Chapter 10
So Rio actually made a latte out of earth, wind, and water. He did this by putting dirt in the espresso machine instead of ground espresso, powered the machine with wind power, and used water from a nearby stream instead of tap water. He questioned how it could be a latte without milk and espresso, but put that thought aside as he gazed upon the finished product.
Rio was about to try to latte himself, when the giant shark artist walked into the shop.
"Ooooh, what is that? I would like one of those, please!" the shark said excitedly.
Rio was so pleased to have a customer that he handed the latte to the shark, only charging half of what a Starbucks latte would cost. Soon he would be able to sell lattes that were triple the price of a Starbucks drink. Rio was taking his first step towards conquering the world of coffee!
Or so he thought, until the shark spit the drink out and started sobbing about its disgusting flavor. Rio's spirit was broken as he watched the shark run out of the shop.
"Are my ambitions a game to you?" Rio asked the Kenma.
"Perhaps the shark's taste is so unrefined he could not recognize a good latte when he tasted it?" Mele said, trying to encourage her wounded lion.
"It doesn't matter. He will tell Master Shafu of my failure, and my enemies at Starbucks will laugh at me," Rio clenched his fist. Without pausing to stare at it dramatically, he brought his fist down on the cash register. Paper bills erupted forth and flew around the shop like feathers in an ethereal display that had absolutely no fucking meaning.
Rageku grabbed a handful of the bills and absorbed it into her jellyfish cleavage. "That's hardly something to be concerned over when you have yet to master coffee-making the Kenma way-trade mark."
"Whoa-whoa!" Kata cried in surprise. "We got that shit trademarked? When was this?"
"Switzerland 1928," Rageku answered before continuing when Rio grew even more frustrated with the ADHD Kenma. "What I mean, Rio, is that you still have a long ways to go."
"But I used the ingredients as you instructed!" Rio argued.
Kata reached for the rejected latte and sipped it thoughtfully. "Where is the fart?"
"Excuse me?" Rio flummoxed.
"Fart. Flatulence, whatever you call it. The air element is missing entirely from this."
"I used wind power," Rio answered him. He pointed to a rather impressive home-made windmill created from Miki's child's stash of marijuana leaves stationed nearby.
"Legality aside, you need to use the essence of wind as an actual ingredient," Kata advised the black lion.
"And you should also have used water from the sea, not this fresh water bullshit from a stream," said Rageku.
"I am not going to fart into my coffee," Rio seethed. "I can't even begin to fathom such a degrading suggestion."
Kata crossed his arms. "Then you have much to learn."
"What about all that crap you said about using my hatred? Were those lies?"
"Pretty much," said Rageku.
Rio was completely exasperated at this point. Obviously these Kenma weren't to be trusted. He looked over at Mele who was still trying to perfect her own coffee making. As patronized as he felt watching her, he also felt proud and rather touched that she was trying her best. He caught himself off guard once more by how genuinely happy he felt for his wife; this simple but pure emotion helped to keep his anxieties at bay. After all, it was Mele who had called on the help of these Kenma. Surely they had something to offer him, even if he had to deep dig or dig deep or DP within himself to find it.
"Okay, try this!" Mele said suddenly after finishing her brew. She skipped over to Miki's child who looked higher than a kite. Apparently she had snuck out to smoke while Rio had made his shameful Kenma latte.
"Maaaaan," drawled the teenager after chugging the whole thing despite the temperature. "This shit is soooooo fucking amazing... So amazing... zing-zing... zing. That's onomotopeia."
Mele took the baseless compliment. Her celebration however was cut short when she felt Rio's glare. She turned to her husband and her heart dropped at the array of different emotions tugging at his handsome features.
"Shit, cramps...," Miki's child cried before running to find some medicine in the sink.
"Will you take our advice or not?" Maku finally asked. He was a Kenma of few words and master of keeping it classy. He almost balanced out the other two, who were trashy as hell and unbearably annoying.
Rio looked away from Mele and targeted his glare at the Earth Kenma. "It appears I have no choice."
But there was one problem: while the average person passes gas around fourteen times a day, Rio hadn't farted in over one hundred years.
Meanwhile, just as Rio had predicted, the artist shark had run to Starbucks.
"Welcome!" Gou sobbed and greeted, still upset over how he was going to prove his younger brother's innocence. He saw the shark's tears and immediately went over to comfort the patron. "There, there, pumpkin-pie. Tell Gou what's wrong," he consoled the animal.
"I...I drank the...the worst la...la...la" The shark could not finish. The coffee drink he had tasted was so incredibly foul that he could sell his own mother to a pimp if it could pay for electric shock therapy to erase his mind of the memory. He took consolation in the fact that coffee couldn't possibly get any worse than that.
Rio did not look happy as he unbuckled his pants and prepared to aim his rear end at the latte cup, which was already filled with the proper amount of dirt and sea water.
"Rio-sama~" Mele helped her husband get situated but he only waved her off, just as he'd declined her suggestion to use her mighty wind power instead. As powerful as she might be, his Pride kept him from receiving any more assistance than he already was getting.
Mele was also worried because she knew of her husband's rather peculiar condition. Due to his inability to pass gas, they had been unable to eat at Thai and Indian restaurants where spicy food was served, and the mere mention of Mexican food would drive Rio up the wall. Being unable to fart, Rio's intestines and appendix might have exploded.
"The wait begins," Rio said wryly, slipping into a meditative state where he hoped the answer of how to fart would lie.
Jan woke up on the floor of the womens' restroom again. He had a vague memory of his dream in which he was a female direwolf that needed to pee. As his reoccurring dreams continued to reoccur, Jan grew more perplexed. What did it all mean?
He got up and messed up his hair, suddenly overcome with immense feelings of ujan-ujan. As images of his dreams faded into the likeness of Rio (as all of his mental images did), Jan became frustrated that he could not find his best friend, a man for whom he had come to slowly develop feelings that transcended just caring.
He screamed and ran out of the restroom, past Gou who held the still-sobbing shark. He tripped over the gay samurai and fell flat on his face. He wasn't knocked out, but decided that if he stayed down perhaps Rio would come to help him up. Until his knight in shining black and gold armor came to save him, Jan would just nap on the floor.
"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," Gou told the artist.
The shark sniffed. "I think I'm okay now, but that Rio-guy really needs to-"
Gou was on full alert now. "Did you say Rio? As in that beautiful sexy man-lion that I call my best friend, my brother from another mother, the Brutus to my Caesar?"
"Didn't Brutus betray Caesar?" the shark asked.
Gou laughed. "Rio would never betray me. Not in a million years! I can't even imagine a situation where he would become so obsessed with power and strength that he'd kill our martial arts master and comrade, forcing me to become a wolf-man via forbidden ShiGeki to stop him." Gou laughed some more. "Completely absurd, I say!"
The shark was touched by the beautiful yet oddly specific scenario. It inspired him to draw, so he flipped onto his back and used his dorsal fin to carve a portrait into the floor of Starbucks. He could only think to draw Rio, mostly to relieve his stress at consuming the world's most wretched beverage known man and fish alike.
He finished the piece in about an hour and forty-five minutes with fifteen minutes to spare. So he gave his completed work a good look and cried over how bad his skills were. His portrait of Rio looked more like Data from the Prince of Tennis musicals. That ugly, spiky nonsense of a hair-style looked nothing like Rio's regal mane.
Gou, however, could recognize his bestie anywhere. "That's Rio! So you did see him!" He grabbed the shark in desperation. "Please, you must tell me where you saw him!"
The shark, wanting to redeem himself, drew Gou an overly-complicated map that required the use of Gou's frequent flier mile. Somehow he'd racked up tons from surfing the web and googling himself to which the results were nonexistent.
Gou hopped on the next flight to Seattle.
Rio hopped up when he felt the ring of muscles that comprised his asshole tickle. He would've felt accomplished except that the sensation wasn't a fart, but his fur gently caressing his entrance.
"Rio-sama, maybe if you took off your-"
"Shut-up, Mele."
"Yes, Rio-sama."
Mele began to sulk. It'd been some time since Rio had sat down to meditate and prepare the grandest fart since the dawn of mankind. A few customers had come to the shop since then, but without the only barista, there was no coffee to be made much less served. This, of course, was completely ignoring the fact that said customers had only wanted to use their bathroom.
Not really knowing why, Mele walked over to the employee lounge. There, she overheard something strange.
"That poor child!" said the voice of Rageku. "Are you sure we aren't taking things too far by playing with him like this?"
Someone laughed-Kata. "I'm not playing with him at all. He was the one that assumed that he himself had to fart into the coffee. If only he had stuck around for me to tell him that only my flatulence is adequate, he would not be making a fool of himself like this."
"But he is paying us," Rageku reminded the Air Kenma.
"What would you have me do, tell him the truth and ruin the joke? It's even funnier considering that he can't fart at all!"
Mele gasped. Her husband was suffering while these cruel beings were sitting around enjoying it! She barged in. "You there!" she yelled, pointing at one of them. She wasn't sure who was who.
Maku cracked an eye open. "Me?"
"Hand over your bodily gas to Rio-sama now!" she demanded.
"Oh?" Maku said, amused. "Would he like a sample of my urine as well? I've heard it tastes like mint with a side of kimchi."
Mele scrunched up her nose. "No, just your flatulence will be enough."
Maku laughed and went back to sleep.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Mele snapped, grabbing one of Miki's child's empty bottles of beer and throwing it at the Kenma. The other two gasped. Kata farted out of sheer anxiety. Mele suddenly realized the one she had assaulted was not the Air Kenma. She shrunk a bit in fear.
Maku opened his eyes again. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Nothing!" she hissed, grabbing the actual Air Kenma and running out. "Rio-sama!"
Rio looked up from his meditating just as Kata was thrust in his face.
"They lied to you, Rio-sama," Mele informed him. "Only Kata's gas can be used to make the Kenma latte."
Rio looked absolutely pissed. He glared at Kata. "Is this true?"
Kata quivered, peeing himself. "Maybe?"
A dark purple flame erupted around Rio. While he hadn't been able to deduce what he had wanted to in his trance, mediating had allowed Rio to level up from simply shooting flames out of his eyes to conjuring up one that surrounded him. The flames were simply too intimidating for Kata to handle, and so he farted once more-this time into the latte that Mele had strategically placed under him. The fart's power caused the sea water to froth somehow. The latte was ready to be served.
Meanwhile, the shark looked up from the floor of Starbucks as an eerie feeling came over him. His worst fears were about to come to pass. He could sense it in the wind, even though he was inside. He worried he would not have enough tears to see him through the darkest hour that was yet to come.
"I must prepare for the end of days," said the shark to himself. He walked past the lip-locked samurai and out the door. He envied those boys in their naivete, for they had not tasted anything besides the other's tongue in the eternity that had been the last few days.
Gou stood outside the new coffee shop that Rio had acquired. He had arrived in a significantly shorter time than it would have taken him had he followed the shark's map. Fortunately (and unfortunately) for Gou, he'd been kicked off the Seattle-bound flight after it had been determined that there was no record of him having been come on board. His frequent flier miles were real, but because everyone thought he wasn't, they couldn't be used.
Nevertheless, there he was, come to take Rio back, exorcise his demons and restore Starbucks to its former glory, and he knew just the way to do it. Guitar in tow, Gou entered the establishment along with a group of firefighters.
Mele watched as the firefighters she'd called rushed in and took care of the damage that Rio's latte had caused. Ancient-alien theorists would later describe the event as the wrath of an extraterrestrial god.
Rio had locked himself in the employee lounge, ostensibly to meditate, but the screams of pain coming from Rageku and Kata seemed to indicate otherwise. Maku had left earlier for a mud bath and avoided the entire ordeal completely. Miki's child hid behind the counter stuffing her face with the last of the vegan muffins. This left Mele to worry and worry some more over what was to happen next. She knew in her heart that her husband had the talent and ability and manliness to make the ultimate latte, but it hurt her so to see Rio fail. There had to be something missing.
Resolving to find a solution no matter what, Mele left the partially-scorched building. She bumped into a "stranger" on the way out.
"Hi again, Mrs. Rio!" Gou greeted. Mele gave him that look he knew so well, like she'd never seen him before in her life. Then she continued on her way. "Alright, see you later!" Gou called after her, but she didn't hear him.
Mele swallowed hard, afraid of what she had to do. She would go to Starbucks and steal more of their bacon, even if it might cost her her life. Then she would uncover Starbucks trade secrets and kill Master Shafu to remove competition or something, that part was less important.