Northern Sunport rested in a sinkhole created by the tunneling of a native Borish animal known as an Ewek. They are massive, wormlike creatures that tunnel through the dirt, eating smaller animals underneath and creating vast cave systems that glow brilliantly with the natural minerals of the planet. Northern Sunport was constructed here because of the vast mines underneath the sinkhole, them being ripe in minerals that could be sold for vast amounts. Trees were planted at the basin of the hole where they grew hundreds of feet tall, with thick branches and girthy trunks that were perfect for housing establishments, but were also perfect for keeping the Eweks away, as they could not easily tunnel their way through the roots.

The group trek along the crowded wooden pathways that connect the trees with one another high up into the air, each wearing a special facial covering their features from the passerby around them. Vendors call out from the windows, selling goods made of gold, silver and copper, along with various exotic foods from Bor and other nearby planets like Ewek jerky, colorful fruits and other excellent snacks. Ludo walks up to a stand and asks for a stick of jerky, which he receives and munches down on, covering his mouth in a gamey smell and salt.

Cairo looks back at him and plugs his nose. “Where’d you get the money for that?”

“Kineki gives me food for free.”

“You revealed your identity?”

“She knows the type of business I dabbled in, don’t think it matters.”

The crowded wooden streets begin to thin as they approach more frugal housing districts higher and higher up the trees. The air began to thin, but large rumbling devices lining the wooden trunks expelled oxygen into the atmosphere around them, satiating their burning lungs.

“To think she managed to move all the way up here…” 

They stop at an identical apartment to all the others. Gold leafed numbers shone in the fresh sunlight that peeked through the trees, glistening well against the wood carved door with its tiny circular window. Dante steps up to it, knocking thrice in a happy pattern that pleasantly runs through the rest of the trees. The door slowly creaked open, a moderately tall Borman stood peeking behind it, the bags under her eyes larger than the eyes themselves. Her spokes climbed down her head tightly wound by titanium bands that made them appear like stocky braids. Her slab was much fairer than Ludo’s, a clean smoothness that felt like glass and was as sparkly as diamond.

“Yes?” She yawned. Peering at their clothed faces she began to tremble. “Y-you’re not Esmalt’s men, are you? I swear I have the money it’s just…”

Dante lifts his mask and reveals his pearly white teeth. “Howdy, Meilin!”

All the tension that built on her shoulders lifted- it even looked as if her eye bags had disappeared. Sweeping forward she rushed into Dante’s arms where she lifted him into the air slightly before embracing him in a hard hug, locking her lips with his own for what seemed like minutes.

“What’re you doing here?” She asked jubilantly. “I thought you were already done on Bor.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, about that… We need a place to crash until our parts come in.”

All of them, say for Ludo, drop their disguises and split their lips into grins and smiles, or in Jenga’s case a slight nod. Meilin nods vigorously and opens the door, leading everyone inside. Her apartment was not very lavish, as one could expect being inside a tree over 80 feet in the air. The studio apartment she called home was vaguely messy, not really with garbage but with the feeling that there was garbage strewn about at one point and that it all disappeared somehow. 

“Would any of you like a drink?” She asks as they all take places on couches and the floor. “I don’t have much, but I do have some cola.”

“Pop?” Pop asks. “Yes please!” Meilin rubs her head, frizzing her hair more than it was before. She returned from the open kitchen carrying a large crate full of plastic pouches with caps and straws. Rather than having them organized, they were haphazardly loose, stacked up like loose sheets of paper in a recycling bin.

They all begin sipping on the sodas as she curls up next to Dante, each of them cuddling each other closely. 

“So who's the new guys?” She asks him, point at Ludo and Rezuk. Ludo still had his disguise on and hands in pocket, fiddling with the pendant.

“My name’s Rezuk.” He slurps the rest of his drink and gets up to look for a trash can.

“Sweet, nice to meet you. And you?”

Ludo looks over to her, silently muttering to himself while looking back and forth to Dante. 

“That’s Ludo,” Dante answers, “I think he’s just shy right now.”

Meilin raises her brow at him, shaking her head. “What?”

“Mhm! Remember I told you I needed a mechanic? Well, Ludo was the perfect fit!”

She looks between him and Ludo, brow growing crosser and crosser. Ludo’s tongue falls down his throat and he begins to stand up, but not before Jenga snickers to themself and yanks off his hood, revealing his mug to her. They stare at each other for a second before he flips the hood back on his head and rushes out the front door. Once outside he slumps down next to the trunk, huddling his knees close to his chest and wrapping his fists in the pendants chain. 

From the outside he could clearly hear Meilin’s voice raise itself, vibrating the windows and sending shivers down his spine.

“I told you I never wanted to see him again!”

“I must’ve misheard you-” He hears Dante try to defend. 

“No, you very much did not!”

“Didn’t you recommend him, mademoiselle?”

“No, I very much did NOT.”

Even through the walls Ludo could feel the heat of all the stares penetrating Dante’s body like magnifying glasses reflecting the sun onto unsuspecting ants on the sidewalk.

“Alright alright, look. In my defense I really did think she got over it.”

A loud slap vibrates through, the sniffling of noses mixed with silent sobs that were not that silent brought Ludo’s eyes to water. No streams, but simple pools in the holes of his eyes. The air went silent as storming footsteps diminished and doors slammed. No air was moving between lungs, only from the oxygen devices that clung like lizards to the trees. Dante slowly left the house, face red and lip slightly swollen. He pulls up and slumps down next to Ludo.

“Sorry about that,” he apologizes, “In earnest, I thought she had gotten over it.”

Ludo ignores him subconsciously as he rubs the pendant in his hands. Dante looked up to him; he could see the water in his eye sockets.

“What exactly happened?”

Ludo slowly looks over to him, the sloshing water slipping out of his face. “You said she told you everything.”

He nods. “I think she did, but I want to hear it from you. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. In fact, I’d understand if you don’t want to stay with us anymore.”

Ludo shakes his head. “No, I’ll tell you. If she already told you what she knows, then my side will help fill in some blanks hopefully.

“We were dating for years, since we were sophomores in high school. I felt like it was love at first sight when I saw her- met her at a Macks actually.” He laughs somberly. “In the beginning we did everything with each other, studying, eating, we even ended up having the same day job in the same place, even though that was probably a coincidence.

“But problems arose after we left high school. Meilin probably knows very little about it, but I was a member of the Emerald Tribe all through high school, all the way up to a few years ago.”

“Emerald Tribe?” he asks.

“Don’t think any little of me, but it’s a gang run by Eckart and Esmalt, two escaped criminals from Diana-5- the planet next door. They built an empire based around selling illegal substances- and… in some cases people. I joined this group when I was real young: I grew up poor and because I was an orphan I never really had any friends, most kids saw me as defective because of that.”

He tilts his head. “Why would they do that? It doesn’t seem very reasonable for people to discriminate based on not having any parents.”

Ludo wipes his face. “Well, Borish culture is based around family. The family unit is seen as sacred here- everyone has a family. If you don’t have a family, usually it’s because you’re different in a negative way- at least as far as society is concerned.”

Dante ruffles his brow. “Now that just ain’t right!”

He nods. “But at the time, I felt that I needed some sort of family- any type of family. My mom died when I was 3 to Blackening and my dad committed suicide a year later by throwing himself into a trash compactor.”

Dante’s eyes widen. “I-I’m sorry for your loss…”

“Don’t be. My dad was a real piece of shit, or so I’ve heard from my aunts and uncles. That’s the reason they didn’t take me in, they thought I was going to end up like him. I was basically alone on the streets for the next 6 years of my life, until I met a guy named Kae- a twenty something Kelk. He was the first person I’d ever met that treated me with dignity. Looking outside of it you might say that a 20 something adult taking away a 10 year old kid is a red flag, but you can’t understand the feelings we could share with just a glance. In his eyes I could see the hunger and sadness I had been experiencing ramped up, as if he was holding onto my sadness for me. He was the first person who ever really understood me. 

“And because of that, I followed him. Followed him to the Emerald Tribe’s hideout where I met Eckart and Esmalt. I can still picture their exact forms in my mind, they were like amber angels with their spokes covering their whole bodies and extruding an air of extreme menacing, but I still stayed there. Despite their looks they treated me with kindness, giving me food, sending me to school and giving me a place to stay where all my other relatives didn’t, so when I turned 14 and they handed me a green handkerchief and a small handgun I didn’t say no- I couldn’t say no, not to them.

“It was at this time I met Meilin. I wasn’t wearing the gear in that Macks, and I meet her gaze as we waited in line. I was- and arguably still am- pretty socially inept so the first thing I said to her was “I like your smell”.” Ludo stifles his tears and laughs deeply to himself. “I like your smell- how ‘bout that?” He covers his mouth and lets out a grand giggle. Dante follows suit.

“That’s funny,” Dante admits, “Though I can’t exactly relate.”

Ludo sighs and smiles. “Yeah I didn’t take you as the type to be a wallflower.

“Anyway she- for some reason- found it funny instead of creepy and we began hanging out, and not long after finding out we went to the same school, began dating. I never told her I was a gang member. In the beginning it was just because I didn’t find it worth sharing, but as we aged that feeling turned to a need to keep it secret. How could I have shared the fact I sold drugs and carried a gun on me in my free time?”

Dante interjects, “But it seems like everything was going fine, what changed?”

Ludo sighs. “It was the fact I never really told her. I’m sure she picked up that I was doing something when we weren’t together, but I’m not sure. It all changed when I turned 18; Esmalt began to treat me like a… pimp of sorts. She wanted me to start dealings with other women in the gang. By this time I had gathered a moral compass from Meilin and all my other friends- especially Kae, who had left the gang at this time and found a steady job working at a mechanics office where he taught me how to harness my mechanical abilities- I started denying her requests. 

“She didn’t take it well, Esmalt that is. She and Eckart began to give me more and more jobs, and since I still viewed them as my family I agreed to most of them, slowly losing the bond I had with Meilin. She confronted me about this, and I promised to spend more time with her. As a way to promise, she gave me this pendant-” Ludo holds up the beetle pendant to Dante, who slowly rubbed it and admired its craftsmanship. “And I gave her one as well- one shaped after a Daucus Beetle, a symbol of eternal love around here. 

“One day though, Esmalt went off the deep end. I think she already knew I was seeing someone, but she didn’t know who, so she sent one of my mates Tujo to investigate. He was her right hand man for the most part, the mafioso to her godmother. Now that she knew who I was seeing, she used that leverage on me to do bigger things, threatening to harm Meilin if I didn’t do what she said. I stole from cars, assisted in killing members from other gangs, created drugs. In all that time, I basically stopped seeing her. 

“Then one day, they almost killed me. Esmalt sent Tujo and another of her lackeys to kidnap me and send me to the trash compactors down in the south. I managed to escape, but I had nowhere else to go, so I tried staying with Meilin. When I showed up the door was locked, and looking into the window I could see she was crying. I tried knocking but she wouldn’t stop, she just kept sobbing on her couch. 

“I was left completely alone, so I went to the only person I knew could help- Kae. Since he wasn’t affiliated with the gang anymore he wouldn’t turn me in, but after a day living with him he got a letter, a letter from Meilin. Jist of the letter was that she was done. She had been too stressed, too anxiety ridden, and I wasn’t supporting her emotionally and physically. She broke up with me.”

Dante looks down at his feet. He tucks his legs into his chest and rubs his head. Ludo looks away from him and stares off into the forest. The sun had begun to set, the ominous red sky cooling to a purple as it exited over the horizon. 

“Das a nice story mon,” a voice calls out from the darkness of the branches. 

Ludo shoots up to his feet, frantically looking around the leaves and eyes becoming bloodshot, open as wide as they can go.

“But ya let out some odda details.” A bright red light flashes from the trees, illuminating them with the fire of the devil. Arrows of the light rained down from that glow, nearly glancing by Ludo’s head and piercing itself into the trees and walkways. Ludo looks up at the figure with the widest eyes.

“T-Tujo…”

Dante looks between Ludo and the figure. His eyes squint as he rolls up his sleeve, slapping his metal forearm which pops out a pump which he pulls with a sharp click. 

“How did you know I was here?” Ludo frets.

Tujo laughs, “Mon, didya re-lay tink Kineki wouldn’t report ya?”