The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, the hill is conquered. Behind Bug is now a trail of corpses and ruin, a path paved in blood so that those behind her may follow.

Bunkers lays collapsed and full of corpses, trenches now mass graves, and so much of the hill of wooden scaffolding and piled up timber now reduced to a potholed and burning mess of ruined lumber. In many places the hill begins to collapse, no longer able to sustain its own weight as gravity finally wins out over its failing form. Landslides of wooden debris tumble down the slope, forever burying the corpses of the dead, damning them to remain on this battlefield until their bones finally decay. In other areas the constructions of layered scaffolding collapse inward, falling into the center of the hill like massive sinkholes swallowing up the earth.

But the hill still stands. And resting at its peak, like a crown atop a king's head, is a glorious mansion built of carved stone, polished wood, and glass windows.

In comparison to the rest of the shanty like wooden city below, full of peasants, this mansion is the house of a god. A temple to wealth and extravagance and greed.

Just looking at it makes Bug feel sick.

"Ptooey!" Bug spits on the ground as she places a cigarette between her lips and lights it with a match. Only the Goddess knows where she got it from.

The glow of the cigarette makes shadows plays over the burnt half of her face, her disgust clear for all to see as she marches through the blown open gates and glares up at the marvelous estate.

"Dégueulasse… We should just burn the whole thing to the ground and be done with it!" Bug curses.

"Ah, nous ne pouvons pas faire ça, Chef. Nous devons capturer la princesse!"

Bug waves aside the worrying Lieutenant's concerns and hands her minigun off to Susan to hold. Susan just looks down at the bulky weapon in her hands and sighs. She adds it to the growing pile of guns being carried by Elaine's spider mount, mumbling to herself as she asks what she's going to do with all these things.

Blowing some smoke, Bug talks as she walks towards the front door. "Oui, don't worry. We'll capture the whole family and save the girl. They need to answer for their crimes against the people."

A firm kick sends the pair of fancy oak doors flying open with the one on the right being sent flying off its hinges to clatter to the stone floor and knock over an expensive looking bust by the wall. Inside, some of the servants scream as they run away in fear. The few remaining loyalist, with blood draining from their faces in fear and resignation, bring their arms to bear, hiding behind hastily erected barricades on the second floor. They already know that they have lost, but they tighten their grip and hold position none the less.

"Surrender and we shall spare you lives. Enough blood has been spilt today; do not throw your life away for a lost cause." Bug calls out to the desperate men.

But their commander remains resolute in his loyalty. He stands, pistol raised and leveled at Bug as he looks down at her from the second floor. With a look of disdain and hate, he spits at Bug and speaks.

"Nous ne nous rendrons jamais à la racaille révolutionnaire!"

More revolutionaries flood into the building from behind Bug and raise their rifles. Bug sighs, "Hah, then you shall die and be forgotten on this day. Change has come, and those who resist will be swept aside for the sake of the people! Men, prepare to fire. Today, we will finally-"

But a gunshot interrupts her, the resisting commander stumbling forward as he drops his pistol and holds a bloody hole in his chest. He turns and looks towards one of his fellow soldiers, a man who should have been a loyalist. No, nothing but a scared boy in over his head.

Shaking and sweating, the poor lad shakes his head side to side and sobs, apologizing as his commander falls to his knees. He drops his rifle and continues to apologize, stepping away from the dying man as everyone watches.

"Je suis désolé, monsieur. J'ai une famille. Je ne veux pas mourir ici. Je suis vraiment désolé!"

The soldiers on the second floor all watch on as their commander dies, his blood dripping off the balcony to form a puddle on the first floor. Slowly, one by one, they all lower their weapons and their heads, resigning themselves in defeat.

Bug raises her hand and wave for everyone on her side to lower theirs as well, directing them to detain the prisoners and treat them well.

Walking up the stairs, Bug picks up the commander's pistol and then sets a hand on the crying boy's shoulder, giving him a reassuring nod and a thank you before handing him off to be arrested.

"Suis-moi." Bug says simply as she walks further into the mansion, a dozen men following behind her and a Susan.

They move unmolested through the halls as servants scatter like rats and hide away in rooms, fearing for their safety, but they are all ignored. They have not come here today to harm the maids but have instead come for the masters of this place.

They move past pieces of art hanging from the walls, vases and busts on stands, delicate candelabras made of silver, and furniture made of fine mahogany and dressed in velvet. Silk curtains adorn every glass window like dresses on fair maidens, and flowers fill the vases with colors and bring a lovely scent to everyone's nose. Where it is they had gotten the flowers, no one knows. But surely the rich can get almost anything with enough money.

With every step through these halls, Bug and the revolutionaries only grow more enraged. Even a single piece of furniture uselessly lining these halls would be worth enough to feed ten families! How many have starved just so they could decorate this house? How many have died just to fuel one's vanity?!

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They arrive at the end of the passage, the scant few remaining guards lowering their heads and dropping their weapons at Bug's arrival, knowing that fighting would just be pointless now. They don't resist as they are pulled to the side and their hands are bound, Bug kicking the opulent double doors open.

Storming inside with Susan following behind her, the swordswoman, not having said much as she has just resigned herself to following Bug around and see how this all goes, they come across a sight that has everyone going sick.

A long table fills most of the room from front to back and is adorned with a silk tablecloth running along its surface. Normally, it would have been quite the sight, what with the intricate and delicate patterns worked into its surface, telling a tale of some distant past. But now the entire table is covered in half eaten food, discarded bones, and dirty plates dripping with soup and sauce.

Even with Bug's arrival the occupants of the room do not seize in eating. Fat fingers wrap around bones and lift meat to mouths surrounded by round cheeks and messy lips and double chins dripping with grease. They chew with their mouths open and slurp their soup without a care for who is watching, laughing as they converse with mouths full of food and drink their tea without extending their pinky!

They, the grotesquely obese rats, don't even look towards Bug as she marches into the room, simply continuing to stuff themselves with so much food that it leaves every half-starved revolutionary to instantly skip past jealousy and envy and move straight into full-bodied disgust.

"Duke Eugénie Rat Paresseux de Rarisét, you and your family are hereby under arrest! You shall be tried by the people of Rarisét Ville, and if found guilty, your heads promptly removed from your necks! Do you have anything to say to this?"

Behind her, Bug can hear one of the men snickering about how they are going to need a bigger guillotine. She chooses not to comment on that, but looking at the girth of their necks, she can't help but to silently agree in the back of her mind.

The fat rat at the head of the table scoffs, seeming to finally give the intruders his attention as he continues to chew on what looks like a chicken leg.

He speaks of something about how he is above the people or whatever… Susan can't even follow what the conversation is about honestly, beyond picking up some context clues and pulling from past experience. Nobles pissed off the peasants, now someone has to die to fix everything.

Susan just sighs as it all continues to play out. She has long since stopped questioning how it is that Bug is now, for some reason, able to communicate with the rats in their strange language or why it is that she is acting so weird.

Guess she finally lost her mind… Oh, that looks tasty.

Wandering over to the table as Bug gets pissed and ends up pistol-whipping the fat rat across the face, whom Susan assumes is in charge here, she reaches out and starts making a plate of food for herself. Piling on plenty of meat, something that looks like mashed potatoes, and then covering it all in gravy.

Worked up an appetite fighting up that hill. Healing bullet wounds is surprisingly hungry work. Oh, this taste pretty good~ Oh, and now everyone is getting arrested. I wonder what they are saying? Probably some nonsense like, 'Do you know who I am!?' or something like that… Is that pudding? Don't mind if I doooo…

While Susan is enjoying herself, Bug and the rest of the rats go storming out of the room after Bug interrogates one of them that looks like an ugly fat lady wearing too much makeup and a dress two sizes too small for her rotund form, leaving an unappealing amount of cleavage and fat on display. How it is that she can even breathe wearing all of that is simply beyond Susan.

But still, Bug is on the move again, so Susan quickly snatches up another leg from the table and then moves to follow.

Honestly, by this point, crazy or not, I'm just curious about how all of this is going to end. I hope Elaine will be ok when she wakes up… Oh Goddess, what if she comes out all loopy like Bug is!?

Behind them, the fat rats are being dragged away by their bound hands, kicking up a fuss as they complain like children getting scolded by their parents. Susan just follows along, eating her meal as a handful of rats follow along. They don't seem to pay her much attention, but one tries to hand her a gun again, for the dozenth time today. She has long since stopped trying to refuse them and just takes the thing with her fork still in her mouth and her plate balanced on one hand before adding the rifle to the literal pile being carried by the bone spider.

Seriously, why do they keep giving me guns? Can't they see I have a pile of them already? Dumb rats… Good food though. I wonder where they get the ingredients to make it? We are really far underground, after all.

Letting her mind wonder as she follows and eats, Bug eventually leads them to a room on the other side of the mansion with a locked door. Putting out her cigarette, which Susan has no idea where she got it from in the first place, Bug grabs the doorknob and forces it open, breaking the lock with nothing but a twist.

Susan waits and lets everyone else enter first as she eats. Just observing as the little people run around and do their thing with such serious looks on their faces.

It's weird being the tallest person here. These rats don't even reach my chest in height, and poor Bug is even shorter than they are. Hahaha... Mhh? Oh, it looks like someone important is in here. Well, she's a pretty rat. I think? Certainly, better looking than most of them so far…

Inside, sitting on a stool in the center of a dusty old room, with an old book in her hands under the light of a lantern, is a rat girl with delicate features and a slim figure. Despite her dress not being as fancy or high quality as what the others had been wearing, it only serves to add to her good looks as the simple dress does not distract the viewer from her other features.

Thin waist, round thighs and a full bottom, her chest while small, still has a curve to it that draws the eye. But more than just her body is her face, with… Ok, Susan honestly doesn't know how to really describe the physical features of a bipedal rat person girl. She's pretty sure that this rat is attractive, at least going by how all the male rats in the room are suddenly holding their collective breaths and clutching their chests at the sight of her?

I guess her eyes are pretty? Susan thinks to herself as she enjoys some more mashed potatoes. Shrugging, she decides to just keep watching as Bug strolls into the room like some hero in a story and kneels before the girl.

They speak to one another in the rat language for a while, Susan not understanding a lick of it, but after a bit, Bug takes the girl's hand gently in hers and kisses the back of it. The others cheer and clap, something having just happened apparently. Susan just raises her plate and gives a little 'whoo!' because why the hell not.

Looking like they are ready to celebrate and party, the rats start streaming out of the room, Bug leading the girl gently by the hand and being all smiles. On her way past, Susan follows and asks, "Sooo, what just happened? Who is this?"

Bug turns and smiles, that crazed look still stuck in her eyes ever since she left the raft.

"This is Madame Isabelle, seventeenth daughter of Duke Eugénie Rat Paresseux de Rarisét, and she has been secretly helping the rebellion to stop her father's evils and help save the people from his unjust rule. She is to become the new leader of the people and finally bring peace and prosperity to all!"

Susan takes a bite of meat, "Oh, that's cool… Hey, when are we getting out of-"

"And we are to be wed soon! Isn't that wonderful!?"

Susan nearly chokes, but thankfully, because she doesn't have to breathe anymore, she doesn't and manages to force her food down and swallow.

"WHAT?!"

"We're getting married! Oh, this is so exciting!"

The rat holding her hand is all smiles and blushing like a maiden in love.

Susan looks between the two of them, raises a finger and starts to say something, but then stops and slowly lowers her hand as she seems to remember something…

"… You know what? Congratulations. When's the wedding, because I am SOOO going to enjoy this."