In the back compartment Catherine watched the scenery pass them by at a somewhat decent speed. The machine transports below were moving faster than them but when compared to their walking speed, especially when carrying the unconscious Nyoka this was still faster by a long shot. Though, with how cramped it was in this back compartment she was sure if Nyoka was awake, she would be complaining. But, since she currently couldn’t Catherine had shoved her to the bottom.
Their driver, Roger, had been quite since they took off. Focused on piloting the ship through the Guts, but every once in a while would glance back at them and would snap back to driving once he met Catherine’s eyes.
Catherine smirked, figuring he was wary of her, or possibly afraid? Either way it was amusing to her. “so how does this slow ship manage to catch anything?” she asked, but received no reply. She squinted, figuring he couldn’t hear her from within the cockpit. Standing up she leaned over to knock on the glass, causing the man inside to jump, turn around and widen his eyes.
Rogers slowed down the ship, then opened the cockpit “What are you doing?! Sit down you are going to get hurt!” he yelled in a panic “Its bad enough I’m transporting you two in this ship! I don’t need you falling out!”
Catherine raised her hands up defensively “Fine fine~” She said then sat back down “just had a question, is all. You’ve been quite ever since we decided to ride with you.”
He stared at her for a moment, then sighed “…sorry… just nerve wracking. You really are not supposed to be in that compartment. You don’t even have seat belts!”
Catherine glanced at the space around her, while indeed cramped, posed no threat to her even if they crashed. She simply shrugged in reply, lowering her arms “so my question?”
“…Right, go ahead.” Rogers waved her off, plopping back down in his cockpit and speeding up the vehicle again.
“How can this slow ship catch one of those machines?” she asked, pointing towards the numerous transports.
“Oh, well… this thing CAN go a lot faster, but that isn’t how it catches anything.” Rogers said “this is a Stunner, pretty much it just locks onto a target and fires an emp blast that disables any small ship.”
Catherine crooked her head to the side “And what if it misses? Those things are going pretty fast.”
Roger shrugged “That’s part of the job, actually looking for something you can hit. Older transport models, something damaged, the rarely congested areas that have slowed down. I hate to admit it, but this is an older model stunner. It can’t hit newer models going at top speed.”
Catherine was still a bit unsure how that all worked, and was curios to see it but she was honestly sick of the guts. More importantly she and Nyoka were taking up what was the cargo space, so she doubted Roger would pointlessly shoot down a transport. “You said this thing can go faster right?”
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“Yeah, a lot faster. “Roger nodded “but not with you two back there, if I make a tight turn or stop suddenly you’d go flying.” He then sped up slightly “This is as fast as I will go, won’t take long to get to our base, just sit tight and it will take 30 minutes… okay?”
Catherine frowned, she doubted this thing could shake her but could tell Roger wasn’t going to budge “Fiiiiine” she said, plopping down on top of Nyoka.
Roger nodded “Good, now if you excuse me. Ill focus on driving and getting us there in a... timely manner.” He then closed the cockpit.
The rest of the trip was in relative silence. Only the sounds of machine transports passing by at greater speeds and the low hum of the engine of the ship accompanied them. Nyoka remained unconscious and Catherine just watched the same scenery pass them by, nothing but metal pipes, different machinery, and unmarked passageways.
Much to Roger’s word, after what Catherine assumed to be 30 minutes the ship made a change to their directions. It drifted in the air, going down low to the bottom of the metal highway and stopping between two large pipes. The cockpit opened “Careful, it’s a tight fit.” Roger said, taking out a small handheld device and flipping it’s switch. A loud, dull, clang resounded and one of the pipes separated and rose into the air at an angle to allow access. “Not my favorite entrance but, going to be dark for awhile.”
Catherine just silently watched as Rogers navigated into the pipe and once they were inside the pipe lowered back into place, leaving them in darkness with the only illumination being the lights in Roger’s cockpit. That was soon fixed, however, when Roger’s flipped another switch and the lights infront of the Stunner came to life.
“Much better, “ Roger turned back to them “almost there, not much longer.” He then sat back down in his cockpit and continued to drive.
Catherine looked back behind them “so you guys have to stay hidden, huh?” she asked.
“well, yeah. This is an underground thing we have going on here.” He shrugged at her obvious question “we have been around for a long time thanks to our leader, and the organization tends to write us off as long as we don’t do anything too crazy.”
“too crazy?” Catherine asked, but she could understand how dismissive the organization could be after how much they wrote her off as just a mild inconvenience or convenient tool.
“Well, to them we are just another small gang I suppose. If we keep it that way and not, say, try and raid the control room of the Empyrean, the major higherups don’t bother us. It actually allows us a lot of leeway. Our leader says if they were to take us seriously we wouldn’t last a day.”
Catherine had to agree to that, remembering the angels. But she didn’t think it was impossible to oppose them, after all Delvin had done, and after personally seeing her dungeon stop an angel’s repeated assault, it was something the current her couldn’t do, but in the future… Catherine’s thought was interrupted as she noticed a light at the end of the tunnel that they were rapidly approaching.
“But anyways, we don’t like to dwell too much on the what ifs. For now…” The Stunner exited the tunnel and entered from the top of an absolutely huge open space that housed a small town, several structures built and attached to what seemed to be an unused gap in the larger ship. Different scrapped together houses hanging onto the upper metal walls, large facilities built at the base of the gap, and in several different places there were a multitude of ships attached to different docks.
Catherine glanced around, impressed at the use of space and how snug everything was to the point there were rarely any open spaces that would allow you to see the original metal of the Empyrean behind it. The only space that would allow it would be next to the entrances that led into this gap in the ship, all of which varied in size.
Roger stood up, turning around in dramatic fashion to face Catherine “welcome, to the underbelly!”