Don't neglect the sentiment.

[Poxy Dennis]

The rat bite on his ankle was progressively worsening.

The edges around where the little beast had sunk its teeth in were growing red and the whole area was swollen, crusting with little yellow flakes in the middle. Dennis scratched at it vigorously in between shambling steps, his gnarled trunk twisting down to meet the ankle as it rose, leaving him poised on one foot for a moment, swaying and grunting with the effort before setting off again. It was such a pain, all of it, but there was no reward for sloth in the piss... he had to keep reminding himself of that while shifting the weight of his bag from one shoulder to the other. Since he'd woken and dragged himself from the half collapsed hovel he was occupying, Dennis had eighty percent of his good junk spots on the outskirts. There wasn't much today, some scraps of near or fully spoiled food, bits of rusted metal components torn from their hosts, the usual. The best score he'd found all week was a discarded pouch of tobacco only half smoked. When the other scrubs went to sleep and the junkies went out to prowl, Dennis would sneak downwind and take a few quick puffs before himself retiring. In the piss, any show of having more than the next man could earn you a quick stick in the ribs.

Lately he'd done well avoiding unwanted eyes, resigned himself to the more empty buildings, the ones people were scared to sleep in. Yet he always felt the eyes watching him, especially on a day like today with the streets packed to capacity. Slowly and shambling he made his way down to the ramshackle market where Desmond hung out, the little shit, sneakthief, what a stupid f- “OI! POXY!” there it was, every damn time. “Shhhh!” Dennis hisses in return, flapping his arms and shambling quickly over to the greasy little man who stood hailing him from outside the market proper. “You couldn't make more noise if I stuck you in the split!” he scolds, wide eyes darting violently amongst the crowd to see if anyone had noticed, but they all seem preoccupied. Dennis couldn't say why, but there was a buzz running among them today. Once he got this unpleasantness out of the way he might care more about it, but for now he gritted his teeth and smiled... simultaneously. “HA! Right, Right, best not draw attention, don't want em finding out about all your riches and powerful magic now do we Pox?” God, the smirk on his face could ignite a passionate bludgeoning, it probably would someday. Dennis' face twitched slightly “You want to see the haul or not? If we're quick I can make another round through the pit before dark.”

Desmond ushered him back toward a low crumbling wall which had accumulated natural bulges of abandoned debris and trash where the two could converse less in the open. With a groan and some creaking from his bones Dennis gently lowers his hairy sack to the ground and works for a moment at the knot he'd hastily tied to secure the top. Some mumbled curses and a few moments later he finally manages to free his haul, and almost immediately it starts. “This is all you have for me?” greasy weasel, cock faced mo-“I know shit's tough Poxy but this is just sad, even for y-” “Come on, Des, there's some good stuff here, look at these-” Dennis starts brandishing a couple smalls hunks of rusted metal “I know you can get these melted down!” “Look, I don't know what you want me to say, it's not like it used to be, there's a new blood moving through the streets, and a better market too. This-” Desmond gestures to the open sack “This junk just isn't worth my time anymore” Dennis couldn't help but grind his teeth “Look, I can't leave without something, just give me something, come on, you know you would have given me at least five!” “One! I'll give you one bu-” “ONE!” Dennis shouted uncontrollably, his eyes darting back to the crowd momentarily before returning to the little sweaty black haired greasy weasel snake pig fucker lookin' shit toad honkey- “One and half, Pox. Come on, don't do this to me, you know it's not like I can just -give- it to ya, you gotta bring me somethin' I can work with here!” “Fine, one and a half.” It was all Dennis could do to keep from biting his face off, but there wasn't anything for it. Desmond was hooked up now. Maybe not well liked, or even respected, a low level fence and junk pedlar, but Dennis knew what would happen if he stepped too hard on that line.

Once the deal was made and the pitiful exchange carried out Dennis left with as much speed as his dragging foot would grant him. He'd find the bright spot in this, he knew he would, there was always something else going in the background, some bigger plan. Right now though, the anger was coursing through him. Desmond was right, there were bigger scores to be had now. The streets were flooded with drugs and magic, secrets were traded in the dark, whores worked the corners just as they always had. Business as usual in the piss hole he supposed, but there was something new wrapped in amongst it. A new hunger, a new energy stirring the pot, whatever it was Dennis couldn't keep up the way he had been for so long now.

It was on that note with those thoughts swirling about his head that he set back off into the piss, a new urgency in his brain to find a -real- score.

[Gladrags]

Gladrags was done with dwarves, done with guards, and done with rats. Unless the rats was done like dinner. Rats for dinner, oh yes, yes and yes and rat spleens and rat tails and ratserole with fine dwarven ale. Gladrags hacked up a greenish wad of phlegm, and spat violently, imagining every dwarf in the world grown smaller and smaller and smaller and drowning in her foul mucus. The subsequent cackling caused the other two flotsam sifters currently present to pause in their work. Fishhook and Twine were carefully stripping their dead comrade of anything of value before the final ritual dumping of the body in the Ofriyu.

Bucket, the man who had kicked his own in the sewer just a couple of days prior, had been with them for a while. Not sure how long, calendars weren't exactly lying around all handy-like. They never knew what had brought him down to their level, but the flotsam sifters never really cared about such things, if truth were to be told. At the end of the day, Bucket had been one of them, sifting through the same shit. And now he wasn't, and Gladrags was displeased, and it was all the dwarf's fault. "They're drowning in filth and dirt and dust and shit and the city shits on the dwarves and the guards and rats and our dinner, that it does my trawlers, that it does." Fishhook and Twine grunted. Hell if they knew half of what Gladrags said, but usually when they figured it out, it made a kind of sense. They knew that guard, whats-his-face the dwarf, had promised to bring back Bucket, and he hadn't. Gladrags had. That was what mattered.

An hour later, as the sun reached its midday zenith, Bucket's pathetic rat-wrecked corpse splashed in the river. With Bucket's last bath accounted for, and the other flotsam sifters trudging off to hunt for whatever they could find to barter, Gladrags went off on a mutter. The motley rag-shrouded figure lurched through the shanty town, a bottle of the dwarven ale in hand which she'd received in payment for assisting the blasted guard, railing against all the injustices of the world to any unfortunate enough to cross Gladrags' path. Gladrags was completely absorbed in the task of drinking and ranting "...ards ain't guardin' and the rats are eatin' instead of gettin' et and it ain't right and they piss on you with piss instead of doing what ought be done and..." when the filthy sifter's mutter brought them across Dennis' path "...then a pox did brighten the poxy path and it was Dennis an' not a dwarf, so a pleasant pox indeed upon us all."

Gladrags coughed like there was a dying toad stuck down there, coughed like it was an eviction notice, until a large greenish-brown clump of viscous ooze splattered itself on the bottle. Gladrags scraped it off and popped it in a mouth filled with rotting teeth as one grey eye swivelled from the ale bottle to Dennis. Gladrags' other eye remained fixed upon the precious glass vessel as the wretch washed down the phlegm with some more ale. Gladrags belched as punctuation before adding "What's a pox ponderin' on a poxy street, eh? A pocket of poxes in pocks of cityshit and there it is, and there it isn't, eh Pox?"

[Poxy Dennis]

Dennis could see the woman's unfocused silhouette from a mile away. Well, his idea of a mile might be a little optimistic, but still. “Mind yer own damned business ye dank shrew!” he spat back at gladrags as she swayed his direction. God how he despised the woman. “I can smell the piss on ye from all the way over here!” granted, there weren't many places around where you couldn't smell piss, but it seemed to get distinctly worse any time gladrags came around. He'd never understood her fascination with him, but he didn't like it. “Don't ya have a smelly shit hole to crawl in somewhere?”

[Gladrags]

Gladrags cackled "Not one or one and two but a few, yes a few but they are swarming with stinking guards, fouling up the sewers with their lying and corpse-grubbing gauntlets." The sewers had suddenly become far more restricted with the blasted guards investigating something that wretched dwarf had overturned. They were blocking off access to most of her favourite trawling spots "Yer smellin' like failed innards agin, Pox, like yer organs are all twistin' an' writhin' wi'the pus-plague of failure. Yer rusted bits are all rusted out, eh, and out of luck with Des? Oh yes and oh a cranky purse equals cranky person and so it is with Pox and so it is. What'd 'e give you"

Gladrags pinned Pox's gaze with one mad grey eye while the other peered thoughtfully at Dennis' sack of goodies.

[Poxy Dennis]

“Des gave me shit is what 'e gave me.” Dennis grumbled through his rotting teeth, still seething over the encounter. “Still it's better than what i'll give you if ye' don't quit eying me sack.” With a rough twist he swings the bag still full of what the rubbish merchant wouldn't take over to his opposite shoulder and starts hobbling on, but encumbered as he is it's likely gladrags can keep right up with him. “It's all shit now! ALL PISS!” he yells back over his shoulder, assuming the woman's trail in his wake. “there's once a time a man could irk a living off the left overs! Now? Now there's nothing left! Stink and filth and whores and -worse-” with an audible pop from the shoulder Dennis throws a dirty glance back to at his momentary companion. “Wait... what're prim and proper gaurds gaurdin down there in the sewers anyway? Nothing worth protectin 'f ya ask me.” hobbling on he spits and rounds the corner back toward the heap.

[Gladrags]

Gladrags hissed as she haunted Dennis' trail "Y'aint got nothin' to give the likes of old Gladrags in that raggedy bag, Pox. Yer poorer than a broken jug with not a drop in't, and the guards ain't got nothing but lies and deceitful beer and corpses and lies and more corpses." The rag-bedraggled figure's tone turned dark "One of mine died down there, an' it weren't pretty. I'm glad they be blowin' up the damn guards' side o'the city. Did you hear them booms, Pox? Woke me up, and woke me up again."

One of the sewer trawler's grey eyes shifted its focus towards the more upmarket side of the city. "When things fall down, and things go missing, there's always excuses, and no excuse to not be makin' things go missing I's thinkin'. How watchful are the watchers, eh, Pox? When it gets dark and cold and they've got broken bricks to go blind bendin' an eye over. They took one o'mine, gotta take somethin' back. It's 'bout ek... ekwi, feckin' fair trade, it is. Ekwitradable scenario."

Word had reached the shantytown markets that the entire civic court had collapsed as a result of one of the explosions, and the site was swarming with guards. But that was in daylight, weren't it. Figures they'd be all ant-like angry under the sun. At night time, who'd notice a shambling shadow or two come to pick among the debris? Gladrags ambled alongside her disgruntled colleague "Whaddya say Pox, and whaddya say to that? The city's fireworks, and we're all owed a little sparkle."

[Poxy Dennis]

Dennis gave pause. Such a pause in fact that his trailing ankle got twisted up with the solid one as he ground to a halt as his mind lept into the scenario. He had in fact heard the explosions. Long off and muddled through the leaning roof of his hideaway, but present all the same. He'd also heard the whispers of their causing. Shadows slinking round in the dark were likely to be the same as corpses if seen by the wrong eyes, but his desperation could be weighed in the literal pounds of his worthless sack. “And how bright a sparkle's that gon' be if we get kicked into the shit caryin it, eh? Aint a quanity o' booze on this whole ball o'mud sufficien ta make you hikin the skirt seem an 'ekwitradable scenario' fer us leavin with our digits should they catch a wiff o' your piss in th' night.”

[Gladrags]

Gladrags hacked up some phlegm amidst a bout of wet bronchial coughing laughter. "Kicked into the shit? They gone kicked me out of the shit and dark quiet stenches, brought down their damn lights and armour and authority. Well, they move into my shit, I move into their shit. Land flotsam is flotsam still, and still flotsam is easier to sift."

The sewer crawler's left eye swivelled to one side, staring intently at Fort Omenbryn while her other orb kept its lock on her partner in conversation. After a moment's pause the wretched figure cackled "'Sides, ain't a damn one of them willin' to lay hand on me rags." Well, the damn dwarf might, the filthy lying scum, but who couldn't outrun a dwarf? Heh, even Legless Lazar outran the damn dwarf, and so she'd heard.

Gladrags shifted both eyes back on Pox as she lurched along in her shambling gait "I think yer just scared and poor and scared to poorness, Pox. Can't do honest work, can't do dishonest work, and it ain't working, and working it ain't." The stinking pile of rags convulsed with another bout of coughing "'Sides, think of all the scrap metal and bits and bobs all shambled in the rubble. All to be thrown in a scrap heap if we don't take a heap ourselves. What a waste eh? Can't let waste go t'waste, Pox. Can't let it."

[Cristyn Hayers]

Cristyn walked through the streets of the Industrial district a little too quickly and a little too nervously. The whole city was in an uproar and she didn't like it one bit. Last night, when she was tucked away in her usual sleeping spot, loud bangs and a soft rumble of the earth had woken her up. She had tried to go back to sleep, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her. She'd gotten up and, with Jammy trailing behind her, had made her way to the site of the blast. She hadn't been alone. The streets were buzzing with activity, as if it were the middle of the day. She didn't like that, either. She liked her routine and she liked to know what she could expect. This was nothing like that.
She arrived at the place where before the civic court had stood tall and proud. Now, it was a rubble, and already swarming with people.
Cristyn had slipped back into the shadows and watched from a distance, trying to comprehend what was going on. She caught traces of conversations, claiming that Justice Hall and the statue in Memorial Park were also bombed.

She hadn't gone back to sleep after and now she was wasting time in the Industrial District. Normally, she'd be down in Downtown, trying to get her hands on some money, some food or some other items that she could pawn. Right now, with the whole city out of balance, she didn't dare go there. The city guard was in a frantic, working hard to clear the mess the bombs had left but most all, figuring out what had happened. No way Cristyn was going anywhere near there.

She kicked a loose rock lying in the street, her head swarming. She had little money left and and a whole day of getting nothing more left her worried. She looked up and saw to figures walking together, discussing something loudly. Cristyn picked up her pace and started walking behind them, trying to come off casual. She recognized these two figures. One was Poxy Dennis and the other Gladrags; both two figures that she didn't have much to do with. She would have left them alone, but there was something in their demeanor that caught her attention. She knew when people were up to something and these two were definitely up to something.

"If you guys are planning somethin', I want in." Cristyn chipped in, her eyes bright and with her hands on her hips. "I can help." There was no way of picking anyone of today and she was hungry. She needed some money and Dennis and Gladrags were planning on earning some. She wanted to be a part of that.

[Poxy Dennis]

One of the things about living with permanently awful vision is that you tend to rely a bit more heavily on your ears and the feel of grit under your feet or fingertips. In the dark quiet of night Dennis could easily pinpoint the location of rodents as the ran through the walls, a skill that filled his belly in times of desperation. However in the glare of daylight, surrounded by the cacophonous roar of activity and breath and idle chatter, arguments, bargaining, his spatial awareness was left wanting. He might have heard the pattering of footsteps behind them otherwise and felt prepared for the voice which suddenly spoke out, but he wasn't. So when Cristyn called out to the pair from behind while they were discussing matters that could get them both drawn and quartered it's no surprise that he reacted poorly.

For all his shambling and twisted muscle mass Dennis could move at a surprising pace when the adrenaline hit. In the span of about two seconds he had rounded on the woman and while emitting an ungodly almost feminine battle cry easily lept the distance between them and did his level best to drag her down into the muck. “Who sent you! What do you know! What did they tell you!” He bellows furiously, spraying mucus and spit all the while as he simultaneously gropes for the girls throat and his hobo stabbing knife.

[Gladrags]

Gladrags cackled as Dennis turned rabid and pounced on the streetchild. "And a waste is wastin' a waste so's he can waste away in the wastin' place o'the guards. Put yer rat-gutter away, Pox. You was young an' stupid once."

The ragbag figure bent double with a coughing fit, hacking up a mess of phlegm coloured with green and rust onto the road. Gladrags lurched a bit while Dennis and Cristyn wrestled "Now's you ain't so young, Pox. Ain't none of us young 'ceptin' this one here, and here you go wantin' to waste that too."

While Dennis screamed his questions at the streetkid, Gladrags got busy raking out a pernicious length of dried snot from the inside of its left-nostril housing. "'Sides, who'd waste the time wastin' you, eh? And sendin' some sprogling t'do it too? Use yer thinkin' bits, Pox. Three can carry more than two on a good night, an' three is better'n two an' one when all is even, and so it is. Anyway, you'll bring the guards down on us all with yer hollerin' and knifey bluster, so stow it." Gladrags wiped the snot on her rags, where it got lost amidst the overall sewer-grime her rags were typically smeared in.

[Poxy Dennis]

Dennis' elbow cracked hard against the ground as his blind swan dive at the girl brought both of them down. The fall left him sprawled inappropriately across her waist as he tried to claw his way upward and get a grip on her neck, but a moment later he felt the hard crunch of a knee knock him good in the ribs and doubled. “Get off me!” Cristyn shouted. Dennis blinked back tears as the girl quickly wiggled her way out from under him, his hands desperately snatching at anything he could grab, which happened to be her ankle. Another kick later and she was free, the grubby cripple rubbing at his throbbing head. “I'll brain ye I will!” He coughed out, but the girl had already taken off running as passersby gaped at the scene.

After a long minute of whining and cursing and nursing his new bruises Dennis slowly dragged his ass up off the street, grumbling viciously under his breath. “No manners! No manners anymore. they jus go skulkin and sneakin up on people in the streets!”

[Gladrags]

Gladrags drained the last of the dwarven ale while Dennis played punch up with the the street rat. Some folks'd throw the empty bottle away but Gladrags thoughtfully placed it into a large ragged pouch. Within moments it was hidden amongst the ragpile which constituted her Sunday best where it clinked lightly against some other hidden treasure. There was folks who'd trade somethin' useful for a glass bottle, and so there was. "Shouldn't ha'made a fuss Pox. Gettin' all fussy and unthinkin' and I'm thinkin' too much noise is drawin' attention as we isn't needing, and what we need is less fuss and faces in our faces. To an alley, says I." The flotsam shifter started trudging in the direction of the nearest.

It wasn't much of an alley, really. Not particularly grimy, let alone dark or foreboding. It was just another narrow sidestreet for getting places a little faster with some useless debris strewn around. Gladrag's expert surveillance quickly assessed that anything useful for barter had already been claimed. "Wonder what's in the civic hall scrap heap. Bet there's bits of metal t'be melted and that fancy stuff what's used for writin'. Folk's pay for the fancy, I fancy." One grey eye swivelled to her cantankerous companion in the potential civil redistribution of civic hall, who for some reason wasn't moving at as convenient a pace as he had before the dalliance with the suspicious street rat. "What're y'lollygaggin' over?"