V M Mixing Business with Pleasure [Quest]

[Pecan]

So there we were, crouched down in a thicket of scrubgrass. The cloudless sky beat down on us with a heat that’d make you sweat just thinking about it. Now, ya boy Pecan was used to this kind of heat. Afterall, lil’ baby Pecan grew up in the Rojanian deserts. I mean what kind of scav would I be if I couldn’t handle a little bit of afternoon heat? Nico on the other hand? That boy needed some milk… or really anything capable of rehydration. Milk, however, could wait, we had ourselves a lil’ heist to orchestrate.

“So… do we just like, go for it?” Nico asked, “I mean, don’t we need keys or something?”

“Nah nah nah,” I said, holding up a screwdriver, “Look, I used to steal these things all the time, they’re made to be cheap, not hard to steal - I just jam this little baby into the ignition and she’ll crank right up, easy peasy.”

“Okay… and if they start shooting?”

I shrugged, “You’ve been shot before, haven’t you?”

What we were looking to swipe was a sand skipper. Now for you off worlders that don’t know, sand skippers are basically hoverbikes. This particular model was a two seater and it looked like it had seen its fair share of scraps. More modern skippers would have all sorts of bells and whistles and anti-theft devices, but this baby was probably worth less than its weight in scrap. Honestly, it looked like it was held together with nothing more than hope and well-wishes. Regardless, we needed a ride and it fit the bill perfectly.

The skipper sat parked outside a saloon along with several other skippers. A gaggle of sun-dried wannabe cowboys mulled around, each of them partaking in a bit of the ol’ fashioned day drinking. If ya asked me there was nothing wrong with getting sauced up before the afternoon and, if anything, it made our job easier. What didn’t make our job easier, however, was the fact that every damn one of them was packing heat. This wasn’t surprising, living in a frontier town meant frequent encounters with bandits, but despite my laissez-fair attitude regarding getting shot I really wasn’t interested in digging lead out of my gut.

“Alright, let’s go,” I said, standing up and moving towards the skipper, “Act cool, if shit goes down - you shoot, I drive.”

“Right,” Nico said, sparking up a cancer stick and following close behind.

Now, the key to thieving things real good was keeping your nerve. You had to be ice cold. You had to act as if whatever you were swiping was yours already. Hell, this is theft 101, but it is vital to wear confidence as a sort of invisibility cloak. So we did just that. We walked with a relaxed swagger, polished and cold and collected. Unfortunately, what they don’t teach you ‘till theft 202 is that no matter how careful you are, shit can always go sideways.

“Hey!” Someone shouted, grabbing my shoulder and whirling me around, “What the fuck are you doing back here?”

I had not a single solitary clue as to who this man was. His hand left a greasy paw print on my shirt and he reeked of sweat and liquor. He looked like a real bastard, with his beard braided into knots and his left eye gouged out and replaced with an obviously fake glass one. His little display had attracted the idle stares of everyone nearby, and assuredly attracted attention of the skipper’s owner. He didn’t give me a chance to say anything before he was jabbing a finger in my chest and slobbering, “You think you can just come back here after what you did? Not on my watch buddy.”

“You know this guy?” Nico asked, nervously glancing towards the quickly materializing crowd.

“No?” I answered.

There was a momentary deflation of his anger. Obviously he knew me, but with the amount of people I’ve pissed off throughout the years? It’s a miracle I remember even half of them. No doubt he had cultivated whatever grudge he held against me as delicately as a farmer cultivates his field, and when it came time to harvest? Well, I hadn’t even remembered his name let alone his existence. Anger, twice as acidic, flashed back to the forefront. He grabbed his pistol and jammed it up underneath my chin.

“Your friend here cheated a card game against me,” He said, addressing Nico, “And when I called him out on it he gouged out my fucking eye.”

Ohhhhhhhh, fucking lol, this guy? For the record, dear reader, ya boy Pecan does not cheat at cards. I mean, I’m many fucking things, but a cheater ain’t one of them. No, the big boy here just had a streak of bad luck, plain as that. My memory, however, was jogged and I knew this place looked familiar. It was at about this time that the other observers began to mutter amongst themselves and my name came across nearly every one of their lips. Yeah, I remember, after I gouged ol’ boy’s eye out every one came to his defense. I mean, seriously this wasn’t just a bar fight they were basically trying to lynch me. Sooo, I defended myself and one thing led to another, and well… improvised explosives don’t exactly make friends. Soon enough Nico and I had enough guns on us to make a target dummy blush.

“Easy peasy he says, walk right up he says,” Nico muttered, glaring down the barrel of a ramshackle shotgun.

“Hey, what’s life without a little bit of surprise?” I smiled and winked at ol’ One-eye, “I mean it’s just a matter of keeping an eye on perspective, right?”

Predictably, this set him off. His face scrunched together in rage at the sheer audacity of my demeanor. He pulled the trigger. And…? Nothing. Just an off-kilter click as the weapon jammed. Poor guy’s luck was just abysmal. Mine? Well baby, I was one lucky dog. Wordlessly Nico flicked what was left of his cigarette over his shoulder. The discarded dart landed harmlessly at the crowd’s feet and a heartbeat later, exploded. Immediately a cloud of dust, fire, and debris swallowed us all. In the ensuing chaos I headbutted the one-eyed bastard and reached for my own boom-boom devices. Blind-fired gunshots ripped through the improvised smoke screen and I tossed a couple homemade grenades towards the source of gunfire. While not quite as brimstoney as Nico’s cancer stick, my bombs carried a lovely amount of shrapnel.

And boys and girls? That’s why you don’t steal - you might get recognized by some asshole and have to bomb a saloon to defend yourself. Really, it isn’t a good look for anyone. Anyways, with everybody nice and suppressed we were able to reach the row of skippers. A bit of shrapnel had embedded itself in our prize, but that probably made it more structurally sound in all honesty. Nico had manifested his AK-47 while I jammed a screwdriver into the bike’s ignition. The tool sheared through the cylinder and with a twist the bike sputtered to lift, lifting itself a few feet off the ground.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about, Nico baby,” I said, straddling the dirt beast, “Just like the Abyss all over again!”

“Yeah…” Nico’s voice came out strangled, no doubt ravaged by the horrors of smoking, “Good… old… times.”

 

[Nico Cinder]

The engine of the junk bike rattled in unison with the rata-tat tat of Nico's rifle. His eyes were full of dust and his mouth was full of rust. He couldn't tell if he was hitting anything or not, but before he knew it, they had already wobbled a couple hundred yards away from the saloon. When the gunfire and explosions died down, the engines started up.

"You couldn'ta picked a faster bike?" Nico asked.

"What? You mean one of theirs?" Pecan howled back, the cackles reaching his eyes.

Nico grimaced and went to reload, but found that the magazine was snagged on...fuck, he didn't know. The rest of the gun, he guessed. Suppose he's stuck with what he's got, for now. "Where the fuck are we going, Pecan?"

"That way!"

Rounds sang by their heads, and Nico swore again, turning his aim and his rifle on their flank. Bastards were most definitely gaining. He squeezed the trigger, expecting a wall of lead. Instead, a single bullet crawled its way out of the barrel and into some poor guy's goggle down the way there a bit. Nico swore again and banged on the side of the gun with the bottom of his fist a couple of times, and the empty magazine jiggled weakly. He hit it one more time with a grunt and it finally locked into place. The gun whirred in excitement, spitting out bullets so quick and rambunctious Nico almost let the thing jump out of his hands - apparently the weapon had forgotten it was empty. He tried to control where he was shooting but his finger hadn't even been on the trigger. The gun sprayed all kinds of wide, accomplishing little other than maybe scaring the shit out of some birds. The gun eventually clicked again, spent. Nico didn't bother trying to reload this time.

"You gettin' em?" Pecan shouted.

"Uh...Yeah! Sure am," Nico grumbled, reaching for a dangling scrap grenade from Pecan's belt.

The look on Pecan's face when he felt his explosives being jostled was somewhere between mischievous and maniacal. "Whoa there! You gotta take a guy out to eat or something."

"Drive now, witty banter cliches later!" Nico yelled, lit cigarette clenched between his teeth. He went to pull the pin on his borrowed toy, but found that there simply wasn't one. Man, just terrible luck killing people, today. "Who the fuck uses a rope fuse anymore!?"

Pecan shook his head. "Gentlemen of taste and distinction!" Clearly, his tagalong knew next to nothing about how explosives worked.

"What did I say about witty banter!?" Nico screeched, lighting the fuse with his cigarette. He found a snug spot in Pecan's creative engineering to nestle his cig, letting the ticker tick a few inches off in doing so. Managing all of this on the back of a moving hoverbike was much easier than it sounded, Nico would assure you. Even so, all his combined dexterity couldn't save him from that one stray spark against his hand, and a yelp and a drop later, a pleasant ball of fire erupted in front of a handful of goons behind the boys. A gas can somewhere down the line of carnage must've been punctured by the flaming shrapnel, because several more people and vehicles go up in flames or spinning out or both.

There were a lot of bikers in that there saloon when the two of them got there, but now, well, there sure as shit were a lot fewer. What remained of their ilk was, while sparse, still far outnumbered the two of them. They were regrouping, too, having pulled back a considerable amount after that last big explosion. Bikers riding in formation had never been quite so terrifying and annoying. Nico told Pecan as much.

"They're gonna follow us at that distance till we stop, for one reason or 'nother," Pecan struggled against the rush of wind in their ears, slowing his new sand-skipper down to a glide. Much to Nico's curiosity, their enemies matched the change in pace, maintaining respectable distance. "Could be we're outta gas, maybe one of us gotta take a pisser. Then when they're good and ready, they'll circle around us on their shitmobiles and take turns replacing our skin with buckshot, one bead at a time. Sometimes several. If we take too long to stop, they might even radio into er... wherever the hell dirty bikers radio into for back-up. Maybe the bar. I'm sure they'll be expecting someone to pay the tabs them guys in the dirt didn't. All of this assuming you and I, pal of mine, don't blow them all to hell first."

"See anything in all that desert out there?" Nico said, with little humor in his voice. He was trying to fire his rifle at the ground passing beneath them. It clicked, taunting him.

"Nah, sand, sand, fuckin' sand," he muttered, more to himself than back to Nico. Silence, save for the now much softer wind and rhythmic hum of the skipper. Wasn't long before something perked him up though, and Pecan shifted forward into his seat. "Hey wait a minute, I think somethin’ in the desert is making itself known to ol’ Pecan. Something… peekin' its little head up in that dune over there."

“Think they’ll make their move if we stop here?”

Pecan shook his head. “We got time. They’ll lick their wounds first. But what they don’t know, is that they’s already a buncha dead men, far as I’m concerned.”

Nico had a feeling he was concerned a little farther than Pecan.

 

[Ketkin Flynn]

Ketkin Flynn can deal with an explosion or two in the morning, ok? This isn't exactly the most hospitable neck of the mesa. What Ket cannot deal with is a sinking turf war rattling his hydroponic moisture farm right into the goddamn ground! He spent the better part of a year getting this operation running. An underground cave the size of a 2-3 car garage, With hand molded clay architecture to hold his beautiful collection of orrelian pickle flowers and act as a heat sink for the water pump and monitoring station computer. No other water purification company on the planet can compare to his technique because they all forget about the organic component. Any bottom feeder can boil the bacteria out of some water but that isn’t going to make it taste like life itself. This may seem uninteresting to someone that doesn’t live in a desert but the nobles in a very very rich neighborhood would disagree with you, and they pay Indirectly pay Ket a lot of untraceable money to bottle the stuff. The biker bar a klick out usually scares off any unwanted attention, but it would seem they finally stepped in some shit they couldn't scrape off. His shoulders drop as he lets out a deep sigh. He gently sets down his trimming shears and leaves the secret basement of his desert dwelling. This modest single room adobe hut easily holds the very few personal items Ket has ever bothered to hold onto in addition to the most basic necessities for human life. None of his belongings catch his eye today though. A trap door flies open, the rug covering it thrown haplessly aside, and ket's eyes automatically lock onto his gear as he strides into the room and up to the harness holding his exo suit upright. When he turns around and steps backwards into the display the suit jumps to life, making a series of deep hums and mechanical clicks and whirs as it secures itself to his body. He runs outside, mounts a rusty skipper he's been working on for weeks, and prays to the old ones that he remembered to replace the anti-grav catalyzer. The sound of a thousand forks in a thousand garbage disposals answers that prayer and his mission to chase off a bunch of heavily armed leather jacketed assholes off his "lawn" begins.

Ket parks the skipper behind a sand dune and gives it a loving pat for a job well done before peeking his head over to finally get a look at the action. He can't believe his eyes. One warring party is immediately recognizable and expected (patrons of shitty biker bar). The other is not a party at all.

Eagerly whipping out a pair of binoculars, Ket discovers that TWO men have single handedly wiped out at the very least a dozen of the gang members. Unfortunately for the usurpers they appear to be out of munitions, stalling for time in a dead man's race. Ket watches on for a while, mildly amused. The explosions have stopped, meaning his operation is safe for the moment and he can enjoy watching these cocky bastards meet their inevitable doom. There isn't any refuge for hours in any direction and there's no way their skipper will outrun the pack. The smirk that was beginning to creep onto his face vanishes as he gets a closer look at theirs. The gears in Ket’s mind start to spin wildly when he realizes THIS is the muscle sent by Plaineview to get his water to Karim. With a grimace he returns to his bike and equips a compact mirror. Oldest trick in the book. After a minute or two of messing with the angle he sees the rider course correct in his direction.

His royal guard arrives only minutes ahead of their new friends, and he could have sworn both of those crazy bastards were smiling when they drifted to a halt inches away from him. He takes a long intentional look at both men, memorizing their faces on the off chance they crossed him, before speaking.

“So… you boys thirsty?”

Ket hastily begins rigging the accelerators on both sand skippers to lead the bikers away from his base at max speed, hopefully kicking up enough sand to mask the riderless seat. Nico stands guard while ket and pecan push their respective rides off at slightly different angles, splitting up the pack in case one of them gets wise. Ket finishes off his ruse by detaching a small gadget from a clip on his exo suit. He shallowly buries it in the sand dune and upon deployment it expands, carving out a sort of shelter they can crouch into until everyone passes. A canteen of the best water on the planet is passed around as everyone takes a surprisingly refreshing break from the brilliant heat. When it got quiet they unceremoniously trudged their way back to the base, more specifically the basement. Pecan and Nico were quickly shown a surprisingly nice bathroom to wash up in, especially compared to the other amenities available to them. Ket begins loading up a self propelled sled with crates as they survey a pile of metal detected scraps and broken machinery, drawers of various ammunition, and a chest of small melee and ranged weaponry scavenged from unnamed corpses.

“Anything you want here will probably be more useful to you than me, except for the plants of course. You see something shiny, feel free to grab it. We ride in 20.”

 

[Pecan]

Now ya boy Pecan wasn’t quite sure how to take Ketkin. I had admiration for competency and he seemed about as competent as they came. Hell, I was ready to have a good ol’ fashioned shoot out with those bikers, but Ket came along with his big smart guy brain and bailed us out. His whole operation carried an attention to detail, while not being too caught up on making things look pretty. It was efficient, it was effective, and--

“Holy fuck Nico, have you tried this water?”

He shook his head and I handed him the clear cylinder of liquid. Now that we had a minute to cool down in Ket’s bunker he didn’t look so miserable, but that was the trick with dehydration - you could look absolutely peachy and then keel over from heat stroke. He took a sip and his eyes lit up. He slammed the whole thing in just a few gluttonous gulps and I was left regretting handing him the whole thing.

“Holy fuck is right, that is good,” Nico agreed.

I looked towards Ketkin, who was dutifully loading the delivery, and asked, “Oi, how in the arbiter’s asshole did you get water to taste so freakin’ good?”

He paused and looked me up and down, seemingly sizing up my intellect before grunting, “Trade secret.”

“Awh, come on now, I have to know,” I said, leaning on one of the crates and whispering, “It’s MSG isn’t it?”

“It’s not MSG.”

“It totally is MSG isn’t it?” I looked towards Nico for reassurance, but he only shrugged.

“It’s not.”

“Right, gotcha,” I said, winking at Nico.

Delicious additives aside, I had my own preparations to perform. Those numbskulls had swallowed every last one o’ my grenades and I was in desperate need for some more. The Plaineview representative had assured me that force wasn’t required, only intimidation. But, come on, this was Mesa Roja we were talking about here. Intimidation was only good if you cracked a few skulls to prove your intimidatingness. So, while Ket and Nico were loading cargo I was busy cobbling together a few of my beauties. Now bomb-making is as much an art as it was a science. Too much shrapnel and not enough explosive meant a disappointingly small area of effect. And the reverse? Well, that would just give you a little pop and maybe put someone’s eye out. No, a good bomb married both shrapnel and explosive content in a loving fusion capable of turning multiple men into piles of pulled pork. I had only managed to cobble a handful of the little buggers together by the time they had finished loading the cargo.

“Time to go,” Ket said, opening the hatch to his operation and pushing the anti-grav sled out.

“So, uh, where’s our ride?” Nico asked, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“Ride?” Ketkin said, entering commands in the sled’s control panel.

“Yes, y’know, four wheels? Or maybe a floating car? Camels maybe?”

“Yeah,” I chimed in, “What’s the plan anyways, Plaineview just told us to meet you at these coordinates. They didn’t give us any specifics.”

Ket sighed, looking up from the control panel. He pointed off towards the horizon and said, “You see that ridge over there? That’s our destination, some of the noble houses have established a sort of speak-easy casino just on the other side. The last two times I’ve tried to deliver I’ve been ambushed and robbed. Owing to the fact that they didn’t kill me on the spot we suspect that the robbers were hired by the casino in order to skirt on paying the bill. All we need to do is reach the casino, cargo intact, collect the money, and make sure they don’t have the balls to pull something like this again.”

“I like it, I like it,” I said, “Nice and simple and a good opportunity for a bit of the ol’ ultra violence.”

Nico interjected, “Okay, but that doesn’t explain how we get there - is someone coming to pick us up?”

“No,” Ketkin answered, “We’re walking.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’ve partitioned off enough water to keep us hydrated for the journey,” He explained, “We should get there before sundown if we leave now.”

And so, that was the story of how ya boy Pecan and his boy Nico got roped into walking across basically the entire fucking desert. But that Plaineview sponsorship was all I needed to shoulder adversity. With that sponsorship I could finally participate in GIANT ROBOT FIST FIGHTS FUCK YEAH BABY THAT IS WHY WE PLAY THE GAME FUCK YEAH.

 

[Nico Cinder]

There was something interesting about watching two rocks stare at each other. This Ketkin dude hadn't been joking - these folks were definitely bandits. Looked like 'em. Smelled like 'em. 'Bout six of em, double the boys' three, all dressed to murder. Their leader was a short, stacked woman with a scar along her left cheekbone, and a wild mane of dusty brown hair. Her right eye was covered by some sort of optic pirate eyepatch. She was younger than Nico would've thought a desert bandit leader, and the way she leaned on her rifle and rested her cheek on the barrel was somehow both lazy and unsettling. Pecan stared at Nico. Nico stared at Ketkin. Ketkin stared at the woman. She stared back.

This went on for an uncomfortable amount of time, until one of the rocks finally cleared their throats. It was kinda hard to hear, from twenty something yards away.

"Mr. Flynn," she began finally, in a tone best described as vaguely country. "I believe you're well aware of how this goes down by now. No need to have everyone here sweat. Or bleed. Not over some water." The water farmer tilted his head in response. Out of the corner of Nico's eye, he saw Pecan's fingers twitching, hands hung loosely at his waist. The lady's friends all stood silent. Four of them counting the leader had pieces on display, and the other two had a big ol' lead pipe and a machete between them.

"Brunhilda. Uncommon to see you so far out in uncharted waters," he said back calmly.

"You guys uh, acquainted?" Nico ventured to ask.

"He's about to get reacquainted with the business end of my sharpshooter here," Brunhilda cut in. "If'n he don't give us the formerly and formally agreed upon amount."

"Tell your damn siltsucker bosses that I'm giving them a fair price. This whole bandit dance they're making you do is highly unprofessional and unnecessary," Ketkin said plainly, loudly.

Brunhilda spat. Literally. "Don't know what yer talkin' about. Thought I told you the last time. Everybody's gotta pay a toll to come through this turf."

"Turf seems to be expanding," Ketkin shouted, before muttering to his compatriots. "These are the ones I told you about. Though, they're further insand than usual. They usually waited for me not a couple miles outside the casino gates. We've only been walking for about an hour."

"Coulda fooled me," Nico muttered back. "Feels like it's been a month since I've seen anything but sunlight and god damn sand. Think they were nosing around for your little workshop?"

"Alright!" The woman shouted, kicking her rifle up by the butt and shouldering it with an understood intent. "Your water or your lives!"

"She's bullshitting, they wouldn't dare kill their prize water pig," said Ketkin, activating his glow-y suit thingy. Nico scrunched up his face at the conceptual differences between water and land pigs.

"Good. Means you two won't have to feel bad about wastin' a buncha bullshitters. God knows I wasn't gonna either way." There was a distinct couple of clicks. Nico swung his head in their vague direction, already pretty sure who was doing the clicking. Pecan greeted him with an empty-handed grin, the scrap grenades already flying in a perfect E-formation over his and Ketkin's head.

What happened next would be over in a matter of seconds. One grenade rolled to a stop in front of Brunhilda's foot. She punted it back towards the boys, but it clattered to the dust with little fanfare and no big boom. The other two grenades were not responded to in a timely manner. One thug tried the old return to sender trick as well, but made the mistake of trying to pick it up and throw it. Slippery fingers, this guy. He fumbled it twice, and there just didn't seem to be a third chance in the cards for him. Or a head. The third and final grenade was not so much as deadly as it was incapacitating. It scattered the thugs it landed near, but one was a bit slower on the uptake than the others and found himself with bits of rusty metal embedded in his leg.

One of the thugs sent running by this came for the group with his own piece of sharp rusty metal. Nico pulled his blade into the world to bat away a wild strike as they descended into a back and forth for all of four blows, before Nico ran him through, well and good. The bandit's corpse fell forward, leaning against Nico's shield arm. He shrugged it off with a grunt and a weird face. That left two to be sprayed down by a rabid Pecan before they even managed to properly clear leather. He was still laughing when he ran out of ammo. Quite a bit of clicking from Pecan today.

Everyone's in the dirt now, except Brunhilda and the water boys. Her rifle was already pointed at the sky by the time her second man fell, apparently having made her decision on how this little scuffle was gonna go. She made a smacking noise with her lips, surveying the carnage. The one with the new holes in his leg had started to crawl his way over the nearest dune in the interim silence, leaving a trail of red sand as he went.

"Reckon I'll see you later this evenin', kiddos," Brunhilda sighed. She marched right over to her injured man and began dragging him by his collar over the crest of the sand hill. Moments later, there was the sound of an engine or two, vaguely, in the wind.

Ketkin snorted. "That definitely could have gone worse."

Nico toed the dud grenade with his shoe. It had already begun to accumulate a coat of sand. "Speaking of which...what happened here, big guy? It's not like you to choke under pressure."

Pecan only shrugged in response. "They can't all be winners like me."

They all shared a moment to breathe, trying to ignore the taste of dust in the air. Eventually Ketkin decided it was time to move things along, double-checked the cargo to make sure no water was spilt. They started walking again, almost as if they had never been interrupted at all. "Might run into her again," the diver huffed.

"Think she'll bring more next time?" Nico asked with an appropriate amount of measure to his voice.

"Or at least some tougher dudes. These guys were chumps. You see them flailing around out there? That what they teaching kids in bandit school these days?" Pecan said. Nico had himself a laugh over this, and Ketkin began to say some shit but was abruptly cut off by the sound of Pecan's scrap grenade going off a good distance behind them. They all sauntered to a turning stop, watching the exploded sand drift back down to the ground, and the smoke up into a cloudy pillar.

"Huh," Nico said.

"It was the long con, baby," Pecan said.

"A late bloomer," said Mr. Flynn.

Nico was thirsty.

 

[Ketkin Flynn]

What was a carefree (if arduous) stroll had become a tense March. Three sets of eyes dart back and forth between barren mounds of sand. Fingers rhythmically tap on loosely sheathed weapons.

“That peg legged degenerate has never known when to quit, stay focused.” Ketkin warns in a low voice. He can tell it didn’t need to be said.

“I ain’t ever popped somebody I couldn’t pop twice.” Pecan retorts with a smirk, fiddling with some metallic nonsense in his off hand.

“Anything to pass the time at this point.” Nico adds as he slips a cigarette into his mouth. Even when he isn’t using his ability little red flecks dance out of his mouth as he exhales, resembling a freshly stoked hearth. “And unless they run really fucking fast they have rides.”

The three boys share a mischievous look at the revelation. They are super tired of walking.

“I don’t think this requires one of my ingenious plans, we know they’re coming.” Ket orders. “When we hear their engines we paint sand simple as that.”

Pecan let’s out a soft maniacal chuckle. “I don’t know boss I think that’s the smartest thing you’ve said yet.”

Nico shakes his head with a smile as he flicks his cigarette into the air. It ignites like a match head and never makes it to the ground.

Despite the undeniable dehydration the crew strides with renewed vigor. They don’t have to stride much longer. As soon as the combustion fueled growls become perceptible the boys spring into action. Armor is activated. Weapons are drawn. And an all out sprint ensues. Brunhilda crests a dune in front of them, expecting to see three weary travelers unprepared for her increased numbers. What she finds instead is a pack of blood thirsty vagabonds hurtling towards her at Mach fuck this. She doesn’t get a chance to retreat.

As Ket closes in on his wasteland rival for the last time he remembers all of the extra bullshit he’s had to go through to keep his business afloat. All of the extra security he had to install. All of the extra packaging to protect the product. Hiring these two goons on his left and right currently squeezing the triggers on wildly dangerous firearms. The runes on his exoskeleton begin to glow a twisted ghostly purple and instead of his next step carrying him forward like all the rest it launches him in the air almost directly towards Brunhilda. Almost. The normally composed submariner lets out a blood curdling scream as his outstretched brush blades sail right above her.

“NOT THIS TIME ASSHOLE” he cries out as he quickly switches his left brush to the net launcher. He spins around in the air and fires it as a few rifle rounds glance off his armor. He’s unsure what the net manages to grab on to in his rage but it’s enough. He pulls with all his might and extends his remaining brush blade. Brunhilda is frozen. Aghast at the defiance shown by this mark. Her mouth was still wide open when her severed head hit the ground.

By the time Ketkin is back in his feet pecan and Nico have already laid waste to the rest of her crew. Hard to tell with them all piled up like that but that’s at least a dozen heavily armed bandits forced into early retirement via lead shower.

“You have some shit you needed to work out boss?” Pecan says slyly as he replaces an empty mag and leans down to start looting bodies. Ketkin nods slowly as he inspects the quickly fading runes on his exoskeleton, not really listening.

“Yeah… I don’t like bullies”