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.
'Damn it Ester. You just just had to get greedy for that Drone module didn't you!?' Pumping his limbs as fast as his non spliced body could go.
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 he 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 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.'
Glancing backwards as his limbs kept on pumping with purpose, 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 around and found himself at the place where the ship had floated down.
'Well what do you know?' Ester raised an eyebrow underneath his goggles. 'Free Therapy.'
He had thought that he would need to spend all day to find the round space vehicle.
Weird that it was already covered in trash without a single mote of damage from reaching Terminal Velocity, but it did seem very on brand for whoever exiled these people to toss the escape pod with the rest of the garbage being shipped here.
'Annndd my mood's ruined.'
Thinking about how poorly the exiles were treated, it seems as if these folk were just an unlucky bunch that woke some higher up on the wrong side of bed.
As horrible as it sounded, literal criminals with a kill count in the hundreds of thousands received a better treatment when exiled here.
'At least those guys aren't quite literally tossed into the garbage.'
Ester caught an empty soda can tumbling down to him to the tune of his Respirator still working overtime to refill the oxygen tank attached to his back.
Architects know that he needed that to breathe in this voidscape.
Looking at the faded out label, he noted that it was from a new group that he had never seen before. She would like this.
Tossing it into the collector behind him with an almost disinterested glance as he stared up at the real treasure of all this, it would've been almost perfect if his hand didn't suddenly start to glitch.
'What the Void?'
Staring at his hand which had suddenly decided to spin around like a ballet dancer zooted up to their shoulders in whatever drug was making the rounds in the Marketplace, Ester stared it dance around for a few moments before mentally commanding it to stop.
It didn't.
"Hmm..."
Ester's left hand hissed with the sound of pneumatics as it continued to spin around like a demented gear.
He sent another mental command to stop through the three Rune backup shut down procedures
They all didn't work
"This is a big problem."
Especially now that it was his entire arm flailing around and not just the hand.
Dodging a wild swing taken at his own head from his own arm, Ester grumbled underneath his breath as his reflexes honed under the fact that many things would kill you if you helped him dodge another blow to the ribcage.
He had to physically restrain it when it got anywhere remotely near to the Respirator.
It turns out he could get a whole lot stronger when his life was on the line, who knew?
"I swear I just fixed you yesterday! Why the Void are you trying to kill me!?"
Grunting with exertion as the metal arm continued to fight against his grip in an attempt to slay the person who modded it onto himself in the first, Ester stumbled backwards as the hand slammed itself against his skull.
"Oww!?"
Stumbling down onto the ground, where the drop pod lay still, Ester slammed his head against the drop pod with a pained grunt as he forcefully ripped out the wire powering the whole thing.
It pained him to do that since wires as a whole were rather difficult to find when everything was smashed up from the fall, but if he had to decide if his survival or his arms survival was better, Ester would rather bet on the former.
'Ouch.'
Rubbing his head with his un modded hand, Ester glanced back at the drop pod which he had slammed his head on, noting thankfully that it had no sharp edges.
Then a door opened.
Hurriedly stumbling up to his feet, 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'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