Running on Fumes [Private, Ask First] (Dated)

The sewers of Manehattan. The final resting place of bodily waste, and the home of roaches of an unusual size.  The humid and putrid air of the dilapidated network of tunnel beneath the city only punctuated the feelings of death and decay that seemed to perspire from its very walls. Recently, hazardous gases have been detected in some areas of the labyrinthine sewer system, and it has been entrusted to Kroll, the de jure Captain of the Guard, to locate and close off these poisonous sections.

Armed with his expeditionary machete, hazard placards, chem-lights, and a few rolls of red tape, Kroll continued to trudge through the filth-ridden sewers, searching for any leaks in the sewer’s piping. He’d been down here before many years ago, on a much darker errand…

Jimmy lackadaised around the sewers, purveying its fine corners and excellent architecture. He thought. He honestly could not figure it out- how did he, how did he manage to lose ALL of them? He tried to count the missing relations on his hooves, but they only went up to two so he quickly got confused in the process of doubling up the amount and doubling it up again.

Fuck. Well he'd need to tally them up as they came then. Jimmy worked his imagination, trying to bring up what he remembered from his distant elementary school education. The algebra didn't stick, but fuck all if he didn't count like a champ. He was a counting champion, and he'd tell anyone who cared to listen.

The basic ruminations on numbers and arithmetic led him astray, and before he knew it he was neck deep in who knows what but really WHO KNOWS WHAT?! It was slightly acidic to his skin, and he tossed himself flopping on the side of the trench like a fish, wiping the viscous fluids off with a hoof. It was in this condition that a Griffon perchance decided to walk by. Jimmy calmly flipped up onto his hooves, and slicked his hair back with the grease accumulated on his hoof.

"Yeah, just.... I was... This is all legit, hear?"

Kroll heard the sound of something thrashing around in water coming from one of the nearby trenches, and looked over to see a stallion flopping about like a fish out of water. As the stallion got back up to his hooves and slicked his hair back, Kroll couldn't help but sigh and rub his face. "No, no...it's fine, relax..."

Kroll looked over at the water in the trench and put took out the litmus paper from his Hazard Kit, dipping it in for a few seconds before pulling it back out. Dark Orange. Shaking his head, Kroll put the paper and kit away, directing his attention back to the stallion.

"You really shouldn't be down here right now; there's been word of a gas leak, or something like that. I highly suggest that you leave, sir."

Jimmy looked at the griffon and his kits and his papers with an expression not totally unlike that of a child trying to assess the nature of two dogs in heat going at it. It was a mix of curiosity, misunderstanding, abstained judgement and the discrete sensation that he was, for some reason, supposed to be avoiding what he was watching.

Jimmy remained silent, assessing this new Griffon. The sewers were a lonely place- Jimmy and his forty-something and a half relations had discovered that in the fourteen or so minutes they had been there. Jimmy took that to mean he was an expert in Sewer-ing, since, in all reckoning he had more experience in those fourteen minutes than anyone he knew.

"Now now, sir, I think you are probably confused. Us ponies live down here, and yeah, we look around for things."

Jimmy was chill. He knew he had this under control. It wouldn't be long, but in no time at all he'd have the Griffon's shiny bag and the treasures it held. He just had to lead the Griffon along, yeah, that's all.

Kroll stared at the stallion before him, not sure how to interpret its odd rambling.

"That...doesn't change what I'm saying. There may or may not be toxins leaking from the pipes that will kill you. And not only will they kill you, it will most likely hurt the entire time you die. If there's anybody else down here with you, I strongly advise you and them leave now."

Words danced in Jimmie's head as the Griffon's jabber-jaw spat them out in great tracheal troughs of thunderous trollops. Jimmy did not feel so good, or well, or really good or well at all. Really he could be not good and not well simultaneously he reckoned, bearing that those things were not in fact mutually exclusive.

He nodded his ascent to the Griffon, who had taken a special grandeur in Jimmies shined over eyes. Jimmy projected a stream of vomit in a rather half-hearted fashion. Where did those nephews of his go? "Yeah, speak of the devil, I think that... we need to find my nephews."

Jimmy did not pause to cognate his next act, grabbing Kroll roughly and diving into the troughs.

Kroll took half a step back as the stallion decided to throw up a little before drafting the griffon's help in locating his nephews, a task that, though arbitrary, was relevant in the search and subsequent eviction of any and all inhabitants of the sewers...

What Kroll wasn't prepared for was the strange stallion grabbing ahold of him, and dragging him into the trough of hazardous liquids.

Sten heard something half-slosh and half-squelch around the corner. He waded along to take a look, thanking every god that came to mind for wellington boots. And the mask, come to think of it. Without that, he'd have a face full of whatever foul smell they had going on down here. Or at least more of it.

Around the corner, he saw a griffon and a pony taking a quick tumble in the... well, taking a tumble anyway. Lucky for them everything was pretty liquid once it got this far. He scampered over to the edge of the trench.

"Alright down there?" he said, with as much concern as he could muster, given the circumstances.

Jimmy clawed at the rim of the trench in vain, his hooves being about as effectual as the hooven nubs they were. As he slid down the torrent of fluids and other things, a though occurred to him that perhaps misfortune could be traced to singular karmically charged events at some points in his past.

A particularly pigeonesqe griffon stood in a side trench as Jimmy slipped by, wearing boots to its neck it appeared, and a respirator on its face. Jimmy tried to gasp out a "help" but inadvertently swallowed a mouthful of shit. Jimmy settled for a flailing garble, hoping in his heart of hearts that Griffons could understand pony body language.

Before he could read any measurable response in the Griffon, a torrent dragged him below and he couldn't see anything anymore. The waves of sewage crashed against him, flipping him and tossing him around. He was no longer able to determine his orientation, and with a second flip was incapable of figuring how far he'd gone.

Suddenly his hoof caught on something, wedged between a rusty bar and concrete wall. This gave him the leverage to move his head from the water, and see that he'd only moved twenty meters. He flailed about with his loose limbs trying to alert the two of his location.

Kroll's claw burst out of the sludge and grabbed ahold of one of Sten's arms, thinking it was a piece of rebar. Gripping tightly, the captain began to haul himself out of the foul bath, completely soaked . After he coughed out what little of the liquid got into his lungs, Kroll finished crawling out of the sewage trough, rasping quietly.

Sten was a little surprised when an arm emerged and grabbed a hold of him, but he helped haul the poor bugger out anyway. By the look of him he'd taken quite a serious dive in the stuff. Best let him recover.

"You alright?" he said, leaning down to him. "Need a moment?"

The pony had vanished off downstream, but... well, he was an earth pony. They were the resilient sort. That was what Sten told himself, anyway. He wasn't going wading for him at any rate.

Kroll rolled to his feet, coughing a little as he shakes some of the sewage out of his feathers. "Fine...I'm fine." He looked at the griffon before him, noticing the breathing mask and boots. "You...*cough* I take it you're part of the hazard crew?"

Sten glanced about. If he'd been a little quicker, he would've said 'yes sure I'm with whatever that is', but the air down there was really close. It was hard to think straight with the mask on, and with a head full of humidity.

"Uh, no, I'm just checking out the terrain down here," he said instead.

Kroll waved a claw dismissively. "Well either way, I could use your help, especially since you have that mask...I'm supposed to be looking for the source of a gas leak down here. Haven't had much luck so far..." Kroll paused to look around for a moment, as if he was missing something. "Say, where did that stallion go?" He paused, looking over the edge of the trough. "...Equestrians can't swim, can they?"

"Gas leak?" said Sten, raising an eyebrow (a pointless gesture, given his mask). "Wouldn't you be able to smell something like that...?

But the other griffon had something else on his mind. Sten peered down the trough, leaning out behind him.

"I think so," he said, trying to sound sure. "I mean, it stands to reason, right? I mean, ponies have rivers, same as everyone else."

Jimmy flailed more in the water, gesturing wildly with his loose hoof. If he knew how to swim it wasn't evident at the moment, namely do to his lack of finesse and the garbled way that he drowned/spoke.

He gradually pried himself from the water, using the bar as leverage. When he finally managed to pull his head completely out of the water, he shot the two a look of defeat and frustration.

Kroll raised a brow in surrpise. "Huh. I suppose they can...somewhat." He started making his way towards the stallion, opting to regard the brief sewage dunk a misunderstanding. "Are you alright?"

Sten sidled up behind the other griffon. Just in case, you know? I mean, he looked alright, but since when was that proof? Best to leave it to the professionals.

"I can't recall if Griffon's know the difference between a drowning pony and free lunch, so let me explain that no, I am not dead, and no, I am not alright."

Jimmy proffered a hoof to Griffon who stood over him, waving it expectantly.

Kroll let out a sigh-like chuckle as he reached down to grab the stallion's foreleg, helping it back up to its hooves. "You really ought to be more careful...this isn't a place for...well, anything that likes living in general. You really should get out of here."

Sten nodded emphatically. "I think we could all do with a breath of fresh air," he said. He cast about behind himself. "Of course, one of you knows the way out?"

He tried not to make it sound too much like a question. Sten wasn't much of one for confidence himself, but he liked to think of himself as the cause of confidence in others. After all, once you'd seen Sten, you had an idea of how much further you had to fall.

Jimmy tried to wipe himself off, but realized he was just griming it in more. He snatched a plume of feathers off of Sten's back when he figured the griff wasn't looking and tried to use them to sop off the grease and excrement.

"Goddammit. This isn't coming off is it... Agh, okay, yeah, sorry for not being the conversationalist but I'm actually looking for somepony. Have you seen any, uh, miscelanious Earth Ponies, about, uh, waist height? I was supposed to be watching them and they wandered off..."

Kroll frowned, shaking his head. "Can't say that I have, no. Do you know a specific number of these associates of yours? That would be really helpful right now; I don't need any Equestrians wandering off into hazardous sections of these sewers today."

Jimmy paused, from wiping himself off, as if he were trying to think a thought. "Well of course I know the number, just, I can't precisely say which number it is. I remember seeing it once, on paper, and if I saw it again I could point it out to you. Why does that matter? We'll just find them and count them after."

Jimmy peered around suddenly. "Did you hear something?"

Kroll paused. The more this stallion spoke, the more he doubted it's state of mind. All the same, if there really were others down here, it was up to Kroll to make sure they were out of the sewers. Sighing at the stallion's odd question, the captain replied. "No, I didn't. What did it sound like?"

Sten pricked his ears and had a quick nervous glance. Any noise other than sloshing in the sewers generally preceded death. And, of course, sometimes sloshing did too. It was just that kind of place, really. Oh well.

"More to the point, how close was it?" he said.

Jimmy wasn't quite sure. He began pushing the Pigeon Griffon in the direction he had heard the noise from, intent on sleuthing it out and also intent on using the Griffon as a shield should something jump out. Jimmy peered around the waist of the Griffon, trying to get a better look from behind his shield.

A glow emanated from one of the chambers branching off from theirs, and Jimmy could get a glimpse of it from behind his feathery friend. "I am of the opinion that you- need to check it out."

He shoved Sten forward towards the light.

Sten scrabbled against the ordure underclaw. Baths, he thought. A hot bath, with soap and shampoo and bubble bath when all this is over.

"Hey, hey, hey, who says I have to go?" he said, turning his head to the pony. "Could be dangerous up there. You'd need someone with special gear to handle something like that."

Kroll sighed, rubbing his face at the stallion's antics. "Sir, I'll take it from here; I'm supposed to be looking for the source of a gas leak down here anyway, so I'll go with you. Please stop pushing the tercel, please."

The bend revealed a room, a working closet with easy access to several massive valves. Benches sat idle and dusty, and the tools had been rusted fast to their surfaces by the moist air. A lingering heat filled the room, as if it had just prior been significantly hotter.

A set of galvanized steel stairs led off from the room downwards- a glow shone below.

Jimmy's expression was unpalatable, akin to disgust and curiosity and gasiness. "Augh...Just... Augh... I'm going in there, I suppose my nephews broke something."

Sten edged after the pony, although he didn't like the look of the place, tell you the truth. Derelicts gave him the heebie-jeebies (to use a technical term).

"The hell could they have broken?" he said, idly running a claw over a chunk of debris.

Kroll looked around the dilapidated area, doubtful that the stallion's missing relatives had anything to do with the damage. "Well, we'll just have to have a maintianence team come down here sometime later on to get this stuff fixed up...but finding your relatives is priority one right now." he said as he followed after the two.

Jimmy ran down the stairs, following the glow. The stairway opened up into a long passage lined with corroded pipes and concrete flooring. The glimmer of a gas lamp flickered above in the darkness, lilting violently to the sides back and forth. Jimmy caught whiff of something rancorous, but kept on despite the stinging it had on his eyes.

He approached a wide bend leading out onto a ledge, which looked over a spinning pool of waste water. The trenches on the sides of the ledge flowed inwards towards the pool, carrying fluid from deep in the system to this reservoir, which then sucked it away to somewhere else. Jimmy pawed forwards slowly to the edge, when he was struck by a sudden, intense migraine...

Sten pelted on after the pony. Just who built all this? he wondered, and how long must it have taken?

No time for that. Something stank through his mask. "Fuggin' hell..."

What it was became obvious. Up ahead was a drain of some kind, with all that entailed. The air was so thick you could cut it. Mind you, the pony was having a worse time of it.

"Hey, you alright?" said Sten, edging towards him.

Kroll raised a brow at the sight of the change in the stallion's behavior, but was reserved to lending a claw, recalling being dragged into a sewage trough earlier. Looking around at the dilapidated architecture, the captain couldn't help but wonder at how long it must've taken to construct this now-decrepit area of the city's sewer system.

A brilliant glow illuminated the chamber from its center, blinding Jimmy and causing him to stumble back. His eyes narrowed, as the what-ever-it-was stationed itself over the suction below it. It swiveled about, revealing a mischievous looking face in black, grinning sinister at the assembled group. Jimmy nearly swooned as he was struck wholly by a wave of methane.

He retook his footing, and in a bit of savage indiscretion, heaved his sledgehammer from its saddlebag at the glowing object. Perhaps, one could rationalize, he was just addled from the gas exposure. But whatever his intentions where, his hammer had arced up into the air, and clonked the object headlong, splitting it in two vertically along its middle. It parted, seemingly undamaged, but severely irritated.

The water around them began to boil up from below, and suddenly pillars of fire exploded into the air. "Well fuck, I don't think I will idle along here for much longer."

Sten yelped as fire happened suddenly and violently over the pool.

"The bloody hell'd you do?" he shouted, maybe a little hysterical.

The smell hanging in the air was now burned, as well as being unpleasantly organic. Sten held an arm across his mask to try and mask it. He stepped up behind the pony and put a claw on his shoulder.

"Let's step back, shall we?" he said, giving a gently yank.

Kroll looked around at the area for some route of escape, pausing to give the stallion a withering glare. "You don't ever stop and think what your actions can cause, do you."

Jimmy turned, presumably to say something to the Griffon who'd snarked at him, when he the methane inhalation finally struck him. He flopped to the side suddenly with all the weight of his body being tossed into the channel of water, sucking him down into the spinning vortex.

As Jimmy was being flushed to who-knows-where, the will-o-wisps were getting increasingly belligerent. Fiery lances filled the room as the ambient natural gases began combusting, only being held back by quickly plummeting oxygen levels. They struck out at the two griffons with wiery tendrils of flame, singing their feathers.

The sudden increase in activity excited the will-o-wisps, and what had been two prior split again into four, healthy and aggressive will-o-wisps. The newer pair grinned menacingly and began to hover over to the gangway that held the griffons.

If that weren't enough, the heat and commotion had begun crumbling the poorly cemented concrete below them. Shit was getting bad, is all that was to say.

Sten had been in enough burning buildings to know the reasonable response to everything being on fucking fire; Get near water fast. It was just unfortunate that what was in the pool wasn't strictly speaking water. Oh well, c'est la vie. He turned to the other griffon.

"C'mon, let's get out of here."

With any luck, the suit and the mask would keep most of it out of his fur and mane. Hopefully. He took a running dive into the... well, let's call it water for his sake.

Kroll watched the other griffon vanish into the cesspool, then looked up at the fiery beings, who seemed to be incapable of being reasoned with. Taking a deep breath, the captain closed his eyes and jumped into the current of filth below.

The trio was tossed about in the water as the suction whipped them into a whirlpool. The fluid was thick, but powerfully compelling in its motion to have them pulled into the drainage below. If Jimmy could contemplate, he'd likely say something like- "Fuck"- or some similarly concise and unintelligible grumbling.

They went down, into a tube that was roughly five times the width of a man, and for a brief while it was just this piping action with no respite. For about thirty yards they were dragged through this slicked and awful mess before they were plopped into a massive concrete trench with no discernible walls, but with gasping room with which to breath. The air was mostly mucked up, but the construction did allow some fresh air to vent itself in. This trench was short, only lasting about ten meters before ending ubruptly in a drop.

The trio was then dumped, rather unceremoniously into the darkest chamber that had ever existed.

Sten landed heavily in a slump, and stayed there. For the moment, everything was fine. He wasn't surrounded by shit on all sides, no one was screaming, nothing was on fire and nothing wanted him dead. For the moment, he was blameless and entirely innocent.

The bastard who'd landed on top of him wasn't, though. He was going to hell.

Kroll coughed and took a few deep breaths, slowly picking himself up. Looking around this new room, all he could see was black "Everyone good?"

Jimmy had landed on something soft, on his feet too! What fortune. Oh wait, it was a griffon. That was probably bad.

Jimmy gingerly stepped off of Sten and began fishing about for sledgehammers. As soon as he was off, his trusty sledge slicked down from the hole in the roof, thudding heavily off of Sten's knee.

"I can't see anything," he said, in an incredibly opaque fashion.

Sten screamed a little into his mask and limped to his feet.

"I'll kill you, you bastard," he said, rubbing his knee, but his heart wasn't really in it.

He took the time to have a glance around the hole, but bastard was right. It was dark as you never hoped it would be.

"No one bring a light?"

After a brie moment, a soft, green glow that steadily began to get brighter illuminated the immediate area of the group, revealing Kroll standing over Sten and Jimmy, clutching what a shard of glowing quartz.

The green light gives the griffin's face an almost sickly pallor as he looms over the two with a somewhat disappointed look on his face. "Are both of you alright?"

"I am..." he droned off for a few seconds before spinning about to face Kroll. "...incredible."

He said this as if it was a simple fact, that there was no debating his incredible state nor was their a feasible chance of conceivably convincing him that he was otherwise.

He stared into the light, his eyes glazing over. "We should probably move from here. I heard their we're cultists running around these parts, and I got to get my nephews." With that out of the way he began ambling off into the darkness.

From the shadows, as he grew distant, he yelled that he had found a magnificent castle, and it was now his.

Sten righted his mask and sniffed. It wasn't that the air smelled any better down here, but it certainly smelled different, slightly more chemical? He shook his head, which made it spin a little, but he was alright, he was alright.

He looked off down the direction the pony had run in. He turned to the other griffon.

"You think help we should go him?" he said, straight faced. "Seems here-down dangerous."

Kroll nodded as he turned to look in the direction Jimmy walked off in. "We definitely should... I doubt he can see in the dark, and though I don't take any credence in his claims of a cult down here, extra caution wouldn't hurt in the least."