Rodentia Adventures

CHAPTER 15: VICTORY?

The human had no memory of exiting his truck, just the dizzying confusion of the crash. The next thing that he could remember was sitting on the side of the road, his whole body hurting, his head even more so, but thankfully showing no obvious signs of serious injury. The seat belt hadn't done much good, being old and just a little bit too loose, but it did prevent him from going all the way through the windshield, which was something, right? He had no idea what had happened, beyond the basic premise: he was driving, he crashed into something, and now he was no longer driving. 

The 'something' was the core issue here, both good and bad. On one hand, it was good that he didn't appear to hit another car, or worse, a pedestrian. Nobody was hurt, and thus there was nobody to potentially sue for injuries or damages. Even financial concerns aside, it was a tremendous relief that there was nobody to be harmed, much less killed, but this still created the other non-trivial problem: there was just nothing there. It would be difficult enough to explain to his boss how he had totaled the truck by crashing it into something. How on earth was he supposed to explain that he had totaled the truck, crashing it into nothing?

 <3~ <3~ <3~

There was no real way to describe the noise which followed. To Jerin, it sounded like the end of the world, a terrible orchestra of screeching, grinding, crunching, falling metal and once it finally settled down, ending with a rhythmic metallic clicking and the drippings of liquid. She opened her eyes, head still ringing, barely able to tell down from up, but eventually deduced that up was most likely the opposite of where her feet were, and looked to that direction. At first she had thought that she was somehow back in the city, but on closer examination, no, it was much different. There were certain familiar features, sure, but unlike at home, it wasn't rusted through, and although it was clearly heavily damaged, the network of plates and pipes and mechanisms above were far more dense, whereas even before the city hard been attacked, so many of the older components had simply fallen away with age. She looked to her left, and hardly any distance away a warped rubber tire sat at rest, black streaks setting a trail behind it, which would have run right over her had she been just a little closer to the side of the road. A dark fluid flowed from some ruined bit of tubing just behind her, staining the already dark ground and forming a thick, fowl smelling puddle. 

She stepped out in front of the wreck slowly, not only for the sake of caution, but that also happened to be the only speed which her battered and exhausted body was capable of at the moment. She, of course, knew very little about the vehicles that the Makers used for travel, beyond that they moved fast, were quite loud, were extremely dangerous, and looked very shiny. Even she, however, could tell that it was in pretty bad shape, looking fairly normal to one one side, with the other heavily crumpled in. Over her shoulder, on the other side of the flats, one of the Makers sat, a cloth pressed to his head, likely nursing the injury caused by the not so coincidentally human head shaped crack pattern in the glass above the wheels. 

Up ahead of the vehicle, thrown clear from the road, was the crumpled gray heap of the dark lord, breathing heavily, but otherwise lying still. She rushed over, hopping onto the grass, climbing up onto its body. 

"Hey, are you okay? Here, let me heal your wounds... ohm... ohm... ohm..." Jerin said, pressing her palms out against the warm short fur, closing her eyes. 

"Why-" the dark lord croaked, looking to her with one silver eye, the other swollen shut. 

"Why am I helping you, even though you attacked our city and tried to kill us?" Jerin asked. 

"No," Fury said, voice sounding a little stronger, but nonetheless very pained and very, very tired. "I'm wondering why you think you have healing powers."