Eddie jutted a thumb towards one of the curtains that, upon closer inspection, seemed to be acting as a pseudo-divider for another room. At the very least, he seemed to play off Stiletto's oddities, or he was simply used to behavior like that from his previous line of work. “You should be good in there. The manhole leading down is there too.” He nodded and paused for a beat. “Padlock combination is 0-4-5-1, before I forget. Been keepin' it locked so I don't have any rats comin' up and bitin' me while I'm sleepin'.”
Strings of lights illuminated said room in a pale yellow hue. Other than that, it was rather spartan compared to the rest of the house in terms of decor, only seemingly used as a storage closet.
“Perfect! We'll go get changed now.” Stiletto rose from her lawn chair, practically jumping out of it and headed towards the divided room. Once inside, she deftly removed her letterman jacket and the concealed quickdraw holsters that house her Krieger Kreuzzügler II machine pistol and two pairs of combat knives. She bent down to unlace her heavy boots, hopping out of them and—
Hopped out of her black romper as well for whatever reason, folding it neatly and setting it aside. She put on her holsters again, jumped into the newly-acquired waders and threw her letterman jacket atop it, now looking like she's part of some varsity fishing team, as if that was an actual thing.
“Done! How do I look?” She twirled around to face Mary, striking a pose after completing the 180.
“—It looks like you're wearing a pair of waders?” Mary stared blankly, beginning her own process of getting out of her combat stompers and revealing her pure chrome feet. “Er, not to say you don't look okay or anything in those.”
She flung her jacket to the side, stepping into her waders and quickly pulling the straps up. In the end, she did all of this with about the quarter of the heart that Stiletto put into this; apparently silently detesting the use of waders. It's probably something she previously didn't bother wearing in the past when she had to climb into sewers.
They don't make bug shaped waders.
“—Just saying you look okay. Not, uh, flirting.”
“Of course you aren't!” Stiletto shot finger guns at Mary. “—I don't want a drone death squad on my ass.” She squatted by the manhole cover to fiddle with the padlock, stopping to look up at Mary. “I guess I should check if we're ready to go or not.”
“Hotrod would do that? Wait, why would Hotrod—” she asked the space behind Stiletto, before realizing she wasn't as equipped as she should be. Arming herself resulted in her sticking her hands down her waders and fumbling around, in a way that looked as unfortunate as it sounded.
“I don't know, actually!” She drew her Kreuzzügler II and gave it a once over, making sure it's ready to go.
“Totally ready when, uh, I get all my stuff put together. You can see in the dark and stuff, right?”
“Yep! I can see in the dark pretty alright.”
Mary's usual confused expression remained on her face, slapping her RPM together without taking her eyes off of Stiletto—and the wall behind her—as if she'd done it a hundred times before.
“Right. Bat eyes, right? Wait. Bats can’t see in the—uuh, echolocation?” She laughed awkwardly at her own joke as she slapped the box mag in and pulled the charging handle back.
“I just like the aesthetic of these eyes. They don't cry every night, though.” Stiletto resumed fiddling with the padlock to unlock it. “Standard low-light upgrade, which isn't really biologically accurate, but—”
The padlock opened with a click and got tossed, the manhole lifted and pushed aside to reveal their dark and dank descent. The humid smell of raw stagnant sewage wafted up from the seemingly endless pit below, the bottom obfuscated in darkness.
Stiletto turned to Mary, Cheshire grin on her face once more. “Time to hunt mutant rats. Let's get this money.”
Mary sighed through her nose, peering down the open manhole. “—I can go first if you want. Just in case there's something waiting.” The elf paused to glance up, before rapping a knuckle against her thigh. “—It's a bit harder to bite through chrome. Or, uh, I can take up the rear, ‘cause it’s probably kind of hard to shoot around me.”
“I'm good with whichever, I don't mind taking point.” Stiletto already had one foot down the hole, resting on the metal ladder's top rung.
“Okay, well, kinda seems like you’re on point, then.” Mary chuckled and stood up to her full height, proceeding to thunk her head against the ceiling.
“That I am!” She rested her other foot on the ladder, the rubber boot thudding dully against it. In a trice, she descended into mutant rat country.
Mary followed along a tad bit too closely, her height making the ladder a little more than awkward for her to challenge; forcing her to stop-and-go as she unintentionally skipped rungs designed for someone much shorter than her.
----------------------------------------
The descent was thankfully only about a fifteen foot climb into pure darkness. Or at least, darkness for those who weren't adjusted for it.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
That smell that wafted up earlier? It only got more intense the further they descended. It’s the kind of sewage that's been fermenting down here for decades. Which it likely has been, considering that by the time they set foot on the cracked concrete that formed something of an ad-hoc landing, it was plainly visible that this section of the sewers was in an extremely disused state. Burnt out Christmas lights were strung down the length of the sagging tunnel, only being cut off where a more modern stretch of sewer-works intermingled with the old. At least it seemed like the newer segments had working lights, not that it mattered much for our intrepid duo.
The landing area was clear of any rats. Or homeless people. Or pygmy hydra. Or the myriad of things you’d otherwise find lingering around in sewers-slash-maintenance tunnels.
CLACK. Mary pulled back the bolt on her RPM again, checking the weapon again to make sure that rounds were properly fed into it, before letting the chamber snap shut once more. “Uuh… Kinda just struck me, but y’know how it feels when you sometimes feel overdressed for something? I’m feeling that, except with, uh… Yeah.” Mary held up her machine gun for emphasis.
“Oh, I know what you mean. I do exact the opposite, though. I keep leaving my AM-77 rifle behind unless I really have to bring it.”
“... Hey, uh. What do your parents do for a living, anyways?”
“I don't know my parents.” Stiletto called up an ARO displaying a map of the sewers, just a bit too abruptly. “Mm, that's not good. No recent map for this section. Guess we'll just have to follow the power line.”
“Uuh, crap. Sorry. Didn’t mean to—” Mary paused, leaning over to look at the map, her eyes whirring as they constantly adjusted to the low light conditions.
“All good! Okay, this map is useless to us.” Stiletto dismissed the map ARO, her cheerful tone returning.
The girls' footsteps echoed within the tunnel as they inched forward while hugging the walls. Stiletto perked her ears and frowned when she didn't pick up most noises that should be in sewers, save for the dripping of water from a cracked pipe up ahead. The stench of sewage now carried a putrid undertone that she couldn't quite place. About ten steps away, dim lights indicated that they were approaching a junction.
“Let's take the turn first and see where that goes.” Stiletto gripped her machine pistol tighter. “Water's flowing that way, from the sounds of it.”
“After you.” Mary stepped to one side, keeping her LMG hefted upwards. Despite the fact that there was a reasonable amount of clearance, she still felt the need to hunch over just a slight. “Have you, uh, ever had to clear out an entire colony of rats before?”
“An entire colony? Nah, nothing to that extent, but—” Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She craned her neck to look across the bridge south of where they were, spotting a lone mutant rat. Three pairs of beady eyes, mottled grey fur, and the size to rival that of a small dog. Even while it’s minding its own business, it seemed to exude an aura of agitation. “Okay. I see one.”
“Uh, would you prefer the honors?” She rap-tap-tapped the side of her RPM. “This might be a little bit overkill. And I don’t wanna ring your bell.”
“Got it!” Stiletto whipped her Kreuzzügler II in the rat's direction and squeezed the trigger. The machine pistol spat out three rounds, slicing through the air towards the target. The rat didn’t even have a chance to react before the three rounds tore through it, causing it to reel to one side before promptly plunging into the muddy brown sewage alongside it with a ‘plop.’
“Nice shot!” Mary shouldered her massive rifle, if only to applaud at the display. “Maybe if we’re lucky, there’s only gonna be, like, four of these down here and then we can call it a day.”
Stiletto kept her machine pistol trained in front as she thudded down a set of stone stairs, still following the power line down. “Hopefully!”
She stopped a few steps short from an intersection, eyes focusing straight ahead. Her artificially pointy ears twitched. Squeaking, and a lot of it. She hugged the wall again and motioned with her machine pistol, signaling to turn left.
Mary opened her mouth, as if to ask. She figured better and leaned to the side instead to investigate what Stiletto was signaling at, given that her hearing wasn’t quite as sharp as her companion’s. She spied a few more rats lingering about, these ones slightly smaller than the last one; a tad more emaciated as well. “Killing those ones too?”
“We should. The less rats that Eddie can see when he gets down here, the better.” Stiletto crouched down on one knee, taking her sweet time to draw a bead on the closest rat. A quick-tap headshot, followed by a short burst to dispose of the rest of the pack. She snorted, part laughing and part purging her nostrils of the stench that grew stronger with each step. “Think there might be a nest up a—”
The conversation was quickly cut short by an unbearably loud amount of squeaking, and paws scratching and scrambling against worn concrete. A practical ocean of mottled grey fur moved out in a deluge from the bend just up ahead of the duo. Mutant rat after mutant rat scrambled over its own cohorts in a furious charge forwards.
“—THAT’S NOT NORMAL,” Mary shouted at the top of her lungs, a little too preemptively to account for her gunfire. She barely had time to heft her massive LMG, firing the thing one-handed into the horde; the butt braced up against her shoulder. The sheer amount of overkill was apparent as the raking fire made oversized rodents explode like ripe melons filled with gore. The rounds carried enough force behind them that sometimes a lucky hit would pierce clean through a rat and straight into another one; luckier so when the shrapnel from an exploding rat would take out a third.
Stiletto joined in seconds later, hosing the swarm down with her Kreuzzügler II. The occasional rat that managed to stray close enough to the duo had the pleasant experience of being hacked in half by her combat knife; being ever so flashy in the process of such despite the pair’s hurried retreat backwards. Her motions were effortless, as if she’d done this day in and day out. One second, slashing a leaping rat out of the air, transitioning to an ice-pick grip to protect her wrist from another. The next, she’s cartwheeling backwards, hacking up rats as equally as she’s punting them into the air.
Not that it made much of a dent into the swarm that approached them; the rabid chargers clambering over their fallen comrades without a sign of slowing down.
Stiletto glanced over her shoulder and spotted an alcove, making a beeline for it and pulling Mary inside. It was a tight fit for the both of them, but cramped discomfort was much better than being washed over by the rodent tsunami. The swarm continued to scramble past them, paying the duo no heed.
“You're right, that's not normal. It's almost like they're running away from someth—”
Her words were cut off by the horrible shriek of metal getting forcibly bent, and the collapse of something heavy.
“Something like… that?”