ASH: Shadow Girls #1 - All Cats Are Gray

[Scott Eiler]

On 2021-12-05 21:08, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> "What's her new endgame?"
>       "Well, what's*yours*?" Maria asked, stalking over and draping herself
> across his shoulders.  It was a testament to his genetically enhanced
> strength that her cybernetic bulk didn't make him stagger or even sag.  "Not
> that I'm complaining about being legit, but it feels like you have another
> shoe to drop."
>       "I really don't, darling," Rex shrugged, as if he didn't have a hundred
> and fifty kilos of battle steel depending from his shoulders.  "I was bred to
> rule, and that's what I intend to do.  For now, this city.  Perhaps more,
> once I have convinced the Combine that I'm not some cackling supervillain
> trying to leverage this into a sloppy and destructive world domination or
> apotheosis plot.  That means being more scrupulous about following the forms
> than the 'real' governments.  Manhattan was utter chaos when I arrived, your
> Cybernostra just one of many factions playing turf war games.  Most of the
> gangs were and still are children.  The Combine's attempts to pacify it by
> sending in STRAFE failed miserably...although not entirely due to their own
> fault, I'll grant them that.  But they came in as law, which was the core
> mistake.  I came in as lawlessness, the first among equals in crime, and have
> been steering this city back onto the path of order and prosperity.  If I
> have any ignoble ulterior motives, it's that I want to shove the Combine's
> noses in what I've accomplished."
>       "Ah, so my hubby is human after all."

I enjoy the world-building aspects of your fiction.  Though the in-story 
reaction to the new character(s) at the end was classic also.

-- 
-- (signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> ------ http://www.eilertech.com/ -------

"Your Royal Highness, instead of devoting yourself exclusively
to Minerva, should, instead, rather offer sacrifice at the altars
of Bacchus, Orpheus, Venus, and Morpheus."

- Advice to Prince Duarte of Portugal.  From "The golden age of
Prince Henry the Navigator", by Joaquim Pedro Oliveira Martins.
Coming soon to Project Gutenberg.