บท 3: Frustration
As the rays of light graced Ambitan's vision his emotions reached a wild crescendo as the second wind kicked in upon seeing the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
Wildly he clawed forward, and despite the bloody streaks that stretched across his palms, it mattered little to him with his single-minded focus and, funnily enough, tunnel vision.
Grabbing the last garbage bag that blocked his path he pushed forward with a mighty heave. However, under his diminutive size and inadequate strength, the bag hardly budged. So he backed himself a bit, creating some distance between himself and the bag before doing a sort of fast crawl over. After rushing forward, he propelled himself forward to send himself crashing into the bag to try to dislodge it from where it had been placed.
As Ambitan continued his fierce struggle against what seemed to be this insurmountable barrier, the strength continuously seeped out of him. His fists pounded against the bag trying to push it just the couple more inches that were needed.
Even now the cracks of light were slowly becoming greater as the distance between him and the great outside lowered.
Peeking through the gradually widening cracks as he continued straining against the bag Ambitan scanned the surroundings as little grunts of exertion escaped his lips.
His eye pressed against the garbage bag the entire surroundings were complete garbage, no sign of any Gnasher activity around here thankfully.
Then with one last great push, the garbage bag finally gave away to let Ambitan burst out into the open after so long.
Desperately his lungs gulped in the air that they had been deprived of for so long. After finally reaching the end though the adrenaline left him as the fight or flight response had been achieved and his limbs entered shutdown.
Ambitan's knees buckled and collapsed underneath him, sending him hurtling into several other garbage bags. A stray can fell over, knocking several other pieces of waste aside to squarely hit Ambitan over the crown of his head.
Content in knowing that his safety was assured, Ambitan allowed himself to catch but a moment of rest, simply lying in the piles of trash.
After a couple of moments Ambitan, despite his body complaining against his actions, stood back up to collect his rucksack from where it had been discarded not too far away.
His limp leg buckled, clearly having had enough of the abuse it had sustained.
Despite Ambitan's best efforts, he wasn't able to fully stand or really put any weight at all on his right leg.
Conveniently enough though, there was a worn-faded pipe laying across from him. So Ambitan reached out and grabbed it before attempting to use it to support himself. The pipe groaned and shrieked but fortunately enough it held. Some of the rust flaked off and floated down into the heaps, left to settle among the rest.
With his rudimentary crutch now equipped, Ambitan hobbled over to where his rucksack lay before kneeling over to retrieve it.
From the rucksack, after picking it up, one of the batteries slipped out of one of the many patchy holes. From there, almost in slow-motion, Ambitan could only watch that battery, something that would've been enough to secure at least 1/5th a proper meal dip and dive through the cracks of the garbage piles, almost like it was sprinting away from him.
"Shit!"
Ambitan swore and stomped his 'crutch' through the pile of garbage, trying to upset it and cause things to fall over so that the battery would be revealed.
Thunk
The first pound, but all that was revealed was far too inedible food (even by the standards of The Pit-Slums).
Thunk
After a second hit, some garbage that Ambitan had been standing next to was unsettled, disrupting his balance, knocking him over once again.
Learning his mistake this time, before thumping the garbage heap again, this time he moved aside outside of what should reasonably be affected before pushing and prodding again.
However this time the garbage was stubborn and refused to move. Most likely some odd, twisted pieces of metal that were part of some old Upper Sector construction.
No matter, all Ambitan would need to do would be to pick another spot to attack the problem from.
"Or maybe I should just call it a day already. I'm spending far too much time on this one battery."
"But that's why we can't just give up now. We've already invested too much time in this battery."
His head warred against himself, but eventually, he decided to cut his losses where they lay and turn back into his hovel before it got real dark.
The Pit-Slums were already a dangerous enough place, but you definitely didn't want to be out when the lights went out.
However, there was one small, really infinitesimal problem that is actually returning. Especially given how since Ambitan had been burrowing around in the garbage he had completely lost all sense of direction that he had over the small corner of the Slums that he typically roamed around.
"Those damn Gnashers. I swear they'll get what's coming to them one day," Ambitan swore to himself.
Everywhere he turned the sight was pretty much the same, a never-ending, veritable ocean of trash, not that Ambitan had ever seen what an ocean looked like. But if were to imagine one it pretty much be these garbage dumps replaced with water.
Therefore the only option, if Ambitan wanted to reach safety before the sun fully set, was to go back into the tunnel and hope that the Gnashers weren't still forcing their slaves to work at the dumps.
Besides that, he could pick a random direction and head that way but that would be infinitely stupid.
After all the encampment that Ambitan calls home is not the only part of the Pit-Slums with people. Rather than being organized in a central hub, it's more split into communities where different groups call the Pit-Slums 'home'.
And these groups typically aren't too fond of outsiders, especially considering that they frequently compete for resources.
So it really wasn't too unlikely for a kid running around at night to get swooped up and either be chipped or devoured.
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