Vice Bunker 19 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 19

-VB-

Kali hummed as she filed her nails during her break.

Working with computers and pens did her nails dirty in more than one ways, and half of the appearance of a competent administrator was the appearance of one. It was only the lazy and nearly incompetent administrators who ignored their appearance for convenience. However, this ignored the fact that people - faunus included - were intrinsically visual creatures.

As she once told Blake, “How would you feel if the person you were talking to smelled and looked like a homeless? The way you behave will change. More dismissive. More careless. Much like how humans treat faunus due to their bigoted racism.”

And as administrator, she had to have the people’s confidence and their confidence came from what they could perceive; since most of them did not care to spend the time of the day talking with her about her qualifications and experience, her appearance - snappy, sexy, and secure in all measureable fields - determined their confidence.

It was an odd way that people worked. Most would glance at someone and think they knew all about them.

Well, her recent appearance theme has been ruined a little by baby bump she sported now along with Harley, Taylor, and Victoria. It had the demeaning effect of reducing her from the crisp and effective yet sexy and unreachable office lady to a haremette who was also a secretary.

‘Well, not like I care too much,’ she thought. ‘I’ve already made my administrative prowess very clear.’

Indeed, Kali considered the recent change to her appearance as a result of her pregnancy to be non-factor.

It wasn’t as if Alan’s harem was the only harem in the bunker, although calling any other coupling in Alan’s bunker a harem would be Kali being generous. There was that one couple with two men and one woman, the other one with two women and one man, and then that genderless(?) Case-53 trio.

Speaking of which, there were a lot of other pregnant women, too.

Kali was just fine with that. It just meant that her baby and their half-siblings will have plenty of other kids to make friends with.

… She did, however, resent the fact that she was stuck working while Alan was digging. Maybe she should start working on training Taylor as an administrator, too? She would finish paperwork extremely quickly with those bugs of her hers.

She heard hurried running in the halls, and stood up to open the door. The person running got there firs, however, and pulled the door open.

It was Taylor.

And she looked frantic?

“Kali, we need your help!”

The last time someone came running for her like this, the Cannibals attacked.

What was it now?

She followed Taylor as the girl ran down to the twentieth sublevel and then down a rough and seemingly unsupported tunnel that Kali knew was Alan’s tunnel towards the PRT bunker. She didn’t know how long she ran after Taylor, but stopped when the far end of the tunnel lit up with flashlights.

The tunnel, barely wide enough for four people to feel cramped and maybe eight feet tall, looked cramped from how many people were there. Laserdream was here with Alan, and they stood across from a recently collapsed cave wall that led to the other side of the cavern… which had to be the PRT’s side if the blue armored hero was any indication.

Oh no. It looked less like a cave and more like a wall. Did Alan break directly into one of the hallways?

Eh, He couldn’t have known.

“Ah, it seems that Alan finished the tunnel!” she spoke up just loudly enough that they couldn’t call her out on it.

Several heads turned to her.

She gave them a wave and a smile. “Good … evening. I’m Kali, one of the administrators of Yal’Manus’s Bunker. I’m glad that the heroes are doing alright!” she greeted them jauntily. Taylor looked scandalized from her left and Alan looked less defensive.

Armsmaster’s grip on his halberd lessened and his arms lowered a little.

“... I am Armsmaster of PRT ENE. Or what’s left of it.”

“Wonderful. Let’s talk about how your bunker is doing. We’re going to be neighbors, after all.”

-VB-

Our first good contact with the outside world occurred when I managed to finally tunnel into PRT’s own bunker.

The good news was that they survived.

The bad news was that the state of their survival was not so great.

Being the heroes that they were, PRT bunker near Downtown took on far more people than it was wise, and the state of the people…

Well, the fact that Armsmaster and Kid Win had to put all of their time and effort into managing the waste, atmospheric, water, and hydroponic systems spoke a lot about the tippy-toppy precarious state that the PRT bunker was in.

Unlike our bunker, the PRT had less background checks involved and ended up admitting more than a few … unwanted elements of society.

And now, they wanted to use my bunker as prison.

“Yeah, no. Fuck off,” I told the new director of PRT ENE Bunker, Emmanuel Peterson, inside a cramped room I carved into the cavern wall connecting our two bunkers. The room, or more like a open space with a table and some chairs, served as the midway point between our two bunkers.

The ragged ashen blonde man looked aggrieved by my response. “Yal’Manus, I understand that what I am asking of you is unpalatable. However, if our prisoners remain on our side -.”

Why did I want to check on them?

Oh right, the world ended and even bureaucrats and half-hearted heroes were better alive than dead.

“Are your prisoners. Just because you fucked up the admission process doesn’t mean we have to take your burden. Why not just kill them and deal with it?”

“That’s not how the justice system works,” he narrowed his eyes.

“We can talk about that during times of plenty,” Harley sighed, having presented herself as a calm representative from my bunker along with myself and Kali. “But this is not such a time. In fact, I think you are putting the horse before the cart. Doesn’t survival come before justice?”

“If I abandon more than I already have, then I can no longer call myself an American,” he glared.

I thought about it.

“You know, I can agree that your bunker is not capable of sustaining troublemakers right now.”

“Thank you-”

“But if you send them over, you also lose the right to tell us what to do with them,” I continued, interrupting his interruption. “If they step out of line, then I’m just going to kill them and toss them to the Cannibals.”

He grimaced but after full five minutes of tense silence, he nodded reluctantly.

So it was to my surprise that, among the prisoners transferred over to me, I found myself with the custody over Sophia Hess.