As much as I might hate not being active and working. Reading a book on semaphore alone in the quiet of the stadium had been a wonderfully relaxing bit of normalcy for me after two days of non-stop running around and trying to basically build a city overnight. I'd even had enough time to, very very carefully, open my suitcase to retrieve my crucifix and old dream catcher and hang both of them from the corner of the stadium I'd used as a sleeping spot last night. I felt certain that having those two items hanging near me and relaxing with a book was why when I eventually ended up drifting off to sleep that my dreams were pleasant and not haunted by the worst events of the day.

A shame then my sleep was interrupted by something jamming itself in my nose.

Waking with a flailing start I quickly blocked my free nostril and to blow the obstruction out. On the bright side, it wasn't a cockroach this time. I was still very confused to see one of Matilda's moths covered in mucus sitting before me, then the itching started.

"Joe, be quiet," Matilda hissed at the spot on my head my ears had been and still worked somewhat as functional ears. "I've got something important to discuss with you."

"Why did you do that?" I demanded with a whispered yell, "Fuck! My nose is super itchy! It feels like I've got a rash or something in there!" I tried to use a Focused prehensile tail to reshape my tail blade into something thin enough to get inside my nostril and scratch the itch but everything was still way too thick! I still found myself considering trying anyways just to scratch if not outright remove the burning, itching flesh.

"Joe! Focus!" Matilda batted at my head with her wings, "This is serious!"

I glared at the woman. I was serious too, it felt like the time I'd wiped my nose and snorted after handling habanero slices, and I didn't have a tall glass of cold milk to snort this time! It felt like it was spreading to my damn eyes and was making my seldom seen animal instincts scream about unsafe prey! How was I supposed to focus like this!?

"I'm trying but this is seriously unpleasant!" I shoved my nose into the dirt. A quick snort and a hard blow seemed to help somewhat but it left me feeling a strong need to sneeze, but I couldn't. It wasn't even a hung sneeze, I couldn't even fake a sneeze to try and trigger a real one! I was missing some vital part of me to allow the action. Yet I still needed to sneeze! How was I supposed to deal with this without being able to sneeze!?

Oddly having a glob of stick silk impact my eye actually helped me break out of the panic I was working myself into. Swinging my head around to glare at Matilda with my free eye and grumpily motioned for her to say her bit while trying to ignore the itchy, burning, gritty sensation working its way from my nose to my eye and throat.

"Joe, I was watching Daphne like you asked and I briefly lost her in the dark."

"Unfortunate," I grunted, trying to blow through the nostril that now felt like it was swelling shut. "I take it you managed to find her again though. Is she in trouble?"

"She's at the church where the gang is staying," my attention now fully locked on her she hurriedly continued, "She's being welcomed like a friend by the people who seem to be in charge and is talking excitedly with them. Don't ask me what about since they're mostly speaking some sort of Spanish sounding nonsense and I'm worried to get closer in case she recognizes my moths."

"So it's a near certainty that she's a member of the gang then?" I asked morosely. I hated when my paranoia was proven right. "You sure it's her and not just a look alike?"

Matilda nodded, "My eyes might not be so good, but my sense of smell seems to be as good as, if not better, than Saul's. Trust me, it's her." Matilda froze and seemed to be focusing on something in the middle distance. "They're planning to attack us come morning."

"Morning?" I felt myself tensing, "Any clue what time?"

"The apparent leader said at first light." Matilda shifted and fluttered her wings in agitation, "He looks like he's going to be a problem, a major problem."

"Why is that?" I asked, head beginning to spin up with potential plans of defense and how best to deal with a raid in the early hours of the morning. If he was going to simply run in and try and smash things up then things would be fairly easy, the stadium itself was solidly built with few entryways that were large enough for people now. All of those entrances were surprisingly defensible with metal gates and twisting halls that would allow for brutal hit and fade ambushes from all directions on any assaulting party. But if he was someone clever, baiting out counter attacks to defeat my largely untrained forces in detail this could get bad quickly unless I countered with a decapitating strike.

"He's big," Matilda stated, "Really big. He might be able to look down through the roof of the stadium big."

I looked up at the massive domed ceiling above us, still supporting the massive defunct video scoreboard despite having clearly seen better days. The domed ceiling that looked to be between two hundred to two hundred fifty feet away from us and could be seen from tens of miles away. And the boss of the gang was big enough to look down on that? Yes, I could see how that would be a major problem even if he was so blunt simple as to simply walk forwards and smash all before him.

"Alright, yeah I can see that being a problem." I admitted, "A manageable problem with a bit of work and planning, anything else he's saying? Anything you can gather about what he's planning will be beyond useful."

She was quiet for a minute, "Sounds like he plans to march over here, demand our surrender, squash people until we do and publicly execute you." I nodded to her description, a simple yet solid plan. Reveal to us an absolute titan of a war asset to shock and demoralize us, have it be supported by his men to help avoid it being swarmed and defeated, and work to shatter our moral to claim as many of our assets and people as possible while expending as few of his own as he could. "He's also sending Daphne back to us, though he’s calling her Cami. He's saying he wants her to reveal her treachery as he gets into position to demand our surrender." Ah, a nice one two punch of moral shock, would probably work against a lot of people too, especially if they hadn't suspected anything.

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"Well then," I said, smiling darkly and slowly rotating my tail blade, "I suppose we should be ready to welcome her back. Would you be a dear and wake up Damian for me?"

"Already up boss," Damian announced from just below my line of sight, causing both me and Matilda to jump in fright, "Heard the whole thing, what you want me to do to this traitorous bitch?"

~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~

I sat just outside the busted loading bay entrance that had become an unofficial 'main entrance' to the stadium looking up at the thousands of stars hanging in the void. It was one of the few benefits to this utter disaster. Being able to truly see the night sky again, not the rare scattered star of the city or even the patchy star scape of the farm, but the true spectacle of a night filled to absolute bursting with spilled jewelry. Even with the waxing moon close to full, the Milky Way remained clearly visible along with the infrequent eye catching flicker of movement that was a small meteor burning up in the atmosphere. If only I was able to see it in color.

A small shadow blotting out the stars caught my attention as I clearly saw a dark gray blob moving across a gray sky in a way that was painfully obvious to me. It looks like she was back then.

I shifted slightly, leaning my head back against the ledge behind me and muttering a curse as my head 'accidentally' impacted the still working loading door. Despite not being able to sense either of them, I knew both Matilda and Damian would receive the signal to be ready.

I watched the bat's approach with forced casual interest and as she drew over the fields around the stadium, watched her wave to me midair and swoop low and catch herself on one of the streetlights. She nearly slipped off as some of the cracked paint on the pole came off in her grip, making her squeak cutely as she scrambled for a better grip. She cast a quick worried glance my way and I shot her an amused smile to let her know I'd seen the slip.

Then I shifted my position enough to scrape my head across the metal behind me as I casually said, "Evenin' Daphne."

"Hey big guy," she left her wings open and hanging limply like a child hanging from monkey bars. I couldn't help but notice it also would mean she would be able to quickly catch the air and flee should she need to. "What are you doing out here so late? Didn't think you were nocturnal."

"I'm not, I just took too many naps earlier and now I'm wide awake in the middle of the night with nothing to do." I sighed absently listening for any sound of Matilda or Damian moving but not noticing a whisper over the night noises of frogs at the creek. "How about you, anything interesting going on tonight?"

"Yeah," she smiled at me from her inverted position, "I just finished convincing my old crew that they could walk in and take this place."

Well now, this was unexpectedly off script. "Interesting, I didn't think you were supposed to reveal you were a turncoat until your giant showed up."

Her face looked confused just long enough for two blobs of silk to pin her feet to the lamp post as we both suddenly became aware of Matilda and Damian perched on the lamp above her. Damian himself was literally sitting close enough to her that his long fluffy raptor tail was dangling next to her ear. He casually drew out his bowie knife and gave her a toothy smile.

'Daphne', or perhaps Cami, laughed nervously at this, "Damn, you guys managed to follow me back then? I thought I'd slipped your little flying spies before I headed back." Matilda didn't respond so she simply continued, "Well that kind of ruins the fun of the surprise. Yeah, I'm technically a member of Tango Blast."

"Technically?" I raised an eyebrow as I continued to watch the stars, "Seemed like you were pretty close to them for a technical member."

"Nah, wife of a member." she smiled sadly, "Tango is a boy's club, no chicas allowed. But when this happened and my bo didn't show, along with most of the gang, Jorge said I was close enough to count and wouldn't even need to take my beating to get in. Jorge made a lot of changes to what was left of the local Foritos, like putting himself in charge. Said all his pinche boludo cojones were needed to survive this post Rapture shit." Her expression turned thunderous before she looked at me and flashed a vicious smile. "Then I stumbled into you bunch of bobos."

"Here you were with a massive pile of food, coated in blood and obviously way stronger than most of our group of wannabes. Within a day of me finding you, you were already building farms, working on irrigation, getting real ass beds, repairing circuits, training an army, having delicious cooked meals, and had already simply beat half of our hardest chicos like they were disobedient children."

Her expression turns cloudy again, "What do I find when I head back to the church? Barely any food, none of it cooked, a bunch of tontos del culos getting high off expired opiates, people sleeping in dirt, and Jorge wandering around trying to set up protection rackets with everyone he can find. ¡A la mierda con eso! The only guy there that's not a total coño is Half-Breed and he's too much of a cachorro perdido to do anything about it." Slowly a wicked smile spread over her face, "So why not join the winning side and throw that bunch of maldito tu puta madres onto the tender mercies of your horde of killing machines."

"That is such a woman thing to do." Damian moaned, covering his eyes with his hands as he massaged his scalp. I couldn't help but notice the action made his cat ears wiggle adorably.

"I had been hoping to come to a peaceful resolution," I grumbled, "There's few enough people left at this point considering the number of unknowns out there. We still haven't seen what's outside the metroplex or even made contact with a quarter of the cities that are part of it."

Cami barked out a laugh, "Good luck with that Jorge is one of those loco malnicdios who would charge a police line and keep fighting back even when they were stomping on his head. He's a leg breaker through and through without a single thought in his head beyond fighting and fucking."

"Well I guess we'd best start brainstorming ways to murder this big bastard," I sighed, "Because after sending a spy among my people, his men attacked me twice, and now having this fotze think he can just wander in and attack me and mine. I am done offering him forgiveness, I have naught but the sword remaining for this simple beast." Just the thought was enough to set my blood boiling as I fought down a furious hiss. "Matilda, Damian. Go wake everyone up, yes everyone we've got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to prepare."

"Does this mean you're going to let me down?" Cami asked, wiggling her pinned feet.

I gave the woman a long cold look. "I'm going to need a few conditions before I even consider doing that. First one, start talking. Tell me everything you know about Jorge and the remaining Tangos."