Itsuroh smoked a spliff and blasted his mixtape from his speaker from the jungle gym, filling the air with 808 drums, bamboo flutes, and lyrics about how much money he’s been able to take from being a member of the DOOMLAYERZ. I busted open a bottle of some really expensive alcohol I can’t pronounce and licked the foam that erupted from it off my hands. Quentin was floating in the air, already faded, screaming at the top of his lungs. Travis had some girls twerking on him. Om was hanging by the legs from the monkey bars, half-naked, doing situps. I guess he thought bitches were gonna come look at him if he got sweaty enough.
We were in the playground of a townhome complex that we’d taken control over, partying ‘cuz we’d just pulled off a bigass job. Well, we were getting the party started, at least. I took my phone out and started recording everybody doing their thing, then posted the video to the Roe Estates story. Now everybody on PicTalk was gonna know we were turning up tonight. I decided to take another video and share it to the DOOMLAYERZ story.
After half an hour, Leland finally flew in, carrying a grill over his head, and overstuffed grocery sacks hanging from each arm.
“What took you so fuckin’ long, man?!” I called up to him.
“They kept tryna sell me this ‘warranty’ shit with the grill,” Leland explained. “Plus, the plug was late. Plus, I had to buy the meat last, ‘cuz I want my shit fresh. I bought the real gourmet shit cuz I love y’all niggas so much.”
I squinted my eyes, focused, and lifted the grill from Leland’s hands, levitating it down to the ground. I sensed that the briefcase was under the hood, so I opened it and made it float over to me.
I grabbed the briefcase, entered the combination number (444), and opened it. I counted the money. There was about 200,000 maru missing from the 5.6 million we made off with today. I looked at the grill. It was new and pretty fancy, but it didn’t look that fancy.
“How much was that fuckin’ grill?” I asked Leland.
“Hunnid K,” he replied nonchalantly.
“And the meat??”
“‘Nother hunnid K,” Leland replied.
“You spent a hundred thousand marus of DOOMLAYER money on fuckin’ burger meat?”
“I told you I bought the real gourmet shit.” He dropped the plastic bags from inside his elbows, caught them in his hands, and gave one to me to examine. “We eatin’ like kings tonight, king!” Now, it was true that these were the thickest, reddest patties I’d ever seen in my life, but that was beside the point.
“What about the pills???”
“I bought ‘em wit’ my own money ‘cuz I knew you was gon’ bitch about how much I was gon’ spend on the burgers. Twenty K, by the fuckin’ way.”
“Let me see ‘em.”
“Why? They mine. I spent twenty thousand marus of my own money for that shit.”
“You gon’ forget that my psychic powers saved yo’ ass earlier today?”
Leland smacked his lips, fished into his pocket, and pulled out a plain white pill bottle. He opened it and dumped out six half-blue, half-white capsules. I smiled, anticipating the high I’d get from taking all of them at once. These were Psychopills; a drug unlike any other. Not only do they give you a crazy, rushing high, but they also make you see shit for how it really is. They can also strengthen and sometimes even awaken people's psychic powers.
All of a sudden, I felt something in the back of my head. It was somebody's Metaki. Leland noticed my smile slip away. “Wassup?” He asked.
“Somebody’s comin’ this way. Gimme a pill an’ I might get more details.”
Leland smacked his lips again.
The energy I felt was strong. Real strong. The type of strength you’d expect from an A-tier. And it was headed this way.
“I'm not fuckin’ around! Gimme one!” Damn. I sounded scared. There was more than one aura. Fuck. It was two niggas. And they weren't no amateurs either. These auras were some A-tier pro Metafighter-type auras.
“Ayo!!” I shouted to the rest of the gang. “I sense somebody comin’!”
Itsuroh took a long drag from his joint. “I know. I been feelin’ em.” He got out his phone and switched songs to some Top 100 shit they play at the club. “Just act normal. It's a party. Them niggas don't know who we wit’.”
”What about the case?” Asked Leland.
”Give it here,” said Travis, holding his arms out, waiting for Leland to toss it over to him.
Leland threw it, Travis caught it, then used it to smack the ass of the girl in front of him, who was shaking that fat thing with her legs standing straight, spread wide, and her hands on the ground. She let out a squeal that didn't quite sound like pain, then stood up straight and started grinding on him.
“Take this to yo’ crib,” he told the bitch as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing the case to her chest. “Don't let nobody see it. It's got some important paperwork on it.”
I couldn't help but stare as she ran off with the case. Her ass was jiggling like gelatin with every step she took. Half of each cheek hung out from her booty shorts, which strained to contain the juicy treasure under them.
“Quentin!” Itsuroh called out to the drunk nigga in the air. He didn't listen.
“Q, get the fuck out the air!”
Quentin slowly rotated around in the air to face Itsuroh. “Why?” He asked.
Instead of answering his question, I pointed up in the sky above him. A white woman in a black pantsuit, carrying a humongous metal suitcase with her, was flying right this way. Her bright purple aura was much denser and more refined than ours. And if we were strong enough to blow up that mansion earlier today, how strong was she?
We all watched wordlessly as she landed right in the center of the playground, with the grace and elegance of a fairy. Her aura dissipated as her feet touched the ground, but the instinctive feeling of danger I got when I first sensed it wasn't going nowhere. I'd sensed two niggas, so why was only one bitch here?
“What's going on here?” The woman asked coldly. The way the words came out of her red lips made it sound like she wasn't actually asking us. It was like she was asking the space she was in, not any of the people in it. Her large, round sunglasses refused to reflect any light from them, making looking into them feel like looking down an empty well.
I stepped forward to speak. “We're just-”
“We're just havin’ a party.” Itsuroh cut me off to explain exactly what I was gonna say.
Leland tried to casually put his hand–the hand that held the Psychopills–in his pocket, then coughed a fake-ass cough into his fist. That bitch-ass nigga thought he was slick and just took one. He'd told me he'd never taken one before. He'd always wanted to get psychic powers.
“Are you aware that flying is illegal in residential areas?” She asked Quentin, who immediately started to lower himself to the ground.
“I'm sorry, ma’am. I didn't know,” Quentin bullshat, trying hard not to slur his words.
“He wasn't flying. He was floating. Floating without moving around in the air doesn't count.” Itsuroh corrected her.
“That law applies specifically to unintentional floating,” she recorrected him.
“So you're gonna arrest a guy for getting a little drunk and floating for a while? You ain't never got drunk n’ floated some?”
The woman pushed her sunglasses further up her nose and that was the only time a bit of light flickered from the lenses. “I did not come here to make any arrests,” she said as she reached into her pocket to take out her badge–a striking silvery diamond with the letters “CATA” engraved in a deep, almost blackish purple. I slowed my breathing, trying not to look nervous. I was hoping she’d be a cop. When I saw the suit, I told myself that she must’ve been a fed. I wanted nothing less than to have fucking CATA on our asses. They were the one group that had a chance at taking us down.
“I'm with the Chitan Anti-Terrorist Association,” explained the lady. “Today, there was an attack on Senator Yoshihiro Urameshi’s estate by the DOOMLAYERZ. Five-point-six million maru were taken from his bedroom safe, and his house was destroyed. They then immediately flew over the Liberty Moon border. Have any of you seen or sensed anyone flying around within the last couple of hours?
“We been drinkin’ for the last couple hours,” Itsuroh said with a shrug. “None of us can sense shit.”
“I see…” she said, bumping the suitcase against the side of her thigh. She opened her mouth, then closed it, like she had something she wanted to say.
All of a sudden, my head became filled with someone else’s thoughts. YOOOOOOOOOO, thought the other person. I FUCKIN’ DID IT!!! I AWAKENED!!!!
What the fuck? I thought. I’d never had someone breach my mind before, but I had trained for it when I joined the DOOMLAYERZ. I gripped my head and braced my mind, strengthening my mental barrier. I figured that it must be a telepathic attack from CATA.
FUCK YO’ MENTAL BARRIER, NIGGAAAAA!!!! YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!!! I ALREADY KNOW YOU!!!! The other thoughts came to me with a strange, underdeveloped psychic pattern. This must’ve been somebody who’s never had psychic powers before.
I tried to discreetly glance over to the nigga next to me. Leland?!
He looked back at me from the side and smirked.
So mental barriers don’t work if you just know the nigga?! We both thought at once.
Hold on, nigga, don’t start thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, or I’mma start takin’ over your mind, Leland warned me.
You can’t do that! You just awakened. There’s no fuckin’ way you have the power to take over minds!
“Y’know…” The lady in the sunglasses pantsuit spoke up. She held her suitcase behind her back, leaned forward a little. “I’m supposed to get off soon. Would it be cool if I partied with you guys?”
“Well…” Itsuroh folded his hands and chose his words very carefully. “If you don’t mind, we kinda celebration’ somethin’ personal to our community, so-”
“Hell yeah, you can party wit’ us!” Those words came out of my mouth, but I didn’t say them. Leland, are you fuckin’ stupid?! I thought. Itsuroh also looked at me with a face expressing a similar message.
The woman put one very voluptuous leg on her tippy-toes and twisted it around in a little circle. She still had her suitcase held behind her back and puffed her chest out nervously.
Are you? You like that bitch! You want her to grind on you!
No, the hell I don’t!
Yes you doooooo, niggaaaaa!! I can see it in yo’ subconscious! You been wanting a thick white bitch like that on yo’ dick for yeeeeaaars!!!
Itsuroh stifled a sigh. “Alright, you can do some dancin’ wit’ my nigga here for a lil’.” He switched the music to a special beat crafted by a legendary anonymous producer within the DOOMLAYERZ who makes beats with special subliminal messages. This one triggered “attraction” in the brain by combining samples of R&B music, dialogue from an old TV show, gangsta rap, and other sound effects. A baritone, slightly slurred voice spouted off phrases that only made sense if you didn't listen to them. The point was not to listen to the words, and instead to let the beat speak, your ears listen, and your body respond.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. My left leg lifted itself up and stepped me forward.
“Welcome to the debut grand opening of DOOMLAYERZ Bistro…” The woman stepped toward me, trapped in the same strange trance as I was.
“...Bed and Breakfast, Bar and Grill…” She put her hands up, swung her hips around, and pressed her ass right up on my crotch.
“...Café Lounge Underwater.”
My pelvis pushed itself into her soft, plump flesh. I could feel my dick swelling up against her, begging for the touch of flesh instead of fabric. I bit my lip and grabbed her hips as she grabbed one of my hands with one of hers, and lifted the other up to caress my face
“Where we offer you the finest of the finer things, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How do you do?”
My lip slipped out from my mouth when I heard the near-silent, instantly distinctive whir of Metaki building in the bitch’s palm.
BLAM!!!! At the exact second she blasted me in the face, the beat changed. Blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, all I could hear was everyone's feet shuffling, getting ready for a fight as the new song played in the background. The only reason I wasn't unconscious right then was because of a psychic hack I learned that makes me almost unable to be knocked out.
The new song was fast-paced, like something you'd hear in a club, but with these mysterious static effects dusting the whole song, from the drums to the synthy melody to the vocals. The lyrics were hard to make out, but went something like this:
I don't know where I'm going
But I know what I'm showing
Feelings, that's what I'm pouring
What the fuck is your motive?
I couldn't move. The psychic hack doesn't make you able to stand up and fight after an attack that should've knocked you out. It just keeps you awake. I was left with no choice but to watch and listen to the fight with one eye (the right one, which was the one closest to the ground) and ear (also the right one, which was pressed against the ground). I just had to trust in my fellow DOOMLAYERZ to have my back. There was no way four whole niggas couldn't handle one bitch, especially if Leland was in her head. You are in her head, right? I asked Leland telepathically.
I got no answer. He must’ve been focused on the fight. I could hear the screaming, whirring, and whooshing of blasts being hurtled in every direction above me. I could feel Leland trying to back up and charge up his Metaki, but the woman was not letting him have the space and time. Every time he backed up, she shot a blast at him. The other boys were all trying to gang up on her, but she kept pushing them all back.
They took the fight to the air after one moment where Travis shot a blast at the bitch and almost hit me in the face. That left me on the ground by myself, watching smoke rise from the little crater right in front of my face. Behind the smoke, I saw a little silver rectangle just sitting in the middle of the floor. As the haze dissipated, more and more of the rectangle’s little details materialized onto it. It was the suitcase. And for some reason, the woman kept occasionally throwing these sharp white beams of energy at it. The other niggas either didn’t notice or didn’t care. At first, I didn’t either. That was before I noticed the dark red liquid seeping out from the sides. The beams made jagged, twisting trajectories onto the suitcase like lightning bolts, increasing the flow of blood out of it with every strike. The case seemed to swell slightly, with the blood appearing to pump from it as though it were a cubic metallic heart. Eventually, it seemed to start radiating its own Metaki. My eye widened and I started to sweat. Was it a Metaminion? They were illegal, yeah, but CATA wasn’t exactly on the side of the law. That’s what made them scary to us. A cop or a fed, especially in Higashima, has a vested interest in taking you in alive, ‘cuz lethal force laws are confusing as hell, and they don't wanna go to jail. Plus, cops and feds prefer torturing their terrorists instead of killing them.
Shit got really freaky when the suitcase started to open. Chunky, calloused, heavily melanated fingers inched out from the lips of the case, slowly prying it open more. More and more sweat started to collect on my forehead and face.
Finally, the suitcase burst open, and along with it came a burst of Metaki that knocked me back. A bit of rolling around in the concrete seemed to be just what my body needed to wake up, though.
I scrambled up, faced the suitcase, and started charging up a Metaki blast. I didn't know what it was or how to beat it, but I did know that this was the bitch's secret weapon. I bet if I blasted it to smithereens now, before it fully transformed or whatever the fuck it was doing, I'd get us closer to a W. Maybe after destroying her secret weapon thing, I'd rush her and put her on the backfoot.
I grinned and gritted my teeth, trying to heave as much Metaki between my hands as I could while formulating the plan in my head. A pair of shoulders started shimmying out the suitcase. The arms had already been free, and the hands were planted firmly into the ground to support the rest of the body's effort to squeeze out of the suitcase.
I canceled those plans when I saw whose head popped out of the case once the shoulders got free. It was the bald, black-as-the-street head of Fraz Chitan, founder and director of the Chitan Anti-Terrorist Association. It's hard to powerscale him, but people say he's a rare example of an A-tier metamartial artist who's never hit the scene.
Without hesitation (or any thoughts at all, really), I shoved my energy at Chitan’s head, to no apparent effect. Like, the nigga didn't even pause or nothing! He’d already had his eyes on me from under his own pair of perfectly-round sunglasses. I could feel them.
With a deep breath and a grunt, Chitan bent his arms at the elbows to a 90-degree angle, then shot himself upwards and out of the case.
I tried to steady my breath so I could charge up another attack, but remembering how the man who copped a 20-v-1 with DOOMLAYERZ who were all scaled above me was walking right to me, aura glowing and shit made me a little nervous.
“Where's the case at?” Chitan demanded.
“I-I don't know what you're talkin’-”
Chitan’s hulking body became a blurring streak for a split second, and then I was interrupted by a fist to the solar plexus. I felt my aura disperse from the impact. I coughed violently, stumbling around, clutching my stomach. I thought I was gonna throw up. I'd never been hit so hard that my fucking Metaki turned off. But it was cool, though. He still didn't know I had psychic powers.
Still doubled over, I glared at Chitan, gritting my teeth again. I thrust one hand out toward him, to which he held his arms up to block what he thought was gonna be a Metaki blast.
After a second of no attack, he lowered his guard slightly, and I took that opportunity to lift up a few chunks of concrete in front of him and fling them into his face. That broke his glasses and took his vision temporarily. Now he was the one doubled over, with his hands over his eyes.
I took these precious few seconds to charge up my Metaki as much as I could. While doing that, I took two huge blocks of concrete out from the ground on each of Chitan’s sides, making sure that each chunk was big enough to cover Chitan’s whole body, which stands at a height of 6’9” and a width of a doorway. I floated the blocks away from my target, then, suddenly, forcefully, and with an aggressive yell, slammed them into him.
I knew–or should’ve knew–the concrete would shatter unaffected against his body, but it gave me some more time to charge my Metaki. I then looked up to my fellow DOOMLAYERZ, who were still tussling with the bitch in the air.
“GET YO’ PUNK ASSES DOWN HERE AND HELP ME!!!” I told them. “I’M FIGHTIN’ FRAZ FUCKIN’ CHITAN HERE, NIGGA!!!”
Om was the first one to break from the group scuffle, jetting straight down to Chitan to clash with him. He came barreling down elbow-first and clashed against the anti-terrorist’s forearm. The two didn’t technically touch, though. At the center of the shockwave sent by Om’s attack and Chitan’s defense, there was a tiny space between the two “weapons”. There’s this advanced Metaki technique where a fighter can solidify his aura. Everybody wonders whether Chitan’s body was indestructible, or if he was just really good at putting an invisible aura shield up. Whatever the case, nobody’s been able to do any real damage to him–ever. And Om wasn’t gonna be the first.
Chitan grabbed Om’s face, then slammed it into the ground, following up the humiliation with a blast of Metaki, creating a nice cozy crater for him to sleep in. Floating above it, he crossed his arms and started slowly moving toward me again. His eyes, the color of freshly-forged metal dipped in cooling water, locked me into place
“Just tell me where the case is, and this’ll be the only nigga unconscious tonight.” He told me.
Damn. Om was one of the strongest in our group.
“OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!” Quentin belted out a drunken, sorrowful war cry. He then pulsed with an impressive new reservoir of Metaki out of nowhere. With fists pumped in front of him, he flew down to Chitan. Drunk and full of rage, a red streak of Metaki traced his path down to the head of CATA.
Similarly to before, Fraz Chitan braced himself well for the attack. This time, though, he felt he didn’t need his whole forearm. This time, he only needed his index finger, coated in all the aura his body gave off, to block Quentin’s drunken stampede.
“Where’s the case?” Chitan repeated, with a touch more urgency and frustration.
Me and Travis got the same idea–to blast Chitan while he had all of his aura focused on one spot. That left Leland alone to hold off the bitch for a second, and since he was the weakest, a second was all it took for his punk ass to get dogwalked by that bitch.
In that one second me and Travis attacked Chitan, the bitch shot a barrage of Metaki blasts at Leland, sending him to the ground. I rocketed up at the bitch, rearing a fist back and pumping it with Metaki to avenge my friend.
Just before my fist made contact with her jaw, I felt my body get snatched backwards, causing my swinging fist to only hit the air.
I looked over my shoulder to meet the steely, silver-eyed gaze of Fraz Chitan. He didn’t seem very much affected by the blasts me and Travis shot at him.
“C’mon, boy,” he told me. “Let’s stop bein’ stupid.”
I looked over at Travis. The bitch had him in a midair chokehold.
“I think you know deep down that this is all wrong,” Fraz told me in a frighteningly soft and fatherly tone.
“Fuck no!” I told him, with all the manliness I could muster from the position of being held by the collar. “We tryna bring forth a new age! The way this whole damn system was built is fucked up! We livin’ on stolen land and we supposed to be okay with that?! Nigga, the whole fuckin’ language we speak was forced upon us! We gotta change all this shit up! An’ it starts wit’ bringin’ death, destruction, and doom to the niggas rulin’ us!”
Fraz stared at me in silence for a second. Shit, maybe I’d really gotten to him. I might be able to fuck around and talk-no-jutsu CATA into joinin’ the DOOMLAYERZ, I thought. A lotta people did think it was possible. It started getting me to think about how shit happens for a reason, and how maybe we were destined to get our ass beat today because we were about to make history. I looked into Chitan’s eyes, trying to peer into his mind.
Chitan’s barrier is known to be hard as fuck, but sometimes, when you have real psychic and psychological finesse, it’s possible to slip one seed of thought in the brain of people with even the strongest psychic barriers. When you do that, and get them to think what you want them to think, your psychic energy can phase through the barrier.
“Do they feed y’all niggas a script?” Chitan asked me, interrupting the train of thought I constructed in those few seconds of silence.
“Huh?”
“I swear to God, a nigga I apprehended just the other day said the exact same shit you was sayin’.”
“Well, we stand for this shit! Of course we all fuckin’ talk about it, it’s what we fuckin’ believe in!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, nigga. Where’s the case?”
“We ain’t never gon’ tell you, nigga!” Travis shouted, having just pulled the bitch’s arm off his neck enough to speak.
“Also, we ain’t niggas!” I added. “We are free! You still a slave to this broken-ass system. You a nigga.”
Chitan sighed. “Star 17, You niggas are like parrots. You think I don’t know how fucked up this ‘system’ is? I’m old, nigga. And you are a nigga. I realized what you realized a long time ago. But what I didn’t do is break into a goddamn senator’s mansion and steal 5.6 million maru.”
“That’s ‘cuz you a sheep. You ain’t never freed yo’ mind like we have. We-”
“What is the endgoal of the DOOMLAYERZ?”
“Huh?”
“It’s a simple question. What are y’all doing with all the money you steal from billionaires and politicians, and all the stores you ransack, and the areas you claim as ‘territory’?”
“W-we can’t tell you that! That shit is classified!”
“Right. Classified. That’s what that other nigga said. What’s really interestin’ about him is he gave all kinda other classified information, like which apartment complexes and housin’ developments y’all been spreadin’ y’all’s bullshit to. But he ain’t have nothin’ to say about why he decided to join the DOOMLAYERZ, or why the DOOMLAYERZ have to use violence. That’s crazy.”
Fuck. They know we got this complex. My face went numb.
“Most violent organizations–terrorist or revolutionary or whatever–start by putting the why for the violence front and center. Y’all don’t. That’s awfully strange.”
“A nigga like you wouldn’t get it.” I told him.
Chitan chuckled. “I’m startin’ to think that maybe y’all don’t really have a why. I think it’s just violence for the sake of violence.”
“Well, we don’t give a fuck what you think.”
“You know what? That is perfectly understandable. And I kinda wish I could say the same myself. But I guess y’all niggas fascinate me a bit too much. My fascination with y’all sometimes even gets me distracted. For Star’s sake, I ain’t come here to learn no damn core principles! I came to obtain a case, and to find out who told y’all about it. Only a small circle of Yoshihiro Urameshi’s friends knew he even had a safe in his room. Even if you read his mind, you’d have to be close enough to him to do it. And he’s been living in a government-constructed underground bunker for weeks. So either you're workin’ with one of Urameshi's friends or you read one of their minds. Which is it?”
“Chief!” The bitch speaks up, still holding Travis in his chokehold. “I finally tapped into his mind. I’ve got all the info.”
Travis was desperately struggling against her to free himself, but he wasn’t making much progress.
“They’re actually working with Dethro Broadus.”
“Dethro Broadus?!” Chitan and I both exclaimed at once.
“You didn’t know who your own snitch was?” Chitan asked me incredulously.
“How the fuck did you know?!” I asked Travis.
“Me…and some niggas…was…theorizing…” Travis struggled to speak, seeing as a woman’s arm was still pressing into his windpipe.
“I can’t fuckin’ believe this shit. The motherfuckin’ DOOMLAYERZ been workin’ with the vice president of Liberty Moon. So what was you sayin’ ‘bout this ‘system’ bein’ broken? This whole time you been working with ‘the system’!! You see now that you workin’ on the wrong side?”
I froze, completely stunned. I stared off into nothing, trying to think of what to think about. The first time I was told about how fucked up the world was, it made me feel like I had to do something about it. So I joined the DOOMLAYERZ. They told us they were everything this system wasn’t. They told us we were gonna tear all this shit down and build it back anew. They even told us we’d put all of today’s politicians either in cages or in graves for their crimes of greed and gluttony. I spent five whole years as a member of the DOOMLAYERZ. In that time, I found a new family. I always thought my family was mid as fuck, so in the DOOMLAYERZ, I was really a part of something.
My train of thought got interrupted by Chitan slicing my head off.