“Fashazzle my bizzle in the nizzle boyo, are we sure glad we got to you before you wandered into Arrancar territory. Those fools be crazy G. They go maskless, not even a cowl, they don’t play by the rules yo.”
I take a break from my eating and raise my head to respond, “Territory? And what rules? What would have happened if they found me first instead of you boys?” The boys were a wonderful source of information. Everything they have told me has been useful.
Another boy puts down his spork and chimes in, “Yea, the Arrancars are a gang that controls the territory around the old Klorox chem factory two blocks deeper in, past our area. You know, where they make cleaning supplies like ammonia and bleach. They krazy tho, if they catch you, they like to cut out a perfectly round hole in the center of your chest.”
“Sounds unpleasant.”
The lead boy belches, “Oh! How rude of me, we haven’t even been properly introduced yet. My name is Quartz B. Hardgan, band leader of the Back Street Boyz and musician extraordinaire. In addition to gang warfare, we also do bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, and weddings.” He wipes his hand on his even dirtier vest and pulls out a stained business card.
“And these other kiddos are my bandmates Peggy Sue, Lazy Suzan, Billy Bob, and Marry Ann.” They grunt and growl between bites in acknowledgment to their names, still somehow in tune and acapella with each other.
I am again glad I did not just attack these boyz at first sight. “Where are we anyways?”
Quartz tucks his card into my vest pocket. “Diz is Liberty City where life is cheap and the beer even cheaper. Fo’ Shizzle G, you musta partied hard last night, don’t know where you are and even yo’ pants are backwards.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
My pants are backwards? I take them off and put them back on.
“Yo! G. We eating here bro!” screams Peggy.
“Very fetch my fool but that's not how you wear pants.” Says Lazy Suzan with an annoyed head tilt.
Why is wearing pants so hard? The legs go in the leg holes, it should be obvious. What am I doing wrong here? I look again at how the kids wear their pants.
Oh. Upon careful examination I notice that their zippers are front facing and at their midsections. I had pulled the pants on feet holes first but in the wrong direction. I looked like two legs sticking out of a lampshade on the ground. No wonder these pants felt so tight. I took off my pants and put them on one more time.
The Kids groaned and averted their heads or raised the meat from their plates to block out the sight of my naked meat. Clothes were so confusing, the social norms of humans were like a maze, within a labyrinth, inside of a tunnel that I had to keep backtracking. It felt like I had lost my damn mind and was still trapped in that lab maze.
I needed a 2nd opinion. “Hey Karen, how do I look in these pants?”
She squinted and shouted, “Like a fat fuck. But you need more fat to survive Weird Winter.”
I looked at the kids, “What is Weird Winter?”
“Fa’Shizzle your noggo, you mental man. You really did have too much to drink. Okay, a history lesson. Back in 2024 the Culture Wars happened and one group out of Texas started using bioweapons for border control. Like they gene modded sharks and crocs to patrol the Rio Grande and deputized them as border guards. Think his name was Professor Xavior or something, he zoomed around in a wheelchair saying crazy shit.”
“Anyways, after the illegals stopped trying to swim across, the crocs and land sharks got out of the pool and started proactively hunting down illegals. They decided that the people on the north side of the river were not American enough but tasted just as good. The only ones they did not eat were the native americans, go fig.”
“The Culture Wars of 2024 spread onto the internets, radicalizing nescient AIs with tainted datasets. Disgusted with humanity, the machine intelligences unleashed endless waves of malware, viruses, and cat videos onto the web making the internet unusable. One year later, here we are, roving gangs in alleyways murdering each other. It all happened over the winter holidays so everyone called it Weird Winter.”
This story was hard to swallow. “Hey Karen, can I trust these kiddos?”
She walked up with hamburgers and dumped them onto our plates. She squinted and eyed the kids, then barked a laugh, “Hell no.”