Literature / Stray Cat Strut

Stray Cat

Stray Cat Strut—A Young Lady's Journey to Becoming a Pop-Up Samurai is a Web Serial Novel written by RavensDagger. It was first published in June 2021. It is a Cyberpunk Alien Invasion story with a few LitRPG elements.

Catherine "Cat" Leblanc is just another disabled orphan living in the corporate Dystopia of 2057. While on a routine museum trip, an Incursion appears in the sky, and Cat must get her kids to safety. In the process, she becomes one of the Vanguard; alien-empowered Super Soldiers charged with defending humanity against the threat. She is now a "Samurai", one of the most powerful people in the world.

A samurai's power is simple: Kill aliens, get points. Use points to buy superadvanced technology and gear. Use said gear to kill aliens. Rinse and repeat.

As Cat fights one-handed through an alien invasion to save her kittens and her friends, she must face annoying civilians, a snarky AI in her head, and monsters that are growing more dangerous by the hour. Then there are the other samurai, unimpressed corporate soldiers, and internet culture turning her into a meme.

But despite all her complaints, despite her insistence that she's not cut out for this, Cat is a Vanguard now. She is the first line of defense for humanity, and she's going to save her friends.

The novel is available on SpaceBattles.com (here), Royal Road (here), and a physical copy is available on Amazon, complete with an audiobook.

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Stray Cat Strut provides examples of:

• Accidental Murder: In volume three, Cat is interrogating an information broker, and tries picking him up by his suit and holding him over a ledge for intimidation. His suit rips, as it cannot support his weight, and he falls to his death. She goes to grab the next guy in line, promising him that she knows what she did wrong. He quickly gives her what she wants before she can try.
• Affectionate Nickname: "Cat" is short for "Catherine." When she takes up the samurai name "Stray Cat," Longbow takes to calling her "Stray Kitten."
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: There are several reasons that the Protectors choose to help Earth by empowering Vanguards, and this is one of them. They prefer not to interfere unless strictly necessary until a culture makes contact on its own; sure, they could evacuate the planet or just give them tier-4 tech straight out of the gate, but that would be inefficient and make the culture dependent on the Protectors. They prefer a Technology Uplift solution instead.
• An Arm and a Leg: Cat lost her right arm (and the eye) as a child, in the same accident that made her an orphan. It's mentioned early on that she can repair both easily as a samurai, but it takes her a while to actually do it.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Samurai are automatically considered to be officers, without consideration for training, experience, or even membership in the military. Doesn't stop them from being given a Fetch Quest, though.
• Atrocious Alias: One of the first gen Samurai is named "Neon Girl Happy-Chan". It's far from the worst name.
• Badass in Distress: In book 2, a girl who may or may not be a brand new samurai is kidnapped. Cat is hired to rescue her. Sure, she should be able to break out on her own, but it's still a very dangerous situation to be in, especially if she's completely out of points. Cat eventually discovers that she was kidnapped so that a weapons R&D department can indoctrinate her into working for the corporation, then buy weapons and blueprints just slightly better than what they already have and pass them off as their own. Everyone who hears about this can't believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea.
• Badass Transplant: When Cat finally replaces her missing arm, it's a super-strong alien prosthetic with built-in tools in the fingers and also a rocket launcher.
• Benevolent A.I.: Every Vanguard is equipped with their own A.I., which are capable of overriding any man-made computer system (military or civilian). The only thing stopping them is their own programming (which appears to be excellent) and the self-discipline of the Vanguard they are assigned to (questionable at best).
• Beware the Superman: Many people are worried about the powers of the Vanguard, superhuman transhuman soldiers with no accountability. It's mentioned several times that a samurai can flat-out murder people with little to no backlash. This, of course, is why the Protectors choose the Vanguard very carefully, based on those who fight to protect humanity and who should handle all the extra power well. Judging by some of the things Myalis says, they are continuing to monitor the situation in case their recruiting standards need to be tweaked.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Antithesis are plantlike, in that they absorb sunlight for energy, but their drones are animal-like.
• Black Box: A lot of the blueprints the Samurais get from the Protectors. State that most people don't even try to understand it outside of a few Samurai.
• Body Horror: Right before Cat became a samurai, she was impaled onto a pole. She has to physically slide herself off the pole to save herself.
• Bug War: Humanity's war against the Antithesis comes off like this, though it's mentioned a few times that the Antithesis are not insects. The closest Earth life they resemble are actually plants.
• Bullying a Dragon: Many of the chapters start with corporate and PMC notes advising their employees to NEVER MESS WITH SAMURAI. The reason they are constantly circulating these is because there's always some idiot who thinks the laid-back kid with mechanical cat ears can be bossed around. Even an absolutely brand-new samurai with zero experience has instant access to bleeding-edge technology, and is generally treated as a threat comparable to a full platoon. The highest tiers could literally blow up the moon.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Samurai tend to be eccentric.
• Cat Girl: Myalis clearly has a bit of fun turning Cat into one of these. It starts simple, just giving her cat disguise holograms to her stealth drones. Then her upgraded Multi-Armed and Dangerous rig comes equipped with a weaponized tail. Then she gives her an augmented sensor suite in the form of cat ears. And then she starts putting cat and kitten logos on everything.
• Cyborg: Most people have some cybernetic implants called "Gear", which seems to have replaced smartphones and tablets. Samurai can take it much further, with the ability to quickly and easily replace lost limbs or damaged organs. It might even be possible to go the Full-Conversion Cyborg route.
• The Chosen Many: The Samurai are hand picked by the Protectors when they demonstrate the right amount of altruism, courage, and self sacrifice.
• Church Militant: Downplayed; Gomorrah's sect of Christianity venerates the samurai as saints. While they are not supposed to fight themselves, they have a notably higher tolerance for violence than most, and even before Gomorrah became a samurai herself she engaged in some vigilante behavior.
• Clarke's Third Law: A lot of the tech from the Protectors is flat out called Clarktech.
• Code Name: Samurai go by their code names under most circumstances, and new samurai are advised to pick one quick before the internet picks one for them. While the samurai does get final say, it's traditional for them to be named by other samurai; Longbow names Cat "Stray Cat," and Cat herself names Gomorrah and Crackshot Cowboy.
• Cool Car: Gomorrah spent most of her points on a muscle car/Hover Tank she named God's Righteous Fury. It has flamethrowers, missile launchers, and a top speed in the mid hundreds. It lasts a week before being wrecked in a fight and replaced.
• Cowardly Lion: Cat before she became a samurai. She is scared out of her mind and her legs shaking, but she still ran out to save of the kids, then proceeded to use herself as a sacrifice to distract them.
• Crimefighting with Cash: One of a samurai's most basic tricks is to just buy a bunch of tier-1 guns and hand them out to people who need them. You could even argue that this is the core of everything they do, since all their "powers" are based on a point-buy system.
• Cyberpunk: Corporations rule the world, and the poor people work in service of the rich. It's not quite as bad as some examples, as the richest and most powerful are the benevolent Vanguards, charged with protecting and guiding humanity. Unfortunately, they're too busy fighting an alien invasion to fix the serious systemic problems happening in their backyard.
• Didn't See That Coming: One of the reasons that the samurai are too busy to help with the various social issues is because they made a major strategic blunder with the Antithesis a while ago. They assumed that the portals could only appear on Earth, so they missed an incursion starting on Mars. It had years to establish itself before anyone noticed, and now every single high-tier samurai spends all their time trying to beat back the tide.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Facing an endless wave of aliens, Gomorrah calls Franny to tell her that she loves her. Once they survive, she realizes she's going to have to deal with the actual fallout of that.
• Elite Agents Above the Law: Samurai are generally immune from arrest or prosecution, and can demand (and get) cooperation from any police or military units they come in contact with.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: Most chapters start with quotes from in-universe sources that provide small amounts of worldbuilding. They are often humorous in nature.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The first entire VOLUME takes place over less than a day and the first four cover less than a week. Cat makes quite a bit of progress in that timeframe due to lots of enemy targets and judicious use of explosives.
  Deus Ex: How long have you been a samurai?
  Cat: Three... maybe four hours?
• Fallen States of America: Most world governments fell when the Incursions started. Some smaller governments sprang up, but for the most place it is the megacorps that handle anything large-scale.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Putting aside the new religions that have grown up to worship the samurai or even the Antithesis, many existing religions explicitly identify the samurai as living saints. Considering they're super-powered protectors who earned their power by selflessly trying to help people, this is an understandable position to take, but they tend to creep out most samurai. Gomorrah, a nun who belonged to one such sect before she became a samurai, has it the worst.
• Fetch Quest: Cat is annoyed to discover that a civilian mall cop has no trouble ordering her around like a grunt, and sends her to rescue a couple of his idiots, then to turn on the building defenses.
• Friend to All Children: Cat starts the story essentially running the orphanage where she lives, and then she becomes a samurai and decides "well, guess I own an orphanage now." She continues to be good with other children throughout the story (even if she insists that Lucy is better at it), and adopts one or two.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The story starts off with Cat using herself as a sacrifice to distract Antithesis drones long enough for the rest of the kids to escape. She only 'fails' because she's made a Samurai before she dies.
• Hive Mind: Played with. Unlike many fictional hive minds, the Antithesis don't have a connected mind or anything of the sort. Rather, they are comparable to an ant nest (or even a plant), where drones can act independently but communicate with each other to coordinate.
• Hive Queen: Explicitly averted with the Antithesis. Despite their similarity to insects, there is no central "queen," either in a communications or reproduction sense. There are some leader-type models, but nothing so central or irreplaceable as a queen.
• Hollywood Evolution: Averted, surprisingly. The Antithesis evolves through a semi-random process not dissimilar to natural evolution. They add random genetic code from anything they eat to new batches of models; most of these mutations are simply non-viable, and most of the rest are not particularly useful. Roughly one in ten thousand are useful, at which point the hive consumes the successful model and begins producing more. When the hive can produce thousands of models every hour, this process advances quickly.
• Honest Corporate Executive: A few samurai own megacorps, and it's mentioned that all of them make sure that their companies are actually working for the common good and that their employees are well-treated.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: The Antithesis are a plant-based version of this, spreading across the universe and consuming everything in their path. Surprisingly, it's mentioned that the galactic government could defeat them in a straight-up fight, but it would be an inefficient use of resources. Better to empower individual worlds to defend themselves.
• Inherent in the System: As a cyberpunk story, this is to be expected. More than a bit of page space, especially in the chapter headers, is spent focusing on how the world is terrible, and there's little an individual or even a full corporation can actually do to fix it. Samurai can cut through most of the red tape due to both their status and their technology, but they're so busy with the Antithesis that they just can't spare the attention. Cat, a brand new samurai, kills an entire company in about a day with some legwork and some hacking, but a new company will soon fill the void and nothing will change.
• Inspired by…: Per Word Of God when asked about if the title was a Shout-Out to The Diamond Age, Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer:
  This story was inspired by Snow Crash and Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (BAHHSCQ). Snow Crash was written by N. Stephenson, who also wrote Diamond Age~
• I Work Alone: Played with; according the Myalis, most samurai are lone-wolf types, and most work alone. Even the ones who don't, such as Cat and Gomorrah, tend to work in very small groups, such as just two partners. On the other hand, they are good at working together when the chips are down, and there is little jurisdictional friction. Cat's area is largely under the domain of the Family, a clan that claims most of North America, but they make no effort to recruit her and work with her with no real trouble.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Cat is a foul mouthed, irreverent punk with an attitude problem. She's also a dedicated hero.
• Living Emotional Crutch: A more positive example than usual; Cat is clearly reliant on Lucy for most of her emotional support, but no one really sees a problem with this. Myalis even suggests that Cat call or visit Lucy whenever things start getting bad for her, to recharge her emotional batteries.
• LOL, 69: Whenever a book reaches chapter 69, the chapter title is "Nice."
• Magical Girl: In chapter 2 of book 1, a statue of a first gen Samurai is shown. She's named "Neon Girl Happy-Chan" and has an outfit that is a frilly dress.
• Magikarp Power: Samurai's work like this. They're just bog standard humans when they're chosen, and need to spend points to kill aliens to get more points.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Cat is much more tomboyish than her girlfriend, Lucy.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Used in a way reminiscent of video games; appropriate, as it's a LitRPG. Cat quickly finds that while she technically outranks everyone as a samurai, random no-name mall cops are still willing to give her Fetch Quests to rescue civilians or plug in the defense grid or what have you. When she finally encounters higher-tier samurai, they are either too busy to help her, or just give her some mobility support so that she can get the majority of the kills and rank up faster. In later books, there's a massive worldwide Incursion, and Cat wonders why the higher-tier samurai aren't handling everything. Again, they admit they could each defend an entire city on their own... but since they're so busy elsewhere, it's better to let Cat and her friends handle it so that they'll rank up, and eventually be able to do that sort of thing themselves.
• Mimic Species: One model of Antithesis specializes in disguise, mimicking random parts of the landscape until someone gets too close. Samurai generally just find them annoying, but they can kill entire groups of survivors by themselves.
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Grasshopper is a samurai sniper with a bug motif who is also an actual kindergarten teacher—she keeps her teaching license next to her literal license to kill. When she hears that Cat has a gaggle of orphans under her care, she shows up dressed in her Sunday best to give everyone (including Cat) a science lesson.
  Grasshopper: [taking out a rocket launcher] I was thinking we could start with chemistry, trigonometry, and physics!
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Cat gets two extra autonomous arms designed to hold guns and fire independently. She gets these before she bothers to fix her missing arm.
• Mundane Utility: The catalogs have an incredible array of weapons, armor, and upgrades. They also have some really great food and clothing.
• Named Weapons:
  • Most of Cat's purchased weapons have some sort of interesting model name, such as the Hummingbird (micro-rocket pistol), the Trenchmaker (modular pistol that can shoot anything), and the Simurgh's Tear (anti-air rocket launcher).
  • Gomorrah names her most awesome flamethrower (separate from the model name) "Archangel's Kiss."
• Naughty Nuns: Downplayed; Gomorrah and the sisters of her convent seem about as chaste as you would expect of nuns (their near-Church Militant mindset is something else altogether). Cat, on the other hand, complains that they're all too hot to be nuns, and Lucy loves the uniforms.
  Cat: Okay, what the hell? Does your abbey or coven or whatever only take in cute girls?
  Gomorrah: Uh, no? I... guess there might be some overlap though. We're all well fed, and we exercise a lot. Beauty tends to follow that often enough, I guess.
  Cat: Yeah, Lucy's not allowed to visit, okay?
  Gomorrah: Deal.
• No Hero Discount: Played with. Corporations will not allow looting under any circumstances, explicitly including during an active alien invasion. If you find a broken vending machine, you better pay for everything. On the other hand, samurai can take basically anything they want, especially basic supplies, absolutely for free. Partly because it's not like anyone could stop them anyway, but also because not even corporations are stupid enough to try to stop the people who are saving the world.
• Non-Indicative Name: The samurai Laserjack specializes in social technology. No lasers at all.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Incursion shelter at the beginning of the series is completely and utterly in violation of standard shelter construction. Cat initially thinks it just wasn't finished, but when the building shakes the 'reinforced' panels on the wall were revealed to be paper thin sheets of metal. It doesn't even have a door.
  • A few chapters later they realize the stair cases only go up and down one floor and have to find another staircase to go down another floor. The fact this would screw over anyone in a fire is mentioned in frustration. And then there is the fact that fire extinguishers only work if there's a fire detected, otherwise it needs a credit card before it fires.
• Nun Too Holy: Gomorrah is a nun samurai who likes using fire to fight aliens and annoying humans. Then it turns out that the rest of her convent likes to head out into the city with baseball bats to fight criminals. Gomorrah describes herself as one of the calm ones.
• Orbital Bombardment: It's mentioned a few times that the older samurai have access to this technology. It seems like it's inefficient to use it on an Incursion, though, at least if you want there to be any city left afterwards. It generally gets mentioned when some corporation is stupid enough to screw with a young samurai.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: A couple chapter headers claim that most religions have collapsed since the Protectors were able to conclusively disprove the existence of anything supernatural. Of course, it's blatantly obvious that this is at best an incomplete explanation, since one of the main characters is a practicing nun. Yes, her sect venerates samurai as saints and has much looser bans on violence, but other than that it seems similar enough to religion as we know it.
• Pants-Positive Safety: Cat and 'Baldy' have to resort to this in the museum in book 1 as Cat had enough points to buy guns, but not to buy holsters.
• Parental Abandonment: Cat is an orphan, living in an orphanage with ten other kids. The full story of most of them is unknown, but Cat's parents are dead. It's implied pretty strongly that it happened in the same accident that cost her her right arm and right eye.
  Cat: Losing an arm had been pretty rough, so was the whole ordeal with my eye melting in my face and my entire right side getting toasted. But that had been years ago, the day I became an orphan even.
• Plant Aliens: The Antithesis are a collection of plant species working in a symbiotic relationship. The mobile monsters are technically fruit, complete with seeds, which is why any dead Antithesis can create a new hive.
• Playing with Fire: Gomorrah, samurai nun, really likes fire and flamethrowers.
• Pyromaniac: Seems like there's a reason Gomorrah mostly uses fire. When she gets a chance to go all-out, Cat notes that she seems to almost purr with pleasure.
  Cat: Are you sure you're not a pyromaniac?
  Gomorrah: I was never diagnosed with anything.
  Cat: Did you burn the therapists?
  Gomorrah: Oh, shut up.
• Rags to Riches: Cat is a crippled, uneducated orphan with no prospects at the start of the story. Being a Samurai puts her into the economic top 1%.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Younger samurai tend to go through bizarre fashions at a rapid pace, as they just buy whatever they need at the moment rather than worrying about looks. Older samurai tend to have a more stable look. Fans love both trends.
• Raised by Robots: Downplayed. The orphanage uses old, cheap robots for most tasks involving rearing the children, but the older children pick up the slack.
• Read the Fine Print: Corporations originally liked tricking young samurai into binding contracts early in their careers, essentially enslaving them. This went out of style when older samurai started objecting to such practices with orbital bombardments.
• Required Secondary Powers: Normally, some of the first upgrades a samurai gets help render them immune to their preferred attacks. Cat gets some earbuds that render her immune to her sonic grenades, but Lucy gets mad at her that she keeps using gas and explosions without being immune to gas or explosions. At least she gets a gas mask quickly. Gomorrah, on the other hand, has fireproof armor, but her AI keeps trying to convince her to upgrade her skin to be the same. Gomorrah puts it off because it would also turn her blue and poisonous.
• Remote Body: Deus Ex typically uses mind-linked meat puppets to interact with the world, leaving her real body safe on her space station. By all indications, all samurai eventually come up with something like this to keep themselves safe.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The Samurai spend points to acquire the technology they use to fight the Antithesis. They can acquire points by killing individual Antithesis, and the level of tech they can access is dependent on what tier they are. Several people, including samurai, are a little worried about the psychological effect of literally turning war into a game might be. Myalis mentions that the point rewards are carefully balanced to prevent "creating bad habits," which is also why you get points and special rewards for rescuing civilians.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Any one samurai can get away with basically anything. Even a brand-new samurai has bleeding-edge technology and equipment and can outfight a small platoon; anyone who has been around for a couple years is at least a city-killer. The governments and megacorps soon gave up and passed laws giving samurai special rights and privileges to cut down on arguments.
• Species Loyalty: Samurai don't take kindly to people attacking other samurai, especially young samurai. The older samurai have been known to get younger samurai out of binding contracts via orbital bombardment, and in the second book Cat is able to get a lot of very expensive help for free just by telling other samurai that she's trying to rescue a newbie.
• Stronger with Age: The Samurai by merit of the point buy system and by merit of "Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young". A first generation Samurai is mentioned as still being alive in the first chapters, and is considered one of the strongest out there.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Protectors grant certain humans a point-buy leveling system that the humans can use to obtain technology to fight the Antithesis with. This leveling system is the product of strong A.I.s and advanced sensors, with teleporters giving samurai access to their weaponry.
• Tanks, but No Tanks: Cat refers to wheeled armored vehicles as tanks at one point.
• Technology Uplift: The Protectors could park a fleet in Sol to protect humanity from the Antithesis, but that's inefficient. Better to give technology to individual humans who have proven themselves trustworthy and slowly uplift the species that way. Every once in a while, a samurai will buy a blueprint off a catalog and give it away or sell it, pushing humanity farther. This is where hover cars came from.
• There Are No Therapists: As a cyberpunk dystopia, this is to be expected. One chapter header claims that mental healthcare largely died a quiet death (since it's easier to ignore than physical health, it's not as profitable), while another mentions a free counseling service that sells all your information to the highest bidder. On the other hand, part of an AI's job is to act as counselor for their samurai, and several times Myalis talks Cat through some trauma, even if that just means telling her to talk to Lucy.
• Throwaway Guns: When samurai buy guns, they come loaded and ready to use. It's not uncommon for a samurai to empty a cheap gun and just buy a different one rather than buying more ammo. Even Cat, who is considered rather frugal, leaves behind a few hundred thousand credits worth of guns on her first day. Because of this, there is a small but notable industry of people who come in after an Incursion, find a samurai's trail, and collect their discarded gear.
• Touched by Vorlons: Certain humans who demonstrate heroic qualities are granted a leveling system to get weapons and technology. This system is granted by the Protectors. These people are called "samurai."
• Transhuman: It's repeatedly mentioned that samurai can upgrade themselves with cybernetics and genetic modification. It's considered an unavoidable and entirely necessary part of fighting the Antithesis.
• Unfortunate Names: One of Cat's new orphans brings home a dog named Catkiller. Multiple people are worried about that.
• Vengeful Vending Machine: Chapter 12 has a vending machine that kept eating Cat and Lucy's credits without vending anything. Myalis seems annoyed at it enough that she hacks all the machines to dispense all their products.
• Virtual Sidekick: Every samurai gains an AI upon first becoming a Vanguard, which handles their point purchases, sorts through the catalogs, and overall assists them with whatever they can. They are rather limited with what they are allowed to do outside interacting with the actual samurai, however. According to Myalis, just one AI could conquer the entire Earth easily, which is not at all what the Protectors want.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Cat and Gomorrah eventually settle into this. Leading to in-universe internet fans shipping them.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Samurai gain all sorts of items and upgrades to defend humanity, which vastly improve their own lives in the process as a side effect. One of the first guns that Cat gets, a little 5-point 9mm automatic that is perfectly within human capability to build, could sell for 200,000 credits (roughly $2000). She soon heals her orphan's disabilities, including her own, and builds a luxurious home for them all.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The entire point of the Vanguard is to defend humanity and uplift its technology. A samurai can, technically, choose not to fight (Myalis even mentions a monthly point stipend, so it's not like they'd starve), but they universally choose to fight for the betterment of mankind.
• With This Herring: Cat has to fight six Antithesis mooks with nothing more than a shiv that one of the younger kids had on them.

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