Chapter 16 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 16 — Babababoons

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 15 — The Abyss · Next: Chapter 17 — Station and Repair Hub E · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

I awakened to find a message from Elle and Imani.

Summary

Elle: the robot rooms have a hidden tunnel that opens only after the automatons wake, and the automatons wake only when the mobs go into withdrawal; it leads down to another track. Donut has worked out that the 20% rest-and-shower buff — invisible on the stat sheet, a bug a few seasons old that Mordecai says he has ticketed — gives her 52 mana, enough to read the Minion Army tome from the first floor: a five-minute cast, a five-hour cooldown, a thirty-metre circle scaled by Charisma, and a 2% chance per intelligent mob to switch sides. 'Don't cast it unless I tell you to.' 'Don't be so pessimistic, Carl.'

Outside the food court, forty Babababoons — baboons with too-small human features, in ripped T-shirts (a cobra, Nicolas Cage, 'It's not going to suck itself'), 'created by taking a standard earth baboon and crossing it with the population from a Florida jail drunk tank' — are in stage two of the DTs: double strength, no speech, and, for the first time, inside a transit station. The purple line has stopped, and they walked here, Carl guesses. Powerful Strike at 13 kills one per punch; Katia snaps one in a bear hug and discovers she can move the metal inside herself, slowly, toward traveling spikes; Donut's split laser is weak; Carl's Banger Spheres — baseball-sized balls of robot scrap for the xistera — take three. He loots the hats and some corpses. Everyone's inbox is full of DT encounters; terminals are no longer safe. At the switching station the Station Repair portal is 'Pass-Through two-way,' the track runs through it, and its switches clank from the other side as a red train comes out; the zombies in the yard are wormed, like Grimaldi's crew. Fire Brandy chats with Donut ('My boy is named Mongo') and Katia ('I was about to adopt, but aliens destroyed my planet'). 'Try not to blow the train up, okay? I have two little ones.'

Characters

• Carl — Kills babababoons with one punch each; first use of the Banger Spheres.
• Princess Donut — Reads Minion Army; a zombie baboon in a top hat; too small to ride in a fight yet.
• Katia Grim — Twists a baboon in half; the idea of traveling spikes; tells Brandy about the adoption.
• Fire Brandy — Two children; talks motherhood with the cat.
• Elle McGibbons — The hidden tunnel under the robot rooms.

Locations

• The Iron Tangle — A mall-food-court saferoom overrun by baboons in withdrawal.
• The Abyss — The Station Repair portal is two-way; the yard's switches clank through it.

Motifs

• The Rev-Up Vitamin Shots — Stage two of three: the floor's addicts turning on everything.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Banger Spheres from robot scrap.
• The mobs are victims — A mob the AI is 'pretty proud of'; a demon mother with two living children.