Author's Note: w00t! Thanks for the reviews, you guys! I'm sorry I didn't reply to any of them...I'm not so great with replying xD But I did read them all and appreciate them! Now here's chapter 2! I realize some of it (well, probably most of it) sucks and is probably OOC and cliche. xD;; My writing just sucks like that, you see. XD And also, about the scene with the brick xD--I'm aware that Kenny didn't have to throw a brick to get their attention, but I had to find a way for a certain someone (I won't spoil it for you ;D) to die. XD And the people who everyone refers to as "they" or "them" at the end of the chapter-- I don't even know myself who it is, okay? It could be anybody in the world. So, if you like it, leave meh a review! cB
"Eric Cartman...hmmm..I think so. I think he hangs out with my brother," the kid said.
"Who's your brother?" Kenny mused, hoping to get somewhere.
"Why his name's Kyle. He and Eric don't get along too well though..." he started.
A light turned on in Kenny's mind. Kyle and Cartman!
"Hey! You're Ike, aren't you? You're Kyle's younger brother!"
"Yep, that's me, Ike...How did you know!" Ike was puzzled. Kenny stared at him. He now noticed that Ike was maybe about ten years old now, and he'd grown a hell of a lot for only ten years.
"I'm Kenny! I used to know you! Before I...died the...last...time..." Kenny realized this wasn't going to make any sense to little Ike, who probably didn't remember Kenny anyway, or his eccentric tendency to be dead a lot. "Never mind. Hey, do you know where Kyle is right now?"
"Yeah, he's out with Eric and Stan. That's the reason I'm here right now -- Kyle didn't want to bring me with him cuz he says I embarass him. And he can't play kick the baby anymore, so he made me go somewhere else. They're all at Stan's house," Ike said.
"Aw dude, thanks a lot!" Kenny beamed and went off hurriedly to where Stan used to (and hopefully he still did) live.
Kenny went up to the house and rang the doorbell. A girl about nineteen years old answered, and Kenny could barely say anything once he fatefully set his eyes upon her...
That girl is SEXY, hot-dayum! Kenny thought to himself, practically drooling.
"What do you want, faggot?" the girl said. Her brown hair was spiked up and she would, without question, stick out in a crowd in her dark, spunky punk-rock attire. She had several tattoos splattered all up and down her arm (most of them were demons or demon-related) and at least six facial piercings. She was Shelley Marsh, and now had very straight teeth (and no dental headgear, either) and a slim, sexy rocker body.
Kenny tried to get a hold of himself. He rolled his shoulders quickly and smoothed back his messy hair. "Is uh..Stan here?"
"Yeah, the little weirdo is up in his room. Who are you, dipshit?" Shelly snapped quickly, sounding annoyed. Kenny apparently liked smartass girls now.
"Kenny..."
"Kenny McCormick? As in the one who died ten years ago? No fucking way! Get the hell out of here, you're not fooling me!" she shrieked and slammed the door. Kenny sighed heavily.
It started to snow again as he walked towards the back of the house. Hopefully he could get Stan and the other boys' attention by throwing a rock at his bedroom window or something. He found the window, and realized he could climb up it if he was careful.
Older Kenny was actually pretty graceful and limber, he thought. Hopefully he wouldn't still have that bud-luck, dying-all-the-time thing now. When he looked in, Kyle, Cartman, and Stan (who all looked older, but he couldn't really see their appearances too well since it was dark in there) were watching something on Stan's computer.
"Staaaaaan!" Kenny called out raspily, as not to get the attention of anyone else in the house besides the boys'. "Kyyllle! Cartmaaaaaan!"
No one heard him. Kenny, vexed, jumped down off the side of the house and grabbed a brick that conveniently set on the ground. He climbed back up again and tossed the brick gently through Stan's window. The brick caught their attention, all right -- it hit Stan right in the head, hard!
Stan toppled over to the side pathetically at once. Kyle and Cartman turned over towards him.
"Oh my God! They killed Stan!" Kyle exclaimed. Kyle sounded a hell of a lot different from his high-pitched childhood voice.
"You bastards!" Cartman joined in. Kenny was shocked by how much Cartman had changed, too.
"Hey, that's supposed to be my line, fatass!" Kyle snapped.
"Ay! You can't call me fatass anymore, remember? Goddam, we've been through his a million times before!" Cartman retorted. He was right, Kenny realized it now -- Cartman was so slim! Not as slim as Kenny was, of course, but for being a fatass as a child, Cartman sure was thin. His facial expressions had changed too, and his hair was now a much lighter brown than before. He was almost unrecognizeable to Kenny, if he'd had passed him on the street.
Kyle and Cartman realized that what had killed Stan was a brick, and slowly their eyes moved to the window, where Kenny was sitting.
"K-k-Kenny!" Kyle managed to stutter. "Kenny! ...Kenny!" He couldn't believe it.
"Holy fuck, dude, he's alive again!" Cartman shouted.
"Yeah, it's me, guys! It's so awesome to see you again!" Kenny said, slipping agiley through the window and into the room. "But...do you guys remember what happened?"
"Dude! D-d-dude!" Kyle stammered. Kyle had changed a lot, too: his hairstyle had been tamed to slightly long and curly red hair, and his appearance had only gotten more handsome. He was wearing black eyeliner (dark, emo eyes), was still a tad short, and wore almost all black clothing -- he was pretty much a goth now.
Cartman sighed apathetically, rolling his eyes. "Don't mind him, Kenny, you know how he is. You don't remember what happened ten years ago?"
"No..." Kenny blinked.
"It was in fact ten years ago today," Cartman said. "You got run over by a truck. And you didn't come back like you always did. In the meantime, I've taken over the world, and I'm now your god. So, why don't you go ahead and start bowing down to me, eh, poor boy?"
Cartman hadn't changed at all except for being a fatass.
"Cartman!" Kyle scowled. He turned to Kenny. "He's just being an asshole, Kenny. Anyway. Dude..There's been so much that happened since you've been dead! We're all seniors in high school now. We're all eighteen now. And I really hate to have to tell you, but um...Your dad...um...got in a bad car accident with my dad a couple of years back. They both passed away."
"Aw dude, that sucks ass...I'm really sorry," Kenny began.
"Don't worry about it. And since you've been dead for so long, Stan's the one who uh...kind of took your place. Kind of. I mean, a couple of months after you didn't come back, he just started dying a lot...And then coming back, like you did. But it really sucks when he's gone because then the only person I have with me for the time being is this asshole here." Cartman's eyes shot hatefully into Kyle's. He ignored them and went on. "And everyone's gotten a lot older. Man, you should see Ike!"
"I did!" Kenny interrupted. "He was the one who told me where you guys were."
"Oh, yeah, he really shouldn't be up here with us anyway. Mom made me take him with us. Boy, she can be a --"
"A bitch?" Cartman cut in. Kyle practically growled at him, Cartman snickering.
"Yeah, anyway. Well, before you came, we were watching 'Mansion of 9,000 Dead Things.' You wanna finish watching it with us?" Kyle offered, pulling the media player back up on the computer screen.
"...'Mansion of 9,000 Dead Things'?" Kenny asked, very puzzled.
"Oh yeah, it came out a couple of years ago when you were still dead. This will be the sixtieth time Stan, Cartman, and I have seen it this month. It's become this huge obsession in America since it came out," Kyle explained as Kenny wrinkled his nose in distaste.
After the movie was finished, Cartman and Kyle exchanged exclamations of 'how awesome the special effects were', and how 'fucking disgusting the corpses were' and 'how cool' they were. Kenny wasn't interested in it at all.
"Hey dude, what's wrong?" Kyle said after he'd noticed Kenny's aloofness.
"I don't know what to do now. Do you know what it's like to just miss ten years of your life? Damn," Kenny said all angtsy-like. Kyle frowned at him, and Cartman just looked on.
"Hey, look at the bright side," Kyle suggested, shrugging. "You're free of that dying thing now. That's Stan's problem, now! And you don't have a drunk for a dad now. He can't beat you up anymore. And you probably don't have to go back to school, since you've missed ten years of it. Hell, you can drop out now! And I'm sure you'll be popular with the ladies now, since you're back to life, with a sexy body...I mean, seriously, you're sexy, dude."
"Well..." Kenny cleared his throat nervously and blushed, "Thanks? ..." What the hell? Before Kenny could figure out what was happening, Kyle was lying right on Kenny's chest, leaning very close, smirking deviously...
"Ah dude, lay off him, you fag!" Cartman shot in.
Kenny could have sworn he felt a huge anime-sweat-drop on the side of his forehead as Kyle frustratedly (and reluctantly) rose from where he'd been lying against Kenny. Not just from how nervous he'd been, but also maybe because Kenny might have liked what had just happened a little bit...
"Yeah, ya see, Kyle heretold us allabout three months ago," Cartman explained smugly. "He's as gay as Big Gal Al, dude. And that's pretty gay."
Before Kyle could say anything smartass-ish back, Stan's bedroom door swung open and made a huge almost-hole in the other side of the wall from the impact. It was Stan's mother.
"Boys! Boys, oh hurry! Follow me, we've got to get to the bomb shelter!" she shrieked.
"Wait, what?" Kyle exclaimed. "What's wrong, Mrs. Marsh?"
"They're using biochemical warfare! They've unleashed..." her voice trailed off, making this situation a hell of a lot more dramatic.
"...deadly chickenpox into the atmosphere!" she finished.
Everyone in the room -- except Kenny, who was still trying to take everything in -- gasped loudly in alarm.
"Deadly chickenpox," Cartman murmured almost inaudibly with disbelief. "I knew those bastards would try to destroy us some day..." He shook his head.
"Damn it! What's going to happen, Mrs. Marsh? Are they gon..." but before Kyle could finish, Mrs. Marsh took hold of his hand.
"Come on boys! Get Stanley, maybe he'll come back to life sooner or later. We're heading for the bomb shelter!" she yelled, dragging Kyle out of the bedroom door.
Cartman stood and picked up Stan off his bed and put him gently on his shoulder, so as to carry him. Cartman's body was slim, but his build was still strong enough to carry Stan, who was now a little bit chunky, and tall. Stan had changed a lot physically, too, Kenny noticed -- from the look of his body shape, Stan was probably an even more amazing football quarterback than when Kenny had last seen him play football.
Kenny followed Cartman out the door and the downstairs, and out the of the house.
"Hurry, quickly boys, quickly! Deadly chickenpox has alreadyinfected the air!" Stan's mom yelled frantically from the raised entrance of the underground shelter. Cartman and Kenny ran as quickly as they could and practically dove right into the cellar.
Mrs. Marsh shut the entrance immediately and led the two down the steps into the actual shelter.
"Now um...what exactly is deadly chickenpox? And who did this to us?" Kenny asked when they all found a spot in the first room of the cellar.
"They did," Mr. Marsh softly proclaimed ominously, who sat on the floor. "They did."
Kenny's very confused expression didn't push Mr. Marsh to elaborate, nor anyone else.
"Deadly chickenpox is like chickenpox," Cartman began. "Only...deadly. Yeah, they discovered it back when you were dead, Kenny. There's no cure for it. And...it's deadly."
Kenny sighed. In ten years' time, the world would go crazy, and even more stupid than it was before, he thought to himself.
"Yeah, you fuckin dumbass," Shelley chimed in. Kenny's heart skipped a beat; he'd forgotten about Shelley! His heart melted and helooked over at her. Hisflirty expressionwas returned by Shelley with a dark scowl. "Dickhead," she muttered.
"Shelley Marsh! Don't you call Stan's little friend a dickhead!" Mrs. Marsh admonished her daughter. "By the way, Kyle? Who is your little friend?"
"Don't you remember Kenny? Kenny McCormick, the one who died a lot when we were kids?" Kyle asked.
"Oh, the little poor boy? Didn't he die for good, though?"
"Yeah, but he's back now. It took him ten years to come back to life, for some reason," Kyle finished. Apparently this was okay with the Marshes, as if it were a commonplace happening.
All of them sat there in silence for the longest time, withthe news channelplaying faintly on the television in the background so that they could keep track of what was happening. Kenny tried to think of all these new things that were hitting his mind so fast -- he was now eighteen years old, his best friend was attracted to him, there was a war going on, they were all trapped underground together for god knew how long, his other friend was dead, and he wanted Stan's sister. Kenny looked around the room, only to see Kyle's deep brown eyes meet his own.
