Ch35 Picnic
by
“No worries,” *BAM* “It doesn’t seem too dangerous,” *BANG* “It’s only the one after all.” *CRASH*
“It sounds like an elephant in a china shop! And it’s doing the macarena!”
Elephant? Macarena?
“Nicole, believe me, its fine. I know how to deal with rats if I have to.” *WHAM*
“Says the guy who had to be saved from them.”
“There was over forty of them!” *THUD*
The weird multi-armed torso-rat definitely wasn’t the most agile thing around, but it was plenty strong. It must have smelled something it wanted further down the hall, because now it was chasing the entire crowd of civilians in front of it to try and get past them. Whenever it caught up to a person it would grab them with it’s eight arms, sniff them while they screamed, and then throw them angrily to the side. Definitely still hunting mutants.
I was blending in with the panicked crowd, waiting for a good moment to slip away. I had absolutely no interest in getting pulled into a fight right now, not in such a public setting. There would be guards coming to deal with this soon, and even I could predict that the heroes might show for an emergency at the hospital. Being arrested right now was not appealing in the slightest.
The rat grabbed a woman, sniffed her (she screamed), and threw her to the side. The crowd of people was starting to thin a bit as people ran down side corridors or were knocked to the floor, but then a dull roar down one of the intersecting hallways had some of the humans running back into the main crowd. That was bad.
A second stitched-creature appeared from the intersecting corridor, this one with an intact mutant man’s body that had a chitinous carapace, but with a nessie’s neck and a rat’s head. The two joined up and continued chasing the crowd.
Hmm, if I was gauging their behavior correctly…
*SKREEEEKKKiiikkiikikik*
Yup. A third stitch-creature was flanking the crowd from the next intersection. They might be heavily modified, but the stitch-creatures were still using rat hunting tactics. Both myself and the crowd were being herded.
Idiotic. They were going to herd a bunch of panicked civilians into a constricted space! During Odd Summer! There was well over five thousand people at this hospital, easily enough for at least one to trigger. Some more level-headed people in the crowd were trying to keep things under control, keeping others from being trampled and so forth, but it was only a matter of time before someone got truly hurt, and then the real panic would set in. Considering the circumstances, there was a good chance any resulting trigger would be a violent one. I didn’t want to be around for that.
“Hey Nicole? I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“What!? A-alright, but call me back when you’re safe!”
“I will.”
I hung up the phone, resolving to alter my version of events a bit when I retold them to her later. There was absolutely no way I was letting Nicole know I got herded by rats a second time.
Let’s see, I had to make this look as normal as possible and get it done quick. The best thing would be to get something large and heavy to bludgeon the rats with. Avoid making them bleed, humans panic at the sight of blood.
I spotted a fire suppression canister in a case embedded into the wall. Shoving my way past a few running people, I grabbed the tab on the case that said “LIFT HERE” and wrenched the lid off. Then I grabbed the canister. It wasn’t as heavy as I would have liked, but it was solid, and if Mikey’s horror movies were any indication, bashing something’s brains in with a fire suppression canister was common enough to not panic the crowd.
I slowed down and let people run past me. The two stitched-creatures approached, and I angled for the one with the long neck. Just a bit further…
The stitched-creature came in range and I swung the canister at its head. The metal canister slammed into the underside of the long-necked creature’s chin, throwing its head up in a wide arch and breaking its jaw. The head flopped backwards over its own shoulder, and a moment later the rest of the creature followed, toppling onto the floor. It didn’t try to get up.
Huh. That was easier than expected.
The eight-armed creature blinked in confusion at the sudden absence of its partner, before attempting another hiss-bellow and swinging its arms at me. I ducked underneath the first swing, but with eight arms it was able to land hits through sheer numbers. I couldn’t dodge all of them while appearing human, and eventually three of its arms grabbed my sides. It attempted to lift me up and throw me…
…and failed. I was simply too heavy for it, and with an entire eight-armed torso crudely grafted to the front of a rat body, its center of balance was terribly placed for heavy lifting. Its hindquarters lifted off the ground before I did, and I used its resulting moment of confusion to slam it in the face with the canister. Once, twice, and then it roughly shoved me away to spare itself more head trauma.
The rat thing covered its head with its arms, trying to get its bearings, before suddenly flailing and roaring. I was about to step in for another attempt when a shoe flew over my shoulder and bounced off the rat-creature’s torso. It didn’t do any damage, but the rat paused to watch the boot hit the floor.
I turned to find that several humans had started to grab anything they could to arm themselves. Boxes, medical equipment, the one human who took off her boots and had already thrown the first. One especially large man had dumped the medicine off a metal trolley, and was lifting the whole thing over his head to brace it for use as a bludgeoning object. This human ran forward and slammed the trolley onto the rat, unbalancing both of them. While he recovered, other humans began throwing their objects, or directly hit the rat with their makeshift weapons if they were feeling brave.
The third rat-creature that had tried to flank the crowd wasn’t doing any better. The humans near it had also gathered weapons (one had somehow found a metal baseball bat), and proceeded to beat it to death in short order. That one hadn’t had any real protective enhancements, and didn’t last nearly as long as the eight-armed rat.
Very interesting behavior from the humans. I did not expect them to turn on the rat-creatures in such a manner. Most civilians I encountered always ran, and I had assumed it their default behavior in dangerous situations. My successful attack on the rat-creatures must have galvanized the crowd into going on the offensive. Indeed, the rat-creatures didn’t really have any weapons beyond physical strength, and it wasn’t like three rat-creatures outnumbered such a large crowd. It had only taken a visual example of seeing one human prevail to make the group realize an alternate (and better) method of survival existed. I’d definitely have to remember this tactic for next time.
The crowd slowly started to filter back towards the exits, some of them clutching their weapons while checking around corners, others helping those who had trouble walking due to injury or just frayed nerves. A few of the more proactive humans did that weird ritual where they hit my shoulder, and congratulated me on my martial prowess, or on the size of my ‘testicles’ (I’d never even bothered forming them, a waste of resources). Confusing.
As the crowd walked out I passed by the corpse of the third rat-creature. It had been more or less pulped, nothing more than a red pile of meat with no real features. Technically the rat-creatures were much stronger than any one human, even most mutants, but the combined might of the human crowd hadn’t been a force the rat-creature could overcome. A good reminder of the lesson I learned with the yellow-fur. There was a reason ‘weak’ humans were at the apex of this world.
Yes, I’d definitely have to remember this tactic. How brutally effective it was, and how quickly they turned on a monster.
Escaping the hospital hadn’t been difficult after the crowd killed the rat-creature. The guards had managed to subdue a decent number of the ones they came across, and when Turbo arrived at the scene he searched the hospital and ended the last few pockets of fighting in short order. Brilla was forced to move the van long before he came, due to some of the rat-creatures trying to get at Gregor, so at the very least they weren’t at the scene when the hero arrived. I on the other hand, got stuck in the police debriefing afterwards.
I answered some innocuous questions about events inside, and assured a harried EMT that I was fine before they left me alone. In the crowd of civilians and police, I gleaned whatever information I could from the questions police and medical personnel asked, as well as the ‘chatter’ over their radios.
Twenty-five people missing, two critically injured and mutating, and one man dead after he tried to protect his young mutant daughter from a rat-creature. The rat-creatures had arrived using sewer tunnels around the hospital, and had broken a hole in the floor of the morgue to facilitate their escape with their ‘cargo’ (a shame I couldn’t follow, but Nicole would never have been able to reach the tunnels under the hospital in time to escort me).
All things considered, it wasn’t the worst outcome. No triggers had occurred, and the rat-creatures hadn’t been able to break into the mutavus treatment ward because of the already higher than normal security. My biggest problem was that I needed to call a taxi in order to get to the mall and buy cinnabons. The other minions couldn’t risk staying with the hero around, so they had left after confirming I was fine.
After a brief stop at the mall, I arrived at Manchineel St. and paid the taxi driver. Then I climbed down the sewer entrance with my bag of cinnabons, making sure to dodge Mr. Chonker’s half-hearted lunge and bonk him once. Eventually he’d learn to stop. Then I was almost running around the bend to get to Nicole’s. I was terribly late for our established meeting time, by a whole hour and thirteen minutes.
Up ahead I spotted Nicole. I had called her after I left the hospital and let her know that I was safe. She had been worried about still going on our outing after what had just happened, but I assured her that I wasn’t at all tired from the ordeal, and, in fact, was more eager than ever to begin exploring the tunnels.
“Hey Nicole, sorry I’m late, but I brought the cinnabons. I made sure to get more than one like you asked,” I handed the bag of cinnabons to one of her smaller mandible claws.
Several of her eyes blinked, “You just got attacked by Frankenstein rat monsters and you’re worried about cinnabons? Are you sure you didn’t get hit on the head?”
“It was only a glancing blow. I’m fine I assure you.”
“A-are you joking?”
“…Yes?”
I heard mumbling coming from Nicole’s den. It sounded like she was talking to herself. Human’s did that sometimes, although I hadn’t quite figured out why.
“So are you ready to go Nicole?”
One of her claws clacked, and she fell into silence. She was avoiding looking at me again. The silence stretched onwards.
“Is something wrong Nicole?”
“…um. It’s just… well…”
“I’m sorry the cinnabons aren’t warm, but they didn’t have a container to keep the heat in.”
“It’s not the cinnabons!” she said. Then she let out a big sigh, “It’s just that… I don’t like people looking at me…”
Confusion. She hadn’t seemed bothered by it up until now.
“Oh. Then have I offended you?”
“What? No!”
“Cause I’ve been looking at you when we talk.”
“That’s not what I meant!” she yelled. I waited while she gathered her thoughts.
“Tofu, you’re the only person I’ve met in years that doesn’t look at me in terror.”
Well, that wasn’t quite true (I was rather terrified when I first met her) but I decided to remain silent about that.
“I don’t want that to change…” she trailed off.
Well, that wouldn’t be a problem. While I didn’t have complete control of my emotions, I did have complete and utter control of my facial expressions. If she needed for that to not happen, then I could do that.
“I promise that will never happen Nicole.”
Her eyes finally focused back on me, but she didn’t say anything.
“…Do you want to call it off?” I asked. I really hoped she didn’t decide to call it off.
And then she began to exit her den.
The first ‘segment’ of Nicole’s body was her head. It was reminiscent of a scorpion’s head, but heavily armored, and her eight eyes were placed in a semicircle along the top half of her skull. The first two eyes faced forward, and were the most like a human’s eyes; they had pupils, but the coloration was still uniformly dull gray to match her carapace, no visible iris. From there, a second pair was placed to either side of the first, this pair with no visible pupils. Next was a third pair that had strange pupils with an almost crosshair-like structure, and finally on either side of her head were the biggest pair, which were fully compound eyes. I recognized the compund structure from my research into insects and scorpions. All the eyes besides the large compound ones could blink, and rotate independently in their sockets.
I would have loved to know how her brain coordinated all the different visual inputs. I still had trouble with more than four eyes, let alone using differing designs. Mutavus had created a truly elegant design here.
The bottom half of her face was taken up by her mouth. The top half was part of her skull like with a human’s, but the lower ‘mandible’ could split in two, and was formed by a modified set of pedipalps. Both pedipalps were tipped by small, claw-like ‘hands’, composed of three ‘fingers’. Although stubby, I had seen her deftly manipulate a smartphone screen with those fingers, as well as rip a rat’s head off with them when it came too close to her face.
Oh, and her mouth could spit acid. An important detail.
The second segment of her body was where her main claws were attached. Both claws were large and armored, and while not truly sharp, were easily strong enough to shear a medium sized rat’s body in half without effort. Together, the two claws were large enough to block half a sewer tunnel by themselves. It was almost like she was wielding two vault doors instead of claws. Impressive considering the rather thin ‘arms’ they were attached to.
Past her claws the segments became rather uniform. Each sported a pair of multi-jointed legs that stuck out from the sides, and ended in a two-clawed ‘foot’. The joints themselves were odd, being a mishmash of human bone and arachnid exoskeleton, which resulted in a combination of ball-socket joints, and reversible joints that could easily change direction. The resulting legs looked almost too thin to support her weight, but mutavus had obviously found a way, as she practically glided out of her den, completely silent. Likely she’d be comfortable walking or crawling through a tunnel even if she had to do it upside-down or backwards.
All counted, there were twelve leg segments, which gave her twenty-four legs, and plenty of weight, and muscle, and leverage to easily handle her claw-heavy front end. I estimated that her total weight was actually around twenty-five tons, a bit higher than my previous estimate (although I would never tell her that, humans apparently found it rude).
And then came the tail. Here, mutavus had outdone itself. I could see the perfection in its design. For about twenty feet past the last segment, extended a tail made from (if I was interpreting this right) braided cables of muscle. The outermost layer of muscles were like overlapping ribbons, and seemed to be made out of a flexible carapace composite (how?!), but when the tail flexed and coiled, I could see hints of the stronger cable muscles beneath. They likely extended all the way through her body, acting as an anchor for her muscular system in place of a spine. If I was right, this was how Nicole was strong enough to wield two giant claws like knives, and how such thin legs could support her weight. Mutavus had created some kind of hyper-strong, flexible muscle tissue! Envy!
Compared to all that, Nicole’s core unit was somewhat… disappointing.
It was attached to the end of her tail, and looked entirely like the upper half of a normal human. One head with the normal accompaniment of sensory organs (straight hair tied back in a ponytail), and two arms with one hand each (five fingers). I assumed the rest of her torso was also in order, but I couldn’t see it since she was wearing a black t-shirt, as well as well-used, heavy-duty overalls that ended in a many-pocketed ‘skirt’ around her waist (filled with tools I noted). The only abnormalities were her tail that connected to her lower body somewhere under her skirt, and the fact that her pigmentation was uniformly dark gray to match the rest of her carapace, even her eyes, nails, and hair. If it weren’t for that she might have been any other young human woman. Her human torso didn’t have any extra carapace, or scales, or claws, or spines, or anything else I could see. Too bad, but the parts that had mutated more than made up for that weakness. At least now I knew for certain why she always saved food “for later.” Her acid-spitting mouth probably didn’t have taste buds, and that was one of the best parts about eating.
Nicole had a duffel bag hanging over one shoulder, and she nervously fiddled with the tools in her skirt pockets despite the fact I could see they were all arranged neatly. She kept glancing at me and then back at her tools, before finally saying, “Well?”
Confusion.
“Well what?”
The tension drained out of her posture (if having her core unit exposed made her that nervous I’d need to get her some armor. I knew I always felt better when my core was in my helmet).
She made a nervous chuckle, and then smiled.
“Let’s get going.”
“I dunno Abe. This looks sketchy as fuck,” said Blake. He stared down into the lightless hole in the floor and spat.
“It is. But we’ve got a detailed description of what we’re hunting, and over two dozen son’s of bitches who need help and fast. Clock’s ticking.”
“So why don’t they get a fucking cape in here. We’re pest control, not caped crusaders.”
“The only guy who could’ve had to leave. Some situation up north.”
“Pah, bullshit. Just doesn’t want to risk his own hide.”
“Maybe, or maybe there really was another emergency. Whole sector’s only got three capes, they’re stretched thin.”
“Three? Fuck. I hate working east sectors.”
“Everyone does, but look on the bright side, we’re getting paid double plus a bounty on each civi we rescue and rat we bag.”
“Can’t spend money if we’re dead,” said Blake. He spat another loogie down the hole and frowned when he couldn’t hear a splat.
“We’re also authorized to use the big guns.”
Blake turned away from his staring contest with the abyss and raised a questioning brow at Abe.
“For real?”
“Yup. Guess the sector mayor or some other big-wig wants this shit dealt with. They even offered to restock all the ammo we use.”
“Well shit Abe. Why didn’t you just say so? Let’s bag us some rats!”
The two men turned away from the hole in the floor of the morgue, and headed for one of the loading docks where the hospital received deliveries. Two vans and a large semi-truck were rolling in, all of them with the company’s logo emblazoned across their side; the silhouette of a vampire, with a red circle and slash “No” symbol covering it.
The vans unloaded six people each, and including the drivers and support crew, that brought the group assembled here to twenty people. Abe and Blake had started as a small, two-man squad after leaving the service, and they had slowly grown their company into one of the better respected (read: expensive) extermination crews in the city, despite their small size. Vampires, banshees, illegal pets that had triggered and grown to monstrous size, you name it they had hunted it. Frankenstein rats was a new one for them though, so they had called everyone in.
“Yo boss, what’s the big hullabaloo? I thought we were hunting vampires?” said one of the new arrivals.
“New plan,” said Abe, “Some asshole has been making Frankenstein monsters out of rats, kidnapped a bunch of people and then fled into the sewer. We’re being paid for each civi we get back and each monster we put down.”
There were surprised stares and worried murmurs at that. Rescuing kidnap victims? From a villain? That was a job for heroes, or maybe the police.
“Calm your tits,” growled Blake, with a sly grin on his face, “we get to break out the bolters.”
“For real?”
“And the client’s picking up the ammo tab.”
At that proclamation there were some cheers. They got to use the bolters? Then the job was as good as done, they just needed to save a few civi’s from overgrown rat monsters and collect their check at the end. Probably get a damn medal for it too, please and thank you.
The back of the semi-truck was opened up, and reinforced cases full of equipment were pulled out, including the two large crates with the warning labels (not because of the contents, but because if you touched them without permission Blake would rip you a new one). The hunters that opened them did so almost reverently, revealing the contents that were sacred to anyone who had ever been on the wrong end of too many claws and fangs.
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“Kruger370 automatic, smooth-lock, portable hand-held heavy-bolters. Delivered straight to our unworthy hands from heaven’s very own gun assembly line, also known as New Dawn Inc’s factory number seven.”
There were four bolters total. Not enough for everyone who’d be going down into the tunnels, but enough to ventilate anything that challenged the group four times over. The portable version of heavy bolters could only use lightning rounds, but that was all you really needed. Designed to penetrate armor and lodge in flesh, the rounds were charged by the gun, and would discharge their payload to burn deep, a necessity when the vast majority of triggered animals wound up with regeneration as a power (the guns also had a stun setting, but who the hell ever used that). The only problem with them was the possibility of stray rounds, which put bolters under even heavier restrictions than normal weaponry. A single round wouldn’t always kill unless it hit the right spot (but it would put them down, New Dawn Inc. guarantee*), and the mutations that occured due to a lightning round wound… well, they tended to be nasty.
“Alright gather round you punks,” yelled Blake, as people finished gearing up, “Time to see what you’re working with.”
Abe waited for the group to assemble, and then pulled the tarp off a pile in the dock to reveal the body of one of the stitch-creatures that had assaulted the hospital. Several people recoiled at the sight of it, and expletives were used liberally.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s big and ugly, but that’s about it. No special abilities or powers to worry about, and they’re none too bright either. Most of the ones they put down were beaten to death by hospital guards, so a few bullets or a bolt will put them down right quick. One of the head doctors did a look-over, and it’s likely that the super responsible is a puppeteer, not a tinker, so all we gotta do is pop them and the whole circus goes with them. Oh, and remember to check your lines of fire, all the kidnap victims were mutants. Even if they don’t have armbands: check first! I don’t need to lose a several thousand dollar bonus because ya’ll were trigger happy.”
The group set about making final preparations for the rescue mission. There were communications to set up, and they needed to make sure the hole was a viable access point. Some of the hunters were already done gearing up, and were gathered around the corpse. Partly to discuss tactics to use against other stitch-creatures, but mostly just to prod at it and talk shit.
“So the poor blokes got stapled to a rat. Ain’t that the shit.”
“Man, have some respect.”
“How many of em do you think there are?”
“Don’t really matter. Tight corridors, four bolters? There could be a hundred and we’d be fine.”
One of the newer hunters, a guy named Tidus, nervously toed the corpse with his boot, “Are all of these parts mutant? Some of it looks off, besides the rat I mean.”
“Might be some alligator mixed in, it is a sewer after all,” said an older member of the group. Some of the group members chuckled. “Hey, I’m not kidding. There was that one guy with the green ooze downtown. They caught him dumping gator babies and turtles n’ shit into a sewer with the stuff. Took a week to hunt it all down.”
“So you’ve been in the tunnels before?” asked Tidus.
“I have indeed,” said the veteran hunter, “Once back in S3 with the aforementioned gator babies, another time in N6 with a rogue vampire.”
“What are the tunnels like? I’ve heard stories.”
“Bah. Course you have, I just told you ‘bout the gator babies. Mostly they’re just smelly. Trust me kid, we might run into some vampires or a gator or whatever, but that’s what we got the bolters for. Besides these ugly beasties,” he kicked the corpse, “the worst we’ll see is some big rats.”
Nicole
“Stay close, the rats are the least of our worries down here… not that close!”
She shoved Tofu to the side, and then immediately remembered that wasn’t exactly socially appropriate. He hadn’t actually been too close, but her personal bubble had grown over the last three years since she mutated, and her social skills were pretty rusty. Luckily, Tofu remained unfazed as ever, and ignored her social faux pas.
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” said Tofu, “Everyone keeps telling me that the tunnels are dangerous, but the only dangerous thing I’ve encountered are rats.”
“That’s because you’ve spent most of your time in the sewers, they’re the safest part. The section between us and the surface is dangerous because that’s where all the understructure for the city is, and below us is dangerous because that’s where all the organic life hides.”
“That’s where the rats come from?”
“No, they’re scavengers. They nest near the surface so they can raid it for garbage. They’re basically the bottom of the food chain down here, the only thing lower is the nessies.”
“Ah. Can you tell me more about some of the animals we could encounter?”
“Oh sure. Let’s see… there’s crickets, spiders, cheepers, sligs, crocs, one time I actually found an octopus, um, will-o-wisps, those you really need to be careful for, as well as vampires, grue, click-slithers….”
Hunters
“Ho~ly shit that is a big rat.”
“Understatement of the goddamn year. Thank god for bolters.”
The hunters were gathered around the corpse of an absolutely massive rat they had just downed. It was large and white and just about the size of a tank, with incisors like swords. It had damn near cracked the ceiling with its head when they loaded it with lightning rounds.
“I don’t see any stitch marks,” said one of the hunters, “think this is a Frankenstein special?”
“Gotta be. I’ve seen bigass packrats before, but that’s just ridiculo- look out!”
The hunter who cried the warning suddenly pulled the man next to him aside. Sticking out of the water where the man had been standing was the head of a snake that could have given Chthulu a run for its money, tentacles lining a razormaw of teeth. The hunter’s gun came up, and he fired a burst into the thing’s face.
The thing squealed and started thrashing, and suddenly it became apparent that the ‘snake’ was attached to a larger body in the water. Blake came forward with one of the bolters, and sank some lightning rounds into the thing to finish it off. Only when it finally died did they dare to drag it out of the water.
“Fuck, it’s like someone stapled a snake to a croc and then put my ex’s head on it.”
“You let that suck your-”
“Hey fuck you.”
“Shut it. Both of you,” said Blake, “We’ve wasted enough time as it is. Let’s get moving.”
They formed up and continued on, with Blake taking point and keeping a watchful eye on the pace. The dark and the risk of ambush was getting to some of the hunters, mostly the newbies, but Abe didn’t like it either. Admittedly he had expected an easier trail to follow, but apparently the super responsible for the monsters saw fit to let them operate autonomously. There weren’t any lights or equipment that might have indicated the attack on the hospital was planned from close by. The monsters were just dragging their victims through the sewer however far it took to get to their destination.
He gave one last look at the weird snake/croc monster that had tried to ambush them.
At least they were going in the right direction.
Tofu
“One sec, just need to wrench this lever and stop the flow for a bit,” said Nicole.
The lever in question was attached to the water main that serviced Manchineel St. and the surrounding blocks. Technically it was an emergency shut-off valve, but Nicole had jury rigged it to be an on/off switch. With the water stopped she could make small improvements to the pipes before turning it on again. We were trying to add a small spout to the pipe that would shoot water down a side tunnel, and make a current for the nessies.
Nicole grabbed the lever with her (human) hands and pulled. The lever must have been stuck, because she had to strain to get it to move, which caused the muscles in her forearms to stand out. That was when I saw another little mutavus improvement; when the muscles in her arms strained, they bunched up, coiling around themselves and creating squiggly patterns under her skin. Seems her human half was not as unmodified as I thought. Mutavus had changed the muscles internally to provide strength while leaving her appearance of a younger woman unchanged. A clever deception, I wondered how many enemies had targeted her core only to find it was not as vulnerable as it seemed.
Unfortunately, she noticed I was watching and her hands slipped. The recoil nearly bashed her head against the wall.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Just, keep a lookout or something yeah?”
“Sure.”
I’d noticed similar behavior several times, normally associated with any indication I was paying too much attention to her. At first I thought it fear that her vulnerable core was being analyzed for weakness, but this seemed to be a more human, psychological problem. She was afraid that I would be afraid of her, which frankly made no sense to me. Perhaps some malfunction of her emotions? I could empathise.
Once Nicole had the water shut off, I carved a hole in the pipe. The remaining water shot out under pressure, but eventually lessened enough to allow me to stick the sawed-off pipe piece into the hole, and aim it in the direction Nicole needed. Then I took a tube of sealant and made sure the pipe piece was cemented in place, using my fingers to make sure the sealant reached all the right places. Technically you weren’t supposed to touch the stuff directly, since it would fuse your fingers together, but that wasn’t a problem for me.
Once I was done, Nicole turned the water back on, and a stream of water shot out of the newly made spigot. It flew down the tunnel and into the canal flowing down the center. I didn’t notice a big change in the water flow, but Nicole assured me she had it mapped out.
“It only needs a little bit in a few different places.”
“And the city won’t send someone to fix it?”
“Not if I’m planning this right. Maybe if we were closer to Central they’d catch it, but it’s a bit more lax out here.”
“I’d think they would want to keep a better eye on the areas near the wall.”
“You’d think. But tons of stuff slips through the cracks.”
“Interesting.”
“It definitely gets that way sometimes. Just remember to not go any deeper than the sewers, don’t touch anything that looks like a gizmo if you don’t know what you’re doing… oh, and don’t follow any lights.”
Hunters
They’d run into another of the snake things, as well as a few normal (but still large) rats when they explored a tunnel that had been dug into the side of the sewer. They had been starting to worry that they’d lost the trail when they found the tunnel, which led to an older maintenance shaft that was a floor lower than the sewer. The lights no longer worked, but there were pipes all over the walls that they could follow.
“Lights up ahead,” called out a hunter in front. Something was sparking in the darkness of the tunnel, looking a bit like a downed power line.
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