Understanding the Underbelly

Rumia was up late at night again. This time, she was going down to the sewers more prepared. She had food that she nicked from the cafeteria in a bag that she bought from shopping, her cloak that she used to conceal her glow, and a brand new rope that she would use to make scaling down the dorms easier, at the very least.

Looking at the clock in her room, it was about time for Amethyst to be in that tunnel for bathing purposes. Everything lined up, so now it was her time to act.

“Are these nightly expeditions gonna be like, a consistent thing?” Anise said, standing behind her.

“Huh? Yeah, as I said, the same rule applies, don’t tell anyone.”

She had managed to leverage Anise’s help to be able to climb up and down from her room without needing her there. The engineer had jerry-rigged a device on the end of the rope that would latch onto the window, allowing her to climb up and down all by herself.

“What are you even doing out there?” Anise asked.

“It’s nothing important for you,” Rumia said. “I’ll be back soon.”

She didn’t want to tell Anise where exactly she was going. Any deeper slip from her could get the entire city guard on top of her, and she already felt suffocated enough with Grimace watching her every step.

“Alright,” Anise crossed her arms. “I was just wondering.”

“Thanks for keeping this a secret though, I really appreciate it,” Rumia said. That seemed to warm Anise’s expression a little bit.

With that, Rumia decided to scale down her dorm room once more. The height was still scary, but the rope with her feet planted on the wall felt so much better than dangling with Anise’s toothpaste.

It only took a few seconds, but she made it down onto the ground. With that, she used a button on the other end of the rope to detach it from the window and drop it to the ground. After putting the device in her bag, she headed towards the sewer system.

She had two goals for today. The first one was to build her rapport with Amethyst, because she seemed like a genuinely useful ally. The second was to explore the sewers themselves, as she never got the chance to explore them fully. She needed to get familiar with moving around in them.

Maybe she could visit some important places too. Gathering as much information as she could in this time.

She reached the sewer tunnel, locked behind the gate. Amethyst wasn’t waiting in front of it, but she figured she was probably there.

Ruimia shook the gate a fair bit, creating a rattling noise that bounced through the sewer tunnels. A moment later, a figure emerged from the darkness of the sewers holding a few glowing pieces of metal.

“Ayyy, Rumi. Ya stuck around!”

Amethyst stood on the other side of the door, a cup of water in her hands. She pushed open the door for Rumia to enter and she stepped inside. Rumia put her bag down in front of Amethyst for her to dig through.

“There’s your food. What do you want me to bring you next time?” Rumia asked, as the other girl rummaged through her stuff.

“One sec,” Amethyst said. The girl began taking out bags of food. “Boiled Porcine Eggs, good protein. Got some good veggies here with the Monds. Got some Lunar Bread of course, a favorite of mine. I coulda done without the cake though, you coulda gotten me some cheese or something?”

“Doesn’t everyone like cake though?” Rumia responded.

“It tastes sweet but I ain’t exactly got room to be eatin’ somethin’ so bad for my health. I gotta always be on the top of my game.”

Adelyn always liked sweets, and so did she. She wasn’t expecting that treat to be rejected so handily like that.

“Well, if you’re not gonna have it then let me have it,” Rumia said, taking it.

“Sure, just don’t get cramps later,” Amethyst responded.

Rumia placed the cake back into her bag and looked at Amethyst.

“I wasn’t expecting you to care so much about diet,” Rumia said as Amethyst finished packing her food.

“Is it just because I’m poor?” Amethyst shook her head. “As I said, it’s important. Even if I can’t be picky y’know? I’d argue that makes my diet even more important than ever!”

“I suppose,” Rumia said. The two of them began to walk down the stream, heading towards the water purification machine. Upon reaching it, Amethyst pushed open the bars behind it, allowing Rumia to move through it.

“Where are ya planning on visiting?” Amethyst asked, walking back over to the clean and purified water.

“Probably the walls… maybe just a few other places. I’m really trying to get the lay of the land, you know?”

“That’s cool,” Amethyst said. “I’m gonna go take a bath.”

Right. She still thought it was weird that this girl bathed in the water that was used to fill the school lake. But, it wasn’t any of her business.

“Alright, you do you,” Rumia said.

“Anything else you want to know?” Amethyst asked, beginning to prepare for her bath as Rumia stepped through the open metal bar. For the sake of privacy, Rumia did not look backwards.

“Uh, right. If I’m going to the walls, how far is PASCAL’s detection window? What’s the safe zone, so to speak.”

She heard Amethyst splashing into the water behind her as she answered.

“Keep around two arm’s lengths away from the walls and ya should be fine. No problem at all.”

“Thanks,” Rumia said. She began to walk off, her glowing presence illuminating the pathway forward. She would have a lot to explore today.

***

Rumia was observing the map she had taken from Amethyst the previous day. Though, it was still pretty difficult to navigate through all of this darkness. Her immediate area was illuminated but anything further was far too dark for her to see still.

Luckily, she read more than a few maps with Adelyn back at her time in the library. So, she was barely managing, which was more than nothing. It was eerily empty in the hallways, with the only occasional presence being a small rat.

Though, what also made this place difficult to navigate was the smell. It stuck with her before but it was even worse now. It smelled like a combination of dying corpses and manure, and it made it difficult to even breathe. Rumia definitely wanted to have a shower after this expedition.

After all this suffering, she finally reached the tunnel that led towards the wall. It didn’t look much different from any other tunnel in this sewer. If she didn’t have this map then she would have been totally lost. But she began to approach.

One cautious step after another, wanting to make sure she did not run into anything. The silence cut through her ears, as even the sound of her own footsteps made her wary. Eventually, she reached a stone wall.

She would recognize this material, it was the same as the walls. What struck her as new was the metal door attached to it, unlabeled and unmarked. It was odd. She could only guess where that went.

Rumia stood a fair bit back from the wall, worried that PASCAL might detect her. She looked around the tunnel, and there seemed to be a few wires that led into the door. It wasn’t much, but she definitely figured there was a connection there.

The glowing girl nodded. This could be a potential avenue for her escape, she would just need to figure out a way to deactivate PASCAL and break through the wall. She’d need to do it fast too, but that was a problem for later Rumia to solve.

***

Rumia had begun exploring other areas of the dark sewer. Though with the smell, she really wanted to get out of here soon. She had no idea how Amethyst could survive living down here for this long.

Another rat skittered by her, as she wandered throughout the maze of the sewers. She checked her map before she saw a few storm drains that led down into the tunnels she was walking through. Rumia was in the market, it seems.

At this point in common time, no stores were open. There were a select few, but they weren’t worth peeking her head out for. Amethyst did mention that she could steal a lot of things easily from these stores, but it definitely wasn’t from peeking out of drains.

She kept on wandering through the market sewers, it was even more of a maze than normal. However, she turned a corner and eventually saw something. A pipe for her to go through. The bad news is, she had no idea where this would lead.

It would also be disgusting to climb through, if she ever had to. Even more so than walking through these already gross sewers. But, having to squish her way through the sewer pipes of a building would be rough.

She didn’t want to do it unless it was absolutely necessary. It was also probably illegal to do so, and there was a good chance she would get caught. But, this was still good to know. She had something in mind at this point.

She looked at her map of the sewer systems. It covered general areas as labeled by Amethyst, and she knew access to some of the buildings. However, there were a lot of unlabeled parts and pathways that went across the city.

So, her next goal was to map out this entire sewer system. The plan was to mark down each of these drains and where they probably connected to, and then explore the city up top. That way she could know exactly where all of these pipes connected, and she wouldn’t have to risk getting dirty or getting caught just to check.

For now, she was going to keep on checking for these pipes. She bought a pen to mark things down in the meanwhile, so she would eventually know what she would have access to in these tunnels.

***

Rumia had finally navigated her way back to the entrance that she came back in from. After stumbling around for a while in the dark, she saw a light in the tunnel. A familiar glisten of Amethyst’s glowing pieces of metal.

“Ya finally done?” Amethyst said as Rumia approached. The other girl looked clean for once, most likely due to her bath. Even if it was likely to get ruined by tomorrow.

“Yeah. Could you do me a favor, actually?” Rumia said, before pulling up the map. “Mark down the names of the stores you know, please?”

Amethyst looks at the map.

“I can’t read or write, if I am gonna be one hundred percent with ya.”

“Ah-”

Rumia was embarrassed at having brought up the point to begin with now. Amethyst obviously knew where she was going, but it would be no help if she couldn’t exactly point that out now.

“It’s fine. I just was never taught, haha,” Amethyst laughed it off. “Regardless, ya seem to be doing some good work out there. The tunnels are always open to ya if anything is needed.”

“Thanks. Did you want anything tomorrow?” Rumia asked.

“Just keep it balanced. That’s all I ask, if I need something else, I’ll tell ya by the next meetin’.”

With that, the two of them parted ways. Rumia looked one more time at her map, with the markings laid out across the entire city. The more knowledge she had, the better.

Every small win counted. No matter how long it took.