Brooklyn is currently driving the truck back to Gumtrap as fast as possible. She already had to avoid the back-up those security officers she threw to the grave drakes called. She also kept that old truck driver as a hostage since in villainy you quickly learn that it is always a good idea to take a hostage since it gives you some leverage if you ever get caught with your pants down.

Speaking of pants, Brooklyn also found some pants finally since the truck had an extra pair of security clothes in the back, she still smells god awful but at least she now looks like a normal human instead of some cave-woman.

*muffled noises*

The gagged driver in the back tries to speak.

Brooklyn ignores him and continues making her way toward Gumtrap bumping over all the small dirt mounds since there is no road outside of the city. Eventually, she is met with a massive concrete wall that stretches up at least 10 stories with turrets at the top to shoot down any flying monsters. Those turrets are actually quite rare in this world, but Gumtrap is not your average city in fact its history is clouded in mystery and conspiracy theories but as long as it keeps out the monsters people don’t really care who made it.

Some say it was god that built it, others say it was the original heroes, and some like Brooklyn let other people argue and focus on the present.

And currently she has to get inside Gumtrap to hide this truck, grab her throat medicine, take a shower, and then head back and find Puffball and find a way to hide it from any other villains or worse the Hero Association. If the Hero Association learns of an intelligent monster, they will search every nook and cranny for it and exterminate it before it can grow too large. Brooklyn, on the other hand, wants it to grow as big as possible since she simply refuses to allow something as amazing as Puffball to die by the hands of her long time enemies.

Brooklyn truly only wants what is best for Puffball. She might be a little too obsessed with the monster but it makes sense since she is experiencing the side effect of having your brain inserted with a brain parasite that clouds her judgement towards Joy.

Not like she will ever find out about that in the first place.

As Brooklyn moves into a long line of trucks waiting to enter Gumtrap she pulls out a pen and notepad from the glove compartment and writes a note for her gagged hostage in the back.

‘Get me back into the city and I won’t kill you and don’t even think of trying to call for help.’

It’s a very simple yet effective message and the driver nods in agreement. Brooklyn undoes the drivers knots and takes off his gag and they swap seats.

“You’ll find no problems with me...just please don’t kill me, and I’ll make sure you enter the city with no problems,” The old man says as he tries his best not to breathe the air near her.

‘Fuck! Why does it have to be me! I've always heard stories of trucks trying to smuggle people in but this lady is just crazy!’ He thinks as he looks in his mirror and sees her sitting in the shadows behind him.

===

Tim works as a customs officer in the industry sector of Gumtrap. His job includes checking passports/ID’s, truck inventory, organizing files, and overall making sure that everything that enters Gumtrap is on the up and up.

Tim is currently talking to a lumber truck driver that entered into the customs gate that he is currently working at. He checks the organized files on his computer for all the lumber trucks that are currently out of the city.

The computer reads that currently trucks numbered 62, 527, and 625 are all currently carrying logs and are outside of the city.

“Please tell me the identification number for this delivery, the identification number for your license, and the time you left Gumtrap.” Tim says for the millionth time in his life.

“62, 00117723, and about 20 hours and 14 minutes ago.” A middle aged balding man replies to Tim.

Tim clicks the number ‘62’ on his computer and checks to make sure everything the man said was correct. Tim’s computer displays the same driver’s number the man said, but the time is displayed as the exact time the truck left, meaning Tim will have to do some math to find out whether the time the man said was correct. The truck left yesterday at 15:19 and is arriving today at 11:33. Tim quickly does the math in his head, and the total comes out to the exact same. There is also a picture of the driver confirming that the middle aged man is actually a driver.

*tap tap tap*

The driver begins to tap at their steering wheel waiting for Tim to finish.

“Almost done. I just need to make sure you're not carrying any contraband.”

Tim opens up his computer again and clicks on the icon that says, ‘Camera View’, the screen flickers and a set of 5 cameras that show the truck in front of him from different angles appear on the screen.

The truck in front of him isn’t enclosed so Tim just does the bare-minimum he needs to check for contraband on non-enclosed trucks, which is basically just glancing at the different cameras for 30 seconds and checking for anything suspicious.

Tim doesn’t find anything suspicious, and he opens the rusted metal gate for the truck to drive into the city.

“Thank you for your time.” Tim replies as the man drives through the gate and enters the walled city.

“dick,” Tim mumbles under his breath waiting for the next vehicle to enter his customs' gate.

Another truck quickly pulls up to his gate but this time the truck is enclosed.

“Please tell me…” Tim gets cut off by the slightly jittery old man in the truck.

“Sulphurine, 515, 62681812, and yesterday at 4:22.” The old man quickly replies to Tim in a slightly nervous tone.

Tim isn’t all that taken aback by being interrupted as more experienced drivers will interrupt him since they already know what he is going to say, but he is a little curious about why this specific driver seems to be nervous.

Tim pulls up all the info on his computer as he asks the old man a question.

“Is everything all right?” Tim asks as he checks all the info.

The old man shifts unsteadily before responding.

“Yep, it’s just been a long drive.”

“It says here you were supposed to have a small security force of two with you. Do you mind telling me why they aren’t with you?

The old man shivers a little before replying, “I don’t know what you're talking about. It’s just me.”

The rest of the info this man gave Tim all the checked out but he is being a little too suspicious. Tim has to check the back of the truck anyway but he is going to be a little more hands on to make sure this man is not smuggling anything into Gumtrap.

“Okay, please open up the back, and I’ll check your inventory.”

The old man presses a button in the truck, and the back unlocks.

Tim leaves his station and goes to open up the back of the truck to check for anything illegal. He slides the trucks back open and is greeted to about a dozen crates of raw Sulphurine. Nothing strikes him as suspicious, so he opens up three random crates to make sure nothing is inside the old man's truck.

Tim didn’t find anything except glowing rocks and gives up on the idea that this old man is carrying some type of contraband and heads over to the truck's window to tell the man that he didn’t find anything and he is free to go if he can explain why he doesn't have his security workers. As Tim is about to speak to the man again and ask him a few more questions about the lack of security officers, he sniffs the air coming from the window...which was a horrible decision for him to make as he smells a pungent disgusting cocktail of smells come through that window and he realizes why the man was acting so weird.

'This guy must have crapped himself while out on a delivery which takes some serious dedication to meet that deadline.' Tim thinks to himself and plugs his nose.

Those two security guards probably didn’t want to be in the truck anymore and decided to call one of their security cars over to pick them up.

Tim isn’t going to say anything about this man’s embarrassment and quickly heads back to allow the man to pass through and maybe throw up.

Tim opens up the gate for the old man and lets him pass through and the truck drives away.

*bleeeergh*

Before puking into his lunch bag after catching another whiff of that god awful smell.

===

Brooklyn threatened the drivers life to enter back into the city. She could have entered the city through a number of different ways, but this was the easiest since she could just threaten the old truck driver into smuggling her into the city.

The old man obviously agreed since he didn’t want to die and Brooklyn hid behind the old man’s seat with a knife as he talked to the customs officer.

They eventually leave the custom station, and Brooklyn takes over the wheel again since she just needed the old man to be at the wheel while they were being searched for contraband.

The driver in the back starts to get a little fidgety before Brooklyn hears an extremely quiet voice come through a phone.

"Hello? Do you need a hero at your location?" A phone call quietly comes through.

Brooklyn immediately grabs and throws a rock knife into mans throat to stop him from speaking to the caller on the other end and destroys the phone that fell out of the mans coat.

Brooklyn drove and hid the truck in an abandoned building on the edge of the industrial sector, close to her apartment since she will need it to go and pick up Puffball and his weird monsters from that cave. The she walked home after dumping the body down into the nearby sewer system, where the body will be eaten by any monsters down there.

Brooklyn meets the door to her apartment and turns the handle to enter. Her sister is watching the T.V. and looks over to whoever opened the door.

Veronica locks eyes with Brooklyn before a tear falls down her eye and a smile forms on her face.

“You...you're not dead,” Veronica begins to cry after seeing her older sister before going over to hug her sister.

“You *sniff* look terrible but I’m glad your still al-*sniff*-ive,” Veronica cries while hugging Brooklyn.

“...you smell *sniff* terrible too,” Veronica says as Brooklyn pats Veronica’s head to console her.

Brooklyn is going to spend time with Veronica but first she is in desperate need for her medicine. She quite literally can’t speak right now due to the throat pain.

Brooklyn taps on Veronica's shoulder trying to tell her to let go of her. Veronica feels the tap and stops hugging Brooklyn. Allowing Brooklyn to go into the bathroom to grab her special medicine to alleviate her throat’s pain. She reaches into the glass medicine cabinet and grabs a blacked out pill bottle that contains the pills that she has been missing for over a week. She grabs one pill and swallows it. While she waits for the pill to kick in, she takes a shower to cleanse herself of over a week's worth of grime and blood. The feeling of all the soot leaving her body is satisfying enough that she ends up taking a shower for a little too long and Veronica becomes a little concerned.

“Hey Sis are you alright in there?”

“Yes. I’m fine,” Brooklyn tests the medicine by saying a short sentence.

Brooklyn soon steps out of the shower and wraps a white towel around her body before leaving the bathroom and going to the bedroom to change clothes. Brooklyn soon emerges from the bedroom looking somewhat normal even after basically going through hell for a week in that cave.

Brooklyn is in a rush to get back to that cave as fast as possible but comforting her sister takes priority over that right now. Brooklyn spends the rest of the day with her sister to make sure she is doing okay after Brooklyn has been gone for a week.

The day after that Brooklyn grabs some money and her suit from her closet before heading back to the truck to leave Gumtrap.

Why does she need the money? Well, she is going to have to bribe one of the shady customs officers somehow, if she wants to fake being a truck driver, she would have just killed the truck driver earlier but she didn’t have any money coming back from that cave.

Money doesn’t just explode out of monsters!

Life just isn't a videogame...well for most creatures that is.

*mental sneeze*

I can't believe I can sneeze mentally! Why did that feature as a human have to carry over!

Does that mean someone was just talking about me?

Nah, that's stupid. That only happens in isekai.

Wait...................I got isekai'd!