“Ach-hem…” A few machines down, a thin, twitchy insectoid with black arthropod eyes wobbles off his chair and scurries toward them. “Ahoy! I happened to overhear your conversation, and I think I can help you find what you’re looking for.”
“That was fast,” Steve says.
“The name’s Soddy. I’m sort of an unofficial newbie guide.” He wipes a thin hand across his leaking proboscis and points across the room. “Grab your drinks. And tip your waitress.”
When their waitress returns, Dave pays her, and she growls, “Thanks a lot.”
They follow Soddy into the elevator and ride up to a floor called ‘Scrapper’s Ranch,’ where they enter a dark room filled with obscured strangers hooting at half, and in some cases fully, nude aliens of various and indeterminate sex dancing on dimly lit platforms. Soddy leads them to a table against the wall and orders more drinks from a scantily clad waitress with a swollen, swinging udder.
“It’s hot in here,” Dave shouts, but his voice is drowned out by the pulsing thump blaring from invisible speakers.
The dancers, unfamiliar and mostly unappealing alien life forms, gyrate and contort in ways which Dave would have been just as happy never knowing were possible. He accidentally makes eye contact with a spiny, hard-shelled dancer and quickly glances away. But it’s too late; her beady eyes lock on, and she scuttles toward him. She grins horridly, rubbing her muddy exoskeleton on his lap, and he labors to smile as her shell painfully digs into his pelvis. When she’s finished, she holds out her claw and Dave scans the barcode etched along its side, only to discover that her performance cost him a little more than a month’s pay.
As she scurries away in pursuit of more prey, Dave chugs the rest of his beer and anxiously nods at Steve in a bid to leave.
“I get it,” Soddy says. “It’s not your thing. That’s cool. I got something better, something a little more intense. It’s the kind of thing sick guys like you will love – one of Scrapper’s Delight’s hidden delights.”
Dave and Steve exchange nervous glances as they follow their guide back to the elevator. Soddy simultaneously presses the buttons for ‘Grand Guignol’ and ‘Dry Cleaning,’ and the box jerks into motion.
A few turbulent moments later, they step out into a dark hallway. At the far end of the long corridor, Soddy slams his fist against one of half a dozen reinforced metal doors, and a small hatch slides open to reveal a pair of glaring yellow eyes.
“What’s the password?” the eyes growl.
“Fish and chits,” Soddy says.
The door swings open, and a din of raucous cheers and jeers streams out. They step into the smokey, stifling air, and Soddy leads them through a mob of zealous gamblers to a small bar in the corner of the room. As they wait for more drinks, Dave tries to get a glimpse of what everyone is so excited about, but he can’t see anything over the crowd.
“You won’t find this place in the brochure,” Soddy yells.
“What is it?” Dave asks.
But Soddy just smiles and looks down at his phone.
“I don’t know about this,” Dave whisper-shouts to Steve. “If this is illegal we could get in real trouble.”
“Are you kidding me?” Steve says. He tilts his head back, downing a glassful of dark red liquid. “I wish we could do this every night. Come on, lighten up.”
Determined to enjoy himself, Dave gulps his beer and follows Steve and Soddy closer to the action.
“Get him!” somebody in the crowd shouts.
“He ain’t chit!”
“Rip that chithead to pieces!”
They push their way through the frenzied mob of spectators up to the edge of a wide platform in the center of the room, where two humanoids are seated at opposite ends of an ornate wood table. Its wide surface is strewn with little hunks of flesh and broken bone and stained with dark splotches of dried blood. The competitor nearest Dave, a guy the shape and color of an eggplant dressed in leather bondage gear, looks unperturbed as his near-sighted teenage opponent hurls confusing insults.
The kid slips a small notepad from his pocket protector and glances at it. “Cool outfit. Do they make them for whatever gender you are?” He looks out at the confused, muttering audience, jots something down, and says, “The last time I saw your mother, she was younger.” The crowd grows quiet, and the kid dejectedly stuffs his notepad back into his pocket.
“Place your bets,” the announcer calls out over the speakers.
Dave notices the other onlookers pulling out their phones, and he follows their lead. When he connects to the Scrapper’s Delight network, a betting app maliciously installs itself. Its interface is childishly simple – headshots of the contenders next to shifting odds, and a ‘delight-fully fun’ payment system. Based on the kid’s uninspired joke-telling, Dave selects ‘Bling Hippo,’ the bondage freak, and bets a hundred crits.
When all the bets are in, two bulging, greasy beasts approach the table carrying what looks like a living machine connected to two pulsating, translucent sacks of flesh. Wires are plugged from the sacks into the competitors’ ears, and another jumble of wiring connects them to the central unit – a clumsy fusion of electronics and raw biological material.
The competitors close their eyes, and the crowd grows quiet. For a few long seconds nothing happens. Then, one of the sacks twitches. Before long, they’re wriggling and writhing against the table. They start to grow, swelling to many times their original size and, just as they look as if they’re going to burst, their insides are excreted out onto the table in gooey pink pools.
The competitors open their eyes, and the mounds of steaming matter in front of them slowly rise. Bling Hippo’s avatar is a miniature version of its leather-clad user, only muscular and agile. Across the table, the kid’s creature struggles to stand, its thin, malformed frame wobbling and slipping in the goop. The gaunt monster tentatively lurches forward, and its user begins displaying signs of fatigue. The pathetic creature tries to lift its leg again, but it stumbles and collapses onto the tabletop. In the same instant, its teenage user loses consciousness and slumps down into his chair.
The crowd is silent for a beat, and then it erupts. Insults are hurled and bottles are flung.
“Hey, I won!” Dave cheers.
One of the beasts that carried the machine drags the kid, dazed and muttering, out of his seat, and the announcer asks, “Who will be our next champion?”
“I got your champion right here,” Steve drunkenly shouts, shoving Dave toward the platform.
Before Dave can decline, one of the beasts lifts him out of the throng and sits him down in the empty chair. Bling Hippo frowns from across the table and juts his thumb in the air. His hulking avatar grabs what’s left of the kid’s frail monster, smashes it against the tabletop a few times, and tosses it into the crowd.
The kid’s wire is inserted into Dave’s ear, and he glances around the room uncertainly. “I’ll give it a shot, I guess.”
He closes his eyes and tries to imagine himself as a fierce warrior of unparalleled fighting ability, with the strength and agility of ten men. At first nothing happens, but then he feels it, just a slight something in the back of his mind. The feeling grows stronger, and he knows that outside of him a great champion, the best version of himself, is being born.
After a long moment, he opens his eyes, and his avatar is sloppily birthed onto the table in front of him. It squirms and cries, and he confidently gazes upon it as it struggles to be. But as he searches the muck for the powerful form conjured in his imagination, he quickly discovers the terrible truth – his great warrior isn’t inside the muck, it is the muck. The image he thought he had formed so thoroughly in his mind’s eye was just vivid enough to manifest the most basic of life forms.
The dark blob spits and sputters, and moans, “Dahhh…”
Bling Hippo snickers and grabs his hairy stomach as he bursts out laughing. “Are these truly the best warriors Scrapper’s Delight has to offer? Legendary battles have taken
place between these walls. Have I become so powerful that there is no one left who can challenge me?”
With an arrogant strut, Bling Hippo’s avatar stomps toward Dave’s puddle. The powerful monster lifts its foot, and its user cruelly smiles. At the sight of his most vulnerable self about to be crushed underneath a dirty leather boot, Dave cringes and his defenses kick in. At the last moment, his blob dodges the attack. Catching the enemy off guard, it springs up and latches onto the monster’s face. Bling Hippo’s avatar frantically claws at the goop, but its fingers slip through, and the blob disappears down the muscular masochist’s throat. The monster futilely searches the tabletop and then drops to its knees. With its hands on its stomach and a pained expression on its face, it wails like a tortured animal. A horrible crunching noise silences the creature’s cries, and its body suddenly bursts apart, spraying thick purple blood over the crowd.
His mouth agape, Bling Hippo releases a short, pained sob and crashes face-first onto the table.
Dave wobbles to his feet, his formless blob avatar squirming mindlessly amongst the gory remains. Gazing out over the cheering, bloodthirsty mob, he asks, “Who’s next?”
And the crowd goes wild.
Pants carefully cracks open the door of the cavernous room and tiptoes inside. “We’re in The Big Guy’s office, you guys,” she whispers as she approaches an ancient wood desk and turns her phone so her fans can see the scrap spread across its surface.
“Look at all this stuff.” She briefly admires a cracked triangular stone with half a dozen wavy lines carved across one end and then steps around to the back of the desk and pulls open one of its heavy drawers. “It’s filled with ‘Ol Guard!”
“Excuse me!” a shrill voice cuts through the room.
Pants jumps back, startled, and innocently smiles at the annoyed woman standing in the doorway.
The woman’s hair is pulled back tight, stretching her facial features into a permanent grimace. “What are you doing in here?”
“I was on the tour and I got lost,” Pants says.
“Yes, well, the tour doesn’t include this office,” the woman says, stomping into the room. “Who are you here with?”
“My friends,” Pants says. “I better go find them.”
“You’re going to have to come with me,” the woman tells her.
Addressing her fans, Pants dramatically cries, “Oh no, is this the end for princessfluffypants?”
The woman grabs Pants by the arm and drags her into the hall squirming and crying out for help. As they pass offices in the hall outside, people poke their heads out and look on with amused interest.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” the woman asks. “Where are your parents?”
Pants just stares up in mock fear, summoning a few tears the way she does whenever she gets caught doing something she’s not supposed to.
“Guh,” the woman groans, rolling her eyes. “I’m not a babysitter. You can stay with the other troublemakers until your parents can come and pick you up.”
They arrive at a bright waiting room, and the woman shoves Pants inside. “You deal with this,” she tells a guard stationed at the door; even her footsteps sound angry clacking against the tile as she stomps away down the hall.
The room is windowless, lit by harsh white light, and packed with long rows of plastic chairs occupied by a bunch of miserable-looking people who got caught breaking the rules.
“Pants!” a familiar voice shouts. “Hey, over here…” Beer waves at her from across the room. “They got you too?” he asks as she runs toward the team.
“The security is better than I anticipated,” Horton says, glancing suspiciously at the people seated around them.
The One is quiet for a change, hunched over with thick smears of frosting on his face.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
“Ughhh,” he groans. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Now that we found Pants, let’s get out of here,” Horton says. “Adam Jones is probably long gone by now anyway.”
“There’s a guard outside the door,” Pants warns them. “We’ll need a distraction.”
“We already got it covered,” Beer says.
“You might want to back up,” Horton tells her.
Beer nods at The One, winds his fist back, and stuffs it into his ailing little brother’s swollen belly. With a guttural heave, The One projectile vomits thick streams of what appears to be black coffee and sheet cake onto a row of unsuspecting adults seated in front of him.
“Ewww,” Pants moans.
The guard immediately runs into the room and, seeing the extent of the damage, slaps his forehead.
“Come on,” Beer says, shoving Pants toward the door.
Loud retching and horrified howls follow them as they slink out into the hall. The One, holding his stomach and moaning, lags in last place for a change. Chaos breaks out behind them as they tear through the lobby, startling visitors and staff. Before anyone can stop them, they’re out the front door and running down the pier.
“Well that was fun,” Pants says, bouncing in the midday gloom.
“It was a waste of time,” Horton says.
“No it wasn’t,” The One groans. “As long as we’re not in school, there’s no such thing as a waste of time.”
“Good point,” Beer says. “Pants, maybe your fans could help.”
“Good idea!” She looks into her phone and says, “Hey you guys, let us know if you see Adam Jones. He’s human, and he’s a boy, and he’s sort of dumb looking…”
“We know what his ship looks like,” Beer adds. “It’s a big metal junker with the words Asteroid Jones II painted on the side.”
“You here that, guys?” Pants says. “Help us out by keeping those peepers peeled for Adam Jones and the Asteroid Jones II.”
A middle-aged man dressed in a suit and tie stares as he passes on the boardwalk. “Hey,” he says, turning back suddenly. “Aren’t you…”
“We’re not skipping,” The One says, reflexively. “There’s no school today.”
“No, you’re Pants Team Pink!” The man peers at them with a look of disbelief.
“How do you know that?” Horton asks.
“I watch your show all the time,” the man says. “My daughter loves it. It’s her birthday. Would you mind doing a quick video? She’ll go nuts. Her name is Myra.”
“Sure!” Pants squeals and gathers the rest of the team around the businessman as he messes with his phone. “Happy Birthday, Myra, from Pants Team Pink!” She winks and holds out her fingers in a ‘V.’
“Happy Birthday,” the others reluctantly groan, Horton hiding his face from the camera.
“Thanks a lot!” the businessman says, smiling and waving as he continues down the boardwalk.
“Well, that was weird,” The One says.
“No it wasn’t,” Pants says. “My fans are everywhere.”
“Mehh,” Horton whines, pulling his shirt up over his head. “Soon everybody in the universe is going to know what I look like.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Pants says. “If you ask me, this whole privacy thing is starting to get a lit-tle paranoid.”
“That’s what they all say,” Horton argues, “until it’s too late.”
“What do we do now?” Beer asks. “We still got a little time before dinner.”
“We could check the pawn shop again,” The One suggests. “And on the way we can stop for a pseudo-soy kebab.”
Beer scrunches his face and says, “You gotta be kidding.”
The One throws his hands in the air and glares at his brother. “What?”
“You just puked everywhere,” Beer reminds him.
“Yeah, and now my stomach is empty,” The One counters.
“Remember guys, you can get the best pseudo-soy kebabs at Roy’s Soy Hut,” Pants announces. “No one knows soy like Roy!”
“How do we know Adam Jones didn’t already make a deal with The Big Guy?” Beer ask
s.
“We don’t,” Horton says. “If that’s the case, then we’ve already lost.”
“We can’t give up yet,” Pants says, as she pokes at her pink-hued hunk of glass. “Wait a second!” she cries as she receives a new message. “One of my fans says she saw the Asteroid Jones II in the municipal parking lot.”
“Hmph, of course,” Horton says. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
When they reach Blart Road, they turn and march up the broken sidewalk. They keep a lookout for the ship as they walk past block after block of plastic apartment buildings, but for a while the only animate things they encounter are a few land-junkers lazily rolling along the cracked asphalt.
“It must be rush hour,” Beer says.
They pass a woman pushing a stroller, and the little baby inside looks up at Pants and gurgles, “Pants.”
Pants whips her head around. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” The One asks.
“That baby knows me!” Pants cries.
“I’m tired, and hungry,” The One complains.
“We’re almost there,” Beer encourages him.
But The One’s pace slackens. Hunched over and dragging his feet, he says, “I bet the ship won’t even be there. We’re trusting a tip from one of Pants’s fans. It’s probably just some fish head trying to get attention.”
“There it is.” Horton points a little ways up the street toward the edge of town, where the buildings end and spaceships crowd the horizon.
The sight of the lot seems to renew their spirits, and they excitedly sprint toward it, laughing and kicking up big clouds of dust. The One narrowly beats the rest of them across the finish line, throwing his hands up in triumph.
“The One, the only,” he declares, panting.
Their excitement is short-lived, however, as they come to realize the immensity of their task. The dirt lot, crowded with endless rows of ships, extends all along the edge of town and back until it collides with the crumbling landscape beyond.
“I guess we should split up,” Beer says. “Shout if you find it.”
The boys take off running across the lot, disappearing between the aisles, and Pants is left all by herself. Staring down one of the dark passages, she clutches her phone with both hands and tries not to tremble. Before the fear can overwhelm her, she thinks of her fans, takes a deep breath, and steps into the aisle. The old beat-up ships tower over her, blotting out the dull sun and enveloping her in shadow.
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