Chapter 294: Dazza Was a Very Good Problem

I named the crater horror Dazza before finding out whether it could open doors, which was exactly the sort of decision that made Bridget keep asking for my location.

He had teeth where other animals kept spare skin, eyes tucked between more teeth and dark tentacles that moved as if somebody had taught a nightmare to beg for chips.

The pod's interference display climbed when I pointed its front window toward him. A pressure brushed against my thoughts, full of shapes that wanted to become screaming faces, and Galaxy Brain cleared it before I lost control of the steering.

The radiation meter remained a separate problem. I stayed inside the sealed cabin and moved back along the marked track until its exposure warning dropped, because understanding danger didn't make me immune to becoming cooked leftovers.

[System: That's not a stray, mate. That's what happens when a dentist loses a fight with the fucking ocean and refuses to accept the result.]

He had brought me a present, and I thought that counted for something in a world where my relatives mostly brought armed staff.

Dazza nudged the bent fence toward the pod again. I used the manipulator to lift one loose strip, moved it aside and watched him follow the motion with enough eyes to make focus seem deeply unfair.

When I lowered the strip, he caught it between two tentacles and chewed. The sound resembled a toolbox being fed through a ceiling fan, but the pleased little rumble afterward convinced me he had enjoyed it.

I called Bridget through the pod's ordinary camera feed. She answered from the club's upstairs room, saw the thing outside my window and became very still for reasons that had nothing to do with magic crossing the connection.

"Matt, tell me that camera was showing something behind a very thick wall."

"There was a wall, sweetheart, but he'd eaten the fence beside it. I thought that meant he preferred open spaces and possibly needed more exercise."

The feed caused no interference alarm on her end, and she reported no pressure or voices when I asked directly. That didn't make the creature safe; it only meant looking at this particular recording wasn't doing what standing close to him had done to my cabin display.

Dazza pushed the fence toward me again. Bridget watched the entire section scrape across the track and asked whether I had already given him a name.

"Dazza sounded friendly, love. I'll walk him, and I'll feed him and take care of him. He's such a good boy, or girl, or teeth thing, and he only ate the gate because nobody told him we needed it."

"You hadn't needed that gate," she said. "The people who owned it probably felt differently, especially now he was bringing you the rest of the fence."

"That showed initiative, and I didn't think we should punish him for doing extra work."

[System: Oi, you soft cunt, you've adopted a demolition site with separation anxiety. The bastard's already looking at your rental like it's a packed lunch.]

I would explain which things belonged to us once we'd established a basic relationship built on trust and scrap metal.

Bridget didn't give me permission to release him into the club. She told me that if I intended to keep him, the walking, feeding, cleanup and damage would belong to me, along with the job of finding somewhere he couldn't chew a customer.

I agreed because those sounded like reasonable puppy responsibilities. The fact that the puppy could possibly eat a tram felt like a minor difference in equipment.

The sample locker gave me a way to test containment without opening my cabin. I used its external loading tray to offer the last strip of fence, then withdrew the manipulator while Dazza folded himself into the space after it.

He wasn't smaller inside than outside. His tentacles simply gathered around the central mess of teeth, filling most of the compartment and leaving no room for my comforting assumption that he might travel in a handbag.

I closed the outer door. The lock light stayed green, and the psychic reading outside the compartment dropped to background while the locker grid drew a steady, substantial amount of power.

The camera showed Dazza biting the ceramic lining once, abandoning it and returning to the metal strip. That was one useful observation, not proof he could never break anything if he became angry enough.

I checked the load and interference limits against the labels. Both stayed inside the pod's rating, though the remaining battery time shortened enough to make lingering a very stupid plan.

"He fitted, sweetheart, and the box was doing what it said. I was taking him to the licensed holding bay at the depot, not introducing him to the dance floor."

"You were also telling the operator exactly what was in the box," she replied. "I wasn't explaining why your dog ate a rescue crew."

I promised, sent the depot a picture and requested a contained return slot. The operator's reply contained a price warning and several questions about why the fence in my image matched their restricted-boundary equipment.

Before moving, I tested whether Dazza understood his name. He followed the sound from the locker speaker once, ignored it twice and became immediately interested when the manipulator tapped another piece of scrap against the loading tray.

That seemed less like obedience and more like a promising food-based negotiation, but I had maintained several adult relationships on worse foundations and saw no reason to become judgmental now.

Old Mate laughed so hard that I nearly missed the truck moving below. The pressure controller was being lifted toward the intake frame, and the supervisor had stopped arguing over his call.

I still had a mission, a rented pod and enough time to make both situations worse. Dazza pressed several eyes toward the locker camera while the last of his fence strip disappeared between his teeth.

Then the intake's test alarm sounded, and the guards began clearing the exact access lane my pod needed to use before the pressure machinery started.