Chapter 37 - Blood Drive
Okay, you were partly right.
After morale, parts and labor are critical to any remodeling project.
Although, the more astute among you might have some questions. Like how did we have so much poo-crete? Was committing monkey genocide really enough to pave an entire, extra-wide highway through the Screaming Bamboo Forest? Especially since we left an incredibly long trail of corpses? Wouldn’t we run out eventually? And, most importantly, would we have enough left to complete my many planned projects for Apati?
Those are all fantastic questions.
And as for the answer?
Well, uh, poo-crete is actually a renewable resource. Every few hours or so, a fresh load came out flaming and hot and sizzling and ready to build something glorious.
Wait… why are you looking at me like that?
No, no I don’t mean the monkeys kept crapping. Honestly, how would that even work? We ring ‘em out and chuck ‘em back in the monkey crate? That’s just inefficient! What would we even feed them? Bloodfruit? But those are precious, right? They’re the main ingredient in a fresh cup of FJ. Plus, how would we know which monkeys we’d already milked? Would we have to transport them between cages?
See what I mean? Inefficient.
Also, dangerous. They were really hard to catch after the paralytic wore off.
Luckily, there was another way – a better way.
After throwing a few hundred of the creatures in the cage attached to the back of the Death Wagon, I’d noticed something strange. They… well, they seemed to be multiplying somehow. I wasn’t sure about the specifics, of course. And what happens behind closed bars is none of my business. But I do know one thing.
If you stuck two monkeys in a cage, every few hours or so, a third popped out…
And another few hours after that? Yup, the baby was full grown.
Maybe a response to the relentless, screaming hellscape that was the bamboo forest? The one where even the rain was acid? Some sort of evolutionary adaptation?
At least, that’s what some of Fang’s sisters called it. I mean, I would have asked Fang what was going on, but we all know why that have been pointless, don’t we? Don’t we? The winking is to help drive my point home. Specifically, that’s he’s never gotten laid. Ever.
Anyway, the mechanics are still a mystery. I guess what happens in the monkey fuck-cage stays in the monkey fuck-cage, if you know what I mean.
And if you use more than two monkeys?
Yup, you’ve got a cluster fuck.
That’s the technical term for when multiple new monkeys pop out at once.
Either way, the one cage worked well during our highway construction project. However, now we needed to scale it up for our new commercial applications. Really start pumping out the poo-crete, you know? So, we built a bunch of new cages! Which was super easy. There was tons of scrap metal in Apati.
Then we split the monkeys between the cages, installed a new automatic sprayer system based off my ingenious new design – one that would lube up all those furry little bastard with a thin coat of FJ. We started by throwing in some fresh fruit to feed them, but after extensive testing, this system turned out to be better. Faster. We increased the clusterfucking by at least 200%. Plus, something about my proprietary blend of herbs and spices made them more docile! Incredible, right?
But opening the cages each time was inefficient too. And making sure the demon monkeys were wedged in tight both increased the output and improved safety. I mean, the monkeys couldn’t fling their poo if they couldn’t move, right?
Luckily, I had a solution for that too! I installed a new, prototype orifice made out of a narrow band of one of the larger bamboo tubes along the bottom of each cage.
So, every so often—
PLOP! A monkey pops right out the bottom!
The pressure just does it automatically. And the coating of FJ helps them slide through smoothly. Perfect system, right?
My left hand tickled as Maribel turned my fingers into a corrupted thumbs down.
Ahh, she’s right. We aren’t quite finished yet.
Those of you that share Maribel’s view that the demon monkeys are an inferior wannabe-rat that only deserves to be imprisoned, tortured, and then drained dry of their precious crap will absolutely love this next part.
The cages were each suspended above a worktable, each one manned by Fang’s sisters, each of them wearing those mechanical claws that Manslaughter had used on me. Except these were blunt and padded – not designed to shred silverfin scales and pry open cans, but to squeeze and twist those demon monkeys with a puff of steam. It was important not to puncture them or they would explode. And poo-crete explosions could be deadly.
The next problem was how to store the poo-crete, right?
That turned out to be pretty easy. Fang’s sisters squeezed the poo-crete into a bamboo collection system, a hundred pipes emptying into a large, rotating, indoor vat that kept off the mist and kept the monkey crap moving so it didn’t cure. A special steam system also helped warm the outside. If it wasn’t exposed to water immediately and was kept warm and moving, the poo-crete would keep for weeks. Maybe longer.
I got the idea from the monkeys! I mean, obviously, the poo-crete wasn’t hardening inside them right? Plus, they twisted a lot. So, we simulated that.
And once the bodies had been twisted dry?
Well, the limp, twitching, and sometimes still-breathing bodies really started to pile up. But we believe in recycling in this family. So, they were eventually hauled off to the grinder in an adjacent warehouse – a whirring, steel-toothed contraption that ground up the monkeys into a gory pulp. The monkey mash was then hauled off to the blood fruit fields to act as fertilizer. A perfect, bloody, ingenious system.
Maribel fucking loved it. She really enjoyed watching the process.
Which is why we spent so much time in the factory.
Observing the metal cages hanging from the ceiling, thousands of glowing red eyes glaring at us from overhead – desperately pleading for death. The recurring, wet plop, plop, plop as the monkeys landed on the worktables, their muscles too atrophied to even put up a fight. The grunt and shriek as they were drained dry of their precious payload and then dumped in big twitching piles.
Honestly? It reminded me of home. Of my lair. It might have been the smell. Or the crimson eyes peering from the darkness. Also, possibly, all the blood.
What? Why are you looking at me like that?
Ahh, right… you’re probably wondering how we hauled around all the monkeys. And the monkey mash. And the poo-crete, right? Like we needed to tackle multiple constructions projects and build a nice little fortification to block the spread of the bamboo forest, didn’t we?
Well, alright, I guess I can explain. If you insist.
So, remember how I mentioned a steam turbine? You know, after I got a chance to see some of the factory machinery? Yeah, well, I decided to build one. It wasn’t that complicated. Basically, a big metal pole with a bunch of fan blades welded to it. Then you put it in an enclosed metal container and shoot the steam through one end. That didn’t take my engineering team long at all to make—
And voila! The pole starts to spin super fast. So, we made some grooves on the end like on a gear – a drive shaft [Engineering] called it. It attached to this little box and cross bar, which transmitted that rotational energy from the shaft to the wheels, causing them to spin through the magic of physics. You slap a couple seats and a wagon bed on top of that frame and the result? A steam powered vehicle!
That’s right, I’d reinvented the wheel a second time! Or… third, technically?
Anyway, it clearly wasn’t a futile waste of time, after all, now was it?
In fact, we have several different types of vehicles now. An all-purpose utility vehicle for hauling monkey bodies and other miscellaneous materials. A bamboo harvester with a few of those big glowing chain blade things welded to the front – because we needed to cut down and gather more bamboo, right? Oh, and then a larger, commercial hauling vehicle. I called it the Beast. It was equipped with a two ton container made of 100% pure grade-A poo-crete fresh from the monkey anus.
Only Manslaughter was strong enough to drive it alone. It was for hauling the bamboo back from the forest. Since, you know, that was an essential part of farming blood fruit. Since PK and I were basically best friends, he’d revealed some of his farming secrets. It turned out that it was the combination of ground bamboo and monkey guts that really gave his fruits that extra pep. Also, their distinctive, huge size.
You just had to liberally spread the writhing monkey paste across the field – carefully, of course. And then wait for nature to do its thing. For those fragile, tender, blood root stalks to emerge from the field of pulped guts and spear up into the sky. To grow pulsing, throbbing, juicy new fruits that would spread our message of friendship across the whole of the Five Rivers. That’s why it was easy to shrug off the thousands of monkeys that needed to die to make this happen. I mean, they were giving their vessels’ lives for a good cause.
So, I guess that’s it. That was my plan for producing a fresh cup of FJ.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Not bad, huh? I’ll admit, I was pretty proud of myself.
“You forgot something important… the labor part,” Lili piped up, cackling.
Ahh, I guess I did. Sorry, I got carried away.
I hadn’t accomplished all of this alone.
It took a team. An engineering dream team.
So, you might have also been wondering, who’d built Apati? All of the canning machinery? Those super cool chain swords, and knives, and those steam-powered claws? Who was maintaining all of that stuff? Naturally, my first thought was Fang’s sisters.
But that turned out to be wrong. Oh-so-very-wrong.
And yet the answer just felt so right—
“We have almost completed the renovations to the city walls,” a savran reported, standing at attention and wiping off his glasses – the steam in the factory could be a bit much.
“Perfect,” I answered. “And the bamboo clearing?”
“It’s going well,” my head engineer announced. “We’ve cleaned out most of the vegetation surrounding the city, mulched the root system, built the retaining walls and walkways out of poo-crete according to your designs and we’ve started planting the blood fruit groves as soon as they come online. The first few fields are already sprouting.”
He shook his head in disbelief, eyeing the other engineers behind him.
That’s right. You heard me right. Him. As in a male pronoun.
As in a male savran. There were many of them, in fact. Dozens.
The survivors.
I’d finally found Fang’s male role models. And they were—
“Adorable!” Lili crowed. “They’re so cute!”
She was right. And fashionable. They stood in a tight group behind me. Wearing fancy hats. Glasses. Neat little lizard suits. Bowties.
It was almost like they were trying not to get laid.
Which, well… I guess they were? Technically?
After decades and possibly even centuries of being hunted by the females, it turned out that the male members of the tribe had evolved. Yet instead of sharp claws and vicious teeth and thick muscles and flaming poop, they’d gone a different direction.
They’d adopted a version of my system, actually.
They’d made themselves indispensable.
Their bodies might be smaller and weaker and more fragile than their female counterparts. They might have terrible fashion sense. Zero game. Almost no way to defend themselves. But they made up for that with raw brainpower. By servicing and designing the many machines that were incorporated into the factory, their mist spirits exposed so often to the grease of the machines that they had evolved into oil spirits.
Which was perfect. Since that allowed them to more easily service the machinery and create the ink to draw out complicated schematics in their little notebooks.
Yet just being useful wasn’t enough. I knew that firsthand.
So, they’d gone further. They’d evolved to survive.
Not by growing bigger, or stronger, or faster.
They’d gone a different direction.
Specifically, they’d evolved to be far too cute to kill.
Which is why their eyes were larger. Why their scales took on a pink hue when exposed to heat – including steam. Why their claws retracted. Why they were all slightly pudgier, slightly curvier from the lack of demanding physical labor. Why their clothing was so form-fitting, neatly tailored and designed to show off their bodies – a testament to the hours they’d spent sewing their own outfits in their well-decorated little lizard lairs.
They even shared tips and tricks – wrote them down in those little journals.
Yeah… yeah, that’s right! The wise hunter applies his eyeliner liberally.
To make his eyes look even bigger, of course.
This explained so much. So very much.
With a burst of mist, Fang appeared beside me, his scales slick and Manslaughter walking into the factory behind him, eyeing the work. “One of the babies said you needed me?” my bromate snapped irritably, glaring at me.
“Ahh, about that…” I began, grinning.
“It’s Buzzkill!”
“Buzzkill’s here!”
“Wow, he looks so cool. Look at how big his dagger is!”
“He’s not even afraid to be around Manslaughter—”
Fang flinched, turning and eyeing the other males with distaste. I’d always wondered why he was so reluctant to have me meet his uncles. His grandparents. His male role models. And now? Now, I knew why. And it was absolutely glorious.
“Why are they here?” Fang hissed at me, edging away from the others.
“They’re my engineering team. We’ve been over this,” I replied easily.
“He would look even scarier with a touch of blush,” one commented.
“Right? Maybe some fake blood tracing the scales of his face?”
“That would really give him a demonic look.”
Fang flinched again. I don’t know why. I agreed. I’d seen him with blood crusting his scales. He did look more intimidating. I mean, would it hurt him to put in a little more effort? To pay some attention to his appearance? He should probably write that one down in own little lizard diary—
“Ahh, my babies are here!” Manslaughter cooed when she saw the others. Steam blasted out across the group, their scales shifting from dark green and gray to a bright rainbow of colors even as their claws retracted and they stared up at her with huge round eyes. A reflex. An instinct. The result of decades of evolutionary adaptation where only the cutest survived. They were so fucking adorable it almost hurt.
The steam was even having an effect on Fang, but he conjured his mists, using it to ward off the heat – to protect himself from transforming into his much more adorable, docile self. His true self.
“What. Do. You. Need?” Fang hissed at me, still glaring.
“Ahh, nothing. I just missed you,” I said with a smile.
This one didn’t even hurt. I loved this so very much.
It almost made up for Fang keeping secrets and ignoring me and lying to his family about our bromantic relationship. And Elder Gracen. Also, about his male family members. The ones who were also definitely not dead. At least, some of them.
“Ahh, that’s so sweet,” one of the engineers hissed.
“Right? They make such a great bromantic couple.”
“Even after how he’s mistreated poor Nyx…”
Also, I was loving how his male counterparts were much more accepting of me; of our relationship; of our obvious connection. That’s probably why Fang had been keeping his distance. Definitely not because I kept pestering him to answer my many, many, many questions. So many. Too many really. I actually had to write some of them down.
Luckily, the engineers always had a spare notebook and pen.
Fang hissed out a long, pained sigh.
Meanwhile, Maribel and Lili hi-fived while he glared at them.
“The factory seems to be coming along,” Manslaughter noted, ignoring our antics.
I nodded. “Yup, we’re almost finished. Although, harvesting the poo-crete is just the first step. Ultimately, we’re going to need to ship it north.”
Why stop with the FJ? I figured there was probably a market for impenetrable, water-cured poo-crete across the Five Rivers. It was super convenient to build stuff and if we used the bamboo to create a supporting lattice, even Fang’s sisters couldn’t break it apart. At best, they could just chip the corners. It was really strong.
Manslaughter looked skeptical as she stared at the huge rotating vat in the center of the factory. “Sure, but how? This does not look easy to transport.”
“Or safe,” Fang muttered.
I grimaced. To be fair, a few of his sisters had gotten encased in shit.
It was a truly awful way to die. I should know.
My babies had done it dozens of times. Maybe hundreds.
“Oh, but our team of engineers has a solution for that!” I announced.
Every pair of glowing snake eyes in the room turned to that diminutive group of fluorescent baby lizards wearing their snazzy little outfits – each one holding a notebook.
“Well, that’s um…”
“He’s overselling it…”
“We’re not sure it’s ready…”
“Ahh, they’re just being humble,” I stepped in smoothly. With a clap, Maribel summoned my precious babies and I automatically handed them treats. Then they darted off across the room to the huge tarp I’d discreetly positioned along one side of the room – the one hiding our marvelous new creation.
“Drum roll please!” I demanded.
The baby lizards tried their best. But they were too weak to get the heavy bass rhythm I was looking for… so I glanced at Fang’s sisters. They started clanging their armored fists together, the monkeys overhead adding a nervous chitter to the rising wave of sound.
And as it reached its apex, I signaled my babies!
They pulled back the curtain to reveal my latest masterpiece. My solution for bringing a fresh load of monkey crap to every corner of the Five Rivers. A smaller rotating container was positioned along the back of the vehicle – one made entirely of cured poo-crete. The hole at the top was hooked up to a complicated tube system made of bamboo covered in a thinner layer of poo-crete, the bamboo’s suction more than enough to pull out the poo-crete. The vehicle was even equipped with our largest and most over-designed steam turbine to-date – one that required a minimum of four of Fang’s sisters to operate it. Which was completely necessary. The vehicle was very, very heavy.
“Ta-da!” I announced.
Fang and his mother were speechless. I could tell. Because they weren’t saying anything. Anything at all…
Okay, now it was getting awkward.
“What is it?” Mansalughter hissed eventually.
“I’m, uh, I’m calling it the Dump-Truck,” I answered.
Fang was just rubbing his eyes in pain.
“It is just a smaller rotating vat on wheels?” That was Manslaughter again.
“Well… yes, technically. But the sprayer system is new!”
I gestured at the babies and they quickly pulled the sprayer hose free and another climbed up on the bed and started tickling the top of the tube. Moments later, the entire pipe pulsed and throbbed, growing slightly larger and then poo-crete erupted from the end of the hose – two of my babies trying vainly to hold it steady as it shot a high-pressure stream of monkey shit at the target nearby.
Their aim wasn’t great… actually, it was pretty terrible.
They got the wall, most of the floor, the side of one machine. Fang’s sisters also had to flee the wave of monkey shit erupting from the hose. And moments later, it was over – they’d drained the entire tank dry in mere seconds. Almost as fast as Fang tended to pop off.
The others just stared at the huge mess we’d created, a lot of poo-crete covering my babies and still sizzling. They just sighed and then broke apart into shadowy streamers—
Only to reappear beside me, standing in a line and paws stretched out for payment.
Which, of course, I provided. “You did great.”
They just chittered angrily, scarfed down their burgers, and disappeared.
“This… this is a weapon?” Fang asked in confusion.
It was my turn to glare. He knew it wasn’t. That was why he was smiling.
“No, it’s a transportation and application system.”
“Why does the poo-crete shoot so far then?” That was Manslaughter.
“To hit those hard to reach locations.”
“But what if it is close?”
“It’s still a work in progress,” I replied through clenched teeth, waving at the engineers – they were taking copious notes. “We could probably use larger tubing to reduce the pressure slightly,” I offered. “That’s not a terrible idea.”
“You wish to make it even bigger? Even after the last model exploded?” Fang asked.
“That was one time!” I snapped back.
Fang’s smile just widened, showing more teeth.
Probably because his sisters were all muttering in alarm. They would have to drive and operate the vehicle, after all. I wasn’t loving this at all.
This is exactly why I needed Cole – but he was busy dealing with… well, everything else. Housing. Food. Transportation. Childcare. Our new police force.
“It’s just a proto-type—” I began, trying to head off a new morale problem.
Thankfully, the universe decided to help me out.
“Nyx!” Cole came running into the factory, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Nyx, where are you? We have a huge problem!”
Thank the Flow! Like I said, a perfect distraction.
“What is it this time?” I demanded, hands on my hips.
Cole pitched over, breathing hard, and putting up a finger. Wow. He was really out of shape – maybe even worse than the engineers. No wonder he got raped by the egg spirit. He really needed to add in more cardio. Maybe I should make him do some wagon pulls. That had really helped me build muscle and endurance.
“There’s… there’s something coming,” he gasped finally. “It’s heading downriver. A huge ship. Our… our scouts just reported in. It’s our creditors.”
Ahh, well, that was a problem. My eyes swept across the factory we’d just finished building. Our blood fruit saplings weren’t even fully grown yet and we hadn’t finished setting up all of the fields. This was, uh, sooner than I’d been expecting. Weeks too soon. I’d been hoping to have our operation up and running. Maybe sell a few pallets of FJ to demonstrate the commercial viability of our new product line…
I could see that same realization reflected in the eyes of everyone present. Manslaughter glaring at me. Fang laughing and smiling and generally acting like an asshole. His sisters all staring through the steam, the poo-crete manufacturing operation having ground to a standstill. And my engineers were—ahh, right. They were gone. They’d vanished into a hole in the wall.
Which was just fine. Perfect actually.
Just like the males of Fang’s tribe, I’d also evolved to survive. Grown stronger. Faster. Smarter. Crazier. That was part of my own unique charm.
Besides, I always perform best under pressure, right?
“No. You just start talking to yourself,” Fang hissed skeptically.
“Like right now,” Manslaughter added with a nod.
“They aren’t exactly wrong,” Lili added.
Wow. I was starting to feel attacked. Maribel just pat my shoulder. At least, she was still on my team – her support bought and paid for with the corpses of thousands of fake rats… which I guess did sort of undercut the authenticity a little.
But this was fine. Yeah, yeah, this was going to be great.
We would just have to go with Plan B.