CHAPTER 2
LOCATION: WESTERN CITY, CANTON PINSODEO, PLANET DELGATERA.
The planet known as Delgatera was one that was both adored and dreaded as a sabbatical terminus. The entire planet consisted of two continents, with one being a massive desert that spanned almost the entire globe. Around the north, however, was a massive ring-shaped sea with a comparatively infinitesimal country in its centre. It was here that the majority of the planet's intelligent civilization resided, though many savage clans roamed the wastelands that covered the rest of the planet. There were three evenly divided cantons in the city state, with the most notable by far being Canton Pinsodeo. Named after the ancient warrior queen who had served as the entire region's first imperator, Canton Pinsodeo had since gone from a revolutionary kingdom into a modern-day cesspool of gaily grooving excuses for living garbage.
The state's pitiful populace, alongside nigh-countless denizens of tourists and vacationers from throughout the cosmos, constantly flocked to the Western City's infamous discothèque known as The Wave, which was in fact only one in an endless sea of franchised establishments owned by Icon Incorporated, a cosmically massive megacorporation responsible for creating and running establishments for virtually every consumer need, ranging from nightclubs to gymnasiums.
The Wave itself was a beautiful three-story building in the middle of the Western City, blending in nicely with a glistening skyscraper on either side. The middle formed an open pool area, surrounded by a ring of buildings that hung together, with each having a specific purpose. The front view was dominated by a majestic entrance with a luxuriously silky crimson carpet, alongside an equally rubicund band of cotton that snaked its way between two golden posts to block off the door. The sides of the building were covered in large flashing neon signs of its name that fancily swirled around the side.
One could hear the booming rave music threatening to blast apart the very concrete and steel of the building itself twenty-four hours a day. The Wave was famous for its wild parties and its slick but stout proprietor, a virile serpent known by his ridiculous alias of Sin-R, who had made the establishment what it was today, for better or for worse. A pair of burly bouncers tentatively awaited on either side of the entrance, granting admittance or omission to patrons while they also patiently stood on the lookout for trouble. Hundreds upon hundreds of partygoers had amassed for the 24-Hour Friday rave, and they were keeping all four of the doormen on their toes. One in particular, a muscular male of the planet's native horse-like species known as the Delgaterans, continuously glanced around the crowded queue in case of any twats trying to sneak in.
Unsurprisingly, something suspicious caught the horseman's eye. Just as the other doorman on his side was being kept busy with a group of flirtatious females of various races, some slimy male was trying to wriggle around him and sneak in. In just a simple bound and reach forwards, the Delgateran bouncer had easily grabbed the idiot by the back of his collar and hoisted him up into the air. Wriggling around frantically, the would-be patron looked behind him to see the greatly annoyed equestrian, making an audibly agonising series of whistling and whining through the trunk-like mouth that dangled off of his face.
The horseman stood at a menacingly tall height of about an inch or so over seven feet tall, his body rippling with muscly black skin as a sandy-blonde mane ran down from his head like straw and just barely grazed off of the tops of his shoulders. The most noticeable thing about him, however, were his entirely blood red eyeballs, which were a notably unsettling aspect of the Delgateran people originating from the desert wastelands, or the "Stallions of the Sand", as they referred to themselves. He was clad in a pale grey, loose-fitting and sleeveless single piece bodysuit with an armband snuggly slung around his left bicep, branded with the Wave's gaudy neon logo, alongside black high boots and a utility belt with a ring of pouches that circled around him like the rings of Saturn.
The boob continued to toot and whinge, a series of clicking noises joining in between them in his species form of oral communication. The equine, not taking his gaze off of the would-be infiltrator, reached for his belt and flicked open one of the various pouches and took out a small grey, homemade-looking box-shaped device that resembled a primitive tape recorder. Clicking in a small red button to switch the device on, Chez held it up near the buffoon's trunk-like mouth, recording his whistles, whines and clicks as he continued yakking. Once he had finished his mindless blathering, the bouncer clicked the red button to cease its recording before clicking a small blue button on the other end of the device. The mechanism began to softly whir as it analysed its recording, translating the recorded dialogue into the universal language; English.
"C'mon Chez, help a bro out here!" the translation of the boob's begging began. "I promise I won't cause a fuss if you just let me in for five m-"
"Sorry, but you're not getting in tonight, Chime." the horseman Chez spoke in his richly sonorous voice while clicking the device off prematurely, as he could easily tell where that was going. He had quickly recognized this particular scumbag. He was a slimy little humanoid named Chimergis, who had been trying to sneak into The Wave day-after-day for the past few fortnights. By this point both he and Chez were on a first name basis with one another, with Chez even giving Chimergis a shortened nickname, though that was just a habit of his with just about anyone he talked to.
The burly equestrian proceeded to wordlessly fling the unctuous slime to the side of the queue. After not so gently landing rear-first onto the pavement and taking a few minutes of overreacted agony to get up, Chimergis huffed before putting his hands in his pockets, hanging his head low and walking off into the streets that had been shrouded in the darkness of the fallen night. Chez slipped the translator back into his utility belt and returned to his post, arms crossed and leaning back against a pillar, as he knew that his looming height and musculature were threatening enough to deter almost any hopes of sneaking into the establishment.
As the night began to drag on and on, with Chez letting in any law-abiding or good-looking city dweller that approached from the queue, he eventually entered a state of mild disinterest as he began to reminisce of days gone by that was his life.
All his childhood, born and raised in the vicious wastelands of Delgatera, Chez was a tall, somewhat gawky and yet quirkily handsome fellow who possessed a marvellous thirst for knowledge, even to the point that he had managed to study the limited technology of his savage homeland and excel in the studies of engineering, despite the limited technology of his savage homeland. He was a paragon of intellect and held a very civil, polite demeanour.
This would, however, become a burden that he had to constantly bear throughout his life in the desert lands, as the hardened "Stallions of the Sand" whom he called family were kinfolk who valued brawn over brain. Chez was constantly abused in virtually every way his siblings could think of, as punishment for branching away of the path of his ancestors. Eventually, he managed to use his technical prowess to construct a one-man transport out of the fierce deserts and into the city state.
Finding constant failure in his attempts to find the right job to for someone of his smarts, and instead being met with only work suitable for musclebound meatheads, Chez came to an abuse-driven conclusion that only the strong were valued in any society. Worse still, his abuse had left him with a severe inferiority complex that, in some mad subconscious effort to please his long-forgotten brethren, has driven him to spend just as much time drilling his body into its physical prime as he has been expanding and refining his skills as a technological savant. Using his now godly musculature, and still finding little work for his great intellect, Chez settled for a job as a bouncer at the Wave.
The equine softly sighed as he continued to let the creditable and the alluring pass through. He soon enough saw a suspicious trio approaching the club, most notably the one in the centre; a reptilian humanoid of towering height, even surpassing his own, with scaly sapphire skin and entirely crimson eyeballs. Chez's eyes narrowed as he recognized the colossal reptilian; his name was Bata, and he was formerly a star athlete nicknamed the Cerulean Cyclone, who was renowned for supposedly being one of the fastest in the universe. He was suspected of using performance enhancers, however, and voluntarily dropped out of his sporting career before any charges were even pressed. He was now rumoured to have proceeded to become an illustrious figure in the drug trade of said performance enhancers.
Chez braced his boots against the ground and adjusted his stance, looking directly at Bata as the narcissistic reptilian shoved his way through the queue and came right up to him. The Cerulean Cyclone wordlessly flashed a devilish smirk as he casually slipped a sizeable credit chit to the equestrian, but Chez didn't even make a move for it as he retained a stance and expression that wordlessly spoke the words "You aren't welcome here". The city may have been a corrupt hellhole, but he strived to be a chaste and chivalrous fellow who took his job seriously, and that meant not leaving in a suspected drug dealer.
Bata's expression slowly changed to silent look of annoyance, and the two began to wordlessly stand across from each other in a crimson-to-crimson stare down. Bata kept his hand holding the credit chit extended, however, still offering the money to the Delgateran. Chez, however, still didn't even move for it, though his eyes flicked to it for the briefest moment before going back to the stare down with Bata, whose other hand slowly clenched, the bones loudly clicking as the reptilian let out the softest of hisses through clenched teeth.
Just before any fists were about to flying, though, the front door behind Chez suddenly flung open. The two men's gazes flicked back to see someone approaching them. Chez recognized the individual as a muscular humanoid proboscidean female whose entire body, trunk included, was festooned with too many scars, tattoos and piercings to tell which was which. She was named Scarbez. Walking up to Chez with a wordless smirk, she simply eyed him for a moment before and casually moving him aside, greeting Bata with a mutually joyful fist bump.
"Hey, Bata!" Scarbez greeted in her savage yet seductive voice, motioning her head back towards the innards of the building, and giving a disdainful wave of the hand at Chez. "You can go on ahead, don't mind that asshole."
Bata reacted with a return of his devilish smirk, looking over at Chez as he put away his credit chit and went on ahead with his other two associates, a pair of similarly muscular-yet-androgynous humanoids consisting of a pale-feathered avian and a dark-armoured arachnid, going in after him. Scarbez followed the trio, taking a moment to look back at Chez and mockingly wink at him before slamming the front door as loud as she could, sending a gust that caused his sandy locks to flow in tandem with the currents of air. Chez looked back at the now reforming queue of patrons, proceeding to silently provide admission or dismissal to whoever approached him for the remainder of his shift. This was yet another incident that made him doubtful of his acceptance of this lifestyle.
…MEANWHILE …
The three and a half hundred metre long Interplanetary Civilian Transport, otherwise known as an I.C.T., leisurely soared down from the starry heavens of nightfall. The spacecraft continued to sink down the last few miles or so towards the ground of the Canton Pinsodeo Spaceport. A sizeable ground crew awaited on standby for the craft to touch down. As the shuttle continued to descend, the undersides of the craft's corners opened up as its landing gear extended outwards, the flatfooted legs pointing down at the ground as the ship finally landed.
Once the vessel had touched down and lowered itself so that it's flat underbelly rested on the ground, a set out four hook-like anchors opened out from every side of each landing gear's 'ankle' and dug into the earthy ground to ensure that the parked ship stayed still. As the ground crew then proceeded to half-heartedly hurry along to unload the luggage and freight from the western side, a lengthy slope extended out from the vessel's eastern side as a large door opened up for the passengers to exit out from as they then proceeded to walk down the designated ramp.
Both tourists and returning residents alike were directed towards and into the spaceport building, entering into the Customs office. As per usual for the spaceport to a city so full of druggies and drunkards, what the visitors were greeted with was not receptions desk, but rather the sight of about a dozen Coalition officers outfitted in full body armour with holstered but immediately visible high-power firearms.
One officer stepped forward, clad in a suit of bulky, curvilinear armour with an intimidatingly designed gasmask-like helm, like the rest of the troopers. Unlike the rest of them, however, their gunmetal grey armour was wreathed in various gold-leaf markings, signifying their rank as the commanding officer of the squadron. Also dissimilar to the rest of their troop, who each carried hulking reptilian builds that indicated them as races like the Trandoshans or the Gorn, this one boasted a lean and lanky build most likely akin to the bird-like race known as the Turians.
"Welcome to Delgatera, I am Brigadier Proction." The lean trooper spoke in a distinctly female voice. "I'm just going to need you to form a single file queue towards…there."
The Turian policewoman motioned towards another hulking Gorn officer standing by the exit out of the Customs office and into the main hall for the holidaymakers to get their luggage and head out of the spaceport and into the city. Everyone did as she said and approached the officer by the exit, who had taken out a small scanning device that he immediately pointed to the first vacationer in the queue; a somewhat chubby-looking male humanoid feline with fiery-orange fur and electric-yellow stripes.
After slowly scanning the vacationer from head-to-toe, the device took a few moments to process its findings before displaying its results on a small screen extending from its left. The officer overlooked the results before looking to Brigadier Proction, giving a simple nod before speaking.
"He's clean." He bluntly relayed to the Turian, who nodded and motioned for the tubby tabby to go through the exit, which he did.
Another in the queue approached the officer, who scanned them and once again gave approval. And another. And another. As the process was repeated and repeated to everyone in the queue, one duo unfortunate enough to be stuck in the far back simultaneously let out a quiet groan of annoyance. The duo consisted of an orange-skinned and red-haired boy and his scarcely garbed, tanned, black-haired and six-foot tall mother. The woman had crossed her arms and irascibly tapped her bare foot on the ground in impatience, and meanwhile the boy was barely awake and was putting virtually all of his effort into keeping his drooped eyelids from closing and his slouched body from collapsing.
The scanning processes seemed to take longer each time it was repeated, despite the fact that every time the scanner gave an approving beep. The woman subtly bit her lip and nervously looked around at the officers surrounding the queue. Virtually all of them looked as if they'd rather just leave them through to the scum-ridden streets, or possibly that they would just rather gun them down to make sure that any possible threat would be terminated. The woman quickly deterred the worry and groaned in annoyance, however. It was kind've her own fault for taking the cheapest flight here, as law-enforcement had caught onto the fairly common activity of some unshackled bandits spending as little as possible with their loot.
After what felt like at least an hour, and was in fact a couple of hours, the last few passengers from the I.T.C. were being scanned and let into the city. The third-last member of the queue, a humanoid female feline with solid black skin and solid white eyes, approached the officer. The hulking male ran the scanner over their form and waited a few minutes. Upon hearing the expected ping of approval from the device, he nodded and she was rushed out of the room.
"Next." He bluntly barked to the next of the queue. Underneath his helm, he raised his brow towards the sight before him as both of the last visitors approached him at once.
He was approached by a six-foot-tall woman with black hair and eyes, tanned skin and a curvaceous-yet-muscular build, skimpily dressed in nothing but a ragged little black dress, who was carrying a small sleeping orange-skinned boy dressed in a purple bodysuit and a yellow hooded vest over her shoulder. The woman herself was looking rather deprived of sleep herself, as there were blackened bags underneath her bloodshot eyes.
"Uh, ma'am, were gonna have to ask you to put the kid down. We can only scan one at a time." He gruffly said to her, earning a slightly twitching glare from the woman as she gently put her son on the ground.
"Just do it already." She half-sleepily growled as the officer began the scanning process.
After a few minutes the device gave a positive ping, and the officer motioned for her to move onwards. The woman, however, raised one eyebrow and shook her head, glancing at her sleeping spawn curled up on the floor before looking back at him.
"You seriously expect me to leave my son here?" She said as she knelt down to gently adjust the boy's sleeping form until he was lying straight on his back. "You can just scan him like that, and then I'll leave with him."
The officer rolled his eyes and scanned him, once again getting an approving beep from his scanner.
"Alright then. Move along."
The woman silently cursed the officer and picked up her sleeping child, hoisting him over her shoulder and walking out into the city.
/Hello dear reader and thank you for reading this second chapter! This chapter is just to serve the purpose of introducing some more characters and expanding upon the world a little more. Also, I thought to include Bata as a little nod to anyone who may be reading this story solely on the merit of the Dragon Ball franchise.
Anyways, if you want to give your thoughts or ask any questions, then be sure to do so in the Com- I mean…in the Review Section below!
