“Uhhhh… nice wings?” I said blankly. I wasn’t sure what else to say to a samurai who just flew to a heavily armed battleship without an invitation and no apparent sense of self -preservation.

  “Thanks! I made them myself!” Spark replied as the mechanical wings on her back shifted a bit before disappearing with a puff of purple smoke, leaving behind a thin, streamlined backpack with hazard stripes down the sides. She then pushed up her goggles before producing a pair of round-rimmed glasses and sitting them on her nose.

  “Can I come in?” she asked expectantly.

  “I wasn’t expecting guests,” I grumbled. “I haven’t even had a chance to shower yet this morning.”

  “Ahhh… sorry,” she mumbled, her ears and tail drooping sadly. “I guess I could come back later…”

  She looked so downcast I couldn’t bring myself to actually send her away.

  “It’s fine,” I sighed. “I was planning on contacting SkyFire later today and asking her to set up a meeting with your biology expert. I guess you can help me with that instead.”

  “Biology expert?” Spark asked, cocking her head to the side.

  “I’m here about the anti-antithesis trees,” I clarified. “The ones that are able to detect antithesis hives and warn us about them, or something.”

  “Oh, those! I can definitely do that. My team developed those!” Spark exclaimed.

  I stared at her for several seconds. “You did?”

  “Mhmm! Besides engineering, ecology is a bit of a passion of mine? It’s a bit of a ‘side effect’ for what I actually was trying to create.”

  The girl paused to smooth out the fur on one of her ears.

  “I was mainly trying to make a proper ecological replacement for the countryside surrounding the city? Both for repairing the environment and for growing healthy food for everyone.” As the girl spoke, she started pacing back and forth in front of the hatch. “Naturally I needed to preempt the Antithesis, so I dove into some of the more esoteric entries into the catalogues I was purchasing and stumbled upon some basic plants that would work as a foundation for us to develop into a sort of ‘vaccine’ for the forests. Early detection and warning; spore consumption and breaking down; plants that prey on the early models. After I found those, me and a team I put together with Mom’s help started work on improving them, since just buying them would have issues beyond expense. Namely that replacements would be finite if I, ya know,” she tilted her head to the side and made a ‘blegh’ sound while making a weird face, ”died.” .”

  “Sounds… complicated. Couldn’t you just arrange to clone the original plants, like they are in Vancouver?” I asked.

  “I mean, I could? But that would defeat the purpose of the experiment,” she exclaimed. “I wanted the plants to seamlessly integrate with the local environment. Not run wild or require maintenance. That takes a lot of time, care, and consideration to do properly! If I’m going to do a job, I’m going to make sure I do it right!”

  “I guess that’s fair…” I muttered. “Well, come on in, I guess.”

  As soon as she was given the go-ahead, Spark rushed past me, grabbed Bandit’s arm, and held it up to her face. “Cool! It’s surprisingly heavy for a plush animal. Definitely some sort of robot, right? Can I take one apart? I might be able to give you some ideas on how to upgrade them!”

  Bandit looked over at me, in panic. “Boss?”

  “I might be convinced to let you disassemble a couple, but not that one. Not unless you have an extra ten thousand points and a way to transfer an AI,” I said.

  Spark let the fox go and brought a hand up to her chin. “Ten thousand, eh?”

  As soon as he was released, Bandit scurried away and hid behind Bob. “Boss!”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I sighed. “Bandit is one of my squadmates, and you can’t take him or any of the other bears standing here apart. I threw that number out as a joke to let you know how expensive they were to upgrade. I literally have a thousand of the basic bears running around. I can probably let you have a couple of those.”

  “That would be even better! Having a couple spares would be helpful in case I accidentally break one,” Spark exclaimed.

  As the girl bounced towards the exit, I shook my head. “And I thought Magpie was bad,” I grumbled.

  Spark’s ears twisted in my direction, and the girl twirled in place, her eyes sparkling. With ears like that, of course she’d hear me… I really needed to learn not to mutter to myself around other samurai.

  “Magpie? Which one? You’re not talking about the one in Seattle, are you?” Spark asked excitedly.

  “Yes?” I replied hesitantly.

  “How is Maggie doing? Is she still following the proper safety procedures? You don’t know how long it took me to convince her to start using safety equipment,” Spark said, practically babbling. “She has such an amazing archive of tech! I spent days going through it, and I got so many ideas from her. I should visit again!”

  “She’s good…” I replied. It was hard to keep up with the hyperactive girl. “I just visited her a couple days ago. She seems to have calmed down a little bit over the last year.”

  Spark frowned. “She has? That’s a shame--it’s hard to find fellow engineers who can keep up with me and aren’t Protector AIs.”

  Before I could direct her towards the hangar, where I’m sure I could keep her occupied, the fox-eared girl took off down the hallway.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! They come in frogs too? What other types of bots are there? What do the frogs do? Amphibious warfare?” she asked as she clamped her hands around Sir Froggington’s head and stared into one of his eyes.

  “That’s the kids teacher,” I said, prying her away from the bot. “And I typically use the frogs for more scientific pursuits, like maintaining the hydroponics systems and teaching at the schools. Can you please stop grabbing every single bot we pass by? The smart ones know you’re not a threat, but the baseline models might mistake your enthusiasm for aggression, and I’d prefer it if you weren’t shot on my watch.”

  “I can try, no promises though,” Spark pouted. “Why’d you make the frogs the teachers and caretakers? I would have expected owls, or kangaroos, or something.”

  “What the fuck are kangaroos?” I asked.

  “They’re these big bouncy boys that carry their children around in a pouch,” Spark explained. “That’s not important--what is important is frogs aren’t normally known for their intelligence or their child care routines.” She looked at me with a serious expression undermined by her still sparkling eyes. “Explain yourself.”

  “My youngest sibling loves frogs, so I made her caretaker a frog,” I replied. “Simple as that.”

  “Awww… that’s so cute! Do you think I could get a couple of those for my little sisters and cousin?” Spark asked.

  “I don’t see why not… as long as you calm down a little, and you promise to explain your trees later,” I said. “How about we head towards the hangar bay? I’ll show you the assault models, the engineering models, and my manufacturing area.”

  “Manufacturing?” the girl asked, her tail wagging furiously.

  “Yeah. The area is a lot more open, and I don’t think you can break much down there,” I grumbled.

  “So long as there’s factories to ogle! Lead the way!” she exclaimed excitedly.

  Before I turned, I caught a glimpse of Deadbeat standing behind the girl, shaking her head in disbelief. Apparently I wasn’t the only one that was having trouble keeping up with Spark’s enthusiasm.

  “So… since you’re the one that made those trees, have you had any trouble with anti-genetics factions?” I asked as I started to lead her through the corridors.

  “No? Why? What happened?” the girl asked.

  “They apparently found a Montero-Westaria genetics lab on an oil rig and…”

  “For fucks sake, again?” she shouted in frustration, making me jump. “I knew it’d been too quiet since the last time!”

  “Okay… guess you’re not a fan. Noted,” I muttered, taking a step back.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” she replied angrily. “What did they do this time? More antithesis-human experiments?” she asked.

  “Uhhh… That’s exactly what it was,” I replied. “You knew about that?”

  “We’re supposed to keep it secret, but considering you know about them, it’s a moot point.”

  “Well, the secret’s out now,” I said. “Half the samurai on the west coast are out for blood, while the other half are just trying to minimize the fallout and trying to prevent other companies from being caught in the fallout.”

  “Well… good!” Spark exclaimed. “Those fuckers deserve it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I grumbled. “I just hope innocent people don’t get pulled into the conflict.”

  “That won’t happen,” Spark said dismissively.

  “Another samurai targeted my ship with artillery,” I grumbled. “And if they’re willing to threaten another samurai, who knows what they’d be willing to do to a civilian they think may be involved.”

  She facepalmed, “Ahh… Maybe I’ll give some of my friends on the west coast a call, see if there’s anything I can do to help calm things down, especially with regard to the labs researching my plants,” Spark muttered.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. I considered deploying my forces, trying to secure some safe zones, but I was pretty sure that would have just aggravated the issue further,” I grumbled.

  “I didn’t realize things were that bad…” Spark muttered, putting her head down to think.

  We walked in silence for a minute until we finally stepped into the hangar bay. Spark finally raised her head when we left the hallway, and her eyes went wide.

  “There is so much stuff here…” she murmured in awe before she vaulted over the railing and ran into one of the equipment storage areas.

  I just stared at her as she scampered across the floor towards the Kodiak disassembly area. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all…”

  This arc features Spark from 'A Spark of Sylvan Flame' - Go give them some love!

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