If you want more to read, consider joining my Patreon! Or check out my other original works:

  Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) - OngoingFluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) - OngoingLove Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) - Completed!Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) - HiatusCinnamon Bun (A wholesome LitRPG!) - OngoingThe Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) - Volume Two Complete!Lever Action (A fantasy western with mecha!) - Volume One Complete!Heart of Dorkness (A wholesome progression fantasy) - Completed!Dead Tired (A comedy about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) - OngoingSporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) - OngoingPast the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the pnet, and then try to fix it) - Completed!Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) - Volume Two Completed!Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) - Completed!The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) - Completed!Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) - HiatusQueen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) - Completed!No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) - OngoingSave Scumming (A time-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - The Guard RoutineGmazon was getting used to the routine, which felt kind of dangerous. Endgames weren't joking matters. They should never be something that someone was used to. Yet here she was, stifling a yawn even though she'd gotten a solid eight hours of sleep already.

  She was, at the moment, kind of alone.

  Kind of, because just a few metres back was the Base. The pce they were currently working hard to defend against... so far, nothing at all. The Base had people in it. And around it. And above it. She suspected that there might be people below as well.

  The Base had an item that they needed to keep safe. The item was Anomalous. The capitalization on the A in Anomalous was audible. She'd seen two teams of scientists move into and out of The Base already, and she'd only been here for a few days.

  She, of course, was so low on the totem pole that she wasn't supposed to know anything about the strange item held within, but for all that their security was pretty good, there were still tongues that wagged.

  So far, she'd pieced together a few things. First, the Anomalous whatever didn't like having items too simir to it nearby.

  She didn't know what that meant, but it freaked some scientists out.

  Second, the room it was held in had to be retively open. That seemed to make some sense to her, in a weird game-logic kind of way. At least, it did when she used the third thing she'd picked up and then used some rampant specution to make some unsubstantiated guesses.

  The third thing couldn't be moved by anyone, unless they intended to steal it.

  She'd discovered that one talking to a friendly (and a bit cute) HRF guard the other day. During the first couple of days of the Endgame, once they found the Anomalous item and started to guard it and study it, they'd brought in a known thief and asked them to move it. They had, easily. Apparently, anyone else trying to move the thing might as well try to move a mountain.

  Only there were a few heroes who might be able to give a mountain a solid shove, so maybe that was a bad analogy.

  In any case, she'd taken all of that together, and the skills of the Endgame, and all the kind of work they were doing, and pieced it together into a sembnce of what was going on.

  Their side, or whatever, was supposed to keep the Anomalous item safe. The bad guys were meant to steal it.

  Now, if only they'd bloody-well get to it.

  Gmazon reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She rubbed at her eyes a little, then regretted it when it made her eyes itch.

  At least trying to rub the pain away was something to do.

  She sighed, then looked around. She was stationed on the east side of The Base. There were heroes on all sides, and a small team within. Enough heroic firepower to cause problems, all bored out of their minds.

  They weren't allowed anything fun. They'd been allowed audiobooks or music on the first couple of days, but apparently some paper-pusher thought that it might distract them from the work of standing in one pce and injuring their feet by staying too still for too long.

  She wasn't even tired enough to nod off!

  Gmazon checked the time on her HRF-issued smart watch (it wasn't fashionable, but it was kind of cool), then she pulled a walkie-talkie from her hip and clicked it open. "Gmazon here. Anything to report?"

  "Quiet."

  "Nothing west-side."

  "South side is boring as fuck," the st reported. That had come from Wrap-Up, who was turning a bit grumpy with nothing going on.

  "Keep the chatter to a minimum," a dull voice said. One of the HRF agents listening in on their line. "Do you have anything to report, Hero Gmazon?"

  Gmazon sighed, then pressed in the tab. "Negative. East side is clear," she said.

  Well, that had been a nice twenty-second diversion. She hoped that chatting a little like that wouldn't get a bck mark on her file. She figured it wouldn't. They had to know that this job was about as dull as could be.

  She'd take working in retail again over this, and that was saying something.

  "Come on, something happen, please," she muttered.

  The world didn't seem keen on answering her wishes. Not for the next two hours. She started to walk, pacing left and right slowly, eyes darting here and there.

  There had been training for observation and guard work, given by some serious-faced sergeant. It was a hyper-abridged bit of the kind of training soldiers received before going on guard duty. Mostly it involved keeping awake, pacing a little when the time came for it, and scanning in a right-to-left pattern because that was apparently more efficient for catching sight of things.

  She was just considering pying with her gear a little, or maybe trying to see if she could do anything with her powers that wouldn't be too noisy and obvious, when she noticed something.

  Squinting, Gmazon tried to catch sight of whatever that had been again.

  It had looked like a shadow had shifted. Which was... not too unusual. There were HRF trucks moving around all day long around The Base, and they often had lights and such that would cast long shadows... at night. It was—she gnced at her watch—1648. Almost five-PM, for people that didn't know how to read stupid military time. It was a little overcast at the moment, but it wasn't dark.

  She grabbed her walkie-talkie again, and brought it close to her mouth before pausing.

  A needless check in wouldn't be a bck mark, but a false report? She wasn't sure. Probably not? How reasonable were the officers at the HRF?

  How delicate was her reputation at the moment?

  Chewing her lower lip, she considered what to do, then lowered her hand, then brought it back up. "Gmazon here, east-side. I think I might have seen something. Can't confirm."

  It took three long seconds for someone to reply. "Oh shit, really?" Wrap-Up asked.

  "No needless chatter," the droning officer on the line said. "Gmazon, report."

  "Very low certainty, uh, sir," she said. "I think I saw a shadow moving in a way that was... uh, not normal?"

  "Copy that. Bizarre movement of shadows."

  "Yeah," Gmazon said. The Base was pced in a retively open space. The nearest buildings were offices, mostly. A dental clinic, an old computer repair shop, and boring offices, some converted from older brick-walled houses, but most of them were modern buildings. The space around The Base one road on one side and parking lots on the others. There weren't any buildings within spitting distance, though the southern side was considered the worst. It looked right at a brick wall with no windows or anything.

  There was a reason Wrap-Up was there at the moment.

  "Gmazon," the officer said, making her jump. "We don't have anything on our recordings."

  "Alright," she said. "I might have been jumping at shadows."

  "Understood, Hero Gmazon. We'll put a note in your file to reduce total guard time to a more... manageable amount."

  She sighed, lowering her arm. There it was. The stupid punishment. If she could even call it that. It wasn't like she wanted to be here standing around and doing a fat lot of nothing. But having her guard time cut rankled. It was an insult, of a sort. A weak one, but still.

  Plus, it gave Wrap-Up something to needle her about. He would, too, the jerk.

  The rest of the evening passed both quickly and very much not. Every minute felt like a crawl, but when she tried to think back, she could only remember the passing of hours as a vague blur.

  Endgames were supposed to be dangerous, and exciting, and risky.

  She was relieved by a normal, human guard, a man in a clean HRF uniform with a rifle on a sling over his back. By all means, she should have returned to The Base, but that shadow thing bothered her still.

  "I'll be going on a small patrol," she said. "I want to see if I was just imagining things. Maybe there's something reflecting the light in a weird way? It might lead to more false-positives ter."

  There was a pause before someone replied. "Understood. Keep your line open. Do you want backup?"

  Gmazon grit her teeth. She didn't. But that wasn't the correct answer. "It's against protocol to head out alone, isn't it? Yeah, if there are some troopers with nothing better to do, I could use the help."

  "Sending a squad over now."

  "Hope you find something," Wrap-Up said.

  It took a solid five for the squad to show up, and she could tell that they were both unenthused about finding anything, and that they were happy to be out of The Base.

  She decided to get things over with quickly, and lead them in the direction she'd seen the shadows.

  The next twenty-odd minutes were spent walking around and looking for signs that something was strange.

  The only thing she found were some old wrappers.

  Gmazon picked one up. It was a candy wrapper. That was all she had to show for this. There went her rep.

  ***

  A note from RavensDaggerThe Stray Cat Strut Rolepying Game Kickstarter is Liiiive!

  Link: https:///projects/ravensdagger/hope-punk-a-stray-cat-strut-tabletop-rolepying-game

  Hope//Punk is a project I've been working on since te March! It's a full ruleset for a tabletop rolepying game, with custom rules that allow you to make a Samurai, and more importantly, all the gear that comes with that role! (It's a gear-based progression system, and it's really neat!) All tied together with a pretty bow on top!

  There's lore, there's background and catalogues and there's all sorts of weird stuff going on! Legit though, it's been a ton of fun to py, and now it's live for everyone to grab!

  The game is FREE. The Kickstarter is to cover the costs that went into the artwork (there's a lot of it!) and to gauge interest in future modules and the like! If you want to check out Build 0.71 of the game (the somewhat unfinished pre-Kickstarter build) you can find it here: https://ravensdagger.itch.io/hopepunk

  I... was going to make this post begging for people to join up, but the Kickstarter reached its goal 7 minutes after I unched it, which is wild.