and more ‘number nine on the list of Samurai that corporations never want to fuck with’. She’s Tier Four, and mid-high Tier Four at that. That name isn’t for show either; when she isn’t sailing the seas and blasting ocean hives to smithereens, Scurvy’s probably finding a new way to torture a jackass CEO.”

  “Sounds like a weird Sam’ to have come out to the middle of the desert though.”

  “Phoenix is apparently her hometown. Must have initialized in that real nasty incursion back at the cusp of the thirties, back when the old city got wrecked. Guess you never forget your roots.”

  “I get that. So what, you want me to come to this little party of hers?”

  “Essentially. Scurvy really likes rubbing shoulders with the new initializations, which over the last year have only proven to be you, Bone Hawk, and Staccato. The latter has very fervently declined, saying he needs a little more time to get situated in Orson, but Bone Hawk has confirmed his attendance."

  So Kevin was going. If this was just some random get-together of Samurai I didn’t know that would be a hard no from me, but with Kevin there I could afford to spare some time for it. Mostly I just wanted to check up on him, make sure he was doing alright. His journey as a Samurai had been a tumultuous one, between Targ and everything else, so lending an ear wasn’t exactly a bad idea. “So when is it?”

  “Tommorrow.”

  I unintentionally groaned. “Jeez, really fond of giving advanced notice, aren’t we?”

  “Well, you aren’t exactly doing anything tomorrow, are you?”

  He got me there. “...Touché. Send me the coordinates and I’ll pop over I guess.”

  “Great, because the other option was having Scurvy drag you there kicking and screaming.”

  “She’d have to catch me first, dumbass.”

  “You severely underestimate the strength of Tier Four Samurai. See you there.”

  The line cut, but I didn’t fail to catch that last comment, that the recluse himself was coming out to the Soiree. Guess those types do have to actually get some sunlight eventually, and now I was looking forward to seeing the man in the flesh.

  I walked back to my little posse, still chatting away near my fire and now sporting a significantly higher amount of discarded beer cans in the area. I’d have to ask them to clean that up later. Nothing about the request from Trig was particularly confidential, at least in my opinion, so I felt cool with sharing the news. “Well, I guess I’m going to a party tomorrow.”

  “Very nice, very nice,” Diego replied, beckoning me to continue to divulge.

  “Involves some big-shot Sam’ from out of town named Scurvy.”

  Mauvika snapped her fingers, coming to a realization. “I’ve heard of that, yeah. It’s a pretty big deal, even if media companies are basically unable to get any coverage on it. Heard from a friend of a friend that there’s always a lucky Sam’ that gets to even fight Scurvy at one point during the event.”

  Oh? That part definitely caught my ear. “Has anyone ever beaten her during that?”

  A snort. “No.”

  If there were still a way for my knuckles to audibly crack, I would have done so at that moment. “That just sounds like a challenge.”