After a good night’s sleep and a quick breakfast, we were back in the truck.

  “So why do we have to go to this place so early?” I grumbled as I slowly drove the truck out of the hangar and into the open sky.

  “Evelyn, it’s eight thirty in the morning, that’s hardly early,” Jane chastised me. “And to answer your question, we need to be there by ten to watch the samurai parade!”

  I blinked a couple times, then shook my head. “I’m sorry, I think my ears malfunctioned for a minute. The what?”

  “The samurai parade. Nimbletainment is one of the world’s biggest entertainment companies, and since most people love samurai, they have a number of shows, games, and interactive mesh experiences based on samurai,” Jennifer explained, rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe you don’t know this.”

  “Why would I know this? I don’t exactly go around looking up corporations on the net!” I exclaimed.

  “That’s no excuse,” Alan snorted. “They had a couple of those floating holo billboards hovering around the undercity before you began your restoration efforts. They were the only company not advertising firearms or flavored nutriblocks. I’m almost as oblivious of my surroundings as you are, but I’d at least heard the name.”

  “Looking up would have meant there was a chance of missing a particularly juicy piece of scrap,” I said.

  “Or maybe you just couldn’t see them because you had your hood up, like always,” Eddie laughed.

  “Oh, I probably saw them,” I snapped, looking at Eddie in the rearview mirror. “Just because I have a hood up doesn’t mean I was completely oblivious. I never paid much attention to the ads because I always had something more important to do. There’s no point in fantasizing about luxury goods when we were struggling just to keep everyone fed.”

  The boy flinched a little, his confident smirk fell, and he leaned back in his seat. I immediately regretted snapping at the kid. Today was supposed to be a fun excursion, but I just couldn’t take the constant needling.

  Even though we were fairly well off now, just a year ago we’d been struggling to survive. Those memories were still extremely clear in my memory, and there was some small part of me that feared we’d end up back there one day.

  I wish I could just joke about it like everyone else, but I couldn’t. I had far too many bad memories for that.

  That being said, I didn’t want to bring down the mood, and I didn’t like snapping at everyone. So I looked at Jane, silently pleading for her to change the topic.

  “It’s unfortunate that Evelyn doesn’t know anything about Nimbletainment, their properties, or Nimbleland, but that just means we can spend the rest of the day educating her on everything she’s missing,” Jane said smoothly, taking control of the conversation. “What is everyone looking forward to today?”

  “The games!” Eddie declared, regaining a little bit of his previous pep.

  “The stuffies!” Issi shouted a second later.

  Jennifer didn’t reply immediately. She probably wouldn’t have if Jane hadn’t turned in her seat so she could look at the kids.

  “The samurai simulator,” she finally admitted.

  “A samurai simulator?” I repeated in surprise. “How would that work?”

  “It’s a mesh simulation that replicates an incursion,” Jennifer explained slowly. “It has a database of hundreds of thousands of catalogs, and when you earn enough points, it suggests a handful of top choices based upon your public profile. Most people treat it like a game, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a fairly realistic simulation.”

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  “Interesting…” I muttered. “Maybe I should check it out.”

  “Maybe it would be a good time to mention that even though you can’t legally be held responsible for any damage you cause, due to your samurai status, you should be careful about doing anything reckless in the park,” Alan said.

  Frowning in confusion, I turned to look at my little brother.

  “Why the… heck… would I want to go around and cause damage to an amusement park?” I said, remembering to censor my language in front of the kids. “It’s not like I have a habit of wandering around, busting up private property. Not without a reason anyways.”

  “So that little crusade you went on six months ago?” Alan prompted.

  “I had a very good reason for that! It was all in the defense of civilians… right up to the point where the former council went too far,” I said defensively. “And even then my friends and I focused all our efforts on the corporate military assets, not the facilities.”

  I glanced back at the kids, who were looking between Alan and me curiously. Although they’d been aware that I’d been involved in the fighting around the city at that time, I had intentionally downplayed how bad the fighting was. “What’s your point?”

  “It’s just that… After you became a samurai, I went online a couple times to see if there’s anything you had to be worried about. Although you spent a lot of time looking after our protection and quality of life, you rarely looked after yourself, so I wanted to see if there was anything you needed to watch out for,” Alan said.

  “Why is this the first time I’ve heard of this?” I asked.

  “Because the consensus online was: Unless it’s literally the first day after awakening, Samurai can one hundred percent look after themselves with their AI’s help. Even if a megacity dedicated all their resources towards eliminating a samurai, most of the time the samurai would win,” Alan explained. “At the time I thought the idea was ridiculous. How little I knew.”

  “Get to the point,” I growled.

  “Right, well, there are a couple caveats. Although samurai can absolutely crush corporations, they should avoid starting an unprovoked beef with multinationals. Many of these companies either have the support of other samurai or have alternative ways to fight back. A lot of people used Nimbletainment as an example of a company you shouldn't mess with,” Alan said.

  “What? They’re just a media company. How bad could it be?” I asked.

  Alan looked at me for several seconds, then turned towards the kids. “Hey, do you guys know the Clumsy Crusader?”

  “He’s funny!” Issi laughed. “He comes up with all these plans on how to fight the Antithesis, then always needs Samurai Girl and Samurai Man to come rescue him!”

  Alan just turned back towards me and raised an eye.

  “I don’t get it. Who’s Clumsy Crusader? What do they have to do with this?”

  “Clumsy Crusader is a character of Samurai Friends, a super popular kids cartoon,” Jennifer explained. “They’ve released numerous press releases claiming he’s a completely original creation, and any similarities to any real-world person are completely coincidental.”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. “That’s not a foreboding statement at all.”

  “The word online is that he’s based upon a samurai out east, named White Knight. He dresses up as a knight, and he used to investigate large corporations to look for signs of corruption or illegal business practices. He didn’t find anything on Nimbletainment, but apparently he stormed into several of their branch offices and tore them up ‘looking for proof of their wrongdoing,’” Alan said. “Nimbletainment couldn’t do anything to stop him legally, but after wrecking the fourth or fifth office, Samurai Friends suddenly had a new, legally distinct joke of a character. From what I’ve heard, White Knight had to stop his corporate crusades. Too many people equate him to the cartoon character these days, and no one will take him seriously.”

  “I’d start a real crusade if that happened to me,” I grumbled.

  “They did a complete psych profile of the guy and knew exactly how to make him stop,” Jennifer explained. “There was very little chance he’d get violent, and if he did… Nimbletainment is partnered with hundreds of samurai around the world. They have backing if they need it.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.

  Jennifer shrugged. “I also did a little research. Did you know most corporations have a samurai threat index? Most of them end up getting leaked to the net. You almost always end up in the ‘No Corporate Value’ category, which actually has a surprisingly small number of samurai in it. It consists of samurai who dislike corporations but won’t do anything unless provoked. Asking to use their image, or using their image without permission, will probably result in corporate losses.”

  “Sounds about right. Why is that category so small?” I asked.

  “Because most samurai are either open to some sort of deal, if the offer is right, or outright hostile to corporations. The big corps actually shut down all the advertising in the area where hostile samurai are located, doing their best to avoid provoking them,” Jennifer said.

  “Seems like a lot of work,” I grumbled. “Wait… how did we get to talking about samurai threat indexes? What was the point of this discussion again?”

  “Don’t cause damage to the park, or any trouble, unless there’s a really good reason to,” Jane declared. “Just be good!”

  “Well… Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” I said indignantly. “It wasn’t like I was planning on causing damage today.”

  “Are you planning on bringing your bears into the park? Taking Bob?” Jennifer asked.

  My eyes unfocused, and a cold sweat ran down my back.

  “Give me a minute,” I replied quietly. “I need to take care of something before we arrive.”

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