The st shelter we were scheduled to check was a massive crete structure, which would have blended into the surrounding buildings if it didn’t have a rge fenced off area on one side. At first I thought the area was a stru site, sidering it had a number of temporary buildings setup, but I have no idea why they would have covered the entire area in astroturf. In the end, I gave up guessing. It didn’t really matter anyways.

  This time the antithesis started showing up before we even had a ce to set up our defehey crashed against the link fence, bending the posts in some areas, before we mao cut down the front line.

  Rather than taking a single defensive position, I decided to walk the perimeter this time. Shooting the occasional higher model that showed up, and allowing Nyx to top up the bear’s ammo bags when I strayed close. After I finished my first circuit Hel stopped me. She looked a little unfortable.

  “I’d like your help evacuating this shelter, if you don’t mind. I think things will go smoother if it’s you and your team down there, rather than me and some soldiers,” she said.

  I stared at her, bnkly. “Why…”

  “Because I’m not great with kids.” She shuddered for a moment, then looked over at me when it was obvious that I still didn’t get it. “You do know where we are right?”

  I shook my head.

  “This is aary school, some of the surrounding civilians have also takeer here, but it’s mostly kids.”

  “Ahhhh…. Okay then.” I holy didn’t know what to say, it looked like every other building as far as I could tell, how was I supposed to know?

  She tio stare at me for a few more seds, until I decided it was easier to just hahings than ask more questions. I headed for the entrah my bears in tow. “Nyx, where is this shelter, and how does one evacuate it?”

  It’s in the basement, and usually you just have to open up the door then direct everyoowards the buses. I expect it’ll be harder since you’re dealing with kids.

  “Right…” As I ehe building I found myself in a receptiohere was a tidy desk on my right, along with a few hallways leading further into the building, and on my right were a set of stairs. Down I went.

  The stairs went much deeper than I expected, several stories at least. They e a small unadorned room with two massive metal doors embedded in the far wall. It looked like there was a set of hydraulic pistons embedded in the wall on each side, f the doors shut. I didn’t see a sole or anything, just the door.

  “So… do I just ask you to crack this thing or what?” I asked after several seds.

  Whenever you’re ready.

  I quickly checked my bears, the a and for them to ehe safety on their rifles, before putting them away. I made a mental o ask Nyx about installing biometrics to prevent small hands from getting their hands on anything dangerous iure.

  Ohat was done, I gave the order. “Open it.”

  The hydraulics whined, struggling to move the massive foot thick metal doors, but slowly the shelter opened. As soon as the door had opened wide enough a pair of guards stepped out, half terrified, waving tiny pistols in my dire.

  “Identify yourself!” the slim one ordered, stepping closer to me. His partner was gng around furiously, I guess they expected an ambush or something.

  I stepped forward, faster thaher one could react, grabbed the first guard's pistol and ripped it out of his grip. The sed guard turowards me, but I just reached out and disarmed him the same way. My new muscles were awesome.

  “I’m a samurai.” They both flinched and backed away, which just caused me to sigh. I walked over to the open door and peered inside, several people were huddled iaring back at me. “What’s the situation inside?”

  “We came down as soon as the arms went off, ahe door open as long as possible. There are no major injuries, but as you see the vault mainly tains children from the school upstairs.” I looked at the guard, who was surprisingly helpful, then checked that the pistol’s safeties were on before flipping the guns around and handing them back to the guards.

  “You aim that at anything other than an Antithesis I’m going to do more than disarm you both, got it?”

  They both nodded.

  The vault was absolutely full of kids, I’d have to make sure they were anized before moving on or someone would get lost, or hurt.

  “Alright, listen up.” I raised my voice, so everyone could hear me. “The evacuation is here but I want some anization, who are the caretakers for the kids?”

  One of the women closest to me stood up, “You meaeachers, right?”

  I stared bnkly at her for a minute. “Yes…?”

  Thankfully the woman didn’t seem to be phased by my answer. “There are a couple of us, most are at the back watg the kids.”

  I nodded. “Then yahe kids into groups, and make sure everyone is ated for.”

  “Sure, we’ll collect everyoo their csses,” she replied.

  I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like they already had a pn, so I just decided to go with it. “Sounds great,” I said.

  As she ran off Nyx spoke up. Your ck of educational knowledge is staggering, you might want to correct that when we have more time.

  “Quiet you.”

  As the kids were getting anised, a couple men came running up to the front. “If the evacuation is here, we ght?”

  I looked him up and down, “You could, but I’d like the adults to space themselves iween groups of kids, so we keep track of them”

  He scoffed, “I’m no baby sitter, I’m out of here.” He pushed past me, and it looked like his friends were going to follow, but seds ter the rude man was thrown bato the shelter. Bob stepped o me aended his cws on one side. Everyone froze.

  I once again raised my voice, trying to keep the annoya of my voice. “In case you couldn’t tell by the armor, or small squad of robotic kill bears behind me, I AM a samurai, and I’m attempting to get everyo of here alive. To do that, I need order. I’d like the adults not associated with the school to split into small groups and travel between the children, so no os lost or left behind, got it?”

  I poi the children, which were nanised inth lihe teachers were running bad forth taking tallies.

  “Although, it looks like the kids are well behaved and anised, unlike some people. I wonder if I should worry about them, or someone else?” I g the men, who slunk away.

  “Assholes,” I muttered.

  After a few mihe teacher I was talking to before came up to me. “Everyone is ated for and ready to go.”

  I nodded a Hel a message to let her know everything was ready. After a few moments I got an aowledgement. As soon as I did I sent my bears to each stair nding to monitor things.

  “Alright, I want two or three adults at the front, then a group of kids, then a couple more adults, so on and so forth. Walk calmly up the stairs, and out the main doors. Ready?”

  I saw hundreds of little heads nod. The adults, not so much. “Alright, move out.”

  The long n started moving past me. The occasional kid would gawk at me, but I would just wave, then give them a geap on the back te them to follow the line. When one of the adults shot me a dirty look, I just lifted my LCARS a little higher and enced them to keep moving forward. In the end everythi rather smoothly.

  Once everyone was on their the stairs I did o sweep of the Shelter. It was a mess, there was garbage on the floor and bs id out everywhere. It wasn’t super surprising, they’d been packed in so tightly it was hard to move. Survival over fort.

  I was about to leave, but at the st minute I stopped and grabbed a few bags of the leftover rations, then I sprinted up the stairs, colleg my bears as I went. When I got to the top of the stairs the st few people were already b the buses.

  Before stepping outside I grabbed the soldier and shoved the bags into his arms, which he almost immediately dropped due to the weight. He looked at me in fusion.

  “Put one of those on each bus taining kids, that’ll keep them tent until we get bap. If there are aras just pass them to the other buses.”

  He saluted, “Yes ma’am,” and trudged off.

  With my work finally done, I wandered off to find Hel. She wasn’t too far off, spraying the Antithesis with something that looked like a fmethrower, but was freezing them instead of burning. I saw her raise an eye when I approached.

  “Done already?” she asked.

  I rolled my eyes, “Of course, I’m not sure why you thought that’d be difficult. Kids are easy to deal with.”

  “So there were no issues?”

  “I didn’t say that, there were adults dowoo.”

  She gave me a strange look, then shook her head. “I got a message while you were down there, the twins want you and Humboldt to give them a hand. We shouldn’t need six Samurai to escort the n out of the city, not uhe Antithesis surge like earlier. Reinforts from California have also arrived in camp, so we’ll get some repts whe back. Just call the twins and figure out what’s up.”

  As she left I just scratched my head. I didn’t know what was going on, but it sounded like I was in for a long night.