Homeward Bound

Story so far

The hats are the whole rescue in one object: junk arrival souvenirs that let a crawler pass an abyss portal to the stairwells, donated to the party by the hundreds so that strangers could live. This chapter Carl spent them. With a Station Mimic city boss waiting at the cart portal, he announced a new plan — he had enough hats in his inventory for everybody at the end of the line — and walked six hundred people out through the giant abyss gate into Trainyard H instead of into a three-hundred-foot mouth.

Princess Donut's accounting was immediate and aggrieved. They were down to eighty-three, she wants to buy a social-media board with the proceeds, and Carl then pulled thirty more out of inventory and tossed them on the ground behind the cart in case there were stragglers. "You know, it's no wonder you were always so poor. There's a fine line between being helpful and being a dumbass, Carl." His answer was that they were never ours — people gave them to us to help others. They kept a little over fifty.

And then the hats came back. Daniel Bautista pulled his off, laid it in front of Donut and said "For you, Princess Donut," and a queue formed: six hundred crawlers bowing one by one and dropping a stupid train hat in tribute. She gathered them all into her inventory with her tail swishing. Carl suspects that with most crawlers now at the fronts of the lines, shopkeepers will pay far less for them than they used to — and that Katia Grim, who suggested the whole thing, was never really after the money.

Appearance

A cheap conductor's souvenir cap reading that its wearer rode the Iron Tangle — heaped in the hundreds into a pile at a cat's feet.

Role

The abyss gate's key, spent by the hundred on strangers and returned as the crawlers' first act of collective gratitude.

Relationships