In the world before mega corps and Antithesis, people enjoyed going out into the wild to hunt. For many the meat was nice, but it wasn't truly about that. After all, they could have always gotten some from the butcher. It was the hunt that they enjoyed.

  As the world changed and Antithesis and mega crops began to invade many wild preserves were taken over and renovated so that more cities and factories could be built.

  ***

  Kai looked up and up at the massive dragon. It had an immense coiling body with four legs. Its head was draconic and on top of its head was a pair of massive crystalline electric blue veined crimson antlers poking out from a mane of crimson hair. It released a breath of crackling crimson energy that Kai knew held enough power to easily destroy the man he had just been fighting five times over.

  A pair of arms wrapped around Nayr's neck, pulling him out of his book and into a hug. A low, husky voice whispered next to him, tickling his ear.

  "So this is where you were hiding from me." Viv said, as he instinctively leaned back into the comfortable embrace of his girlfriend.

  Despite being four months into their relationship, Nayr still felt a blush rising up his cheques.

  Viv wrapped one, toned, bronze tanned arm around his waist and easily hauled him up so she could slip onto his bean bag chair and set him back down onto her lap. Her samurai tek enhanced body , easily able to lift up his light body. Her fingers tangling with his curly, dark brown hair.

  "Me, Tidal and Trixie are planning on going to the mall. I know you don't want to go yourself, but I wanted to check and make sure there wasn't anything you might want?"

  Nayr closed his eyes, simply enjoying the feel of Viv's fingers in his hair as he thought over if there was anything he needed. Eventually he opened his eyes back up. Viv hadn't pushed him, didn't look impatient or anything. She simply smiled at him and waited. Her patience was eternal when it came to him.

  "If-" He licked his lips as his voice cracked with unuse, as he hadn't spoken since the previous night when he had said goodnight to his girlfriend. "If you get some apples, tomatoes, cheese and sausage I'll make you some pizza and apple cobbler tonight."

  At his words, Viv's eyes lit up, a massive smile spreading across her face. "Well then, I'll absolutely have to get those for you. Even if I need to fight through an antithesis swarm for it." She half joked. "If food cooked by you is on the line, I'll fight through a whole hive if I need to," She said, a large smile on her face, a small giggle escaping. "If you're going to make me a treat, maybe I should give you a treat?" She said, while leaning forward to look him in the eyes, her amber irises entrancing him until his brain managed to process what she had just said and he felt his face flushing redder than the tomatoes he had asked her to buy.

  Viv was eighteen, only half a year away from nineteen, she was beautiful, fit, funny, smart and nice. She was all of that and had been even before becoming a samurai. She had been so far beyond him even before becoming one of humanity's protectors and now, now she was so, so much further beyond him.

  If she had wanted, she could have quit school and done whatever she had wanted when not fighting the antithesis. It's what other samurai that were still in school did. Her friends Tidal and Trixie, two samurai of a similar age had done just that. Yet she had decided to continue going to school. had continued for nearly a year before eventually telling him the reason four months ago. She'd had a crush on him for years and had stayed in school because he was.

  It had taken a while for him to start accepting that she really was interested in him. After all, he was just the quiet kid in the corner who got average grades and spent nearly as much time as he was awake, as he spent reading. What could she possibly like about him? Even now, he struggled to accept it but he was coming around. It was when she teased him like that, that those thoughts really flared up.

  "You're so cute when you get all flushed and lost in your own head." She said before leaning down and placing a quick kiss on his lips. Lifting him up as if he was no more heavy than a feather, she set him back down and started walking towards the door, before glancing over her shoulder, quicker than he could react, catching him staring at the back of her head, her long, blood red hair reaching down past her hips. She winked at him and then slipped out the doors.

  Taking a moment before going back to reading, Nayr glanced around the room. It was a 'library' or so the school claimed. The books on the shelves weren't true books, not like the one Nayr had just been reading. They were closer to tablets that masked themselves as books to give people the impression of reading a book. The shelves acting as chargers.

  There were chairs and tables, meant to be used for studying. The tables were foe wood and the chairs were those universal school chairs that everyone knew. The seats were made out of plastic and the legs were metal. A couple bean bags like the one he was sitting in were scattered about, mostly away from the tables. He had dragged his own close to one of the tables so that he could put his books atop the table.

  Nayr didn't like that the school pretended this was a library but it was the closest thing to a library his father had at his house and found it a bit comforting.

  Settling back down, the only noise in the quiet room being the sound of the beans shifting as he tried to get comfortable. He found himself unable to focus on his book, a problem he had been having more and more as of late. It wasn't the books, not really, it was the quiet. Whereas many people found themselves needing to fill in the silence of the void, it pushed them to talk or do something, Nayr had never felt that, not all that much at least.

  His dad and grandpa enjoyed the silence but also enjoyed talking with people and being around them. Nayr had never really felt that. The little bit of talking while at the dinner table and the occasional game night every couple months was all he'd ever needed. When he'd started coming to school here he'd found the little talking required while at school was more than enough to drain his social batteries.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Yet, during the last four months he had found that comforting void being filled. Viv's constant chatter and teasing filled the silence he always enjoyed, yet he didn't find his social batteries being drained as they normally were when around people. He found himself even wanting to spend more time around her, something which normally took weeks of silence or near silence to really start feeling.

  Viv never resented him for his introverted tendencies and preferring to stay in rather than go out with her. She always asked if he wanted to go but had told him she didn't want him to feel left out, and if he didn't want to go, she was perfectly fine with that. Even so, Nayr found himself deciding that next time, he would go with her.

  Having made a decision, Nayr opened his eyes and reached towards the table for his book only to freeze. In front of him was something out of place. A large, bear sized creature, its hide was black and green while its face was covered in whip-like tentacles with pointed tips.

  It only took Nayr a few seconds to realize what he was looking at, having seen them in vids and Viv's stories. This was a model four antithesis. Nayr moved before he could think. He kicked back, rolled backwards over the bean bag chair, and started pushing himself off the floor to run.

  Before he could get off the ground, he felt a tentacle wrapping around his ankle and pulling, pain shooting through his body. A second and then a third wrapped around his legs pulling him in. Nayr tried to grab at the floor but it was made out of foe hard wood and there was nothing to grab. The only thing left in arms reach was the bean bag chair and one of the plastic and metal chairs.

  Nayr grabbed onto the plastic chair only at the same time as he felt one of the pointed tentacles stabbing into his leg and then one in his abdomen. Causing him to let out a gasp of pain before gritting through it. Grabbing the light chair with both hands, Nayr swung it down into the head of the model four again and again. It really wasn't doing much, but the model four apparently found it annoying enough that it wanted it to stop. One tentacle wrapped around his left arm immobilizing it while the tips of its other tentacles sliced through the metal and plastic, leaving him only holding the sheared off end of the chair.

  Nayr blinked in shock and pain as his mind started to spiral in panic. Viv had tried to give him a gun, why hadn't he taken it? Well, he knew why he hadn't taken it, it was because he didn't think there should be guns in school and didn't think he would ever need it. Looking down at the antithesis, Nayr couldn't help but wonder why it hadn't yet finished him off. It should be more than capable of it.

  Then he saw it, the plastic and metal of the chair had gotten stuck in its mouth and on the tips of its tentacles. Its mouth was gasping open and closed as it tried to unstick the plastic and metal with its remaining tentacles. Then he saw it, the end of the chair leg he had managed to keep a hold of. Its end was jagged and sharp, reminding him of the spears some characters would wield on the covers of his books.

  His arm, and therefore the chair leg, was also positioned within the center of the tentacles, the space where food would be fed into its mouth. That also meant it was mostly free of obstructions. As he realized that, Nayr saw an opening, something he knew he had read about and could only hope would work out. Nayr stabbed the chair leg into its mouth, past the lodged chair bits and into the roof of its mouth.

  The antithesis let out a strange hissing noise as its head was rocked back and a small hole was made where the chair leg had hit. Nayr stabbed again, this time hitting a bit to the left of the last time. He stabbed again, and again, tentacles started digging into his internals, pain clouding his mind, somehow they hadn't yet hit anything vital.

  Nayr stabbed again and again, not relenting, not when he felt the crunching of bones, not when he felt something squishy giving way, not when he felt less and less resistance, not even when he heard another voice speaking in his head.

  Nayr slowly stopped stabbing and the world went black.

  ***

  Viv shot through the corridors at speeds faster than most athletes could ever hope to move, even with years of training and tens of millions of credits worth of cybernetic enhancements. Her mind took in every minute detail analyzing and evaluating it. A model nine, disguised as a door on the wall, jumped towards her only for one of her bots to fire an arrow into it, killing it before it could really start moving.

  She had been alerted of the incursion only minutes ago yet there was already far too many Antithesis around for her to be comfortable with. Skidding to a stop and pushing off the floor, she turned down down the corridor, the doors of the foe library coming into view.

  She gritted her teeth, why did the stupid a school board insist on not having cameras in the building, why did she allow Nayr to go around without protection. Why hadn't she had a bot stay with him. She knew exactly why she hadn't, it was because she was extremely aware of how much power she held and didn't want to exert it over Nayr and force anything upon him. She didn't want him to think that she was forcing anything on him in any way. No matter the reason.

  She slammed into the foe wood doors, throwing them open. Her eyes and the camera's of her drones immediately began scanning the room. Her attention locked onto Nayr, or at least what was left of him. His body was covered in the tentacles of a model four as they wove in and out of his flesh. Her augmented eyes immediately spotted the extremely shallow dipping of his chest indicative of breathing.

  At the same time, her bots spotted a bookshelf with four legs, and many sets of eyes peering out between the fake books. Two arrows fired out, killing the model nine and killing it.

  "Roxana, get me something medical!" Viv said, her voice horse with stress as she ran over to Nayr, a blade slipping into hand as she cut away at the tentacles.

  I have a Class III Nano-Regenerative Suite which will be capable of fully reconstructing any damaged organ and keeping him alive while it works. It costs

  "Fuck the cost, just get it!"

  Understood, 750 points have been deducted.

  A large, metal cylinder thumped down next to Nayr. The top of the cylinder opened up, a series of miniature spider-like bots crawled out of it and into Nayr's body. A moment later, his breathing stabilized and his skin began to darken, no longer holding the paleness of nearing death.

  Viv reminded herself not to tell Nayr about this, he hated spiders and would be extremely creeped out by the thought of this.

  "Roxana, can you check his augs, see what happened. Don't look through anything else and don't tell me about anything you accidentally find."

  Her eyes scanned the model four’s corpse. The pieces of metal and plastic within its mouth and the metal chair leg sticking through the top of its head. She never could have imagined Nayr killing an Antithesis but here he was, having done just that without even a weapon. As she was looking over the Antithesis and finding herself more and more impressed, Roxana got back to her."

  Artemis, I could not retrieve the video you asked for.

  Viv's brows furrowed. "What do you mean? I didn't think even the most advanced human tech would be able to slow you down to much, much less stop you. Nayr's stuff is good but it's not stopping you good. Is it?"

  No Artemis, it is not. I can not retrieve the vid as Vanguard AI are not allowed to interfere with other Vanguard on behalf of their own Vanguard.

  It took Viv a moment longer to realize what Roxana was saying than she'd like to admit, but in her defense, She had never thought of Nayr as the violent type much less a samurai.

  "You mean?"

  Yes Artemis, he is.