Bad Habit's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

The corners were open again, but every crew now knew Bad Habit's face. He needed a target the crowds could not guard. He found one in a low bar full of smoke and card tables. An ogre sat across from him, huge and half-drunk, dealing a sloppy hand. Bad Habit let the ogre win two rounds. Then he let him talk. "Next boss you want is close," the ogre slurred. He tapped the floor with a thick finger. "Down under. Crocodile crew holds the tunnels. Nobody walks in there and walks back out." He laughed, then coughed. Bad Habit folded his cards and stood. He had his goal. The problem was getting below ground without an army of teeth waiting for him. Back home, his little gremlins swarmed his boots, chewing scrap wire. He crushed a honey cake and thought. The gremlins could not fight crocodiles. But they could dig, and they could carry his small tinkering creatures, the clever ones with their gadgets and impish grins. He filled a sack. The gremlins dragged it toward a broken drain that fed the tunnels below. He teleported down the shaft in a blink. Cold water soaked his black boots. The tunnel stank of mud and rot. His red eyes lit the dark. Ahead stood the boss himself, an anthropomorphic crocodile in a battle-worn jacket, chains swinging on his scaled chest. Two rows of teeth split into a grin. "The burning man," the crocodile said. His voice was a low grind. "You came to me. Saves my crew the trouble." Guns clicked in the shadows behind him. A dozen of them. "Look at my eyes," Bad Habit said. It was the line that had worked before. This time the crocodile did not look. He turned his snout aside and snapped his claws. His crew opened fire. Bad Habit blinked sideways. Bullets struck the wall where he had stood. He drew his black pistol and fired melting rounds into two gunmen. They dropped screaming. But the crocodile was already gone, splashing deeper into the flooded dark where Bad Habit's heat could not find a face to catch. He reached into the sack. His tinkering sprites poured out, tools flashing. They scrambled up the tunnel walls and jammed the crew's guns with wire and grit. The gremlins bit ankles. In the chaos Bad Habit teleported behind the last shooter and burned him where he stood. The crew was broken. But the boss had escaped. Water dripped in the silence. Bad Habit stood among smoking bodies, alone, deep under enemy ground. He had won the tunnel and lost the head he came for. Worse, the crocodile now knew his trick. The one boss who would not meet his eyes had slipped away, and he had gone to warn the others.