Diary Of A Rudie

By Jet Set Yoyo

Summary: The GG's have disbanded, Rokkaku has taken over and no one can skate anymore. Four young kids who looked up to the GG's have the guts to put on their skates and tear up the streets. When Rokkaku arrives and starts taking them down who's going to step in and put Rokkaku back in their place.

Disclaimer: I do not own JSRF or the characters, they're owned by Sega and Smilebit. I only own my own characters.

Another chapter rewrite, nothing much changed here. I added a bit for more background info on the characters as well as cleaned up some grammatical errors. No major changes though.

August 31st, 2013 – Memories of Tag

We're still not even done fixing up the Garage. Tag won't get off his lazy ass and help half the time, the stupid fuck. Cael is useless, he can't lift anything and last thing we need is him hammering a nail into his finger or something. I'm not interested in hearing it, my patience is wearing pretty thin. Keiraan helps out sometimes but there's only so much she can do compared to Tag when he actually puts his mind to it. If she heard me say that though, she'd probably kick my ass.

We haven't done anything against Rokkaku except paint tags here and there which they have cleaned up by the next day and they chase us all over the place. They're crazy serious, I don't know how much more of this we can take. It's gonna start getting cold and we're going to freeze to death. Me and Keiraan can't go home, Cael has no home, and Tag ran away from his and it's a zillion miles away from here anyways. The GG's just have to come back, I'm not giving up and I won't let this team go under. Rokkaku will never catch us.

Never.

Today was awfully weird though. Normally Tag is in a pissy mood at best but today he seemed really down and distance from us. Today's actually when we learned he's a runaway. He never told us before. The only thing we knew was he was from America. Keiraan didn't care all that much and Cael of course was oblivious, just scribbling away.

The day started with me aggravated as I was almost every day now. I woke up Tag and received a punch to the gut as he rolled over and ignored me before I finally tackled him off the couch and he got up to help me out. We worked for a good four hours; a new record for him. Then he complained he was tired and forced me to let him take a break, I won't even tell you how that went.

By the time I found him an hour later I overheard him chatting with Cael behind the old stereo system that no longer worked. I thought about just interrupting them and dragging his lazy ass back to work but something told me to listen, and I did.

"Hey Tag, where'd you come from anyways? You never talk about yourself to anyone." Cael asked him innocently.

"'Cause I never want to talk about it, an' I could ask you the same thing." He looked as though he was contemplating talking about his past, like he was weighing the pros and cons of it all. The pros must've won because he sighed heavily and started his story.

"I grew up in New York City, kind of similar to Tokyo-To maybe even bigger. I lived with my Mom in a ratty rundown apartment. Mom was never home, she'd send me to school in the morning and that was all I saw of her in the day. She wouldn't come home 'til late and when she did she was piss drunk; practically passed out in the living room all the time. I'd always wait up for her but when she came in she was always with a man or too drunk to even know I was standing in front of her fucking calling out to her."

Tag's face contorted as he continued. I couldn't tell if it was anger or pain, maybe both. I could only imagine. My parents loved me, at least I'm pretty sure. I lived with my Grandma before all this anyway. I mean, if I really wanted to, I could always go back. It seemed like he couldn't go, even if he had a way to get back to America.

"When I came home from school every day, the door was always unlocked, there's nothing we had worth stealing anyway so I'd just play by myself hoping she'd come home and play with me for once. Yeah and pigs fucking fly. The neighbor lady knew more about my mom than I did, she'd come over around dinner time and have me go to her place for food."

He then looked up and noticed me standing there, just listening. I would've thought he'd be pissed off. Though he seemed angry enough after saying all that, it wasn't directed at me. Something always set him off but he just stood there before continuing on. I didn't even notice until after that Keiraan was standing beside me listening in too.

"If I ever asked her about it in the morning, she'd always tell me some bullshit lie like work ran late or she had to work so much so I could eat. That she was acting like that because she was really tired or the people she brought home were customers so she could get extra money. I was too goddamn trusting and naïve to realize I never actually ate at home anyway. By my thirteenth birthday I was pretty fucking sure she was toying with me, there's no way it really took all night to make enough money to feed a kid who never ate at home anyway. I took a walk down the road on my own and there she was climbing into the backseat of a car with some random guy. I was so pissed I went home, I stayed up all night just so I could see her when she came home and she wasn't even coherent enough for me to bitch at her. She just smelled of alcohol and weed."

He stopped for a moment again, maybe to calm himself down 'cuz he was now looking pretty upset. He was even shaking a little bit. I'd bet those memories were pretty painful; I'm not sure why he'd be willing to recall them just for us to hear. On the streets it doesn't matter where you're from, what you've done or what's happened to you. All that matters is that you don't get caught.

"That next day the same man she was with the other day must've seen me as I watched them because he drove by and grabbed me into his car. Yanked me in just like in one of those movies. He held his hand over my mouth and another guy in the car called my mom. I couldn't believe what was happening to me, I was SO fucking scared I just kept begging her to come save me but she said something to the men and next thing I knew I woke up on Chou Street. How the hell did I even get from America to Japan! I stole a pair of skates from a guy who was supposed to be disposing of a bunch of 'em and found you guys. Simple as that."

He ended it like nothing even mattered, trying to cover up the fact that he was so upset about the whole thing. That bastard; making himself seem cooler.

"Hey man, I'm sorry." I said, like it would somehow make things better. Dunno why I did it; like I said on the streets nothing but survival matters, especially now. He didn't have a cocky remark for me, no rude gestures, nothing. Just went back to work with me, that damn near gave me a heart attack.

Constructive Criticism is greatly appreciated.