Ester waded through the mounds of newly made garbage, the Dumpers having finished their last bits of dumping as the engines roared with golden fire in an attempt to escape the planet's pull with their bulky bodies.
Staring enviously at the extravagant things that had enough fuel in them to exchange for enough food for a year, Ester shook his head and focused on the task at hand.
Making his way to the vehicle drop site where people of unknown origin were no doubt deposited without any respiratory machines.
It was a harsh way to go, but there were a lot worser ways to go on this Architect forsaken planet.
Like being dropped in the middle of a lake so acidic that creatures that could breath fire
He was rather scared after bearing witness to a leviathan that managed to knock out of the Dumpers from out of the sky.
Those Dumpers also made sure to not go near the ground after that event, or near large bodies of water for that matter
Glancing up at the slowly closing up sky bearing the many marks of the Architects workings dancing among the stars, the last Dumper roughly the same size as a Grunger farted out what looked like their sewage.
'And here I thought they could at least dump it with the rest of the trash.'
Pausing to watch this rare sight of brown liquid fall straight downwards with the intent of coating whatever poor thing was caught underneath it, Ester soon realized that poor sap was him.
'Oh shit.'
Belatedly realizing how ironic his words were as he was running away from the sewage water falling down at Mach Fuck you, he really didn't want to test how well his body of flesh and metal could stand against a liquid composed of excrement and other unmentionables.
Sanitation aside, a thousand pounds of liquid falling down at that speed would for sure turn whatever poor sap unlucky enough to find themselves on the wrong end of it.
It was just that Ester never thought he would be on the wrong end of a trash rain.
'And here I thought I wouldn't be using any crystals!' Hurriedly ripping the board from where it hung on his bag, with a click, the bottoms of the board lit up with clean blue light as it was thrown onto the ground.
But instead of slamming onto the ground like gravity and physics desired, the hover board spat on the rules of physics as miniature gravitational pulses exited the bottom of the hoverboard
But the inner workings of the hoverboard aside, Ester hurriedly leapt onto the flat surface, bending forwards slightly and directing the hoverboard away from the hell swiftly closing in on him
He so wanted to punch his past self in the face... Maybe the gut since good respirator masks were hard to find. 'You really couldn't just wait until the last of the Dumpers were gone!?'
Ester heard his Respirator kick up the pace as his heightened heart rate burned through the stale air kept in reserve for situations like this, the numerous pumps hurriedly removing the number of carcinogens, metals and poisons from the fast moving air.
'I definitely need to get a new filter later. Possibly a new Respirator.'
Already dreading the conversation he would getting once he returned, Ren heard the sound of something slamming down on the ground behind him at what sounded like an angry roar.
'Sorry shit stain from space but you're not getting me today.'
Risking a glance backwards as he sped forwards with tear jerking speed, Ester slowed himself to a stop at the sight of a large plume of flame rising upwards.
'...It definitely got something.'
Recalling the large roar from earlier, it came to Ester now that the roar was probably from something intact exploding under the falling shit.
'Damn it... that explosions at least a couple Aether Crystals down the drain.'
Staring regretfully at where the explosion came from, Ester shook his head and slapped his neck.
'Nope, focus on the task at hand and forget about the fact that you just lost a couple Aether crystals that can power our base a couple more- Shut it you traitor.'
Slapping his neck again to snap himself out of the hole he kept on digging, Ester turned the hoverboard round and slowly looked at the Dumping zone.
Now that it was out, it would be a very... efficient waste of time to turn it off and put it back on his bag.
Might as well use it for all its worth.
'And what do you know?' Ester raised an eyebrow underneath his goggles. 'Free Therapy.'
Redirecting the board, he slowly floated to the bottom of a crater, making sure that he could speed away at the first sign of danger.
After all, who knew if the ground underneath him would cave out underneath him? There was a chance of something exploding and there was a chance of an Architect deigning to send their attention to this contaminated Aether space
The last one had a very unlikely chance of happening with it being more likely for the Void to appear nearby, but it paid well to be paranoid.
You couldn't exactly be paid if you were dead.
Floating near the bottom of the crater, Ester appraised the egg shaped dropship.
If the little carving on the side of the ship wasn't an indicator enough, this was one of those Made in Hina products, mass produced items with no regard to quality and only regards to quantity.
Meaning, Ester had absolutely no clue who was inside it.
Mass produced items don't exactly have identifying features to mark the status of the person trapped inside after all.
'So are you trash of society? Or trash of society?'
Although they both sounded the same, the trash of society involved criminals that broke some governmental law, while the trash of society broke someone's personal law.
In other words, the trash of society dubbed the Exiled, were usually people unlucky enough to get on the bad side of a Star Noble.
And considering the stories of some of the Exiled, the Star Nobles sent people here for crimes as little as failing to polish their shoes properly.
'And now that I think about it, this is probably the trash of society in that drop pod.'
Despite one side being criminals and the other side being folk who just rubbed feathers the wrong way, the Exiled Criminals were at least escorted by a bunch of guard drones to prevent escape.
Civilian Exiled didn't get that sort of treatment.
And seeing as he wasn't being shot right where he stood, it was a Civilian Exiled.
Ester pursed his lips underneath his mask as he directed the hover board forwards, the slight hum of the machine running in tune to the sound of his respirators struggling to refill the oxygen tank attached to his Frame.
Architects know that he needed to breathe in this voidscape.
Spotting a small bright thing from the corner of his eye as he approached the Dropship, Ester bent down and swiftly snagged it out of the ground, the item covered in small bits of plastic, dirt and dust.
Dusting it off of all the junk, Ester saw that it was the Soda cans brightly lit label that caught his attention.
And as he looked at the faded out label, he noted that it was from a new group that he had never seen before. She would like this.
Making a motion to shove the can into his back pocket with his right hand whilst making a mental note to give it to Eva later, Ester tilted his head in confusion when his hand suddenly crushed the can in the palm of his hands.
Then it began to spin.
'Ah.'
Ester pursed his lips as he stared at his spazzing out right hand, the modded limb shifting all its gears maniacally as the limb slowly slipped from his control, one link at a time.
"I swear I just fixed you yesterday..." He muttered underneath his breath as he stopped the Hoverboard and let it idle, his other. fleshy and non modded, hand rifled through his bag, his memories vaguely directing him the direction that he wanted right before he grabbed something that tactilely resembled what he wanted.
Erstwhile, his right hand hissed with the sound of pneumatics as it span around like a demented gear blade, the chaos in the limb only growing worse by the second as the light within flickered ominously.
It wasn't as if he didn't have any Runic Cipher overrides tucked into the corner of his mind for cases like this, but the first few seconds of watching the limb slowly slip from his control one link at a time were spent failing at exactly that.
"I dunno if I should be glad that this happened enough times for me to start prepping for this sort of thing."
Bringing out a screwdriver with a bent end, Ester felt his body on the hoverboard tilt slightly as his metal arm continued to defy his orders.
Hurriedly balancing himself before he could fall down and possibly crack his respirator, Ester grunted and pressed the edge of the screwdriver underneath a plate located just underneath his shoulder.
Pulling it out revealed a glowing glass tube containing a glowing blue crystal containing brightly glowing Aether.
Flipping the screwdriver round so that the sharp end wasn't pointed at the hard glass case, he nudged the battery and instantly felt the difference.
Namely, he wasn't going to be falling from a crazed arm anytime soon.
Letting out a sigh of relief as his metallic arm let out a quiet hiss as it slowly rested against his body, Ester looked at the drop pod.
Then a door opened.
Hurriedly stumbling shifting his weight so that the Hoverboard darted backwards, Ester raised his hands- hand up in defence only to pause at what he saw inside.
A woman and a man, both in a state that they hadn't noticed that Ester was staring at them.
In fact, they were in a state where they were unable to notice anything actually.
To put it bluntly.
They were dead.
'...I guess that they found a way to kill themselves.'
He stared at the Aether crystal in both of their hands, the light blue glow which should've denoted the existence of the astral energy within already depleted.
It was now nothing more than a very fragile crystalline structure with the only benefit being its Aether Conductivity.
Staring at the dead couple smiling peacefully, Ester caught sight of the plaque behind them.
'You are exiled because of refusing to bow to the... Prime Minister of Maginum's painting? The Void?'
Raising an eyebrow at the harsh punishment for something that didn't fit the crime, Ester glanced at the two corpses sitting in the middle of the rather cramped pod and bowed to them.
'Sorry about this you two, but a guy's got to survive. Something that you two don't seem keen on doing anytime soon.'
They didn't stop him when he opened up the Drop Pod, taking everything of value from within and placing it into the bag connected to his Collector.
They didn't stop the following Hunter Scavenger's from rendering their fleshy bodies into nothing more than bone.
They didn't stop the Flash Flood which stripped whatever remained around their bodies as they slammed against the walls of the drop pod.
They didn't stop anything that happened to them for the many years after as they lay buried underneath the new pile of trash arriving from Space.
They didn't stop smiling as their skulls laid next to each other underneath the immense amount of dirt.
+++
Tree that desires powerstones despite having no clue what they are
Please refrain from chopping off my head