Scene 3: Waste Department Ventures

Hello again! If you skipped to here after reading the note on the first chapter, here's a very short summary of what you missed:

Scene 1: Innocence leaves their can by climbing/falling down the side of their can. They sustain some minor damage, but they fix themself up fully.
Scene 2: They collect some supplies and head to their waste department, where they are now.

Happy reading!

(Line breaker)

The first thing you hear when you power back up again is the loud gurgling of water struggling to drain. This access room is, thankfully, still dry, but you can hear the water sloshing around right outside the door. You grimace, resolving not to open it, at least for a while.

It would be good to clean up around here somewhat. You're not going to be back in your can for a while, but seeing the state of things so far, you're honestly a little surprised everything has continued functioning mostly normally. You should at least try to unclog some pipes so these areas can drain.

... and, probably, clean up some of the refuse. You cringe at the pile in the room with you. How is there so much?

At any rate, you still need more supplies. Hopefully once the water drains enough, you can navigate around your biological processing facilities without the Miros quail snipping at your wires for a while.

>Look for stick/pole/spear

A spare spear would be helpful if you do end up testing your explosive making on one. You get up, glancing around the room; you appear to have picked one of the smallest ones to shelter in. There's not a lot in here, just lots of pipes and some valves and—ah. One of them has a crack in it, and it's dripping refuse out ever so slowly. You cringe.

There isn't really a way to get rid of the refuse, or at least you don't know of a method. The bio material runs through all of your biological processing facilities, where it gets processed into fertilizer or other useful components. The former used to be shipped off to the growing towers, and the latter would get transported back to your can, but truth be told you haven't noticed either of those happening recently. There might be a way to... put the refuse back in the pipes? You honestly have no idea. It doesn't seem like there's a way to deal with it right this moment.

On top of that, it seems like the only point of interest in this room is the pile of refuse. There's nothing sticking out of the walls that you could grab, and you don't want to risk pulling something vital to your facility's functioning off the walls. The water does seem to have drained a little more, though.

>Well... if the only thing of interest in this room is the pile of refuse... better go investigate it! This can't possibly go wrong. Have fun!

One of these cycles, you're going to stab this overseer. You give it your best glare, but all it does is dance in place, repeatedly gesturing towards the pile of refuse.

Ugh. Fine. You pull your robes off you; they're already soiled anyway, but you draw the line at mud and water. Tossing that and the rest of your belongings in a heap, you stomp over to the pile of refuse and—you growl to yourself—plunge your hands in.

It's wet. Or so your sensors tell you. Disgustingly wet. You at least can't smell it, because it's also rotting, and it's now on you as you root around inside the pile of gunk. Why are you doing this? There's nothing in here but more mush. Were you hoping for a spear? A rock? Or—

Your hand closes around something solid. Startled, you stop for a moment before pulling it out, shaking the sludge off your arms. It's... a pearl?

... you remember this conversation. You're not sure when you converted it into a pearl and... flushed it, but it must have made its way here by accident. These—things like pearls shouldn't normally go to biological processing. You think. You're not sure.

You stare at it for a few more moments before slowly putting it down. You'd rather not carry this with you.

The water should be mostly drained by now, so you can leave the way you came.

>I meant for you to use the stick to move the mush out of the way instead of sticking you hands in, but lets go open the door! Adventure awaits! And maybe we can find some explosives out there!

You glower at the other overseer that popped up next to the first, which is innocently waggling in place. Jabbing your finger at it, you growl, "You shut up."

Your voice module has already been repaired, but you're still not used to talking, so your words come out as something akin to "Ooo shuh-up". Overseers can't make sound, but you swear they're laughing at you from the way they're wiggling. You growl again, but stomp back to your belongings, shaking the last of the refuse off your arms as you march over. You've embarrassed yourself enough.

You begrudgingly put your robes back on, firmly tugging them over your head as the fabric catches briefly on your antennae. You need this with you to carry your belongings, but you'd much rather just leave it here with how soiled it is now. It's probably a waste to simply leave your robes behind anyway. In a pinch, you could use the fabric.

The door creaks and screeches in complaint as you start undoing the locking mechanism, straining against the metal with as much force as you can muster. You hear something snap as the mechanism finally unlocks, and the door flies open amid a small flood of water that, while only rushing past your ankles, still makes you stumble a few steps backwards. You cringe as the door slams against the wall and rattles loudly, and you grab it before it can make any further sound. This room won't work as a shelter anymore; you appear to have broken something.

Luckily for you, there doesn't seem to be any Miros quail around this specific part of your biological processing facility. Just a long, still partially flooded corridor that's steadily draining into the lower floors, and rows of access rooms along the shaft. You know the ones you checked last cycle won't work as shelters, but you didn't carefully check them for supplies.

You wander along the corridor, keeping your senses primed to pick up on the softest clank of metal against metal. You don't hear any of that, but you do hear water flowing through the pipes, some of it sounding more interrupted than others, and you hear the machinery chugging away, deep in the interior of this facility. With any luck, you won't have to visit those rooms.

At the end of the corridor, back where you came from, is another ladder up, though this one is significantly more eroded than the one you climbed up the previous cycle. Clumps of moss—you think, anyway—hang from the slick metal, still dripping with water. There isn't another way up to the upper floor of the access shaft that you can see.

You also know that some of these access rooms stretch very far into the innards of this facility. You're not sure which, but one of these rooms has to give you access to the very depths of the machinery around here. There isn't much reason for you to head that way right now though. It might be on the lower floors, now that you think about it. You're fairly certain there's a basement level access point.

Either way, there's nothing of interest in this specific corridor. You're unlikely to find either plant material or weaponry supplies here. You just have to pick a direction and hope you don't run into anything aggressive.

>Let's go up, because Miros quail can't fly last I recall, so there should be less chance of encountering them the higher we go. Right? Right? Right??? Also you should practice talking some more, you don't seem to be very good at it!

You swing your spear at the overseer with a snarl. It ducks under your swing, popping back up in front of you and waving around as if nothing happened. You point your spear at it, hissing, "Shut up before I make you."

To your credit, the words come out clear this time, but your threat doesn't seem to faze your overseer; it continues bobbing around cheerfully. When did these things get so snarky? You swing at it again, but you don't fully mean it this time, and it dodges the swipe easily.

Whatever. You're wasting precious time. You jump up and crab onto the ladder; it creaks dangerously, and your feet slip on the moss as you climb up, but it holds your weight as you make your way up to the upper floors.

You emerge into surprisingly bright sunlight, and you shield your visual faculties from the glare as you look around. You were very mistaken on the size of your biological processing facility, evidently. You're in but one part of it, and are currently looking out over the rest, a mass of partially submerged buildings and pipes crossing every which way. The walkways to the other buildings are partially eroded, the stone and rebar crumbling away in multiple locations, but some areas are still accessible.

Distantly, you hear the clanking of metal. There's no Miros quail out here, and you wouldn't expect them to be out in the sunlight regardless, but from what you can tell, there's more than one nest of them here. All of the buildings here are sealed shut, with no light from the outside leaking in if the access shafts are closed; the one you climbed through appears to be partially broken.

You're still not fully certain of the layout of this facility, but the building you entered from seems to be a very small portion of it. The walkways connecting this building to the bigger and taller ones seem mostly intact, and they stretch off on either side of you. Ahead, the walkway is mostly broken, but you can tell it used to lead to one of the shorter buildings below, one that's partially submerged in water.

You have no idea what any of these buildings do. You can only hope they're functioning as they should be. Though, given the state of the building you came from, that seems unlikely.

>Scout up higher and the left building

Two other overseers wave at you before dipping away. You stare down the remaining two as you sit, tapping your spear against the floor impatiently. Neither of them seem to care, instead joining their tentacles and spinning around, blithely ignoring your glare as they twirl in sync. You harrumph, opting to try and sharpen your spear.

You don't get very far with your rock when your overseers return; you set it aside to look at their projections. The first displays an aerial view of the entirety of your biological processing facility. There's more buildings here than you previously thought: there's one far ahead of you that you missed, and a smattering of smaller and mostly submerged buildings on the borders of the facility. Large, thick pipes also wind their way out of the current building you're in and towards what you presume is your heavy metal processing facility. A thinner pipe connects this building to several of the smaller submerged buildings ahead.

There is a second thick pipe connecting this building to the one to your left, which happens to be the largest building in the whole facility. The second overseer's projections show its interior, which is heavily flooded, with water pooling in places that it clearly should not be in. Dimly, through the water, you can see the outline of a tank. It's likely—you dig around in your memory for a while—the clarifier facility. The flooding there is a bad sign.

Your gaze snaps up to the sky as a warning rumble of thunder sounds. The clouds are starting to grey. You'll need to move fast.

>Go right to locate a working shelter

You veer off to the right, walking quickly along the bridge. Parts of the supports creak ominously as you go, and you quicken your pace further, clutching your spear as you all but run across the bridge. With how much time has passed, you likely should have expected that things would be falling apart, but actually seeing it is... harrowing.

You make it to the building with no incidents, thankfully. The lock on the access shaft undoes easily—maybe too easily—and you yank it shut behind you as you enter. The world immediately plunges into darkness, the paltry glow of your neurons above your head only weakly illuminating the narrow shaft ahead of you. Water gurgles loudly through the pipes all around you, but the shaft itself is mercifully dry.

It has a similar layout to the previous access shaft you were in, from what you can tell, but with less access rooms. The pipes do sound a lot louder and closer though. It's also a lot darker in here, as this building is completely sealed off.

From what you can discern, you're in your aeration facility, in one of the facility units. You vaguely remember how it works: water carrying organic waste flows into arrays of microbes that help process the waste from your can, similar to how your processing arrays work. There is likely water all around you. At the very least, it's safely contained in the walls. For now.

You tense as you hear a sudden clanging from somewhere below you, much louder than before. This access shaft likely spans several floors as well, but going downwards is probably not a good idea right now.

>Might as well keep going, but definitely head up if possible. Check rooms you find for shelters and/or flashbangs, which could be a possible light source or distraction against Miros. And as usual, don't die!

(Forage successful.)

Briefly, you wish that you could tell your neurons where to go. They drift behind you as you start forward in the shaft, your footsteps echoing softly off the walls. You really should have downloaded the information about your waste department. You have no idea where you're going.

The clanging below you starts, stops, then starts again, the sounds still clearly audible despite the many floors between you and the Miros quail. You're not even sure how they got there. They're supposed to be in your heavy metal processing facility, but they've apparently migrated. Why they've chosen the biological processing facility is beyond you, but it's metal all the same to them. They will tear your facilities down to reproduce.

But you're in no state to fend them off, let alone fix the damage they've done. You don't even know where the next floor of this access shaft is. You're just walking into the dark and hoping it works out.

... or maybe not the dark, necessarily. Ahead of you, a thin shaft of light filters in from the ceiling, weakly outlining a ladder that extends both up and down. You step up to it, peering up at the crack. You can see the sky through it, roiling grey and black storm clouds swirling angrily everywhere you look. You... should probably find somewhere that isn't close to this crack. Aren't these facilities supposed to repair themselves?

You climb up the ladder to get a closer look at the edges of the break. There are veins of dark brown interspersed throughout the metal. You can only assume they used to be functional microbe strata, but evidently they've long since died. That would explain the crack in the ceiling; it doesn't bode well for the rest of your waste department. Though at this point, it's hardly a surprise.

At the very least, the weak light here has enabled a patch of plant life to sprout. You remove one of the blue seedpods, turning it over in your hands. It's a plant in the same genus as cherrybombs. Though—you toss it lightly in the air, and it emits a flash of blue—these seem to work more like flare bombs than actual bombs. It could be useful to have some around. (+2 flashbang) You're really reaching your limit on what you can carry, though.

The upper floors likely won't flood, even with the crack in the ceiling here. Your aeration facility should also have less... gunk. So hopefully one of these access rooms will serve as a decent shelter.

>Check random rooms on upper floor

Back to this again. You sigh as you go back to opening random doors in the hallway. The layout is similar to the first building you were in, but the access rooms here are larger, and notably, sludge free. You do hear a lot more water rushing through the walls around you, however.

If anything though, this facility, or this part of the facility, seems less damaged. Most of the rooms you check seem in sound condition, a healthy (you hope) gushing of liquid sounding off behind each wall. You notice a lot of access points into the microbe arrays inside each room as well, presumably the reason behind having these access rooms; you leave them be. You don't want to disrupt your waste facility's functioning.

A soft pattering of rain starts as you open a room to an odd quietness. There's no water running through this part of the arrays. You stop at the access point, uncertain. Is this part broken? It would hardly be a surprise for certain sections of your facilities to have ceased functioning at this point in time, but you're not sure as to how this works. Once again, you wish you'd downloaded the information about this.

You should probably deal with this once the rain passes though. Or maybe it'll start functioning again once the rain passes. You kind of hope it does. A prickle of unease trails up your back as you shut the door firmly, bolting it into place, and sit down with a sigh.

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