It didn’t take very long for the heavy lifters to assemble the bear-acade panels just outside Grand Falls. While not as effective as the titanic concrete walls that surrounded most megacities, they were a much better option than the flimsy concrete fence that was currently protecting the town.

  As soon as they were set down, the ten-foot-tall, heavily armored, interlocking panels automatically drove thick metal pins deep into the ground to anchor themselves. Once they were secure, the nearby bears scrambled up the dders to man the covered walkways near the top.

  Even though I’d produced a lot of walls over the st year, I didn’t have even close to enough to encircle the town. In fact, I barely had enough to secure the eastern side, nearest to the ever-growing hive. Rather than risk the antithesis coming in at a strange angle and bypassing the main front, I chose to purchase enough panels to block off the North and South sides. The panels weren’t exactly expensive, but between the ICBMs and the new fabricators, I didn’t have enough free points to run them all the way around town.

  “Do you think they’ll hold?” Mud asked, knocking on one of the heavy panels.

  “The Twenties can smash their way through, given enough time, but my heavy weapons should be enough to take care of those big boys before they get close enough. The problem is, we may have some significantly rger monsters heading our way,” I said. “Still, they have a much better chance of standing up against a determined assault than the town walls.”

  “Your confidence is inspiring,” the man grumbled quietly.

  “Hey, I’m confident in my tech, but I’m also a realist,” I said. “I have no idea what the Antithesis cooked up during the conflict on Mars, or what sort of changes they made specifically for this assault. We’ll be going into this fight nearly blind. I’m just hoping they decide to create smaller support models, something we can easily deal with instead of waves of titanic monsters.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see,” Mud muttered. “You heard anything from your contacts in the Family yet? I kind of expected to receive more reinforcements by now.”

  “No, but that doesn’t surprise me too much. I expect they went into full-blown panic mode when the Antithesis changed their drop zones. They would have had to redirect every single samurai in the field to try and contain the damage,” I said, slowly backing away from the walls. My scouts hadn’t reported any movement from the direction of the hive complex, and the bears were in pce to intercept any attack, so if I wanted to step away, now was the time. “This might be the only break we get for a while, so we should give them a call while we can.”

  I took a couple of steps towards the main gate, then paused and gnced around. “Uhhh… Where’s Wild? I just noticed she’s not around.”“She left around half an hour ago to pnt some reinforcing vines and seed pods around the base of your wall,” the man replied. “How did you not notice? She even said goodbye to you before she left.”

  “I was a little distracted trying to set up a town-wide defense and organize over a thousand troops. Forgive me for being a little distracted,” I grumbled. “Should we call her back for the call?”

  “Naw, that girl doesn’t like dealing with the Family unless she absolutely has to. She doesn’t like to rely on others,” Mud said.

  “It seems like she relies upon you,” I said.

  He froze for just a moment, then shot me a grin. “I guess that’s true. I must be the exception that proves the rule.”

  The two of us wandered back towards the main gate, where I’d stationed a small number of troops to act as a quick response team. There were half a dozen Ursas, fully rearmed and ready for a quick strafing run, clustered around my personal Kodiak command vehicle.

  I noticed Heavy affixing a rotary ser cannon to one of the Orca door mounts. I hadn’t bothered having the bears mount anything ahead of time; instead, I pnned to rely on the quick mounting system to put whatever we needed on in the middle of battle. Guess the big bear just wanted to have the extra firepower in case anything happened. I couldn’t bme him.

  When he noticed us walking by, Heavy nodded our way but almost immediately went back to his work.

  As I stepped into the back of my command vehicle, I used my augs to connect to the comm system and pce a call to Charlotte.

  “Teddy, please tell me you have good news,” Charlotte said, her voice echoing out of the speakers the instant the call connected.

  “I’m still alive, as are the locals and Grand Falls,” I replied as I colpsed onto one of the side benches. “We’ve started fortifying the area and evacuating the civilians, but I managed to get a sneak peek of what’s climbing out of the main impact site. I’m not exactly confident with our ability to withstand a full assault. Could you let us know the state of our reinforcements?”

  Charlotte was quiet for a moment. “Give me a second, I think we should bring Bckwatch in on this conversation.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Bckwatch?”

  “The big kahuna in Denver,” Mudfp muttered. “Guy’s an asshole.”“Don’t hold back, Mud, let me know how you really feel,” a deep, gravelly voice growled. Bckwatch, I assume.

  “I’ve never been one to hide how I feel,” Mud replied casually.

  “Gentlemen, now isn’t the time to have a pissing match,” Charlotte excimed. “We need to talk about the current situation.”“My apologies, Stalking,” Bckwatch replied. “Who exactly is on the line?”“Evelyn Cire, I guess you’d better know me as Teddy and MudFp. Wild is pnting some surprises for our soon-to-be unwelcome guests,” I said.

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard of you, the bear girl. I’m gd you’re there; I was afraid we wouldn’t have enough forces to protect that town,” Bckwatch muttered.

  “Yeah… that’s kind of why we’re calling. When can we expect some reinforcements up here?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Bckwatch said slowly. “You can’t. Not right away.”“What the fuck are you talking about? You can’t seriously tell me that you can’t find a single other samurai to help protect Grand Falls until we can evacuate the civilians."

  “Please calm down and listen,” Charlotte snapped. “We’d love to send you reinforcements, but we’re stretched extremely thin right now. All avaible samurai have been dispatched to try to deal with the initial wave of Antithesis spreading from the impact zones. Even though a rge number of Antithesis headed straight for your town, we’re tracking equally rge columns spreading out in several other directions. We can’t let them run loose, so we’ve sent strike teams to try and intercept them.”

  “So… what? You didn’t think our little town was important enough to send a defense force to?” Mud growled.

  Charlotte snorted. “Please, you must have seen what Teddy is capable of by now. She’s better equipped to defend your town than an entire squad of other samurai. Besides, we’re not leaving you out in the cold. We’ll send additional reinforcements your way once we take care of the other columns. You just have to hold out until then.”“Speaking of holding out,” I said. “Do we have any pns on how to deal with that monstrous fucking hive structure that nded outside of town? Nyx, my AI, was telling me that it’s not going to be easy to dislodge.”

  “No, but we’re still going to try,” Bckwatch growled. “We’ve rerouted three orbital weapon facilities towards the area. A photonic collector array, hand of god, and hard rain system.”

  “A what, what, and what?” I said.

  “An orbital ser system, a ptform that drops tungsten rods from orbit, and a missile ptform,” Charlotte crified. “The first one will be on station within the hour.”

  “And those’ll take care of the problem?” Mud asked.

  “Honestly… we don’t know. The biggest pod survived all the superweapons fired at it and still managed to make a controlled entry. It has to be hardy. Not only did it manage to deliver thousands of tons of biomass to the surface, but it managed to sink it deep enough into the earth to fortify itself,” Charlotte said. “It’s not going to be an easy target, but we’re going to do our best to burn it out before it can cause some damage.”

  “What if you can’t?” I asked.

  “Then you better be prepared,” Bckwatch replied. “Because you’re going to be on the frontline of one of the biggest battles this pnet has seen in a long time.”

  TheWackyWombat

  SCS Fan Fiction DiscordIf you'd like to join a slightly more active discord, try the SCS Extended Universe (i.e. Fanfiction) discord.

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  Check out my Stories:

  Teddy Bears On Brigade

  Evelyn "Teddy" Cire is a street kid just trying to make ends meet, in the slum deep under Calgary Megacity. That is, until the Antithesis attack, and she's given the power to fight back.

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  Duelling Dungeons

  A story about Talia, an Arachne girl, finding her pce as a floor boss in a competitive dungeon. Half cozy slice of life, half action.

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  Imaginary

  A young girl's attempt to find her pce in a world where superpowers come with severe downsides.

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  Tarnished Honor

  Reina and Skyler, long term girlfriends, fight Alien invaders in the Cyberpunk City of Vancouver.

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  The Wicked Witch of the Wild West (ON HIATUS)

  A young outcast witch tries to find her pce in the world by traveling the remote wilds in the wild west

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  Unexpected Guests (TBoB x DD crossover)

  Evelyn (From Teddy Bears on Brigade) ends up in the world of Duelling dungeons and needs to find a way home.

  Avaible on: [Royal Road] or [Scribblehub]

  Support me!

  Join me on to gain full access to my backlog (Currently 10+ chapters ahead!)

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  Here's the link: https:///c/wackywombat

  Buy the shirt!Want to wear your favorite bear loving samurai? Get a shirt! Commissioned by RavensDagger himself, and hosted on the official SCS webstore you can get the Teddy T now! Sorry, no bear hoodies... yet, but if you show your support who knows what might happen in the future.

  Teddy T-shirt: https://litrpgforge.com/products/scs-secret-merch-teddy

  And if you don't feel like supporting me, you can still take a look around at the other Fan fiction shirts, or even official SCS merchandise here: https://litrpgforge.com/collections/stray-cat-store

  Finally: Big thanks to all those people that review my draft, the chapters would be a lot rougher without your feedback!