Chapter 4: Tightass Extraction
The Tightass Punks had less of a unified look than Rockhard's gang. The leader Tightass himself wore a heavy loincloth with belt, and the other two members had followed suit. Maybe not both of their own volition since one was Tightass' slave.
Tightass was almost as tall as Spit, despite the age difference. He had a teal mohawk tied into a simple braid halfway down his back.
Jin looked young by comparison, with his pointed chin and big eyes, the left one covered by his black mohawk-fringe. He wore jewelry and even had gold studs on his loincloth.
The slave member was called Licky. His loincloth was much smaller – a mere triangle, hanging just low enough to keep the chastity cage covered. There were little hearts drawn all along his thick metal collar.
Spit tried to make a good impression by showing up in his usual black loincloth, which seemed to work.
"Ready?" Tightass asked.
"Sure am," Spit answered and his application interview was concluded.
The punks set off toward the gate, squatted over the scanners for a second and made their way along the road. Spit noticed that Licky had been given the most bags, leaving his ghost with nothing to carry.
He didn't say anything, not wanting to embarrass the leader.
Within ten minutes, the group left the beaten path and wandered into tall grass, steadily approaching a small forest.
Licky fell behind, so Spit slowed down to keep him company.
With the other punks out of earshot, the hunk said, "Yo Licky, getting tired already?"
"Um... n-no sir, I'll catch up right away."
"Ha, don't bother. Let me just grab a thing or two."
His ghost twin detached from Spit's body and soon the heaviest bag hovered behind them.
"Wow," said Licky. "Thanks, bro."
"Why are you their slave anyway? I heard you all are best friends since forever. Were you enslaved and they bought you?"
"No..." Licky said, drawing out the sound. "They fell in love. I love them, too, but they were fine without me. I didn't want to leave, so I convinced them to let me sign a contract." The slave looked proud. "Now I'm bonded to them more closely than they are to each other."
Spit whistled. "Good job, if that's what you wanted. How long did you know each other at that point?"
"About a month."
"I see. And they treat you as a regular slave?"
"Sure, but I'm happy. Especially when they fight about who gets to use me. That's when I know they love me back."
Spit grinned. "Sounds like a great friendship."
The forest was home to ruins. A city from the precursor civilization, mostly sunken into the earth and ground to dust. But a few buildings were intact enough to harvest.
After all that time, things like electronics and clothes were basically useless, but the raw materials could still be recycled. This was the original purpose of trash punks.
Tightass directed them to a four level building – one of the tallest still standing. It was slightly crooked and the southern wall was mostly crumbled.
"All right, punk boy," the leader said. "We start at the top. Apartments exposed to the outside by broken walls are less important than those where only the windows are gone. Sort things in the hallway. Go."
"Uh, sort what?" Spit asked.
"Anything that might be valuable. Cloth, dishes, boxes with buttons and cables. There's a screen or two in basically every household, maybe even a holo-projector. We'll decide what can be used after it's all gathered."
Raiding an ancient ruin was unsettling.
Spit started together with Jin in an apartment labeled 14. The door was weakened but they still had to crack it open. The ancestors had owned a lot more furniture.
All pictures were long faded but there was a huge painting hanging next to a long table with many seats. It showed four people, wearing cloth from chest to feet. The world had been colder back then.
"Any idea what the table is for?" Jin asked as he dragged consoles and their many cables out from their slots in the living room table.
"Which one?" Spit asked. "The big, long one at the kitchen or the one in front of the sofas? No idea either way. Maybe they all did work at the same time?"
Jin crawled behind the sofa for more cables. "I heard they couldn't sit on the ground for some reason so they needed tables to eat at."
"Don't fuck with me. This is spooky already."
Spit took a look into an adjacent room, which was tiled and full of ceramic bowls in sizes from a big dish to a full trough. A bathing area, probably. Did they have one in every individual apartment? Then where did they socialize?
The bedroom was half filled with spider webs. All cloth had unfortunately been chewed through by moths.
"Do we take the scraps?"
"Probably not," Jin said. "But bring them out for Tightass to look at anyway."
A harsh hammering sound echoed through the floor.
"What's that?" Spit asked, readying his ghost.
Jin waved. "Licky's job is to tear cables out of the walls."
The younger punk opened a door and revealed a tiny room full of relatively untouched clothing. They got busy carrying the stuff into the hallway.
By the end of the day, Spit didn't feel like he understood more about the precursors, but he got to keep a black strip of cloth that looked exactly like what the tallest person in the painting wore around his neck.
Tightass, the precursor expert, simply called it `a tie'.
Spit knotted the strip around his neck, which made the thing fall over his chest much less elegantly than what the painting suggested. Probably just artistic interpretation.
Finding useable trash was only half the punks' work. The other half was hauling it to the train station.
They were a lot slower this time, carrying and pulling with them as much as possible.
Spit noticed they were moving in an arc toward the road instead of going a straight line.
He asked the leader.
Tightass pointed at the horizon to the side. "See that smoke pillar. Faint, far away. That's Ballbuster territory. You don't want to run into a criminal gang this tough."
"Wow, I had no idea there are criminals living this close to Apex."
"They're not going to attack a city. ...I think. There are a lot of them. I just want to stay as far away as possible."
"What crimes do they commit?"
"Pretty much anything but theft. Which is why nobody's hunting them down. They avoid getting a high reward on their heads."
"Crazy."
The rail network didn't lead all the way to Apex yet, so they visited the close-by town Stone Burrow, built directly onto a quarry.
Resting in the shade, the Tightass Punks waited for the train to arrive.
The slick thing silently hovered in on magnetic fields, letting off some workers who instantly started unloading materials.
A man in a pink NewLaw thong waved the punks over. "Yo, which one are you?"
"I'm Tightass."
"All right. New stuff?"
The punk leader pointed his thumb at the boxes. "Loads of electronics and cables. We got started on a new building."
"Great. Load it up."
Spit, his ghost twin, Jin and Licky complied while Tightass stayed behind.
Halfway through the task, someone tapped Spit on the shoulder.
"Yo," said a freak – recognizable by the pitch black eye balls. His yellow mohawk was tied into many small spikes. "Know where I can find Dreck Hole?"
"Ah, you're here for their recruitment, to... beat them up?"
The new freak laughed. "Pretty much. I think I'm perfect for the job."
"Why?" Spit asked. "What's your power?"
The new freak flicked his arms and Spit was pushed back by an invisible force, then hit in the side and made to stagger.
"Force fields," said the new guy to his fellow freak. "Nicely dull, so it won't break any bones. And I can control the direction to keep them guessing."
"You'll be the king of that place, bro," Spit said with a chuckle. "But I don't actually know how to find it. Um... Jin! Come here."
By the time they knew where to point the new arrival, Tightass had received payment for the previous shipment, which had been evaluated at a central hub.
They continued piling their precursor trash into the train.
Tightass was much more interested in saving up than Rockhard, because harvesting ruins required equipment.
The next days were spent just as the first one and then it was time for another party at the Fuck-o-Drome.
Spit hadn't actually known if they'd work or party, but Tightass was thankfully not that obsessed with making money.
Partytime.
Things have gone well for far too long. Time for them to break a little.
Chapter 5: Freaking Out