INTERLUDE LUCY - SCHOOL DAYS PART FOUR

Interlude Lucy - School Days Part Four

Things could be worse.

That was usually the case, so it really wasn't much as far as reassurances went, but it was still something to cling onto, and she was nothing if not talented at clinging onto small, vain hopes.

She had five people clamoring for her attention at the moment, but she raised a hand in a 'one moment' gesture, then closed her eyes.

First of all, this suit she was wearing was cute as heck, but damn if she wasn't regretting it. The suit pants made her ass look fine, but the inseam was bothering her all day, and the less said about her shoes the better. She really wanted to sit down for twenty minutes and let her feet get a break, but there hadn't been time for that.

Her eyes being closed probably suggested that she was looking at an aug-feed from someone, and she had done that a few times today, but in reality, her main concern at the moment was getting two minutes of peace.

She had been putting out fires for twelve hours. Her only breaks had been two or three minutes spent in a washroom here and there, and while talking to somewhere where a new fire had sprung up, and most of that walking was done while issuing orders.

The reality was, simply put, that her Kittens weren't ready for an event of this magnitude.

There were three dozen plates spinning at the moment, and she could barely keep track of them all. Ideally, every plate would have someone dedicated to watching it, and then every group of two or three plates would have an overseer reporting to a few over-overseers with more authority. A chain of command, like they had in the army or something.

Instead, the buck stopped with her, but the buck was only ever one step away from her to begin with.

That had to change, but for that to change, she needed organization, and right now they didn't quite have that.

Still, there was some progress in that direction. Not having any sort of system in place but still having to work things out meant that a system or two had formed kind of spontaneously. She was keeping track of the Kittens who had stepped up when things started to break down.

A few notables had taken charge of their sectors, had started issuing orders or had taken initiative.

It went counter to a lot of people's instincts to do that. That was something she'd picked up at school. The modern person wasn't meant to have initiative and drive. Finding someone who would step up was a big deal, and that person either had to be put down or promoted.

She was happy to find that the Kittens had a few people that would probably do well in a more managerial role, but mostly she was annoyed by how much work they had to do. To get the organization up to standard, they'd need... processes.

Too much improvisation wasn't good; it led to new, unpredictable problems.

At least most of the issues they had so far were mostly in the back, and while some stuff was scuffed, she tried to make sure that the public-facing side of things at least looked passable.

If all went well, the Kittens would be remembered as a group that stepped up and did the best they could while dealing with a bunch of temperamental samurai, scrambling around to keep up, which was entirely fair and something that even bigger, better-organized group had a hard time doing.

Hopefully no one would know how everything out of sight was held together by duct-tape and wishful thinking.

Lucy opened her eyes and let out a long, low breath, not a sigh. "Okay," she said as she scanned the... dammit, there were seven people now. She scanned over them anyway, then nodded. "Which one of you has the most pressing issue?" she asked.

One of them, a student called... Kaelen according to Lucy's augs, stepped up. She was hugging a clip-board close. "Um, we're running out of seating space," she said.

"That's not... we have enough seating for a hundred more people than were invited," Lucy said.

"Seating wasn't assigned," one of the others said. "So some people are taking up two seats instead of one. A few gangs don't want to be squeezed in."

"God dammit," Lucy muttered. "Okay, Kaelen, that's your name, right? Cool, take five people from the front desk. Reception should have closed five minutes ago anyway. I know they need a break, but so do the rest of us. Grab five, get them to walk the alleys and tell people to squeeze in."

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Kaelen nodded. "Um, one more issue?"

"Yeah?"

"The seating doesn't divide equally with the number of people allowed in each gang," she said. "So some people even in filled rows don't fit."

Lucy sighed. "Find chairs, set them on the end of each row. If there's still not enough seating, come and get me again."

"Yes, Miss Lucy," Kaellen said before she scurried off.

Good worker, that one. A bit lacking in confidence, but that could be fixed over time. Lucy had discovered that a lot of the Kittens were, for a lack of a better term, posers that just wanted in on something cool, but a good percentage had stepped up, and she was taking quick notes of that. If there was ever another event like this, she'd have a much stronger core of people to work with.

"Next disaster?" she asked.

As it turned out, the next few things were pretty simple. Some interpersonal problems were solved by telling people off, some issues with logistics, but she was becoming a deft hand at handling those, and some problems that were only problems in the short term.

It wasn't good to push things off, but like... the show was going to start in twenty minutes. If they could put something off for thirty, then it wouldn't actually be a problem anymore, would it?

One smaller gang had shoved one of her Kittens and they had been a little hurt. So Lucy crossed the main concord to where the gang had been made to wait by casino security, and she was amused to see the entire gang shrink back from her as she told them, in no uncertain terms, that they operated on a one strike policy here, and that if they didn't apologize and cover the medical bills, she'd find other ways to make them pay.

She could see why Cat enjoyed intimidating people, it was fun.

It was more fun when people who were inclined to commit crime did so in a nice, organized fashion. Organized under her, that was.

Not that she wanted to dive too deeply into that. Her Cat had a nice reputation going on as a sort of... Robin Hood ish character. A slum rat with a gun and a heart of gold. It helped that Cat actually was just kind of nice under all of her grumbling punkness.

Lucy didn't want to jeopardize that too much by having Cat linked with organized crime. Besides, the government was a step above crime in the hierarchy, so this was just a stepping stone.

The minutes before the show actually began were disturbingly non-hectic. A bathroom clogged up, and two gangs got into a shouting match in the lobby, but no one died from either situation, and... and that was it.

"Okay," Lucy said with a sigh. "How's the main room looking?"

The last was asked to the nearest Kitten, who shrugged a little, then gestured to the room. "Did you want to see it? We can continue to stand around, in case something happens."

She was worried about letting the Kittens handle themselves, but micromanaging was a great way to prevent people from getting things done and to slow things down to a crawl.

So, she decided to extend a bit of trust and walked up a floor and to the control booth for the main auditorium.

It was a room currently filled with six techies that worked for the casino, all of them bent over sound systems and looking up at a wall covered in displays. There was a long, narrow window that overlooked the auditorium itself. She had a nice view of the stage from there.

This was more a stage for like... magicians and musical performances than this kind of presentation.

"How's it going?" she asked the lead.

"Well enough, but we still don't have directions," he said. "But someone keeps connecting to our network and changing things."

"Ah, that's not good," Lucy said.

He shrugged. "Figured it was one of the Samurai's AIs, because our network isn't connected to anything. It's entirely isolated."

"Oh, well, in that case, I'm sure it'll be just fine."

She couldn't help but chew on her lower lip a little. This was it.

***