Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cover art by Foxena.

Content rating is PG-13 for violence and dark themes, although I don't think they are intense enough to warrant a mature rating.

This work is being cross-posted on Royal Road and FurAffinity, if you see this story in those locations, that is me. If you see this story on any other site, it is stolen.

Chapter Text

The report of cannonfire from The Providence rang through the dead of morning. Algernon stiffened, his ears swiveling in the direction of the racket. The possums around him were similarly startled, looking around nervously as though they could locate the source of the rig’s fury while they huddled in the belly of it.

“Are w-we being attacked?” he asked nervously.

A weasel, one of the overseers of the vehicle, poked their head through the entrance to the boiler room. “Hey! Back to work you lot!” he barked. “Probably just some scav thinking they’ll get lucky.”

The words shook them from their daze, but the anxiousness remained on their faces. They were all possums though, so their neutral expressions had the appearance of perpetual worry anyways.

With how big the firebox was, removing the previous day’s ashes required multiple crewmen. The rakes used for the task were gargantuan, and the effort had already left the marsupials tired and covered in soot. With the cannons ending their salvo, Algernon and the others returned to pushing the kindling to the back of the box. He watched as a brave soul ventured into the vessel itself with a matchbook. Lighting the match, the possum gripped the stick with their tail and nervously lowered it into the paper and thin planks, and as soon as the pile ignited the possum skittered back to safety.

Once the fire was burning, the group formed a line to heft the fuel logs in to cover the whole floor of the firebox. Soon a blanket of flames filled the boiler. The belly of the colossus groaned as it began to heat up. Now that the rig was waking from its cold start, Algernon and his coworkers ambled out of the engine room. Their work day had only just begun.

Directly next to the inner workings of The Providence lay the facilities room. It held lockers and the various tools needed for the engineers to do their jobs, and a large CRT screen took up most of the far wall. The readouts detailed the distribution of tasks to the possums. Algernon was one of the few crewmen who could actually read, which made it his responsibility to inform the others. Following along during sermons had made him proficient, and if he were a rat it would have immediately made him an important part of the Clergy, most likely a priest. As it was, it only gave him more responsibilities.

“Sawyer, you’ll be checking the monkey tail and closing it. Harley will be monitoring the lubricator. Riley and Eda are on air compressor duty.” Algernon blinked when he got to his own entry on the list. “I-I’ll be cleaning the main hatch.” Although he didn’t know why it needed to be cleaned now, when it hadn’t before.

He shuffled off to his duties along with the other possums. Some climbed up through the inner workings of the behemoth vehicle, others disappeared into the winding passageways on the ground level. Algernon’s path took him through the cavernous main hall. Mess tables that could seat a hundred took up the floor, meanwhile catwalks criss-crossed above, leading to the various offices of the rig. At this early hour, few animals walked through the space save for the unlucky ones needed to man the graveyard shift.

The largest portal from the hall led to the back entrance of the rig. Algernon was surprised to see the leader of The Providence standing there by the secure hold embedded in the side of the room. The rat, Armand,  was hunched over the ledger he held in his paws, appraising different items one of the weasel overseers brought to and from the hold.

The rat scowled at the precursor-sized hex wrench being presented to him. “You lizard-brains! None of these artifacts look remotely like what we need!” Armand shrieked, his tail whipping against the metal floor. As the weasel hastily brought the item back to the hold, the rat finally noticed the possum standing awkwardly nearby. “What are you gawking at?”

“I’m h-here to clean the hatch, sir,” Algernon said.

“Ah good, it took long enough for an underling to arrive,” he muttered. “The noble crest of our heritage has been soiled, and must be returned to its former glory!”

The possum wrung its paws. “Can you open the hatch for me, sir?”

“What? Most of our protectors still sleep, and we can’t let any filthy brigands into our holy enclave!” Armand exclaimed. “Access the exterior through one of the nearby outlets.”

“But sir, the crest is awfully high up...”

“Bah,” the rat scoffed, waving a paw at him. “The cargo lines haven’t broken in at least a season, and you can use that clingy tail of yours.”

“Oh...” As the weasel came out of the hold with a screwdriver as tall as he was, Algernon scampered off before the rat threw another fit.

He grabbed a rag and bucket from the nearest maintenance crevice, and holding the supplies with his tail, Algernon climbed up through the interior of the walls. With an opossum's dexterous digits, they were the only species on the rig that could take advantage of the numerous pipes that lined the inner workings to climb upwards. At least, when the engine wasn’t warmed up and pumping boiling liquids through them.

At the top of the vehicle, a small flap sat closed. Undoing the lock, Algernon opened it to the outside, letting the cool morning air in. A hint of light tinged the sky, but the landscape around the vehicle was still covered in shadow. He walked out onto the roof of The Providence and lit the nearest lantern. Even though he couldn’t see how high he was, Algernon couldn’t suppress a shudder at the inky void surrounding the vehicle.

He quickly got to work securing a harness. There were several crane arms for doing work around the rig, which the possum attached himself to. Algernon approached the edge of the roof. Gulping, he crossed himself with his paw across his chest, before turning his back to the open air and repelling down the outside.

Below, the dim glow of another lantern illuminated The Providence’s air compressor. Lowering down to it he caught Riley and Eda starting to drain the reservoirs.

“Can I catch some of that?” Algernon asked.

One of the other possums gave him a shrug, so he held out the bucket with his tail and gathered the stream of water leaking from the machine. With that in tow, he scrabbled along the side of the vehicle to the back hatch. He ascended back up to near the top of the rig, where an emblem twice his length stood proud.

Hooking another lantern over the edge of the craft, he scrunched up his snout at the mess. Expecting dirt and grime, instead a large reddish-brown stain spread across the face, with clumps of grey fur caked into it. Algernon stared in dismay at what he needed to clean for several minutes, before setting to work wiping away the grisly sight.

By the time he had finished, his paws were covered in gunk and his stomach was clenched in revulsion. The first rays of dawn were breaching the horizon, illuminating his handiwork. Time was starting to wear down the letters, but the “A&E” encircled by a helix was still prominent and stood proud against the steel frame of The Providence.

The landscape surrounding the rig was finally casting off its shadows. Below, a massive crater several times larger than The Providence spread out. Remnants of some building lay within, and debris from beyond the cusp of it were drawn into the hole. Gargantuan structures rose up all around it. Algernon wasn’t sure how any creature could have made creations so large, but it just went to show how great the precursor race was.

However, besides the activity on the rig, a stillness hung over the gigantic colony. Every window in every building was dark. Nature was beginning to claim the architecture, its trees poking through the concrete and its vines snaking up the walls. The sun hadn’t touched the ground yet, but he knew that as with every precursor settlement, their relics littered the streets.

“Underlings!” Armand’s voice blared through the speaker mounted next to him.

Algernon’s body jolted in shock, causing his tail to let go of the wash bucket. His mouth opened in a silent scream towards the source of the noise.

“There is an additional task that is required of you,” he continued. “The Providence needs to be topped up on water reserves. Fill them up from the pump, posthaste!”

It took a minute for Algernon’s ears to stop ringing. In that time, the possums working the air compressor had already climbed to the roof of the vehicle.

“Since you’re already tethered, we’ll swing you over to the tender,” Eda said.

“Wait, I’m not - eeeeeee!” As the crane turned, he was pulled away from the side of the Providence and suspended in the air. He spun in slow circles while the crane arm was guided over to the broad side of the rig.

When the movements stopped, Algernon looked down and spotted the reservoir the vehicle was parked next to. Someone had set up a ramshackle windmill to pump up water to a receptacle, a droplet painted across its side. He lowered himself down to its level. On the side of The Providence the nozzle of a siphon protruded nearby. Swinging over to it, he grabbed and pulled it out to the reservoir. He gave a thumbs up to the possums still on the roof. One of them threw a switch, activating a vacuum pull started by the sparks of power forming in the engine. With suction coming out of the siphon, Algernon attached it to the faucet of the reservoir and turned the spigot. The sound of water flowing traveled down the hose. For several minutes Algernon watched over the transfer, until with a thunk , the suction ceased. He detached the siphon and let it retract to its cubby. 

Feedback resonated from the speakers situated around the vehicle. “Attention citizens of The Providence,” Armand’s voice came through again. “Morning mass will begin shortly, proceed to the cathedral.”

The possums above immediately left to the nearest flap. Scared of being late, Algernon climbed up the rope as fast as he could. Slipping inside, he traversed the tight innards of the machine towards its heart, where the cathedral lay. Another flap opened next to the cathedral’s entrance, and Algernon arrived in time to only receive a withering glare from the weasels at the door instead of something worse.

Besides the main hall, the cathedral was one of the largest spaces in The Providence. Metal arches rose up to the soaring ceiling, arching back down towards the pulpit. In front of it, a substantial, precursor-sized book rested in the choir. Rows of pews took up the nave, and were already filled with possums, mice, weasels, and the hundreds of mammals that called the rig home. Algernon slipped into a pew with his possum brethren.

Many of the constituents were conversing in hushed voices. Others looked paralyzed from boredom. Next to him, one of the other workers was dozing off, exhausted from their intense work that morning. One of the overseers came up behind and smacked them on the back of the head, bringing them back to wakefulness with a yelp.

The murmurings of the creatures quieted when a rat in Clergy vestments padded up to the pulpit. Candles surrounding the front illuminated the rodent’s aged wrinkles. His flabby skin jiggled as he raised his arms.

“Sons of Atom, daughters of Eve,” the priest intoned, “We are gathered this morning, as we do every morning, to celebrate the gift of law bestowed upon us by the Creators. Today we’ll be reading from the book of Genesis, chapter six.”

The priest walked around the pulpit to the large book. The rat flipped through pages bigger than his entire body, which threatened to cover them. Algernon grabbed a copy of the holy text from the pew in front of him, thankfully one of hybrid size. His fellow workers didn’t bother getting their own, either from lack of interest or inability to understand.

Just as Algernon found the passage, the rat read, “‘But the earth was corrupt in the view of God and full of lawlessness. When God saw how corrupt the earth had become, since all mortals had corrupted their ways on the earth, God said to Noah: I see that the end of all mortals has come, for the earth is full of lawlessness because of them. So I am going to destroy them with the earth.’”

With a degree of reverence, the rat closed the book. “And so it is in this day and age. We live in the midst of a Noah generation, and like Noah, we too are preserved from the lawlessness of the outside world within our own arks, awaiting the cleansing. As Clergy, it is our sacred duty to cherish the law just as our creators did before us, and protect it from those who wish to see it dismantled. So whether it is your responsibility to administer this entire ark, or prepare the minds of the next generation, or maintain the workings of this vessel, do it with the knowledge that you are performing a righteous task.”

Once more the priest lifted their hands to the heavens. “Creators, bless these humble creatures. Thank you for opening our eyes, and not leaving us blind like the vermin who continuously do evil. Quicken the day of your wrath, so that our enemies may be vanquished and our inheritance restored. Amen.”

The crowd half-heartedly echoed an amen back. With the benediction spoken, that meant that it was time for the first mess of the day, which the animals were much more eager for. Algernon found himself swept with the sea of bodies out of the cathedral and towards the main hall.

Now that the rest of The Providence was awake, the hall was abuzz with activity. A cacophony of voices filled every corner. Algernon grabbed his ears to protect his sensitive hearing. His instinct was to run and hide from the overstimulation, but the pangs of hunger were starting to stir in his belly. And so he waited in the chaotic crowd for food.

When he was finally jostled to the front, he was greeted with the morning’s meal; Giblets of roach were offered in small thimble-sized bowls. It’s what was served for every meal, so the cooked insect was hardly a surprise, but Algernon couldn’t help but be disappointed all the same. The meat didn’t have an unpleasant taste, but eating it season after season reduced eating to just another necessity.

Before Algernon was thrust aside by more hungry patrons he grabbed a bowl. With all of the commotion in the hall he couldn’t bear to eat there. He began to rush off to his secret spot, when another possum with frizzy fur and squinty eyes noticed him and lit up. Before he could escape, she came up to him with a huge smile.

“Oh Algernon, it’s good to see you!” she said, squeezing his neck fluff. “It feels like it has been seasons since we’ve crossed paths!”

“H-hello Mabel,” Algernon greeted. The old possum had a look of adoration that was almost unnerving.

“Come, sit with the rest of us! I would love to catch up with you!”

He glanced over to the nearby table. Baby possums were seated neatly together, all smacking their mouths as they chewed their meals. None seemed fully aware of their surroundings, perfectly content to blissfully munch.

“Mabel, it’s been many seasons since I was a joey.” In truth it had been way more than he could count, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that.

“I remember when you were as small as one like it was yesterday,” she crooned, squishing his cheeks. “You’ll always be that little bean in my eyes!”

“Well, I-I have to organize the barracks while everyone is up and about, so I’ll need to eat on the job,” he said.

“Always so considerate. Go do what you need to, but don’t be a stranger!”

With a final pat she released him. Algernon gave a friendly flick of his tail, then hurried out of the hall. He headed towards the barracks, but not for cleaning purposes. Just outside of the sleeping quarters was a corridor to one of the cannons, but yellow tape criss-crossed the entrance. Ignoring the barrier, he ducked underneath and traveled deeper inside; he’d found that other hybrids stood well clear of the space, believing it to be hazardous. However, all that lay at the end of the narrow and twisting passage through the walls of the vehicle was an empty shutter to the outside.

The cannon had been removed and never replaced, leaving a small ledge inset to the side of The Providence. Algernon let his legs and tail dangle off the side and began munching on his meal. The giant-sized city was now fully visible under the mid-morning sun. Below, what was once hidden by pre-dawn shadows was laid bare. Although much smaller than The Providence, great behemoths of steel, rubber and glass lined the sides of the roads, the remains of mythical vehicles. None showed signs of steam valves or pipes so it was unclear even to an engineer like Algernon how they functioned, but the precursors had many such technologies that were beyond hybrid comprehension. No matter the case, no one would get the chance to investigate; every vehicle showed signs of tampering with, likely by groups of scavengers. Like the Clergy said, they tended to destroy everything they touched.

Other relics from a bygone age littered the streets. Great poles that housed electric lamps were broken against the asphalt. In rare instances the sophisticated lights still glowed in the evenings, but with a city in this much ruin it seemed unlikely many would work here. Lengths of cables that once spanned the buildings now slithered across the ground. Numerous signs of every color and script imaginable were littered everywhere, torn and scattered, making the initial meanings illegible.

Even though no life was left in the city, peeking out between the debris and foliage were remnants of it. The bleach-white of bones left in the sun was all that was left of the precursors. Algernon hadn’t been up close to them in person, but from his perch he’d seen some of The Providence’s surveyors next to their remains, and many of their bones were longer than the average hybrid. Their scale must have been astounding.

Speaking of the surveyors, Algernon heard a colossal groan rumble through the vehicle as the main hatch of the rig opened. After a minute of the whole frame shuddering a dull bang sounded as the top of the hatch hit the ground. A few minutes more, and the workers started appearing down below; crews of moles and martens equipped with carts to transport any precursor relics they found back to The Providence. Algernon didn’t know why they were searching for them, but he trusted that the overseers knew what they were doing.

One of the groups was picking through an abandoned vehicle at the lip of the crater. Even at the distance they were from him, Algernon’s sensitive ears were still able to make out bits of their conversation.

“Do you really think this is the place?” one of the moles asked. “Clearly there used to be some A&E presence here, but is it the one with the key?”

“How should I know?” a marten snapped. “Stop distracting us, and let us do our job.”

With a jolt Algernon realized that if the surveyors were out, then he was late for his own work. He hastened back inside to the facilities room, but he was already too late; the overseers were agitated that the possums were delayed in their duties by his lack of presence. He couldn’t stop stuttering as he read out the tasks from the monitor, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“I-I’ll be maintaining the firebox for the afternoon shift,” Algernon said, hoping to swiftly move along.

Those hopes were dashed when the overseer clamped a paw on his shoulder. “Edgar has already been doing a good job keeping the flames healthy,” the weasel said, a malicious glimmer in their eyes. “Why not let him continue doing that duty, while you can do a special task that needs doing, hm?”

“What task w-would that be?”

Shortly thereafter he was standing in front of the paddocks with a mop and bucket, a whimper escaping his throat. Inside was where the rig raised their flock of roaches, hundreds of insectoids as big as he was. In the dim space the bugs covered the entire floor, in some places piling on top of each other.

His duty was to clean the pens out of loose chitin and refuse, a chore that had clearly been neglected judging by the stench of rot filling the space. With immense reluctance Algernon stepped into the first paddock.

The next several hours was a grim chapter in Algernon’s life he didn’t want to relive anytime soon. The smell within the pens was overwhelming and made him want to pass out. Hardly any of the roaches wanted to move for him to clean and he had to coax nearly every single one to move. Some decided to flick their wings at him, and a couple flew at him with limbs outstretched in an act of defiance, causing Algernon to flee several times.

By the end of the ordeal much of the grunge caking the paddocks transferred to his fur instead of the bucket. The only consolation was that the roaches would all end up as food for the crew, eventually.

When supper rolled around, he didn’t have to make an effort to avoid the crowds. Everyone gave him a wide berth with the stink that clouded around him. He returned to his quiet place with his meal more so to not be ridiculed by his peers than for an escape.

It was a relief when the day was reaching its end, since that meant it was time for the nightly bath. All of the possums had migrated to the lowest levels of the vehicle, where the reserve tender was accessible. It doubled as a cleaning tub once most of the water was emptied into the main tender. Usually that wasn’t an issue, except for the one time the cooling lines were incorrectly redirected to the reserve tank. The smell of boiled mammal didn’t leave the rig for weeks.

Algernon discarded his overalls and uniform along with the others and stepped up to the edge of the tank. The sight below paralyzed him. Water was lapping at the top of the ladder down, its depths hiding the bottom. He felt unsteady on his feet, and backed away before he could tumble in.

The sound of pumping water steadily grew until the others started climbing down the ladder. He peeked over the side. Water was only up to the possums’ waist now, so he grabbed a chunk of lye and descended as well.

Joining his fellows he immediately soaped himself as fast as possible, vigorously rubbing to wash the entire day away. The layers melted away one at a time: mud, sweat, and finally soot.

He was startled when he felt someone start to scrub his back. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Mabel smiling up at him. Feeling he ought to contribute, Algernon started to wash the back of the possum in front of him, who gave an appreciative hum.

Once every limb and every digit was clean, the group bundled out of the tank and dried off under the heat sinks of the engine. Then it was off to their quarters, which was just a small room with padding lining it. Together they curled up in the center so that they looked like one big jumble of fur.

With the warmth shared between them and after the exertions of the day, it didn’t take long for Algernon to begin drifting off. Before sleep overtook him, he clasped his paws and prayed to the creators, giving thanks for another day passed, and praying for their blessing in the day to come.

It was the following morning, and Algernon was on his hands and knees wiping the floor of the back entrance. All of The Providence’s surveyors tracked grime in when returning from their expeditions, causing the entrance to be caked in dirt. The task was grueling, and he was pretty sure the floor would become just as grimy again in the next couple days, but if the overseer watching over him said it was an important duty, it wasn’t his place to question.

With the first shift of surveyors already out in the city the hatch was open and let the breeze and soft dawn light in. The faraway sounds of shifting rubble in the city indicated where workers were searching. The sudden patter of feet coming up the hatch drew his attention. Seeing the group rapidly approaching, Algernon scrambled out of the way right before they bustled into the entrance.

“Fetch the boss, quick!” A marten from the group said to the overseer. He held up a rod caked in dirt out to the weasel. “I think this is what we’ve been looking for!”

In an uncharacteristic act of doing work, the overseer ran off deeper into the Providence. Meanwhile, Algernon wrung the end of his tail as the surveyors muddied up the floor he had just cleaned.

Not a minute later Armand came striding into the entrance with his ledger. He had his usual scowl across his snout before seeing the artifact the surveyors had. The rat opened to the first page and looked between the rod and the ledger.

“Brush it off,” Armand demanded. The moles and martens complied, rubbing off the dirt covering the object. Beneath was a metallic surface lined with symbols. A few rings circled the cylinder at one end.

The lead rat kept glancing between his ledger and the strange artifact until his ears perked up. A small rumble emerged from his chest until he started laughing with glee. “I can’t believe it! This really is the master key!”

The surveyors looked excited as well, if a bit uncertain of what to do. “Sir, what does this mean now?” one of the moles spoke up.

“Put it in the lockout, in the most secure place you can find,” the rat said. “As for now, it is time to celebrate!”

Algernon found himself carried along by the surveyors to the entry hall where many of the other denizens were starting to travel through. The possum untangled himself from the other hybrids in the middle of the space, still at a loss for what was happening.

Thankfully, Armand’s voice was broadcast through the entire rig, causing every hybrid to quiet and turn to the speaker. “Attention citizens of The Providence. Today is a glorious day; I have found the master key, the prime artifact we are after on our holy mission! With it in my possession, we can finally return to the home of our order and sanctify this lawless land. In honor of this event, every worker can take the next shift off, and our special food stores will be open to all.”

The intercom went dead, leaving the room in silence for several moments. Then, a raucous cheer from every corner of the space erupted, causing Algernon to cover his ears. Hybrids from all over the vehicle poured into the hall. A few carried cans as big as they were with them. Overseers climbed on top of them and pulled on the tabs as hard as they could until they opened with a pop and the weasels tumbled off. Numerous paws reached in and pulled out preserved fruits and vegetables, a rare treat for the animals.

The food spilled out into the crowd, and Algernon was able to snatch up a piece of melon. Before the celebrations became too exciting he scurried off again to his secret spot. Even from the empty cannon shutter the sounds of excitement could still be heard in the distance, but it was low enough that he didn’t feel like he would risk fainting from all of the stimulation.

Sighing, he sat down on the ledge and let the mild breeze jostle his fur. Nibbling on the melon, his eyes dilated. Compared to eating roaches every day, it was a transcendent experience that pulled him into his own world. In the juicy euphoria of the fruit, Algernon could finally imagine that all that he and his brethren had worked for would lead to something better, if this savouriness was any indication.

His pleasant thoughts were swiftly interrupted when something yanked on his tail and flung him from the safety of The Providence.

Algernon by Foxena.

Chapter Text

In all his time on the Providence, there were many times Algernon had fallen off ledges. Most of the main walkways had railings or other safety features to prevent such accidents, but the routes specific to the engineers tended to be more perilous. However, all of those times he was either harnessed or latched on with his tail, so they only led to momentary panic.

This time, he was so taken off guard that it took him a moment to realize he was even falling. Even if there was something for his tail to grab on to near the shutter, he was too far away to do anything now. He could only tumble over and over in the air, hurtling towards the ground below with nothing but the rushing wind filling his ears.

Before he became a splat on the ground, he came to an abrupt stop against something soft. The air was forced from his lungs, and before he could recover his savior grappled him in a vice grip.

When Algernon’s brain finally caught up to him, he realized that he was in the arms of a large hybrid, holding him firmly against themselves and trapping him in their bulk. His terror from falling quickly returned and he tried to cry out, but a massive paw was wrapped around his muzzle.

Another hybrid dropped down from the side of the vehicle. It was a skunk clothed with tattered scraps of clothes and with unkempt fur, definitely not part of the Clergy. When she turned to face him, Algernon couldn’t help but whimper in fear. A manic grin was spread across her snout and her pupils bore into him like he was a piece of meat.

The skunk pulled a jagged shiv from their belt and wielded it at the possum. “Better not try anything stupid, rodent,” she jeered, “Or else your innards might become outtards.”

At that chilling remark, Algernon’s body decided that it was time to pass out, and his world quickly became dark.

Waking up had never been a pleasant task, especially with how early the engine needed to be started, but being awoken by several smacks across the face was by far the worst wake up call he’d experienced. He flinched in shock from the slaps and his eyes flung open. A rat was standing over him with a disapproving frown on their face. What was Armand doing here?

Then he remembered: he’d been kidnapped. Panic began to take hold again. This wasn’t Armand. Although the rat before him had a similar gray pelt to his boss, this one wore a fancy tricorn hat and had a sleeker feminine appearance.

“Flaming hell, it took you long enough to come to,” she said with annoyance.

After his initial shock Algernon realized that his face stung all over. She had probably been at it for a while. He tried to get up, but realized he couldn’t. “Wha-”

Looking down, he was coiled neck to toe in ropes, with only his tail free to wiggle around. He felt like one of the moorings that adorned the roof of The Providence.

A cruel chuckle came from nearby, and with dread he realized there were more hybrids there. Glancing around, a group of hybrids took up the space surrounding him in a small metal room. The skunk from before was playing with a knife and leering over him. There was also another rat, one with white fur and bespectacled reddish eyes that seemed to be analyzing him.

But by far the scariest creature stood in the back, a hulking badger with scars lining all of their exposed fur, including one carved in the shape of a “W” across their shoulder. The hybrid stood stoically with their arms crossed, staring down at him with a flat expression. Seeing the knife-sized claws on their paws, Algernon shuddered to think what they could do to him.

They all wore garments that looked cobbled together, and judging by their hostility, these could only be the scavengers that he’d been warned about his whole life. He pinned his ears back. This was the worst possible situation he could imagine being in.

“Look at how scared the rat-thing is!” the skunk tittered.

“It looks nothing like a rat,” the pale rat said. “That’s clearly an opossum. They’re much more cowardly than we are.”

“If you say so.” The skunk began picking her teeth with the shiv.

“You! Barge dweller!” the leader bellowed, causing the possum to shrink away as best he could. “You are on my steamer, and as such you will obey everything I tell you, or there will be consequences. Understand?”

Locked onto her dark orbs, Algernon bobbed his head vigorously. With how his jaw was quivering, he didn’t trust himself to speak without breaking out into a sob.

“Good. That colossal steamer you live on, I know it holds valuables inside. However, it’s built like a vault, and I don’t want to waste valuable crewmen getting inside.”

“You mean you don’t want to waste any more than you have already,” the skunk said.

The rat rounded on her. “Silence, you mangy cur!” she shrieked. Her ire didn’t last long though, and she focused back on Algernon, prodding him in the chest. “But since you live on that barge, you must know everything about it, including its layout and weaknesses. Now, since you’re in my control, you’ll tell me how to safely get inside without drawing attention,” she demanded.

Algernon eventually found his voice, but he couldn’t keep the tremor from it. “W-what... What do you plan t-to do?”

“We’re gonna rob it, you dimwit! Now spit it out, or things will start to become unpleasant for you!”

Fear of what these scavengers were capable of threatened to overwhelm him, but the fear of disobeying the Clergy was starting to rear its head. If he sabotaged them, even under duress, would he become unclean like the creatures surrounding him? Would his deity abandon him?

Summoning as much courage as he could muster, Algernon, replied, “I can’t do that! I can’t forsake the creators!”

The leader looked puzzled, and turned to the pale rat. “What’s he on about? Has he gone feral?”

“I’ve heard rumors that the armored barges are full of religious zealots. They’re probably not feral, but their mind might be addled,” the other rat suggested.

The gray rat threw her paws in the air. “Whatever, this isn’t going to go anywhere. Peach! Get over here.”

Algernon had almost completely forgotten about the badger, but with a heavy sigh they started approaching him. Their friendly-sounding name only made them more intimidating. He tried wiggling away but there was nowhere to go, and soon one of the badger’s feet slammed down on the end of his tail. He let out a yip of surprise and tried to pull the appendage away, but it was pinned in place.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” the leader said, “We’ll start at the end of your tail and work our way up. And if you’re still uncooperative, we can start on other limbs.”

He didn’t know what the rat meant until the skunk hunched over his trapped tail and started giggling maniacally, bringing her knife down to his flesh.

“W-wait! Wait! I’ll tell you! Please, just stop!” Algernon yelled automatically.

The skunk halted, her glee immediately turning to disappointment. “Really? We hadn’t even started,” she pouted. “Pathetic.”

His mind finally caught up with his tongue, and he realized that he was profaning himself in favor of temporary comfort. He’d never felt so weak. Tears began to leak unbidden from his eyes.

“Drop the details, or the pain will begin!” The rat threatened.

“There - There’s a shutter where a cannon is b-broken!” Algernon blubbered. “The passage to it is unused and leads past the barracks!”

 “Barracks? How many fighters are there?”

“N-no, barracks for the workers. There are only around twelve capable of fighting, m-mostly weasels.”

The leader tapped her chin. “That can’t be true. The barge was a beast to contend with,” she noted, speaking to herself.

“It’s probably built with strong outward offensive and defensive capabilities to offset internal weaknesses,” the badger spoke up for the first time. Their voice was deep and rumbly, but distinctly female, to the possum’s surprise. “You don’t need to be experienced in combat to fire artillery, you don’t need as many scrappers with the amount of cannons they have.”

“Well, can you take a dozen weasels?” the rat asked.

The badger grunted in reply.

“Excellent. Prisoner, tell me where this shutter is.”

“It’s the same place I was p-pulled down from, next to the air compressor,” he said.

The leader glared over at the skunk. “You lizard brain, why didn’t you just tell us there was an unguarded opening in the first place?”

The skunk didn’t seem phased by the barb. “Don’t get your tail in a twist, Frieda. You told me to nab one of the defenseless-looking workers, so that’s what I did. You never told me to look for a way in.”

“I am surrounded by idiots,” the rat lamented. “Not you,” she added to the pale rat, whose whiskers twitched at the remark.

The badger removed her foot from his tail, and Algernon quickly curled it around himself to protect it. “Can you let me go now?” he asked hopefully. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

The leader rounded on him again. “Not a chance. I still need to know where the goods are once I get inside.”

“I-I can tell you how to get to the vault!”

“Do you think we’re stupid?” she growled. “I’m not going to let you lead us into a trap. We’re bringing you with us, and you’ll guide us directly to the treasure.”

His stomach dropped. “No, that’s not n-necessary! I wouldn’t lie, honest!”

The leader spoke to the pale rat. “Go fetch Teddy. We’ll be preparing to raid the barge at nightfall.”

With that the interrogation ended, and she moved elsewhere into the depths of the vehicle. The skunk pranced off as well, clearly excited for what was about to happen. The other rat had also slunk off in the meantime.

The badger was the last to leave. She seemed to be scrutinizing Algernon under her gaze, and he could only sit and tremble. He didn’t know what she was trying to find, but eventually she, too, wandered off, leaving the possum alone to think about the impending disaster ahead. All he could do was pray that the creators would deliver him from this mess.

Harper, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

Algernon was left in his bonds for what felt like hours. In that time he was able to examine the room he was stuck in. A single table was bolted to the corner of the space, surrounded by seats for several hybrids. Besides that the ground was empty; all of the room’s features were above. A ladder led up to a second-floor catwalk, and it appeared there were several stations set up for prepping food, repairing tools, among other things. He realized this was this rig’s equivalent of a main hall, but clearly built for a frame much smaller than The Providence.

Doorways lined the walls leading every which way, but he didn’t have a good angle to see what lay beyond any of them. He heard the sounds of activity throughout the vehicle, and a few rats passed to and from the space, but never long enough for him to see what they were doing.

Eventually one stopped in front him, a lithe one with calico fur. “Hello there!” he greeted the captive.

The possum blinked up at the rat, unsure how to respond. This one seemed way too chipper to be a scavenger. “Uh-”

“Frieda said she brought in a capture, but I didn’t know it was an opossum!” He grabbed Algernon’s tail. “I’ve never come across one in the wild. Is this thing really prehensile?”

Algernon yanked his tail out of the rat’s grasp, who squeaked in surprise. He twisted around in the ropes, but didn’t see anyone else in the vicinity. “H-hey, uh, could you untie me? I don’t belong here!”

“Sure thing,” a voice said from above. His ears pulled back when he saw the skunk looking down with an amused smirk from one of the walkways. She jumped down and landed with barely a sound, approaching him slowly with a sway to her tail and a knife dancing in her fingers. “I’d be happy to help.”

She swiped down with her blade and Algernon screwed his eyes shut. Instead of cutting flesh, the coils of rope fell away. He collapsed over on his side, his limbs numb from the restriction.

The skunk cackled. “I like this one, he’s fun to toy with.”

As he shakily pulled himself to his feet the rat patted him on the shoulder. “She’s such a prankster! You get used to her eventually.”

Now that he was free, Algernon frantically glanced around for any avenue of escape.

“I wouldn’t try anything if I were you,” the skunk said with a paw on her hip. “Although it would be a fun chase, you wouldn’t get far.”

He gulped. Instead of bolting, he elected to wring his tail in his paws.

More creatures emerged into the main space. The badger from before came out with a large metal contraption strapped to her back. It took him a moment to realize it was an armament sized for precursors; he didn’t think any hybrid would be strong enough or crazy enough to wield one, but the badger didn’t seem at all concerned with the deadly weapon.

The leader also reappeared. Looking around at those assembled, she noticed the other rat present. “Sascha, what are you doing here? You’re not coming with us.”

“Oh, I just wanted to see what all the commotion was about,” the rat replied, their tail wiggling happily.

The other one sighed. “Whatever, prepare some poultices and bandages for when we return. Also, where is Teddy?”

“You took his explosives away, so he’s not in the mood to join the raid,” the skunk explained.

“That isn’t up for debate!” The leader screeched. She turned to one of the upper doorways. “Teddy, get down here! We’re leaving!”

There was no response from above.

“Just use your lighter or something to set things on fire if you need to!”

Still no response.

The rat grit her teeth and clenched her fists. “Alright, you can have one stick of dynamite, but that’s it!”

A raccoon head poked out of the doorway. Greyish-brown fur ringed a blank smile and two beady eyes that displayed little brain activity behind them. “I can have a boom stick?”

“Yes, now get your tail over here! I need to go fetch one of those damn things for you,” she said, sulking off to one of the ladders.

Meanwhile the raccoon scrambled down to join the rest of the hybrids. Unlike the menagerie of materials used in the other scavenger’s clothes, the raccoon had a simple pair of overalls, though one of the straps had broken. The outfit and perpetual grin made them look unassuming to Algernon, but he wouldn’t be in a scav gang if he wasn’t dangerous.

“Wow, I didn’t know we got a new rat crewman!” Teddy said.

The calico rat tilted his head. “Not that I can remember, what do you mean -” realization dawned on his face. “Oh, Teddy, our friend here is a bit big to be a rat! He’s a bona fide marsupial!” he said, patting Algernon on the shoulder.

Teddy regarded the possum with their unblinking eyes. “If they’re not a rat, why are they rat shaped?”

Not knowing how to respond, Algernon simply stared with his mouth slightly agape.

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” the leader said, returning from up top.

The raccoon held out their paws expectantly.

“Get the hell outside! I’m not letting you set one off in here again,” she yelled.

The badger reached out to one of the walls and pulled on a handle. A large section of it swung outwards, and as the crew shuffled through it the skunk shoved Algernon along with them.

They stepped through to the outside. Night had fallen over the crumbling city. He craned his neck around and saw that they were exiting a small rig, comparable in size to the precursor vehicles he saw lining the roads. It was parked in the shadow of an oblong structure, its surface reflecting the debris surrounding it and the stars in the heavens.

“Sascha, have Siegbert fire up the engine. We might be returning hot,” the leader called back to the calico rat.

“Of course! Have a good time!” He waved back at them before the badger resealed the side of the rig.

“And you!” she screeched at the possum, “If you dare run off, we’ll put a hole in your body bigger than your body!”

He cowered away from her, stealing a glance at the firearm the badger carried. He rapidly nodded his head.

“Geez, if you want to babysit him you could have just asked me to hold his tail,” the skunk commented.

“I don’t need any snark from you,” the rat said, handing over a red cylinder to the raccoon. “Just do your job. I already need to make sure this one doesn’t blast us all to smithereens.”

The skunk made a rude gesture with her hand, but started walking out across the broken concrete. When the gang started to follow, Algernon shuffled along with them. He looked back. The badger was bringing up the rear, likely as a form of protection, but also as a threat. There was no way out.

Instead, as they walked into the night he surveyed their surroundings. He’d only seen the city from up high on The Providence. From the ground, the buildings were even more towering, and the dark made them into impossible leviathans that haunted the skies. With how much the sight filled him with dread, he kept his gaze fixed near the ground.

The lip of the crater approached suddenly, and Algernon found himself slipping on the edge. A big paw caught the scruff of his uniform before he could fall and lowered him down to solid ground. The badger dropped in afterwards and gave him a light shove to continue walking.

Even though the precursor’s structures didn’t loom over the pit, when he looked around there were other things inside that gave him unease. Their procession passed by ruined walls and openings that might have once been doorways. Pieces of the A&E logo could be seen printed on some of the surfaces; This had once been a building to rival the monoliths around it, but something terrible had happened.

The bones carpeting the ground attested to that. Precursor skeletons usually lay relatively intact along the roadways, but the ones here were scattered. What was more unsettling were the smaller bones and skulls interspersed. Hybrid remains. Algernon didn’t know why they were mixed, but it was clear that this land was cursed. This party of scavengers, the crew on the Providence, none of them belonged here.

While that realization was occupying his mind, the other side of the crater appeared. The Clergy’s rig was parked over their heads. He heard the rumble of the vehicle’s engine as it sat idling, which meant it was preparing to leave soon. However, Algernon didn’t see any lantern lights dotting the vehicle like there normally were; where were the guards?

“Prisoner, where is the opening you told us about?” the leader said quietly.

The possum pointed up to the circular port where the cannon was missing.

The rat glared over at the skunk. “You, secure a line for us.”

With surprising agility and swiftness she jumped out of the pit and stalked up to the Providence, her dark fur making her almost impossible to see now that she wasn’t right next to them. The skunk’s climbing rivaled that of an opossum, scaling the seams in the metal plates with ease. When she got up to the shutter she briefly disappeared inside before a length of rope dropped down. When her head popped back out her devilish grin was visible even at that distance.

“Okay, let’s go,” the rat said, clambering up the debris at the lip of the crater.

The raccoon reached his arms up to the edge and hopped, but barely left the ground. “Peach, some assistance?” he asked.

Grumbling, the badger grabbed the raccoon under his arms and chucked him up over the lip. A dull thump signified his landing.

“Teddy, stop landing on your head,” the rat chided.

The badger turned her attention to Algernon. “N-no, I can do it myself,” he assured, climbing up the chunks of concrete to solid ground.

They advanced across the open ground to the side of the vehicle. One by one they ascended the rope; the leader first, then the raccoon, Algernon next, and the badger last. Her resounding footfalls were not quiet in the least. Once again he wondered why no one had raised the alarm; Surely the scavengers would have been spotted by now.

At the top they all gathered inside the cramped shutter. Worryingly, the skunk brought out her shiv and the badger wielded her gun. Even in her massive arms it looked like she was carrying a cannon around. Clearly they were prepared for trouble.

“You’ll be leading us to the treasure now,” the rat whispered. “Any cries for help and you will be gutted before you can utter a word.”

Algernon could only nod. He sensed that the skunk’s knife was at his back as he passed through the corridor into the interior. It was a tight squeeze for the bulkier hybrids, and seeing the badger forced to walk sideways through the maintenance shafts might have been funny under different circumstances.

He paused at the exit from the shaft in front of the barracks. Small bowls littered the ground throughout the hallway, and dried patches of melon juice created sticky patches underfoot. It seemed that the crew had celebrated so hard that everyone passed out.

Still, there were dozens of Clergy in the barracks right across from him. He could yell out to warn them what was happening. The scavengers would kill him, but it would save his brethren from these evil creatures. All he had to do was say something.

But he found he couldn’t. He remembered the priest saying that their holy duty would diminish their fear, but it was greater now than it had ever been. Numbly, he walked past the barracks, leading his enemies deeper into The Providence.

The main hall was even more of a mess than the hallways. The cans of special rations were still present, and bits of fruit and vegetables carpeted the ground. Algernon looked around again, but no one was on any of the walkways, not even the weasels that usually patrolled at all hours.

“Look how rich these bastards are,” the rat scoffed. Meanwhile, the skunk and raccoon were picking up chunks of watermelon and corn, stuffing them in their mouths.

Algernon didn’t comment as they continued forward. All the way down the main passage to the back entrance no Clergy were present. It wasn’t until they approached the lockout that they encountered other hybrids. A weasel that was slumped against the wall next to the vault, snoring loudly.

The skunk’s smile widened and she readied her knife. Before she moved on the guard, the badger grabbed her shoulder. The skunk snarled, but that didn’t deter the badger from advancing on the unsuspecting weasel. They briefly were awoken by the heavy footsteps approaching, but before they could even react a fist coming down on top of their head sent them into unconsciousness. The possum whimpered as he witnessed the violent act, but the other animals made no reaction.

“Now this looks promising,” the rat said as they got to the locked door.

The raccoon pulled the explosive stick from his overalls.

“No! Absolutely not!” she hissed. “Harper, get this open!”

The skunk slipped more implements from her vest that at first Algernon thought were more shivs, but were slimmer and well-crafted. She brought the tools up to the lock on the door and deftly slid them in. In a matter of seconds she fiddled with the picks and the lock opened with a click .

“Peach was right, the security here is awful,” the skunk said. She opened the door and led the scavengers inside.

Reluctantly Algernon followed them in, rubbing the backs of his hands anxiously. Being just an engineer he had never been inside the lockout, but its contents were what he expected. The space was about the size of the entry hall that connected it and was filled with precursor artifacts. Familiar tools he had worked with were represented, but at a scale that would make Clergy use untenable. Old books similar to the one in the cathedral were stacked up to the ceiling. There was even ammunition that could fit the weapons like the one that the badger carried.

The gang scoured through the collection, but didn’t pick anything out from it. The rat looked around at the collection with a frown, her whiskers twitching.

“All of this is just junk,” she said with disdain. In anger she turned to the possum and pulled him to her face by the front of his uniform. “Think you can fool us, huh? Show me where you keep your goods!”

Despite her shorter stature he couldn’t help but be terrified. “I-I wasn’t lying! These are valuable Clergy artifacts!”

“These scraps are all over the place in old human settlements, they have no value! You better have something of worth here, or your own has run its course!”

“Hey, what’s this?” the raccoon asked.

Everyone turned their eyes to the corner where he was standing. Tucked behind other odds and ends was the master key, wrapped in thick chains. The rat let go of Algernon and scampered over to it.

“This is more like it, look how shiny it is! I bet it’s made of silver!” she said with excitement. “Prisoner, what is this strange metal stick?”

“T-that’s not anything important, just something we use as a spare part. Y-yeah, just a spare axle.” Even without his unconvincing explanation, his twitching ears and tail would have given him away.

The leader turned to the skunk. “Alright, it's valuable. Get this thing unlocked.”

To Algernon’s relief, the key looked heavily secured, and would probably be difficult to steal. The skunk got out her picks again and examined the substantial lock over the artifact. After eyeing it for a few seconds she put the picks away and simply pulled the rod up and out of the chains circling it. She held it out to the leader with a blank expression.

“Excellent,” the rat said, taking the master key. “Everyone grab anything else that looks worth anything and let’s get out of here.”

While the rest of the gang started picking up some of the other metallic items in the lockout, Algernon finally snapped out of staring at the chains in disbelief. “W-wait! Please don’t take that!”

His plea fell on deaf ears as the scavengers filed out of the vault. He followed them into the entrance hall as they began returning the way they had come. “You can’t take the master key! The Clergy n-need it to save the world!”

The leader looked back at him with indifference. “I’m sure your little club won’t mind us borrowing it for a bit. Also, a key?” She ran her paws over its smooth surface. “It doesn’t have any teeth. It’s not a very good key, is it? We are doing you a favor by removing such a faulty tool.”

They were already getting towards the main hall, so Algernon started grabbing towards the artifact. “Please!”

She pulled the key away from his hands and kicked him back. “If you don’t get out of my way, we’ll end you here and now! I know the way back, we don’t need you anymore!”

“Hey, another weird rat!” the raccoon exclaimed.

Everyone turned their heads. An old possum was standing in the center of the hall, staring at them all in horror. She had several chunks of melon piled in her arms which were slowly dripping juices at her feet.

Algernon’s ears drooped as he recognized her. “H-hey there, Mabel! Don’t mind us, I-I’m just guiding these... Uh... These other Clergy members! They were... Lost.” He forced a smile, which looked more like an awkward grimace.

Mabel continued gaping at him for a long moment. Then she suddenly dropped her bounty of fruit and bolted, shrieking.

“Flaming hell, stop them!” the rat commanded.

The skunk pulled a couple of knives out and threw them at Mabel, but in the possum’s scampering she managed to weave out of the way. Cursing, the skunk ran after her with another shiv. The badger pointed her gun at the retreating animal, causing Algernon to gasp.

Although she continued to track Mabel with her weapon, she didn’t fire. Mabel reached the wall and clambered up pipes lining it to the higher levels, where she disappeared from view. The skunk also got to the wall and craned her neck upwards, but after not seeing her quarry she pounded her first against the metal plating.

“You useless dolts, what was that about?!” the leader fumed.

The badger rolled her shoulders. “Couldn’t get a good line of sight.”

The rat opened her mouth to chew her subordinate out, but stopped when a blaring alarm sounded from all of the speakers. Algernon covered his ears to protect them.

“That doesn’t sound good,” the raccoon commented, barely audible over the siren. He still had the same empty smile etched on his muzzle.

“Grab the possum, he’s our insurance,” the rat yelled. She ran towards the broken cannon they had entered from, and Algernon found himself lifted by the back of his uniform as the badger and the other scavs thundered after her.

As they ran, a loud voice rang through the intercom over the alarm. “Attention citizens of The Providence,” Armand announced, “There are intruders on the vehicle! If you are able-bodied, scour the vessel for these heathens and dispose of them immediately!”

In racing towards the barracks, the gang forgot a critical fact; that’s where most of the rig’s crew were gathered. They came to a halt after the pounding of footsteps reverberated from the hallway up ahead.

“We need an alternate route, now!” the rat bellowed, baring her fangs at the dangling possum.

Algernon pointed with a shaking arm. “To the right, there is an emergency hatch in the engine room!”

The badger kicked open the door and they fled inside. Due to the active boiler it was sweltering. Crackling from the blaze burning in the firebox and whistling from the myriad pipes filled the air with noise, competing with the blaring alarm.

After they were all in, the badger dropped Algernon and picked up one of the ash rakes, using it to barricade the door behind them. The raccoon and skunk used another to block off the door to the supply room. At the side of the firebox the hatch was bolted to the ground, which the rat went over to. She grabbed the wheel to open it, but even with all her might it wouldn’t budge.

As the scavengers were busy taking up defensive positions Algernon thought that perhaps he could huddle in the shadows until the Clergy came and took care of the gang. However, the skunk was quick to press a knife to his neck at seeing his idleness.

“If we don’t get out, neither do you,” she warned. Sweat poured from his brow for multiple reasons now.

A bang drew their attention back to the door, which shuddered. It buckled more as the crew on the other side continued to ram it.

“Stay back, we have a hostage!” the leader screamed at the hybrids outside. “Once we’re out safely, he’ll be released!”

The door stopped moving. Then, Armand’s voice came from the other side, “Don’t stop, eliminate them! The scavengers and the heretic, too!”

“Eeep!” Algernon let out at the proclamation. The pounding at the door continued in earnest, while the scav leader continued in vain to open the hatch. “You need to undo the latches on the corners!” he called out to her.

The rat gave him a sidelong glance before moving to the first latch. Even though they were small, it still took all of her strength to pull it free. “You two, get your tails over here and help!”

Algernon felt the blade leave his neck as the skunk went over to the hatch and started undoing one of the other latches. With the threat on his life, he also went over to work on the hatch.

The raccoon and the badger stood at the back near the supply room and watched as the entry door continued to be beaten. Eventually the rake holding it back couldn’t take anymore and the door burst open, revealing several angry hybrids with skewers and blunt weapons.

A deafening crack broke the air as the badger fired her gun. Algernon nearly fainted at the noise, and the Clergy at the door paused as the bullet lodged deep into the floor at their feet.

Another latch clicked open. “Back to it, you pansy!” the scav leader screamed at the possum. He broke from his stupor and grabbed one of the remaining ones, while the rat went over to assist the skunk with the other.

“Don’t give in to fear, they are outnumbered and the creators are on our side!” Armand called out. Some of the weasels stopped hesitating and started advancing towards the intruders. They quickly skidded to a stop again when a lit stick of dynamite landed near them.

The last two latches snapped open. The leader surveyed the evolving situation, noticing the raccoon bouncing in excitement, the fleeing Clergy, and the lit fuse. “Aw hellfire.”

As the spark of the fuse reached the stick, it suddenly sputtered out. Everyone paused. The raccoon looked distraught, before wailing in anguish at the injustice.

Seeing that the explosive was a dud, the Clergy once again ran at the scavengers. They didn’t realize they were making a grave error. The badger once again aimed her weapon, and with uncanny precision fired at the dormant stick of dynamite.

The detonation erased the guards and threw Algernon forward. Sprawled out on his stomach, he felt like someone had punched all the air from his lungs, leaving him gasping. He looked around in a frenzy. Steam was spewing out of broken pipes with a sharp hiss from where they had burst from the explosion. Clergy were scrabbling away on the other side of the steam to get away from the searing heat, which was cutting them off from the invaders.

The rat and the skunk were trying to turn the wheel on the hatch, which was still refusing to budge. Algernon got to his feet and went to assist, and with their combined effort it finally started turning.

From across the barrier of steam Armand called out, “The next time I lay eyes on you, heretic, I’ll wring your neck!”

The possum’s ears turned down. At this point it seemed he was resigned to his fate as a scourged creature.

It didn’t take much longer for the wheel to reach its limit, and the hatch was unlocked. The three hopped off it and attempted to lift the hatch up, but to no avail. The raccoon and the badger joined them, and finally with their combined effort the door lifted open. Clergy rushed to release the rest of the steam from the engine and reach the scavengers, but it was too late; the thieves dropped through the opening and escaped from The Providence into the night.

Teddy, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

The scavenger gang high-tailed it back to their vehicle, navigating the crater and the city streets with far more abandon than their approach. Putting as much distance between themselves and The Providence as quickly as possible was the goal. So by the time they reached the strange, reflective monument their rig was parked under, they were all starting to tire out even despite the adrenaline. The engine of the vehicle was fired up, causing it to rattle loudly and spew steam against the mirrored surface above it. The badger opened the door on the side of the rig and the scavs hopped up into safety.

The leader leaned against the wall, catching her breath. “What a damned mess. Can’t believe we made it out.” Her ears perked up when she made that realization. “We made it out. We robbed the armored barge!” A quiet, nervous laughter emerged from her maw which shifted into a happy cackle.

Their return drew the attention of those who had stayed behind. The pale rat and the calico rat emerged from a hole in the wall, the latter scampering to the raccoon and slathering a minty-colored paste they brought on to his singed fur. The former went up to the leader. “I see you’ve come back with plunder,” she commented.

“Indeed! My plan was a resounding success!” She handed the master key to her subordinate. ”Take this to my quarters and start running the steamer towards Seb’s at full speed.”

Adjusting her spectacles, the pale rat looked over the strange cylindrical item.

The calico rat next went to the possum, applying the same paste to his scrapes. “I see you decided to keep this one,” he said.

Turning in surprise, the leader realized that Algernon was still with them, shaking like a leaf. She narrowed her eyes. “What the hell are you still doing here? Go on back to your little cult or something. Get,” she said, shooing him away with her hands.

Breaking from the other rat’s ministrations, Algernon grabbed the nearest bench with his hands and feet, wrapping his tail around its leg. “P-please! I can’t go back to the Clergy, they’ll - they’ll just banish me for betraying them!” he wailed as sobs wracked his body. “Don’t make me leave!”

Her whiskers twitched. “That’s not my problem.” She grabbed onto his uniform and attempted to pull him off, but he had a death grip on the furnishing. “Peach, help me throw this one out!”

Before the badger could move, he continued pleading. “I-I won’t survive in the wilderness, I don’t know what I’m doing! Let me be your servant; I-It’s what I deserve, I just don’t want to d-die!”

The rat closed her eyes and rubbed a paw across her face. “What a damned wet rag,” she muttered. “How could you even be useful to my crew? Your guidance in our operation was subpar at best, and your interference nearly cost us the mission.”

“On The Providence I was an engineer, I c-could help you maintain your vessel!”

“We already have someone running the engine, so that wouldn’t -” The pale rat approached the leader, who narrowed her eyes. “Senta, I thought I told you to -”

The white rat cupped her paw and whispered into the leader’s ear. She listened, scowling at what she was hearing. The other rat eventually broke away, and the leader gave a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose it would not be a terrible idea to have someone else as backup,” she conceded. “However! If you’re found meddling with anything you’re not supposed to, you’ll end up as our next meal!”

Algernon flinched away, but vigorously nodded his head in understanding.

“Alright, now that’s sorted, I need time away from you buffoons. Don’t bother me.” With that, she climbed the ladder to the upper floor and disappeared. The white rat spared a glance at the possum still clinging to the bench, shaking her head as she walked over to another fissure in the wall and squeezed through.

“Well, I am sure you are all famished, let me get some rations for you all!” the calico rat exclaimed, reaching up to a loose rope that dangled from the ceiling and ascending it to the stores secured above.

The raccoon poked at the possum. “I don’t think that’s how you’re meant to sit,” he said.

With the imminent danger gone, Algernon unclenched his fingers and toes from the seat and returned upright. He was immediately grabbed from behind, an arm wrapping around his shoulders.

“Looks like we get to spend more quality time together,” the skunk snarked. “Exciting!”

He was already reconsidering his decision to serve the scavs. The floor jolted under them as the rig started moving, and somehow the rattling throughout the hull became even louder. Now that they were on their way, there was no taking things back.

The two hybrids maneuvered the possum into the corner seat, the badger watching the proceedings with her typical crossed arms and uninterested stare. The rat returned from above, an armful of strange-looking strips in his arm. He offered one to the badger, who took one and tore a chunk off with her teeth.

“Here we are!” He laid the rest of the food out on the table, some type of jerky. “Consider this a welcoming gift to the crew, uh -” his face drew blank.

“It’s - It’s Algernon,” the possum said.

They paused, looking at him with perplexion. “Damn, that’s a mouthful,” said the skunk. “Can’t you pick something simpler?”

“Alge... Alger... Al. I think Al works,” the raccoon said.

Algernon wasn’t sure whether he liked that nickname or not. “Well, I -”

“Welcome to the crew, Al!” the rat said. “I’m Sascha, the resident cook. Also nurse. And tailor,” he counted off on his fingers.

“Hi, I’m Teddy! I blow things up!” the raccoon shouted.

“Peach,” the badger spoke.

“Go on! Eat up!” Sascha encouraged.

He took a piece of the jerky and bit into it. Roach was the predominant flavor. It seemed some things didn’t change between crews.

Algernon didn’t realize he’d dozed off until the badger’s fist slammed onto the table and startled him awake. As he lifted his head, a stack of jerky tumbled off.

“Dammit Senta! I had a tower of five going!” the skunk said, annoyed.

The pale rat, Senta, was now standing at the table. “I’ve been tasked with getting you acclimated to the vessel,” she stated.

The skunk gave her a sour frown. “Hey, she has a name you know!”

Senta looked at her. “I refuse to use the one you and Theodore came up with. It turns our profession into a joke,” she said disapprovingly.

“You’re meant to name a rig after something you love,” the skunk explained, hands splayed on the table. “So naming it The Belching Dragon makes tons of sense.”

The rat’s whole snout scrunched up. “Anyways... We would rather you not make the commons here your quarters, which means you will need to room with some of us. That said -”

“Al is welcome to stay with us!” Sascha interrupted. “It might be a tight fit into the crawlspace, but we’ve made it work with Siegbert.”

Senta crossed her arms. “The possum will not be bedding with us,” she said coolly. “I don’t want to take care of him any more than I need to.”

Algernon was well aware that to the scavs he was currently just a nuisance, but hearing it so bluntly made his ears droop.

“With Lewis gone, Al can room with us,” Teddy suggested.

“Oh, t-that’s kind of you,” Algernon said. It took him a moment to process the raccoon’s whole sentence. “There’s already someone else?”

“Yeah, I share the room with Harper!”

“Who’s Harper?” he asked tentatively.

The skunk beside him gave a wide smile. That option suddenly became a lot less appealing. Off to the side, the badger pulled at her face with her paws, eliciting a deep sigh.

“I would rather that he stay in one piece long enough to be useful, so that is also not ideal,” Senta said.

Harper snarled at the rat. “I’m not some feral, you stuck-up whelp!”

“I’ll believe it when you stop acting like one,” she countered. “Besides, this isn’t up for debate, Frieda and I have already decided that -”

“He can stay with me,” Peach groaned, sounding none too pleased.

The others stopped arguing. Algernon peeked up at the towering hybrid. Given her imposing presence, he wasn’t sure if his chances of survival were any higher with her or with the skunk. Noticing him staring, the badger turned her glowering eyes towards his. He quickly looked away and used all of his willpower not to let out a squeak.

Harper looked put out, but remained quiet. “Excellent, I don’t even need to ask. With that out of the way, come follow me,” Senta gestured to Algernon.

He got up from the seat and dutifully went after the rat. She first led him to the back of the vehicle, where a steep set of stairs led down to a lower level. “If you touch or break anything you aren’t supposed to, you’ll promptly be ejected from the vehicle,” Senta said over her shoulder as they descended.

Algernon nodded. There didn’t seem to be much he could do against their threats except comply.

At the bottom was a single space which served as the rig’s bathhouse. He was surprised the scavs even had one, but he supposed even brigands needed to clean up. A tarp screened off a single spigot which jutted out from where the rat told him the tender was. Even though the size of this vehicle paled in comparison to The Providence, steamers were thirsty beasts and the tender took up the remainder of the bottom floor.

Back in the common room, Senta pointed out the other doors leading to the back of The Dragon, which were the crew quarters. The one on the main floor was Peach’s, while the one on the top floor belonged to Harper and Teddy. Begrudgingly the rat let him inspect the walls around the hall. It looked like several different types of metal plates had hastily been bolted together to form the interior, and said bolts were only loosely secured. He noted several places where the bolts were missing entirely, leaving eye-sized holes into the crawlspace between it and the hull.

Senta led Algernon to a door at the front of the vehicle. “The engine room is Siegbert’s domain. He doesn’t like it when you touch things in there,” she mentioned.

Before he could respond, the rat knocked on the door. “Siegbert, open up! We’re going to take a look around!” she called out.

After a short time, the door swung inwards and Siegbert stared out at them. Algernon was already wary from Senta’s warning, but even more so upon seeing him. Siegbert was the biggest rat that he’d ever seen, as big if not bigger than he was. Their black pelt was covered in ash and sweat, the hot air from the boiler wafting out past him. He gripped a socket wrench in his paws, and gazed past the two of them with empty eyes.

If the rat was surprised to see a new face he didn’t show it. Siegbert simply grunted and walked back into the dimly-lit interior. “And above all else, do not try and take the tool away from him,” Senta whispered.

As soon as they stepped inside Algernon immediately started coughing. By the light of the firebox he could see that the walls and floors inside were caked with ash, and flakes of it fluttered lazily in the air. He tried clamping his mouth shut to not inhale any more, but it only made breathing slightly more bearable.

Through the floating detritus he could still make out the shape of the furnace, which surprisingly was more suited to a hybrid’s size than the one he was used to. The door was small enough to be managed by a single member rather than the group it usually required. It was open while Siegbert picked up and threw pieces of garbage into the inferno. Under any other circumstances Algernon would have spoken up about the inefficiency of such fuel, but as it was he was using all of his willpower not to hack up a lung.

When Siegbert was satisfied, he used the wrench to slam the door shut. The force of it caused ash and other dust to sprinkle down from the ceiling. The giant rat looked over at them as if for approval. Algernon just gave him a thumbs up before swiftly moving out of the space.

Outside, the cooler air made all of the ash he tracked out stick to his slick fur. Senta quickly followed after him, not looking much better. “The engine room is in slight disarray, but it is in manageable shape for the time being.”

“I... suppose so...” He wasn’t sure he was able to voice how much of a hazard it was without getting smacked upside the head.

They climbed the ladder up to the walkways above. High up on the walls were small portholes that let sunlight trickle in. It appeared that after all the events of the previous evening and his own nap that a new day had crept up on him.

Senta led Algernon by another door facing the front of the vehicle. “This is the wheelhouse. Frieda does not allow anyone access due to the sensitive nature of the items inside.”

“S-sensitive nature? In what way?”

She hesitated. “All of Theodore’s black-powder munitions are locked away there, so he doesn’t blow up the vehicle. Just so you know what we’re dealing with.”

“I see...” If the dynamite from last night was anything to go by, Algernon felt that the thrill of fear that passed through him was justified. He figured if the cabin was locked, Harper could potentially unlock it, but even she probably had enough self-preservation to leave it alone.

Along the gantry were the different stations Algernon had spotted before. The galley didn’t interest him, but the workstation did. Several tools like wrenches and screwdrivers hung behind it, still in sizes fit for the precursors. What surprised him the most was a mobile welder which took up considerable space at the end of the walkway. The Providence had one, but only the overseers were allowed to use it due to its rarity. He had no clue how the scavs had managed to procure one.

Their last stop on the tour was even higher up. Another ladder led from the walkway up past the supplies strapped to the ceiling to a hatch. Senta pushed it open, letting more sunlight into the decrepit vehicle. She shimmied to the side to allow Algernon room to poke his head out alongside her’s.

They were no longer in the crumbling city that the ruins of the A&E facility lay in. The rig trundled past buildings that once made up precursor suburbs. From the front of the vehicle steam emerged from vents on the sides, giving the impression that it was smoke leaking from the maw of a great beast.

Other steamers passed by on the opposite side of the road. It was strange seeing them at this level; he was used to watching them from up high in his alcove. Although most were around the same size as The Belching Dragon, down here the other machines posed a threat to them.

That was likely the reason for the armament bolted to the roof. It looked like a nail gun he had once seen the overseers use — they had discarded it after too many self-inflicted injuries — but this one was larger and on a swivel to cover every direction. Given its size, it seemed capable of firing off bigger projectiles than nails.

“Our cannon, in case of emergencies,” Senta said. “Although typically we can scare off others easily enough.”

She pointed upwards, where an orange pennant flapped above their heads. “A semaphore, for other passing crews. Orange means ‘leave us alone,’” she explained.

He glanced at the other lane. Across from them, a pair of grey foxes were lounging on top of their steamer. They eyed The Dragon with hunger, sizing her up. “C-can’t others just attack anyways?”

“It’s the principle that matters,” she stated. The foxes passed by without incident.

Algernon looked around at the scenery some more. On the side of the road he spotted a sign that, while eroded and dented, still distinctly displayed the number “66” on it. While not knowing precisely where they were, on the long journey aboard The Providence the Clergy had followed the road labeled with the same number all the way to get to the city, which meant the gang was currently traveling it as well. At the opposite end of the highway was the headquarters of the Clergy, seasons of travel away from them.

“The Devil’s Road,” Senta commented.

The possum turned to her in confusion.

“That sign,” she pointed to the road marker, “The symbol on it is the mark of the beast, which labels the Devil’s Road all along its length. It can be unforgiving, but this stretch is relatively safe.”

“But... The mark of the beast has three sixes. There’s one missing.”

She frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. All scavengers know what that symbol means.”

He didn’t think it was worth arguing with her on that. With her point settled, Senta closed the hatch and they descended back down to the ground floor. “That’s everything. Now go and make yourself useful, lest you make us regret showing you mercy,” she commanded, before wandering off and slipping into a gap leading to the crawlspace.

It didn’t take any convincing to get Algernon to begin working. From what he’d seen the rig was in desperate need of attention.

He took a wrench from the workbench and set about tightening any and all bolts that he could find. There were a few loose bolts lying around with the supplies which he used to fill some of the holes where they were missing, but there were still several empty boltholes afterwards. A roll of duct tape was also among the tools available, so a healthy dosage of that was used to patch up what couldn’t be filled.

The Dragon made its first pit stop just before mid-morning. It rumbled to a halt and the other crew members were quick to open the main door and set foot outside. Algernon peeked out and saw that they were parked next to a pond. Teddy had grabbed a vacuum hose hooked up to the tender and plodded over to the body of water to refill the thirsty machine.

While the other scavs loitered, Algernon took the opportunity to inspect the exterior of the vehicle. The Providence had a dozen tires, but this rig only had four wheels. The hubs were not in terrible shape, but they weren’t in good condition either. The tires themselves didn’t have any treads left, which didn’t bode well for if they hit any bad weather. He quickly ducked under the carriage to check the bottom, which was a canvas of rust. It had eaten through the undercarriage, exposing the axles, which themselves looked like they were on their last legs.

The leader had deigned to leave the cabin and stretch her legs outside, so Algernon went over to her. “M-miss, there are -”

“You’ll refer to me as Captain, or Captain Frieda,” she demanded, glaring at him.

“Captain, the wheels and axles n-need to be replaced as soon as they can.”

Frieda scowled. “We do not have the luxury of time or resources to do so. Once we have reached Seb’s we can reassess. Now get back and do what you can.”

He ambled off, squeezing his tail with worry. They would just have to hope the questionable parts they had lasted until they got to wherever this Seb’s was.

There were other fixtures on the outside that could be addressed, though. Just like on the inside, a myriad of bolts kept the outside shell of the vehicle intact. Hefting the wrench and tape up through the hatch on the roof, Algernon harnessed himself with a length of rope and lowered himself down. Carrying the wrench in his paws and the tape with his tail, he set about tightening the bolts along the exterior and taping over the areas that were missing.

As he was working he was able to examine more of the engine. The piston and crank suffered from the same lack of care as the rest of the vehicle, but appeared like they could hold out longer than the wheels they were driving. The water injector leaked a continuous drip even with the boiler in use.

While he continued operating on The Dragon, it suddenly started to pull away from the pond. It quickly got up to speed, leaving Algernon to swing violently like an ornament from the side of the rig. After screaming and bouncing around for far too long, eventually he was rescued by the badger who dragged him up by the rope and pulled him back through the hatch.

Harper was laughing hysterically when they made it to the main hall. Apparently it didn’t take Siegbert much convincing to get the vehicle in motion, even if everyone wasn’t safely secured. Frieda was less enthused, since he’d dropped the wrench and tape in his thrashing. At the very least, the sound of rattling had greatly diminished due to his efforts.

Sascha distributed more roach jerky for the crew, as well as thimbles of water. From the chalky taste of it, Algernon reasoned it must be from the excess moisture that had already passed through the engine. He also reasoned that the scavs could very well have served straight up pond water from what they sucked up earlier, so he was thankful that at least some of the impurities had been burned away.

Throughout the afternoon he worked on trying to bring the engine room into order. When he knocked Siegbert didn’t seem phased by him, so he went in and stayed out of the rat’s way while he worked. Algernon found a cap to some sort of precursor receptacle amongst the hanging supplies, which he used to ferry piles of ash up to the ceiling hatch and dump it outside. It was arduous work that left the possum in a fugue.

When the vehicle next stopped to siphon up more water, he was able to empty the ashes out the main door instead. While he was dumping one of the loads out, he saw another vehicle approaching them, veering off the main road towards the creek The Dragon was parked next to. It was sleeker than their vehicle and a black flag flapped from its roof.

The scavs quickly took notice. Algernon heard the roof hatch groan on its hinges, and when he looked up Peach was standing on the edge of the rig, glaring down the other vehicle. It slowed its approach, before steering back towards the highway and speeding away from them. He wasn’t sure what that was all about, but he had the feeling that they avoided a rather unpleasant situation.

After they got moving again he had to go back to dumping the ashes out the roof hatch, and by the time the light was dwindling from the day he was exhausted and covered head to tail in grime. The engine room looked like it had barely been touched. It would take several more days to clear out the rest of the ash.

He wandered down to the shower room and languidly discarded his clothes. Turning the faucet, water began to pour down from the spigot above. It was almost scalding, but Algernon was too tired to care. There were already pieces of lye scattered on the floor so he used one to scrub down. It wasn’t until he was washing that the isolation of his situation hit him. Being used to the communal baths with his fellow workers, the loneliness of the shower was sobering.

The tarp was suddenly pulled away. “Boo!”

Algernon screeched and jumped back in fright. When he realized it was just the psychotic skunk leering ghoulishly at him he calmed down, but only slightly. “Is th-there something you need?” he asked.

At first Harper looked delighted at his fear, but her expression shifted to one of discomfort as the possum went back to scrubbing himself down. “Uh, I was told to bring you some of Teddy’s spare clothes so you don’t stink up the place with your old outfit. It’s on the steps.” She made a quick exit, Algernon hearing her mutter “Freaking weirdo” under her breath as she departed.

That was a reminder that there weren’t crewmembers to take care of their soiled clothes like there were on The Providence. He grabbed his dirty outfit and also scrubbed that under the faucet. Once satisfied, he hung them up at the far end of the room where other garments were strung up to dry. The clean outfit that had been provided to him was just a single pair of overalls. Apparently Teddy had a very minimal wardrobe.

Ascending the stairs, he felt The Dragon come to a rest again. With dread, he realized that it was time to go to sleep. Timidly he approached the badger’s cabin. The door was slightly ajar, so he was able to peek in.

Peach was already inside. She had her back to him, but in the candlelight she appeared to be laying something on the ground next to a ramshackle bed. Besides that the only other items in the room were the gun and a collection of other implements, from wrenches to blades to axe heads. As if sensing his presence, her head swiveled to him. The badger’s gaze wasn’t menacing, but it held an unhidden annoyance that made him want to be anywhere else.

“I’m preparing another bunk,” she said flatly, continuing with her work. Inching through the door frame, Algernon saw she was spreading a blanket on the ground. It didn’t look thick enough to soften the metal plating underneath by much.

He swallowed. “Thanks f-for making that for me.”

She turned back to him. “You will be sleeping in the bed, I will be sleeping here. You’re soft from your previous station, you would not do well on the floor. I’d rather not hear your complaining all night.”

“Oh...” He didn’t know how to respond to that.

After settling the fabric, Peach went over to the lantern and blew out the light, plunging the room into darkness. With eyes designed for seeing in the night, Algernon saw the badger curl up on the blanket, shifting around until she found a comfortable position. He was paralyzed by the situation until Peach opened her eyes and looked at him pointedly, at which he cautiously approached the bed and got on.

Even though the frame barely looked stable, the mat on it was comfier than what he was used to on The Providence. He couldn’t help but stare over at Peach as he settled, afraid that this was some sort of trap. However, her form remained unmoving except for the rise and fall of her breathing.

Reluctantly, he also curled up. Despite his tiredness, anxiety kept him awake. Being the first respite he'd had since everything had gone wrong, he considered his predicament. He was permanently separated from the Clergy, miles and miles away from everything he knew. Now his only company were scoundrels and thieves. What was left for him to do? It seemed that his only option was to continue to partake of the evils the gang committed.

Out of a desperate need for hope Algernon almost began praying, but hesitated. Was that even still available to him? It seemed likely that the creators either wouldn’t hear his prayers or ignore them in his current standing. Despite this, he reached out to them anyways, asking for this situation to make sense, and for something, anything, to hold on to.

It was still night, but some time had passed. From where he lay Algernon surveyed the room, but a smothering darkness filled it. Even his nightvision couldn’t penetrate the gloom. He heard something move next to him. He focused on where the noise came from, but still couldn’t see past the side of the bed.

“H-hello?” he called out meekly.

In response, a growl emerged from the dark. Fear consumed his mind, reverting it to its primal state. He was no longer a hybrid, but prey.

Immense, slavering jaws parted the blackness in front of him, but his body was not responding to the present danger. He could only watch as the monster behind the countenance considered the animal before it and then lunged.

Algernon shot up with a gasp, his heart pounding. He was still in the scav vehicle, but the night yielded the whole space to him. It seemed that it had just been a -

A loud noise sounded next to him, causing him to whip around in terror. Peach was where she had settled on her blanket, slumbering fitfully. Her snoring sounded like a faulty motor.

He laid back down. Even though he yearned for it, rest was elusive as the evening dragged on. Fear was making him hyper vigilant and alert. To pass the time he stared at the ceiling and counted bolt heads.

For a while it seemed like the rumbling emerging from the badger would be his only company through the night. It was sometime in the graveyard hours of the morning when his ears picked up a foreign sound.

Immediately Peach’s snoring stopped and her eyes snapped open. As the noise became louder, it became clear what it was: the engine of an approaching vehicle. She rose and slowly went over to her collection of tools, selecting a wrench. The sound of wheels against dirt came to a halt right next to where The Dragon was parked. Peach waited at the door to her quarters, listening intently. For several minutes, all that could be heard was the idling of the two vehicles’ engines. Then, the soft thump of feet against the roof of The Dragon prompted Peach to slip through the door.

From where he was laying, Algernon only heard what was happening around him. Peach's footfalls retreated deeper into the vehicle as the pattering on the roof continued. Creaks in the metal plates signified movement in the quarters below him. He heard faint murmurs from the ground outside the vehicle.

Scraping along the ceiling hatch in the main hall caused the scrambling inside the vehicle to hasten. Someone on the outside started tugging at the main door to The Dragon, but it was shut tight. Soon the squeal of metal sounded as both entrances were trying to be pried open. Algernon curled his tail around himself, clinging to it like it could protect him.

With grunts of surprise the hatch was suddenly swung open with a clang . The wet sound of metal cutting through flesh and gurgling death rattles shortly followed. By then any semblance of stealth was discarded; shouts and caterwauling came from all around the vehicle. The scraping at the front door became more urgent, until a great force burst through it from the inside. Gasps matched the clamor of the door ramming into several bodies.

After, all that could be heard from above and below were animalistic roars, war cries of their feral nature. It was a chorus whose voices diminished as the seconds passed. Soon just a few distinct howls remained, and then all at once they died out.

For a minute there was only the rumble of the steamers’ engines. Then the vehicle shifted as hybrids entered into it and each entrance was sealed back shut. A string of curses came from the main room, which could have only been Harper. A set of feet approached down the catwalk.

The door slammed against the wall, making Algernon jump. Peach stood like a specter in the frame. She exhaled in huffs, a guttural growl hidden beneath each breath. It didn’t seem like she was focused on any one thing, simply filling the space with her haunting presence.

Algernon shimmied back in the bed as far as he could. The bedframe creaked in protest, and the badger’s head immediately snapped to him. His heart launched into his throat, but she seemed to have broken from her reverie. Still breathing heavily, she shuffled into the quarters and threw the wrench to the floor near the other weapons. The scent of iron followed her as she went back to the mat and curled up. While Algernon remained wide awake until morning, Peach began snoring again like nothing had happened.

The rats (Senta, Frieda, Siegbert and Sascha), by Foxena.

Chapter Text

The following morning, the sun shone over the massacre that transpired during the night. Algernon had to quickly turn away from the scene that awaited outside when the door was opened. He didn’t trust himself to keep the rising bile down if he turned back.

Frieda took little time in directing the other scavs. “Grab anything from the steamer that isn’t nailed down! Especially anything shiny!”

All of the other crew members went about the vehicle the other gang had arrived on while Algernon secluded himself to The Dragon. He heard one of the corpses being dragged away.

“Peach, what the devil are you doing?” Frieda yelled.

“Burying the bodies,” she replied. “They don’t deserve to be left out for ferals.”

A long-suffering sigh came from the rat. “Make it quick. We’ll be leaving as soon as the looting is done.”

The sound of the dead being carried away continued, followed by dirt being displaced. With her shovel-like paws, it wouldn’t take long to dig the graves.

While everyone else was working, Algernon figured he ought to be busy as well. Since the front door wasn’t an option, he went up top to see if he could dump ashes on the opposite side of the vehicle. He popped the hatch and was immediately greeted with additional gore. Closing it, he instead decided to wait until the mess was cleaned up before continuing his duties.

After an hour Peach returned to the vehicle. She was matted in blood, and headed straight for the bathhouse. He looked back outside and the camp was now cleaned enough for him to come out without risk of nausea, although the dirt was still saturated with crimson. A pile of supplies lay where the bodies used to.

Algernon perused the haul and was happy to see that there was tape and a wrench to replace the ones he had dropped. He was hopeful that would placate Frieda for his past blunder, since she looked to be in a particularly foul mood as she surveyed the spoils.

“This garbage was all they had? No treasure at all?!”

“They had these!” Teddy held a stick of dynamite in each hand. The coating on them was compromised, and black powder was leaking out of both.

“Give me those!” She snatched the explosives from the raccoon. “It was foolish to let you loot with everyone else.”

Teddy’s face was filled with sadness as Frieda carried the dynamite inside. Everyone else helped carry the other items into The Dragon. Sascha and Senta worked to secure the odds and ends to the ceiling or any other space that could be found for the supplies.

Their captain looked out one last time to see if anything had been neglected. The attacker’s vehicle was all that remained. “If only Seb accepted steamers as payment. Damn everything.” She pulled the door shut, and the vehicle began to pull back on to the highway.

Much like on The Providence, things naturally began to follow a pattern on The Belching Dragon. There was really only one task that took up his time: the continual cleaning of the engine room. The amount of ash filling it seemed unending. Each day’s worth of effort left him filthy and exhausted.

The frequent stops the vehicle needed to make helped break up the ordeal. Slaking the thirst of the machine was also an unending task, so the rats made sure to veer off the main highway whenever a symbol of a water drop was marked along the route. Either a natural source was always near them, or a pump had been erected out of scrap metal to utilize aquifers beneath the soil. He still couldn’t guess who engineered them.

While the scavs siphoned water to the tender, Algernon used the opportunity to break from his toil. Whenever Frieda came out to stretch her legs she would give him the stink eye, but he took her lack of vocal dissent as a license to rest.

On one stop, Peach and Harper went off into the surrounding precursor suburbs. When they returned they carried several roach carcasses with them. Sascha took them and squeezed the meat out of the shells and rolled it into sticks. After grabbing preservatives from their stores and rubbing it on them, the rat hung them up over the prepping station. Seeing how their food was made didn’t help with his appetite.

Once they got moving again, Algernon returned to his task. It took a few days for features of the engine to appear from beneath the ash. Thin vents in the ceiling emerged, which he found out Frieda used to shout orders down to the room with. He got an earful from her when he accidentally pushed some of the gunk up into the wheelhouse. Next, a small reflection appeared to the side of the firebox which denoted the sight glass. The pressure gauge was uncovered shortly afterwards. With it not being visible, it was a miracle that the boiler hadn’t burst. Either Siegbert was a savant or a mad man.

Eventually enough was cleared away for Algernon to notice a notch in the floor. Upon closer inspection it seemed to be a slot where a lever was meant to be. After the Dragon reached another spot he was able to inspect the undercarriage again, and deduced that it controlled the grate of the firebed. It certainly explained why the engine room had become the vehicle’s ashpan. Once the vehicle came to a cold stop he’d need to rectify that.

During his trips between the engine room and the roof Algernon glimpsed how some of the others spent their time. Teddy sat up top chucking rocks at the road signs they passed. For some insane reason Harper found hanging from the side of the vehicle exhilarating. He didn’t notice the rope lashed to one of the moorings until a slew of curses flew at him when he dumped one of his loads. Afterwards he dumped on the other side and watched his back for any reprisals from her.

Peach, meanwhile, spent most of the day in her quarters, only emerging when she was needed. The scraping sound of metal against stone sounded from the room throughout the afternoon. When turning in for the evening Algernon occasionally saw the tail-end of her weapon maintenance. It looked like she was in some sort of trance, the needless upkeep transporting her to some other place; From her blank eyes he couldn’t tell if it was somewhere pleasant or not. As she heard him enter she would quickly stop and put her whetstone away.

The weapons’ presence only fueled his anxiety when trying to sleep in Peach’s quarters. Although no more raids came, nightmares continued to invade his dreams, making rest elusive. As each day passed the fog in his mind only grew thicker.

So when the beams of light appeared on the horizon, he at first thought his eyes were deceiving him. Above the roofs and trees, they danced in the dusk-colored sky. Algernon rubbed his eyes with his paws, but the lights were still there.

“We’re almost at Seb’s!” Teddy exclaimed, peering up at them as well. “You’ll need to see it to believe it!” Already worn out from a day of ash removal, he took a seat beside the raccoon. The scav bounced excitedly as he continued to hurl stones at the passing signs.

It didn’t take long for the source of the phenomenon to make itself known. Within the hour, surrounding trees and buildings parted to reveal a fortress lit up like a star in the twilight. Strings of lights hung from a walled entrance pieced together from metal plates and stacked vehicles. Their glow was the white of electric lights, a luxury even the Clergy rarely employed. Yet here in the center of scav territory there were spotlights advertising to all the existence of this improbable castle. A sign towered over it all, spelling out “Seb’s” in electric bulbs and pointing with illuminated arrows down to the front gate.

Rigs of all shapes and sizes passed between the twin turrets watching over the traffic. As vehicles passed around them he was surprised to see that they weren’t the smallest one. Buggies that acted as little more than personal movers zipped between the behemoths. Others were almost as large as The Providence, able to swallow their own vessel whole.

Algernon could only stare in awe as the crew worked around him. Senta took down the orange pennant they were flying and replaced it with a green one. As their vehicle approached the entrance it got in line behind the other incoming steamers. Up ahead he heard an amplified voice speak to the ones at the front.

The line of rigs inched forward until The Dragon was halted at the entrance. From the gate towers more spotlights blasted them with light. While they were blinded, a voice boomed out from a speaker. “State your business!”

Frieda climbed up onto the roof. She stepped to the front of the vehicle and stood proudly before the spotlights. “This is Captain Frieda of The Belching Dragon! We have payment for Seb!”

A sigh carried through the speaker. “Very well, move along.”

The Dragon pulled forward into the settlement. Inside, more wondrous sights awaited Algernon. Parking lots were normally filled with decrepit precursor automobiles, but the one laid out before them was filled with fully functional steamers. Various chassis lined the inner walls in different states of assembly. When he saw hybrids working in and around them, he realized that the steamers were actively being built by this conclave of scavs.

“You know how to construct rigs?!” he yelled in shock, pointing at the laborers.

The rat’s snout twitched. “Seb’s lackeys do.”

Algernon stared as a steam boiler was lowered into one of the frames by a complex system of pulleys. He was certain that the knowledge of how to do so was beyond the savage minds of the scavs. Was that something else they had stolen from the Clergy? Regardless, with how many rigs were present in this fortress it only made sense that they were scav handiwork. It certainly explained the haphazard state of The Dragon.

They continued pulling toward the front. Past the open-air garage, great cages were erected containing scores of roaches. Compared to the pens on The Providence, these were entire ranches of the critters. Algernon didn’t envy the ones who needed to take care of an army of them.

When they arrived in front of the main building, he understood why so many roaches were needed. It was a precursor building that was in surprisingly good condition, made even more impressive by the electric lights that set the exterior ablaze. Mostly intact windows covered the entire front of it. Inside he glimpsed more hybrids than he had ever seen in one place, eating and being merry.

“Alright, this is your stop. Teddy, take our recruit inside with you,” Frieda said.

Algernon’s ears folded back. Inside? With all of those hybrids? “I-I think I’d rather stay aboard.”

“That is an order! ” she snarled. “I have important business to attend to with The Dragon.”

Teddy was still bouncing with excitement as he grabbed Algernon by the arm. “Come on Al, Seb’s is amazing!”

He was dragged down the hatch and to the exit. Harper was already leaning against the door, waiting for them. The wicked gleam in her eyes as she smiled at him did not make him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

“This is going to be so much fun!” she said gleefully. Harper swung the door open and led them out to the curb. Algernon expected more members of the crew to emerge, but the skunk quickly slammed the door shut.

“What about the others?” he asked.

She hooked an arm around his shoulder. “And let them be a buzzkill? No, the three of us will get along just fine!”

A whine lodged in his throat as Algernon was pulled along to the entrance of the parlor. Being alone with the two most unhinged members of the gang could only end poorly.

At the pair of gargantuan doors a porcupine stood sentinel, dutifully pushing one open to let the trio inside. Immediately a wave of noise washed over them. Algernon clamped his paws over his ears. “I-I don’t know about this...”

Harper pointedly ignored him as she continued guiding him inside. If the cacophony wasn’t enough to overwhelm him, the amount of chaos happening in the outpost was. The sea of animals had a similar energy to the Clergy’s celebration upon recovering the master key, but without any of the restraint.

Chief among the festivities was food and drink. Tables of every size spread across the worn checkerboard tiles. On the smaller end were groups of rats and stoats tearing into piles of bugs by candlelight. Up from there were other mustelids around Algernon’s size that slew libations at each other across the aisles. There were even larger fauna there, including a coyote who leaned against a particularly tall table and surveyed the crowd. When their eyes settled on Algernon, the canine smirked at him and licked their lips, much to the possum’s dismay.

There were even stranger seating arrangements scattered about. In one section a mesh grate was suspended beneath a precursor-sized table, where bat hybrids hung upside-down. Even while inverted they were able to slurp up fruits and juices without issue. The other mammals made a deliberate effort to avoid going underneath those areas.

Wildest of all, and what generated the most commotion, was a raised platform on which a duo of hares were duking it out. They were swatting at each other with strikes almost too fast to see. All the while dozens of hybrids surrounded the ring and cheered the fighters on. Some in the crowd were doing their own impromptu feats of strength, arm-wrestling or shoving against each other.

“Look! More Als!” Teddy shouted over the noise, indicating the far corner of the parlor. Another porcupine was standing watch over a cordoned-off area where a group of timid animals huddled together. There were a couple of possums as well as some moles and mice, all looking around at the proceedings with terrified eyes much like Algernon was. A few still had the remnants of Clergy uniforms clinging to them.

“Psh, we’re not leaving our possum in the playpen,” Harper remarked. “He needs to get the full experience!”

The skunk pulled him along to a counter sized for the precursors, which had steps built up to it so hybrids could be served. At the top the bar was lined with burning candle stubs and a hybrids drinking. A stout bobcat was manning the taps and sliding cups of various sizes down the counter.

Harper sat Algernon down at one of the shot glasses used for stools, while her and Teddy took seats on either side of him. “Two Belching Dragons and one water!” she called out to the bartender.

The bobcat turned to the skunk and narrowed his eyes. “Ain’t ya part of Frieda’s crew?” he asked.

“Sure am! Put the cost on her tab,” she said.

“Frieda’s tab s’already stacked with unpaid favors.”

“And we just came in with a shiny thingamajig to cover those.”

The bobcat eyed her warily, but went to work mixing their drinks. He tapped liquor into two cap lids and used a spigot behind the bar to fill a third with water. Lastly he pulled a small hose out from the wall and turned a valve on it, layering the liquid that came out on top of the first two. He shoved the drinks towards the group. “Enjoy,” he said with little mirth.

Algernon reached for the water, but Harper batted his paw away. “Ah ah, that’s not for you,” she scolded. She pushed the cup of water over to Teddy, and set one of the other ones in front of the possum. A rainbow film like an oil slick shimmered in the flickering candlelight, beneath which was a cloudy brown liquid.

“What... What’s this?” His voice was tinged with equal parts fear and bewilderment.

“It’s a Belching Dragon,” Harper said, flashing a teasing grin.

“I m-mean... What’s in it?”

“Booze and...” she looked down into the drink. “Booze.”

He stared deep into the grim concoction. “I, uh, appreciate the offer, b-but I’m not thirsty.”

She kept smiling at him. “This was bought with the boss’s money, drink it.” She inched the cup closer to him, but Algernon leaned away. “Drink it.” The smile was no longer in her voice.

With a whimper he picked up the amalgamation. He didn’t want to dwell on what he was about to do, so he closed his eyes and brought it to his lips. A hand came from underneath the cup and tilted it even further, dumping significantly more into his maw than he was expecting. Instinctively he blocked the deluge from entering his throat with his tongue.

The substance that filled his cheeks was vile . It had a bitter spice that no natural thing had, and the oil seemed to suck the moisture from his tongue. The fumes were causing the back of his throat to tickle.

Harper appeared very amused by the torment he was going through. “Don’t you dare spit it out, Frieda will be very unhappy if you waste our hard-earned cash,” she said. Small sounds that were a cross between hiccuping and gagging emerged from the possum. She poked at his bulging cheek with a digit. “Go on, swallow.”

As his eyes began to water, he finally choked it down with an audible gulp. Immediately he started coughing and spluttering.

She patted him on the shoulder. “There we go, first sip done,” she snickered. Taking her own cup, Harper downed half of it in one go. Despite her experience with the drink, she couldn’t help but shiver a little. “Keep going, the neat part comes after you have the whole thing!”

With his mouth already coated in suffering, he quaffed down more of the liquid while Harper and Teddy drank from their respective cups. At several points he wanted to stop, but the continued intense stares from the skunk kept him going. With the bottom of the cup in sight, his stomach was writhing and his head was foggy. He didn’t realize when the second round had appeared in front of him.

“I propose a toast,” Teddy said, raising his cup of water. “To Lewis.”

“To Lewis,” Harper echoed, raising her own drink.

Algernon was trying to process, but his mind was starting to feel like soup. “Who’s Lewis?”

“A fellow raccoon who served with us,” Teddy said, with admiration in his voice. “He gave his life for the good of the crew.”

He blinked. “What happened?”

“When we were planning out the robbery of the steamer you lived on, Lewis helped look for a way inside. He tried sneaking through the back entrance, but sadly the ones inside found out and opened the door all the way.”

Algernon thought about The Providence’s entrance, which the surveyors entered and exited through. It functioned like a drawbridge, which meant if someone was just outside it when it came down - “Oh...”

“It was an honorable sacrifice.” Teddy still wore his blank smile, looking none too grieved.

He glanced back at the fight between the two hares, which was still raging. Blood was beginning to spatter the platform they battled on. He couldn’t help but think about the field of bodies after the night ambush on The Dragon. The priest back on the Clergy vessel taught how scavs only bred violence and death, and while he certainly believed that even before his kidnapping, it wasn’t something you thought about when you were in safety. “Is that... common?”

“It is part of being a scavenger. Crews turnover all the time, and Lewis wasn’t the first member who kicked the bucket. His death was an unfortunate event.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Now, the hamster who was our original engineer? That was hilarious. Grisly, but hilarious.”

He nodded along as though the conversation wasn’t as unpleasant as it was. Tapping his claws on the counter, Algernon peered into the depths of the second Belching Dragon.

“You wouldn’t leave Lewis dishonored, would you?” Harper asked him, a cruel twist in her lips.

The possum dreaded the foul substance, but dreaded even more what Harper would do to him if he went against her wishes. He downed more of the unholy cocktail. Somehow the taste didn’t bother him as much the second time. A part of him worried that was because the concoction was stripping the taste buds from his tongue. The other part wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, so he continued lapping up the drink.

The first sign that he was not okay was that he was starting to enjoy what he was chugging down. In that moment Algernon wasn’t of a mind to consider that, but he still had enough faculty to know that something was up when his paws seemed to double in front of him. He examined his fingers in wonder as his vision multiplied them.

“Whatsh happening?” For some reason the voice that came out of his mouth wasn’t his. Well, it was his voice, just... stupider. He chuckled at the absurdity of it.

Harper was having a hard time keeping it together. “You okay there, buddy?” She got out between bouts of laughter. The words sounded like they were spoken through a funnel.

It took him immense effort to self-evaluate. “I... I acshually feel great!” He’d never felt so unrestrained before. If this was what liberation felt like, then he wanted more of it.

Algernon reached out to his drink, but instead of grabbing it he became fascinated with the ripples appearing on its surface. He was then intensely aware of the floor vibrating beneath his seat. A shadow appeared over him, and he turned to find the double-image of the scarred badger standing behind them.

“Peash! The ground ish shaking!” he warned her.

Taken aback, the badger glared at Harper. “What did you do to him?”

The skunk shrugged, but couldn’t erase the smug grin off her face. “He was thirsty, so I got him something to drink.”

 Peach breathed out through her nose. “Frieda is requesting you,” she told Algernon. “Come with me.”

“Oh, wonderful!” He didn’t know what the boss had in mind, but it could only be something good. Standing up from his stool he found that the ground was still tilting fiercely under his feet. He face-planted directly into the wall of flesh that was Peach, eventually propping his arms up against her to steady himself. “Shorry, the room is shpinning. You might need to carry me.”

She looked down at him. “No.”

Peach began walking off, forcing Algernon to wobble after her. In his inebriated state, the stairs down from the bar was the most daunting challenge he’d ever faced. Each step kept shifting away from his feet, so he elected to crawl down on all fours, much to the consternation of Peach and the hilarity of the other scavs. The badger led him across the floor towards the back of the establishment. Down the colossal hallways of the building the commotion of the crowds died down until it was just background noise.

Around the corner stood a door with a hole cut into it from which a mud flap hung, separating the space beyond. On either side of it were two boar hybrids, standing even taller than Peach was and looking just as rough around the edges. Besides the stripes of pink flesh where old wounds had healed, one of them had a metal spike protruding from its snout where its tusk used to be. Most notable were the identical marks on their shoulders in the shape of a “W”, just like Peach had.

The boars’ beady eyes set on Peach and Algernon as they approached. Their gazes especially bored into the badger with an intense hatred Algernon would have found strange if he were sober.

Peach was unfazed by the other’s hostility, ushering her charge towards the opening. “Through there.” She pushed him through the flap while she remained outside.

Unceremoniously he flopped into the room. Chuckling from nearby caught Algernon’s attention and he regarded the space as best as he could with his vision swimming. Unlike the rest of the parlor, everything here was hybrid-sized. Cabinets lined the walls on either side with various sheafs of paper poking out of their drawers. The stationary migrated over to the center of the room, where they covered the grand desk that was settled there. They were filled with numbers and tallies without end.

A plump rat sat behind the desk, peering down his muzzle at the possum with amusement. Frieda stood before the other rat, looking ashen. Languidly Algernon rose to his feet and gave her a salute. “Reporting for duty, capshian!”

Frieda put a paw to her forehead. The other rat couldn’t help but laugh some more at the performance before him. “I like this one!” they said in a booming voice. “Where did you find him? The circus?”

“No Seb, this one came from the same armored barge as the trinket,” she said, sounding like it was taking all her willpower not to boil over.

“Oh, so you did acquire something else on your latest expedition!” Seb scrutinized the possum, who was swaying on his feet. “I have to say, I wouldn’t buy him for much. We already have a few Clergymen pets. They’re not well-adjusted to scav living.”

“He’s not - just show him the doohickey,” Frieda said, waving her hand at him.

“Very well.” Seb lifted the metal rod from beneath the desk for Algernon to look at. “Would you kindly tell me what this is?”

Seeing the artifact, the possum’s eyes lit up. “It’sh the mashter key!” he said in delight.

The rat turned the key over in his hands. “I suppose it does have some teeth,” Seb muttered, fiddling with the nubs on the end of it. “Tell me, does this tin rod open anything valuable? A treasure cache, perhaps?”

“It’sh the key to the worldsh future! It will shave ush from the infeshtashon of the shcavs!“

“Will it now!” Seb propped his head with his hand as he regarded Algernon. “How magnanimous of you, to stop all of these hoodlums from taking advantage of people! Sadly, since I profess to be one and run quite a profitable business, I don’t think this metal tube is of value to me.” The rat’s demeanor shifted as he turned to Frieda. “It would appear you don’t have anything to offer me. Now, if you can’t repay your debt, you know what will -”

“The mashter key is real valuable!” Algernon interrupted. “The Clergy wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise!”

Seb turned back to the possum with irritation, before a sly expression formed on his face. “I imagine they would want it back, wouldn’t they? Enough to pay handsomely for it?”

Algernon’s face drew blank as he used his remaining brain function to think through the rat’s question. “Yesh! We’ve been shearching for sho long, we’d do anything to get it back!” he eventually responded with glee.

“And since you belong to these zealots, surely you know where to find them so you can, well, ransom this hunk of metal back to your kind?”

Frieda frowned at the other rat. “Seb, I don’t think -”

“Shh!” He held up a finger to his mouth. “I suggest you remain silent while your life hangs in the balance.”

“I’m... not shure where The Providence ish...” Algernon lamented, oblivious to the situation. “But! I know where the Clershy headquartersh are!”

“Do tell!” Seb said, indulging the drunken ramblings.

“It’sh at the end of Route... Route... the end of The Devilsh Road!”

“There isn’t anything up that way, unless you mean -” Seb broke out in roaring laughter. “Really? All the way to the Pacific? Oh that’s too rich!” He continued to laugh until he burst into a coughing fit.

Clearing his throat, Seb once again turned his attention to Frieda. “Well, it seems you have quite the trek ahead of you! Since I am so merciful, I’ll give you some time to... spearhead this expedition your friend has kindly offered,” he said, voice dripping with fake saccharine. “Let’s make it sporting; how about... two weeks! Your rust bucket should make it a fair distance in that time. Who knows, you may even make it to Depot before my boys overtake you!”

Grim resignation lined Frieda’s face. “Thank you for your kindness,” she forced out through clenched teeth.

“Of course! Now, I do believe you should -”

A scream burst from outside. One of the boars stumbled into the room, tearing the mud flap separating it down in the process. “That bitch of a badger broke my wrist!” he bellowed, clutching his limp hand in the other.

Outside, the other boar had his back to the wall, eyes wide in alarm. Peach stood with her arms crossed, a subtle smirk on her lips.

Seb’s features contorted into fury. “Frieda, take your crew’s hides and get the hell out of my establishment! You have one week now, pray I don’t make it less!” he screamed.

The rat leader grabbed Algernon by the arm and hastily pulled him from the office. “Oh, bye Mr. Sheb!” the possum waved to the fuming rat.

Frieda stomped away from the guards down the hallway, with Peach shadowing them. “What the flaming hell was that about!” she berated the badger once they were out of earshot. “You’ve signed our death certificate for us!”

“They were getting handsy,” Peach said with a grunt.

The rat eyed her incredulously. “Making moves? On you ?”

The badger flattened her ears. “No, not - handsy in a violent sort of way.”

“Whatever. We need to get everyone else and move out of here ASAP.”

Algernon found himself guided along back through the twisting corridors of the parlor until they made it to the crowds again. Before, the noise was overwhelming, but now it seemed to invade his skull and put an intense pressure behind his eyes. The high from earlier was gone and he was now fully aware of just how much his guts were twisting within.

The stairs back up to the counter were even more impossible to traverse the second time. Cursing, Frieda had Peach drag him up. He remained face-down and groaning the whole way up, his ankles smacking against every step.

Finally they got to where Teddy and Harper were sitting. “Hello!” the raccoon greeted as they approached.

Harper sluggishly turned, her neck lolling around and a woozy smile plastered on her face. “Friedaaa! You’ve been misshing out!” she slurred. A hiccup escaped her mouth, eliciting a giggle.

“Creators above, she’s also hammered,” Frieda commented, the last of her patience fading. “Harper, we’ve leaving! Get your sorry ass moving or we’ll drag you out by the tail!”

“Come oooonnn, jusht wait until -” Suddenly she jolted. “Uh oooh! Here it comessh!”

Despite her anger, Frieda knew what was coming, so she quickly ducked back out of the way. As a rumble travelled up her form, Harper turned to one of the candles and let out an almighty burp. Immediately a fireball erupted from the candle, blasting back into her face and knocking her flat on her back.

The whole crowd quieted as the explosion went off, their attention drawn to the skunk who had spawned it. Harper lay on the ground, still and scorched from the blast. After several seconds she hacked out a cough. With breath returned to her lungs, she began giggling maniacally where she lay. All of the hybrids cheered and hollered at the display.

Even as he was in anguish, Algernon couldn’t help but wonder how she could find such a thing entertaining. His belly growled. With dread he felt movement in his guts, the realization that what happened to Harper was about to happen to him. When it reached his throat he clamped his hands over his muzzle, but it was too late. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Instead of a belch, the contents of his stomach splattered everywhere, and he passed out.

Algernon trying to support himself on Peach, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

When Algernon returned to the land of the living he was greeted with the worst headache he’d ever experienced. Groaning, he turned over, but the pain followed him. How did he even end up like this? A gap of memory was missing in his head. Tentatively feeling around with his fingers, he found that he was in bed. He came to the conclusion that staying still seemed the best option.

For a time he was able to rest and let the throbbing in his head dull. When the door to the room opened and let the outside light stream in, the pounding returned at full force. He hissed at whoever dared enter his domain.

“Wakey wakey!” Harper cooed from the doorway.

The words were like mallets to his skull. “Aaugh... Please...”

“No time for slacking, Frieda wants all hands on deck!”

“Can’t...”

A huff escaped her mouth. “You’re not the only one suffering from a hangover. Suck it up. And believe me, if you think this is a nasty wake-up call, Frieda’s is gonna be so much louder.” A pause. “Or, I could rattle this bell next to your ear to get you warmed up!”

Algernon opened his eyes to small slits. The silhouette in the doorway was in fact holding a round bell, and he was absolutely certain she would use it. Very reluctantly he slithered out of the bed and gathered himself. Somehow Harper restrained herself from shaking the bell around as he passed into the common room.

Work was slow as he recovered from his night at Seb’s. Much of the ash had already been emptied from the engine room, but without The Belching Dragon coming to a full rest in the time since he’d been on it, Algernon hadn’t had the opportunity to empty the grate in the firebox, so more ash was beginning to filter into the room. The first day back from the scav compound it felt like his progress was zero-sum with how incapacitated he was. Hauling loads up stairs and ladders was not made easier with a blinding headache.

It wasn’t until the following day that Algernon felt back to normal. During the morning meal he was able to talk to the other crew members and piece together what happened that night.

“You were drunk like a fish,” Peach said. She was frowning, which was typical of her, but he got the impression she wasn’t pleased with him.

The possum cringed. “D-did I make a fool of myself?”

“Yes.” 

He buried his face in his hands. The embarrassment he felt was almost worse than the hangover he had.

“Yeah it was awesome!” Harper commented. “We need to get you drunk more often, you’re way more entertaining that way!”

“I think we were thrown out because of that though,” Teddy added.

“So what if he blew chunks across the bar? That was the best part!”

Algernon wished he could sink through the table and curl into a ball.

“Seb wasn’t happy with Frieda, that’s why we were kicked out,” Peach interjected. That grabbed everyone’s attention. The rats weren’t about, and their captain was holed up in the wheelhouse like usual.

“Well, what happened? Spill the details!” Harper demanded.

The badger shrugged. “I only caught the very end. Al was there for more of it.”

All eyes turned to him. Algernon froze in panic. If he could he would have escaped, but he was hemmed in on either side by the scavs. “I-I don’t remember any of it! I didn’t even know I met Seb!”

The disappointment was palpable at the table. “You must have really offended him, huh?” Harper said.

Algernon could only cower, unable to answer the accusations of what he may or may not have done.

If anyone had an inclination to question Frieda about their departure, no one voiced it as they continued further down The Devil’s Road. The rat kept them occupied with running The Dragon as fast as it could handle. The shift in operations became noticeable when Frieda started reprimanding them for taking too long during pit stops. Teddy took the brunt of her screaming when she decided that the hose was not siphoning water to the tender fast enough. With the tools at their disposal Algernon was fairly certain they couldn’t speed up the process anyways, but knew better than to tell her that.

It didn’t help that their tender was draining faster with how the boiler was being run. Siegbert kept a raging inferno in the firebox continuously on Frieda’s orders. The engine room was always a sauna, but soon after their departure the rest of the steamer became noticeably warmer with how hot the boiler was run. Algernon noticed Siegbert needing to occasionally leave the engine room just to cool off. When he did, sweat rose from his body in a vapor.

The engine not only emptied the tender at an alarming rate, but quickly chewed through all of the garbage that was stockpiled for fuel. During one of their brief stops Algernon tried to tell Frieda that wood was much more efficient than the scraps Siegbert was currently using. The leader’s response left him half-deaf, and he was fairly certain she didn’t care for his argument; the scavs continued to just pick up anything that would burn.

It was good fortune that the landscape beside the highway started to shift. Suburbs gave way to more foliage, until The Devil’s Road took them primarily through hills and forests. That meant the burnable material that was gathered ended up being wood anyways.

While Algernon finished emptying out the contents of the engine room through the hatch, Peach, Harper and Teddy were always standing watch on top of The Dragon. The badger sat stoically with one of her blades, meanwhile Teddy was still throwing pebbles at any passing targets. Harper looked like she was ready to pass out from boredom. If her brooding was anything to go by, Frieda had probably stationed them there. Day after day the trio served as deterrents against other scav crews. Even if none of them wanted to be there, they served their purpose; none of the steamers they passed made a move on them, even when Teddy landed a hit on another vehicle.

All of the changes in how The Dragon was run led to a tension hanging in the air above the crew. Even the other rats, who always fell in line to Frieda’s decisions, were not immune from the stress. Senta was often found overlooking the remaining supplies they had, frowning as it continued to dwindle. Sascha likewise fretted as their food stores depleted.

On one of the occasions that they were refilling the tender, the calico rat approached the leader. “Captain Frieda, we need more time on our stops to be able to hunt, we are running dangerously low on rations!”

Algernon and the other members inclined their ears to the conversation. If they were expecting a reprieve, Frieda didn’t give them one. “We don’t have time to do that, it could take hours!” she said, rubbing her temples. “If we have to go without food for a bit, then so be it.”

Harper, who had been siphoning water from the nearby stream, threw the hose down. “Like hell we will! If we don’t go get some grub, then I won’t get us any water either!” she yelled, stamping her feet.

Frieda met her tantrum with a cold gaze. “If you don’t like it, leave.”

The skunk’s features were contorted in fury, but she made no move against the captain. Harper turned to Teddy, who instead of wearing his normally blank expression had one of worry. Hissing, she picked up the hose and began sucking up more water.

Sascha, too, wore concern plainly on his face. He mumbled his grievances under his breath as Frieda wandered back inside.

And so the pressure continued to build in The Dragon into the next day. None of the crew said anything, but everyone felt it in the air. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time until it burst. But until then, they continued onward.

The golden hour of the afternoon shed its light over them when they hit the fork in the road. They had passed countless ones before without much thought, following the “66” markers down the highway, but the neon-colored signs surrounding the path forward caused the rig to come to a halt. The captain joined the rest of the crew on the roof to look them over. Several white dashes on red circles were planted along the shoulders of the road. Others showed terrifying creatures with too many legs that Algernon had never seen before.

“What’s all this about?” Frieda demanded.

Adjusting her glasses, Senta examined all of the signage. “The Devil’s Road continues into dangerous territory infested with mutated insectoids. We’re advised to take the detour,” she said, pointing to the right fork.

The captain’s scowl deepened. “How long is the way around?”

The pale rat looked at a sign that had “Route 44” written on it, with an arrow scrawled underneath pointing down the alternate path. “It says the detour is an additional 44 miles.”

Algernon blinked. “Wait, it doesn’t -”

“Too long, we keep going down The Devil’s Road,” Frieda instructed.

Everyone got back to their duties, all innocent to the error they were making except Algernon. Given the atmosphere of unease already onboard, the possum didn’t want to stir the pot more by trying to correct them.

Evening began to roll across the horizon, and The Dragon turned off the main road down one marked with a droplet to settle for the night. Relieved the day was over, the possum went down to the bathhouse to clean up. He expected to be able to let out the tensions of the day but immediately noticed something was wrong. A rattling sound reverberating from the back wall drew his attention. Concerned, he cautiously walked over to see what was causing the racket. Exposed pipes snaked across the back where they commonly hung their wet clothes. Some of the pipes were shaking, which could only mean -

Eyes wide, he scrambled back upstairs and made a beeline for the engine room. Bursting inside he caught Siegbert in the middle of tossing more branches into the firebox. The pipeworks inside creaked and groaned.

“Siegbert, stop!” he yelled.

The large rat halted, facing him without expression. Algernon scampered to the sightglass, and his heart plummeted when he saw his fears were correct: The gauge was in the red.

“W-we need to let out the pressure!”

Still the rat looked at him blankly, unsure how to proceed. Frantically Algernon searched for a safety valve but none poked out from the engine’s spartan surface. He pulled at his ears, hopping around in a panic. His toes hit a notch in the floor. Looking down he saw the space where the lever for the ash pan was meant to be.

“Siegbert, your wrench!” He pointed down at the slot.

The rat looked between his tool and the hole in the floor. He jammed the butt end of the wrench into the socket and pulled. The squealing of metal filled the room as the rat’s muscles tensed, until the makeshift lever slammed back.

All at once the inferno fell through the holes that opened up in the ashpan. The whooshing sound of burning embers passed beneath their feet as the steamer rolled over the dropped fuel. Airflow from the outside pushed the billowing cloud of smoke caught in the firebox into the engine room, causing them both to start coughing. They burst through into the main hall to escape the fumes.

The hatch in the ceiling opened and Teddy poked his head in. “Hey, I didn’t know The Belching Dragon could poop fire!”

Loud cursing came from the cabin followed shortly by the sound of a body hitting the floor and objects scattering. Further commotion reverberated through the walls as Senta and Sascha emerged from a hole to the common room.

“Good heavens, what happened? That screeching couldn’t have been normal!” the calico rat exclaimed.

Senta glared at Algernon. “Explain.”

“Well, I -”

The vehicle ground to a stop, jostling the hybrids. Then the door to the wheelhouse slammed open. Out stepped the captain, smoke at her heels and murder in her eyes. “Who?!”

None of the crew answered, but Algernon couldn’t help but cringe away from her gaze. To Frieda that was enough evidence. She launched from the catwalk down on top of the possum, her claws digging into his shoulders while he was pushed down to the floor.

He turned his head away as she shrieked directly in his face, spittle staining the deck around him. Shouting erupted and everything became a blur to Algernon except for the rat’s sharp teeth lunging at his throat.

Frieda was pulled back before her molars could snap shut around the possum. She struggled fiercely, barely restrained by the other rats. It wasn’t until she was bodily lifted that Algernon was safe from her attacks. His pulse pounding, blood leaking from claw marks on his front, he looked up in terror at Frieda as she flailed her limbs around wildly, dangling by the collar from Peach’s massive paw.

“Captain, snap out of it! You’re acting feral!” Sascha whined. He raced over to the possum, ripping away the bloodied fabric to the wounds beneath. Seeing the shallow scratches, he scampered off into the wall.

Frieda persisted in her manic behavior, so Peach shook her around like a rag doll. Once the rat stopped swinging her senses had returned, but she was still snarling. “You son of a badger! What did you do to my ship?!”

“Th-the engine had too much pr-pressure, it was going to b-burst! Opening th-the ash pan was the only thing I c-could think of to reduce it quickly!” Algernon said, on the verge of tears. While he talked Sascha returned, covering his wounds in balm.

“Meaning we now need to cold-start the engine, which will take all night!” Frieda snapped. “We’re sitting ducks, we’ll be killed off in no time!”

“We’d be dead soon anyways if you continue pushing us so hard,” Senta said.

The captain turned to her subordinate in disbelief. “How... How dare you! I’ve been saving your sorry hide ever since the gang was formed, and this is how you repay me?!”

Senta folded her arms, unfazed. “Our food stores are completely depleted. If our new recruit is to be believed, the steamer is on the brink of exploding. You’ve been nearly working Siegbert to death, while forcing the rest of us to sit on our tails and watch for unseen foes. If you would just let us do our jobs, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“If you did your jobs better , I wouldn’t need to organize yourselves for you!”

“Frieda... What happened at Seb’s?”

At that, the captain grew quiet for a moment, hanging limply with a sour grimace. She reached up and batted at the badger’s mitt. “Let me down, you oaf! I’m not in the mood for killing anymore.”

Peach snorted, but released the rat. She dropped to her feet, but instead of being tensed with rage like before, her shoulders were slumped in resignation. Sighing, she lifted her head to her crew, jaw set. “Seb gave us a week.”

 The hall was filled with silence. “A week for what?” Sascha offered cautiously.

“To run.”

More silence. “What are you on about? We just paid him with all of the treasure we collected! Including the silver rod of power, or whatever!” Harper said.

“Worthless. We weren’t even close to covering what we owed,” she admitted.

The skunk was once again the one who dared break the quiet. “So once again our lousy rookie failed to pull through,” she sneered. Algernon hung his head, trying to look as small as possible.

“It's not his fault.” Shock was arrayed on the crew’s faces at Frieda’s uncharacteristic words. It wasn't like her to defend anyone, let alone the bottom rung. The rat scowled. “It's not his fault; the fault’s all yours for never scavenging enough to meet Seb’s demands!”

Shouting and screeching ensued. Instead of protecting everyone from Frieda's rage, now Peach protected the leader from an angry wall of mammal. Most barked at her, their words lost amongst the rest of the din. Teddy seemed to be trying to roll into a ball at the edge of the mob. Meanwhile, Harper got too frenzied and her head connected with the badger’s outstretched fist.

“Enough!” Frieda’s voice cut through the noise. Her crew froze, but continued to look at their captain with contempt. “Because I kept you in line since Seb's, we now have a head start on his lackeys. You ought to be thanking me!”

“What's the plan?” Senta asked. If it was possible, the pale rat looked even more incensed than Frieda, but unlike the captain her fury was restrained and focused. “All of their vehicles are faster than this bucket of bolts. How will you be keeping us alive?”

“By keeping ahead of them. We just need to hope that the distance we’ve put between them is enough and -” She faltered, looking over at Algernon. “If we can make it to the end of The Devil's Road, we might be able to ransom the mystical doohickey back to this one’s cult,” she said, inclining her head to the possum. “Apparently that's where they're based.”

“What purpose would that serve…” Senta narrowed her eyes incredulously. “Are you seriously suggesting grovelling at their feet for protection?”

“Have any better ideas?” She snapped.

Teddy raised a hand. “Isn't Al’s ship in the other direction?”

“Oh yes, let's go back to the very barge we robbed and kindly return the goods. Surely they won't bombard us on sight!” She bit out sarcastically. “I don't know about you, but I would prefer to go to the place where we have a better chance of negotiation!”

“We could just run into the woods, they wouldn't find us if we abandoned ship,” Harper said.

“You dimwit, that's even dumber than Teddy’s suggestion!” she screeched, causing the skunk's muzzle to pull back into a growl. “Going into the wild is the quickest way to turn feral!”

“So running is the only option, then,” Senta stated. Solemn silence returned to the hall. The finality of her words hung over the group like an anvil.

“How many days has it been since we departed?” Sascha asked.

“Six.” There was certainty in Senta’s tone.

“Then let's get the engine fired up!” Frieda commanded. ”We can still make some progress tonight!”

“C-captain, the engine still needs to c-cool down,” Algernon said meekly. “Otherwise the pressure w-will still be dangerously high.”

Frieda looked ready to start another verbal barrage, but instead let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine! We’re screwed anyways, might as well die on a full night's rest! We'll set out at first light.”

With that she stormed off back to her cabin, slamming the door behind her. The rest of the crew remained stunned in the main room. For what seemed like minutes no one moved, before eventually the spell broke and they began drifting like ghosts to their rest.

Algernon followed Peach into their cabin, but when he laid on the bed he was still wide awake. It was clear that sleep would not come quickly. Quiet permeated the whole vehicle; with the engine dormant, the constant hum of the pipes was no longer present. For the first time he could hear beyond the walls of the vehicle. Nearby rushing water passed. In the distance, creatures bayed into the twilight.

Another regular sound that was absent was Peach’s snoring. He waited for an hour, then two, but still no noise came from the badger curled up on the floor. He turned to face her.

“Peach,” he said softly.

Her eyes slowly slid open in the dark. She stared at him expectantly, although her countenance betrayed annoyance.

“Is… Is Seb sending people to kill us?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes again and moved a paw underneath her chin as a pillow.

For a few minutes he didn't say anything. However, his curiosity wasn't sated, and Peach still wasn't snoring. “Why?”

The badger's eyes flashed open again. She exhaled and shifted around so that she was facing him. “That rat runs a business for scavs. New gangs need a steamer, Seb provides them one,” Peach murmured. “Usually they can’t pay for it. Instead, Seb demands a certain amount of loot from each gang he provides to. If the gang can't make enough, he deals with them accordingly.”

“... And our crew didn't collect enough for him.”

Peach grunted in affirmation.

“The punishment seems… harsh.”

Her shoulders lifted up lazily in a shrug. “It’s the role of a leader to be strong. If one member gets off light, others will take it as weakness and exploit it. Seb is just performing the duty given to him.”

He ruminated on what she told him. It seemed accurate to his own experience. The Clergy’s mission was paramount to the survival of their species, any weak links would be detrimental. So for someone like him, who actively sabotaged their work, exile to the wilderness was better than he deserved. If Peach’s assessment was trustworthy, it seemed Armand’s proclamation of death over him was justified. He had avoided his end on The Providence, but fate put him back on that track. Now both himself and Frieda’s crew were approaching the consequences of their actions.

“So we deserve this, then,” he said.

She craned her neck up to him. “What did you do to deserve being hunted?”

“I… I've wronged the very group who will restore peace to the world.”

She stared at him blankly. “If this group of yours wants to bring peace, they're doing a poor job. Forget what they think of you.”

“But, they serve the c-creators; it is them who I have to answer to for my transgressions!”

Peach let out a huff, rolling her eyes. She shifted to turn away from him.

Algernon also rolled over, staring up at the ceiling. No, there wasn't a simple word that could wipe away his guilt. Part of him was certain that their pursuers were penance for stealing The Clergy’s one hope. However, another part of him wasn't ready to die. Was it wrong to keep on living?

To tear his mind away from that uncomfortable thought, he asked one more question. “... Is Frieda - I mean, is the captain a good leader?”

For a while there wasn't a response. Algernon assumed she wasn’t going to say anything, but eventually she replied. “If someone isn’t a good leader, they don’t last long.”

Peach putting Frieda in time out, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

The first explosion jolted everyone in The Belching Dragon awake. Algernon didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until the sound of the blast catapulted him to consciousness, and it took a few seconds of paralyzed panic to even digest what was going on. To his side, Peach immediately swung her head in the direction of the explosion. It came from the engine room.

“What -”

The second explosion was much bigger, deafening every other noise and shaking the entire vehicle on its axles. A wall of force and heat rippled through the chassis. It made him flinch in shock, but in the moment after it passed over him all of his extremities and organs were still intact. In the next moment he was snatched up and secured under Peach’s arm.

She burst through the cabin door. The hall was filled with smoke, but Algernon wasn’t able to tell much of what was happening as the badger leaped from the second story to the ground floor. The main hatch similarly stood no chance against Peach and she jumped outside.

Sunrise was cast over the landscape around them. Peach twisted around, looking for attacking enemies. From his position Algernon could see the forgotten wrecks of precursor vehicles, and noticed they were nestled within a small valley, but nothing stirred except their own steamer.

The badger leaned down and shoved the possum underneath The Dragon. “Stay there,” she commanded, before stepping back into the rig.

Above, he heard movements throughout the vehicle and a roaring fire. Smoke leaked through the ash pan, but a breeze drew it towards the front of the vehicle away from him. From his cover Algernon looked all around. A river ran behind him, several meters away. A precursor building rested against the side of the valley next to a rock face. Arboreal forest rose above it and hemmed in the valley. It was a beautiful landscape they were parked in, and he still saw no signs of other scavs.

He saw Harper’s and Teddy’s feet hop down to the concrete. The two turned to look up at the vehicle, and the skunk immediately began to snicker. “Oh man, the captain is going to be pissed!”

Teddy reacted with a series with oohs and aahs , clapping at the disaster happening above.

There was more commotion as Peach returned, followed by the group of rats, coughing the smoke from their lungs. They crowded around the badger, trying to glimpse at what she was carrying.

“I-Is it safe?” Algernon called out.

The group’s footsteps stopped. A murmur came from Peach that sounded like an affirmation, so the possum crawled out to join the rest of the crew.

When he stood up, he saw what Peach was carrying. He covered his muzzle in shock as he looked at Siegbert, his whole front scorched. Sascha was vigorously rubbing his burns with ointment. “Is... Is he...”

“Alive, but critically injured,” Sascha said, his brow furrowed in concentration. “He was in the engine room, where the first explosion went off.”

“Th-the second one was elsewhere?”

Senta pointed up at The Dragon. Lifting his gaze, his ears flattened when he saw the damage. Where the wheelhouse had been, a hole now gaped. Metal supports bent away from where the windshield used to be, flames and smoke erupting out of it. Small bits of metal that had been sent skyward started raining down around them.

Pulling his eyes from the disaster, Algernon looked around at the crew gathered outside. Not all of them were accounted for. “... Where’s the captain?”

 Senta’s eyes widened, and she cursed under her breath when she realized where Frieda would have been when the explosions went off. Teddy and Harper gazed up into the sky, shielding their eyes from the morning rays. Nothing but the smoke and flakes of debris were above.

“I don’t think she’s coming down,” the raccoon commented.

An object that barely made a sound as it smacked against the pavement landed next to them. Harper bent down and picked up the long, rubbery length. It didn’t take long for all of them to realize what it was. The skunk held a rat’s tail, minus its owner.

“Can it be reattached?” Teddy asked.

Sascha stared at the appendage in shock, ignoring his crewmate’s question. Senta continued to mutter words that made Algernon’s ears burn. Harper threaded the tail through her pants to see if it could be used as a belt.

Their eyes were eventually drawn to the smoking crater of the wheelhouse. The carnage was difficult to look away from, and there wasn’t much the remaining crew could do at the moment. While entranced by the flickering orange and grey, Algernon tried to think through what could have caused this to happen.

It was clear that the second explosion was caused by Teddy’s stash of dynamite Frieda kept locked away in her wheelhouse. It also seemed they were the only hybrids for miles, so it must have been set off by someone in their crew. Hopefully by accident.

What confused him was the first explosion, the one in the engine room. That one can’t have been a pressure explosion, like what almost happened the night prior. As a joey, when The Clergy trained him as an engineer, they showed him pictures of the aftermath of such an engine failure, and needless to say Siegbert would be in much the same shape as Frieda if that were the case. Did the large rat have dynamite of his own? Siegbert acted a bit... dim, but demonstrated as much survival instinct as the rest of the crew. Which wasn’t much, but was enough to exclude behavior like lighting dynamite indoors -

He perked up. “Teddy, did you...?”

The raccoon pouted. “Someone set off the pretty fireworks without me.”

Algernon was bewildered by why his crewmate was upset, but Teddy’s attitude probably meant he wasn’t responsible. Atleast, not directly.

So then it really was set off accidentally? The firebox was cold, so there wouldn’t have been a fire inside to light anything. However, Siegbert had to fire it up for the day, so perhaps if he accidentally threw in some black powder with the kindling...

He remembered the deteriorating sticks Frieda confiscated from the scav ambush. He also remembered the vent that had been cleared out that was embedded into the ceiling of the engine room that led to the wheelhouse. In their bumpy stop last night, some could have easily fallen through. Then the first explosion could have flared through the same vent to ignite the whole stash above. Algernon slowly put his paws to his face. In that case, The Belching Dragon had simply had enough.

Harper scratched at her stomach, growing bored of the flames as they began to die down. “So... Now what?”

It was a few hours before the blaze had died enough for them to be able to venture back inside. Using water from the tender they were able to extinguish the remaining embers. Siegbert was brought down to the bathhouse to soothe his burns and because it gave Sascha space to tend to him.

Senta was quick to delegate tasks to the remaining crew. She sent Harper and Teddy out to survey the nearby ruins for helpful supplies. Sascha quickly joined them in search of more medical supplies. Peach went hunting for roaches to satiate their hunger. The job of assessing the damage and fixing The Dragon into a workable state fell to Algernon.

That prospect didn’t look good. He started his investigation in the engine room, and there were already several things that needed to be addressed if they had any hope of the steamer being operable again. The firebox was warped and would need to be forced back into its original shape. It had been blasted out of alignment, and the pipes attached to the chamber had all either become bent or detached. Some could be welded back into place, but others would need to be replaced entirely. The gauges along the outside of the boiler were busted, but Algernon grudgingly admitted that The Dragon could run for a little bit without safety features.

The door to the wheelhouse was blown off its hinges and crumpled beyond recognition. Inside it was difficult to tell what it was even meant to look like in the first place. Half of the room now lay completely exposed to the elements, while the other half was scorched and bowed. In the center the titular wheel emerged from a cavity in the floor, half submerged into the engine space of the vehicle. The way it was contorted, there was no question about its usability; A new one was needed.

Walking around the space, the floor plates were concerningly unstable beneath Algernon’s feet. He was able to pull one of the plates up without much resistance and assess the damage beneath. More collapsed pipes. Snapped serpentine belt. Misaligned axles and rods. Disregarding the inner workings, it was going to take a herculean effort to reconstruct the room into... well, into a room again.

A glint from a crevasse in the floor caught his eye. He wandered over to it, lifting the plate the shine was under. To his amazement, the master key was nestled underneath. Frieda must have stowed it away there to hide it. Miraculously, the artifact was unscathed from the explosion. Either the metal plate hiding it took the brunt of the blast, or the key was made from serious stuff.

Covering the master key again, Algernon took his findings out to Senta. The white rat was standing over a pile of junk that was accumulating at the foot of the vehicle. It looked to be various odds and ends that had been collected from the nearby building. Senta was currently examining a flashlight that must have been tiny in a precursor’s hand, but was rather large for a hybrid. She pushed the switch, but no light came from it. She discarded it at her feet where several others were.

He tapped his fingers together. “Senta, The Belching Dragon is not in good condition.”

The rat picked up another flashlight souvenir. “How fast can you get it working?”

Algernon’s worried frown deepened. “S-So, I don’t know if it can be fixed. Most of the engine w-will need to be replaced.”

She turned to him, her face set. “I didn’t convince the captain to let you be on the crew just so you could sit on your sorry tail. I, for one, don’t want to die. How fast can you get it working?”

Her resolve in the face of their grave circumstances surprised him, but helped to strengthen his own, if only by a degree. If anything, he couldn’t let this valley be the master key’s resting place. His brethren in The Clergy still needed it. Algernon put a finger to his lip and considered all of the damage. “Three days, for the bare minimum. It is dangerous to leave the main cabin open to the elements, but that could be worked on during travel if we gather the necessary materials.”

“That’s not ideal, but it will have to do. You’ll have to inform the rest of the crew what needs to be scavenged.” Approaching footsteps caught their attention. “Speaking of -”

Harper and Teddy came up with more supplies in their arms. The skunk dropped her load of metal trinkets into the pile, while the raccoon walked up to them holding an aerosol can.

“Look at what I found!” He held the bright-colored item up to them. “I don’t know what it is. But it looks neat!”

Senta leaned in close to scrutinize the words emblazoned across the can. “It looks like it might be edible,” she murmured.

“It says it’s some kind of ‘bug spray,’” Algernon read. Whatever that meant.

“Oh!” Teddy set about figuring out how to extract the insides.

The rat turned to Harper, glancing at the flat capsule she brought up to them. “And what's this?”

“A lighter!” She said gleefully. Harper flipped the top open and spun the igniter, sparking a flame.

Algernon looked back at the can Teddy was trying to spray, and noticed the flammable warning on its label. Eyes wide, he grabbed the bug spray. “T-Teddy! Let's aim this thing over here,” he said, rotating the nozzle away from the lighter.

Teddy pressed down on the top of the spray, causing a mist to eject from it. “Aha!” He went around to its front and opened his mouth to the nozzle. Pushing down again, he welcomed the fluid into his maw. He smacked his mouth a few times, before his face contorted in disgust and he flapped his tongue to get the flavor out. “This doesn't taste like bugs at all!”

“You two, pay attention,” Senta said. “Al needs specific parts to fix The Dragon. While he's busy, you'll find those parts for him.”

Harper and Teddy turned to him. “Alright, so… We'll n-need some pipes. One inch diameter.”

They stared at him blankly.

“Uh, this thick.” He made a circle in the air with his digits.

“I saw some straws in the building, will those work?” Teddy asked.

“No, those - they need to be bigger than a straw, and smaller than the width of this can,” he said, poking the bug spray. “It should be made of metal. Or plastic.”

Harper looked at him with confusion. “Right… anything else, oh enlightened one?”

“W-well, we also need a steering wheel, and any steam engine c-components you can find, like gears and belts,” he stammered.

She gripped Frieda's tail that was still wrapped around her waist.

“N-No! Like a belt that can be fed into the cogs!”

She threw her hands up. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?! Why don't we just take an engine from one of those over there?” She pointed off to the abandoned vehicles parked in the lot.

“Those use combustion engines, we don't have a way to produce ethanol for it,” Senta said.

“You two are hopeless! I'm out.” She stalked off back towards the ruins. Teddy followed after her.

The rat huffed, shaking her head. “Maybe you should go with them as a guide.”

Memories of the last time he was alone with Harper and Teddy flashed in his mind. “I-I’d prefer to start taking out the broken parts.”

And so as the sun reached its zenith, Algernon worked on disassembling the cabin floor that was over the engine. Removing the metal plates was the easy part; getting the mangled pipes loose posed a challenge with how even the bolts holding them in place had bent. Progress was slow, and the day crawled by.

While he was busy with the mechanics, Senta sorted through the objects Harper and Teddy brought. He occasionally looked down through the hole in the wheelhouse and noted that the pile that was to be kept as supplies was much smaller compared to everything that had been brought.

During one of his peeks he saw Sascha come scampering back to The Dragon, holding a bottle of salve in his paws. Algernon did a double-take when he saw the helix of the A&E logo on its side. It was strange seeing the creators’ emblem out in the wild, especially in the midst of the circumstances they found themselves in.

He cast an eye to where the master key hid, beneath part of the floor he hadn’t taken up. Maybe it was a sign that the creators were still watching over him, despite his transgression. He went back to his task with renewed vigor.

It still took most of the day to remove all of the piping that couldn’t be salvaged. The sun was approaching the cusp of the valley when he exited the vehicle with the last piece. He tossed it into the stack of scrap and collapsed onto his tail, panting. He expected beratement for taking a rest, but Senta only spared him a passing glance before she continued sorting through the junk.

Heavy footsteps signalled Peach’s return from her hunt. Instead of dragging the husks of roaches behind her, she carried an armful of cans.

Senta ruffled her whiskers. “That doesn’t look like food.”

The badger dropped her load and rotated one of the cans towards the rat, pointing at the peas on the label with a claw. “Not meat, but it will do for now. The humans had some of these left behind in their shelter.”

Senta ran her paw over the vegetables on the label. “I’ve heard rumors of these food caches, but never seen one in person. I’m surprised it wasn’t already looted by other scavengers.”

Peach’s brow dipped in concern. “There’s a cave entrance beyond the building. Webbing from limb-beasts covers the walls there.”

“Limb-beasts?”

The badger grunted. “They have many limbs. More common out in the Western Roughs.”

“And this has to do with getting food, how?” the rat questioned.

“Limb-beasts are nasty when caught unaware. Probably scared off other scavs from picking the place clean. Probably ate all the roaches too; didn’t find any.”

Senta let out a sigh. “Very well, I’ll warn the rest of the crew.”

Shrugging, Peach grabbed the pull-tab and opened the can of peas for them. The three wolfed down the contents greedily, not having eaten for the past day. The clamor brought Sascha outside, and the badger opened a can of corn for the calico rat to consume and bring some to Siegbert.

Afterwards, Algernon requested the help of Peach with some tasks, who wordlessly agreed. Even though the mobile welder was as large as he was, Peach carried it without too much effort into the main cabin. Thankfully the unit came with a pair of hybrid-sized goggles so his eyes wouldn’t be seared as he worked.

The last rays of the sun were departing the valley while he worked on the pipes he’d left inside of the engine. Algernon was able to realign the ones that had been forced out of alignment, and welded over the gaps between the pipes and the firebox itself. Above, he heard screeching metal. With her brute strength Peach pulled the metal supports of the wheelhouse into roughly the same shape they had been in before.

“Special delivery!” he heard Teddy call from outside.

He clambered up from the innards of The Dragon and looked down. Harper and Teddy were walking back up to the vehicle. The possum’s ears drooped when he saw what they carried with them.

“We found the pipes you were looking for!” Harper exclaimed, holding up two PVC elbow connectors. “Most of them were stuck to the wall though, so we just took what wasn’t nailed down. Which was just these.”

“... I see.”

She grimaced up at him. “Don’t give me that look! We did what you asked to the best of our ability!”

Teddy held up the bundle of drinking straws in his arms. “These aren’t for the repairs, I just thought they were neat!”

It looked like he would need to go with them while they scavenged after all if they were to have any hope of fixing The Dragon within a timely manner. Darkness was beginning to settle, and he didn’t want to go hunting in the dark, so their searching would need to continue the following day.

“Peach, I’m starving! Where’s the food?” Harper yelled up the badger.

Algernon saw Peach close her eyes and keep a lid on her annoyance. She let go of the plating she was shifting and walked out of the cabin.

He gathered with the rest of the able-bodied crew in the main hall to take a break from their labor. The remaining cans of food were brought in and they quickly feasted through them. Algernon only ate a few handfuls, looking on with equal parts awe and disgust as Harper and Teddy feverishly gorged themselves on a can of beans. The raccoon’s head was completely enveloped by the container as he licked it clean. When he pulled his head out, his whole face was dyed a lighter shade of brown.

No one spoke during the whole meal. There wasn’t anything anyone could say that would make their situation better. Much like the night before when Frieda informed them of their incoming demise, the crew went to their separate cabins with little spirit left in them.

Algernon, however, returned to his work on the engine. He was too anxious to sleep. The restless energy instead fueled him as he welded long into the night, the sparks creating temporary suns in the dark. The soft rumble of the river added to the impression of being in some far off place separate from the struggles of reality. Monotonous completion of his work drove his demons away, if only for a little bit.

“AAH!”

He screeched and dropped the welding torch, wildly floundering to locate the source of the scream. Giggling from above drew his eyes up to the roof. He lifted his goggles and saw Harper watching him from the edge where it had completely blown off.

“D-do you n-need something?”

“Nope!” She hopped down into the cabin and idly padded around the perimeter. Algernon’s lip quivered with concern, but the skunk didn’t seem to have anything else mischievous in mind. Yet.

She caught him fearfully staring up at her. “You’re a riot to be around, you know that? Well, don’t mind me, I’m going for a leak.”

Harper jumped out of the hole in the vehicle to the ground, leaving Algernon once again on his own. Letting out a stilted sigh, he picked up the torch and brought his goggles back down. He wished that the skunk would just leave him be. What had he done to earn her ire? He always tried to keep out of everyone’s way, being quiet and compliant to his fellow workers and never stirring up trouble. He realized that was probably the exact reason why she tortured him. She was the exact opposite; selfish, crude, manic and bloodthirsty. The type of hybrid that most exemplified what a scav was in his mind.

He returned to welding. A part of him understood exactly why Harper behaved the way she did. She was a godless heathen, same as the rest of the crew. Their violent and cruel tendencies were in their nature. They didn’t know any better. Therefore they deserved his pity, not his hate.

A voice suddenly called out a distance from the steamer. “Oh sh-”

Algernon immediately stopped what he was doing when a gurgling sound followed. He threw down the torch and hastily climbed out of the pit. Lifting his goggles, he peered out into the evening.

Shapes emerged from behind one of the decrepit vehicles in the lot. His stomach dropped at the nightmare creature that crawled out of its shadow. Several stalk-like legs arced in unnatural patterns, carrying a bulbous body in the midst of them. The creature stood half as tall as the vehicles surrounding it, taller even than Peach was.

A rope-like material trailed from its abdomen to the ground behind it. Wrapped up in it was Harper, who remained motionless in its bonds. He could only watch in terror as the monster dragged her off into the dark.

Harper appraising what is left of Frieda, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

No one in the crew was happy to be woken up in the middle of the night when Algernon came screaming into the main hall. They were even more displeased to hear that Harper had been carried off by a terrible beast away from The Dragon. Most of them digested the news with the same solemn silence they had when Frieda blew sky high. Teddy was the exception.

“This is horrible!” he wailed. It was the first time Algernon had seen the raccoon show so much emotion. To him the outburst seemed disproportional to how Teddy normally reacted, especially considering the one he was showing concern for was Harper. When their captain had been blown to smithereens not even a day prior, Teddy didn’t so much as blink.

Sascha patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay my friend, we’re all sorry this happened to her.” The rat only sounded half-hearted in his sentiment.

“We need to go after her immediately!” Teddy continued to cry, ignoring Sascha.

Algernon twisted his tail in his paws, uncomfortable with the situation. Peach stood at the back of the room in her usual stoic slouch. Senta looked the least shaken up. “We’re not going after her body,” she said coldly.

Teddy pouted at her, his eyes glistening. “Harper can’t be dead! That’s not part of her personality!”

“If she was attacked by one of those ‘limb-beasts’ then I can’t imagine there’s much of her left anyways.”

“She’s probably still alive, for now,” Peach spoke up. Senta turned to her, the rat’s expression demanding an explanation. “Limb-beasts have venomous stingers which paralyze their prey. They bring them to their nests and wait until their catch... puffs up, and then they devour them.”

Sascha’s tail twitched. “Oh, so they marinate their meals in poison?”

The badger raised an eyebrow. “Sure. Limb-beasts are dangerous on your own. With a group, there is a chance of recovery. I’ve seen hybrids rescued from limb-beast nests more than a day after they were caught.”

Senta rubbed her brow. Sighing, she looked at the crew with hard eyes. “We don’t have time to stage a rescue. If we don’t put all of our resources towards fixing The Dragon, she won’t be the only one dying. Need I remind you that seven days have passed? As we speak, Seb’s goons are riding towards us to pay our debt in our blood.”

A hush fell over them. Algernon agreed with Senta’s pragmatism, but it still didn’t sit right with him. Part of him was frustrated that he even cared; as a scav, Harper deserved the same end that Frieda had met, right? That’s what the Clergy would say on the matter.

He frowned. If that’s what he believed, then why was his immediate response to inform the rest of the crew about what happened to her, in the hope that she could be saved? Even though from birth he’d been taught that scavs deserved to reap what they had sown, a deeper part of him he didn’t know existed felt a wrongness at abandoning the psychopathic skunk.

“But we can’t just leave her!” Teddy yelled out, still beside himself.

“Have you heard a single word I’ve said?” Senta scolded. ”We need to move on, or we’re all in jeopardy.”

“What about -” As Algernon spoke, the rest of the group turned to him in surprise, and he froze. He thought he had the words to express what he was feeling, but came to the terrifying realization that he in fact did not. He started quaking profusely as everyone stared at him expectantly.

“What about... how... you all are... a crew, you know? And... that means that... that... as a crew... I mean, if Harper’s still alive, then... As a crew, it’s... our responsibility... to... help each other! Otherwise... well... loyalty... There wouldn’t be any... loyalty! Which is important... to do... uh... yeah...”

Everyone continued to regard him with blank looks. Peach was giving him a particularly strange expression that he couldn’t decipher, one that seemed to pierce through him. Sweat began to bead on his forehead.

Senta’s gaze morphed into a glare. “Loyalty doesn’t exist out here, only self-interest, and I am interested in remaining alive. Tell me: was it loyalty that caused your old crew to kick you to the wayside?”

He started sweating even more. “Well, uh -”

“I agree with Al.”

Now it was Peach’s turn for everyone to stare at her in surprise and bewilderment. The badger countered their attention with her unwavering scowl.

“Not you too with this nonsense!” Senta said in exasperation, emotion threatening to break her stony countenance. “You of all people should understand the wisdom in cutting our losses. We’re likely to lose more crew trying to save the one. The captain would have recommended moving on.”

“In my experience, we helped comrades who needed it, regardless of risk,” she replied with measured words. “As for a captain, we currently don’t have one.”

The rat clenched her tiny fists, seemingly too angry to speak for several seconds. When she finally composed herself enough to say anything, it was with vitriol. “Fine. I can’t stop you on your little crusade, but you can’t tell me I didn’t warn you. Your deaths won’t weigh heavy on my conscience.”

Peach snorted. “You’re welcome to tell yourself that.”

“Let’s get out of here, Sascha,” she motioned to the other rat. Senta stalked off into a crevice in the wall and disappeared.

Sascha couldn’t meet any of their gazes. “I... need to tend to Siegbert.” The calico rat quickly scampered down into the bathhouse.

Across the room, Teddy seemed to have been holding his breath through the tense exchange, but exhaled in relief when the rats left. His demeanor quickly shifted back to one of simple delight. He crossed the room and wrapped Algernon in his arms. “Good! Oh good! Let’s go get Harper right away!”

Peach grabbed the ladder to the second floor. “I’ll go get my gun.”

“W-wait, let’s not be hasty!” He tried to raise his arms, but Teddy’s hug had them pinned at his sides. The raccoon looked confused, but Peach stopped and waited for him to continue. “It will be some time before the limb-beasts will... eat Harper, r-right? Then we should think through our approach and prepare for it.”

Teddy’s beady eyes sparkled in understanding. “Oooh, are you talking about a plan ?” By his tone, that was probably a foreign concept.

“Y-yes.” Algernon turned to the badger. “Peach, how many limb-beasts do you think are at their nest?”

“With the amount of webbing around the cave entrance, at least several. Their nest is probably inside.”

He frowned. If the beasts were holed up in a cave, then they needed to contend with the darkness as well. Even with the amount of prowess Peach had demonstrated he doubted that she would be able to wield her gun effectively without any light. That kind of weapon only had six chambers, which might not be enough anyways. A melee weapon would probably not be effective against a monster of this size either. Algernon put a claw to his lip, trying to think of a better way to defend against the limb-beasts. He felt Teddy’s fingers start to rub the top of his head. Knowing Teddy, the raccoon was likely doing it to help him think better. Somehow.

“Is... there anything that these limb-beasts are weak to?” Algernon asked.

“They are hunters of the shadows,” Peach explained. “In the Western Roughs, being near a lantern or a campfire was enough to ward them off.”

“So we attack them with light!” Teddy exclaimed. After a moment Algernon felt the ministrations on his head freeze. “Wait! Explosions are just lights that hurt!”

Algernon cringed, the explosions that crippled The Dragon and the crew still at the forefront of his thoughts. “L-let’s not use dynamite if we can help it. I don’t think there is any left after yesterday, anyways.”

Teddy reached into his overalls and pulled out a stick. The possum looked at it in shock. With how it was deteriorating, he guessed that Teddy had secreted it away from the stash he found from the crew that had ambushed them.

“Ah. Well, it’s g-good to know we have that as a resource.” It was also a reminder to keep the raccoon as far away from the engine room as possible. “I think that a less lethal option would be better. I-I mean, something with less potential to backfire.”

“Fire,” Peach said.

“Yes, we don’t want something that will backfire as easily.”

“No. Fire can be used as a weapon against the limb-beasts.”

His ears perked. “I see!” They slowly drifted back down again. There wasn’t a good way to wield something like a torch that wouldn’t be tricky.

“Oh! We could use Belching Dragons to breathe fire on them!” Teddy offered.

Algernon figured he was referring to the tonic that was served at Seb’s. What Teddy suggested obviously wasn’t going to work, but it set his mind in motion. Maybe they could toss volatile liquids on to the beasts and ignite them? Senta mentioned the other day that they didn’t have alcohol, so an alternative would be needed if that were to work.

He recalled the items that Teddy and Harper scavenged yesterday, and his eyes lit up. “I think I have an idea.”

When the sun rose and touched the valley, Teddy and Peach went out on the mission Algernon had given them. He’d shown them the flammable symbol on the side of the bug spray and told them to find more containers that were labeled with that. As long as the limb-beasts were not active, they would be stockpiling what they found at the entrance of the cave. That would be what assured their escape if things went south.

All the while Algernon worked on the contraption that was to be the center of their operation. To test that it was even feasible, he set the lighter on a hunk of metal a ways away and, having ignited it, pressed down on the top of the spray. He flinched back when a plume of fire shot out where the liquid passed through the spark. The flames would normally have been a sign to stop, but in their current situation it meant progress, so he continued.

Using the scrap that was collected yesterday he started constructing a frame. Welding holders for the lighter and spray was simple enough, but he quickly realized that the finished weapon was going to be bulky. The can on its own would have been a lot for someone like him to handle, but in addition to the payload on one end, a counterweight was needed to make the device more balanced. When the main chassis was done, Algernon could barely lift the weapon. It brought uncomfortable wrinkles to his plan, but he decided not to dwell on what that would mean.

The moving mechanisms were a more involved effort, but a few hours later when Teddy and Peach returned it was as finished as it was going to get. The raccoon looked at the piecemeal contraption with awe. “This looks very dangerous!” he said appreciatively.

Peach looked at the weapon skeptically. “What does it do?”

He pointed at the two handholds and the trigger inside of the top one. “The bottom is for stabilization, squeeze the top to fire,” he explained.

The badger hefted it into her arms. It took both of her massive paws to hold it, but despite its weight Peach seemed to manage it. She pointed it away from them and pulled the trigger. The mechanism spun the igniter and pushed down on the spray simultaneously, and a gout of flame erupted from the end. Teddy clapped excitedly, and even Peach had a sparkle in her eyes.

“You made a flamethrower,” she said, sounding impressed.

“You’ve... used something like this before?”

Her eyes became unfocused for a moment. “A couple of times.”

“Do it again! Do it again!” Teddy chanted.

“Th-the fuel is very limited, so please only use it if you have to!” With the excitement over, Algernon remembered why he sent them out in the first place. “Did you find what we needed for the cave entrance?”

“Oh yes! It will be the best boom ever when it goes off!” the raccoon said.

He was worried what Teddy meant given his track record for finding things, but Peach gave him a slight smirk. “It will be enough,” she assured him. “We are ready to proceed with the mission.”

The realization of what they were about to do finally hit him, and a wave of anxiety rushed over him. “R-right, I suppose it is.”

Peach marched off towards the precursor facility. Teddy scrambled after her to keep up with her big strides. Algernon scooped up one of the working souvenir flashlights and followed after them, his nervousness only increasing with every step.

He didn’t realize how vast the valley was until he needed to travel across it. With dread coursing through his veins, it felt like they were walking for hours. While they traversed the field of concrete, Algernon swivelled his head to check behind each decaying vehicle they passed, but no monsters emerged like they had during the night. His paranoia hadn’t ceased when they walked next to the building, and he found himself searching every window and shadow that clung to it.

He was so focused on their surroundings that he almost ran into Peach when she stopped. The cave yawned before them, ready to devour any who walked in. Webbing clung to the cliff face around it and disappeared into the dark within. Inside could only be the limb-beasts that had captured Harper.

“It’s ready to go boom!” Teddy said, indicating the collection of barrels at the mouth of the cave.

Even from where they stood Algernon could tell that the main haul Teddy and Peach put together mostly consisted of propane canisters. “That’s, uh... Yeah, that will do it.”

“It took a while to roll all of them here, but it should be potent enough,” Peach commented.

He was indeed pleased by what they’d been able to find, if a bit worried that it was too much for their purposes. What was gathered would cause an explosion bigger than the ones set off on The Dragon.

For a while they all stared into the void ahead. The webs trailing in the breeze waved as if to invite them in, but no one was quick to step foot inside. After several minutes, Peach set the weapon down and held out a paw to Algernon. “Give me the flashlight. You two, stay out here. One of you, be ready to set off the explosives if the exit is hot.”

“Wh - How will you hold both that and the flamethrower?” he fretted.

Peach wore bemusement on her muzzle. “I’ll carry the light in my mouth.”

“And how will you c-carry Harper?”

That caused her to hesitate. She glanced between himself and Teddy. If he were to guess, she was figuring who would best be left on standby. Images of lighting the dynamite and accidentally dropping it at his feet flashed through Algernon’s mind, and even if that wasn’t the exact images going through hers, Peach’s displeased frown told him that she’d arrived at the same conclusion that he did.

Sighing through her nostrils, she drew a short knife she had strapped to her back. “Can you hold the flashlight and this at once?”

Algernon looked warily at the blade. “I-I mean, if I have to -”

She turned the knife and held the grip out to him. Timidly he took it into his arms, but with both the weapon and the flashlight he couldn’t move either around. He set them both down and snaked his tail around the flashlight, then handled the knife in his paws. Peach didn’t seem satisfied with how he pointed it straight out from his chest, and readjusted it so he held it more upright.

“Just... keep it between yourself and any foes.”

“Uh-huh!” Algernon uttered with as much courage as he could muster. He felt his body trembling.

Although uncertainty was still written plainly on her face, Peach grabbed the flamethrower and turned to resolutely face the cave beyond. “Teddy, set off the dynamite only when we tell you to. Al, stay close to me. Don’t touch any webs.”

She started walking into the depths. Algernon wanted to be anywhere else, but followed close behind with shaky steps. Even just passing the lip of the entrance he expected to be immediately jumped by one of the monsters, but things remained eerily still and silent except for the subtle billowing of the web strands. He couldn’t help but jump at their shadows, pointing the knife at anything that moved.

Peach pushed forwards with a slow but determined gait. She showed no signs of fear even as the sunlight started to dwindle the farther in they got. The beam of the flashlight soon became their main source of illumination, and the darkness bore the full weight of the earth surrounding them. It was trying to swallow them and make this place their tomb. Algernon’s limbs became stiff as if in rigor mortis due to fright. He needed to keep reminding himself to breathe; passing out would spell death.

The limited use of his limbs, including his tail, meant that he kept the cone of light set forward. Ahead, the webbing grew thicker, stretching down to the cave floor. In the artificial light they appeared like ghosts out of the gloom. Peach became more careful with her footing to avoid them, with Algernon mimicking her movements as best as he could with his smaller frame.

Stepping around one of the webs, his toes caught one of the strands. Walking he almost fell forward onto the knife, since his foot was stuck fast. He pulled his leg, but it wouldn’t budge.

Peach turned when she noticed he wasn’t following anymore. Her eyes grew at his predicament. “Cut yourself loose!” she whispered urgently.

The sound of scraping above made him snap his head upward. For just a moment his light flashed on the form of a hideous monster with too many legs and too many eyes, then it jumped down on him.

Algernon fell backwards and squealed in terror as the massive creature bared down on him. Its body flattened him to the ground, and he thrashed around wildly to try and escape from underneath the beast.

Suddenly it rolled off of him. Algernon scrambled away on all fours as far as his tether would allow him, his eyes finally focusing on the scene caught in his flashlight’s beam. Peach continued to push the body on to its side, which was otherwise unmoving. The knife he’d been carrying was staked through the bottom of the limb-beast’s head.

“Good aim,” she stated.

He could only mutely nod as he watched her plant a foot on the corpse and yank the weapon free.

They barely had a moment of rest before Algernon heard skittering footsteps rapidly approaching. With lightning reaction Peach brandished the knife towards the darkness. In the penumbra of the light, legs and mandibles reared back from the sharp point and screeched. As more pattering came from deeper in, Algernon moved towards Peach for protection against the monsters.

More and more limbs crowded around their island of light, and Peach needed to keep moving the knife between different targets. One of the limb-beasts grew bold and lunged at the badger. She thrust the knife forward and the monster reeled back with a hiss of pain. Another overstretched itself and Peach walloped it in the face with her fist. With the monster pushed back into the rest of the crowd, she quickly picked up the flamethrower and gripped the trigger.

Illumination bloomed in the cave, threatening to burn their retinas. Shrieks erupted from the beasts as webbing and mutants alike caught fire. In the light of the flames he saw a dozen of the fearsome beasts retreat quickly into the cave, some that were ablaze lighting up more webs as they went. Others were curled up and burning in a heap, twitching in their death throes.

Algernon felt his leg come free, and he looked up to see Peach with the knife back in her hand and an intense glint in her eyes. She held the weapon out to him, which was now covered in guts. With trembling hands he reluctantly took it.

“We need to be quick, they know we’re here now,” she said.

He nodded again, and they continued into the earth. The path ahead was still lit by fiery carcasses and webbing, assuring them there weren’t more beasts ready to ambush them from the shadows. “D-do you think you scared them off?” he asked hopefully.

“For now. They won’t give up their lair without a fight.”

The fires petered out when the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern. Once again they were subject to the range of the flashlight, which barely penetrated the space before them. What it did expose was reflections not too far ahead of them. Algernon balked at the dark waters, instinctively backing up.

“Peach -”

“Shh!” She held up a paw and craned her head.

Straining his ears, he thought he heard something over the crackling of the embers. It sounded like... giggling?

“She’s close.” Peach moved forward, skirting closer to the water than he was comfortable with. Algernon followed after her, but at a much safer distance from the pool. The webs here had not caught fire, and instead of a haphazard mesh of strands they were arrayed in tapestries that crossed between walls and stalagmites, creating a silken labyrinth.

They wound their way through it, not encountering any more of the limb-beasts. Looking up he couldn’t even see the roof of the cavern, so they wouldn’t know if any were hiding on the ceiling anyways. Still, none made themselves known and what they heard before was becoming louder. As they drew closer to the source of the noise it became clearer that it was Harper’s snickering. He couldn’t fathom why she was doing that, but many things about the skunk made no sense.

Finally her form appeared out of the gloom. She was tangled up and suspended in one of the webs. From where her body was exposed it was clear that she was puffing up from the poison, and she wore a goofy smile that didn’t match being strung up for dinner. “Hey you two, glad you could join me!” she said gleefully.

Algernon looked at her with concern. “Is she... okay?”

“No. But limb-beast venom tends to make victims loopy.” Peach said.

“Not as loopy as you!” Harper squirmed in her wrappings. “I can’t seem to move my arms!” She laughed more at the absurdity of the situation.

Algernon put the knife to the strings holding her up and started cutting. It went through the webbing surprisingly easily.

“Watch where you swing that, buckaroo! My tail is my best feature!”

As he continued sawing around the skunk, skittering echoed around the cave. Peach glanced around with concern. “Hurry,” she entreated.

With most of the cords cut, Harper’s weight pulled the rest of the supports free and she tumbled to the floor. “You couldn’t have caught me?” she said, her bite momentarily coming back.

“Grab her and run,” Peach commanded.

Not knowing what to do with the knife, he dropped it and picked up her half-cocooned body. No sooner had he held her by her back and legs did fire once again erupt into the dark. Innumerable eyes and legs appeared around them, separated only by the burning walls of silk. With no other encouragement needed, Algernon began sprinting back the way they had come.

“It’s so beautiful!” Harper said dreamily at the flaming destruction around them.

Peach was hot on his tail as he ran, shooting occasional bursts of fire around them to ward off the limb-beasts that descended down the webs. So far the monsters were either burning alive or wary of the formidable weapon, but Algernon didn’t let that stop him from moving as fast as his legs could carry him.

They emerged from the maze of webs and passed the pools of water. Peach aimed back again and squeezed the trigger, but no more fire sprayed out. “We’re out of juice,” she called.

That gave him another burst of energy as fear started to fill him once more with adrenaline. With the inferno at their backs and the distant light at the end of the tunnel, all they could do was run and hope that they were fast enough. Slowly the entrance grew larger and larger, but it still seemed to be miles away.

Harper looked up at Algernon with uncharacteristic admiration. “You’re my hero, possum boy!” she said with a lopsided grin.

Coming from her, he couldn’t help but feel a bit concerned by that. But at the moment he had greater worries; the sound of pattering feet could be heard behind them.

With her longer strides Peach got ahead of Algernon and breached into the daylight first. The expression on her face when she looked back told him that danger was right at his tail. With the sunlight only feet ahead he yelled out, “Teddy, light it!”

As he broke out into the open the stick of dynamite sailed through the air into the cluster of propane tanks. The raccoon stood close by, jumping with joy and watching the explosives with rapt anticipation. Peach threw the flamethrower aside and grabbed Teddy by the scruff of his neck, shuttling him away from the imminent explosion.

Algernon peeked behind him briefly to see legs climb out of the cave, then turned his head in time for the blast to hit.

He fell forward with Harper in tow as the ground shook from the power of the blast. The ringing report of it drowned out all other senses. For a minute he could only lay as a pile of fur and bones against the ground.

Slowly he became aware of himself again. He propped himself up and regarded the cave entrance, only to find it was no longer there. A pile of boulders now stood in its place, surrounded by scorched earth and chunks of limb-beast.

“We totally need to do that again,” Harper implored, before breaking into another fit of giggles.

Teddy helping Algernon think better, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

The door to The Dragon opened slowly and a pair of rats peeked out. Senta and Sascha watched the cloud of dust covering the valley with trepidation. It was impossible to miss the concussive wave from the explosion on the far side of the valley, which caused the earth to tremble beneath them. From their past couple days of experience, it was not a good omen.

Senta looked over at her companion. “How much do you know about fixing steamers?”

The calico rat’s face filled with panic. “I’ve only tended living things, I’m fairly certain machines are much different!”

Before they could further discuss redistribution of roles, a shadow appeared out of the dust cloud. Peach’s silhouette was easily distinguishable, and as the eddies thinned they saw Teddy gripped by the scruff in one of her paws.

“You survived,” Senta stated.

The raccoon gave her two thumbs up. “The mission couldn’t have gone better!”

She looked up at the vortex of dust still clouding the valley. “I can see that,” she responded drily. Senta peered past the badger. “Please tell me you didn’t atomize the possum.”

On cue, manic laughter emerged from the haze. Algernon came trotting up to them with the bundle of webbing that contained Harper. The skunk’s head leaned out of the tangle at an uncomfortable angle, and she looked the happiest she’d ever been.

“Oh, you actually got her back! Good job, everyone! Although she looks a bit, ah, ripe,” Sascha said, noting the puffed-up patches of fur.

Algernon tried depositing Harper down at the foot of the vehicle, but the webbing was clinging to his outfit. He used his foot for leverage to pry himself free, but then that appendage was sticking to the mass.

“Looks like you’re just stuck with me!” she tittered, on the brink of another giggling fit.

Teddy had finally been let down and helped get the possum out of the mire. When he leaned back he found that now he was the one stuck. “Wow, it really is sticky! Just like glue!”

“Significantly more, by the looks of it. We’ll need to extract it from Harper carefully.” Sascha watched with increasing distress as Teddy got more and more of his fur caught in the webbing. “Very carefully.”

Slinking away from the rest of the group, Algernon walked towards the entrance of the steamer, but Senta was still standing in front of the doorway. She eyed him with displeasure, arms crossed. “Good job, I suppose. I thought for sure you doomed all of us.”

“Thanks?” He looked past her with yearning to the interior. “D-do you mind if I head in? I’m tired...”

“Don’t forget we are on a ticking clock, here. The Dragon needs to be repaired as quickly as possible, regardless of personal discomforts. You can rest when...” She trailed off as Algernon sensed a large presence behind him. “What do you want, Peach?”

“I haven’t slept in two days. Move.”

She pointed an accusing finger up at the badger. “Listen, we don’t have time for this. Help Al with what he needs and then you can -”

With one of her massive mitts Peach pushed Senta to the side and stepped up into the vehicle.

The rat looked about ready to blow a gasket, but upon hearing Sascha yelp she turned her attention away. The other rat was now caught in the pile of hybrids and webbing. Throwing her paws up in the air in frustration, she stormed over to the tangled crew.

Algernon used that opportunity to hop up into The Dragon and head to his quarters. He felt a little bad about leaving the clean up to the rest of them, but he thought he deserved a little bit of leeway for what he was able to accomplish that day, and the temptation of closing his eyes for even a minute was too great.

After resting, Algernon once again became busy with his duty of repairing The Dragon. He still needed several parts to complete the engine, so more scavenging would need to be done. It was quickly agreed that everyone would only leave the safety of the vehicle when in a group. Even though the limb-beasts’ den had collapsed, they didn’t want to take any chances.

Harper was still incapacitated, and the crew really needed the correct items this time, so Algernon spent the day collecting them with Teddy and Peach. He was the one identifying the parts they needed, Teddy carried the wrench and screwdriver to free them, and Peach was the muscle that watched their backs.

They first worked through the precursor vehicles around the lot. A usable steering wheel was the easiest thing to find on their list, but dismounting it from the steering column took an hour of effort, and it was large enough that they had to all carry it back to their steamer.

In order to get the internal mechanisms out they had to open up the automobiles’ hoods. Only Peach had the strength to leverage them open. While she held the bonnet on her shoulders, Algernon and Teddy searched the innards with flashlights and tossed out any salvageable gears and shafts they could find.

The serpentine belt ended up being the hardest thing to come by. In most of the vehicles they searched the belts had rotted away or were beginning to. Algernon also found out the hard way that it was difficult for his crewmates to differentiate between belts and hoses. One that Teddy yanked free doused them with stale gasoline, and Algernon was very thankful they weren’t carrying the lighter around.

The best one that they could find still had several notches in it. Algernon held it up and scrutinized it warily. “We should pick up some extra belts for when this one snaps.”

“Earlier I saw bands in the building we could use to wrap around these wheel thingies!” Teddy said, pointing at the spindles on the engine they were next to.

“Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”

“Well, they were bands, not belts.”

Algernon had Teddy lead them into the facility that stood before the cave. From the outside it gave him the creeps, but even more on the inside which was dim and overgrown with weeds, reminding him a bit too much of the tunnels. Teddy and Peach didn’t show any of the same trepidation, so he let them lead while he nervously swung his flashlight beam around.

They entered a room that had shelves of supplies that were surprisingly not picked clean. Teddy scrambled up one of them like a tremendous ladder and made a large racket that the possum worried would attract danger. But after several moments of nothing approaching them, he reasoned that if Harper and Teddy were unscathed after scavenging through this place previously, then there probably weren’t any limb-beasts about.

A small plastic tub dropped at their feet. Algernon popped it open and pinched one of the rubber bands contained within between two digits. “I... suppose these could work.” Not well, but they weren’t ripe with other options. “Are there more of these?” he called up to the raccoon.

In response, several more tubs of rubber bands spilled off from the shelf. With the amount of supplies raining around him, he considered the myriad other items surrounding them. It didn’t take Teddy any convincing to escort them around the storage room and show off the other items he found interesting.

Most of the items weren’t useful to them. The raccoon took them to a rack where dozens more flashlights were hanging, but with the several that had already been salvaged they hardly needed more. Teddy was also more than happy to pour a bucket of small bouncy balls down to the floor which ricocheted everywhere and bopped Algernon on the nose. Then there were the numerous precursor outfits that were big enough to use as blankets, all emblazoned with the word “Meramec” on them, which Teddy filled the aisles with.

It wasn’t until Teddy guided them to an aisle of wellness supplies that they were able to pick up helpful resources. There was a staggering amount of A&E branded items stocked, from bandages of every size to bottles of strange liquids that did not smell digestible. They took a few boxes of the bandages to be safe, but they hit the jackpot when Algernon noticed the display holding rolls of duct tape. Never having enough of that in his experience, they all looped some over their arms like life preservers.

After depositing their haul they returned to the building at Peach’s suggestion to pick up more cans of food. The badger led them past the room full of shelves and towards a more secluded section of the facility. The hybrids ended up in a room much more spartan than the main one, with concrete floors and no windows. Algernon’s flashlight alighted on a utilitarian storage unit that was ajar. Peach swung it the rest of the way open to reveal more sealed cans.

As the badger collected them, Algernon swept the light around the space. The pale remains of a precursor laid against the wall. Suddenly much more alert, he scanned the walls and ceiling, but no monsters made themselves known.

“D-do you think the limb-beasts killed the precursors here?”

Peach dropped the cans she scavenged with a thunk . “Precursors?”

He pointed at the skeleton.

“The humans?” She shook her head. “No. I’ve heard that the limb-beasts weren’t a threat when humans were around.”

“Oh.” That gave him a little reassurance that they weren’t under imminent danger. He glanced over at Peach, who was scowling more than normal at the bones. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve seen many carcasses. The human ones are always...” She thought for a moment. “They’re odd. No signs of struggle or predation. They just fell over and died.”

Teddy scratched at his head. “I heard that can happen if you fall hard enough. I haven’t had that happen yet, though.”

Peach let out a grunt, then went back to the storage cabinet.

After that they all returned to The Dragon and with enough materials to get started, Algernon set to work installing the new parts into the engine. As he worked, time once again started to pass faster, and the following few days blended together.

In that span, the rest of the crew were busy supporting his efforts or attending to their other priorities. With tools in hand, Teddy and Peach went out to find pipes that could actually be used in the engine. The pieces they brought back were thankfully made of steel, and by the hybrids’ sodden state he could guess what the pipes had probably been used for previously. Eventually Algernon was able to measure out lengths they needed so the two scavs could collect more precise components.

The two surprised Algernon on one of their return trips by bringing back the flamethrower that he’d built for the rescue mission. It was quite battered; they’d found it embedded in the side of one of the condemned vehicles, no doubt blasted there by the explosion. After Teddy and Peach brought back more cans of bug spray he spent some time replacing the canister bolted to the frame and confirmed that it was still functional. As to not burn down the vehicle, he requested Peach put it down in the bathhouse so any errant fires could be put out quickly.

Siegbert, who had been staying down there for days, was finally up and about. The large rat was there for their meals, but still had painful looking burns that colored his front red and pink from where his fur burned off. He looked quite miserable, but his state was better than that of their late captain.

On the other hand, Algernon hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Harper since her rescue. Sascha mentioned that he’d attended to her when she was first brought in to reduce the swelling from the poison. According to the rat, the poison drained out with enough pressure. The analogy Sascha used of squeezing a lemon of its juices made him squirm. He assured Algernon that she had survived the process, but needed to rest up for some days.

With the two injured crewmates safe from death’s door, Sascha went out with Teddy and Peach to acquire more food provisions. Wanting to save the remaining canned food for any future emergencies, the rat enthusiastically brought back the charred legs of the limb-beasts that they could find. No one else on the crew was nearly as excited to eat the macabre appendage. After Sascha didn’t keel over from eating his, the others reluctantly consumed theirs. It tasted enough like roach that it was palatable. Algernon found that it was incredibly chewy.

Throughout the duration of the repairs, Senta kept herself busy organizing all of the salvage the rest were bringing in. Some of the knick-knacks that had been gathered turned out to be actually useful, including a viewing device that magnified objects in the distance considerably. It had two sightglasses that clearly were meant to fit over the face of a precursor, but for hybrids it allowed two to use it at once.

Any plates and beams of suitable size were lashed to the ceiling or stuffed away in the corners of the main hall. They would be used once The Dragon was up and running again, to repair the wheelhouse while they were on the road. In between fetching parts, Algernon spied Senta hefting a large metal support up to the stores above them using a pulley fashioned from spare motor wheels. He appreciated the ingenuity on display, but when she caught him staring, her expression turned sour. As he scurried back to the engine, he couldn’t put his finger on why she was suddenly disapproving of him.

By the end of the second night Algernon’s fixes were nearly complete, and he took a long soak under the faucet of the bathhouse to blast away all of his soreness with heat. Exhausted, he slipped into his clean change of clothes and climbed the stairs up to the main hall. To his chagrin, Teddy was sitting at the table there, and got to his feet when the possum appeared.

“Al! Harper wants to see you!” Teddy said eagerly.

Algernon eyed the raccoon blearily. “What for?”

“She says it’s a special surprise!”
“Teddy, I -” He thought for a moment, and realized that Harper would probably hunt him down and bedevil him even more if he didn’t do what she wanted. Resigned, he replied, “Alright.”

He wandered over to her quarters and peeked in from outside. He saw a bunk and piles of clutter, but she wasn’t visible from what he could see.

“Harper?” he called out.

“Come on in, Al!” she replied from deeper inside.

The sing-songy tone of her voice was threatening in a way that Algernon couldn’t place his finger on. Regardless, he stepped over the threshold into her room. He finally saw Harper on the other end of the quarters. She was perched on the edge of another cot, with what he could only interpret as an impish smile. Strangely, there was almost a degree of nervousness in her posture.

“So, you’re the one who bailed me out, huh?” she broached.

Algernon stood anxiously before her. He knew this must be a trap of some kind, but he didn’t know how to avoid it. “W-well, it was a group effort, really. Peach did most of -”

She snickered. “From what Teddy told me, you were the reason the crew came after me in the first place. There was also mention of a spectacular weapon that belched fire!”

Caught between offering thanks or simply brushing off the praise, what came out of his mouth instead was, “Oh.”

“I also heard that you were quite brave .” The last word came out almost as a purr.

His ears started to pull back, and he started to come back to full alertness. This was not normal behavior from the skunk. She didn’t look inflamed anymore, but he wasn’t sure if there could still be some venom in her system. “Are... Are you sure you’re okay?”

Harper got to her feet and sauntered over to him. The way her tail swayed as she approached was also new, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. His mind was screaming at him to turn and run, but his body was rooted in place. “I’m more than fine now, thanks to you!”

“I, uh... I think Sascha was the one who, uh, was tending to you.”

She was now standing over Algernon, leering down at him. “No need to be shy!” The possum let out a squeak as her tail wrapped around his back. “Because the one who saved me deserves a reward!”

It was only then that he understood what she was insinuating. His eyes grew wide. Shakily backing up, he said, “Harper, I-I don’t think that -” She grabbed the end of her tail, trapping him in its embrace and pulling the possum towards her. “Um, I-I uh... Harper? I... D-don’t you... uh...”

“Aw, you’re so easy to fluster!” She brought a finger up under his muzzle, tilting his head up to her. “I like that about you.”

“W-well, uh... I... I... are you, uh... I-I’m not... sure, Harper?” Algernon squirmed in her grasp.

Looking up into the skunk’s eyes he saw the earnest joy at his distressed awkwardness turn to annoyance as a massive THUD shook the floor of the vehicle. She pulled him to the side as a figure appeared in the doorway, blocking the light. “What do you want?” Harper spit out, the bite back in her voice.

“Let him go.” It was Peach. “He clearly doesn’t want to be here.”

She pulled Algernon closer to herself, who was trembling in panic. “We were doing fine until you interrupted!” the skunk growled. “Get your ass out of here!”

The badger breathed out slowly. “It reeks in here.”

Harper let go of her tail, and Algernon tumbled out of her grasp. He saw the skunk bare her teeth and raise her hackles at Peach, and he quickly scampered out of the way if a fight was about to ensue. She looked ready to maul something, but instead of lunging she started stomping her foot and screwed her eyes shut in anger. “Why doesn’t anyone like me?!” she screeched.

Turning away from them, she spent her energy punching into the cot. Algernon continued backing away from the furious skunk. Peach moved out of the doorframe so that he could squeeze past, while she remained to keep an eye on Harper.

While passing through the main room, Teddy called out, “So how did the talk go?” His head was running too fast for him to form a coherent response, so Algernon just breezed past him and ascended up to his quarters. He immediately hopped into his bed and curled up. Staying in that position for several minutes didn’t stop his heart from racing.

Eventually Peach entered their quarters. Instead of laying down, she picked up one of the knives from her weapon rack and a whetstone. Sitting down in the corner she began to deliberately sharpen it. Algernon watched her for a while. She didn’t acknowledge him, just filled the air with the sound of metal against stone.

“Th-thanks for, uh... yeah...” he let out meekly.

“Mhm,” she murmured, not looking up from the blade.

He buried his head further into the mattress. In the following silence he tried to wrestle with the thoughts in his head which were careening out of control. With how much Harper had been picking on him during his tenure on the crew, he thought for certain that she just saw him as a way to entertain herself. What she was doing with him in her quarters, he thought for certain was another manifestation of that. But the way she was upset seemed too genuine for her advances to be fake.

And that’s what made him profoundly uncomfortable right now. Perhaps she was feeling so passionate because of her near-death experience, but regardless of the why, Algernon knew that he did not see her in nearly the same light. If he was being honest with himself, he’d never even thought about those types of feelings because of how hectic life was on The Providence. It was even more confusing to him with how the two of them were different species; he hadn’t even considered that a possibility.

Even though his perception of Harper was more on the negative side, Algernon still couldn’t help but feel bad for her. The hurt when she let him go free seemed to be raw. “Maybe... it w-was a bit mean to say that it... smelled in her room. Especially given her... uh, species,” he said.

Peach continued to focus on her weapon, but replied, “I have the nose of a hunter. To hunters, fear is the most potent scent. That’s what I smelled down there.”

“O-oh...” If that was the case, then that definitely was not coming from Harper. Although that meant what Peach said to the skunk likely wasn’t a slight against her, Algernon still felt the need to defend her in some way. “If she’s looking for... th-that kind of relationship, then perhaps Teddy... would want to? He... seemed really concerned about Harper when she was captured. They’re together quite often, and they share the same room, so they must get along well enough!”

Peach stopped what she was doing and stared up at him. “They’re siblings.”

He lifted his head up to look at her. Peach’s face betrayed no joking or deceit. “Wh-what? How is that p-possible?”

“Their mother is a raccoon and their father is a skunk,” she said, as if that cleared everything up.

Algernon’s eyes glazed over as he tried to process what she was telling him. “How... How does that even work?!”

Peach’s expression grew embarrassed. “I’m not explaining that.” She went back to sharpening her knife to distract herself.

While on The Providence, Algernon had only heard of same-species pairings. Romantic couples were something that was rarely talked about since joeys were reared as a collective and his parents were just everyone that raised him, but it was just assumed that hybrids could only have offspring with like species.

The idea of Teddy and Harper being related broke his view of reality. In order to keep the pieces of his mind intact, he came to the conclusion that the precursor genes in all hybrids are what allowed such cases to happen.

He considered Peach again, who was lost in the upkeep of her weapon. “Are you... their sibling, too?”

She snorted. “No.” Algernon thought that’s all she was going to say, but she set the whetstone down and continued. “Their parents... helped when I was in need. They took care of me for a time. In return, I’ve kept Teddy and Harper safe.”

His mind drew up an unfortunate assumption. “Wh-what happened to them? Their parents, I mean.”

Thankfully his worries were unfounded. “Likely still around somewhere,” Peach replied. “For scavs, it is a great honor for children to start their own crew. Very few live long enough to see them grow that old.”

He was relieved that the two mischievous crewmates didn’t have a tragic upbringing, but it begged a question that he was hesitant to ask. “... What happens when the parents d-don’t make it?”

Peach shrugged. “The children become orphans. If they’re lucky, a kind scav will let them join their crew.”

She got up and put away her implements, signaling the conversation was over. While Peach blew out the lantern and settled down on her mat, Algernon couldn’t help but think of the unsaid implication of what she said; For those less fortunate, there were worse fates in the wilderness than the one he was enduring.

After the days of fixes, it was finally time to fire up the boiler. It was full of kindling and Algernon held a packet of matches ready to light it, but fear kept him from doing so. The crew had swept the engine room as clean as they were able to. Despite their diligence, there wasn’t a guarantee all of the black powder had been cleared.

Many of the repairs he’d made were also dubious, at best. Rolls of duct tape had been used to cover over gaps in the pipes. The steering wheel was in its housing at an angle. In addition to the serpentine belt around the engine’s castings, several rubber bands had also been stretched around them as a ratchet attempt to add extra redundancy. A constant voice in the back of his head warned that at the slightest jostle everything would come undone.

Before he could lose his nerve, Algernon lit the match. He said one more quick, silent prayer before tossing it into the firebox and diving for cover.

After nothing exploded in the following few seconds he lifted his paws from his head. The crackling of flames was the only thing he heard. Getting to his feet he peeked inside the boiler, where the fire was beginning to ebb. He pushed some more branches inside to feed it, shut the load door, and let out an immense sigh of relief.

He exited the engine room to the concerned faces of the rest of the crew. “It’s, ah... It’s working so far!” he assured them.

Most of the scavs also seemed relieved that the first step had been a success. Only Teddy seemed a little disappointed there wasn’t another blast.

“See, I told you that was nothing to worry about!” Harper said to the group. Algernon averted his eyes from her, still unsettled from what happened between them the previous night.

“Yes, well, this is the one positive thing that has happened in the past week,” Senta commented. “Now, when will The Dragon be ready to depart?”

“I-It will take a couple hours to warm up,” Algernon said.

The rat didn’t look pleased. “It is what it is. With the full crew here, we might as well move on to other important matters.”

She left a gap open for a response. “... Such as?” Peach eventually offered.

Seemingly self-satisfied, Senta adjusted the glasses on her muzzle. “With Frieda gone, there is the position of captain to be considered. And, given everyone’s roles in this group, I think it is most fitting that I assume that burden.”

The other rats seemed fine with that suggestion, but it only took a second before objections were raised. “Hang on, who gave you permission to be leader?” Harper complained.

“Even when Frieda was captain I had been organizing and keeping the crew running, I’d hardly be doing anything that I haven’t already been doing,” she said, putting a paw on her chest. “I also possess the intellect to navigate us out of more trouble. It is only logical that I take over.”

“But, this isn’t how Frieda would have done things! Everyone got a say!”

“Yes, which Frieda promptly ignored. What is it you want, democracy?”

Harper opened her maw to further contest Senta, but hesitated. “What even is a demo crazy? You’re trying to take advantage of us with your big words!”

“It means having a vote, Harper,” the rat said with waning patience.

“Yes! We deserve a vote!”

“But you’ll just -” Senta shook her head. “Fine. All in favor of me as captain?”

All of the rats, including Senta, raised their paws.

“Alright then, three votes. All in favor of... Harper as captain?”

“Who said I wanted to vote for myself?” the skunk snapped. “I nominate Al as captain!”

The rat’s eyes bulged in surprise. Algernon, who was idly listening to the proceedings, was shocked back to attention. “What?” He took in the room and saw that Harper, Teddy and Peach all had their paws raised. Before he could form a reply, Harper walked over, grabbed his wrist and also held it up. “H-hey, wait a minute!”

Senta’s gaze was positively icy. “This is a farce! Al doesn’t have the backbone to lead, nor does he even want to!”

“Y-yeah! I don’t think I-I would eeeek !” Harper twisted his arm painfully. “I m-mean, I could do that, potentially. If that’s wh-what people wanted.”

“Makes sense to me,” Peach said. “He saved us multiple times and has been our only hope of survival, while others have sat on their tails.”

“Four to three!” Harper fixed Senta with a smug grin.

The pale rat was grinding her teeth and looked set to lash out until Sascha gently grabbed her shoulder. “I see how it is,” she managed to get out. “Alright, captain , what would you have us do?”

Algernon had only just managed to wrench his paw free from Harper’s grasp, and looked at the rest of the crew in abject horror at the position they’d put him in, never expecting to be in it his entire life. “W-well, I, uh... I think... you’re all d-doing... good jobs! I-In the work that... you’re... doing.” He glanced over Senta, who was glaring daggers at him. “I-I would be... happy! For you to, uh... continue to help in delegating... the crew’s tasks, and...” He broke off, realizing he had run out of words to say. His ears started twitching in anxiety.

“What should be our course of action to evade the pursuers that Seb is sending our way?” Senta pointedly asked.

“S-so, uh... How many days has it been? Since we, uh, left Seb’s.”

“Ten,” she supplied.

Teddy scratched his head. “Doesn’t that mean they would have already gotten to us?”

“Time, uh, d-doesn’t work that way. If Seb is honest t-to his word, his gang would still be a few days away,” Algernon explained. He brought a finger to his mouth and quickly thought through their predicament. “I th-think our best course of action is still the one that Frieda suggested. Since we still have -”

Growing in confidence, he signalled for the crew to wait a minute as he bounded up to the wheelhouse. He returned with the precursor artifact in hand, looking down at the scavs from the second story gantry. “We still have the master key. With it, we have the power to cleanse the world of sc - of evil and bring peace with a single key turn!” he exclaimed.

Happy with his little speech, he gauged the reactions of the crew. They all looked up at him with blank expressions. “Um, th-the leaders of the Clergy also desperately want th-this, so... uh, we can still seek clemency from th-them if we offer the master key to them.”

The scavs looked persuaded at the very least, if not discouraged by the reminder of their situation. Senta’s eyes bore into him. “And you’re sure that is our best option?”

With as much certainty as he could muster he replied, “Yes.”

The rat continued to stare him down for several long seconds, before breaking her gaze and turning to the rest of them. “You heard him! Rest up for the next hour, then prepare for a swift departure down The Devil’s Road! It’s not going to travel itself!”

At her command the meeting was dismissed, and the scavs wandered back into the rest of the vehicle. Realizing that he was free from their scrutiny, Algernon dipped into the bridge and with shaking hands deposited the master key back to its hiding place. He found himself hyperventilating as he considered the mantle that seemed to have been bestowed upon him by mistake. Finding it the best avenue to temporarily escape his beating heart and the responsibility given him, he fainted.

Harper attempting to be flirtatious (it's not working), by Foxena.

Bonus image of Harper's crash out afterwards, by ScottyArtz.

Chapter Text

Algernon quickly came to realize that he didn’t appreciate the work Frieda was doing when she was captain. While he had simply worked as an engineer making sure that The Dragon held itself together, he didn’t notice the vehicle‘s movement any more than he did when he lived on The Providence. The steamer went from point A to point B, and he only needed to worry about it breaking down along the way.

He had quite forgotten that someone needed to actually steer the vehicle. It turned out that while Frieda was locked away in the wheelhouse for most of their journey, that’s what she was doing. At first he had considered handing that duty off to Senta, who was more than eager to commandeer the wheel, but thought it might look better if the captain was the one to be the helmsman. Algernon still wasn’t entirely sure what being the newly appointed captain meant he should be doing, but if this was what Frieda did, so would he.

It turned out that steering a steamer was difficult. Even though he saw firsthand how the infrastructure the precursors left behind was crumbling, he imagined that the roads would be straightforward to travel. Algernon was confused at first with the speed Siegbert had set The Dragon to since it was quite slow. Navigating out of the valley, even with how cumbersome the steering wheel was and with the breeze flowing directly through the missing windshield into the cabin, didn’t pose too much of a challenge to the possum. It was once they turned back on to The Devil’s Road that obstacles started to present themselves.

The main road was littered with debris. Algernon often had to frantically turn the wheel to veer out of the way of loose asphalt, fallen road signs and abandoned vehicles. The meandering speed made a lot more sense considering he would have rear-ended several of the sitting vehicles otherwise.

He also felt bad about jostling the crew whenever he ran over bumps and holes in the concrete. Although most of the other hybrids didn't pay him mind, whenever Senta came in to check on him there was judgment in her gaze. Harper, who for some reason rappelled off the side of The Dragon during their stints of travel, occasionally swung over to the open side of the cabin to heckle him. Whereas he was sure Senta preferred a smoother ride, the skunk insisted that he hit more potholes to make the drive more exciting.

Avoiding other steamers on the roads proved to be another point of contention amongst the crew. The debris made some stretches of road bottlenecks that only one vehicle could pass through at a time. Senta had left the sightglass they’d found in the wheelhouse which allowed Algernon to determine if there were potential conflicts ahead at these intersections, and in every case where a vehicle was approaching from the other direction he commanded Siegbert to shift down a gear to give them enough time to pass. Senta and Harper were in agreement that he should show a bit more dominance against the other scav gangs. Given his current anxiety levels trying to keep the vehicle on the road, it seemed like it was going to be a struggle for him to not pass out again when antagonizing a rival group.

Whether or not he desired to engage in conflicts like that, Algernon didn’t have a choice. As The Dragon approached another section of The Devil’s Road that thinned, he spotted a steamer approaching from the other end. He was about to yell to Siegbert to slow them down again, before a detail on the other vehicle caught his eye; they were flying a black pennant. They were on the hunt for salvage, and his crew was their prey.

Panicked, he went with his first instinct: Run. “I-Increase speed! Increase speed!” he yelled to the engine room.

He felt The Dragon pull forward underneath him. Quickly glancing through the sightglass again Algernon saw a turret much like the one atop their own steamer rotate towards them. Looking down at the bottleneck in the road, he tried to determine whether or not they would hit it before the other gang did and fly past them. It was difficult to say.

Algernon scampered back behind the wheel to commandeer it. In his periphery he saw Harper poke her head in from the exterior. “Those ones ahead aren’t friendly,” she commented. “So don’t, like, rush directly at them.”

His teeth were grit and he was too scared to answer, so Harper blew him a raspberry and ducked back. With his eyes set on the choke in the road and trying to estimate the distance between it and the approaching vehicle, Algernon’s knees started to tremble. They weren’t going to make it first.

Over the roar of The Dragon’s engine and the wind a metallic thunk drew his attention. A long nail was now embedded in the deck in front of him. When he realized that it had come from their attackers, Algernon immediately ducked down. He squealed in terror as another nail fired from the other turret and embedded into the wheel above his head.

He crawled to the side of the wheel to check the situation. His eyes widened when he saw that The Dragon had angled towards the sidewalk. As fast as he could Algernon spun the steering wheel to correct their course. Their steamer veered towards the other one, which was in the middle of the bottleneck.

More nails punctured the metal plates of the floor. Algernon spun the wheel the other way to counteract their movement, but impact was inevitable. He put his back to the wheel and braced.

The Dragon shuddered as it fishtailed into the other vehicle. Screeching metal and sparks filled the cabin. The colossal THUD of a vehicle impacting the concrete sounded. He expected to be flung bodily into the wall, but nothing happened.

He opened his eyes and turned forward. Only an open road was ahead of them. Activity in the rest of their steamer passed through the walls into the wheelhouse, and shortly the door was flung open. Senta entered and saw him cowering behind the wheel. She eyed him curiously, but for once didn’t seem upset with him.

“Siegbert, slow us down,” she commanded through the vent in the floor. She then walked towards the front of the cabin, noting the nails shot through the floor, then sticking her head out the hole in the room to look behind them down the road. Senta pulled her head back in and gave Algernon an appraising stare. “Good job,” she stated begrudgingly.

His heart was still hammering as he gaped at the rat. “Wh-what happened?”

“When you smashed into the other vehicle, you rocked it enough to capsize it. Would you like to turn around to scavenge from it?”

Algernon shook his head, still stunned. He wanted to get as far away from that vehicle as possible.

Harper’s gleeful visage popped back in from the outside. “That was epic! Our previous captain never did anything as exciting as that!”

The possum idly thought that if the skunk had been hanging on the other side of the rig, then she would have become a smear when their two vehicles collided. With shaking legs he stood up. He’d had enough captaining for the day. “I-I think that... I mean, you are n-now in charge of the wheel,” he told Senta.

Her eyes lit up and she regarded the station hungrily. “Of course.”

In his opinion, operations went a lot smoother once Senta was at the helm. Without that duty to occupy his full attention, Algernon was able to attend to the tasks he was more comfortable doing.

With how close the enemy gang had been to perforating him, he felt it was high time to work on reconstructing the wheelhouse. Over the course of the day he was able to construct a waist-high barrier around the edge of the room. It wasn’t much, but it offered a modicum of protection and at least meant he wouldn’t accidentally fall off the side of the steamer.

When they turned off at another watering hole Algernon inspected the damage he’d caused to the side of The Dragon. On the outside there were immense scrapes on the metal body, but only subtle dents on the interior walls. He figured it might have caused damage to the wallspace, but none of the rats made any comment on the matter. It was just another addition to the tapestry of dents making up the rig.

During the late afternoon he heard the roar of another engine approaching theirs from behind. Before Algernon could even take a look through the gap in the cabin he heard the report of compressed air from their turret. The drone of the other vehicle quickly faded away.

Shortly after Peach opened the door to the cabin. “More scavs were gunning for us,” she noted.

“Oh, uh, th-thanks for taking care of that,” he said, bewildered that they had been targeted twice in the same day.

The badger ducked out and closed the door behind her. Algernon looked to Senta, who was still manning the wheel, but she didn’t seem to be much fazed.

“Do... Do you think those were from Seb?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “They wouldn’t be so easily cowed if they were, and they wouldn’t just send one steamer either. We saw very little resistance on the approach to Seb’s; this is more expected.”

Rattled by the attacks, Algernon made sure to keep a better eye on their surroundings as he worked. He checked the sightglass whenever another rig appeared on the horizon, but the ones they passed as evening bloomed only flew green or orange flags. By the time they settled for the night there weren’t any other incidents.

His obsessive checking of the road ahead was what made him the first to see the strange group at the field ahead. There were several rigs parked at the side of the road and hybrids were congregating around a collection of fabric pavilions. A technicolor banner with a circular symbol with lines running through it flapped in the wind.

“Senta, what does a rainbow flag mean?”

The pale rat gave him a confused look from over the top of the wheel. Indicating that he take the helm, they swapped places so she could peer through the sightglass. “I haven’t seen one like this before, but all of the steamers are flying green. It appears to be some sort of temporary trading post,” she said, looking back at him.

He pursed his lips. “Could it be a trap?”

She raised a brow. “Scavs take banners very seriously. No one would fly a green pennant to trick someone. That would be unseemly.”

Once again Algernon doubted bandits would care about that kind of frivolity, but he decided to trust Senta’s instincts on this. Remembering how excited the crew had been arriving at Seb’s, he reasoned they could do with a morale boost after the week they’d gone through. “Let’s take a brief stop, then.”

The rat nodded. “It would be good to stretch our legs for a bit.”

He called down to Siegbert to switch off the power. As The Dragon approached the side of the field he turned the vehicle alongside the other ones, and Senta pulled the brakes.

The whole crew was gathered in the main hall as Algernon exited the wheelhouse. “Alright everyone, there’s a small trading post here. We’re not staying too long so don’t wander off, and if you want to get something...” He realized that he wasn’t sure how that even worked with scavs; the idea of them buying something instead of just stealing it was foreign to him.

“Notify the captain or I if there’s something you want, and we’ll consider trading for it,” Senta added.

The scavs grunted in affirmation. Peach and Siegbert remained behind to keep watch over The Dragon, while the rest exited the vehicle. After closing the hatch behind them, the music drifting on the breeze immediately caught their attention. Algernon didn’t know what type of instrument was making the ethereal sounds, but it did its job of mesmerizing them and drawing them towards the stalls.

Whereas Seb’s was a madhouse, there was an almost lethargic air surrounding the trading post. Several other hybrid groups were milling about but none were acting rowdy, just perusing the wares calmly. Part of the relaxed atmosphere likely had to do with said wares; As Algernon’s crew drew near the fragrance of incense drifted towards them as well as other exotic scents.

Some sort of spices were displayed in jars at the nearest stand, where some of the smells were coming from. Nearby were candles, but of sizes and colors that he hadn’t seen before. These too were in specially-made glass jars. Harper lifted the lid on one to sniff it, and immediately sneezed at the overpowering scent.

Other strange items were scattered around the stalls. A group of moles were perusing a basket of translucent rocks. At another stand were vials of vibrant powders. Yet more had pins and patches of the same circular symbol that flapped above the central pavilion. Algernon’s crew quickly lost themselves in the maze of oddities.

Senta grabbed his sleeve. “We should find the leaders of this caravan,” she said to him.

“Wh-what for?”

“We’ve never been out this far, it would be beneficial to have a map of the region. I doubt we’d be able to find one amidst all of the other useless junk on display.”

Algernon nodded. Anything that would help them not get caught up in any more trouble would be advantageous.

They walked over to the main pavilion, where the entrancing music was loudest. Fabrics and bizarre outfits were on its outskirts and became denser the farther in they went. They had to brush them away in order to enter into the inner sanctum.

Inside was a low-lit, hazy den. Illumination came from more novelty candles, their flowery fragrances overwhelming, making his head swim. More smoke came from the center, drifting from a pipe held in a rabbit’s mouth. The lagomorph was lounging on a pile of cushions and was dressed in the same kitschy clothing hung on the racks surrounding them. A large hybrid, a doe, lay behind the rabbit. She cradled a stringed instrument in her long arms, plucking at it with hooves.

Algernon and Senta stopped before the circle of cushions. It took a minute for the rabbit to notice them, but when he did his mouth drew up into a lazy smile. The rabbit plucked the pipe out of his mouth and blew smoke out the corner of his lips. “Well now, you must be new journeymen ‘round here! What can I do ya for?”

“We’re looking for a map of the area, are you offering any?” Senta asked.

The rabbit took another puff from his pipe. “Nah, we don’t got no maps, right Cynthie?”

The deer hummed in response, not breaking from her music.

“Right on. Maps aren’t our vibe, they’re too structured. Sometimes you just gotta go in the direction that feels right, ya hear?”

Senta crossed her arms, clearly irritated by the answer. “Are you at least familiar with the area?”

The rabbit nodded. “F’miliar enough, ‘least with the land ‘round Uranus.”

“And Uranus is...?” she broached.

Algernon heard a cackle of laughter nearby. He looked over and saw that Harper and Teddy were scouring through some of the clothes at the fringes of the pavilion. The skunk was finding something hilarious, but he wasn’t sure what.

“It’s a town a few hours down the road from here,” the rabbit said. His eyes dilated as he realized something. “Say, I bet they have one of them maps, if you’re wantin’ for one!”

The rat muttered something under her breath that sounded like an insult of some kind. Out loud she asked, “Who runs the settlement?”

Scratching his cheek fluff, he replied, “They’re independent I think, but them folks from the Path have started investin’ in the operations.”

Senta turned without any kind of thanks. She flicked her tail at Algernon to follow her to the side of the space. “It would be good to get a map from this settlement, but they’ll have guards watching who comes and goes,” she said quietly once they were out of earshot.

“Like the one at Seb’s?” he said.

“Yes. I’ve never heard of the Path before. That probably means they aren’t associated with Seb, but there’s still no guarantee there won’t be those who would be interested in us.”

Algernon recalled how the gatekeepers at Seb’s checked that their crew was on the guestlist, so to say. If the ones at this settlement knew that Seb was after them, he imagined that could turn ugly. “Is it even p-possible that the hybrids running that place would know who we are? To the ones here, we’re just some more travelers.”

“The ones here have their heads in the clouds. Also, this isn’t a major settlement; Most of them have radios to communicate with other towns. Seb has one. If he’s serious about ending us he’d probably broadcast our bounty.”

“M-maybe we should just go around? It sounds too risky.”

“The map isn’t the only reason to go. I want to see if we actually need to be running. If they have a bounty board, we can check.”

That’s something Algernon hadn’t considered. He didn’t remember his conversation with Seb at all due to his inebriation at the time, so the only proof that they were being hunted was Frieda’s word. “If you d-didn’t believe we were in trouble, why did you rush us to repair The Dragon?”

She fixed him with a cold glare. “Because I’m not stupid. Even if there’s a small chance what Frieda said is true, we need to expect the worst. But if it turns out there is no need to live on the run, I would like to know. So let’s find a way to slip inside this settlement.”

“Can we try these on?” Teddy called out on the other end of the pavilion. He was holding a garish outfit with lots of tassels on it.

The rabbit craned his neck over to the raccoon. “Uh, yeah! They’re there to be worn. S’long as you barter for it before taking it with you.”

Algernon and Senta looked at each other. The rat let out an exasperated sigh. “I suppose that is an option...”

Trading some of their spare flashlights and other nicknacks, the crew procured enough costumes from the caravan for all of them. Sascha was especially excited about the plan and insisted they get a veritable wardrobe of outfits in order to give them options to work with.

Seeing the energy the calico rat had, Algernon let him do his thing after they took the bundles back to The Belching Dragon. Sascha instructed Teddy to bring a vial of reddish substance down to the bathhouse, and sent a befuddled Peach down after him when she came in to see what the commotion was about. Meanwhile, the rat tore through the pile of clothes and separated pieces out for his fellow rodents.

Algernon picked through the fabrics, not really knowing what he was meant to be doing. His ears fluttered when he heard someone approach. He turned and saw Harper behind him, flashing one of her mischievous smiles.

“You know, I still need to reward you for rescuing me,” she said with mock innocence.

His eyes bulged. “I-I really don’t... This isn’t th-the time to -”

“Oh no, you have it wrong! Your outfit, it’s not very captainy. I’ll help you fix that.”

The next half hour was a whirlwind as Harper pulled him into numerous clothes in order to achieve some sort of style. She had no concept of personal space as she slipped him in and out of the various articles, but he kept reminding himself that it could be worse, especially considering his last encounter with her.

When she was done, Algernon looked at himself in a plastic mirror they had scavenged from the valley. Or at least, he tried to. He picked at the eyepatch Harper secured over his right eye. “I-I can’t see very well in this...”

She batted away his hand. “It makes you look like a leader. If you’ve lost an eye, people will respect you more!”

Not wanting to actually lose an eye, he let the matter rest. He looked over himself with his left eye. The tricorn hat, flamboyant jacket and buckled pants made him look like a fop. His outfit looked a lot like Frieda’s now that he thought about it, which is why he didn’t voice his opinion that it made him look ridiculous.

The other scavs had also put on various clothes to mask their appearance. Harper was now wearing a vest festooned with tassels and a bandana around the top of her head. The getup made her look like the owners of the caravan, but without any of the charm.

Senta was standing at the side looking sullen in the vibrant cloak she had been put in. “Sascha, you couldn’t have made us more conspicuous if you tried.”

The calico rat grinned, wearing his own multi-colored attire. “That’s the point! Bounty hunters will be looking for hybrids trying to stay hidden, so they won’t pay us any mind if we look like this!”

She looked to the ceiling, vexed. “We’re doomed. They’ll find us, and we’ll all look like clowns as we’re beaten to death.”

A series of bangs and heavy footsteps from below drew their attention. “Harper!” the voice of Peach bellowed up to them.

The skunk grimaced. “I didn’t even do anything this time, what is she -”

When Peach rose up from the stairs, Harper broke down in hysterics. The badger’s fur was now a reddish-pink from ear to heel. She stomped towards the skunk.

“No! No, ahaha!” Harper got out between peals of laughter. “I’m not responsible!”

Peach pulled the skunk off her feet by the front of her shirt. “You’re the one who told Teddy to put dye in the tender, aren’t you?” she growled.

Harper was still grinning ear to ear in the badger’s grip. “I couldn’t have, I was out here dressing Al! Sascha is the one in charge of disguises!”

She whipped her head over to the rat, who was smiling sheepishly over at her. Peach dropped the skunk and strode over to him. “I ought to pulverize you,” she threatened, looming over him.

Sascha cowered away from her. “This was the best I could come up with, honest!” he said, waving his hands in front of him. “Intimidation is your most recognizable feature, so we needed to hide it!”

Slowly the anger left her body, leaving behind discomfort. Peach looked at her pink paws with disdain, then glimpsed her reflection in the mirror. She stared deeply at it as though trying to ascertain its meaning. “This is unbearable.”

Still grinning madly and shaking her head, Harper patted her on the arm. “Don’t worry, I’m sure the coloring will wash out.”

Algernon looked over at Sascha, who wore a nervous expression. “Th-the dye, it’s not permanent, right?” he whispered.

The rat looked at him mortified. “I don’t know what was on the label, I can’t read!”

For Sascha’s continued wellbeing, he hoped it was the temporary kind. “A-anyways, everyone back to their stations! We should be able to make it to the settlement by nightfall!”

Peach distraught at her disguise, by Foxena.

Chapter Text

Dusk was slipping over the sky, making the approaching settlement even more distinct against the horizon. Algernon thought that Seb’s was opulent with all of its electricity and extravagance, but that fortress didn't hold a candle to the spectacle painting the night sky above them. Pulses of color pierced the dark and waved hypnotically above the treeline. Adding to the show, fireworks sizzled into the air and burst into flower-like blooms. Suffusing it all were thrumming waves of sound that could be felt deep in the hybrids’ chests.

Most of the crew stood atop the roof of The Dragon, staring in awe at the display. Teddy reached up with his paws as if he could catch the exploding balls of light. The others, open-mouthed wonder at the shimmering colors reflected in their eyes. None had even imagined a sky like the one dancing above them.

The trees parted ahead, revealing the front gate to the complex. A spartan wall separated the extravagance from the outside world, the entrance a simple gate with lights targeted on the vehicles coming in. The Dragon pulled into the line of steamers awaiting entry.

At the sight of the expected protections, Algernon closed his mouth and tried to compose himself as captain. In the foppish outfit and eyepatch that Harper had chosen for him, it almost made it harder for him to put on the presence of what the role demanded of him. Algernon turned to his crew and looked them down with his one uncovered eye. “Alright everyone, now that w-we’re approaching Uranus -”

Harper couldn't stifle the giggling escaping her mouth. “I still can't believe that's what the town is called!”

He furrowed his brow in confusion. “I-I don’t see what’s wrong with - Anyways, I think everyone should head below deck. I'll h-handle the security check.”

Taking one last look at the canvas of lights above, the rest of the crew descended through the hatch. The thud of its closing left Algernon to face the approaching gate alone as the procession of vehicles inches forward. This was the make or break moment, where either they were immediately apprehended due to having a bounty, or they were simply let in. Algernon felt tremors down to the tip of his tail, no matter how hard he tried to stifle them.

All at once the lights enveloped him. His shaking ceased, replaced with paralyzing fear. He was sure he would pass out. Fighting against that urge, he raised his hands to try and block out the blinding whiteness, but still it removed his vision.

“Are you the captain of this vessel?” A voice called down to him.

It was impossible to place where the voice had come from. His mouth felt like sandpaper. “Y-yes, I am,” he croaked out.

There was a deafening pause. “Unusual choice,” he heard the voice eventually comment. “State your name and business.”

“It's Algernon, sir. W-we’re here to trade for supplies,” he answered.

Another moment of quiet. “Very well. Pilot your vehicle to the lot.”

Somehow the possum had enough wits about him to nod. The Dragon pulled forward, outside of the intense light. He could feel the sword hanging over their crew avert its gaze, but for how long he didn’t know.

Algernon blinked a few times so he could see again. When his eyes stopped burning, he saw that the interior was even more transpiring than he imagined. A whole row of precursor buildings ringed a wide-open lot, each one lit up with garish neon and images of fantastical ships. Each one seemed to offer distinct types of services, based on the highlighted signs he saw above each one, from stores selling supplies, to eateries, to the typical libations he’d come to expect from these forts.

Spread throughout the lots were even more attractions. The platforms firing off the rockets into the air and shining multicolored spotlights across the grounds were spread around. Dense groups of animals surrounded various booths with strange entertainments Algernon couldn’t conceive of. He saw one such booth opposite the buildings where the pounding music was spouting from large stacks of amplifiers and speakers. The beat permeating his body demanded he enter into its hypnotic dance, which he noticed large swathes of creatures already doing as the dizzying array of lights bathed them in their glow.

 The sea of hybrids that was in motion made him almost break into a panic. Except for the road and a lane leading to a space where other steamers were parked, it was difficult even finding ground not occupied by them. The chorus of animal calls was overwhelming.

The temptation to turn around was only tempered by the atmosphere. It was rowdy, but the expressions on the faces he could see was one of enchantment, like when his crew had first seen the fireworks break the sky. Uranus was a carnival, and not one of vices like Seb’s was.

Thus, he let Senta steer The Dragon towards the other steamers. As they approached, the operation was surprisingly organized. There were hybrids in matching uniforms who guided the vehicle forwards into a row, and then more who beckoned it into an open spot. Algernon clambered down into the main hall as the steamer came to a stop.

Everyone else was already waiting in the main hall. An air of excitement came from most of them; Harper and Teddy appeared especially giddy to depart. Peach still looked uncomfortable in her own fur after it was dyed pink, but still stood dutifully at the main door. Senta was the only one who seemed tense, her whiskers and tail fidgeting as she faced the exit.

When Algernon arrived, Peach opened the door for them. Waiting just outside were a duo of porcupines in matching outfits. He immediately stiffened, afraid these had come to detain them for their debts. The badger instinctively reached behind her for a knife, but the two raised their hands placatingly.

“Peace, we are here to welcome you to our settlement,” one of them said.

“What does your entourage want?” Senta pointedly asked.

The porcupines looked at each other. “Besides a greeting, we wanted to assure you that your steamer will be looked after while you visit,” the one continued. “It would reflect poorly on us if our guests’ belongings were ransacked while they were out and about.”

She wrinkled her nose at them. “So, what? You’re some sort of mercenaries? If you wanted a warm welcome, you should have set out your green pennants.”

Algernon cringed at the rat’s hostility towards the workers, but the porcupines didn’t seem all that bothered. “We are sojourners of the Path!” the second said, tapping the amulet strung around his neck. The symbol engraved on it was only a few lines, depicting an abstract road disappearing into the horizon. “Our duty is to assist those as they navigate through life, to help make their tangled highways straight. It is an honor to protect fellow hybrids and their means from those who stray from the path!”

“Right...” Senta looked neither convinced nor sure what they were talking about.

“W-we appreciate the gesture. If it’s all the same, we’d still like to have some from our own c-crew keeping watch as well,” Algernon said, trying to diffuse the situation.

“You are allowed to run your vessel however you want,” one of them said, kind amusement on their face. “We’ll leave you folks to it. If there’s any trouble just find someone with a pendant.” With that, the two porcupines lumbered off into the lot.

Senta waited for the guards to be out of earshot before turning to her cohorts. “Sascha, Siegbert, you watch over The Dragon,” she ordered.

The calico rat looked disappointed at missing out on the festivities, while Siegbert’s dead-eyed gaze didn’t shift.

“I should also keep watch,” Peach suggested hopefully.

Senta side-eyed Harper and Teddy, who were practically vibrating with manic energy.

Getting the message, she grumbled under her breath; the chaotic siblings needed a firm hand keeping them out of trouble.

Feeling he ought to assert his captaincy, Algernon cleared his throat. “Alright, you heard the ones running the town, n-no trouble!” he told them. “Otherwise, uh... H-have fun!”

Harper and Teddy were out of the vehicle before he even finished talking. Peach was quick to follow and be on their tails. Algernon and Senta stepped out last, the possum pushing with all his might to swing the heavy door of The Dragon closed. Turning back, Senta was looking at him expectantly. 

“I’m going to look for a bounty board,” she said quietly. “It will take a while to scour a place this massive, so you should help me look.”

He scrutinized the signage over the buildings. One of the nearest held a basic, undecorated one reading “Post Office,” which he pointed to. “If th-there’s any news, it would probably be in there, with the, uh, mail.”

The rat eyed him with an inscrutable expression, but Algernon could feel that despite trying to be helpful, she was still annoyed at him. “Fine. In that case, I’ll look at the bounties, and you can help look over the terrible two.” She turned her muzzle up at the mention of them. “The last time we were in settlement with rules, the place had to create a dozen new ones after they had gone through.“

He didn’t need more explanation than that. With eyes wide, he jogged to catch up with the others. Thankfully for him, the badger’s form towered over most of the crowd, so Algernon was able to make them out before they got too deep into the masses. Bracing himself, he hit the fringes of the throng of bodies and wriggled through until he caught up to them. As soon as he was behind Peach he was able to take a breath, since her presence left space around them in her wake.

Huddled next to his crew, he had the opportunity to examine the animals partying around them. It quickly became apparent that Peach didn’t need to worry about standing out for her fur color; In the pulses of light illuminating the hybrids, Algernon saw many others with dyed fur. They waded through a group of martens that were calling out animatedly, red and blue warpaint marking their eyes and chests. Rats and mice were everywhere in the crowd, many with detailed patterns painted on to their heads to distinguish them. Others were covered head-to-toe like Peach was. A couple of skunks wandered by with lime-green fur, who Harper immediately took an interest in. When he saw the same expression on her muzzle that she had given him on that awkward night he wanted to forget, he realized she was probably more interested in the fact that they were male than for the wild colors they wore.

Before Harper could make a move, Teddy gasped and pointed fervently at something ahead of them. Hybrids formed a large ring around a bizarre contraption, cheering and hollering. It was rooted to the ground by a single column, around which it moved in strange, jerking patterns. A hare sat atop it on a saddle, twisting their body to stay seated, which was when Algernon realized that the main purpose of the machine was to unmount them. The seat suddenly tilted wildly and the hare was thrown off onto the straw padding below.

“I need to be on that!” the raccoon exclaimed, barely audible over the clamor of voices. Before any of them could react, Teddy bounded through the crowd towards the attraction. Suddenly alert, Peach quickly glanced at Harper, who was instead eyeing the facade of one of the buildings. Deciding Teddy was capable of causing more chaos, she stomped after him.

Algernon opened his mouth to call after her, but then felt Harper tug on his arm. “Look! Look!” she yelled, indicating one of the buildings rising over the festivities.

He turned his gaze so his one uncovered eye faced the structures. It was his first time getting a good look at them, and he was surprised by how well maintained they were. While there were clear signs of slapdash repairs with sheets of plywood and steel, the frames still looked structurally sound, which couldn’t be said for many of the buildings the precursors left behind. Most had been left to rot.

Like at Seb’s, the lights were somehow burning inside the windows of the strip. They also were cast onto the signs over each doorway. The one Harper was ogling had a long blade mounted over its entrance. The word “Armory” was painted underneath it.

Without waiting for an answer, she started making her way towards it. “W-wait!” Algernon called after the skunk. He jogged to keep up with her, his eye focused on not losing sight of her. Harper’s striped tail was all that kept him from losing track of her as they weaved between the hybrids. Thankfully, the crowd thinned as they approached the edifices, but that provided an unforeseen distraction for him.

Algernon couldn’t help but pause and turn back to what he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. In what used to be the alleyway between two of the precursor buildings, a hybrid-sized structure had been set up. He pulled down his eyepatch to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him as he looked at the cruciform symbol over the entrance. It was just like the one hanging in the cathedral he was used to from The Providence.

Without realizing it he’d begun walking towards it. Like the buildings sandwiching it the narrow sanctuary was lit inside, but with the warm flickering of candlelight spilling out the open doors instead of electric bulbs. Passing over the threshold, two columns of pews ran up the length of the building. A cut of burgundy rug led up to a humble pulpit at the far end. In disbelief he craned his neck upward at the vaulted ceiling and the care put into its craftsmanship.

“How can I help you, traveler?”

The possum jumped as a tiny animal appeared at his side. It was a hybrid who barely stood up to Algernon’s waist, a shrew, whose outfit looked exactly like the priestly vestments the Clergy wore.

“I-I’m sorry, I d-didn’t mean to trespass!” he sputtered.

The creature’s small, scrunched face smiled up at him. “There’s no need to apologize when all are welcome inside!” the shrew offered.

Algernon regarded him with dismay. Despite his whole life on The Providence going to mass, he’d never once spoken to the priest. They showed up for the sermon, and then they left. They were separated for a holy purpose from the rest of the congregation, just as the Clergy as a whole was separate from the outside world.

Regardless, the candid words of the priest and their good-natured tone curbed the anxiety Algernon felt. It wasn’t everyday that an agent of the creators interacted directly with him. “Well, I-I was wondering... W-why is there a cathedral here?”

The shrew considered him. There wasn’t judgment in his gaze, only curiosity. “You come from one of the Clergy’s vessels, I take it? I don’t mean to pry, but it is rare to see an opossum outside of their trawlers.”

“Y-yeah! Are... are you part of the Clergy too?” Algernon asked.

The priest shook his head. “I am a traveller of the Path! I understand your confusion though, as we look the same on first glance. You could say the two faiths are brothers, in a way.” They stretched their arm out to the nearest pew. “But please, have a seat and take a load off! If you don’t mind me saying, I get the impression there’s a lot on your mind.”

It was true that several thoughts were racing through Algernon’s head. He lowered himself onto the pew and offered a quiet thanks to the priest. He was very much bewildered, especially with the current unexpected situation, but the calming atmosphere of the cathedral and the warm disposition of the shrew continued to put him more at ease.

With the world of law back on his mind, his foremost thought was that of his crew’s mission. “Do you, uh, have contact with the Clergy? I-I’ve been trying to get back to them in order to... to make amends.”

The smile on the shrew’s face turned apologetic. “While the Clergy and the Path may be brothers, we have a hard time getting along.” Seeing the panic rising on the possum’s face, they clarified, “We have been amicable to the Clergy, rather it is they who aren’t happy with our presence. With your familiarity with Clergy edict, you can probably deduce why.”

He hadn’t intended his question of why this sacred place existed all the way out here to expose his predispositions, but Algernon realized that his thoughts on the scavs had come across in it. “Um, the Clergy working out here w-would be strange since... Well, because the hybrids out here are...”

“Too far gone?” The priest quirked an eyebrow.

Algernon slowly nodded, swallowing. A Noah generation, those from The Providence had said.

The shrew nodded along with him. “You’ve been out here in this lawless land for some amount of time, so tell me: Are the denizens of this land as evil as you’ve been told?”

It took several moments for him to formulate an answer. His initial experience of being kidnapped and forced to betray his kinsmen certainly fit his expectations of scavengers. Seb and his establishment, the multitude of attacks by rival crews — it all agreed with the image of banditry and scoundrels Algernon had been taught lived out here.

Despite that, he hesitated to call even the crew who disrupted his life savages. There was reasoning behind their actions, even if it wasn’t good reasoning. Even someone like Harper he couldn’t find hate for. Although, he wasn’t sure if that was due to an inkling of character shining through in his crewmates, or his own morals slipping in the face of life as a bandit.

“... I suppose some of th-them aren’t c-completely corrupt,” he conceded.

The shrew hummed in agreement. “It’s true that it’s a lawless land out here, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe there are those amongst the scavengers that desire law in their lives, but who will be the ones to bring it to them? That is why I follow the Path. As a sojourner, it is our imperative to help those who are seeking the Path, whether they realize it yet or not.”

Algernon fidgeted on the bench. He wasn’t sure he followed all that the priest was saying, but it still seemed clear that there was some overlap between this belief and that of the Clergy. “D-did the creators also send you out on holy mission?”

The smaller hybrid was slow to respond, weighing his words. “It is a holy mission we are called to, and its roots do flow back to the precursor era, but our charter is one that predates Atom & Eve. We hold to a single creator, who is.”

Algernon stared at the shrew blankly, uncomprehending. Sensing that the possum was starting to get overwhelmed, he patted him on the arm. “I won’t keep you from your responsibilities any longer, nor the festivities. Before you leave, I encourage you to get anything you need off your chest.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“If you have any confessions to make, I have listened to and guided many who have been troubled by their sins. Or, if there are petitions that need to be made to the creator, it is helpful to voice them in a sanctuary such as this.”

More to appease the priest than anything, Algernon clasped his paws together and bowed his head. When his eyes closed he searched for something to pray for so he wasn’t just pretending to.

He found that the shrew was right; without immediate distractions, he was able to reflect on many things that had been in his mind but hadn’t had the time to deal with. He gave thanks for averting an even greater disaster in the valley of the limb-beasts. Arriving in Uranus relatively unscathed and without raising suspicions was also a miracle in itself.

What gnawed at him was that any number of things could easily have gone wrong and ended them. Therefore, not knowing how far of a journey remained before them, Algernon prayed for protection over them. If they hoped to make it to the end of The Devil’s Road, it would take something stronger than luck to make their steps sure. It truly was fortune that Harper had survived the —

Remembering that he was tasked with keeping her out of trouble, he sprang to his feet. “I-I have to go!” He shimmied out of the pew and rushed out the door while the priest’s farewell trailed after him.

Outside, the clamor and stimulation overtook him again. Algernon swung his head around until he spotted the sign with the blade above it. He quickly squirmed through the crowd towards the shop, but before he could make it Harper appeared in front of him.

“There you are!” she called out, excitement glimmering in her eyes. “You missed out on all the cool pointy things they had at the shop!”

He fearfully glanced between her and the building she had come from. “Is th-there a reason we can’t go back in?”

Harper pouted at him. “Damn, I was just taking a look! It’s not like I set the place on fire! I’m just done browsing. See, look at this knife they had!” She produced a finely sharpened shiv that gleamed in the light of the windows.

“You bought that?”

She looked at him funny. “They just kinda had it out in the open, so I borrowed it.”

Algernon put a hand to his forehead. “Harper, that’s n-not how it works...”

“Now, now. This means that I don’t need my old one anymore, so you can have it!”

The skunk pushed the flat end of another knife to his chest, and he awkwardly caught it. The blade in his hand was in fact one that Harper had wielded before. He was pretty certain it was the same one she had threatened his life with when they first met. It was crude, dented, and spotted with rust.

“I-I don’t want this,” he said weakly.

Before the skunk could argue, a pink badger emerged from the throngs flooding the grounds. Peach held Teddy by the scruff of his neck, whose body was covered in loose hay.

“Teddy! Did you defeat the metal beast?” Harper asked.

The raccoon’s eyes glittered as he gave two thumbs up. “Yeah! It stopped moving after I bit it on the neck!”

“The operators pulled him from the machine after he broke it,” Peach corrected.

Harper looked over at her. “And did you ride it?”

“No.” There was a tinge of disappointment in her expression.

“N-now that we’re all here, we should regroup with Senta,” Algernon proposed.

Before he could even begin to turn towards the post office, the fireworks suddenly came to halt. The crowd likewise started to slow and their loud voices settled into pockets of murmuring. Anticipation filled the air.

The possum was startled by a voice echoing out from loudspeakers set up around the settlement. “May I have your attention, fellow travelers! We hope you have enjoyed tonight’s entertainment, and are excited to inform you all that the main event is now ready! The legendary wilderness drama, orchestrated by our talented playwrights and performers, is sure to dazzle your evening!“

Spotlights blazed to life a couple of buildings down, lighting up the front of one. A large vertical sign labeled “Theater” protruded from its front, with ribbons of red and white and blue streaming from it to the sides of the colossal doors. Those swung open as the spotlights landed on them.

The crowd of hybrids seemed to unfreeze all at once, the rowdy noise returning to its previous volume. While there were those who simply resumed in their own revelry, many started funneling towards the newly-opened entrance.

“I wanna go! I wanna go!” Teddy bobbed in Peach’s grip.

Peach huffed. “You’ve had enough fun for one night.”

“But I want to see what the fuss is about!” Harper whined. “Imagine all of the other cool trinkets they have laying around in there!”

The badger looked her over wearily, before turning to face Algernon. “You didn’t let her take anything, right?”

He quickly shoved the shiv into his coat pocket. “I-I also think we should check out th-the show! I d-don’t see Senta around, so we can f-find her, uh, afterwards!”

His attempt to redirect the conversation didn’t go unnoticed, but Peach just rolled her eyes and started shuffling towards the theater. Harper whooped in delight, trotting after them, Algernon taking the rear.

By the time the group reached the doors to the building the crowd heading in was starting to thin to a trickle. When they crossed inside and Algernon saw the interior, he was once again taken aback. It was a sprawling room that rivalled the lot outside, completely filled with benches. The seats were packed with hybrids silhouetted by electric lights pointed towards the front of the auditorium, where a raised stage stretched across. Crimson curtains flowed down to the platform and hid what was to come.

With all of the seats near the entrance already taken, Peach lumbered towards the front with Teddy in tow. Finding an opening in the first row, she deposited the raccoon on the bench. Harper ducked under the badger’s arm and hopped up next to Teddy, so Peach sat beside her, with Algernon hunkering down at the end.

No sooner had they settled than lights pointed at the stage began to dim, until only a couple shone on a spot directly in the center. The crowd quieted, and Algernon could feel the bench shake as Teddy and Harper jittered with excitement.

A mink festooned in a fancy outfit not unlike Algernon’s own stepped into the light and spread his arms out to the audience. “Sons of Atom, daughters of Eve, welcome to our humble stage!” he said. It was the same voice which had called through the speakers outside. “Tonight I am proud to present our theater’s rendition of true events! Hailing from the battlegrounds of the Western Roughs, this tale provides a glimpse into the lives of hybrids living under Watchtower’s banner. A story of valor, bravery, and defying adversity that will have you on the edge of your seat! Without further ado, enjoy the show!”

As the mink bowed out, the lights cut completely. Murmurs arose from the crowd, but shortly thereafter the curtain began to rise, and a warm trickle of light emerged from beneath it. Beyond the curtain a scene emerged; The yellow light was cast on the far wall as a faux sun, a sky of blue and orange painted on the woodwork with wispy clouds touching the far reaches of the stage. On the far left, a precursor instrument sat with a similarly-sized seat in front of it, two rabbits waiting patiently atop it. Algernon recalled reading about such a device — a piano — from old musical books aboard The Providence, but had never seen one in person. At its base a group of woodland critters stood at attention.

He didn’t need to wait long to find out what the strange setup was for. When the curtain reached its zenith the rabbits began tapping at the piano keys, a jaunty tune filling the theater. Flat panels made to look like mesas, cacti and tumbleweeds shuffled on to the stage, the feet and ears of more rabbits occasionally poking up from behind them as they worked to move them. Once they were arranged to form a desert landscape, the group of hybrids below the piano began to sing:

“Have you heard the legends told,

Of those warriors from the wastes?

Lean in, lend an ear to this tale,

To the legend of which we showcase!”

As they transitioned between verses yet more props were slid onstage. This time, tents rose up in the back with a tower emblazoned on their canopies. In the foreground, instead of actors portraying characters, wooden cutouts were painted to look like different creatures. There were hybrids dressed in armor-plates fashioned from scraps of sheet metal, wielding blades and firearms. Algernon saw badgers, boars and coyotes, all painted with snarls as if ready to attack each other. On each of their shoulders a white “W” was tattooed.

“The hybrids of Watchtower, allied once,

Now battlelocked for power and vict’ry,

Clan against clan, no end in sight,

Whose warfare knows no mercy!

Constant stalemate through it all,

Were it not for one battle maiden,

Out of the house of the badger,

To claim dominance of the basin!”

The tents and hybrid cutouts were pulled away, replaced with more panels comprising an even more complicated scene. On one side of the stage an army of badgers surged forward towards the other end, where an army of boars were in disarray. In the center stood the most detailed cutout yet: A badger warrior holding a standard with Watchtower’s emblem in one hand, the other leveling a saber at the retreating boars. The badger gazed stoically into the middle distance, and the fake sunlight ensconced her in heavenly rays.

“Stalwart like her fellow brethren,

Though much more was she,

Through blade, bullet, flame, and more,

Weathered this great valkyrie!

Thus through battle was she forged,

Valkyrie of the Western Roughs,

And became a thorn to her enemies,

The boars, most of all, rebuffed!

Hardened skin and iron will,

Virtues attuned for skirmish won.

Territory clawed to their own,

‘Til the swine hoard had none!”

The sound of scraping wood beside him pulled Algernon back from the narrative unfolding on stage. He looked over at Peach. Her claws were digging into the bench, leaving deep gouges through its surface. Her face, normally emotionless, displayed a mixture of deep discomfort and embarrassment. With constricted pupils and gritted teeth, Peach’s focus was fully captured by the production taking place.

 His eyes shifted between his crewmate and the character portrayed on stage. Glancing past the badger, he looked at his other two crewmembers to see if they noticed. Harper was slumped forward, eyes half open and clearly bored out of her mind. Meanwhile, Teddy was staring blankly forward and smiling, which was normal. It seemed neither were any-the-wiser to Peach’s identity.

When he turned back to the play, it had progressed forward and the set had switched. The hero was now back-to-back with her fellow badgers, surrounded on all sides by boar soldiers. Even outnumbered to a devastating degree, the valkyrie defiantly bared her teeth and held a large firearm in her grip. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

“On Paria’s field they fought,

For both parties a last stand.

Badger insurgents cleaving forth,

Through the boar’s home land!”

“Against all odds they prevailed,

To conquer the entire opposing clan.

Yet our valkyrie now vanished,

Mystery forever gracing those sands!”

And now approaches this legend’s end,

From those lands of thunder and flame,

A gracious thanks to our audience,

To hear our performance proclaimed!”

The piano finished in a crescendo, and as quiet graced the stage once more, the curtains began to draw. After a moment polite claps began to rise from those seated. It was then that Peach returned to her senses and pulled her claws out of the wood. As she surveyed those around her to check if anyone had seen her episode, Algernon quickly turned his head away.

General murmurings returned to the crowd and the hybrids began to rise from the benches and wander towards the exit. Harper stretched her arms out with an obnoxious groan as if waking from a deep slumber.

“Man, that was sooooo lame!” she whined. “They didn’t even have actual actors! Where was the blood and guts?”

“There could have been more boom,” Teddy agreed.

Peach grunted, which could have meant anything. She was the first to move from her seat, eager to turn her back to the show. Her crewmates followed after her.

Algernon walked up next to Peach, tapping his fingers together. Peeking up at her, she still looked deeply unsettled. He knew now wasn’t a good time to broach the subject, yet he still felt that as leader he ought to comfort her in some way, especially in her distress. As he began to reach a paw out to her arm, an unhappy voice interrupted him.

“Finally, I’ve been looking everywhere for you lot!” Senta stood just outside the doorway to the theater, her tail fidgeting in anger and a deep scowl on her muzzle.

“Don’t tweak your whiskers, you didn’t miss anything fun,” Harper said.

The rat ground her teeth. “I don’t care what you were up to, we need to leave. Now.”

Sensing the urgency in her words, Algernon brought his full attention back to the predicament of his crew. “W-what’s wrong?”

There were a couple pieces of paper Senta had clutched under her arm. Surreptitiously scanning the crowds for prying eyes, she carefully drew the corner one out so only their group could see it.

Algernon couldn’t see much of it, but what he did see made his ears droop. At the very top was a crude depiction of a rat skull. Next to it in big, bold letters was the word “Wanted.”

Peach is not impressed with the show, by Foxena.