Death Cap - Thirty-Six - Laying Out the Trap Long Before it's Set

I didn’t just rush half-cocked at the muggers with bombs and poison and an angry badger. No, I took a day to walk around the scene. I think burglars called it casing the joint? I’m not sure if it counted, but that couldn’t be too far from what I was doing.

First, I checked the place out properly.

The muggers were staying in a thin sliver of a warehouse on the second floor of one of those big complexes where dozens of homes and factories all got squished together. It couldn’t have been all that big. I stayed on the ground level, where an open gutter pipe ran through the middle of the street and ensured that things stayed quiet.

The muggers came in from their day’s work at around noon. They left just a few hours later.

The next day I snuck over in the early hours of the morning and saw them arriving an hour or so after sunup. They wore nicer clothes on arriving, then when they left to do their dirty work, it was in rougher, but still nice, rags. The kind of stuff a hard working slum-dweller might wear.

So, they had a schedule of sorts.

The warehouse only had one window, on the upper-most floor, and it was blackened by soot and stains. I didn’t think I’d be able to fling anything through. Besides, the glass breaking might alert some folk to come out and see what was up.

I didn’t want people to see me.

The result of my work was fine, but I didn’t need more rumours about a pint-sized mushroom-using person travelling about.

While I waited in the stink of the gutters for the muggers to come and go, I ran through all sorts of different plans. Some were elaborate, others just simple. Toss in a bomb through that window. Maybe lock them in and light the place on fire. Wait for them to step out, then hit them with some spore clouds.

In the end, my final plan was relatively simple, but it would take an hour or two to realise.

I started by lugging some supplies over to their warehouse once they were gone for the day. I stashed them in a large rotting box on the lowest level. The entrance to their part of the building was on the second level of the catwalks which turned the slums into a vertical jungle, so it wouldn’t be hard to grab my supplies once I needed them.

Then I spent half my mana on their door, pushing [Blight] into the padlock they used until it was unlikely that they’d be able to unlock it. Just in case, I brought some wood glue along and spilled some of it into space between the latch of the lock. Just a smidge of it, but enough to gum up everything inside.

Then I left, had a nice dinner with mom with some cans of spam-like meat and beans I’d bought for the evening, and had a nice sleep. I did mix in some chopped up [Healing Chimes] into our supper. I couldn’t tell if they were having an effect or not, but they were edible and tasted decent enough, so I didn’t see the harm in sharing them with my mom.

The next morning I was back at the warehouse bright and early, with a tarp to disguise myself below their doorway.

The five arrived half an hour earlier. One, a tall, lanky fellow wearing pants that were a bit too short for him and left his ankles exposed, tried to fit a key into the lock. It didn’t fit, obviously.

“C’mon, Joe, you daft idiot, do I need to explain how keys work?” one of the bigger boys asked.

“Shut up, William,” Joe snapped. “Lock’s all jammed up.”

“Show me that.” Another one of them stepped up and fiddled with the key and lock. He swore under his breath, then tugged at it a few times. “Joe’s right.”

“Or maybe you’re both idiots,” William muttered.

“Averell”, the one at the door said. “Can you break the damned thing off? I’m starving.”

Averell, who was a short guy with a red jacket and cap on, stepped over, grabbed the lock, then frowned. A moment later something crunched and the lock cracked open. “There,” he muttered.

One of the others grabbed the lock, examined it, then shrugged. “Right fucked,” he said before pulling his arm back and throwing it hard into the distance. The others chuckled and soon they filed in.

I waited.

It took a while for them to get going. I couldn’t tell the time, exactly, except by the movement of the sun, but it felt like forever in the moment and a blink as soon as it passed.

They left, in different clothes and with chains and bats and the kind of jostling I’d expect to see in a bunch of idiot frat boys out for some fun. I could almost believe that they were harmless, then Joe laughed. “Ah, man, I can’t get the scream of that lady out of my head. Whaa! Whaa!”

“No way, the way her legs bent, it was gross,” William said.

I kept my peace and waited until they were well and truly gone. Then I snuck up with my box and set it down. I probably had plenty of time to work, but I didn’t want to risk it. So I hurried. They’d made some half-assed attempt to relock the door, with a long bolt running between two links of the chain, but it was poorly thought out and easy to undo.

The interior stank of sweat and mould and clearly needed some cleaning. There were some couches, a few chairs, and a stove in the corner that rested unlit. They had a bathroom near the back, and some shelving and cubby holes for materials and clothes.

It looked more organised than I would have expected. Dark, though. They had two kerosene lamps on tables, and a string of lightbulbs hung from the ceiling. I didn’t dare light any of those, so I popped a [Purple Horse Head] for the low-light vision and got to work with what light I had.

I checked for traps first, then placed my box inside and then closed the door until I could only stick my hands out. Then I redid the bolt from the interior. It took lots of sweat and cursing my lack of finger-strength.

It would have to do.

I prepared the room, then found a place to hide. Using the old adage that ‘no one looks up’ I snuck up to the rafters and sat down next to the greasy old window. It let me see outside so I’d maybe see them coming, and I’d be out of immediate melee range when they entered.

I set Sir Nibbles down, then placed a cloth mask over his face before fixing my own on. He did not like the mask. He also didn’t remove it. Smart little badger.

Fortunately, the time passed quickly. The boys had a couple of literate members, judging by the few books I found. None of them were particularly interesting, but I did find a biology textbook which was laughably inaccurate. The page on female reproductive organs was, of course, earmarked and bookmarked.

I sighed, but leafed through the text anyway. It was a decent refresher, even if it was mostly wrong in a lot of ways. Old memories were coming to the surface as I read, and it was strangely nostalgic.

Then the door jiggled and I carefully set the book down, made sure my mask was on snug, and touched Sir Nibbles to wake him up from his nap.

Below, the boys entered the room. One of them flicked on the lights. They didn’t bother with the lamps yet, which was great.

“Gods damn, that was a long day,” Joe complained.

One of the muggers whose name I didn’t know, but who seemed strangely familiar grunted in approval. “Long day, good pay,” he said.

They had a sort of coffee table in the centre of the room, and I watched them toss their winnings down one by one.

There were lots of purses, and a few small odds and ends as well. Maybe mugging was a more lucrative business than I thought.

“Hey,” Averell said. “Who moved my textbook?”

“Probably you,” another said.

“Shut up, Jack, I was the last out, I saw it on that table,” Averell replied. He stomped over to the wall with the cubby holes and smacked a shelf, which was notably not a table.

“You’re losing your mind. It’s all the gutter air,” Jack said. He walked to a wall, shifted the couch there aside, and revealed that one of the tin panels was just for show. They had a little stash back there, with a proper safe. Jack fished a key out from his shirt and opened it. “Joe, start counting, need to add it to the books.”

That was enough for me.

I flared out my aura and speared it out across the room towards the couch Jack had shifted.

Joe spun around and looked up, right at me.

A mana-sensing ability?

I didn’t give him time to sound the alarm before I pulled Sir Nibbles back and pushed mana into one of the couch’s cushions. My aura was straining to reach that far, but it didn’t matter.

It was time to set off my many surprises.

***