Mai wasn’t sure what she expected when Andries shouted out his warning, but the creatures that swarmed out of the intersection didn’t meet any image of a Mogwai she’d thought of.

There were at least five of them. Bodies as large as small dogs, they were six-legged and covered in scales and patchy fur, with hideous heads easily as large as their bodies. How they didn’t constantly tip over she couldn’t understand. Milk-white eyes and huge ears told her that these were blind. Health bars popped into existence above them, signaling their intention to attack, fully green. She would have preferred it if they were near solid black as that would have meant the fight would have been easy.

Snouts as long as her arm opened to reveal teeth as long as her fingers.

“Clem Fandango!” she swore. She was glad the hazmat suits she wore came with a catheter and waste collection nappy.

“Use your staff. Keep moving. They’re using echolocation.”

He was following his own advice as the mogwai scuttled towards them. Somehow they were able to walk over the surface of the gloop.

Twirling her staff she waded over to him so that they could cover each other.

“Thank Buddha they’re only small ones,” Andries thrust with his staff, knocking one of the mogwai into the path of one of its packmates.

Mai didn’t know whether he was being sincere or just trying to make her feel good about the horrors they were facing.

Target boxes highlighted areas to strike, and the percentage chance she had of getting a critical hit. Running the streets as much as she had, she’d been involved in the odd fight and had used Street Fighting so was used to seeing them, even if she wasn’t that good at hitting them.

“I thought you said they weren’t that common?” She batted away another mogwai, aiming for a target box but missing. It screeched, and she gulped at the sight of a double-row of teeth.

A dolphoshark would be jealous, she thought.

“Yeah. Well. Wanted to make you feel a bit safer on your first day.”

They fell silent then. The mogwai circled them, just out of reach of the staffs. How they’d managed to work that out, Mai neither knew nor cared. She was too busy looking from one mogwai to another.

Looking at their spider-like legs, she realised that the front two had evil looking hooked toes, whereas the rear four legs had dinner-plate sized feet, allowing them to spread their weight and thus walk on the surface of the foul river.

“What are they doing? Why don’t they attack?” Mai was finding the tension unbearable.

“They’re trying to wear us out. They might be animals, but they’re clever.”

“Can we take the fight to them?” she jabbed her staff, more for the sake of doing something than in actual hope she’d hit one of them.

“We could, but then we’d be split, and they could concentrate their attack on just one of us.”

“Do they ever just leave?”

“Nope. Not unless you fuck them up.”

Mai sighed. The adrenaline coursing through her body was making her knees tremble and her arms feel weak. She couldn’t work out if she wanted to fight or just make a run for it. Looking at those awful legs she decided that running would be a very bad idea indeed.

“Get ready,” Andries set his feet. The mogwai had stopped circling them and were crouched low to the surface. She was facing two. The other three were out of sight, presumably facing Andries.

Mai activated the only skill she thought useful, STREET SMARTS.

Granted, she was in a tunnel and facing monsters, but the skill had attributes which might at least let her read the body language of the creatures she was facing. Right now if the CLEANING skill had a chance of helping she’d have activated that. She hadn’t felt this scared for a long time.

The mogwais she was facing down suddenly decided to move, in concert. They used some unseen signal to coordinate their attack.

Despite having activated STREET SMARTS, or at least she thought she had, she never received any information on her attackers before they moved.

So much for bloody STREET SMARTS.

She thrust instinctively at the one that had managed to get much closer to her. The attack had taken her completely by surprise and she was on the back foot both literally and metaphorically.

Mai wasn’t sure who was more surprised when the staff struck the creature on its snout. Its own momentum inadvertently added power to the blow, but she was still pleasantly pleased when the damage notification popped up.

HIT! 5% DAMAGE

Its health bar was still near-solid green, but there was a small square of black at the right-hand side. The other closed in, maw open wide. Just in time she brought her staff back and rapped it across the snout. Off-balance, and still trying to work out how to fight with her legs encased in human waste, it was a feeble blow.

HIT! 1% DAMAGE

“Dammit, I’m barely hurting them!”

“Keep it up. Any damage is better than no damage. I just …” Andries grunted as he fought his own mogwai.

Her first attacker tried again, barging past its fellow, knocking it off its feet in its eagerness to get at her. This time it attacked her staff. Teeth snapping shut, it took a good third of the staff into its mouth.

For a second they struggled. She pulled whilst it tried to pull the staff out of her grasp. See how you like this, she gave one last pull towards herself, forcing the mogwai to set its feet and resist. Then she shifted her hands to the end nearest her and thrust with all her might. In the split second before they attacked, she’d seen that its teeth curved inwards, meaning that to pull the staff out of its mouth would be nigh on impossible.

Pushing in though was a totally different matter. Her staff moved more easily than she thought it would, causing her to lose her balance towards the creature! Which only put even more force behind her attack.

CRITICAL HIT! – DOUBLE DAMAGE – 150% DAMAGE

KILL!

MOGWAI BANE 5% ACHIEVED

NEW SKILL! TUNNEL FIGHTER 20%

+20UC

As the health bar completely filled with black, the tip of her staff burst out of the mogwai’s rear end before she was able to regain her balance and stop her forward momentum. Pulling her hands away before they too entered the dead mogwai, she released the staff and flailed for balance, arms extended.

The next second a screech from her right gave her a split-second of warning and then her right arm erupted in agony as the second mogwai clamped onto her arm, hand disappearing into its maw. it must have circled around whilst she fought the first mogwai.

DAMAGE! – 20%

BLEED @1% PER SECOND

HEALTH 80%

She screamed. Pain like nothing she’d ever experienced washed over her as the mogwai shook its head from side to side threatening to cause her to lose her balance, and she did not want to end up in this muck with her arm hanging from the creature's jaw.

DAMAGE 5%

BLEED @2% PER SECOND

HEALTH 72%

“Andries! Help!” She tried to pull her arm free. Forgetting in her fear and pain that the mogwai’s teeth curved inwards.

DAMAGE 2%

BLEED @3% PER SECOND

HEALTH 66%

“Little busy!”

She was now bleeding at six per cent per second. In eleven seconds she’d be dead.

As the mogwai set its feet and started to pull back, Mai finally realised what she was doing wrong. Although it went against every one of her instincts, she set her feet better and shoved her hand forward.

Her mogwai mewled as her arm went elbow deep into its body. Gagging, she opened her fist and closed it again as soon as she felt something brush against her fingers.

Screaming, she squeezed with all her might. There was a second of resistance, and then whatever she was holding popped.

CRITICAL HIT! 50% DAMAGE

BLEED @10%

PANIC!

The effect on the mogwai was instant. Squealing, it released its grip on her arm, noxious lime-green blood gushing out of its mouth.

A blood drop and exclamation mark appeared over it, showing the negative status effects she’d just caused. She’d seen them in the holomyths, but never caused one herself before. It was a handy way of knowing what was what in the chaos of a fight. Why the government chose to do it was beyond her, however.

As soon as she was free it turned tail and scuttled off, wailing the entire time, health bar filling with more and more black with each second that passed. It turned the corner of the intersection with one final wail and was gone.

Mai didn’t want to look at her arm. She was still bleeding and had lost another 15% of health.

Shit, shit, shit, is this a serious wound? She decided it was and activated her TREAT SERIOUS WOUNDS skill.

BIO-MASS 70%

“Oh that’s fabulous,” she gasped as the pain stopped immediately, the nanites in her body blocking her pain receptors as they set about fixing her torn flesh.

There was a sudden flash of light from behind her which raced away in a strange ring of light, a clap of thunder and a roar from Andries.

Spinning she gasped at the sight of exploded mogwai body parts raining down.

“What the hells was that?”

“MOGWAI BANE. I have to cause a cumulative seventy-five per cent of damage to all targets before I can activate the SONIC BOOM attack. It’s pretty damn effective. Good job on yours.”

As the nanites did their job, she opened up her SASS to look at the TUNNEL FIGHTER skill and see what the SONIC BOOM could do. She figured that if she was going to have to keep killing mogwai that it was something she could at least work towards getting.

Tunnel Fighter

Fighting in a tunnel is completely different to fighting in an open space. Combatants need to be aware of their confines and adapt their fighting skills accordingly.

Blows become powerful but short. Damage is cumulative rather than dealt in one powerful blow and GRAPPLING and DIRTY BOXING can certainly play a large part.

Workers with TUNNEL COMBAT gain a 20% passive defence bonus against workers without the skill. Similarly, workers without the skill suffer -20% on their defensive ability when fighting in tunnels.

She wasn’t too interested in the DIRTY BOXING skill for now, having already built up some experience in STREET FIGHTING in her previous life, which she felt was more than dirty enough.

Then she opened up the Titles menu, selected MOGWAI BANE and opened up the sub-menu for attacks attached to it.

Sonic Boom

This skill is only conferred once a worker achieves the non-existent title of Mogwai Bane. Once the worker has damaged every similarly non-existent Mogwai by 75%, Sonic Boom is activated, causing an instant kill against all opponents within five paces.

NEW TITLE - MOGWAI HUNTER

MOGWAI BANE - 5%

ASSIST - +10UC

She continued reading through her updated SASS, which helped take her mind off the last few minutes for previous seconds.

Sewer Combat

This is a specific environment-based skill. Usually only Sewer Workers and Urbexers have this skill as no one in their right mind would wish to enter the sewers.

Workers with SEWER COMBAT gain a 20% passive defence bonus against enemies without the skill. Similarly, workers without the skill suffer -20% on their defensive ability.

“What’s the difference between SEWER COMBAT and TUNNEL COMBAT?” she asked, closing her menu.

“Lots of people get confused about that,” Andries replied. “It’s quite obvious really. Tunnels are either man made or made naturally. Both of them are prone to collapse. Sewers are only ever man made. They have different environments, but which can also be similar. Both might have slippery footing, gas build ups and so-on. But whilst subtle, the differences are still there. The main and most important difference of a sewer fighter compared to a tunnel fighter is they know how to use the environment of a sewer to their advantage. Due to our work, you will learn how to move through all the shit down here, thus you will be able to use the flow to your advantage.”

“Okay, thanks, I understand,” she nodded, realising that at some point she’d stopped paying attention. The important thing she took away from his explanation was that they were similar skill sets, but different enough that she would have an advantage over someone if she had to fight them in a sewer and they didn’t have the same skillset as her.

He reached out and gently took hold of her arm. “Looks like the nanites have got things in hand. I’ll use my FIX ARMOUR skill to get your hazmat suit back to working order.”

“I take it we head back now?”

“No,” he laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve still got a day’s work to do. Look on the bright side, you’ve managed to earn some additional credits.”

KILL!

MOGWAI BANE 10%

+20UC

“Forty to be precise. Just got a second credit notification, so the other one I was fighting must have bled out.” She grinned at that, two days’ pay in one kill.

If it wasn’t so damned dangerous I’d forget working on the bergs and just hunt.

“Good job! Although you know you won’t be earning money for the work you’re doing, not for the first month anyway, killing mogwais and other nasties isn’t considered to be part of your job. So you can earn bonuses for doing it. And, as you’ve seen, earn titles such as Mogwai Bane.” He paused until she nodded to show that she understood. “Right, onward. I’m afraid we’re going to have to head to where they actually came out, but I don’t think we’re going to find any more. Who knows, you might even find their nest. There’s sometimes good stuff to be found in them.”

“Let me guess, all the others that come down into the sewers like to look for nests?”

“Yes. One of our workers found a few thousand credits once. Didn’t help as the mother mogwai tore him to pieces just as he was showing the rest of his work party.”

“Clem Fandango!” gasped Mai. It was the foulest curse anyone could make and not one to use lightly.

“Language!” warned Andries. “Swear as much as you like, but you will not use that one around me. Clear?”

Nodding contritely, Mai followed him as he strode through the thick slurry towards the tunnel the mogwai had attacked them from.

“How about I just stand back here whilst you check it’s safe?” she joked as he approached the corner.

“I have a better idea.” He turned to face her and pointed over his shoulder, “How about you go first? I insist.”