“…but like how would that even work? Because that’s very hard in logistics and I mean the guidelines alone would probably never even allow us to do that, and there’s like committees and all that sort of stuff, not to mention the Bureau of Hells-End-Safety, because that would be a huge responsibility, and…”
Victor was a patient cat, and Waverly was his best friend. Still, he knew that sometimes, especially when excited, she could talk without periods or commas, which made it very hard to get a word in edgewise. Unless you interrupted her, but that always felt rude.
Right now, Waverly was very excited.
She’d been talking for a little more than 7 minutes, which had to be some sort of record, but Victor wasn’t really keeping score. Still, it was getting kind of late—early, he supposed—and so he held up a hand, trying to make the interruption less jarring by smiling apologetically.
“Waves?”
Her mouth shut with a clack as her cheeks grew a deep red.
“I’ll just let my mom take care of all of that. She did it when she started her career, so it has to be possible.”
“She did?” Waverly asked, leaning forward slightly.
“Yeah, it’s one of the things that put her on the map.”
“Ohhh,” Waverly said, eyes wide, but now that her train of thought was broken, Victor noticed the telling signs of weariness. She was blinking a little slower, for one thing. But maybe that was just because he felt totally beat himself.
A second later, Waverly proved him right by hiding a wide, infectious yawn behind her hand. “Sorry, I wanna know more, just…”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Victor said, yawning himself. “It’s been one world of a night.”
“Yeah,” Waverly said, and as if on unspoken command, they both sneakily left their glasses on the counter as they got up and ready to leave.
On their way out, they first stopped by Jim, who was busy mopping up some spilled beverages before he could call it a night. The Minotaur hugged Waverly goodbye and gave Victor a fistbump that numbed his arm all the way up to his shoulder. Then they said their goodbyes to the crow, who just stared at them until went back to the bar and cleaned up their glasses properly.
Then he said “Caw!” which meant “Always good to have you, Waverly, and nice to meet you, Victor. Oh, and take the back door, please. I already locked the front.”
It was true, Victor saw now that he paid attention. They were almost the last people in the CrowBar. Only a few other Monsters beside them, Jim, and the crow were still rummaging about, putting away the stereo and pushing chairs back to their place. Victor recognized Genevive the Genie and when she looked over, he gave her a wave, which she returned.
They said their goodbyes to The Host and, led by Waverly, made their way out the back. As soon as they opened the door, she made a beeline to the left, heading straight for the ramshackle stall that leaned against the back wall of the bar.
Bal the Crab was still (or perhaps again) awake, and greeted them with a friendly wave of his claw. “Good morning you two!”
He was right. The dim red glow of the Dreg’s HellSun was barely visible in the gap between buildings above.
“Enjoy your night?” Bal asked, just as a Goblin wearing a fashionable hat rounded the corner, carrying some more wood under his arms.
“Yeah, it was like, really cool! FightNight, and then of course also the M—“
“Massively interesting party that came after!” Victor interrupted her with a beaming smile as the Goblin arrived and, after a friendly nod, unloaded the bundle of wood at Bal’s stall. Waverly gave him a little wave, he waved back, then vanished behind a shoddy curtain mounted on the frame.
“I was going to say that!” the werewolf hissed, as the curtain fell, but the sheepish look she shot him told Victor otherwise.
He smiled a little wider as she went on. “So, um, like, we were wondering if you had…”
Bal’s eyestalks flattened a little, which Victor assumed was his way of squinting for comic effect. “Let me guess. The damn bird told you to mention some sort of passphrase and act all secretive?”
Waverly nodded enthusiastically, then brushed her hair out of her face again.
The giant crab sighed. “Damn birds… I have a ramshackle stall in a back alley, for Satan’s sake, not a Boutique in Elysium. It should be damn apparent that all the stuff I sell fell off of a loot goblin, and that I have some…exclusive stock.”
Then he raised his voice, shaking his claw at the door. “And the crow knows that!”
Victor was sure that for a moment, he heard a faint cackling series of Caws coming from inside the bar, but Bal was already moving on, adjusting his monocle with his claw.
“So, what should it be for you guys? Speed? Acid? Crust? Doom?”
“Oh, um…” Waverly began, saying exactly what Victor would have said.
“We don’t…”
“Metal genres are these!” said the Goblin from behind the curtain.
“Dr. Uma is right,” Bal said. “Sorry, I assumed you knew.”
“Wait, sorry. Dr. Uma?” Victor asked, his ears twitching with curiosity. “He’s got a Doctorate?”
Bal just nodded (at least Victor assumed that’s what bopping his carapace meant), and from behind the curtain came a short explanation of “Interior Architecture from Online University. Hat got me in!”
Victor decided not to press the subject and instead said: “Sorry, I mean, this was our first night and all…”
“Ah! I can explain!” the Crab said enthusiastically. “Or better yet, how about you just take these samplers here…”
He pulled back a dirty cloth from a crate hidden to the side of the stall and opened it, rummaging through it. After a while, nothing happened, except that his rummaging grew a bit quicker.
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“Doc? Where are the samplers?”
“Will bring out, Boss!” Dr. Uma said, and the Goblin pushed the curtain away with his shoulder, carrying a large silverish crate. Catching a curious glance inside, Victor noticed that the inside of the stall seemed to be much, much larger than the outside. He got a glimpse of metal racks you’d find in a warehouse, phosphorous lighting, and concrete painted with orderly lines. Then the curtain fell again, and the impression vanished.
“Here you go, Boss! Metal Crate.”
The Goblin plunked the crate—which Victor now realized was stainless steel—onto the floor, and opened it, revealing rows and rows of orderly stacked discs in their plastic casing.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Waverly said, and Victor could feel her tail wagging by the draft.
Bal, in the meantime, was tapping his claw over the labels that stuck out of the collection. “Symphonic… Speed… Satanic… ah, here! Samplers!” He pulled out two discs and somehow managed to fan them out without thumbs, offering one each to Waverly and Victor.
“They’ve got most stuff on there. Some Dimmu Borgir, Some Anthrax, Megadeth, Soilwork, Scar Symmetry…” He adjusted his monocle. “And yeah, even Linkin Park and some Punk. Didn’t know if that counted, but it wasn’t sold in stores, so why not?”
When they hesitated, he waved the discs at them. “Go ahead, they’re free!”
Waverly took her CD with both hands and looked at it like someone had just gifted her a beautiful painting. Victor just used one hand, took note of the bland cover that read “Britney Spear: Greatest Hits — 2017 to 2022 — Skrillex Remix, feat. Yung Gravy” and put it in the front pocket of his sweater.
“Why CD’s, though?” Victor asked. “Why not just give people some USB sticks?”
Bal snapped his claws happily and said, “Tradition! Or so I am told, I don’t really know. Oh, do you even have a way to play these?”
Waverly’s tail slowed down its wagging, and Victor first frowned, then relaxed, then laughed. “You don’t have disc players perchance?”
—
Bal was super considerate! He even threw in a pair of really good headphones that Waverly could wear, even though she had to tilt them back a little so they didn’t mess with her ears in half-human form. She could of course always go full-human, but you didn’t do that in the Dregs.
She’d made sure Victor put his wallet away securely, too, after he’d paid with his Black Azmodel Express. She’d never seen one of those before, but if she could recognize it for what it was, she wouldn’t be surprised if the next pickpocket could, too.
One thing that had surprised her was that Bal accepted credit cards in the first place, but she suspected you had to go with the times…
Waitaminute.
She stopped in her tracks, but Victor slapped her on the shoulder as he passed her. “Don’t worry about it, Waves,” he said over his shoulder. “He gave us a good price. I mean look, these things even have Anti-Shock!” he waved his own portable disc player at her with a broad grin that was so infectious, she couldn’t help but laugh as she jogged to keep up.
“Hey Vic?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for, like, being friends and all that.” She wanted to say way more, because no friend she’d ever had before went to FightNight with her, and absolutely no male friend she had would be her wingman like Victor had been with Ssseth, but somehow, she felt that was enough.
“My pleasure,” Victor said. And that was more than enough for her.
A while later, they arrived at the Hellevator, and they said their goodbyes. Waverly had wanted to accompany him up, but he had declined, and that was actually okay, too, because maybe she could slink home before her parents woke up, and avoid running into them.
So when Victor vanished into the Hellevator station at Famine Avenue, she turned back the way she came and headed home to her parent’s place, no matter how much she wanted to go up with him to kinda pretend she needed to get her stuff from the dorm and could just come back a day later with a perfect excuse. Her parents would know, and they’d be super disappointed in her, again, and that wasn’t worth it, especially not if there was a chance to make them believe she actually came in at night.
Her shoes echoed on the cobbles that some city decree or another had put down here so long ago that Waverly just always remembered them being here. Despite the HellSun igniting above her, she barely met any people as she made her way through streets other people would probably have called labyrinthine if they were fancy, or fucking confusing if they were normal. Waverly’s steps, however, were as sure as 19 years of bored-out-of-your-house-exploration could make any monster in this neighborhood, which—coupled with the fact that very few people were about yet—meant she wasn’t getting too many wolf whistles, and the ones she did get were easy to ignore or stare down. She totally didn’t know what the deal was. She wasn’t even that pretty, or in heat. Perhaps it was just a habit or something? Oh! Perhaps they were training. Judging by their looks, they needed it.
She grinned a little, but it felt forced, even to her.
Soon she came into the part of the dregs where cobbles made way for mud, and the clatter of her shoes made way to wet mulching sounds as the stuff clung to her feet and ruined her pants. Apparently, someone had finally gotten around to washing the Moonstone above, but as usual, that had probably meant rain for at least 2.5 days, judging by how she was sinking in with each step. Had to be a couple of Splinters deep, easily. At least that meant the rock would reflect moonlight until it got clogged up again, which was always nice, and good for the kids. Should probably last about 2.56 weeks, if the rate of pollution hadn’t gone up since she checked last time. Not that anyone kept accurate numbers in the first place. Not down here.
But even calculating that didn’t distract her from the fact that she was coming home. With each step, the last three months felt more and more like some sort of dream. Going to College, meeting Victor, learning all that cool stuff in class, what did it matter, when this was what she would always return to?
She pushed her hands into her pockets as she went, and her fingers grazed over something hard and smooth. Oh! That was the CD she’d gotten from Bal…
She paused at the next corner, made a wide turn to check if someone was waiting behind it, (there wasn’t), and leaned against the quiet spot herself, pulling out the CD player. She opened it (it opened smoothly, and she played with the mechanism for a solid three seconds), carefully balanced it on her wrist, placed the case in her open palm, wedged the CD out of the stupid fucking plastic middle thing, (ugh!) and pushed it into the player with a soft clack. Then she snapped the case shut, replaced it into her pocket, and pulled on the headphones.
Was it a bit dumb to run around the Dregs with headphones? Maybe. But Waverly dared someone to try something. She could use the practice.
So she pressed play, snapped the Discplayer to her belt (which was a totally cool feature!), and resumed walking.
When the music started up, she couldn’t hear how her feet got sucked into the mud anymore. In fact, her steps felt a lot lighter. It was a woman singer, this time, which was kinda rare, but she liked it!
Sure, the semester break would be hard, staying with her parents. Not because they were, like, bad, she guessed, just because they were her parents. She also liked the brats, even though they always wanted to play, and never left her alone for a second.
As she rounded another corner, the music started in earnest, and she almost found herself skipping. Instead, she nodded along slowly, trying to make it look as natural as she could. Man, this song was good. She kinda wished she had a way to know which band it was, but she could always ask the guys at the CrowBar later. She’d definitely go as often as she could, just to get out of the house. Perhaps hang out with Ssseth a bit more. He seemed, like, kinda sweet, actually.
And who knew, perhaps Victor would actually pull through with the offer. She just hoped she hadn’t spooked him with all her talk about regulations. It was just that so much could go wrong…
Then the song went into its refrain and told her that if she really wanted it, the world was hers. Her throat got a little tight.
At the last note, she arrived at the steps of her home address, just a terraced house like so many others, but at the end of the street, so it had a few more windows. She checked, but no lights were on yet, so her parents were probably still sleeping, or there was a problem with the electricity bill again. She grimaced a little at the thought of all the money in her pocket. Now that she thought about it, she should probably give it to her parents, but perhaps they’d agree to let her buy a new laptop. They could still buy groceries for a week off of the rest, probably. Maybe. 16 underage siblings were a lot of mouths to feed, so she damn hoped her younger brothers had landed a job and were helping out.
She sighed, went around the back, and hopped over the fence. But as she shifted her hands to claws and started climbing up to her second-story window, the refrain from that song echoed in her head.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be all bad.