Dear friends ! Hello ! I have at last put my fingers to the keys to write out the fruits of my labors concerning the borough of Queens and our pals Skittery, Specs, and Bumlets. Haven't you ever wondered how these three brave souls got the largest borough in New York to join the strike of 1899? This is my answer to that question. Expect changes in voice, a whole bunch of Queens newsies, in-jokes, a bit of swearing, some rough 'n' tumble violence, and deconstruction of a few tropes as we go. Maybe also some in-story shout-outs.

You ready? I'm ready! Let's crack on, then!

Disclaimer:

Race: That's my cigar-

Snipeshooter: You'll steal anudder-

Paisley: *Takes cigar* Hey fellas, we'se got work ta do!

Race: *snatches cigar, cradles it protectively* This ain't your cigar, and we ain't your characters.

Paisley: Oh. Right. Crack on, then.

What d'ya thing you're doing ?

Runnin'.

I'd heard Jack Kelly use that selfsame phrase just last week. I had a bone to pick with Jacky boy, as it was he, our great and fearless leader, that had directly sent me on a fool's errand to the strangest borough in New York City, an errand that could only end in- you guessed it- running.

I banked around a sharp corner onto Flushing Avenue, not daring to hazard a glance behind me. I mentally counted blocks until the Brookyn border; I came up with just under infintiy.

Damn.

I never thought that I, Manhattan's fondest of sons, would equate the Brooklyn border of all things with safety, but here I was, searching for the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge in the early morning haze as if they were the pearly gates. I allowed myself a sharp bark of laughter and leapt over the front part of someone's cart. To my surprise and alarm, the three thuds of my pursuers hitting the cobblestones in kind came quicker than I though they would.

Double damn.

I didn't know how much longer my body could take this constant running. It had become a ritual of sorts, a daily dance with danger as regular as the carillon at Our Lady Of Sorrows. Still, I had been escaping for the past week without much more than a glancing cuff to the ears.

But I had never been this deep into Queens before, and I was already questioning my ability to make it out with both my legs still in working order. Whether it was exertion or billyclubs that caused their imminent demise was up to chance.

I took that chance. I dodged back down an alley, knowing (or at least guessing) that it opened up onto Grand Street. I could still get to Brooklyn from Grand, right?

The footfalls behind me were alarmingly close. I could hear the ragged breath of who I correctly guessed to be Messers Barrister, Roesoje, and LaPaglia, affectionately known as Lefty, Gum, and Gabby. A soaking from any one of them, let alone the three combined, was enough to make a fellow quake in his half-boots. It was not in my best interest, then, when a door along the alley burst open, flooding me with a chorus of factory girls. In fact, as cotton skirts and surly feminine faces hampered my progress towards the light at the end of the alley, one thought crossed my mind:

What d'ya think you're doing?

I'm not running. I'm a goner.

Hold it, hold it right there.

My dear friend Skittery is getting ahead of 'imself. In fact, he's getting ahead of all three of us. I know the whole in medial rez thing is popular and all; I don't just sell papes, I'm one of those rare Newsies that reads every last word. All the better to- well, I can extract "Canada Hostile; Looming Declaration of War" from "Harriman Expedition Makes Little Progress," if you catch my drift. A Baby Born With Two Heads get three when it's me improvin' the truth. But I'm digressin'.

See, it all started on a day that you probably know well: Tuesday, July seventeenth, 1899. It was a hot day, sticky, and the old adage summer stinks had been hanging around like a rank Delancey since sunup; I had to squint through the glare in my glasses to see. The Manhattan newsies had just done a little something called strike. And Jack Kelly- good ol' Cowboy Kelly, Manhattan's king, was sending what he called ambastards out into the streets of New York City to drum up support.

Now I'm known among the Manhattan newsies as the one with the big mouth. Literally; I can put an apple in whole. I'm not even kidding. I'll show you sometime, if you'd like. But the hole in the middle of my face is big in the figurative sense, too. I tend to speak often and loudly, which ain't a bad thing for a fellow that makes his sheckles hawking headlines to the hoi-paloi. But it also gets me into some pretty tight scrapes- you'll see in a while, when we get to that part of the story- but I'm getting off topic again.

Anyway, me and my big mouth. Cowboy was telling us where to go, to drum up support as it were. Well, I was pretty confident in my ability to convert whatever section of New York's downtrodden newsboys I got assigned to the noble and glorious cause of striking against our favorite tycoon, the creator of the World Joseph Pulitzer himself. But when Jack said:

"Bumlets, Specs, an' Skittery, you take Queens,"

I felt just a little bit of apprehension, poking at the back of my brain. But just a little. I've been told that I have the gift of the gab, and that, friends, is the gift that keeps on giving.

So you've hoid what my fellow ambassadors (I'm not gonna use whatever pidgin literate term Cowboy insists on) to Queens had to tell you, by way of introduction. Well, let me be the first to say that they did a terrible job.

I'm here to tell you the real deal- about how we, Specs, Skittery, and yours truly, Bumlets, took Queens and brought it to join the ranks of the Newsboys Strike of 1899. It sure wasn't easy. Queens is big, the biggest borough in all New York. You'll hear every language anyone's ever spoken in the space of one block. There're rich and poor, robber barons in turretted mansions and orphans and runaways starving on the streets- and iscapita! Politics run the joint. If you've ever heard of Manhattan's brand of crooked politican, Queens has them in spades and ready to jump you by night. There are gangs camped out in every living acre of Queens, and how they ever do fight. But I'm getting ahead of myself: all you need to know about our foray into Queens are these things.

This is a story about how we met a newsie king by the name of Battle Axe, and lived to tell the tale.

It's a story about running (like Skittery said), but it's also about turning around and fighting for once.

It's about making a gamble and making a fortune- literally. And a first kiss.

In this story, we travel the world in the course of a week, and Skittery discovers how to walk across the East River.

Specs becomes a gentleman, and people inexplicably begin to refer to him as Lawrence. His name's not Lawrence.

And me- well, I talk. Quite a bit, in fact. It's a new development.

It's also about trusting all the wrong kinds of roughnecks and sharps, and putting our lives in the hands of someone named Crazy Arborn.

It's about the Great Dance on Steinway Street, stolen flaming pianos, and everything that happened there.

And, of course, you know how it ends. It's about taming the brute squad and shutting down at least thirty blocks of factories, if only for a day.

Now I'm going to give the spotlight back to Skittsy. Sit tight.

Opinions? Thoughts? What do you want to see out of this? I'm not writing too far ahead, so any feedback will be taken into account! Reviews will be greeted with confetti, streamers, and chocolate-dipped newsies.

-Pais