Published at 12th of August 2022 9:14 pm

Book 2: Chapter 34: Shit Happens

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The downtown streets were uncharacteristically, but understandably, grim. The aftermath of the violent gang war had left the city reeling, and the community of lower downtown had closed ranks entirely. Dan saw Scales on every corner, obvious watchdogs who gave him wary glares as he passed. They knew he was out of place, as did he, but as long as he didn’t cause trouble he should be left alone.

The air still smelled like gunpowder and blood. The streets were still stained with shades of green and red, where the blood hadn’t been washed away by melting ice. It had dried along brick walls and concrete streets, forming grim, tragic street art. There was a palpable tension in the air, a feeling of ‘what next?’ that seemed to pervade every pore of downtown. It felt more like the quiet before a storm, rather than the aftermath. The Scales had to be preparing for war as much as the APD were.

Every now and then, Dan would spot broken lines of police tape, where people had simply ripped the barricades free and gone about their business. Stores that had been hit had reopened, regardless of the APD’s directives. This deep in Scale territory, the police were no longer sacrosanct. Especially after the failures of the past few days. There were no firm figures on how many lives had been lost to the Crew’s blitzkrieg, but even a cursory examination would show how devastated these urban neighborhoods had been.

It should be the work of months before it was all put back to right, but the people here seemed determined to cut that down to weeks. They were out in force, men and women with dozens of different upgrades, all working with each other to restore what had been taken from them. There was something… uplifting about walking through these broken communities, and watching as the inhabitants helped put each other back together.

Dan came to a stop beside an apartment complex. The first floor was a wreck. The doors were off their hinges, and the lobby was still covered in a thin layer of melting ice. He could see people stripping away the carpeted floors, where the ice had melted and caused water damage. Others were removing broken furniture, and shoring up the walls.

There was a scale by the entrance, watching Dan as he approached. The man made no secret of his allegiance; between his bright green shirt, slitted eyes, and the rows of rippling, armored spines running down his arms, he was the poster child of a Scale crew chief. His thick, muscular tail lashed at the ground as Dan approached, and the gang member held up a hand.

“I don’t think so,” he stated firmly.

Dan came to a stop a few feet away. He watched the people working inside, barely sparing a glance for the guard. Dan felt… restless. If he’d been sitting, his leg would be bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. Abby was gone, taken away via private jet to her family’s mansion in Florida. Her words, though, lingered with him. Her worries. It made him itch, made him need to move and do something useful.

Dan gestured with his thumb behind him, towards the distant Bering street. “I was a volunteer at Station Three. Shit went down and we had to leave, but I figured I’d come by today and see if there’s anything I could do to help out around here.”

The Scale’s yellow eyes squinted at Dan. “Yer one of them orange-vest fellers.”

The thick southern drawl coming from a forked tongue was disconcerting, but Dan quickly got over it.

He nodded. The high-visibility vests were the volunteer’s most distinctive feature. “Basically, yeah.”

As far as jobs went, it was hard for people to complain about a crisis volunteer. There just wasn’t anything offensive there for someone to sink their teeth into. It was like complaining about firefighters, or paramedics. Even criminals had to respect those services.

The Scale guard seemed to share this opinion. He glanced up and down Dan’s body, taking in his jeans and t-shirt. He had a pair of work gloves tucked in his back pocket, and wore the same heavy boots he used during his volunteer work. Dan was fairly built at this point, though nowhere near the Adonis perfection that could be found in mod-crafted musculature.

He must have passed muster, because the guard finally shrugged, stepped aside, and declared, “Whatever.”

Dan entered the apartment complex, and set about being useful. A few questioning glances, and an abridged explanation later, and Dan was put to work tearing out ruined floorboard. He exchanged very few words with his fellow workers, who all bore various bestial upgrades. Aesthetics were important in any upgrade, that hadn’t changed. The boundaries of what was attractive had simply expanded. But these people were clearly impoverished, their upgrades were haphazard, utilitarian. There were none of the cosmetic flourishes that a more expensive model would have brought, but rather necessary features for the upgrade to operate.

Dan really couldn’t care less. It was just another different thing, in his eyes. Something to be noted, and then disregarded as completely expected. Judging from the looks they kept passing him, nobody really knew what to think of this reaction. Dan was fine with that. He was missing literally decades of cultural context, and didn’t feel like parsing it at the moment. All he wanted to do was work until his muscles ached.

Time passed, as the floor eventually disappeared, and new material was brought in. Dan knew very little about architecture, but he could swing a hammer as well as anyone, and nailing down wooden boards to a frame wasn’t difficult. He swung where others pointed, and, like magic, a new floor appeared. It took several hours before they finished the entire lobby, and by the end Dan was sweating through his shirt.

Another worker passed him a bottle of water, and he guzzled the entire thing. He’d still barely spoken three sentences during the entire time that he’d been working. He didn’t have anything to add. Shit happened sometimes, and you had to deal with it. This was his way of dealing with it.

He was, in retrospect, pretty damn lucky. He’d had it easy compared to some, and this was coming from someone who’d been shot at! Multiple times! But his house was intact, his friends were alive, and he was far, far away from the center of the fighting. Things could be infinitely worse, and he was thankful for what he had.

“I’m tired,” he declared to the room. “I’m heading out.”

He got a few handshakes and nods of thanks, and then was ignored. People went back to work, because there was still so much to do. That was the way of Dimension A. Shit happens, deal with it. They were dealing, and Dan was glad that he had helped in his own small way.

Dan vanished mid-step, and reappeared on the corner of Bering, facing the remnants of the FBI Field Office. It had been cocooned in police tape, and the entrance was still a gaping ruin. The truck had been towed away at some point, but there were still bits of metal debris scattered across the ground like caltrops. Dan had learned, after the fact, that the driver had been unaffiliated with the Coldeyes’ Crew. He had simply been a trucker plucked up from his place of work and ordered to ram a concrete wall or die. Just another victim.

The feds had packed up and moved shop elsewhere, though Dan wasn’t sure of the details. Their contact information had vanished from the internet, and the field office’s address had been unlisted. The FBI plaque outside, and the words stamped above the entrance, were both gone. All evidence of the building’s former purpose had been scrubbed away, leaving nothing more than a vacant lot and a broken structure.

The feds had vanished like ghosts, but something told Dan that he’d be hearing from Dunkirk again. The man was too angry and too petty to vanish from his life without some kind of weak attempt at vengeance. Dan expected something bureaucratic and irritating. Some kind of minor inconvenience, writ large. Dunkirk was a shithead like that. Whatever it was, Dan would be ready.

He watched the abandoned building for a few minutes longer. People passed by, along the street, but all gave it a wide berth. The place was condemned, taboo. Cursed. The site of a villain attack that had claimed over a dozen lives. Every bit as haunted as Dan’s own home. Nobody wanted to so much as look at it.

He hoped the building would be the last casualty of this… well, it was basically a war. A small, isolated one, but with clearly delineated sides and goals. He hoped that they’d reached the end of it. One more fight, the APD coming down on the Crew like the first of an angry god, and then peace. It was a nice thought.

Things rarely worked out like that, in reality.

Something was coming. Something big and beyond him. He could feel it, like the world was whispering a warning to him. Instincts that he didn’t even know he had spoke to him: don’t let down your guard. There was a danger just beyond the horizon, and Dan felt its gaze on him, and the city he called home.

Whatever it was, Dan would be ready.

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