Dick couldn’t take it anymore and yelled so loud the tuba player actually missed a beat.
“…What. The hell. Is. This. Audio barbarism.”
The author flinched at every drum hit, jerked toward Dick’s mic, and almost squeaked, trying to shout over the chaos.
“It’s… a local legend.
These guys—they’re from another planet. Neu-Bayern.
German colony. Paradise, basically—
nature, clean air, order… perfect German resort.”
He coughed on dust, tugged his hat down like it might muffle the sound.
“They got here just a SST year ago—humans and aliens from there.
Thought they’d found another paradise. Took one look—froze in horror.
When they snapped out of it, that’s when they decided to fix things.”
He leaned in, voice tightening against the noise.
“And on the very first day…
they just ran out into the streets and started SCREAMING at everyone:
‘Hey, you mistkerle… you turned this planet into a müllhalde!
We gotta save it—now!'”
Dick blinked. Then again. Then a third time, just to be sure.
“They… picked a fight with the locals of trash planet… over ecology?”
The author nodded—fast, twitchy, like someone who’d spent way too long near this stage.
“What else were they supposed to do?!
At first they just walked the streets,
singing their insane stuff, harassing every passerby.
Then someone filmed them…
threw it on CosmoNet™…
then it became a meme…
then a hit…
then a festival…”
He spread his arms wide and proudly gestured at the surrounding garbage madness.
“And now, as you can see…
THEY’RE THE FACE OF THE PLANET.”
At that exact moment, the crowd roared so loud it sounded like a black hole tried to fart.
Dick slowly covered his face with his hand—long, painful, existential.
“I… fucking thought… nothing could be worse than the street subculture bullshit of New Tokyo.
But apparently…
I was wrong.”
By now, the drone had found an angle that framed all three—Author, Dick, and Jackie.
It hovered at the perfect height, stabilizing the shot like it had finally remembered it was a press drone, not a flying trash sphere.
The author snorted, raised a finger like he was about to deliver a scientific lecture, and said:
“This isn’t just their anthem, Dick…
It’s an ecological weapon. And it WORKS!”
He pointed at Blindy, who in the crowd was happily snorting and bouncing, flailing his arms like a drunk wasp.
“Just look what it does to these fools!
Ecology’s up twenty percent!
One guy actually stopped… urinating in a fountain!
People started sorting their trash!
Can you imagine?!”
The author waved toward the streets with the pride of a deranged professor.
“They don’t even leave corpses lying around anymore!
They take them to the morgue!
THE MORGUE, DICK!
On this planet!
You understand the scale of this cultural revolution?!”
Jackie kept dancing with the locals—creatures Dick had already mentally labeled “cosmic nightmare fuel with suspicious enthusiasm.”
But she didn’t care. She grabbed their hands, spun, twisted, jumped—like she’d grown up among them and had only now come back home. The crowd pulled her into their circle like a long-lost child of chaos.
Dick scratched his stubble, staring at the madness, and snapped:
“Bandit girl! You even remember why we’re here?
Maybe help with the stream?!”
The drone swung its lens toward Jackie—
zoomed in, tagging her as “Lost in Crowd” like it was a fresh emergency alert.
While Jackie dissolved into the chaos,
Airi and Shiori stood off to the side—calm, steady,
like two armed angels watching everything with eyes that never blink.
The drone cut to them:
- tight shot on Shiori;
- then a smooth pan to glowing, radiant Airi;
- then a wide frame with both of them standing like statues in the middle of the storm.
The author glanced at Jackie, then at Dick,
and sighed like he was explaining the obvious to the second idiot of the day.
“Relax, Dick. She’s Ma Dong-Rho’s stepdaughter.
Grew up around killers, raiders, organ harvesters, smugglers—you forgot?
For her, this is basically family night.”
The drone tilted slightly,
like it wanted to underline the phrase “family night on Mold’pony”
as something any sane person should run from.
The author leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“You should be worried about us.”
He nodded to the side.
A six-foot-tall Karglaxi stood there—no neck, arms dragging close to the ground, legs growing straight out of its waist like someone assembled it wrong. Four eyes blinked at once, all fixed on Dick.
Not with hatred—worse.
With culinary interest.
The drone snapped toward it, dragged the mutant into a massive close-up and the stream got a creature looking at Dick exactly the way people look at a steak in a display case.
Dick quickly turned back to the mic.
“Dear gremlins… If the signal cuts—call space police.
There are some weird types here looking at me like I’m a female in mating season.”
He spun around and screamed, trying to overpower the quacking, sirens, whistles, and fart-sounds blasting from the DIE WÜÜD stage:
“BABY! WE FUCKING NEED TO GET OUTTA HERE—NOW!”
The author shook his head—tired, but very much in agreement.
“And the sooner… the better.”