A lot can change in a little over a year.

During the time since Poncho Guy last visited Ratwater, the town underwent unbelievably rapid industrialization. What was once a desolate, cactus-rimmed ghost town became a massive, bustling industrial park. 

The march of industry was heralded by Cleaner Droids, who appeared in the streets shortly after Poncho’s last visit to quarantine and sanitize the area. Ratwater had been littered with the corpses of the former townsfolk, who all massacred each other after having succumbed to a devastating cattle-borne brain illness that infects its victims with an urgent and insatiable bloodlust. After the Cleaner Droids fulfilled their duties, the government awarded Dwayne Clean (CEO of the Clean’s Cleaner Droids corporation, whose tech was instrumental in disease prevention efforts) with the property rights to all of Ratwater. In turn, Clean sold the rights to “LifeLine", a massive umbrella LLC, who filled the area with factories, converting the town itself into a sort of on-site housing community. After this, Ratwater took on a life of its own, growing from a small cluster of houses and factories into a giant heap of buildings and lights and rising smoke. As the sky above Ratwater blackened with industrial smog, most of the residents packed up and left, leaving a small but still dense group of vagrants and (mostly) violent criminals, along with anyone with a disposition for polluted skies and particle-choked air. 

Standing in this spot, he is reminded of his late companion (his strange little friend, who he fought with constantly and now misses immensely) who had been right there by his side. That was then, and this is now. Things are different, and the air is heavier than it was before.

Following his previous visit, Poncho Guy and his former companion (who, having grown up in the circus, didn’t have an actual name outside of “Squat,” a name he despised and refused to answer to) set off to contract the Trash Droids from a foundry in Screet (the “nearest” commerce hub, which was actually pretty far away and involved a whole drawn-out pulp novel style adventure where Poncho Guy lost his strange little friend [pictured in second slide] in a vicious confrontation with the travelling circus band to which his former companion once belonged.) Tragically, it was Poncho’s late companion who suggested they hire the droids in the first place, and Poncho had only begrudgingly agreed. Thus, Poncho was left alone midway through the mission with no choice but to follow through, bound by the honor of his dead friend.