Tunnel Rat

Milo had a million thoughts running through his head, and so much to do, but...his foot itched! The pain from losing his foot had been terrible, but he had focused on it and shoved it to the side. The itch was another thing altogether, cutting through his defenses.

Brutus had put a sort of large sock on his leg and tied it at the ankle. "You've never had to regenerate something? Fine, here's the rules: You don't look at it, you don't poke it, you don't pick at it or mess with the bandages. You let it grow back at the pace your body sets. No extra cheese unless the Caravan Master gives it to you. And I'm not unless I think you need it. It needs to stay clean and not get anything on it. And whatever you do, don't stand on it. You're lucky you've got good regeneration. Justin lost two fingers once and had to wear a special mitten for a month. When it finally quits itching, I'll check on it. Until then, sit here and watch the girls play with the carts. I'll be patrolling the area and making sure nothing sneaks up on us."

As if the itching wasn't bad enough, the sounds of squeaking rail carts moving over the rusting tracks had forced Milo into action, despite Brutus' rules. He carefully set up his Engineer's Workbench and dug through his storage areas for rust remover and gear lubricant. It was tedious enough sitting still so his foot would regenerate, but hearing the squealing of old metal wheels as the girls raced back and forth with their new toys was driving him crazy.

He decided to turn the job of oiling the cartwheels into a lesson in beginning maintenance. Brutus had told him that he and Gendifur tried to find any skill that the girls could do that involved thinking or crafting. The more new things they could find that would give them experience for their mental stats, the better. They loved and excelled in anything physical, but gaining STR and CON would only reinforce the changes made to them. Milo explained about fixing the wheel, and it became a new game for the girls, resulting in them finding every cart between the furnace area and the coal mines and bringing all three dozen to Milo, the squealing echoing through the caverns. Some of them were hopelessly beyond fixing with a little oil, so the next lesson was how to take apart the wheels of a mine cart and use those parts to repair another.

There were casualties, of course. Large hands, small tools, and rusted parts led to broken pieces and upset junior mechanics. Several cookie breaks were taken to calm them down, especially after Rosie broke a wheel, and then vented her frustration by ripping apart the steel minecart with her bare hands. Milo calmed her by telling her that they could melt all the broken carts down and turn them into new parts or shiny ingots. The thought of making something new out of something broken intrigued them.

"Breaking things isn't always bad? Can you make broken things better? Grackle always yelled when we broke things."

"Grackle called us broken things! He said if we didn't follow his orders, we'd have to go to the place with the broken things."

Milo thought for a moment, "Breaking things is usually bad, and we should try not to break things. But not always. Sometimes, I break things by accident and then I have to fix them. I always try to make them better than they were before. Fixing broken tools and machines teaches me things. And sometimes I see things that are already broken. Some of those I fix, and some I break again when trying to fix. Like the wheels that we couldn't get to turn." He thought to himself of other things he had permanently broken, like General Gangreen or the first Snake.

As if reading his thoughts, Buttercup pointed to the large chunks of rusty deep copper in the middle of the tunnel. "We broke Mr. Badsnake. Can you fix him?"

Milo did intend to 'Fix Mr. BadSnake, but not in a way that would make the Snake happy. You don't give eels a second chance.

"We can fix Mr. Badsnake by turning it into shiny metal ingots that we'll use to make better things. You can help me. Once we fix some of the carts, you can load all the snake parts and take them to the first furnace, and we'll melt the snake. We'll need lots of coal, too. And I want you to be careful when you scoop things up. Use the shovels from the coal piles and try not to touch things with your hands."

Brutus had made sure all of them washed well after the battle. Normal infection could hit anyone, no matter what level, although the girls could shrug such ailments off easily. But both he and Milo were cautious about dealing with the corpses of the corrupted creatures. The big piles of broken scarabs and parts of the Snake bothered him as well, and he wasn't going to be happy until they had melted everything down and cleaned the area of all corruption. He intended to spray the area where they'd thrown the eggs with waste fluid. The corrosive and flammable fluid would neutralize most substances, and the fire would clean the rest.

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The girls got tired of pushing the carts and harnessed up their moles to do the job. The moles had grown bored waiting for the two-leggers to get moving. They were happy to pull the mine carts back and forth at their leisurely pace, despite the girls wanting to race. Moles weren't fast, but they could pull several carts of coal at once. Milo sat in the furnace room, trying to ignore his foot and make plans for this place. The girls had named them Iggy and Ziggy, the Moleski brothers. Which of the moles was which, they seemed to know, but Milo couldn't tell one more from another without their name tags.

Inactivity was getting to Milo worse than the itching in his foot, and he waited impatiently for the girls to gather everything up. After the last load of coal and snake parts was piled up, Milo asked the girls to take turns holding him on their shoulders so he could move around better. He examined the simplest of the large smelters, looking for something suitable for melting metals such as copper and tin. The huge blast furnaces would take many people to operate. He chose the smaller one in the best condition and had the girls fill the firebox with a small amount of coal. An hour later, things were heating up properly, he'd figured out the flues and adjusted the air intake, and was confident that they could use it to melt down the snake.

He used the coke they'd found in one of the storage rooms for this job. It burned hotter and cleaner than coal. The fireboxes glowed red hot as they burned the coke and heated up the thick ceramic furnace. The metal made strange hissing and popping noises as it was heated and the impurities burned off. The noise increased over time until there was a constant, high-pitched scream coming inside. The furnace shook and then went still, the noise dropping to normal levels. Milo showed the girls where the molten metal would pour out into the channels that distributed it to the ingot molds. Crossing his fingers, he opened the valve and watched as glowing, molten Deep Copper poured out and filled each of the large ingot molds. Each movable cart held molds for a hundred ingots. They were on the fifth cart when the color of the metal changed and became more silvery.

"Oooh, pretty. Why is it silver now?"

"The Deep Copper from the snake was the densest metal and poured off first. This looks like an alloy of all the other metals that were on the snake, similar to the metals on the scarabs. We'll have to test the metal and see what it's good for." Another eighty ingots were cast, and then it was time for more cookies and a discussion of how dangerous molten metal could be. They were just finishing up when Brutus checked in on his rounds. Luckily, Milo was back in his resting place.

Brutus eyed the cooling ingots, the little girls with coal dust in their fur, and the lack of large snake parts. "Cooking up some snake? Boy, am I hungry!"

The girls ran to him to tell him their stories of the day's adventure. Dinner was a quick stew of mushrooms and vegetables, with a bit of crumbly bleu cheese on a cracker for dessert. A huge cauldron found in the room was filled with water and became a makeshift tub for the girls. After over an hour of bath time, Brutus tucked them into their beds in the wagon and collapsed next to Milo, "Looks like you half-tired them out, and bath time finished them off. Nearly finished me as well. Georgie and I walked nearly two miles down that large tunnel. There are some minor rock slides and broken timbers, but overall, it's in remarkably good shape. No side passages, and we turned back when we hit another set of metal doors. Quiet and peaceful all the way, made me suspicious."

Milo had a theory, "I think the creatures that might normally lair in this area avoided it because of the corrupted scarabs."

"Ha, I bet they did. Little suckers were pretty territorial. Bad news, that stuff. Another few generations and you'd need an army to deal with them. Meaning I'd bring Justin with me. Boy, is he going to be jealous when he hears about all the fun he missed!"

Milo looked at the cooling metal, "I want to smelt the remains of the scarabs tomorrow. Just in case. Even if they burn to nothing, it's worth doing."

"After you have two feet."

Milo sighed, "Yes, there is that. Stupid Snake." His foot was still itching, but he was tired enough that he could sleep. Brutus winked at him. "Strange how tired you are for sitting around all day. But don't worry, me and Georgie are on guard. Take a nap and we'll see if you can wiggle your toes tomorrow."