In a world of uncertainty, the Shitennou represent the unchanging foundations of humanity: curiosity, resourcefulness, honor, and decency. While the terrible currents of fate may wash away the material works of men, they will eternally guard those untouchable qualities that make our species unique.

Adins Presents

"My Four Kings"

Today's Episode: Got My Mojo Workin'

"Hey, check it out guys!" Jadeite called as he rifled through the mail and landed on a large express envelope, "The proofs for our menus came back!"

It was a Friday morning, 9AM. During the normal course of their lives the Shitennou would all have been out of the house at their respective jobs, except for the jobless Zoisite who would have slept until noon and spent at least three hours on Twitter before even considering taking a shower, eating, getting dressed, or doing something remotely resembling work. Today, however, they had all called in sick with the express intention of putting a large dent in their plans to open a bar and grill which Kunzite aptly named The Four Kings.

Nephrite walked into the kitchen from the living room where he had been watching CNN with a tar-black mug of coffee in one hand, stretching and scratching the back of his head with the other. As usual his five-o'clock shadow was pronounced, his hair was a mess, and he was still wearing the same jeans and t-shirt as he had fallen asleep in the night before. The redness of his eyes teetered between traffic light and fire engine.

Zoisite stepped out of the bathroom wearing a towel around his waist and another wrapped around his head. A plume of steam escaped the room along with him and immediately fogged up all the windows in the house. He had a toothbrush jammed in his mouth and he reeked of intense quantities of Axe cologne. He peered over Jadeite's shoulder as his companion struggled to open the envelope which was sealed with an insulting amount of packing tape as if the contents were never meant to be viewed by human eyes again.

"What dumb son of a bitch packed this thing?" Jadeite complained as he pulled every which way trying to get a decent grip on the parcel.

"Man you really are a limp-wrist." Nephrite commented as he sipped at his coffee.

"Dude, some asshole used duct tape to seal a frigging express envelope!" Jadeite shouted and scowled at the piece of mail, "Do you know how infuriating this for someone who deals with UPS shipments on a daily basis?"

"No, and I don't really give a shit." Nephrite answered honestly.

During that, Kunzite jogged down the stairs to join his crew in far better spirits than was customary in the early morning. Kunzite was not much of a morning person and he had a rather violent history of breaking toasters, coffee machines, hair dryers, and other random appliances that "didn't agree with him" in the early hours. Today, however, he was in good form and raring to go, already wide-eyed, coherent, and much more put-together than his cohorts.

Jadeite, still struggling with the envelope, stood up to get a knife out of the drawer but fell straight back down into his seat and cursed loudly. Zoisite jumped back and realized he had been standing on the draping folds of Jadeite's dark blue bath robe.

"Sorry, Jed." He half-heartedly apologized and continued about his task of drying out his hair.

"So let's see these things already!" Kunzite ordered, furiously rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Jadeite finally managed to tear the now-mangled and unrecognizable envelope open and presented each of the Shitennou with an identical leather-bound menu. On the front cover was a stylized logo embossed with the name "The Four Kings Bar and Grill" written in a bold, eye-catching font. The name surrounded a picture of four playing cards with the faces of the four Shitennou superimposed over those of the kings. Nephrite raised an eyebrow, Kunzite chuckled gleefully, and Jadeite sipped at his orange juice while pondering the situation.

"They totally got my hair wrong!" Zoisite whined as he critiqued the portraits, "I mean, look at this! It looks like I have a celery stalk shooting out of the top of my skull!"

"I think they came out great!" Kunzite announced, practically beside himself.

"They do actually look pretty awesome." Nephrite commented in an unusually positive tone of voice, "I mean, I still like my idea better of the four of us dressed up as Viking lords fighting each other surrounded by a harem of scantily clad mead-wenches … but this works too!"

"Why did I have to be the King of Hearts?" Jadeite asked, pointing at his portrait, "Why did I get stuck being the suicide king?"

"Well somebody was going to get it!" Kunzite replied, "I just gave them the concept, the guys at the printing shop put this all together."

"Yeah, but …" Jadeite continued to pout, "Now whenever customers see me at the restaurant they're going to associate me with the guy sticking the sword through his head. Everyone will think I'm the emo of the group!"

"You mean you're not?" Nephrite asked like the perfect juvenile he was, "I figured it happened after you stapled those impenetrable black sheets over your windows to hide your vampire-like features from the oppressive sun."

"The streetlights outside the house are very bright at night; I can't fall asleep with lights on!" Jadeite defended his actions, "And you should talk Nephrite, you own more knives than a butcher shop!"

"Why would that make me emo?" Nephrite asked, boggled.

"I don't know!" Jadeite confessed in his usual rambling way, "Maybe because you've got more ways to cut yourself than the rest of us?"

"Guys, shut up." Kunzite interrupted the pointless bickering, "We've got to get ready. We're meeting with the realtor today to go shopping for a location."

"I still say we open it right here in the basement." Nephrite suggested as he tossed his spent coffee mug in the sink, "We've got plenty of room and we're in a decent neighborhood. It'd be like Cheers!"

"Except remodeling the basement would be a huge expense!" Kunzite said and began ticking off problems on his fingers, "For one, the ceilings are way too low. We all have scars from smashing our skulls of the load-bearing beams. Two, the furnace is exposed and it's as loud as jet. Three, the foundations leak every time it rains. Four…"

"Okay, ass!" Nephrite interrupted, "You made your point, stop drilling it."

"I don't see why we couldn't have applied for a franchise on one of the bigger chain restaurants." Zoisite added as he methodically brushed his hair, "I mean, they come in and set the place up and do all the work for you!"

"Because we want something unique, Zoisite." Kunzite said helpfully.

"And because not all of us are passive and slovenly prima donnas who spend the majority of their days blogging about how many dishes his roommates made the night before and neglected to clean." Nephrite added somewhat less helpfully.

"Once!" Zoisite fumed on the edge of tears, "I did that once!"

"Guys, please!" Kunzite pleaded as he threw down his menu on the table, "I know we can't help being dicks to each other, but can we try to keep it in check today? I will visit legendary pain upon each of you if you can't keep your mouths shut!"

"Yeah, Nephrite!" Zoisite said petulantly and crossed his arms across his chest, almost causing his waist-girding towel to fall off.

Nephrite rolled his eyes like a five-year-old, tapped Jadeite on the shoulder, and stuck his thumb out, pointing at Zoisite as if to say "Get a load of this!" Zoisite just shrugged it off and continued brushing away at his penny-blonde mane. Suddenly a knock came at the door and Kunzite jumped in his seat.

"God damn it, he's here!" the minty-haired man announced and leapt from the table, "We've been standing around bickering so much that now we're late! Good job, assholes!"

"Who are these realtors?" Nephrite asked somewhat professionally, "Did you check them out? Do you know anything about the guy they're sending?"

"I know his name is Andrew and he's from Crown Realty, they're like triple-A realtors." Kunzite explained, "They only deal with start-up businesses like us and they have a damn impressive track record when it comes to scouting out prime locations. They're the best I could find."

"My piano teacher's name is Andrew." Jadeite commented uselessly.

"Crown Realty?" Nephrite gagged on the name, "Sounds like the type of place with bars on the windows."

The knock came again and Kunzite raced to the door while simultaneously attempting to shoo the remaining Shitennou out of the kitchen so as to not make them look like a rag-tag group of unkempt misfits. They all stayed firmly glued in their places. Kunzite swung the door open and was met by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, middle-aged man wearing a $60 dollar gray suit with a blue silk tie and sporting a polite, but decidedly on-edge smile. Kunzite couldn't help but feel that this man felt strangely familiar.

"Hello!" Kunzite greeted cheerfully and shoved his hand out for a shake, "You must be Andrew from Crown?"

Andrew didn't make an attempt to shake Kunzite's hand. He simply stared straight ahead, cleared his throat, adjusted his tie, and suddenly launched directly forward, falling face-first into Kunzite's chest. His hands flailed wildly as they grasped at Kunzite's waist for support. He had to react quickly to keep Andrew from falling and smashing his nose off the concrete stoop.

Then, just as Kunzite was about to question what just happened he understood that Andrew had been shoved from behind when he heard a second voice cry out, "Go on, give him a hug! Kunzite loves hugs!"

Immediately the normally reserved and stoic king degenerated into a whimpering child. Thankfully he would never let those feeling ascend to the surface of his conscious mind, let alone be expressed physically. It was only deep on the inside that he felt the pang of woe, and it only lasted for a moment. His will faltered on occasion, but it never failed. He hoisted the fallen Andrew to his feet, swatted him heartily on the shoulder and glanced behind him to see exactly what he expected to see.

Mamoru was sitting in a wheelchair sporting his trademark confused, but eternally jolly grin. He waved at Kunzite with one hand while rolling one of the chair's wheels with another, driving himself in a tight circle. The wheelchair made a peculiar rat-a-tat-tat noise and Kunzite realized that Mamoru had clothes-pinned a playing card to the axle so it flapped in the spokes of the wheel like a seven-year-old trying to make his bike sound like a motorcycle. He was wearing dark sweatpants, a New York Giants baseball cap, and a green novelty t-shirt that simply said MOJO.

"I'm sorry, he insisted!" Andrew squeaked in the tiniest voice possible, sensing that something was bothering his soon-to-be client.

"It's uh, no problem at all!" Kunzite announced and walked forward to greet his master, "What do you say, boss? You're looking, uh … better."

"Yeah!" Mamoru announced and jumped up out of the wheelchair, perfectly limber and healthy. The chair went rolling away, rat-a-tat-tatting, "The doctors said I'm like a one in a million to pull such a quick recovery."

Kunzite raised an eyebrow at the vacant wheelchair and asked, "So why did you keep that?"

"Are you serious?" Mamoru asked and almost scowled, but he couldn't quite scrunch his brow far enough so he kind of just made a chipmunk face, "Haven't you ever wanted to have a chair you could drive? A chair with wheels?"

Kunzite thought about the rolling chair up his room that he sat in every night. He also thought about the rolling chair in his office at work and all the chairs in the conference rooms which also had wheels. His brain rolled its eyes, which didn't translate to Kunzite's face thanks to his millennia of mental gymnastics to keep that from happening. He simply grinned and nodded his head.

"So what are you doing here?" Kunzite asked and scratched the back of his head, "Do you know Andrew or something?"

"Know him?" Mamoru laughed and launched himself towards Andrew with such blinding speed that even Kunzite's superhuman eyes had trouble keeping up. He screamed "SERGEANT RAM!" and head-butted Andrew square in the ribs. The blonde realtor doubled over in pain, dropping to his knees with a deflated wheeze before toppling to the ground and into the fetal position.

"Of course I know him!" Mamoru cried ecstatically, "I knew him since we were boys. Hell, we even roomed together in college. Sergeant Ram was our handshake at the Delta Kappa Episilon house."

Andrew squirmed pathetically on the ground as Kunzite heavily sighed and Mamoru watched with an awkward grin. The other three Shitennou suddenly crowded through the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk as well. Jadeite traded his blue bath robe for jeans and a black button-down dress shirt. Nephrite was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday and rudely scratched at his crotch while observing the situation. Zoisite was still wearing a towel.

"What the hell happened here?" Zoisite asked in a disapproving tone.

"Looks like Kunzite beat up another Jehovah's Witness." Nephrite assumed.

"That never happened!" the eldest king demanded and threw himself between the line of sight of the other Shitennou and Mamoru. He turned back to his master and reassured him, "It's a joke, just a joke. He uh … tripped."

"Kunzite, Kunzite, Kunzite…" Mamoru sighed as he wrapped his arm around Kunzite's broad shoulder and pulled the reluctant king close to him, "Beating up a Jehovah's Witness isn't something you need to keep from me. Hell, I killed a Tibetan monk once."

"No you didn't!" Kunzite shouted, startled, and in denial.

"I mean, it was an accident!" Mamoru assured him and patted his chest, "See, I was a refugee and this old Tibetan monk found me living in a cave and he was all like, "Hey, do you want me to train you?" and I was all, "Wow, a real monk! You're probably awesome at martial arts!"

Mamoru continued rambling: "So we went to this temple and he was like, "You need to face your fears!" and we fought with swords and knives and those little smoke-bomb things. Just, one day we were training and my chi totally got unfocused 'cause I get what they call The Sense and I go berserk to the point I can't stop myself and I accidentally killed him! But as he died he told me, "You are my greatest pupil and you will use your curse for good!" so then I totally went back and burned the temple down because I discovered … they were all vampires!"

The Shitennou all stood dumbstruck for several moments before Kunzite spoke for the rest of them: "Well isn't that something?"

"That never happened." Nephrite spoke in monotone.

"Yes it did!" Kunzite shouted at him, a fake grin plastered over his gritting teeth.

"Dude, no. That's like a drunken mash-up of Blade, Batman Begins, and The Last Dragon." Nephrite explained as he swatted his flailing hand in Mamoru's direction, "I think that accident took a bit more out of him than he was already missing."

"Hahahahahaa!" Mamoru laughed as if he were at a stand-up routine, "Ah, Neffy! You can always make me laugh!"

"Is that guy gonna be alright?" Jadeite asked, pointing at Andrew who was still moaning on the ground in pain, "It'd be a shame if he died on our front sidewalk."

"If we drag him to the back we could let him die in the garden." Nephrite suggested, "Lord knows we'd save some cash on fertilizer."

"For the love of shit …" Kunzite mumbled, so beside himself and distraught with rage that he was forming terribly inappropriate and confusing vulgarities, "I'll just fucking do it!"

He bent down and retrieved the crumpled form of their realtor off the ground and he stood him upright, brushing off his suit and attempting to slap some sense back into him with a few good body shakes. Andrew woozily came to and managed to support his own weight again, but he looked so terrified that Kunzite actually began to feel a little bad.

"So, are we ready to get this party started?" Mamoru asked excitedly and rolled his hands one over the other like 60's-era evil villain nefariously plotting a dastardly scheme.

"Wait, are you coming with us?" Zoisite asked and clutched at the towel that was barely girding his waist, "Aww, I'm gonna have to get dressed!"

"No, I'm not just coming with you!" Mamoru announced, "I want to be part of this too! I've always wanted to have my own restaurant. I think it would be a like having my own little kingdom to command with salt and pepper shakers as my loyal subjects and an army of forks, knives, and spoons!"

"Acutally, it's a bar and grill." Kunzite explained to the excitable Mamoru.

"Wait, how did you even find out about our plans to open a restaurant?" Zoisite asked.

"Bar and grill." Kunzite corrected again, more forcefully.

"Haha! Because of this!" Mamoru announced and pulled a leather-bound menu out of his back pocket, the same one that had been mailed to the Shitennou earlier.

"Sorry, I opened your mail by mistake again…" Mamoru confessed, "But once I saw it I thought, Wow! I've gotta get in on this! I taped up the envelope again; I didn't want you to get pissed off."

"With duct tape …" Jadeite growled remembering his struggle with the envelope earlier.

"You live on the other side of the city." Zoisite wondered aloud, "How did you accidentally open our mail?"

Kunzite stepped in immediately: "Uh, hey, uh … wow, um… I mean, that's great that you want to help out and all boss, but uh …" he stammered as he tried to think of a good lie to appease his colleagues, "But you see, the thing is we've already kind of got the trademarks and copyrights for "The Four Kings" taken care of. We can't really add a fifth now, heh …"

"Oh, I don't want to own it or anything!" Mamoru reassured him and Kunzite's heart ratcheted back up a few levels from where it previously lay in the pit of his stomach, "No, I was thinking I might just pop in every once in a while like a guest-star. I could even tend bar sometimes! You know I make a wild Screwdriver!"

Kunzite nodded again as his brain threw up all over itself. Kunzite recalled a night of drinking at Mamoru's apartment where the aforementioned Screwdrivers, a hateful concoction of bottom-shelf Vladimir vodka and Sunny Delight, wreaked havoc on their digestive systems and left them with a hangover that persisted for almost two days.

"Well, we can iron out all those details after we find the right place!" Kunzite reassured his master, knowing full well that he would likely forget any interest he had in being a part of their venture after being distracted by something else … like a bouncing ball … "We'd better get on the road before it gets any later!"

"Hell yeah, let's go!" Mamoru shouted and in one motion grabbed Andrew by both ears and shook his head back and forth like a dog, "Quit holding us up, Andy!"

Mamoru spun around on his heels and darted towards Andrew's waiting Ford Expedition. The realtor whimpered and pawed at his now-red ears and sniffed loudly to hold back his tears. He too followed suit and climbed into the driver's seat of the car where, through the windows, the Shitennou could already see Mamoru digging through a tray of CD's for whatever "music" he wanted to listen to.

The Shitennou exchanged glances and Kunzite loudly sighed as if to say "I'm sorry."

Jadeite spoke for all of them: "Look on the bright side: maybe we'll all die in a car accident."