Stiletto and Mary stared at each other for a long minute, as if neither one was really willing to poke their head out to see what caused that horrible noise. The silence was palpable once the mutant rats scurried their ways into every which exit they could find.
“—Well, uhm. Maybe that was just a segment collapsing or whatever?” Mary hurriedly whispered to Stiletto, standing as stiff as a marble pillar.
“Could be! Probably from an older section of the sewers or something.”
“Somehow… that's not convincing at all.”
“Yeah, I don't really buy what I'm saying myself either. It's probably just… a sewer alligator?”
Mary flattened her brow and shook her head. “There really can't be, like, gators in the sewers or anything, right? That's just an urban legend.”
If only they were so lucky. The string lights promptly flickered out with a loud crackle. Mary exhaled loudly and took a lanky long step out of their protective alcove. Stiletto followed behind just as quickly now that she wasn't being crushed between a full-body cyborg and a wall.
Stiletto raised her head and took a sudden deep whiff, promptly doubling over to cough and retch. “Doesn't smell like an alligator.”
Mary flattened her brow. Again. “…what did you smell? Besides, you know, all the sewage around us?”
“Three things. Ancient sewage, mutant rat dung, and death.”
“…Right.”
Other than those, there was nothing but the foreboding dark. Mary shouldered her rifle, checking both ahead of her and behind her in a frantic pivot—albeit, not so frantic that she flagged Stiletto in the process. She repeated this movement pattern a few times, fully expecting something to suddenly pop up and spook her.
Stiletto, on the other hand, didn't seem all too worried. Or, she was simply far less prone to being as high-strung as her largely mechanical companion. It was more likely that her heightened senses were giving her a better lay of the land.
The tunnel began to rumble again, this time the sound emanating from somewhere even closer. Dust and dirt rained down on the duo and the ramshackle ceiling of brick and stone sagged, a mere moment away from collapsing.
“Seriously, what the hell? We don't, like, get earthquakes around here, do we?” Mary glanced around, lowering her RPM to a more relaxed position.
“I'm not too sure, actually. The last time we had—” She cut herself off and knelt down, groping around the cracked plascrete flooring.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
“Marking the path. I don't want to get all turned around in this smelly maze.”
“Y'know, that's kind of a good point. I've kinda, uhm, forgot where we've come from.”
“Okay! Time to go deeper.”
“... We're going to have to figure out where all those rats went, aren't we?”
“Probably a safe bet to keep following the power line. If we find any rats, we'll just have to kill them and clear the way to the maintenance box.” Stiletto patted her jacket down. “Hey, how many spare mags do you have with you?”
“One. I, ah, wasn't exactly prepared for this many rats.” She patted at her side, as if to indicate the mag stowed inside of a hollowed compartment in her chrome. “Though, I figure another hundred rounds should be fine.”
“I brought three, so I have a hundred-twenty.” She glanced at Mary's RPM. “…much smaller caliber, sadly.”
“—It's not the size that matters.” Mary laughed. Like an awkward dumbass.
The duo sallied forth into the now-further darkened sewers, erring against caution and heading straight for the bend that the large swarm emerged from. When they cleared the turn, they got a better view of what was going on. Massive claw marks marred the brick and concrete, with the spacing between each talon easily half a foot across.
The maintenance box that was supposedly being nibbled upon? Now, a horrible mangled mess of metal that barely clung onto the wall via a few threads of sparking cables, bite marks lining the housing all the way up the length of the line that betrayed the existence of something much, much larger than a rat.
“I don't think it's rats chewing on the lines, Stiletto,” Mary mumbled through a clenched jaw, trying with her utmost ability to keep her voice down. “What the hell do we do now?”
Stiletto made her way to the wall with the gouge marks, running fingers along the marred concrete. “Doesn't this look a bit too clean to you?”
Mary stopped investigating her banana mag only to glance up at Stiletto momentarily, and then at the wall. “For mutant rats? Yes. Probably. I think.”
“Way too big to be a mutant rat's doing. Oh well, whatever it is, probably not here anymo—”
Another rumble, much more fierce and louder. And much closer. Too close.
Stiletto gripped her Kreuzzügler II and took a step back from the wall, signaling Mary to ready her aim.
CRACK. The floor gave way just short of the duo. From the hole where a solid layer of plascrete once was, a pair of massive glowing eyes stared up at them. The floor vibrated as it attempted to scramble up from the lower level that it found itself trapped in. Even through the dust and debris, it was apparent that this too, was a mutant rat, but just a tad bit larger. Make that much larger. Easily larger than a bear.
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As if that wasn't enough bad news, it was jacked up with primitive chrome. A metal faceplate covered one side of its gaunt skull, with wires and cables leading back along a cybernetic foreleg and into its prosthetic claws.
“—what the fucking shit is that.” Stiletto froze in place and just stared at the thing crawling out of the floor.
Mary grabbed Stiletto by the jacket collar and pulled her back a good five feet from the hole. She contemplated dragging her partner back even further, but it looked like the horrid abomination had difficulties scrambling out of the ad-hoc tunnel it created for itself; with its claws scraping and scarpering against the concrete in a failed attempt to pull itself up. After a few seconds of deliberation, Mary hefted her RPM and held the trigger down.
THRAKKA-THRAKKA-THRAKKA.
Reports of gunfire reverberated off of the close quarters they found themselves in, loud enough to destroy the eardrums of anyone without the luxury of hearing protection; the vibrations alone were enough to shake the duo to their core.
Mary broke the silence, after all the echoing subsided. “... Okay, normally, that usually does it.”
It did not. The beast seemed more startled by the sound than hurt by the high caliber rounds deflecting off its skull plating, leaving visible dents where it was hit. It looked as if it was at odds with itself in those seconds that Mary opened her mouth, pausing to decide if it was going to surge forwards, or back itself up.
The abomination promptly resumed its agitated scrambling, if not in a redoubled fashion. This time it actually looked as if it was about to burst out of the pit as the rest of the ground above it collapsed to make the fit more of a possibility.
“Do you think we should run? I think we should run,” Mary blurted out not a second later, still keeping her rifle ready and primed should she need to ineffectually shoot the thing once more.
“Good call!”
The girls turned around and hurried back from whence they came. Not a moment too soon, with the angered squeals of a severely mutated rat trailing close behind them.
For every pace they took forwards, it sounded as if the creature behind them took several more with ease and quickly gained on them. At the pace it was going, it would most likely run them down in seconds. At most.
Mary pivoted on a heel, apparently figuring this herself and started unloading her rifle wildly—
Unfortunately, just as the ceiling collapsed a few feet behind her, separating her from both Stiletto and her escape.
----------------------------------------
CRAAAACK.
Stiletto narrowly avoided being crushed by cartwheeling away from the suddenly sagging ceiling; the closest thing to an injury she sustained being the thin coat of dust and debris that covered her.
She took solace in the continued report of muffled gunfire through the other side of the collapsed mound. At the very least, that indicated that Mary was still alive. If the cyborg was injured or not, she couldn't guess.
She had two options—well, one in reality. Ditching a sister would end up with a reaming of the century if she actually attempted it. Not that such a thought even crossed her mind.
A cursory glance at the pile of rubble behind her showed that there was no way for her to climb through. With the lack of tools on her person, digging through also wasn't an option.
Snap judgment. She resumed her hurried sprint forwards, looking for a turn-off. After all, there was probably more than one way to loop back to where Mary was.
She wasn't too worried. Mary was tough as hell, if the rumors were anything to go by, but she wasn't about to keep a girl waiting—
A familiar face—or snout—in the form of a chrome face-plated abomination that suddenly clambered into her line of sight. She might unintentionally have to keep a girl waiting.
She didn't even slow down her run and brought her machine pistol to bear mid-stride with a single hand. Maybe this creature wasn't so familiar to her, its faceplate still smooth and undented. Looks like there's more than one of these things. If there was one lesson she learned tonight, it was to not aim directly for the brainpan.
The creature swiveled its ugly head to greet her, and she pirouetted out of the way of its snapping jaws. She swiftly retaliated in the form of several small caliber rounds tearing through its exposed jaw at point blank range, eliciting a shriek from the beast as it reeled back. Agitated or pained, it was hard to tell.
That's bingo. Don't shoot it in the bionics.
The dance continued on. The creature swiped at Stiletto, only to catch air in the process. It was quick, but Stiletto was far quicker. Another short burst from her machine pistol to the unprotected side of its face.
It attempted to bite her, yet still she was quicker. Yet another burst of small rounds to its face. Stiletto grinned, confident that she had the upper hand.
The only issue being that the beast showed no signs of slowing down despite every bullet that shredded its exposed jaw, even to the point that it was a useless piece of meat barely hanging from its skull. The monster didn't even seem to notice this fact, still lunging as if it could actually close its jaw. Stiletto spun out of the way regardless, not wanting to be caught between a rodent and a hard place and lifted her gun once more.
Click. Click. Click.
Anyone else, and this would be a cause for panic. Not Stiletto. If anything, this gave her a chance to showboat, and she was a card-carrying member of the showboaters club. Another simple spin around the creature as she holstered her spent Kreuzzügler II machine pistol—completely forgetting that she still had three spare mags—and unsheathed one of her combat knives.
She was about to bag herself a kill in one of her most favorite ways. Not quite her most favorite way, sadly, as she was running against the clock. Every move was calculated from here on out.
The beast swung its head towards her, and she dipped down in a power-slide, cutting the cables and wires leading from its faceplate to its foreleg in one smooth action. Whatever this thing was, it was definitely loaded up on something; the torn cables sprayed a luminescent green substance all over the surrounding area. What used to be a sewer, then a battleground for a moment, became closer to a rave. Loudness and glowing abound.
The beast could do no more than reel and duck its head down in an attempt to protect itself from the flurry of strikes and stabs. If it was capable of more than primal instinct, it'd be regretting its choice of trying to pick on something smaller than it.
Stiletto took advantage of the thing in its prone state, cartwheeling up onto its back like a cowboy riding a bull. If a bull smelled even worse and had a skin condition, that is.
The monster's response was as she expected, bucking madly as it tried to knock her off or smush her against the ceiling. She wasn't having any of that, gripping what sparse mottled fur she could get a hold of and jamming her knife under the protective plate as she ducked down. Now to wait and—
The creature bucked up and smashed its head against the ceiling, causing the knife to plunge deep into its skull with a wet thump. It took a few seconds for the thing to realize it was dead, and a few seconds longer than that for Stiletto to dislodge her favorite knife from the beast's skull. Maybe her second favorite?
Wait. Shit. Mary.
She slipped off of her freshly deceased temporary mount and hurried off to find her companion.