I headed out to the Gamboge Line, waited for a load of gourmands to roll through—they were apparently trapped at transit stations—and jumped onto the back of the train.

  On each platform, there would be one or two panicked mobs left over, and I threw as many fastballs at them as I could. I could feel that I'd lost some skill when I switched class, but not too much. Breaking ball was still high enough to gain the benefits I'd gotten while grinding for the last few days of the third floor. In defiance of all physics, I could multiple separate curves into the throw, so my knife could weave complex pathways when I hurled it.

  Fastball had lost its big buff, though. Right before the end of the last floor, it started adding a knockback, sending targets sliding a pace when it hit them. It didn't move them far, but if I threw it at a limb, it would trip them up. I needed to get that back.

  As I went, I sent back notes on each platform, as people were asking about them. Gamboge-82 had been gourmands, 83 transit-station, 84 cornets, and at 85 everything got off. 86 was hungry antenopes, 87 more gourmands, 88 double-donkeys like the second floor, and 89 was another transit station, where I got off and looked around.

  At the urging of others, I actually explored this space, finding that the Gamboge paired with the Zaffre and had the Foreboding Limited as a named train. People really cared about those named trains. I also found four more crawlers, none of whom had seen Lacie. Of yet, nobody knew how to get me to Mom.

  However, people wanted to know what was at the fifth or zeroeth stops. As Sandra was who I mostly was talking to, I told her I could do it.

  Maddy: 90's the next stop. I'll check it out.

  The deluge of clearly-copied messages of panic had an obvious source.

  Maddy: Tell Mom to calm down. I'm not gonna take risks, just gonna go check what's there.

  Sandra: But you're alone.

  I thought that was actually her, as Mom was far more verbose in her scolding.

  Maddy: If someone else were here, I might have to worry about them. You've seen how fast I can run. If I'm alone, I can get away if there's trouble. It's all good, I promise.

  They kept telling me not to, and maybe it was hubris, but I knew I could make this work. I had to be able to, because if I couldn't, what was I even doing down here? I feel like a lot of people were missing that. They were sitting back in practice, swearing they would be ready on game-day.

  You had to go hard every single time. If you can't win fights on floor four of however many there were—someone had mentioned that there were faction wars on nine, so at least nine—you weren't going to make it. Also, I lied to them. I didn't take it especially easy.

  As soon as I'd gotten on the back of the train, I started hurling curveballs through the rear window into the carriage ahead and above of me. The screeches began, wails of pain and anger and then something sharper, that cut through my skull and settled into my gut.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Desperate to escape that awful sound, I ripped off my hitai-ate and stowed it. Immediately, the wailing sound that made me want to lose my lunch fell to something more akin to bad cramps. I'd won the 800m at state with bad cramps.

  After a few more throws, I climbed up. The last cornet was still howling, but it already had a rupture on it. The car also had antenopes, which looked like squart, headless beasts, about eight feet at the shoulder so they had to hunch to enter the car. They had luscious red hair all across their bodies and their feet were enormous. One opened a maw across its belly, revealing foot-long teeth that twisted like antelope horns.

  Antenope - Level 21.

  The antenope loves nothing more than running through open fields and enjoying the gentle breeze in its luscious locks. It also loves hunting even when its full and will gorge on its prey until it's so stuffed it can't walk, which just shows how human these things truly are.

  The double-donkeys were already all dead, so it was just one ruptured cornet and two unhurt antenopes. I rushed them, intentionally getting in close, forcing myself to practice moving across the piles of bodies. Skating like that was difficult, as too big of a rise would trip me up, but I wasn't going to get a safer practice space than that.

  By the time I had the cornet and one antenope dead, the other bleeding out, beasts from the next car down broke through the door between cars. I backed up, sending fastball after fastball into the mass. Despite my strength of 9, a good fastball to the eye would occasionally one-shot something. Not a monster as dense as an antenope, but a double-donkey or a cornet for sure.

  The gourmands were stranger, as the eyes didn't seem to matter. It wasn't that I couldn't do a lot of damage, it was that I didn't see any specific weak points to target. They died from stacked ruptures all the same, though.

  That second car managed to force me out the back again, hanging off the car and throwing knives up at beasts that couldn't figure out how to hit me. The third car was far easier, and then we reached the station and everything hurried out. Even the ones that were bleeding to death just rushed into the cavern, ignoring me.

  As I followed, I found them dead from ruptures not much further in. The main cavern split into many smaller ones, passages to funnel the monsters into lines. I kept sniping at the back, practicing my curveball to trace a path around a corner, or a fastball if I had a clear shot, as well as skating up onto edges, or even as a loop across the ceiling once when I had enough speed. Always Be Practicing. A mantra to pair with Finish Your Date With Lacie and Focus on the Next Ten Steps.

  In time, the space widened out again, the many caverns coming to windows where these beasts took little bottles and quickly downed them, then walked away in a numb slump, like a the caricature of a stoner you'd see in a school scare-tactic.

  Maddy: I think they're just druggies, or something.

  Sandra: We're getting that from other sources, too. A lot of people are forwarding notes from Carl, so—

  Maddy: Isn't he the guy who almost got us all killed the other day?

  Sandra: Apparently he's also saved a ton of people. Some of the other crawlers I know say he's alright, so I'm choosing to trust him. Evelyn thinks he's evil because he has a talking cat, but she thinks lots of things are evil.

  Yeah, that was Mom.

  Maddy: She's not, um, like, you know, to the people that are evil?

  A long pause.

  Sandra: Wait, killing them? No, she's just angry about all this. We all vent in our own ways.

  Maddy: Okay. Tell her I love her. I'm gonna see what's behind this door where all the drugs come from.

  Sandra: No! Get out of there already! You're completely alone!

  It was kinda funny she was still on about that. I thought I'd been very clear I wasn't going to listen to her.