Chapter 1: Funny You Should Ask (a prologue)
"So what did you say you tried last night?"
"Uh, one of the chocolate bars. Oh, and the Rice Krispie treat."
Kenny unzipped his backpack and started digging around inside. "How'd they work?" he asked as he reached above his head, turning on the car's overhead light to illuminate the vehicle's dark interior. They had parked deep in the parking garage, as far away from other cars as they could.
"Eh," Wendy shrugged. "The chocolate only got me a little buzzed and I'm pretty sure the Rice Krispie treat was a total dud."
"Weird. How much did you take?"
"Like a whole dose of each. I think you might've gotten ripped off, dude; somebody sold you some weak shit."
Kenny tossed a sweatshirt from his bag into the back seat of the car and removed two 20 oz. beverages. "Well, this stuff should be better," he spoke as he uncapped a bottle and handed it to the girl. "I had half a bottle of the grape juice last night and felt like I was floating through space."
"How did it taste?" Wendy asked, skeptically eying the bottle of pink liquid Kenny had passed her. A dopey looking lemon smiled up at her from the label. She took a sip.
"Like shitty grape juice tying to hide the taste of pot, how do you think? How's that one taste?"
"Surprisingly," Wendy started before pausing to take another drink, draining about half of the bottle. "Like Pink lemonade."
Kenny and Wendy emerged from the parking garage, both shielding their eyes from the early morning sun. Looking at each other, they began to walk in the direction of South Park's Airport Hilton.
"I've never been here, have you?" Kenny asked as the two walked side by side towards the towering building.
"A few times during high school," Wendy answered. "Usually for stuff like Model UN. Isn't this where Eric held that big ginger pride rally that one time Stan and Kyle tricked him into thinking he was a day-walker?"
"Yeah," Kenny chuckled. "And don't forget about Coonicon. Who ever went to that stuff though?"
"Well, don't get lost in here," Wendy warned him. "I'm not going to spend the whole day babysitting you."
"Please," Kenny scoffed. "Like that would happen. Just remember what I said and try to keep your cool if that shit starts kicking in for real."
Wendy glared over at the blond, who had stopped walking. "I'll have you know that I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself comp-ow!"
Wendy fell backwards, having collided with something mid-sentence. Someone, actually. She looked up from the ground to find a man wearing a red vest looking down at her. In his hands he held a sign that read "End of the Line". Kenny reached down and helped Wendy to her feet.
"You folks here for the convention?" the sign-bearer asked.
"Uh, yeah," Kenny answered. "Is this the line?"
The man nodded towards the sign he was holding. "This is the end of the line." Kenny and Wendy craned their necks to look around the red-vested sign-bearer to find a line that stretched and twisted around the Hilton for as far as their eyes could see.
"Oh you've got to be kidding me!" Wendy exclaimed before turning to Kenny. "You didn't say we'd have to wait in line for this thing! At this rate we'll be lucky if we can get in before-"
Kenny elbowed her in the ribs. "Calm down!" he glared at her, mouthing a silent "Rookie" as her eyes narrowed sourly and she rubbed her side. He turned back to the sign-bearer. "Is this the line to get in, or the line to pick up your passes?"
"The second one," the man answered, obviously for the umpteenth time that morning. Kenny sighed in relief.
"See?" he said to Wendy. "We'll be fine. Lucky for us, Butters picked up his passes yesterday. Shame that he waited in a line like this for nothing, though. Poor kid."
With that, Kenny and Wendy resumed their walk towards the Hilton. Before they'd made it too far, Wendy turned around to call back to the sign-bearer. "Thanks for the information!" she shouted.
The man waved his sign in response before calling back: "Enjoy the fifth annual South Park Anime Convention!"
Wendy adjusted the pass on the lanyard around her neck as Kenny finally finished checking his bag through security. "Remind me again: just why, exactly, did you have passes to South Park's annual anime convention?" she asked as he approached.
"I told you, Butters gave them to me. He's big into shit like those Totoro movies and that cartoon about the hamsters so he thought this would be the place to meet other nerds or something. But yesterday he came home crying about giant boobs and people without any skin before shoving his and Dougie's passes into my hands and running into his room. I guess he didn't know what he was getting into."
Wendy looked around the Hilton's convention hall, overpacked with scantily clad women and men carrying giant swords. "Anime fans are weird," she concluded. "I mean, I watched a little Sailor Moon when I was a kid but how do you go from that to putting on a big fur suit?"
"You got me," Kenny replied. "I gravitated towards other hobbies. Speaking of which, what do you want to do while we wait for this stuff to kick in? I'd say we've got about another half-hour."
Wendy opened a brochure detailing the events taking place over the course of the convention. "Something that doesn't involve interacting with these weirdos too much. It says they're showing episodes of a bunch of different shows upstairs; sitting in the dark could be okay."
"Sounds like a plan," Kenny nodded.
"I have to use the bathroom first, though. Wanna meet me up there?" she asked as she headed towards the ladies room.
"Sounds like a good way for us to lose each other," Kenny called after her. "Meet me right back here. And don't piss out all that lemonade!"
After waiting in a five minute line for the restroom, Wendy finally entered a stall and locked the door behind her; but rather than pulling down her jeans and sitting down, she lifted her leg to rest her foot on the seat of the toilet. Untying her shoe, she lifted her foot a ways out of it and removed a small bag of pot that had been resting underneath her heel. Kenny may have intended to simply use this outing to field test their new products, but Wendy had other ideas. The blond had told her that selling in such an environment would be too risky, but she didn't intend to miss out on a day of sales. Now she just had to figure out a way to dodge the boy for a good twenty minutes and she'd be set. Retying her shoe, she pocketed the dope and flushed the toilet out of habit. She left the stall to run her hands under some water and headed for the bathroom's exit.
Wendy emerged from the restroom to find Kenny absentmindedly looking around the convention hall. He turned to notice her shortly before she closed the remaining distance between them. "Shall we?" he asked.
After making their way upstairs, Kenny and Wendy ducked into a dark auditorium showing the pilot episode of an anime series that neither of them had ever heard of before; something silly about a girl who was training to be some perverted young billionaire's personal maid. They took a seat in the back row, sitting quietly as they waited to feel the effects of the edible drugs they'd consumed in the car. The first episode ended and the two exchanged confused, unimpressed glances in the dark, but remained seated as a second episode began to play.
His interest wandering, Kenny took a moment to ponder how exactly he'd managed to find himself spending a day on drugs at an anime convention with Wendy Testaburger of all people. When she and the rest of their classmates had left for college, she was the last one he'd expected to ever come back to South Park. How could he have ever imagined that they'd have ended up where they were now? He looked down at their hands, resting mere inches apart from each other.
Suddenly, Wendy's leapt up as the girl hurried to cup her hands over her mouth, muffling the hysteric laughter into which she'd erupted. A few members of the audience turned around to glare at them, annoyed looks on their faces. Wendy squinted in the dark and giggled into her palms.
"What's so funny?" Kenny whispered.
"I just," Wendy gasped out between laughs, "I can't stop thinking about what Mr. Mackey would look like wearing one of these maid uniforms! Oh my god!"
Kenny smiled slyly at the girl.
"Something tells me you and I are going to sell a lot of pink lemonade."