A / N: I work too much and earn too little. Such is life. To make up for the wait, have this extra-long chapter! (Took up eleven pages of my Word. Whew.)

Thanks to Caitiann, Forgotsurname, LadyBender and broken halleluiah for reviewing last time!

Lars hobbled through the gloomy mutant streets, side-stepping the occasional pool of toxic sludge. He was acutely aware of the sound of his crutch, tapping sharply on every hard surface. The lights were going down all around him, as gas lamps were snuffed out and glow-worms got stomped on. Silence spread like spilled treacle through the dark. His crutch, and his own heavy breathing, were all he could hear. Both sounded uncomfortably loud in the empty streets.

"Leela!" he hissed. "Leela! Where are you?"

Most of the mutants were already in defensive positions around the subterranean settlement, too well-hidden for him to spot them. Those who couldn't fight had been evacuated to the town hall, and Lars had been among them . . . until he realized Leela wasn't. She was out there, and the shit was about to hit the fan. Once he realized that no force in the world could have kept him away.

He muffled a shout as a small shadow detached itself from a nearby doorway and barreled across the street. It ran into him, steadied him on his feet again, and thrust a hand over his mouth.

A small, scaly hand.

"Skreem?"

The figure was the right height to be hers, and the dry, rough scales coating her skin were a rarity even among mutants. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Lars made out a pair of yellow irises at shoulder-height. They looked to be glowing in the gloom.

"You shouldn't be here," the girl whispered.

"Either should you," Lars pointed out. "You're a kid!"

"You can't fight though. You're hurt."

"My arms work fine," Lars shot back. "I can work a gun. I once tranked a moose. Anyway, how much experience do you have? What makes you think you can fight half the NNYPD?"

Skreem shrugged. Lars felt her shoulders bob, anyway, which he took for a shrug.

"No-one said I couldn't," she said simply.

"You're a kid," Lars insisted. "You should be somewhere safe."

He felt like this point wasn't being paid enough attention.

Sure enough Skreem simply blinked at him, then seemed to disregard his concern as some alien surface concept.

"I can take you to Leela," she said instead. "But we need to hurry, Mr Filmore. The soldiers are coming soon, and we're not supposed to be on the streets when they get here."

"They're not soldiers," Lars absently. "They're cops."

"What's the difference?"

"Uh . . . when they kill people they don't get medals, I think."

His focus was elsewhere. He needed to get to Leela, and now that Skreem was here he couldn't just leave her either.

"Alright, take me to Leela," he decided at last. "But stay with me."

He held out an arm, grateful when the mutant girl ducked under it and let him lean on her. Truthfully, Lars knew he was pretty much useless in his current condition, and should probably stay out of everyone else's way and let them get on with whatever the hell they were planning. But he had promised to stick by Leela. He couldn't abandon her now. Nor could he abandon the ugly mutant girl whose own mother had once tossed her in the lake. Lars wasn't sure when he had grown so attached to Skreem, but at some point he had. She had stitched him up after he nearly died, and she had no-one. He knew well enough how that felt; saw too much of his own loneliness in her lizard-like features. Leaving her behind just wouldn't be right.

Neither of them spoke as they headed in the direction of the shore.

The silence was somehow stifling. Nothing moved in it. Lars knew there must be mutants all around them but the shadows were so deep he couldn't make them out. The main street – a narrow boulevard of nailed-down wooden boards - stretched all the way to the lakeshore. Clapboard houses loomed up on either side. Every cart had been cleared out of the way. Lars knew the mutants had better night-vision than him – they would have no problem picking him out now, even in poor light – but there was something comforting about the dark all the same. It made him feel less exposed.

He was disproportionately relieved when they stopped at last at a house by the barge-post. Skreem made a shushing motion and shimmied up the drainpipe, her scales rasping on the tin roof. There was a small scuffle, a burst of furious whispering - and then Leela appeared on the edge of the roof, looking murderous.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed.

Lars rubbed the inside of his wrist, where the weight of the crutch had created an ache.

"Helping," he said steadily. "I said I wouldn't let you do this alone, remember?"

"You can't even walk. What if you get shot, or knocked in the lake?" Leela swung down onto the sidewalk and glared at him. "Do you know how many ways you could die out here? What were you thinking?"

"I wanted to help."

"You won't help me much if you're dead, Lars."

Lars considered this.

"That's not true," he pointed out. "You could use my body as a human shield. What if you died and my corpse could've blocked the shot? I'd never forgive myself if that happened."

Leela looked like she had a serious objection to this, but couldn't decide whether shouting or hitting him would express it best. Her lips moved, trying to form words, but nothing came out. Lars decided to take advantage of her speechlessness.

"I'm staying, Leela," he insisted.

Leela found her voice at last.

"Of all the stupid, stubborn things you've ever -" she began heatedly.

Lars found himself grinning.

"There is no way this is the worst," he argued. "What about the time you poured away that super-Slurm on Wormulon, and I tried to chew my arms off so I could keep drinking it? That was a lot stupider than this. You know it was."

He stepped forward, still smiling, and touched Leela's arm. The action seemed to bother her – her cheeks reddened, and she lost the thread of her argument again.

"Or there was that time I was emperor of Trisol," Lars continued, "and I wouldn't let you save my stupid life, because I thought you were a nag. Remember that? You kept trying to get through to me and all I could think about was some story about a grasshopper who sang all summer and mooched off his girlfriend. Or something. I don't really remember."

Leela swallowed.

"It was an octopus," she said vaguely.

"You remember that?" Lars was surprised.

Leela simply shrugged.

"I remember thinking I should've knocked you out and dragged you back to the ship," she said. "It would have saved us both a lot of trouble."

Then she sighed, the fight unexpectedly draining out of her.

"Give me that."

She snatched his crutch and tapped it lightly against the wall, moving to support his weight in one swift motion. At the sound of the tapping, Skreem poked her head over the edge of the roof and took the crutch. She stashed it somewhere out of sight, then leaned over again, arms outstretched.

Leela ignored her, turning back to Lars with a hard look on her face. To his surprise, she pulled a gun out of the holster at her hip and pressed it into his hand. The barrel felt cool against his palm.

"Wh-?"

"Don't use it unless you have to," Leela said tersely.

"I . . . right. Got it. Thanks."

Lars tucked the gun into his belt. Leela's moods changed so fast these days he was almost always caught off-guard by them. Morris blamed it on her hormones, and advised Lars to keep out of her way unless he wanted her to rip off his head - but personally, Lars only put half the blame on Leela being pregnant. She had enough on her mind to drive anyone crazy.

Still, she was letting him stay. It would be stupid to waste time wondering why.

"Keep quiet," she ordered. "And stay low. Don't do anything I don't tell you to, understand?"

Lars nodded. He reached up to take Skreem's hands, flinching at the pain in his ribs as he did so. Leela wrapped her arms around his waist and lifted him up from the ground as the mutant girl tugged on his arms. Between them they managed to haul him onto the roof with minimum agony – though Lars was still lying on his back, wincing at each fresh flowering of pain, when Leela climbed up behind him.

She sighed.

"I did tell you-"

"I know," he panted. "I know."

She left him there to recover while she went to sort her cache of weapons – including what looked like a crossbow. The arrows for it had heads made of thickly-wound rags, and there was a half-full canister of dark matter oil sitting next to them. Flames danced in a second, smaller can.

"Fire?" Lars gasped. He wasn't up for full sentences yet.

"Fire," Leela affirmed. Close to, she looked pale and tense.

"What's the plan?"

"We drive them towards the lake," his wife said quietly.

Lars nodded. He could see the sense in it. Fire on one side, mutagens on another. If the mutants could compress the NNYPD into a small enough area, the surface force would likely surrender. After all, they had no personal stake in this fight. The average beat cop might not harbor any love for mutants, but they weren't the ones pushing a political agenda here. They were just following orders. Deport mutants, suppress mutants, arrest mutants . . . that much they would do without thinking, but Skreem was right – the NNYPD weren't soldiers. They didn't have it drummed into them to die for a cause.

With any luck, they wouldn't want to.

They came from the Eastern Pipeway.

The Pipeway was a relic of the sewer's earliest years; a mile-long length of concrete tunnel tall enough to accommodate even the bulkiest mutants – who were the only ones hardy enough to work there, in any case. It was formed where the drains from the cattle mart met the effluence pipes from the docks. The result of this union was a permanent, immovable layer of excrement at least three feet deep. Tunnel repairs could only be carried out in winter, when it froze solid. During the summer it became a fetid, sucking swamp only the very foolish would venture anywhere near. Crocodiles and deadly pathogens were said to incubate in its depths, and the smell was reported to have knocked frailer mutants unconscious. By Fall it was less lethal, but still thoroughly unpleasant. The only reason the NNYPD would risk coming that way would be if they needed the space to maneuver.

They needed it.

Men and women poured out of the tunnel, indistinguishable under heavy riot gear. Every officer wore high boots and visored helmets, and carried a four-foot plastic riot shield. At the head of the column was a blunt-featured, heavily muscled figure which could only be female – no male officer had hips that wide, or, well . . . breasts that big. (Lars snuck a glance at Leela, and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't noticed him make this observation.) The woman looked to be in charge. She was shouting into a loud-hailer, and the gun strapped to her hip was easily the biggest on display. Behind her came ten, twenty, fifty . . .

He looked to Leela again for help.

"A hundred," she mouthed.

Her eye had acquired that odd, bright gleam again. She was gripping her weapon so hard her knuckles glowed white in the gloom.

The tramp of booted feet filled the streets, getting louder, closer . . .

A horn sounded - a harsh, jarring blast – and then there was a sound like a hundred indrawn breaths, and flaming arrows tore through the night.

Heat. Noise.

The acrid tang of burning dark matter oil, and the sheen of sweat on Leela's forehead as she flipped her bangs out of the way to take aim.

The battle raged all around him, but Lars felt strangely detached from it. It had been a long time since he'd had to recover from an injury the old-fashioned way, and even he could admit dragging himself halfway across town in his current condition had been a bad idea. Maybe he'd forgotten what pain really felt like, or maybe he was just getting older – either way, his ribs constricted with every movement, making dark spots dance before his eyes. Every time he tried to get up he was forced back and the battle slipped out of focus again, like a satellite signal that kept cutting out.

From his prone position on the roof, the arrows fell like fiery comets.

Get up, he told himself. Get up, get up, help Leela . . .

With an effort, he crawled to the edge of the roof.

The streets below were limned in fire. Even from a distance, it was clear the NNYPD were losing ground. They were packed in too close to maneuver, and every time they tried to break formation or push forward more mutants came surging up from the narrow side-streets, driving them back even as fire ate at their boots.

Leela was holding her own, loosing arrows with an almost robotic efficiency. Her shoulders were tensed, her expression wiped blank again, just as it had been when she took out Smitty and URL. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't anything, as far as Lars could tell. It was as if she'd sent all her emotions someplace where they couldn't interfere with the task at hand. She didn't even react as a slug of metal zinged past her head, narrowly missing her. She simply ignited an arrow and took aim in retaliation.

Lars watched her fire, unnerved. Her first shot hit a riot shield, warping the plastic and blinding the man who hid behind it. He threw the shield aside, coughing away acrid black fumes, and Leela's next shot hit him square in the chest. This time the man himself went up like a torch, screaming as the fire licked at his flesh. His companions tried to beat it out of him, but he was twisting, screaming, tearing at his clothes . . . . he dived into the lake, convulsing violently, and sank beneath the surface with a look of relief. Lars watched for a long minute, but the surface stayed still. The man wasn't coming back up again.

Lars dragged his attention back to the battle. The NNYPD were more disordered than ever. They had been pushed right to the edge of the lake. The brawny female officer was trying to keep order but the casualties were stacking up and it was obvious morale had taken a serious dip. As he watched, a skinny Filipino officer went up like the human torch. Fortunately he had the sense to drop and roll. A female officer's helmet began to melt on her head. It seared her hands as she tugged it off and she screamed – but then she lobbed it underarm at the approaching mutants. They scattered like bowling pins and she went for her gun, firing off two shots in quick succession. On a neighboring rooftop, someone screamed, and a dark shape tumbled into the lake. Lars shuddered.

On his own rooftop Leela was still firing, unfazed. Skreem had curled into a tight, shaking ball beside her. At first glance Lars thought the girl had been hit, but then he realized she was only scared. The noise, the heat, the surface people and their dying screams . . . all of it must be new and frightening to her. The fire too, maybe – she had her hands pressed over her eyes like the light might burn her if she looked too closely at it. Maybe it would? Her yellow eyes looked built for the gloom of the sewer – for all Lars knew, they might be sensitive to bright light. He reached out instinctively. Skreem fell into his arms, crushing his ribs as she clutched at him in terror.

"Shh . . . shh . . ." he soothed uselessly. "It's okay. I won't let them hurt you. You're safe, it's okay . . ."

He didn't know what he was saying, but his tone seemed to calm her, so he kept talking. The girl had buried her face in the front of his shirt, soaking it in something that might have been tears and might have been the green gunk she oozed sometimes. She felt fragile in his arms.

"You're too little to be out here," he said softly.

Skreem sniffled into his shirt and Lars suddenly realized he could no longer hear the hiss of Leela's arrows. She must have run out of ammo at last.

He looked up to find her caught in the act of dousing the fire. She was staring at him, and she was recognizable as Leela again. But something had finally cracked her calm composure, and he had no idea what it was. Her mouth was hanging open a little and her eye was round and wobbly-looking, like she'd cut herself and the wound had just started to smart.

"Leela?"

His voice snapped her out of it. She put the fire out, and Lars lost sight of her face.

"I'm fine," she said thickly. "You're very . . . you're very good with her. You should stay here." He heard her breathe in deep. "I'm going down. It's time to talk."

Her boots squeaked on spilled oil. Lars heard her hair swish, smelled smoke and sweat . . . something soft touched his cheek, and then she was gone.

She had kissed him, he realized.

She was scared this might go wrong.

He nudged Skreem, as gently as he could.

"I think I need your help again," he told her.

It took a frustratingly long time to reach the lakeshore, but the journey there seemed to calm Skreem down. Maybe it was the plodding way they were forced to walk – planting Lars's one good foot methodically in the mud and letting Skreem support his weight as he gingerly swung forward to take another step. Maybe it helped to have something to focus on. It couldn't have hurt that there were mutants all around them now, dousing the fires where they threatened to spill out of control. Whatever the reason, Skreem swallowed determinedly and began to hold her head a little higher.

Some of the mutants waved and called out to her as they passed. She nodded and stayed stoic.

"Are you going to tell them?" she whispered to Lars, once they were alone again.

"Tell who what?"

"Tell everyone I was scared." She swallowed again. "I didn't mean to be. I've seen bad things. I've seen blood, and I've seen people die, and I'm not scared – I wasn't scared -"

"I was scared."

"No you weren't!"

Skreem seemed to forget her usual reverence for him in her disbelief; it made Lars smile.

"Sure I was," he said. "I bet Leela was scared too, under all that . . . Leela . . . ness . . . she has. You know what I mean."

This got a wistful little sigh.

"I wish I could be like her," Skreem said, frowning at her own reflection in a puddle. "She's so beautiful. And I bet she wasn't scared. I don't think she's scared of anything."

I think she's scared of everything, Lars thought. She just squashes it down where she can't feel it. But he decided not to say this out loud.

"Well I was scared," he ventured instead. "Definitely. I'm a coward."

"You are not."

Lars grinned.

"Am too. Look, watching people die is bad, but it's still not you, you know? It's different when it is, and it only makes sense to be afraid. Nobody wants to die. I nearly died a few times, and the only reason I wasn't scared was because I never saw it coming. And because I'm not the brightest, let's face it. Leela's right – it's smart to be scared. It keeps you alive." He squeezed Skreem's shoulder, which was the nearest he could come to a hug. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Skreem stiffened, and he wondered if the gesture had been ill-judged – but she was looking at something off in the distance. She turned to him, her eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

"They're up there," she said breathlessly. "We're getting close. I can see them talking."

"You can?" Lars frowned, incredulous. "Wow, I wish I had your eyes. I can't see squat."

"Your eyes would get better if you lived here."

"That's probably true."

"Maybe -" Skreem hesitated. "Maybe you will," she stuttered. "If the surface beats us you could come live down here. You and Miss Leela and her baby. I'd like that."

Lars felt his frown deepen.

"Maybe," he said carefully, not wanting to tell her a life spent in the sewer was Leela's idea of hell. "Or hey, you could come live on the surface."

"With you?" The question came out so quickly it was obvious she hadn't meant to say it aloud. The mutant girl clapped a hand to her mouth. "I meant – I didn't mean –"

"I, uh . . . I don't really have anywhere to live right now," Lars said truthfully. "But you could stay with me, if I did. I don't see why not."

They had come to a halt.

"Live on – on the surface? With you?"

Lars shrugged.

"If you want."

Skreem went quiet. Lars didn't know what to make of that, but they had nudged their way through the crowd by then and he could see Leela, mercifully unharmed, standing in a pool of dull green light. She was talking to the brawny female officer in charge of the NNYPD squadron.

"Leela," he breathed.

They inched closer, and the voices became clearer.

" . . . got some ovaries, I'll give you that," the unknown woman was saying. She had one of those voices that sounded like it was coming through a loudspeaker even at low volume. "Got us right where you want us."

"I want to talk terms."

Leela's voice was steady. Lars could only see her from behind. Her back was straight and still.

The unknown woman's face was hard, but there was a definite, grudging respect there.

"You know I don't have the authority to do that," she said. "I follow orders from on high, I'm no diplomat. You want Poopenmeyer for that. Maybe Nixon."

"Nixon?"

"Mmm." She spat thoughtfully in the gutter, oblivious to the offense she had obviously given the mutants by doing so. "We're past hushing this up. They want to make an example of you. Put you back where you belong and make sure no mutant even thinks about rebelling for another thousand years. You've stirred up a hornet's nest in my city, girl."

"That was the plan."

"Worked pretty damn well as far as I can see. But you won't ever get your rights. Surface feeling's not in your favor and Nixon's spitting mad from what I hear. I can't see him backing down any time soon."

"He will. And in the meantime, you will."

"Is that a fact?"

"Yes." Leela folded her arms. "Unless you plan on jumping in the lake, that is a fact."

She nodded down at a limp wet bundle at the chief's feet. It wore a tattered, soaking blue uniform and breathed in fast, shivery sobs. What limbs Lars could make out were twisted at odd angles, and suckers gleamed on a patch of exposed flesh. It was a cop, he realized. One of them had fallen in the lake and mutated. He couldn't decide whether the guy deserved his pity or not. He barely looked old enough to be in the force.

Chief – O'Mannaghan, Lars read, squinting at her name tag – had fallen silent.

"Even if you could arrest me," Leela continued, "what would be the point? Your orders don't make any sense."

O'Mannaghan snorted. The sound suggested nonsensical orders were not a new thing for her.

"How's that?" she asked.

"You can't deport me," Leela said calmly. "Or rather, you can, but only as far as Cookieville, which is on the surface – the exact place you don't want me to be. I'm a registered citizen. You can't strip me of that status on grounds of species. It goes against every interstellar convention we have. The state might have refused to recognize the mutants down here, but they recognized me the moment Warden Vogel picked up that basket at Cookieville Orphanarium. The state can't disown its own citizens." She smiled. "It's a catch-22, Chief O'Mannaghan. If I'm a citizen, then what you're doing amounts to persecution on the grounds of species, and it's illegal under interplanetery law. If I'm not a citizen, then this isn't a matter of civil unrest - it's a war, and the police have no place in it."

"I still have you on disturbance of the peace."

"No, you don't. I resisted a questionable attempt at arrest, officer. As I said, if I'm a citizen I can't be arrested simply for existing -"

"And the officers who died down here tonight?" O'Mannaghan interrupted. "Who do I pin their deaths on?"

"Mutants died too!" an angry voice shouted from the crowd.

Leela held up a hand, halting things before they could go any further.

"Mutants died defending themselves," she said quietly. "Your officers died too, carrying out bad orders. They killed on bad orders. I don't blame them, and I don't think you blame us for defending ourselves. Like you said, you just follow orders. You have to or the whole system would break down. I understand that. But I'm suggesting you re-examine those orders, officer, just this once, and see if maybe someone higher up can decide if they're legal or not. Take your dead and wounded. We won't hold you prisoner. We just want you to leave."

"That's a generous offer."

"Believe it or not, we're not monsters. Do we have a deal?"

O'Mannaghan flicked the safety back on her gun and stowed it in her belt.

"You understand," she said carefully, "that I'm not in a position to make deals of that kind." She was frowning, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere to the left of Leela's head. "But it seems to me," she went on, "that my officers are backed into a corner here and our position has become untenable. Seems to me like the smart thing to do is to retreat at this point. And who knows? Maybe when I get back to the surface I might express some concerns I have to the mayor, about the legality of this whole operation. Who can say?"

Leela smiled thinly. "Who can say?" she echoed.

O'Mannaghan nodded curtly and stepped back, bellowing to her troops.

"Alright ladies! Get your vulvas in gear, we're movin' out!"

"Wait!" Leela called, as they began to move off. "What about him?"

She indicated the boy on the ground.

O'Mannaghan looked down briefly, then shook her head.

"Can't bring a mutant to the surface," she said shortly.

Her boots splashed through the muck as she moved off, and then she was gone, and Lars was stepping over the whimpering boy on the ground and into the stiff arms of his wife.

Leela was shouting orders to anyone who would listen. She didn't smile when Lars said "They're gone," in disbelief, but she let him lean on her, and ran her fingers over the bandages under his shirt like she was checking to make sure he was still in one piece. She sat and talked to the mutant council for a while, while Skreem and some other mutant medics fussed around the mutated boy. Mutants came and went with reports. They surrounded Leela, looking to shake her hand and embrace her, even when she tried to tell them she hadn't done much and anyway it wasn't over yet . . .

Eventually the faintest trace of surface light began to leaven the gloom of the sewer, and the crowd fell away. By the time they stumbled back to the Turanga household the two of them were holding each other up, too exhausted to think straight. Lars fell into bed beside his wife and slept like the dead.