Sporemageddon - V2 Chapter 28

Death Cap – Twenty-Eight – Discovering That You’re not as Special as You Think is an Important Growing Moment

I ran across the rooftop, then jumped off the back of it. It wasn’t too big of a leap, the alley below was barely a metre wide. I wouldn’t have been able to lay down flat across the width of the alley if I tried.

It still felt like I was jumping over a chasm, and if I wasn’t in such a hurry I would have climbed down and found another way around.

Right then, my job was to get the hell away from this part of the city. The further from the crime scene I was, the harder it would be to track me. Even if they had magical skills, I suspected that changing clothes, reducing my magical use, and staying away from the area and any bully’s notice for a while would help a lot.

I didn’t hear of the bullies catching many criminals in the slums. Sure, they strutted around and kicked down a door or two, but I knew some of my neighbours were thieves and they were more likely to be brought to justice by an irate neighbour than by the law.

So, I was pretty confident that I’d be safe in the deeper slums if I could just get there.

The moment I was on the other rooftop, I jogged over to the edge and looked around until I found a fire escape. It didn’t reach the roof, but it did reach the top floor, so I sat on the edge of the roof and scooted off and fell a few feet onto the topmost platform of the escape. It creaked and clanged, and I was a little worried before it settled.

I climbed down the escape, only to realise that it stopped a floor off the ground above a large stinking, wooden dumpster in an alley. There was a wall, made of old wood and rusty tin, behind the dumpster. I made sure to jump clear of the wall and landed with a hard omph.

“Good thing I’m not thirty years older, that would have been hell on my knees,” I said to Sir Nibbles.

He chattered something, then hissed while looking out towards the end of the alley.

“There they are!”

There was a bully at the end of the alley. A big blue bastard who immediately took off running towards me. He had the normal bully gear on, but he also had a long baton in one hand and a metal shield with the city crest in the other, like a thicker, smaller riot shield. His entire lower face was covered in a gas mask with two large filters.

“Shit,” I cursed as I spun around and scurried up the wall. The edges bit into my hands, but I was lucky enough that they didn’t cut.

The fall to the ground on the other side was rough, ending in a poor roll that made it so that I had to untangle myself to get to my feet. At least I had a wall between me and the bully. I darted to the end of the alley and looked left and right, trying to decide how to get out of the area fastest while losing my pursuit.

Then the wall in the centre of the alley exploded apart as the bully ran through it, shield-first. There was a faint glow clinging to him. A skill?

I didn’t stick around to ask nicely and darted left. At the first intersection I turned, then turned again on the next only to grab the corner and pull myself back when I noticed it was a dead end.

Couldn’t get trapped in a dead end.

I continued to run. If I was getting lost, then they would too. I ran through my options as I continued to move ahead. I had a couple of mushrooms on me. Nothing lethal though. I rooted through my satchel for what I had left. One knit-together bomb, a few other mushrooms. [Purple Starballs] wouldn’t help. That bully was wearing a mask. I had to assume the others would be doing the same.

The [Bottle Pop] I had might work. It was explosive enough to maybe throw a bully off his stride, and it worked on skin contact.

Had that bully back there’s entire face been covered? I had caught a glimpse of his mask, since it stuck out a lot, but not his entire face. I doubted they’d be covered from head to toe, and my [Bottle Pop]’s only needed skin contact to work.

But they didn’t work well in tiny quantities. The amount of contact they’d make would only give the nearest bully a bit of cramping. I doubted it would even slow them down at all.

No, I wasn’t equipped to deal with the current situation. If I had to deal with bullies actually trying to hunt me down, then I wanted… maybe some sort of acidic spore or fungi? Something fast-acting. I’d need something that could obscure the area too, maybe a smoke-bomb like mushroom. Some [Dead Man’s Cough] wouldn’t hurt either, especially if they had anti-poison potions of some sort to deal with the threat my mushrooms posed.

I was not ready for this.

I cursed as I came around a corner and found two bullies chatting with each other. A pair being lazy? They were wearing their masks around their necks, so I tossed my [Bottle Pop] ahead and detonated it between them, then shot by and through the cloud while shielding my face with my arms.

Some of those spores were going to touch my skin. Fantastic. That’s all I needed on top of everything else. Though my poison resistance skills would counter some of it.

The bullies shouted behind me, so as I neared the next intersection I flung a [Purple Starball] out and let it spew its load of spores across the path. If they ran through that without masks, they wouldn’t be an issue.

I took more turns, entirely losing any sense of directions as I pressed deeper into the city. I was running out of ammunition, and for that matter, I was running out of breath.

Then I saw a dead-end alley with a large sewer grate in it, and I nearly sagged with relief.

Pulling the grate off was a challenge, but I managed thanks to strength lent to me by desperation. I climbed down the rungs, then stood in the open sewers, fighting for breath and trying not to faint at the constant stench.

I ripped my hat off and tossed it into the flow, then equipped my mask before tossing off my coat too. “In the bag,” I ordered Sir Nibbles, who was more than happy to escape the smell of sewers for the smell of earthy mushrooms in my satchel.

The sewers mostly lead to the Gutter, so I went against the flow while trying to keep a decent pace and avoiding the smaller off-shoot tunnels in favour of staying in the larger ones.

No one popped their head in, and I didn’t run into any bully patrols.

Either they didn’t care to follow me down, or they’d lost track of me at some point.

How bad was my situation? I… wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t ideal. I’d need to keep my head low for the next while. I was partially disguised, but I didn’t trust in my abilities there.

The big problem was all the evidence I left behind. They’d be on the lookout for someone who was small and used mushrooms as weapons. That could be traced back to me, maybe.

I was small and sold food mushrooms, but maybe that was close enough to get them sniffing around.

“Fuck me,” I muttered. I soon found a familiar section of the sewers and headed homeward.

At least I’d done my job and distracted the bullies. No one would be able to claim otherwise. Between those having bowel issues in public and those hallucinating, they’d certainly gotten a carton’s worth of egg to the face.

Which didn’t bode well for me, actually. Embarrassment was easy to forgive, but hard to forget.

I pulled out of the sewer, then just stood on a familiar, quiet, street. What was I supposed to do now?

I didn’t want to head home stinking the way I did… so I went to an abandoned place I knew where I could access some running water, then, over the course of half an hour, I washed myself off with freezing-cold water that stank of rust.

My clothes, of course, were probably ruined.

And I was starting to feel the unfortunate gurgles that came with contact with [Bottle Pop] spores.

The union was going to owe me so much money when this was over.

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