*** 10 Raid on Assbasher ***
The punks were welcomed back with gratitude and the hunt for gang leaders begun immediately. With the tactical information about Rust City, the place could be taken without trouble.
There were other matters to attend. Bitch One wasn't useful enough to serve as a slave for Fucker so he sent the boy to the auction house. The other surviving bitch got his prisoner ID and was never to be seen again.
While the punk's fiery snake tattoos were removed, Fucker pondered again what he'd use as a gang sign if the opportunity ever came up.
Mere minutes later, the punks got their next mission. With all gangs returning to their territory from Rust City, it overstretched law enforcement to capture them. Fucker's group was to follow a gang moving directly away from the arcology, on the other side of the crater.
They all agreed to join the pursuit.
Riding bikes through the swamp wasn't sensible, so they had to drive around Death Mountain. It lost them enough time that the sun was rising toward the zenith. The battle had to be short or they'd risk dragging everybody into a heatstroke.
Pyro carried the tag-reader, riding on Fucker's bike, his arms around the leader. The reader's radar gave them directions to wherever the gang was going.
The jade sword gang, as they called themselves, were apparently walking straight toward nothing of interests in the middle of nowhere. Suspicious.
Then the criminals stopped, despite not being close to any source of shade. Fucker had a bad feeling about the coming encounter.
It didn't take long for the trash punks to spot nine boys and young man in matching jade jockstraps. They were standing around a chair sized, boxy object, but one of them was on the lookout. As soon as the punks spotted them, the enemy spotted the pursuers.
Pyro let go of Fucker's torso, stood up in his seat and fired his phaser. It didn't hit anything from the distance, but the clouds of sand shooting up obscured the jade swords' visions enough to let the punks get close.
Feeling like a real mercenary leader already, Fucker shouted to his boys, "Go for those with weapons first. We go left, you go right."
Hardass, driven by Pisspig, had his slave steer to the side to flank the jade sword guys, while Fucker drove the other way. Savage on his bike kept going straight.
The sand set and let the gang respond. Pyro ducked under phaser fire and charged up an orb. Hardass and Pisspig threw themselves off their bike and let the gang fire upon an empty vehicle in their confused panic.
Savage arrived at the center first and drove right into the group. He threw himself at the first guy he saw, while kicking his bike into a trio.
Fucker came to a stand at the rim of the jade swords' formation and Pyro flung his flame like a long whip across the enemies.
With absolutely no shadows around, Hardass had to rely on his quick reflexes to slice and dice his way through the crowd before anyone got a shot off at him.
Fucker paused for a second to see who was still up. Four jade swords were left alive. He took out one.
The rest were unarmed.
"Yo, wait," shouted one of them. The boy had his hands up and dropped to his knees. "We'll give you information."
"Hold up," Fucker said. "Let's hear it. What are you guys doing out here?"
Pisspig and Savage tied the trio of gang members up by roping their hands together behind their backs and tying nooses around their necks to connect them to each other, so they made a neat row of captives.
"Assbasher figured out he's been tagged. He told us we all are. We got the mission to find this old EMP."
The boy had nodded at the object his gang had chosen as resting spot. It was some sort of bomb.
"What exactly is that?"
The boy sighed. "It deactivates all electronic devices from here all the way to Rust City. All tags would have become useless."
Fucker stepped up close to the captives face and grinned. "A little late. You know that half your buddies are already being chased, right?"
"I don't think Assbasher cares. He only wants his tag destroyed."
"Makes sense. I assume it failed?"
"Dunno," the captive said. "It should have gone off already. I think there's a countdown or someth-"
The EMP exploded in a pillar of flame, competing for brightness with the sun. Shrapnel hit Fucker's chest and his skin was saved from puncture by the integrated armor. The captive at the back of the row didn't fare so well.
There were only two gang members left. Luckily no punk was hurt.
A clicking behind Fucker told him Pyro was triggering the phaser without anything happening. Their weapons were fucking fried. And so were everybody else's in wide radius. Plus Assbasher's tag.
"Savage?"
"Yeah, boss?"
"Get rid of those two."
"Yup."
The boy shouted again. "No, wait. I can still help."
Fucker shook his head. "You've done enough damage."
"I know where Assbasher is. We just came from there. His hideout is close by."
"...fine. Lead the way."
Two captives, tied together by the necks, walked ahead in the heat.
It took a wonderfully short time to get to the promised rock formation. Nevertheless, the punks went through their entire stock of Hydro-Cola on the way there.
They stepped into the shadow and tied the jade sword boys to a sand stone pillar. Then they entered the indicated cave.
There was an airlock. Assbasher's base must have been a vault once upon a time, that had somehow been forgotten. Fortunately the lock was long rusted away and the punks could pull the entrance open without trouble.
In the dim interior, Hardass went transparent and snuck ahead.
He returned with a grin. "Huge loot. And I think the guards haven't figured out that their guns don't work. Bad news, though. They're all clumped up. No way to take them out one by one."
Fucker took the front position and they marched into the main chamber. The area was decorated with the thorn-halo skulls sprayed onto the walls and a blood red flag hanging above a spiky throne at the end of a table.
With the electricity gone, the only light came from emergency lamps on the floor, which the inhabitants must have just activated.
Several guns were aimed at them instantly and the dozen chaos soldiers present lost precious seconds to their dysfunctioning phasers.
Savage slammed two heads together and took both of them out. Hardass was nowhere to be seen but one guy fell over without clear cause.
Since Pisspig wasn't useful without a weapon, Fucker told him to stay back and he himself made sure to be in the center of the fight to attract all punches. Skin armor could survive EMPs.
He was thrown around quite a bit but his armor blunted the impact, so he ragdolled between the chaos soldiers while Pyro charged up his final strike.
An intense flash later and crisply charred soldier dropped to the floor.
Then Assbasher entered from behind the throne. "You!" he said.
"Us," Fucker mocked.
Savage charged at the man, but Assbasher only reached out halfheartedly and the brute stopped in mid motion.
Was that his freak ability? Freezing people?
Pyro created a flame ball and stepped to the side to get his friends out of line of fire. Assbasher waved again and Pyro froze, too – his flame petering out.
Fucker had to rush. He raced ahead and hoped there was something sharp on the table he could grab in time for-
His bones got stuck in space. His muscles, eyes, lungs – those were still under his control, but no matter how he flexed, he couldn't get his limbs to move.
Assbasher's ability was to control bone. The king of the fallen Rust City got Pisspig under his command as well and sat down on his throne.
He dropped the hip scarf with his symbol on it and spread his beefy legs. Pyro moved awkwardly toward the enemy.
At first Fucker cheered that his friend had broken the hold, but no – Assbasher was puppeteering Pyro's bones. The boy dropped to his knees and opened his mouth in front of Assbasher's dick. Or more likely, his jaw was forced open.
The king of criminals grabbed the red mohawk tail and fucked Pyro's throat as deep as his thick meat made it possible.
Then Assbasher grinned at Fucker and waved at Savage. The brute tumbled over to his leader and reached out.
"Hehe," Assbasher made. "Let's see how much damage a strength freak can to if he doesn't hold back."
Savage's hand closed in on Fucker's face and-
A knife buried itself in Assbasher's shoulder, all the way down to his heart.
The king was dethroned – falling out of his oversized chair. Hardass became visible just in time for the chaos soldier general to see his assailant.
The punks could move freely again. It was time to celebrate and loot the place.
Despite all the gem stones, jewelry and (now broken) electronic gizmos, what impressed Fucker the most were the standard protein bars. They were number 6! The new ones, directly from Rocket City. He had only heard rumors about them.
They tasted bland, but a better kind of bland than number 5, so he was still okay with it.
"Yo, Fucker," Hardass said. "Look what I found."
"Are those slave collars?"
"With keycard and reader. Should we have another go?"
"Last time we almost got caught, though."
"Yeah, I wasn't really serious. Let's just give them to the arcology peeps."
"Probably best," the leader said.
Then there was noise. They hadn't scouted out the rest of the vault. What a dumb amateur mistake.
The punks took position at the door where Assbasher had originally entered the room. When nothing emerged for a minute, they went in.
It was the living quarters they found themselves in. There were more guards, but already dead or unconscious.
Fighting sounds came from farther back. The punks closed in slowly.
Someone came at then, screaming and swinging a pipe. He hit Fucker, who tumbled back, but was of course protected by skin armor.
The assaulter stopped. "Um... You're not more chaos soldiers."
"Yeah," Fucker said. "We're trash punks gone mercenary. We just dealt with Assbasher."
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah, and you better tell us who you are right now."
The boy came to the main chamber with them. His name was Loh. He was about eighteen, had ringed nipples and a tongue stud, a maroon mohawk and wore a blood red dick pouch.
His story was unexpected. He had been Assbasher's fuck toy for most of his life, but lately, the king had grown distrustful of Gah. Loh had been supposed to fill the position of supreme warden one day. But with the gangs of Rust City dispersing in fear of this day's hunt, he had decided to come clean.
He'd probably still end up a prisoner. Shame, really. He was obviously a capable fighter.
Although... they had all the equipment.
"Yo, Loh. What if there was a way to avoid being captured by NewLaw?"
"Like what? I don't think they'll let me go after I was in the chaos gang my whole life."
"It may be too late for you to sign a contract, but with what we have here... Now one has to know how long it's been."
"You mean...?"
Tune in next time for more freaky power stuff.