Chapter 105: The Giraffe Was Wrong: Cassius Isn’t Soup Yet

The large, scarred hand descended into the gray light of the mud-stripe, fingers spreading out like an iron rake.

Clutch-rip.

Fukuro didn’t even have time to uncoil.

The fingers snagged the loose, grease-stiffened scruff of his collar, lifting him straight up into the air with the sudden, jerking violence of a mechanical claw machine plucking a stuffed toy from a bin.

Screee-chup.

His limbs dangled, useless and heavy.

His bare-socked heels kicked at nothing, ticking against the empty air as he swung three feet off the grease-slick brick.

The sheer terror made his whole spine stiffen, his teeth clicking together so fast it sounded like a cricket caught in a gears-box.

brrr-t-t-t-t

"Please spare..." Fukuro squeaked, his voice cracking into a high, wet whistle.

He slammed his eyes shut, the skin around his wire-rims wrinkling into a knot of bruised purple.

"Don’t eat my glasses! The trousers are old grease! I have tapeworms, big ones, very sour, bad for the liver-"

The massive bulk of the man didn’t move.

The grip on his neck was solid, unyielding, smelling faintly of hot lead and burnt tin.

Fukuro forced his left eye open an eighth of an inch.

The silhouette was right there, looming.

He slammed it shut again.

"Mercy, great sewer dragon, god of the grease-pipes---"

He cracked both eyes open this time, his round glasses hanging crookedly off one ear.

The gray mud-light from the street grate hit the giant’s face.

Fukuro’s breath died in his throat. His

tongue felt like a dry piece of leather.

"Crocodile..."

Fukuro whined, his eyes bulging behind the crooked lenses.

"The ghost of the big dead bird... it’s come back from the croco’s stomach to take the zinc..."

"Stupid! Watching a ghost," Cassius muttered, his voice cracking into a dry, high-pitched wheeze.

"The lizard-rot hasn’t taken my brain. It’s just... it’s just the big iron-head of a bird ghost for you?... Stupid for sure!"

He squinted up through the gray mud-light, his bare face looking small, pale, and incredibly dirty without the lenses.

Cassius didn’t move.

He just stood there, towering over the scrap pile like a broken chimney stack, the crude voice-modulator still dangling from his scarred fingers.

Fukuro’s face crumpled.

Heeeee-ugh.

A massive, shuddering gasp tore out of his ribs, and then the floodgates broke.

He didn’t just crawl forward; he launched himself like a launched frog, his bare socks sliding through the black oil until he slammed straight into Cassius’s heavy, dirt-crusted shins.

He wrapped his arms around the giant’s knees, digging his fingers into the stiff canvas of the trousers.

"You’re alive!"

Fukuro wailed, a literal river of tears bursting from his eyes, spraying sideways onto the rusted copper tubing.

"MY BIRDY IS ALIVE?!!!..." he shouted.

"Aaaah-huhu-haaah! The giraffe said you got dissolved in the lower shafts! He said you were soup! He said the cave-lizards ate your feet!"

He buried his wet face right into Cassius’s kneecap, his shoulders shaking so violently that a loose pile of zinc washings behind him started to rattle.

Screee-chhh-t.

Cassius stood perfectly rigid, his arms hanging limp at his sides.

He looked down at the top of Fukuro’s greasy hair, his expression a mixture of profound exhaustion and deep, physical regret for not staying in the dark alcove.

"Heyyy," Cassius said, his voice dropping an octave, flat as a grave marker.

"Get off the clothes. You’re getting salt-water on the grease-seal."

"But the voice!" Fukuro blubbered, his voice muffled by the trousers, a thick string of saliva stretching as he looked up with red, swollen eyes.

"What... snff-hnh... what were you even using to speak like that?" Fukuro asked him while controlling his crying gasps.

"You sounded like a giant iron furnace trying to chew rocks! I thought a reservoir beast came up the drain to eat my spleen!"

He sniffled loudly, wiping his nose directly onto his own sleeve, though he didn’t let go of the boots.

Cassius lifted the small voice invention, the crude copper dial glinting slightly under the gray street-mud light.

Fukuro’s red, watery eyes traveled down the giant’s legs, past the stiff canvas trousers, until they hit the floorboards.

He stopped blinking. His tear-streaked face went totally blank as he stared at Cassius’s feet.

"Your... your soles,". Fukuro stammered, his crying voice instantly cutting off into a high-pitched, confused squeak.

He pointed a shaking, grease-stained finger downward.

"You’re... you’re not bare-toed. Where did you get the leather? The giraffe governor said you didn’t even have rags left for your skin!"

Cassius didn’t shift his stance.

He just lifted his right leg slightly, the massive weight of his foot coming down with a heavy, metallic clink that had nothing to do with leather.

Clank-thud.

"Look closer, tin-brain," Cassius grunted, his voice flat and dry. "I didn’t find a cobbler in the dark-rot."

Fukuro leaned forward, his nose almost touching the floor grease. They weren’t boots at all.

The heavy footwear was a messy, unhinged masterpiece of deep-grid scavenging.

Cassius had taken four large, square iron lard tins, hammered them flat over a pipe template, and bent the jagged edges upward to form a crude, boxy toe-cap.

Thick bands of oxidized copper wire were wrapped around and around his ankles like rusted vines, binding the metal plates over layers of black, oil-soaked engine rags that oozed grease whenever he shifted his weight.

"I made them from the iron," Cassius muttered, shrugging his broad shoulders under his coat.

"They’re just lard tins. Hammered the corners out with a magnetic plate."

Fukuro let out a dry, disbelieving laugh, his hands still hovering near the metal plates.

"Iron tins? You’re walking on trash-can lids! They look like square buckets! Doesn’t that... doesn’t that shear the skin off your ankles?"

"Rags keep the rust from eating the meat," Cassius said, his gravelly voice entirely unbothered as he tapped the iron toe against a hollow copper pipe, making it ring.

Tink.

"These don’t melt. And if a cave-lizard tries to snap at my heel, it leaves its teeth behind in the tin."

He looked down at Fukuro’s bare, shivering socks, which were currently soaking up a fresh puddle of rust-water.

"Move your heels," Cassius growled softly.

"The damp is turning your wool into rot."

Fukuro’s face went through three distinct updates in the span of a single second.

The red, tear-swollen misery vanished instantly, replaced by a wide, toothy, completely unhinged grin that shoved his cheeks right into his eyes.

"Oh ho!" Fukurou chirped, his voice bouncing up into a high, theatrical melody.

"What do my large-eared flaps hear? Is the iron-head melting? Are you caring for me, Cassy?"

Before Cassius could even shift the weight on his lard-tin soles, Fukuro launched his entire body upward from the grease-slick dirt.

He didn’t just stand; he sprang like an overgrown tree-frog, his bare-socked feet leaving the puddle with a loud slosh-whop.

He threw his arms wildly around Cassius’s thick neck, tucking his knees up tight toward his chest and hooking his ankles right behind the giant’s lower back like an dramatic lady being carried across a muddy street.

Smack-thud.

The impact didn’t even budge Cassius’s frame, but the sudden extra weight made the copper wires around his iron-tin boots give a sharp, grinding groan against the brickwork.

Skrrr-grind.

"Hold me, you big bucket of bolts!"

Fukuro wailed, turning the comedy up to eleven as he dug his chin right into Cassius’s collarbone, blinking his bare, un-spectacled eyes with ridiculous rapidity.

"The damp is rising! My wool is rotting! Save the scavenger’s heels before the cave lizard takes my toes!"

Cassius stood absolutely rigid.

His arms remained jammed deep into his coat pockets, refusing to lift a single finger to support the weight.

His face didn’t twist into anger; it went completely stone-cold dead, his jaw tightening until the muscle near his ear gave a small, angry twitch.

He let Fukuro hang there, dangling off his chest like a wet, dirty sack of laundry, the oily rags between his own iron boots oozing a fresh drop of black transformer grease onto the floor.

Drip.

"Get off I’ll kill you this time," Cassius said. His voice was lower than the reservoir water, flat enough to flatten zinc.

"...before I use your ribs to hammer out a third boot---"

Fukuro’s knees unhooked from Cassius’s waist with a sudden, greasy slide.

He dropped onto the stone floor, his bare-socked heels hitting the slick concrete with a wet slap.

Slap-thud.

The theatrical grin vanished from his face as fast as it had appeared.

His mouth pulled down into a sharp, bitter pout, his eyebrows knitting together into an irritated, jagged line.

He reached into his top pocket, snatched his crooked wire-rims out, and jammed them back onto the bridge of his nose with a rough, angry snap of his thumb.

Tink-click.

"You are always like this!" Fukuro hissed, crossing his arms so hard his knuckles hit his ribs.

He kicked a loose brass nut across the vault, his voice rising into a sharp, grating whine.

"Nothing changed! Not even after you literally died!"

His pout face literally looking like a fish and then he continued:

"You should have at least cared a little bit! I cried a whole river for your bare foot death, and you just stand there like a broken chimney stack!"

Cassius didn’t argue.

He didn’t even blink. He just let out a slow, heavy wheeze through his nose that sounded like an old bellows leaking air.

Turning his broad back on the scavenger, he dropped his massive frame straight down onto the six-foot peak of the ruined scrap heap.

K-RASH-CRUNCH.

The pile of oxidized copper tubing and zinc plates groaned under his immense weight, shifting and flattening until he was settled right in the middle of the junk like an iron gargoyle on a trash throne.

One of his boxy, iron-tin boots clanked against a hollow copper pipe.

Thoong.

"I have too much work left," Cassius muttered, his gravel-grated voice flat, unbothered, and completely dismissive.

He picked up a warped magnetic plate from between his knees and began scraping at a layer of black grease with his thick, scarred thumbnail.

Skritch... skritch.

"Get out of here... Go follow the bastrad’s assigned duty. The grand hall must be getting crowded and dirty enough waiting for your detergent."

Fukuro took a step forward, his irritation suddenly short-circuiting into pure, unadulterated curiosity.

He leaned his upper body over the edge of the pile, his round glasses sliding down his nose again.

"But how are you even alive?"

Fukuro whispered, his voice dropping the whiny theatricality entirely, turning genuine and hushed in the dark vault.