Debut

Cathy's first stop is her bank: Third Local. It's a nice little branch office that only has about ten parking spots… of which four are in use, three of which are employees’ cars that the woman recognizes from prior visits.

Normally, she'd just use the ATM buried in the sandstone faced wall, but today she has some actual banking to do, so the woman grabs the handle of the single glass door, pulls it open, and steps inside to the dark green carpeted interior. Looking up at the beige walls, and the open counter with all the tellers, she skips the stanchions (there's nobody in line anyway) and walks up to Samantha (per her nametag).

The teller looks up from her paperwork, “Good afternoon, and what can I do for you today?”

With a **** smile, Cathy keeps her tone upbeat as she answers, “Hi Samantha, I'd like…”

That's as far as she gets before a few bullets open the glass door and a trio of women in what looks like old fashioned plate mail, one with a gilded circlet on her helmet, carrying swords that have triggers in the hilts and barrels in the blades crash through what remains of the door on motorcycles.

The gilded one screams, “We are the Knightmares! I am Princess, and you WILL fill our saddlebags with cash! Open the safe or else!”

“Ugh, not today,” Cathy puts a hand on her forehead, “Please, Ms. Ravenheart….”

“You! Sweatermeat! On the floor, now!” One of the non-gilded Knightmares shouts, pointing the sword gun at the protagonist.

‘Well… field testing, I guess… if it works I'm fine, if it doesn't I don't need to worry about my mortgage payments anymore…’ the unemployed engineer thinks, shrugs, then looks the Knightmare straight in the eye slits and gives a one-word answer: “No.”

The threatening Knightmare fires without hesitation, the shot reverberating in the small lobby if the branch office.

Cathy flinches as the holographic clothing switches out for a full body hard shell automatically using skin four (the last one loaded in), codenamed ‘Daemon’. She then smiles at her assailant, the demonic mask mimicking her expression perfectly as the hard shell hologram stops the bullet cold, routing the inertia into the floor.

The well prepared woman raises a hand into her field of view, now covered with coal black skin and tipped with dark red claws, turning it briefly so she can examine the result, then dropping it to her side as she walks calmly towards her shooter, the AI in the prototype managing realistic movement for her fake leathery wings and barbed tail, “Mortal weapons don't mean much to an immortal… care to play?” The software maps her expression onto the holographic mask perfectly, producing a very wicked grin with the triangular teeth and forked tongue, audio mapping software giving her voice an unnerving edge.

“KILL IT!!!” ‘Princess’ screams, pointing and firing. Her two flunkies do the same, and they repeat until they're out of ammunition and their swords just go click.

Cathy checks her heads up display: “HSC 94%” and she watches it start climbing back up after they finish their volley.

Cathy laughs as she walks forward, the voice changer making it come out very villian-like, “Hmm… which head will make the best souvenir….”

“Princess” knocks one of her minions off her bike with the flat of her sword, then guns the engine and retreats on her bike, screaming. The still standing minion also screams and flees, while the one on the floor scrambles backwards, not bothering to reach for her weapon or even stand up, “Please don't kill me! I have kids! A sick mother! My soul tastes terrible!”

“I suppose my contract does specify I'm to turn people over alive to the police if they actually surrender…” Cathy improvises, frowning, her heart pounding in her chest, “...but runners aren't actually surrendering, are they?” Cathy smiles, “Are you going to run for me?”

“I surrender! I surrender! I'll stay put!” The panicked woman holds up her hands, “Don't eat me!!!” Cathy growls, and watches the goon carefully, making sure to smile and show those holographic teeth.

Meanwhile, she issues a command to her prototype, which does not let the sound escape the holographic shell due to the Lakewood preferences, “Dinah, scrub my image from the security system, retroactive to ten minutes before I entered the bank. Also, see how many of the surrounding businesses caught me on camera and scrub my presence from those as well for the same timeframe. Follow Lethe Protocol for the next six hours.”

She gets a “Working…” on her HUD for a few minutes, and then, “Complete. Found fifteen affected cameras in specified time frame. Video scrubbed successfully. Lethe Protocol Active.” That hangs in her sight for thirty seconds, after which, the text vanishes: A small icon of a river shows up in the corner of her HUD with a six hour countdown, and a small camera icon shows up with a counter, currently at “3”.

‘I'll need to remember the operation order… I should have started with Lethe Protocol…’ Cathy thinks to herself as the police cara park outside, ‘...but it will only have left a little video of the Daemon shell, so not a big deal.’

Three officers charge in, guns at the ready… and all three point them at Cathy.

“I am not your enemy,” Cathy goes with a close-lipped smile, taking pains to keep her lips over her teeth while talking, so that the holographic mask does the same, “You can confirm that with the bank tellers. I can wait.” The engineer then crosses her arms under her milk makers, and leans against a wall.

“...I… I can… can confirm t-that…” one of the bank tellers manages to stutter out, “...s-she was just going to do some banking w-when the Knightmares came… frightened them off without t-touching anyone… soaked a hail of bullets…”

The police officers nod, and lower their weapons… although one does point a gun at the Knightmare on the ground, and goes about cuffing her. Another brings a pen and clipboard over to Cathy, “Might I take your statement, please?”

The woman calmly takes the clipboard, and fills it out mostly honestly, skipping her contact information, the fact that she wiped herself off all video (and is continuing to do so), and simply putting down “Wrath” for her name and ID.

When she hands it back, the police officer looks through it, frowns, looks up at Cathy, licks his lips and stammers out, “T-This should be good. Umm. Have a nice day?”

Cathy nods woth that close-lipped smile, and walks calmly and silently out of the building, looking off to the bus stop, she pauses, smiles, and takes to the sky….