It felt surprisingly good to see that Carl was impressed by my transformation. Throughout our time together he had tried to be polite but it had been obvious that he regarded me as a useless imposition. Sure, I could push detonator buttons or deflect attacks aimed at him, but he didn't really include me in tactics discussions or ask my opinion on anything the way he asked Donut. That was getting old, and maybe being good at my racial abilities would help to change his mind about me.

"We have some more armor for you," he said, pulling things out of his inventory and laying them out on the coffee table.

"Where did you get this stuff?" I glanced over at Donut, started to look back, and froze. There was a player-killer skull above her head.

"Oh my god. Donut, what did you do?!"

"What did I do? Nothing," Donut said. She licked her paw, as if it truly was nothing. "Some useless crawler thought he could slay me and I had no choice but to rip his throat out. Honestly, I barely remember the incident. I did have a cherry or two too many. Now if you'll excuse me, I have training to do." She flirted her tail and sauntered off into the training room, every step exaggeratedly casual.

I raised an eyebrow at Carl, silently asking for details. Predictably, he just shrugged me off with a disinterested, "I'll tell you about it later. We have a busy day ahead of us."

o-o-o-o

Carl spent the next hour punching things in the training room, which makes one wonder why he couldn't have spent five minutes explaining why one of my teammates had killed a human being.

I didn't push either of them on it, at least not now. For now, I went into the training room for a few minutes to try out my new blocking build; the room obligingly gave me mock enemies to smash with my weapon hands. I found that the room had some flexibility to it; if I asked for melee enemies but didn't specify further then it would give me a vaguely humanoid enemy that fought with fast swipes of its long claws and had no distinguishing features—a neutral beige color, sexless, with a mannequin's blank head and no clothes or equipment. If I wanted something different, the room was happy to oblige. I practiced against mockups of the Jikininki janitor mobs that were large and strong, and I practiced against mockups of the horror-baby Drek monsters that were small and fast.

I did only moderately well against the janitors. If I used my hands in mace form then they were heavy, meaning that I swung them relatively slowly even when I thickened my arms for better power and control. If I could get a full swing then they did a lot of damage, but if not then not. It worked okay against the Jikininki, whose long arms meant that they fought at a moderate distance where I would have a chance to wind up and whose thin legs were extremely vulnerable to a smashing blow, but it wasn't going to work in close. I also tried out the spike-hand form, but that wasn't as good since the spikes tended to get stuck. It took effort to pull them out, leaving me vulnerable for a moment and sometimes unbalancing me in the process. Either way, it wasn't ideal. Turning my hands into swords didn't work very well as I couldn't get a sharp enough edge. Spears were the best option, although it brought me back around to the same issue I had with the axe: My Strength score wasn't high enough to do heavy damage.

Against the Drek, I 'died' every time. They were too fast and too small to hit with any of my various weapon types; they would bound inside my reach and attach themselves to me where I couldn't swing on them without endangering myself. I had absorbed a moderate amount of metal armor and could position it over strategic parts of my body, but the Drek fought in swarms and I was always covered in seconds, then brought to the ground by their weight and chewed and scratched until I told the room to reset.

Back to the drawing board...or, in my case, the makeup table.

o-o-o-o

Sometime later, Carl stuck his head into the crafting studio where I was working.

"Hey, you set?" Carl asked. "Time for the recap and then we gotta go."

"Where are we going?" I asked, standing up and following him over to the viewing area.

"Gonna ride up to 149 and derail a train," he said with a grin. "Get an Engineer's Key so we can get into the engine car."

What.

"Why do we need to do that?" I asked. "And why station 149?"

He frowned at my questioning. "We're doing it at 149 because it gives us a way to link up with Bautista and Meadow Lark later. As to why, I want to be able to control the train. Either back it down the tracks or figure out how to loop around."

"But if you crash the train then we can't take it over and the ones behind it won't be able to pass. You'll be shutting down the line for all the crawlers behind us. They could get trapped. Or killed, if their train runs into the one you derail."

"Look," Carl said, "I don't want to hurt anyone but there's a limit to what we can do. There's a lot of lines and not that many crawlers left so there's no reason to think there's anyone behind us on this line. Even if there is, they're fine if they get off at an earlier station and transfer, or if they have a mapping skill that shows them the train is down. And we can send out an announcement to our contacts, spread it around."

"But you don't know. There must be plenty of people we can't get the message to, and most people won't have a mapping skill. Pathfinder wouldn't do it. I'm not even sure your Escape Plan skill would."

"I can't know but this is our best chance. We can't get out of this place unless we can get a train."

What? That made no sense.

"Can't we just go to the 435 stop and see how the employees get back?" I pleaded. "If we can't use it then we can take over a train there."

Donut: YOU SHOULD GO ALONG WITH IT. A DERAILMENT WILL BE AWESOME. THE FANS WILL LOVE IT.

I swallowed nervously. "I want to continue on the yellow line," I said quietly. "Hekla can meet us at stop 409."

"How do you know that?" Carl asked, frowning.

"I got the station list from the conductor when we were on the train to 131 and I talked to Hekla about it. She was really excited because it means she can pick up three of the other Daughters who got separated from the group when we all went down to the third floor."

"And you didn't say anything." His voice was flat.

"I didn't want to complicate things. We were going up the yellow line regardless so what did it matter?" I definitely was not going to say 'and besides, you are clearly too arrogant to be willing to work with another leader, which is why you want to avoid Hekla.'

"It matters a fucking lot if you're planning to get us tangled up with another major group."

I started to call him out for wanting to get us tangled up with Meadow Lark, but Donut interjected.

"Carl!" Donut said, surprised. "What's wrong with you? Hekla is awesome! You should be happy about meeting up with her."

Carl started to say something and then stopped and took a breath. "Fine," he said. "It's not an issue. All the colored lines terminate at station 433 so everyone can meet there regardless of what line they're coming from."

"Wait, what?" I asked. "Vernon told us that 433 was a major hub but he didn't say that all the lines stopped there."

"We can't be certain but we can't be certain of anything in this place. It certainly sounds like it. If it's not the case then we can try 435. If that still fails we'll loop back down and meet at a lower-numbered station."

"How are we going to loop back?"

"They've got to get the trains back to the head of the line somehow. And besides, if we can't find a way then we're all dead so what does it matter?"

"That's not very reassuring."

"This isn't a reassuring place." He started to say something else but the screen lit up and the recap music started.

The recap was the same thing as always: Many shots of people dying in horrific ways interspersed with a handful of dramatic victories and hair-raising escapes. The interesting part was at the end.

Hello, Crawlers.

At the end of this message, you will receive a new tab in your interface. This is where you can interact with your first Benefactor. It will populate at the end of bidding, which will be in about 15 hours. You can see who your Benefactors are, what organization they represent, and if they sponsor additional crawlers. They will not be able to send you direct messages, but you can send messages to them. I highly suggest you thank them for their support and ask them to send you the best loot boxes as possible.

We are currently updating several issues with the train system. Some lines will be down for maintenance. I do not recommend venturing out onto the tracks as the trains may resume at any moment.

That's all for now. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!

It was on the screen just long enough for me to read it and then it shrank to a pinpoint and the screen went black for an instant. Music blared and words blazed into existence.

Current Leaderboard

Lucia Mar - Lajabless - Black Inquisitor General - Level 29 - 1,000,000 Hekla - Amazonian - Shield Maiden - Level 28 - 500,000 Prepotente - Caprid - Forsaken Aerialist - Level 27 - 400,000 Florin - Crocodilian - Shotgun Messenger - Level 24 - 300,000 Miriam Dom - Human - Shepherd - Level 27 - 200,000 Carl - Primal - Compensated Anarchist - Level 28 - 100,000 Donut - Cat - Former Child Actor - Level 27 - 100,000 Ifechi - Human - Physicker - Level 18 - 100,000 Li Jun - Human - Street Monk - Level 25 - 100,000 Elle McGib - Frost Maiden - Blizzardmancer - Level 13 - 100,000

"Wow," Donut said. "It is, it is! Odette was right! That's Elle McGibbons from Meadow Lark!" She turned to me. "She was that nice old lady with dementia that Carl wanted to bang."

"Jesus, Donut!" Carl said. "Why would you say something like that? I didn't want to bang her."

She was sitting on the arm of his chair where it was easy to pat him gently on the arm. "Of course you didn't, Carl."

Carl growled and pushed himself to his feet. "Come on, we're going to go derail the ochre line."

"But—" He was already walking off, Donut on his shoulder and Mongo trotting beside them.

I bit my lip. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to put my foot down and force them to listen to me. This was my chance to be assertive. I could do this. Come on, Katia. Do it!

"Carl!"

He kept walking, so I had to run to catch up before he was out of earshot.

"Carl! Stop and listen to me!"

He stopped. "No, you listen. We are going to derail this train. We are going to get that key and we are going to find out what we can do with it. Your precious yellow train will still be there when we're done. You can come with us and help or you can go back to the saferoom and wait."

By the end of the speech he was looming over me, clearly furious. I shrank back and he seemed to snap out of it. The fury disappeared and was replaced with a tired sense of...shame? Guilt? Annoyance? I wasn't sure.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to snap. Help us do this now and afterwards we can sort out which line we're leaving on. Okay?"

"Okay," I said immediately. Carl was a big guy and having him standing over me like that...I hadn't fully recognized how intimidating he was until now.

He saw that I was still afraid. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Sorry, really. It's not you it's...never mind. It's complicated. Come on, let's do this."

We rode up to station 149, Carl and I maintaining an uncomfortable silence aside from the occasional grunted call for a specific formation or a warning to look out as we ground our way through the mobs. Donut, of course, talked enough for all three of us.

Once we arrived at 149, Carl led us up the stairs to the upper platform, where we found a saferoom pub named 'The Muttering Mutton', a general store, and a Club Vanquisher. We checked the store very briefly to see that there was nothing that would be useful in our current adventure, then we went down the stairs to the ochre line. It was another electric train, like the yellow.

Carl looked down into the trainway, studying the tracks. "Man, I hope this thing works the way it should."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He pointed at the third rail. "That should be carrying all the juice to drive the train, meaning if we touch it or get too close to it then we get fried and drop dead instantly. But it's the dungeon. It might be that all the rails are electrified, or none of them are and the thing actually runs on pixie dust and the prayers of children." He pulled a metal rod out of his inventory, about two meters long and with something tied to the end. Before I could get a good look at it he tossed it down onto the third rail. There was a bright flash and the thing at the end of the stick—clearly some sort of pyrotechnic—blew out.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Hob-lobber fuse. At least we know that rail is hot."

He tossed down a few more test sticks and discovered that, as far as we could tell, only the rail we expected to be hot actually was hot. As a final test he told Donut to cast Clockwork Triplicate on Mongo and have the two duplicates (both of whom were now wearing saddles like their progenitor) jump down on the tracks.

Sure enough, the one that touched the third rail blew up in an explosion of gears and the other one was fine, jumping back up on the platform with us and happily running in circles with the real Mongo until it expired. Mongo warbled unhappily and nosed at the slowly dissolving cogs and gears that were all that remained of his 'brother'.

The ground rumbled and moments later a train slowed to a halt. Carl spray painted a big 'X' on the side as a sign to crawlers up the line that this would be the last one through. Meanwhile, Donut shot mobs through the open doors of the second car. Mongo tried to jump into the car but Donut yelled at him to stop. He did, trembling with excitement and nose a centimeter from the doors as they closed. He hopped back when the train started moving, peeping unhappily.

"Okay, here we go," Carl said. From his inventory he pulled something that the system identified as a Jelly Bomb; it looked like a car tire with the axle still attached and pointing up. Next came a fishing pole, with which he carefully lifted the Jelly Bomb and lowered it into the tracks.

"The train hits the stick and triggers the bomb?" I asked.

"Yup. I thought about building a ramp to do it cleanly, but this was easier."

Why wait for the train to come through? Couldn't we simply destroy a few meters of the track right now? That certainly seemed easier, safer, and more controlled.

I didn't say anything. Let Carl feel clever, and definitely don't criticize when there was no need. I'd already made him angry enough and I wanted him in a good mood later when I tried to convince him to leave here on the yellow line. Most likely what was going to happen was that the bombs would explode directly under the engineer's seat and kill him instantly. The train would be derailed and hopefully we could pick our way through the wreckage and find the key on the engineer's mangled corpse. Given that it was an important dungeon artifact it was probably indestructible like our magical gear. If there ended up being no way through to the engine compartment, or if the key was in fact destroyed, or thrown clear so that we couldn't find it, or buried under too much ruined metal for us to get to...oh well. It would make it easier to convince Carl that we needed to take the yellow line.

In fact...

"Do you have another of those?" I asked, just as Carl was pulling the second one out of his inventory. "Do you mind if I place it?" Explosions were popular with the viewers and I might as well reap some of the views. Also, we were probably going to kill everything on the train, and if I placed one of the bombs then I would get more experience than I would simply for being in the party. It shouldn't make any difference in terms to the likelihood of killing the engineer; in the real world the first bomb would have been more than enough, so either it was going to happen anyway or dungeon shenanigans would protect the engineer from however many bombs we emplaced.

He looked surprised but handed over the fishing pole. "Explosives usually get unstable when handled by someone who doesn't have the Explosive Handling skill," he warned. "It's marked as stable against anything but impact so that shouldn't be a problem, but I'm not sure. Try picking it up. If I see the stability going down then you'll need to set it down—carefully!--and I'll place it."

"Okay." I took the fishing pole and lifted, hard. The bomb was heavy but I only needed to get it off the ground enough that I could swing it out over the tracks and control its fall. He winced as the tire touched down a little harder than was ideal but it didn't explode so all's well that ends well. I hadn't placed it quite right; it had fallen between two of the stringers so that it was tipped on a diagonal with the trigger aimed towards where the train would come from, but that shouldn't matter.

We retreated back up the stairs to wait. The space was tight, the walls barely separating the entrances to the three stairwells, a saferoom pub, and a Club Vanquisher. Donut continued trying to ride Mongo around the small area, a state of affairs with which the dinosaur was very unhappy. He bucked her off every couple of minutes, much to her poofing-out, hissing annoyance. Carl watched all this with amusement while I stared nervously down the stairs, one foot juddering impatiently.

After five minutes I managed to get control of myself and focus on practicing my shapeshifting. I was working on rotating the skin on my forearm down under the arm and back up the other side in a steady whirl. I didn't have a specific use for the action but it required a lot of focus that kept me distracted and seemed like would be a good exercise for developing control. And for building a tolerance to the pain of shapeshifting.

The stairs descended far enough that I couldn't hear the train arrive, but I certainly heard the explosion. A cloud of dust and dirt came flying up the stairs and hit me in the face, making me choke and blink the grit out of my eyes.

Level Up! You are now level 24.

Three stat points gained.

New achievement! Baby Terrorist!

You weaseled your way into getting partial credit for someone else's terrorism—to wit, the destruction of major infrastructure and the murder of 179 helpless mobs that only wanted to eat your face.

Reward: You got a level, what else do you want?!