Monster Salvage Crew [3]

Part Three: Fallout

Sara looked around the remains of the battlefield. The only sound was her own ragged breathing, none of the other combatants were moving anymore. She had expected at least one of them to live, but they must have been too inexperienced with Dose to close their wounds. The fight had lasted less than a minute, it had been less of a fight and more of a massacre. The courtyard around her was soaked in blood. One of the few things that wasn’t covered in red was the gigantic severed hand that lay in front of her. Covered in rust brown scales and shiny brass carapace, it looked just like her left arm did now. At least her hand was relatively unscathed, but from her shoulder down the mutation was severe.

“Fucking hell!” screamed Adeline, breaking the silence. She was standing with the rest of her gang on top of a nearby building. “Fuck! I’ve never seen a bloodbath like that.”

“I’m okay!” Sara shouted back up, she tried to sound cheerful. She imagined that that was what a person would sound like if they were in control of the situation. That was what someone would do if they weren’t terrified that they would not be allowed to join a crew of illegal kaiju scavengers. She wanted to give a thumbs up, but she remembered it had been cut off in the fight.

“Oops, I need to go find my thumb. Listen! This is temporary,” she gestured at her left arm. “I can fix it and you shouldn’t be alarmed!”

She rushed to find her severed thumb amongst the blood and corpses. She needed to be quick, or skin would grow over the wound on her right hand. At that point she would be at risk to develop a second mutation. She could hear the others talking. Despite her enhanced hearing she couldn’t make out what they were saying. They probably wanted to cut her loose, based on the tone of their voices.

It took her a few minutes to finally find her thumb, it had been lying next to Knife Guy. She flexed her right hand a few times and while her thumb still felt raw it was at least attached to her once again. She sat down on the ground and heaved a sigh of relief. It didn’t look like she was going to have to worry about mutations in her right arm as well.

“I don’t have to feel sorry for what I did to you, you know,” she suddenly whispered to the dead body of Knife Guy.

His glassy eyes stared at the sky.

“How was I supposed to know that you weren't capable of stopping the bleeding?”

Blood flowed out of the wound in his neck in a trickle.

“I mean sure, you guys were amateurs and I tried to bring you down as hard and fast as possible, but does that mean that I’m responsible if you don’t get back up again?”

She was confronted by the chunk of flesh missing from his forearm. It was where she had bitten Knife Guy to get him to drop his eponymous knife. The wound was deep enough that she could see bone. During the fight she hadn’t realised she had bitten him that hard.

“Knife Guy, I’m sorry that I don’t know your name, but it was self defence. Kind of. I mean not really, but if I hadn’t done this then they wouldn’t have let me join,” she looked up at where the rest of the gang were still arguing. She barely recognised that she stood up and paced back and forth. “I know that’s stupid and they haven’t let me join yet anyways, okay! They didn’t ask me to do this.”

“Fuck! I look like a murderous maniac who’s talking to her victims, but I’m normal, I promise! I don’t kill people, only twice and that was self defence. Except, I’ve now killed, six people? Is that right? Oh, god, that’s a lot of people,” she sat back down, exasperated, and buried her face in her hands. It was another few minutes before she was drawn out of her brooding.

“Well, that was certainly something,” said Maddox from a distance. They had an expression on their face that Sara found hard to read. It lay somewhere between frustration and respect, she hoped.

“Are you not mad at me?” she asked hopefully.

“No, I am angry.”

“Okay, listen, I’m really sorry that I killed these guys. It was…” she was going to say that it had been an accident, but she thought that it would have been a ridiculous and obvious lie. “I’m really sorry and it won’t happen again.”

“Talk is cheap,” Maddox had a pained expression on their face. “But fuck me, I believe you. In any case I’m not mad because you killed these guys.”

“Is it because of this?” Sara pointed at the mutations on her left arm. “Because I know it looks… insane, but I have it under control and as hard as it may be to believe, I can make it go away. I promise.”

“I know,” they said after looking Sara in the eyes for an unbearable few seconds. “But that’s also not why I’m mad.”

“Why are you mad at me then?” Sara almost felt like a child in front of the older person, despite being halfway through her twenties.

“I know I don’t run the tightest ship, but this is my crew. Do you understand what that means?”

“That. You’re the, boss?”

“Exactly, and do you know what the most important key to success for a crew is?”

“I don’t know,” she really did feel like a child now, “having the best Dose?”

“That helps, but no. It’s for us all to work toward the same goal in the same way. Do you understand what that means?”

“What are you even asking me?” snapped Sara “I know what teamwork is!”

“Do you?” shouted Maddox, it was the first time Sara heard them raise their voice.

“Yes!”

“Then what is all this?” they gestured at the dead bodies lying around them. Sara felt embarrassed and looked at the dead body of Knife Guy without saying anything. “Do you even want to join my crew?”

“Yes. Desperately,” she didn’t look away from Knife Guy’s dead eyes.

“Why?”

Sara felt that she had to give a good answer. She had to have frequent access to Dose to keep her mutation under control, but she could get that back at the arena as well. Her main reason for leaving the arena was the frequent use of recovery brew and the impact it was having on her mutation. If she was being honest to herself, that wasn’t the only reason though. Why was it so important to her to join this crew then?

“I think,” she thought about the way the others had spoken to each other, “I’m tired of being alone.”

She realised it was the truth as she was saying it.

“Huh,” Maddox looked to be lost in thought. “Okay, you’re in.”

“Wait, seriously, just like that?”

“Yes, as long as you promise that you’ll do what I say, when I say it, nothing more and nothing less. You got it?”

“Yes! I promise, thank you!” Sara felt relief flush through her entire body, she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening. “Just, wait, why am I in so suddenly?”

“Do you see that?” They pointed at the kaiju hand that took up half of the courtyard. “Even just a few months ago I would’ve bet that this would’ve been uncontested salvage. It used to be that a chunk of a kaiju body like this would get swarmed by Krows in a matter of hours. No crew wanted to risk getting in a fight with them. Except for us, we worked fast, in and out before we got into trouble.”

“So what changed?”

“The Krows started slacking. These days it takes them a day or so to show up. It’s not a ton of time, but it’s enough that other crews are willing to risk it. We need you, basically, as extra muscle.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it looks to me like there’s enough to share,” Sara pointed at the gigantic hand. The palm had to be at least ten meters across and three meters thick. The fingers leaned up against a wrecked building and towered over the courtyard.

“Wait.” Maddox looked surprised. “Do you not know anything about Divination?”

“Uhm, I know a little, but I never really needed to deal with it.”

“You understand about Visibility at least, right?”

“Uhm, no?”

“Seriously, how do you not know that?”

“Well, excuse me for not knowing the bizarre details of how Divination works, but I’m not an Oracle. I tried a Divinatory Dose once and had a seizure. I haven’t wanted anything to do with it since.”

“Okay, so Divination is hard because you have little control over what you see, right?”

“If you say so.”

“I do, and it’s easier to see an event if there are a lot of people that are Dosed up and it’s easier to see something if kaiju are involved.”

“I follow, so if a lot of people are trying to salvage something at the same time it’s double bad, and the Kaiju Reclamation Office shows up more quickly.”

“I know you’ve got an arena background, but even still. How are you this formal? Just call them Krows, but the point isn’t that they show up more quickly. They show up before we get there.”

“Okay, but when you walked over I thought you were ready to drop me. I still don’t understand the shift.”

“There’s not that many people who can really handle themselves in a life or death fight and the ones who can are usually…”

“Bastards?”

“Yeah, pretty much, and I’ve got a good feeling about you.”

“Thank you, I’ll do my best not to let you down.”

“Don’t thank me yet, today you’re on lookout duty with Vincent, you’ve got to do everything the kid says and you need to be calm and in control.”

“Yeah, easy. I’ll be calm, in contol and do what the kid says.”

“Don’t disrespect him by calling him a kid, you’re barely older than he is. Anyways, let’s go tell the rest.”

“Yes, sir!” Sara made a salute and felt like an idiot. Adrenaline and relief raged through her in equal measures and despite what she had just said she felt as if she had barely any control over what she was saying or doing.

“Don’t call me sir,” Maddox gave her a sidelong glance as they were turning around to walk to the others. “I’m not a man.”

“Sorry. I meant to say, yes, ma’am!” She gave another salute. Embarrassed, she forced her arms down by her sides and walked after Maddox to the others.

“Don’t call me ma’am, I’m not a woman either.”

“Yes, I knew that, just, what should I call you?”

“Just call me Maddox,” they gave her a look that made Sara think they were reconsidering allowing her to join.

“Yes Maddox!” Sara felt awkward enough to want to sink through the floor. It was a feeling that was waging a bizarre war inside her with the relief at not having to worry about the mutation anymore.

“Uhm, Maddox?” she began as something occurred to her. “I need to regularly Dose up to deal with my arm. Is that going to be okay?”

She pointed at her monstrous left arm. It felt compressed and incredibly itchy, like it was encased in a cast. She had to fight the urge to scratch it.

“Oh yeah, right, your arm,” they made it sound like her mutation was a complete afterthought, as if they hadn’t even considered it when allowing her to join. “Is the, situation, stable?”

“Yes, for now.”

“Okay, you should talk to Looks about it later today. He knows about, this sort of thing.”

“He knows about dealing with advanced mutations?” Sara asked incredulously. Mutations this advanced were rare. There were only a few people that she knew of who had ever been afflicted with a case as bad as hers and still maintained any level of control over themselves. The person who had retained control the longest was a man called Clayton the Claw, he had been the champion arena fighter for a number of years. Even he had lost his mind eventually, he had become increasingly erratic until he disappeared five years ago.

“He knows a lot about Dose, just talk to him, okay?”

“Alright, I will.”

The two of them approached the rest while they were belaying the salvage equipment down from the building where they had been grouped up before. Looks was inspecting a bundle of swords. The middle aged man examined them each individually, even though they looked identical to Sara.

“Hey Adeline!” shouted Penelope from above, “are you ready for my big load?”

“Oh god! Are you aware that it’s not in fact your job to embarrass me?”

“But it’s so easy and it’s fun for the whole family!” Penelope shouted with a shit eating grin that Sara could make out even from the ground.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Adeline shouted back, despite having an equally large grin on her face. “Can you please just lower your equipment?”

“Lower my equipment? That sounds vulgar, but if you insist-”

“Please ignore that I said it like that!”

“Okay girls!” interjected Maddox. “Not that I don’t love being forced to listen to your flirting, but can we focus up over here?”

“Aye aye, captain!” shouted Penelope and she dropped herself off of the building wearing a large backpack. She was attached to the top via a pair of ropes, but she still landed hard enough that she would have hurt herself if she had not been Dosed up. “Okay, that’s the last of it.”

It was the first time Sara had gotten a good look at her, she had pronounced cheekbones and a prominent nose. If it hadn’t been for Looks she’d have been the tallest person there by a good twenty centimeters. Like Adeline she looked to be in her early twenties and Sara thought she was absolutely gorgeous.

“First I’ve got a quick announcement,” Maddox startled Sara back into the present moment. “Which is that Sara is now officially a member of the crew-”

“Wait, what?” interrupted Adeline. “What are you talking about? Why the sudden turnabout?”

“I don’t need to justify myself to you. I’m in charge and I think she’d be an addition to the team. That’s the end of the story.”

“Well, that’s bullshit!” Adeline was progressively raising her voice as she was talking. “If you make a decision that everyone disagrees with, then you’ll end up being in charge of nothing and no-one!”

“Not everyone disagrees, Adeline,” Maddox’s voice remained calm. “You disagree with me.”

“Alright,” Adeline got in the older person’s face. “Let’s put it to a vote then!”

Sara was nervously quiet. She wasn’t sure what to say to help her case, but didn’t know if she should say something anyways.

“Okay, we’ll put it to a vote,” replied Maddox.

“I vote that she’s dangerous and unstable and unpredictable and we should cut ties with her as soon as possible,” said Adeline right away.

Sara was afraid that she might be right, she did not have her mutation in hand. She would get it under control though. She just needed more Dose. She would get it under control.

“I think Adeline is right,” Penelope made eye contact with Sara and added, “sorry.”

“Thank you and Clay agrees with me,” Adeline pointed at Looks. “That makes three out of five, I win!”

In the quiet after her declaration Maddox made eye contact with Looks and gave him an inscrutable expression. He gave an equally inscrutable expression back and turned to Adeline.

“Ade,” he began in an apologetic tone. “I know-”

“No,” interrupted Adeline with an expression like the older man had just slapped her. “Clay, you can’t do this to me.”

“Ade, I understand that,” Looks was quiet for a second, looking like he was trying to find the right words to say, “this is difficult for you, but-”

“You can’t do this to me again,” whispered Adeline, almost as if to herself.

“Just look around, we’re surrounded by corpses and she,” Adeline pointed an accusatory finger at Sara, “is covered in blood! Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is normal? Look at what she did! She’s out of control! She’s a fucking monster!”

Sara felt her heart sink at the accusation. It wasn’t true. In her mind she heard herself stamping on a man's head until it exploded. She wasn’t a monster. She remembered the missing chunk of flesh from the arm of a man whose name she’d never know. She wasn’t out of control. She had cut a man in half. She hadn’t meant to, she’d just… She’d lost control over herself. She was vaguely aware that the conversation kept going on around her. She could only see what had happened, she could only hear what she had done.

“I vote that she can stay!” Vincent cut in. Looking at Maddox he added, “that makes three for and two against. It’s done, she’s in, right?”

“That’s right,” Maddox seized the momentum. “It’s done and we can agree or disagree all day long, but we’ve got a job to do and time is not our friend. So can we please just get started and we’ll talk it out later. Okay!”

It seemed that one way or another Sara was a part of the crew, at least for now.

Previous: Part One, Part Two

Next: Part Four

Thank you for reading! If you noticed that I promised this would go up last week, thank you for noticing! I got sick, so hence the delay.

Part Four should be ready to go by next Friday. After that I think Part Five or Part Six will be the end of Episode One of Monster Salvage Crew, which turned out to have way more parts than I originally planned it to.

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