58 - SLAUGHTERHOUSE 9 [Cherno]

A/N: I forgot a whole environmental desc. paragraph near the end. Fixed.

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"Touché."

The old, water-eroded brickwork crumbled like tofu-dreg faux-crete under Casus' blows. They had to pry the door away from the wall and awkwardly squeeze past, with the lock sturdy enough that the whole thing hanged off it. Before long they hit the unfinished tram tunnel, the air stale from lack of active ventilation. Stale... And faintly tinged with the metallic smell of blood.

Following Casus' internal compass, they crept through the tunnel for some time, until they reached an alcove with an emergency door. Rather, what had once been such an alcove. It had been reinforced and built up with ramps and even a mechanized hoist of some kind, while the door itself and a chunk of the wall was gone to make room for a cart rail. Splatters of blood abounded, most dry, some not. A whirring machine the size of a watercooler seemed to be projecting a bubble-like, arsenic-green barrier to make up for the absence of a door. That machine was also the barrier's weakness, as its bulbous shape was halfway- on either side of it.

Contrary to what one might consider good judgment, "SLAUGHTERHOUSE 9" was painted in bright cartoonish red above the door. Nostalgia flowed through Krahe's chest, sparking a faint smirk on her face. This, in turn, prompted a curious eyebrow-raise from Casus.

"Looks like bottom-rung choppergangs are just as braindead as they were back home. Get your belt going, there's no doing this the quiet way. They probably see your Silberblut Coupler as a major windfall, if it's one tenth as valuable as you think it is."

The response she received was not from Casus, but from his belt. The click of a canister locking into place, of the lever being depressed. Hissing of pressurized gas as mercurial metal flowed over his body and formed into armor that looked nothing like the suit of its previous wearer. Casus' version of the Dregsteam Armor was amorphous and elegant, fully embodying the appearance of liquid metal. Large tracts of armor stretched all across his body, the differential between flexible and hardened a tenuous one. It reminded Krahe of non-newtonian reactive armor. The undersuit which peeked through underneath was similarly silvery, effortlessly blending with the armor. It bunched up around his right arm, dripping off it in such a way as to form a wicked blade braced against the back of his hand. His helmet had no visible eyes or visor, but there were two humanlike features to its faceless visage: Lips and hair. The Banisher's flowing mane had been accounted for by the armor, cascading down out of holes on the bottom of the helmet and forward over his shoulders. This only added to the whole armor's unsettling appearance.

That was the point she realized the likely reason the armor looked different. The canister had blue stripes instead of yellow or orange ones.

The belt's own warning affirmed her read on it.

"WARNING: Omniphage. Caustic hazard. Stand free."

"I cannot say I expected a gangster to shell out for an Omniphage cartridge... But I also cannot say I do not appreciate it."

They both heard muffled voices from the entryway of  Slaughterhouse Nine; two of them, vaguely alarmed, arguing if they had just heard someone use a Dregsteamer, and whether it was "that moron transforming for fun again". The argument resolved when the older-sounding of the two voices commanded: "Go check anyway. If we have a repeat of last month it's my ass on the line."

Though they continued approaching the entryway even while this exchange took place, there was simply no way they could reach it in a stealthy manner by the time one of the guards came out. They kept to the same side as the entrance, to at least keep out of sight.

"We've drawn attention. Let us get on with the killing," Casus hissed.

"Think I can disable that generator with a bullet?" Krahe asked, leaning out.

"That model... Yes, if you can hit the regulator right there," he pointed to a circular section where three cables met. It was about fifteen centimeters across, and she was over twenty meters from it. Casus' statement was not a serious suggestion.

She took the shot anyway, propping up her right arm with her left while she formed a smoke grenade in her free hand.

Low and to the left.

Voices of reluctance turned to voices of alarm at the gunshot, but Krahe kept cool and fired again. The generator sputtered. Not only did the barrier fail, it did so in spectacular fashion, unraveling into whipping tendrils of incoherent magic before the generator burst in a shower of sparks and liquid thaumine.

Krahe quickly lowered her gun, sprinting across the tunnel while Casus kept behind her. She was well aware that he could far outpace her, but he had the good judgment not to run ahead like a moron. When she got within ten meters, she hucked the grenade into the entryway. It was imbued with anathema from her arm, and somewhat unexpectedly, the smoke seemed to benefit from the Phase of Earthen Jade. It was significantly denser and slower to start dissipating. Its detonation sent shell-fragments flying, but without the velocity to injure unless one struck an eye.

Swearing and threats abounded. The two Hashem goons were dead before they knew what had happened. Rather than rely on Thaumic Fusion, Krahe had just blasted her target with Tracers at point-blank. She had swept his legs to get his barrier out of the way, and then put one Tracer after the next into is back until he was dead with a gaping hole where his spine had been.

While the brief bout of hyperviolence played out, Krahe took stock of her surroundings. The emergency door led to a stairway to the surface and a shaft with a barebones elevator inside, designed for carrying carts rather than individual passengers. Rather than having had its machinery replaced, it seemed that the shaft had never been installed with it before the Hashems came along. If her mental map was even remotely accurate, this had to reach the surface somewhere inside the blockaded subdistrict.

Casus had killed his target by the time Krahe got her second shot in, and awaited her with a tilted-head, eyeless stare when she looked up from her victim. The body at the Banisher's feet was slowly being eaten by liquid metal from within the single narrow wound in its skull.

"What?" she looked up to meet his gaze. It would've been awkward if she wasn't used to impassive faceplates.

"Nothing. You fight like a Red Hood. That is a compliment," he stated with utter seriousness.