Tumultuous Behavior

10. Tumultuous Behavior

The raids came early in TB Mars. Sirens in the thin air, boots pounding against steel, armored rigs grinding through gates like they were paper. Every sweep ended the same—walls broken, pride dented, nothing found. No weapons. No stash. Just bikers who refused to bow.

One raid went sideways. Their little tank-trucks plowed through the gates and wedged themselves into their own trap. Couldn’t back out without tearing through our wall. By the time the dust settled, they left empty-handed again—but this time they owed us damages. Proof written in bent metal: you can’t crush what you don’t understand.

Still, the council spoke our name like it was poison. Shadow of Death was a curse on their tongues, a ghost to frighten colonists. That’s when a councilwoman whispered: “Send a face, not just a patch. Stop letting them believe in the boogeyman.”

So we did. We walked into Keizer Station like any family would—wives at our sides, kids in our arms, food for the potluck. But on Mars, a patch carries more weight than bread or kindness. The Chief himself stepped forward, ringed with plain-clothed enforcers, and spat it out:

“Take it off, or leave.”

I wasn’t about to strip the cut. I turned for the door, my boy tugging my sleeve. “Why, Dad?” he asked. And before I could answer, the Chief said it plain enough for the whole hall to hear:

“That patch—just him wearing it—that’s tumultuous behavior.”

The words echoed. Strange, heavy. Later, we found them in an old dictionary: unruly, riotous, stirring confusion. They meant it as an insult. We heard it as an anthem.

That night, sparks flew in the dome bay. We took memory from Earth—the old “13” patch. Back home, that number marked the outlaws, the uninvited, the ones who refused the leash. On Mars, we bent that history into something new. The 1 twisted into a T, the 3 slashed into a B. From outlaw legacy to Martian prophecy: TB. Tumultuous Behavior.

And so the club was born. Not from blood, not from war, but from the fear a patch could strike in the powerful. If a symbol could shake a Chief to his core, imagine what a brotherhood built on it could do.

From that day forward, two names rode across the red horizon. The Shadow of Death—the blood bond, the brotherhood. Tumultuous Behavior—the storm that followed, loud and lawless. Together, they weren’t just survivors of Earth’s collapse. They were architects of a Martian legacy.

And across domes and dust, carved into steel and painted on walls, the creed rang true:

Tumultuous Behavior rides here.
And nothing will cage it.