Fourside opened up before the twins’ anxious eyes.

"Holy smokes…" Krause said.

Ricky sniffed and made a face that looked like he regretted it. "You mean holy smokes, exhaust, paint, oil, sewage, trash and roadkill. And hippies."

They weren’t in the best part of Fourside. The small apartments and businesses lining the road looked long overdue for repairs. Most of the cars drove like they wanted to go somewhere else as fast as possible. In addition to the shifty, desperate people lurking around on the sidewalks, an aging hippie lay on a nearby bench, strumming a guitar with his toes and humming something.

"This part of town’s really gone under since old man Montoli died," Brandon said, regarding the hippie on the bench. "If that guy was good for something, he kept the city clean and the people working."

"Do people actually live here?" Ricky asked Brandon as a siren blared a few blocks away.

"A couple million. And that’s just in the metropolitan area."

Krause scoffed. "No way! Even if there was that many people, they’d never be able to count ‘em all!"

Espeon led them along the sidewalk while Brandon explained about how government officials used computers to count people so they knew how little money they could get away with spending without destroying the city’s infrastructure and just how high they could hike the taxes without inspiring rioters. A couple minutes later, Espeon stopped in front of a small building at an intersection that the rat race seemed to ignore. With its weathered brick façade, dirty windows and a rusty skeleton where an awning once hung above the door, it looked as inviting as the sign in front of it.

"No unauthorized parking," Krause read aloud. "Violating vehicles will be blown apart by rocket-propelled grenades. Have a great day."

"Thanks, but how come you read it aloud?" Brandon asked.

Krause looked at Brandon as if he’d just been asked the stupidest question in the world. "Because."

"Sorry. Should’ve known…"

"You sure this is the place, Espeon?" Ricky asked, realizing that the large pothole on the street next to the sign might not be a pothole at all.

"Does this look like a place I’d forget?" Espeon said, and casually walked up to a door facing an alley. The others followed after some hesitation. Espeon knocked three times. After faint footsteps from the other side, a growly voice usually reserved for monster truck rallies and cheap beer commercials answered.

"Who is it?"

"Espeon. I came with some friends."

"Oh really? What did you have for lunch?"

"Pork n’ beans. What else?"

A panel in the door slid open, revealing not the monster truck rally commentator that Ricky and Krause expected, but a skinny, red-haired boy sporting a powerful nose and a blue stocking cap. To Brandon, he looked like a slightly disoriented frat boy who had decided to spend his summer break hiding out in a seedy old building.

"Espeon! You’re back, man!" he exclaimed in a much less husky voice. Espeon nodded and smiled back. The boy scanned the newcomers and finally opened the door, not forgetting to slide the panel shut before closing it. They were ushered into a plain, but clean, entry hall with a few doors and a stairway leading up to the next floor. The boy stopped short of the stairs and turned to everybody.

"My name’s Duster, if you can dig it," he said with a strange but appealing accent that sounded like west coast and southern rolled together. "I think we’ll be needing ya’lls names before we can go any further."

"I’m Krause Lee!" Krause said before Espeon could open his mouth. "This is my brother, Ricky and that guy’s Brandon."

Duster’s jaw slacked as he turned to Ricky. "For real?"

Ricky almost answered, but Duster wasn’t about to let him. "Judas Priest on a carousel! Did you really take out a starman single-handedly?"

"Yeah…I think that’s what it said it was," Ricky answered, scratching the back of his neck with an awkward grin.

"Awesome! Espey and Cecilia said you were dead!" Duster laughed. "But I knew you was probably still out there somewhere! You sure smell like you’re dead, though…"

"Did you say Cecilia?" Ricky asked before Duster could spit out another word. Duster bit his lip and rolled his eyes in thought for a second.

"Yeah. How come?"

"She’s the chick who saved our lives back at the caves!" said Krause.

"How come she said we’re dead?" Ricky added.

"Why don’t we go ask her?" Espeon suggested.

"Good idea," Brandon added as usefully as possible, not wanting to be left out of the conversation. They followed Duster up the creaky steps and into a modest apartment room. An orange sofa and refrigerator sat against one wall, behind an ancient footlocker that doubled as both a coffee table and computer desk. A poster portraying DCMC at a recent gig hung above the most tired TV Krause had ever seen. The scene would’ve been a bit depressing if it weren’t for the twins’ old beagle, Boney, rushing to meet them. Cecilia soon joined the welcoming party. She wore a pair of shorts and a tank top instead of her military attire, much to Ricky and Krause’s delight.

"I didn’t think I’d ever see you two again!" Cecilia said, smiling, her tone much gentler than the one she used in the mine. Ricky felt a twang of suspicion. A few days ago he was staring down the barrel of her .34, and now she greeted him like a little brother. She gave the twins quick but strong hugs before Duster introduced her to Brandon. Duster opened the fridge and produced a six-pack of ginger ale while Cecilia and Espeon cleared off the footlocker/table.

"I hope ya’ll like ginger ale. It’s the only thing they keep ‘round here," said Duster as he handed Ricky and Krause their drinks.

"What is this place, anyway?" Krause asked.

Duster explained with uncanny openness that he was a professional thief working for a crime ring, and he even gave Cecilia a look of mock offense when she added that he was only a self-proclaimed professional. It turned out that the international underworld had known about the pig threat for some time, and had even supplied some of their sophisticated equipment, although Duster said that even at the highest levels, not much was known about the groups’ relationship. His boss had assigned him to the mine when word was that the pigs were hunting for a whole cave made of gold rumored to be in the area. He was to collaborate with a few paid-off pigs to load a good amount into a few trucks and ship them to Fourside. It wasn’t long before Duster realized that the pigs worshipped a slobbering, maniacal, overdressed brute of a hog that planned on destroying everything good in the world.

"I’m a thief," he said. "But I do have a soul, even if it ain’t very big. If you can dig it, of course."
Ricky, Krause and Brandon confirmed that they dug it, and he continued. His plan was to wait until the gold was found, steal enough to carry and get the hell out of Dodge. He wasn’t about to do anything else for a crime ring that supported the end of the world.

"Before the pigs found me, I was going nowhere," Cecilia said. "I think I was happy to join the pigs at first. I was just a tough lil’ whiskey-drinkin’ girl on the streets without any hope or future. They look for people just like me."

"They got me, too," Brandon said. "It was a good thing Krause set me straight."

"Heck yeah!" Krause agreed.

"I got promoted pretty quick to overseer of the lower level of the big mining operation," she smiled. "I guess the Pig King, long live his name, didn’t want to trust the mine to some stinky little piggy."

Espeon slapped her leg. "I told you I didn’t want to hear you say anything about him living at all."

Cecilia grinned and slapped his leg back harder. "It was hard working with those pigs. Sometimes I wondered if destroying the humans who turned me out was the best way to solve my problems. Not every person I came across in my life was as evil as I was supposed to think, and you can’t avoid the fact that pigs just smell."

She turned to the twins with a sad grimace. "I don’t think I would’ve shot you even if that thing was loaded."

Ricky flushed and shifted his eyes. He still heard the anger in her voice as she pulled the trigger. But without her, another part of him thought, you’d have never made it this far.

"Anyway," Espeon said, "the base was in chaos at that point. The pigs were scattered and leaderless, and their king fell. Some pigs probably caught wind of her letting you two go, and they were about to kill her. You were lucky SD turned left instead of right, or we’d have never seen you."
"You really shouldn’t have."

"You called for help and we, total strangers and enemies, decided that you needed help. We went out of our way and killed some pigs for you despite my bad shoulder. Now you tell us we shouldn’t have? Where I’m from, that’s called ungratefulness."

"Cut it out."

"After we rescued her, she realized that it was probably a good idea to run away too. She knew that Duster had an armored truck and the garage was nearby. There was a fight on the stairs, and SD fell behind. The little man went down fighting, down to the last arrow. Sad I never got to know the guy, but traveling will never be the same without him."

Duster interrupted the respectful silence that followed. "So I was in the garage taking out a brigade of highly-trained pigs with only a tire iron. (Espeon: You were sneaking into your truck in the middle of an empty garage! Duster: Shuddap!) Just then, a guy with a whip, a blonde in uniform and a dog run up to me, you dig? First, I was thinking the cast of that new Indiana Jones movie got really lost on their way to their promotion tour. So they start begging me for a ride. I’ve gotta tell you, I’m easily willed by a girl in distress. (Cecilia: Girl in distress? I had to get you into a full headlock before you’d take any of us aboard! Duster: Hey, sweetheart, who’s telling the story here? Cecilia: Sweetheart? I can do worse than headlocks, you know! Brandon: Please! Both of you!) So I take them on board, you dig? The pigs are right behind us in those funny little bean cars! I tell Espeon here to take the wheel and I man the .50 in the back. (Cecilia: I give up.) It was one tough battle, let me tell you. Lots of times I thought we were gonna be goners for sure! Finally, it was just our truck and the best bean car driver ever. I mean it, too! No matter how good I aimed, he always maneuvered around just in time and shot some back. I knew we were driving near a canyon, and I was getting desperate. I took a hold of the wheel, put the pedal to the medal, hit a ramp and prayed to the man above. We flew a hundred yards and landed on the other side safely. The bean car didn’t dare follow us any further. I figured we had to go to Fourside, seeing as how it was the closest place I had a connection at, if you can dig it."

"Too bad we overheated on the highway," Espeon said.

"Don’t blame me! Those stupid pigs didn’t take care of the thing!"

"And now we’re here," Cecilia finished as she punched Duster, then Espeon in the ribs.

Brandon shook his fatherly head and drank the last of his ginger ale. "Now that we’re all together, what are we going to do?"

"We’re gonna fight the pigs," Krause answered.

The playful atmosphere that Duster conjured up hardened into a grim realization that the pigs and their allies were now waging a full-scale war against mankind and they were caught up in the middle of it, like it or not.

Duster, again, broke the silence. "Hey, ya’ll are great, but I think I played my part. I’m a thief, not a fighter, and I got my dreams too…if you can dig it."

"Duster, I can dig it," Ricky said. "I wanna be back home in Einesville with all my friends, but I’ve got a world to save. Those pigs have done awful things, but they’re just getting started. Krause here reminded me that the world’s just too much to lose. If we don’t fight these pigs, you can stuff your dreams in a mayonnaise jar and toss ‘em down a certain creek. Heck, even if we lose, we can tell the folks on the other side that we went down putting up one hell of a fight."

"That’s right," said Krause, then Espeon, then Brandon, then Cecilia, and finally a grumbling Duster. Something outside broke the rattle and hum of the Fourside afternoon. Ricky’s blood was stirred the strange way it was back at the door to Sulfur Spring, and he walked over to the balcony, half-conscious. The famous skyline rose in the north, windows and polished stone gleaming in the sun like bright shields, but Ricky was staring at the mountains across the river. They seemed more than foreboding or ominous. Almost terrifying. As a cold wind lifted Ricky’s matted hair, an awful, familiar voice called out to him.

"I see you, human whelp!"

Ricky uttered a strangled cry and some profane force flung him back into Espeon’s arms. He reeled for a moment, then his whole body convulsed as he saw the bloated brain gurgling in its glass dome.

"First you shall watch me kill your brother. I wonder how much I shall have to manipulate his nerves before he screams like a little girl and froths at the mouth? Then I shall rip out his beautiful blue eyes, the ones his mother gave him. I have nearly forgotten the pain threshold of a human whelp…how long do you think he will survive?"

"Shut up! You won’t!"

"You have given me a most splendid idea, whelp! When I am through with you, I shall take your skull, prop it up on a stick and make it say, ‘Shut up! You won’t!’ I know the Good Human will be most entertained!"

"Shut up," Ricky said through grinding teeth. "I’ve beaten you once, and I can do it again. If you get near my brother, I’ll…I’ll turn you into pudding."

The grotesque brain sloshed about in what could’ve been apprehension.

"Go away," he said. Ricky pulled himself up to his haunches with all of his might, only to be hurled back harder than before. Pain shot through his skull and his back, but he opened one eye in defiance. The brain in the machine still floated before him, but it no longer dominated his vision.

"Go away!" yelled Ricky. This time he seemed to have hit one of his opponent’s many nerves. The brain’s juices not only gurgled, but also fogged up the dome.

"Insolent, foolish, defiant beast of the Earth!" it shrieked. "You have crossed me far too many times! I shall torture you like no other before you!"

The air around Ricky howled into a hellish vortex that the equally hellish machine dove into, its horrible robot screams tearing Ricky’s ears. The thing finally vanished, and Boney’s tongue brought him back into the little apartment room. Krause’s worried and astonished face looked down at him.

"Bro…what just happened? You were saying a bunch of weird stuff."

Ricky looked up at his brother between his suddenly heavy eyelids. "That thing’s coming for us, Krause."