Chapter Thirty-Six - Wrapping Shit Up

“It’s not true. There aren’t people living underground, it’s all some bullshit urban legend. Some punk saw a hobo and didn’t know better and then when he told his buddies they exaggerated the story.

There’s no such thing as a ‘sewer dragon.’ It’s stupid.”

--WriteIt Post, June 2040

***

There was a lot of shit to wrap up, metaphorically speaking.

Gomorrah was, somehow, worse than me when it came to sweet-talking folk, so I got the dubious honour of being the one to talk to the people currently stuck in bathtubs with no limbs.

It took proving that we were both samurai to convince them to calm down, that and six points worth of alien painkillers. The folk currently pinned to racks were somewhat mobile, though they reminded me of some videos Lucy’d shown me of cloned baby giraffes taking their first steps. Awkward and unwieldy, and they tended to crash into everything around them.

At least we didn’t need to carry them.

Doc Hack, as it turned out, had a clever system in place to communicate across the sewers. Morse, transmitted over signals that ran along the network of pipes. I didn’t get into the finer details of it, but once Gomorrah figured it out from his stuff, it wasn’t hard for her and Atyacus to tap into the entire communication system the Sewer Dragons had.

Its simplicity actually served it well. We could swamp it with random data, but there was no real way to hack into a communication system that could be powered by someone with a pair of booster cables and a stolen car battery.

Still, Gomorrah managed to get the message across, and before we knew it, Sewer Dragons were congregating. Not at Doc Hack’s lab—the place was currently a mess—but at the Oasis.

We left the lab the same way we came in, out the top. Carrying our new limbless friends made that somewhat complicated, but we managed, even if it took well over an hour to trace back a path that had initially taken us ten minutes to walk.

By the time we were outdoors and meeting a team of EMTs, I was dead on my feet.

And it wasn’t over.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Franny swore as she walked closer.

We didn’t stray far from the entrance of the pharmaceutical building, no matter how much it annoyed the guards. Seeing us come up with the quasi-Sewer Dragons had made an impression, I think.

The Fury parked itself right on the sidewalk. Rac and Franny hopped out, the younger of the two with a mouth stained blue by slushie, and stopped half a dozen metres away.

“You fucking reek,” Raccoon said.

“We do?” I asked. “I can’t actually smell anything.”

“You’re lucky, because if you smelled yourself, you’d off yourself like a corpo after too many months of overtime.” Rac nodded at her own sage words.

I snorted. “Right, I can imagine. The EMTs were giving us looks too. They didn’t say anything though.”

“You’re covered in shit and blood,” Rac pointed out. “And you’re wearing nutso samurai stuff. They’d be mental to try anything.”

She had a point.

Gomorrah sighed, then looked me up and down in a way that had me very worried. “How fire-proof is your armour?” she asked.

“That’s not a question I’m very keen on hearing,” I said.

“It’ll remove the smell.”

“It’ll remove my fucking skin,” I countered.

In the end, Myalis assured me that I was, for the most part, fireproof. As long as Gomorrah held back and used a reasonable amount of fire on me.

A few gawkers filmed us, and the few cars that were piloted by people stopped on the roadside to stare as Gomorrah hosed me down with her flamethrower. I was warm, uncomfortably so where my armour was thinner, but she was moving fast and it didn’t exactly hurt so I didn’t complain.

Then it was my turn to flame her, which was a lot more enjoyable. Though her armour was, predictably, very fireproof.

After cleaning off our tools with a few spurts from her shoulder-mounted guns, and a sniff-check from Rac, who confirmed that we smelled more like exhaust than outhouse, we got into the Fury and took off with the usual amount of alacrity.

The ride wasn’t long, but it did allow me to grab another one of those energy drinks and text Lucy.

Cat: Hey Lulu, I’m safe. Going 2 b a while b4 I get home

I didn’t have time to lean back and relax before Lucy replied.

Lulu the greatest: What happened?
Cat: Long story. Fought in the sewers. Weird monster doctor
Cat: Still some people to save. Will try to head home after
Cat: Might have to make a stop before that.
Lulu the greatest: Are u hurt?
Cat: Nope! I’m fine. Tired tho
Cat: And I want a shower
Lulu the greatest: We’ll have a nice warm one once you get back!!

I was grinning so hard I think the two in the back thought I was losing my mind.

I wanted to keep talking to Lucy, to convince her things really were all right, but Gomorrah pulled into the lot before the Oasis and I had to say goodbye and refocus. Things weren’t over just yet.

There were at least a hundred Sewer Dragons gathered around the front of the Oasis.

Unlike last time, Gomorrah parked us in front, the sleek car looking out of place against the cement and rust.

“You two stay inside,” I said. “They might not take kindly to what we’re going to tell them, and I don’t want to have to patch up any more bullet holes than I have to today.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Franny said. “I know better than to get in front of an angry mob.”

The crowd did look pretty mob-like. A lot of the Sewer Dragons were standing there with arms crossed and heads bowed. Plenty had weapons of some form at hand. There was a large group that was standing apart, though. They looked awkward, not just their body language, but the way they moved. They lacked the fluid, almost mechanical grace of the other Sewer Dragons.

Our missing people, I guessed.

Gomorrah and I stepped out of the Fury and instantly we became the centre of attention. “So, you wanna be the one who does the talking, or do I get the honours?” I asked.

“On the one hand, the likelihood of there being a riot rises exponentially if you’re the one to talk. On the other, I’m... reluctantly weary of public speaking.”

“Really?” I asked, glancing over to the nun. She didn’t seem shy, at least body language-wise. “You have a pretty voice.”

“I don’t think the beauty of one’s voice matters all that much when it comes to deciding whether or not you’re good at orating.”

That sounded fair. “Have you tried imagining them all naked?”

“Have you?” she shot back.

I looked at the Sewer Dragons, all in their long coats, metal bits shining beneath. A number of them had a nice coating of shit on their pant legs. I imagined the place smelled like a convention held in a pig farm.

Tilting my head from side to side, I cracked my neck and stepped up to the edge of the entranceway to the Oasis, right where a few steps led down into the main area with the tents and little shacks the Sewer Dragons had put up.

Adjusting the volume on my helmet’s microphone, I pushed it all the way up. “Alright!” I said. My voice boomed across the vast concrete hall and I only just managed to hold back a wince. “Some of you might have heard of us. I’m Stray Cat, this is Gomorrah, and for the past few hours we’ve been running around your sewers and kicking your asses.”

I think I had their attention. Now I just had to avoid fucking it all up.

“We came down here because we learned that a whole lot of people were missing from above. Sewer Dragons were responsible for it, but we wanted to get to the bottom of all that mess and rescue those people.” Some of the Sewer Dragons below started to look excited, the unarmed, awkward ones. “Doc Hack’s dead,” I said. “He didn’t cooperate, so now he’s swimming in some pipe somewhere. I know that the city needs you, but that doesn’t excuse kidnappings. We’ll be twisting the government’s arm later today to get them to act.”

I settled my hand over the hilt of my sword. Somehow, that really helped with the nerves.

“If you’re one of the people that was transformed against their will, then gather up here. We’ll be doing what we can to turn you back. If you want to stay the way you are, then all the best to you.”

***