Stray Cat Strut

Sections in BOLD were written by yours truly. Everything else was written by GPT-3. The methodology here is simple. I fed the AI a starting line or paragraph, then let it run. Every time it completed a section, I’d refed it the previous paragraph. Basically, the AI never knew what it was writing about past one or two paragraphs from where it was. A very hard memory restriction.

I blinked at Lucy and she stared right back at me. "Really?" I asked.

"Yes, she said. "I think it's a great idea."

She placed her hands over her heart. "I'm touched."

"Uh-huh," I said as I pushed back my chair. Lucy followed me out of the kitchen, but not before she grabbed a plate for herself and filled it with leftovers.

The living room was empty by the time we got there and the holographic Tommo was nowhere to be found.

Then again, Myalis could probably remotely run her off if she wanted to. Those two had been getting on really well recently, everyone else aside from maybe me experiencing something of a falling-out on top of all that mess they'd caused at first. Still, in self-defence I slid closer to Lucy and we both put our heads on the pillows. "Happy?" I asked after a moment.

"You are," Lucy said as she finally turned to face me. The firelight was casting a red glow over her skin, lighting it up just enough that I could see every curve and dip of her body while making her eyes glow an eerie gold-blue. It was... really really sexy. Smiling at me with these soft lips, so flushed and right above the one place I wanted most to kiss them. "I'm happy because you're here."

It took everything in me not to reach across, grab her face and give her what she wanted. "Lucy, do you know how hot you look?"

She squirmed closer. "You're not looking at the right parts of me," she said.

I raised an eyebrow but kept my cool for now. "Can you turn on the music?" I asked.

The door opened, and a gentle wave of music pushed back through, sounding like a much more reasonable version of what Lucy was listening to before. I recognized it as some kind of experimental jazz or something else complicated. Not my sort of thing, but it did help fill the silence. Lucy seemed to like it too. She hummed along as she made my armour jiggle around a bit, then her fingers started dancing along their own accord over my side, pressing in just hard enough so that she was pushing me back into the bedding.

It was sweet, a nice little tease. Something I had plenty of time to enjoy because I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Times like this made me wish I could still drink. It felt like a nice night for something to celebrate.

And I'm going to stop that run there. I let it continue for a while, but it was getting pretty... steamy? Also, Lucy got replaced by Gomorrah at some point. It got weird.

Here’s a second attempt. This time trying to get the AI to write something more slice of life-y.

Gomorrah, Deus Ex and I were sitting in the hotel bar, nursing drinks (nonalcoholic for my two boring friends) while walking about all the perks and bonuses that came with being a Samurai.

They were... odd. Some of them made sense, some seemed to have been thrown in just to confuse us, and a few had the touch of a very off techy brain to them.

How was I supposed to know that my point totals, which went up and down extremely regularly, had something to do with the local weather?

"The sun will be out tomorrow," Deus Ex said as we walked back into our rooms as a group. It was starting to get late, and some of the other guests were sneaking off to find a room. "There's one more perk that you need though."

"Another one?" I asked.

She nodded. "One more," she said and then locked herself in her room.

I shot Myalis a glance. "You heard that?"

It's one of the perks? A nice room near the hotel with appropriate clothes, then a massage and shower before she expects her partner to finish things properly.

I blinked. "Yeah, she's kinkier than I thought she was." It shouldn't have come as a surprise to know that Lucy had a few things up her sleeve, but it was still weird to think of the whiskered young woman that way.

*Ahem* this coming from someone who talks about his girlfriend constantly in terms of her sexual prowess? Besides, you've never been vanilla either. You're part flesh and blood after all.

Cutting this one off because the AI doesn’t seem to know that Deus Ex is underaged. I... didn’t foresee this ever being a problem. Of course the AI will write inappropriate stuff. It doesn’t know better. Why did I think otherwise? One more!

I swore as the nearest wall blew up and a model five barged into the room. Without a second though, I raised my gun and fired point-blank at it.

The air rippled as five rockets left my gun and tore into the model five. The front of its chest exploded outwards, sending it backwards into the wall, only for a second volley to blow up its arm and swallow it in another rain of shrapnel.

The Model Five was no more.

"Better see where those other three are," I said as I shifted over to the side door while dropping my rocket launcher. My railgun could get away with blowing up shit around me, but that would also mean raining some shrapnel all over Gomorrah. I didn't need more holes in me right now.

In the end, it turned out to be sort of easy to find the Model Twelve hiding below.

A bit of grenade jumping later and there she was, her head at floor level, unaware that I was in a perfect position to blow it off.

"Time to send you to hell," I said as I put my railgun up.

So far this encounter had taken about two minutes.

Was it really so easy?

But wait! The end of the world wasn't right!

Good Lord, it was so good to see that Myalis hadn't lost any of her humanity while hiding in my gear storage. This made the many times where she tried to murder me just a bit more tolerable.

The traction creatures didn't have time to react. I focused in and fired, the railgun slamming my shoulder and sending a burst of fire right into their group.

They exploded, and more models behind them were caught in the sweep of flame as they all died.

Explosives one after another started popping up onto the walls, each dropped by a drone that flew off almost as soon I heard the hiss of its package deploying.

Gravity grenades tumbled down, their extra weight making them fall slower than normal while little parachutes popped open above them and slowed them the rest of the way down to the ground where they burst apart like over-sized water balloons filled with sewage-coloured liquid.
Their payloads splashed all over, roiling and bubbling across the floor.

I stepped out onto the ledge. I would have started planting mines next to but mercs were pouring out of the building, too many of them for me to be getting comfortable yet.

If only the idiot behind them didn't decide that it was a great time to toss a grenade down into their midst. Now instead of being caught in two cross-shaped burst, they were soon going to be all mashed up together as they tried to huddle through the burning rain falling over them.

So, fight choreography is... complicated. I usually need to draw up maps and plans of motion for every fight that I write. The more players there are in a scene, the more complex it is to decide who does when when, and how that impacts the others. After all, a story is told one sentence at a time, which means that I can only really show one action happening after the other.

Actually... wait, one last AI-prompt:

Thanks for reading!

Click here to check out the next Combat Kittens!

If you like what I do, then please consider dropping some stuff in the tip jar.

A one-time donation is fine; just be sure to make it a decent amount if you can. The more these projects make, the longer we can keep writing them, and that's what everyone wants!