Mrs. Wing, the disciplinarian, dual wielded her ruler and yardstick with ruthless efficiency as she chained combo attacks onto the asses of the crying orphans in front of her. Her black and white nuns habit spun as she twirled, putting torque and top spin into her vicious strikes.
The move sets from her class: Catholic Nun, were almost beautiful to watch if you ignored the fact that she was a middle aged halfling who was on the short side. With her tiny stature and black & white clothes, she looked like an old angry penguin princess.
Her equally cruel cat familiar, Peo, hissed and followed close behind Wing’s strikes, clawing painfully deep and bloody red scars into the helpless orphans. The two boys and one girl waited, too afraid to move out of their punishment positions, bleeding with their ass up and hands on the ground.
Wing- “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet. Do you 3 brats know what that means? Clearly you do not! None of you were paying attention in class.” Each of them received another set of strikes, then the Nun resumed her tongue-lashing.
“So much care, effort, and expense have been wasted on you 3 and how do you repay us? By stealing from our kitchens like vermin! No wonder you were abandoned by your parents, you unwanted pests. Well, what do you have to say for yourselves?”
The largest of the 3 answered “We were hungry Mrs. Wing.”
“Tyrone you stupid oaf, still trying to become a Bard when you clearly have the body of a Warrior. You test the patience of God and nature chasing your dreams to become a singer. You are such a disappointing child.”
“Does he speak for all three of you? Billy Bob, Mary Ann?” Said Wing, as she prodded the other two orphans with her measurement, turned punishment tools.
Looking down in shame, the other two answered, “Yes ma’am. We were hungry,” they chorised.
Pacing around them, Wing recited her speech for dropouts and delinquents; “Food is a privilege, a reward for high scores on your standardized tests. Of which you 3 scored the lowest in the entire class. Do you deserve food? Did you earn what you eat? I think not. One way or another you will learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Your punishment is sewer cleaning duty.”
“You can’t send us into the sewers half starved and with only a crew of 3! The rats will eat us alive! You just finished punishing us with your sticks.” Tyron pleaded.
“Silence thief! The beating you received only credits you for wasting my time. You will now earn that food you purloined with work. Now get going!” Wing screamed and raised her yardstick and began herding them towards the armory closet.
The orphans shuffled into the closet and equipped ill-fitting oversized sewer gear consisting of knee high rubber boots, aprons, shovels, and gas masks. Wing then marched them into the orphanage cellar, unlocked the sewer gate and pushed them down into the flickering and foul smelling tunnels.
She threw a map at them. “Inspect section 2B, then Clean out section A2, don’t get lost. We will NOT be sending a rescue party to find you and don’t come back until the entire blockage is cleared up. The next crew is going to check your work so don’t slack off. Now off you go.” Wing locked the sewer gate behind them and left them to their fate.
“Tyrone this is all your fault,” said Mary Ann as she picked up the soiled sewer map off the moist floor. “Your the biggest, you lead, when the rats come you tank them and give us a chance to run okay?”
Billy Bob wailed, “We all gonna die!” and started crying again.
Tyrone took the offered map, studied it and plotted a course. “None of that death flag now. I got this my friends, we are going to survive this together. I’ll sing the song of my people to protect and buff us up! Do not be afraid, follow me!”
Tyrone only knew one bard song, it was the most precious thing his mother taught him before abandoning him at the orphanage. He never knew his father, he later learned that it was the tradition of his people for the dad to leave after birth.
“We’re no strangers to love, You know the rules and so do I. A full commitment’s what I'm thinking of. You wouldn’t get this from any other guy.” Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, Never gonna run around and desert you...
*+1 CHARISMA* you have been Rickrolled.
The team of 3 gripped their shovels tight and peered into the gloom, hoping it did not hold their doom. They walked forward as the song echoed down into the maze-like sewer ways.
Meanwhile, many levels below, the rat mob marched ever upwards on a collision course with the young adventurers.
“Are we there yet?” Karen asked for the 100th time.
“Apologies my queen. We move slowly because I have taken the liberty of ordering our forward scouts to make safe the way for your mob and find our targets. The sewers are an ever changing danger even to us who live down here.”
“Oh yea? like what?” said Karen while she lazily looked at Kane as she was carried by the rats with her belly and paws in the air. “Ratboy hold up! Take a 5 min break and come give me a belly rub. Everyone take 5!” She yelled at the rest of her rat caravan.
Kane continues, “The dangers are many but mostly environmental. First, there are the ubiquitous and unstable fatbergs that we see all around us. They are made out of congealed used cooking fat and barely held together by disposable wipes, plastic bags, and all sorts of garbage. Sometimes we have to use them as stepping stones to go around blocked passageways or cross to the other side of the sewer river.
But the greatest danger is when all these fatbergs eventually pile up and clog the sewers, flooding entire sections of the tunnel. It gets much worse when it rains topside. The sewer river floods and all the lower tunnels become uninhabitable.
Then those kid adventurers get sent down to try and unclog everything. We mostly stay out of their way. They have to unclog the fatberg dams with their shovels from the dry side of the dams you see. When they unclog too fast or are unlucky, the fatberg dams break and sweep them all away. The newbies are more a danger to themselves than to us.
The scout rats have reported seeing a kid cut in half with a sewer water beam! On rare occasions, when multiple levels get backed up, all that water pressure turns this sewer into even more of a death trap. Poke a tiny hole in a fatberg dam and bam you get blasted with a sewer water beam.”
Karen heard none of Kane’s warnings as she happily received a belly rub from Travis.
“You're a big rat! My queen. I have never felt such luxurious belly fur before.” -Travis.
“Yes, I am definitely a big rat, not a dog like the dingos who ate your patients.”
