Chapter Fifty-Eight - Growing Pains

  Sharp yawned, and I found myself turning to look up to her for it. "How can you be tired? We had eight hours."

  "I dunno," she said. "Just... still a bit sleepy. Maybe I need more than just that?"

  "I suppose. You are growing... you are growing, right? It would be inconvenient if you weren't becoming healthier and taller."

  Sharp smiled down at me, then scritched the top of my head. "Yup! At least, I think so? Maybe? It's only been a week! But I've had more food in that week than in the whole month before, so I'd like to think that I'm gonna grow big and strong."

  "I hope so," I said. The girl was still too thin in the wrong places. The exercise we were getting was probably going to help in the long term, but recovery from a life of abject poverty wasn't as simple as the movies and shows made it out to be. A day or two of good care and good food wasn't nearly enough. It might take months before she was fully recovered.

  Also, I still hadn't made an appointment at a doctor for her. For all we knew, Sharp had some pretty nasty issues lurking under the surface. Issues that we might be able to throw money at, in the best case, or issues that wouldn't be fixable.

  Well, if it was the latter, there was always hope in the system that Sharp had. There might well be a perk that would allow her to heal herself. Or I could work hard, level Cat up to ten, and hope that I unlocked a second perk. If I were to pick one now, it'd definitely be something with healing capabilities.

  My ears perked up, and I sat up straighter. At some point, Sharp's hands had pushed me down with the way her fingers constantly ran through my fur. I stood up and gave myself a shake. I was currently wearing the world's cutest PPE suit. A full-body glove that covered me from ankles to neck.

  "Did you hear something?" Sharp asked.

  We were currently located in a rather wide alleyway just off the Boston River. It was unsurprisingly empty. Even the homeless knew better than to camp in this spot.

  "A car. A beaten up old junker, even," I said. The sound of a perforated muffler became loud enough that even Sharp heard it, and she stood up properly just as Jenny drove into the end of the alley and parked her trashy little van to one side behind a dumpster.

  "Hello!" Sharp said with a friendly wave.

  The doors of the van opened, and both girls pulled themselves out. "Yo," Jenny said.

  "Hi!" Sharp said. "Oh, do you need help with anything?"

  The girls were circling around to the back of the van and Jenny threw the sliding door open to reveal a pair of duffel bags. "Nah. We're good. Though... you don't happen to have more of those weird suits on you?"

  "I do," Sharp said. "I brought a few things too."

  We had packed a number of useful things that morning and shoved them into a backpack for Sharp to bring along. There was more than that, of course. Sharp was in cargo pants and a plain shirt with a zip-up hoodie on, the sort with a plain hood that could be tossed on for some small amount of added anonymity. It was also exactly the sort of loose clothes that worked well to hide the handgun she was carrying.

  Her bag had a second gun, a little semi-automatic tactical shotgun, the sort with a powerful light at the front and five-shell tube magazine. It wasn't anything too special, but it was reliable and relatively small. Good for combat in tighter spaces.

  Sharp reached into her backpack and grabbed three folded up PPE suits, and we both watched as Jenny and Alyssa got into theirs.

  "So, what's the plan?" Sharp asked as she finished dressing and pulled the zipper on her suit up. The last thing she pulled on was a full-face mask, one with a decently wide-visibility visor and two filters. She handed the girls a pair of much cheaper masks.

  It was important, for the sake of our disguise, that Sharp wasn't handing out thousands of dollars of equipment so casually. Not that it was easy to convince her to hold back that much.

  "The plan's easy," Jenny said. She attached her holsters onto the outside of her pale blue suit. "We go in, bust that wall down, then slip into the building. Alyssa knows where to go from there. We break into the spot we need to break into, steal what we want, then dip."

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  "Is the thing we're stealing small enough to fit in a bag?" Sharp asked.

  "Yeah, don't worry about it," Jenny said. "If we're in there and you see something you want, feel free to take a grab at it."

  "Okay," Sharp said. "And how much security are we talking about here? Uh, guards?"

  "There shouldn't be much," Alyssa said. "The entity we're stealing from is too paranoid to hire guards."

  The entity? I didn't like the sound of that.

  "Okay!" Sharp said. She reached into her backpack and pulled out the shotgun within, then slung it over one shoulder before pulling the bag on. "I'm ready!"

  The girls both stared at her for a moment before shrugging and starting towards the storm system's exit way.

  I walked up alongside Sharp, then leapt up into her hands when she bent down to scoop me up. It was time for that uncomfortable cat-fit mask again.

  "You sure about bringing that ugly thing along?" Jenny asked while eyeing me.

  "I wouldn't call her that," Sharp said. "She might kill you for it."

  Jenny snorted. "Uh-huh. Well, whatever. Maybe we'll run into some sewer rats for her to scare off with that ugly mug of hers."

  I shot a glare at Jenny, but then decided to ignore her. She was beneath my notice. Besides, while they probably, rightfully, suspected that something was up with Sharp's cat, they didn't know that I could understand English so easily. No point in giving it all away.

  Entering the storm drain system was much the same as the last time. It didn't look like anyone else had passed through since we'd last visited, probably because there was so little of worth down there.

  Jenny pulled out a small GPS, a better one than last time, and started to guide us through the tunnels. Conversation, unsurprisingly, died down. The roar of water in the drain was enough to drown most of it out, and while I had issues with Jenny and Alyssa, they were at least passingly professional. For a bunch of untrained brats.

  Making it back to the section beneath Megabuilding 371 took significantly less time when we knew where we were going. On reaching the bricked-over wall, Jenny stopped and stowed her GPS, then dropped her bag down.

  "Okay, this is it," she said. "We don't know if busting this down will set anything off, but chances are it probably won't."

  "I didn't notice anything like that last time," Alyssa said with some confidence. "And the area seemed entirely unused."

  "Right. Let's get to work, then," Jenny said. She opened her bag and pulled out a rather short-hafted sledge hammer. "We'll do a few swings each, then switch it off to someone else. I don't want to get sweaty in this damned suit thing."

  "Fair enough," Sharp said.

  Jenny took a half-step back, then swung at the middle of the wall. The hammer rammed into the edge of a cinder block and bounced off, but not without leaving a crack in it.

  The next three blows around that same area broke a piece of the block off, and Sharp flinched as it flew past her head. It took a half-dozen more strikes before there was a noticeable dent in the centre of the wall.

  "Here you go," Jenny said as she passed the hammer to Sharp.

  Sharp took it, then swung at the wall herself. She didn't have quite the upper body strength of Jenny, but she had longer arms to compensate. Then it was Alyssa's turn, and the mage proved rather weak, her strikes barely chipping away at the edges of the hole Jenny and Sharp were punching into and through the wall.

  I ran back a ways, then sat down to watch. It took a solid five minutes of switching up between the girls before a hole large enough for someone to crawl through was ripped open.

  "Right, we need to keep at this. If we run, we want a big enough hole that we won't be stuck," Jenny said. "Hey, can the cat scout ahead?"

  "Oh? I guess, if she wants," Sharp said as she looked back at me.

  Well, there was no harm in trying, and I was a little bored besides.

  ***

  This is... day 12 of the project. I'm mostly doing a vertical slice. So only 3-5 parts of each section so that I can get to playtesting on my Discord as soon as possible.

  Also, I might be posting SCS at weird times. I got roped into helping a local community thing? I do some volunteer work every week, and I guess it got around that I know a bit about writing, and now I'm giving writing lessons every-other-week on Thursdays. Uh... anyway! If you live in the Montérégie region of Quebec, come... hang out? idk.

  So, on those weeks, I'll be posting SCS on Mon-Wed-Fri instead of Tues-Thurs. I think a few bonus chapters would do well for SCS anyway, since I'd like to climb back into the top 10 on Popular This Week and don't quite have the views for it as it is!