Chapter 13 —Yomotsu Hirasaka and Yuri Petrov Wanted to Kill this Man / Yomotsu Hirasaka and Yuri Petrov are Very Nice People

The 12th could feel the approaching threat as its great weight caused the ground to quake. He could also hear the screams as the various night dwellers of Graceville ran away from the incoming danger. It was Waterfelon—a powerful NEXT that had recently escaped from imprisonment. Because of the sudden influx of NEXT prisoners, the local jail had grown immensely and had begun to request greater means of keeping these dangerous criminals behind bars. They now had cells that were designed to limit the powers of NEXTs, but in Waterfelon's case, his powers were too strong to completely subdue.

Thus it was that a man, inflating himself into the form of a giant watermelon, was rolling through the alleys of Graceville, seeking to squish and squash his sworn enemies: the 12th and Lunatic. The actions of the two, correspondingly, were clever. They chose refuge in the narrowest of cracks in the city. However, there was little that Waterfelon could not smash his way into.

Lunatic's frightening face was obscured in the darkness of their hiding spot, but his eyes were dimly alight. "He is making a mockery of true justice."

The 12th, whose massive head could hardly fit behind the large waste disposal bin they were squeezed behind, whispered back, "This is only a temporary stage in my master plan!"

Lunatic gave him a funny look, but all of Lunatic's looks came across as both funny and frightening with his same-expression-as-ever-holy-crap-not-sleeping-tonight-nightmares-too-spooky mask. "What is your plan?"

The 12th fell silent and then answered in a powerful tone of voice, "To wait as long as we need to."

Lunatic readied his crossbow. A green glow overtook the weapon, and he gave a nod to his partner. "Have fun with that."

With no further warning, Lunatic rocketed his way into the sky, with his body launching vertically with such great force that the waste disposal bin was knocked over in the process. Garbage went flying in front of the 12th, who now found himself without a hiding spot. Waterfelon turned his tiny human head, which sprouted out of the front of his massive watermelon bod. He opened his mouth and a rapid-fire stream of large watermelon seeds was fired toward the 12th. They were no joke, either—they bore holes in the waste disposal system like bullets.

While the 12th expertly dodged the seeds with the aid of his ears, Lunatic hovered above and fired a bolt from his weapon. It stabbed into the rind, and from the wound, the reddish watermelon liquid burst out in streams. Waterfelon howled and only increased his fury with his seed attack.

"I don't like your plan very much, either!" The 12th exclaimed, desperately trying to find sturdy cover.

Lunatic fired off another bolt, then another—and four bolts later, the alley was flooding with watermelon juice. Seeds the size of bullets littered the ground. Waterfelon's body was rapidly shrinking in size, and he had no more force to show.

The 12th approached with caution, but Lunatic descended immediately. He reached down and grabbed Waterfelon's red collar, hoisting up the half-conscious man. As the 12th advanced, he could hear Lunatic whisper to the criminal, "The voice of Thanatos demands your complete retribution, and a sacrifice may be in order to atone for these sins…"

While one hand held tightly to Waterfelon's throat, the other was supporting green fire, and it looked like at any point he was willing to switch which hand was on the man. The 12th scooped in and seized the other arm; he held it back.

"He needs to be handed back to the police!" The 12th insisted.

There was a tense pause, and then the 12th could tell that Lunatic had dispelled the fire and had gently let go of Waterfelon. Lunatic rose to his feet and turned to cool. The 12th pulled out his phone and dialed up the police. They would be here shortly, and justice would prevail as usual.

Then someone appeared nearby. The 12th heard the sound of his footsteps well before he heard the man's taunting: "Still perpetuating your fake 'justice'? Why don't you take off your masks, so we can know what kind of ugly mugs you cowards really have?"

The 12th and Lunatic no longer were absorbed in their little worlds. They looked toward the figure.

"What purpose do you have here? Who are you?" Lunatic questioned.

But the 12th knew, just from the voice, who it was. Perhaps Lunatic could not see in the darkness who it was, or perhaps he truly did not recognize him. But the 12th knew.

"Already forgot about me, huh?" The man asked. "Wow, what a surprise! Even I thought you would have some memory of me—but I guess I am just another victim along the way for you guys, as you continue toward your blind end of false justice! If you actually were doing something useful, maybe I wouldn't have minded, but you're so ineffective… You blew up my car, don't you remember?"

Lunatic paused to think on it. "You could be one of a few people, then."

The man growled. "It was just the other day!" He stomped his foot. "And you didn't even send me an apology card or something!"

The 12th was stoic. "Your reward was that your vehicle served as an instrument of justice…"

"Nonsense!" Yelled back the man. "C'mon, really? You couldn't have taken the guy out without using my car like that? You think I am made of money, like you two? CAPITALIST SWINE. BURGOISE BUFFOONS. I have bills to pay. AND NOW HOW DO I GET TO WORK WITHOUT MY CAR. I WORK ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN."

"I hear the bussing system is satisfactory," Lunatic commented.

"Oh, I love the busses here," the 12th added. "They always smell so nice. And the drivers are so friendly and many have mustaches."

"UGH!" The man was stomping his feet again. "That's not my point! The point is—I want you to pay for my car. It's the least you could do."

The 12th and Lunatic did not quite have pockets or wallets, and so they were mute in response.

"We can just set up a date for you to pay me," the man offered. "Doesn't have to be right now. But I'd like the money soon."

"We have work the next few days," the 12th responded, sadly.

"Well, I am off this upcoming Tuesday," Lunatic suggested.

The man sighed. "I have some appointments in the morning and work that night."

"We could just mail a check!" The 12th smiled at his genius idea.

"Yeah, that'll work," the man responded, but he sounded a bit unsure.

The 12th picked up on this. "Something wrong with that idea?"

"Just," the man admitted, "I don't know if I like the idea of you knowing my address. I mean, you are kind of the people who blew up my car. Heaven only knows what you'd do if you knew where my house is."

"We would pay you back," the 12th suggested, but he felt Lunatic's elbow jab his side right away.

"Then how about we send you the money over ?" Lunatic offered.

"OH YEAH," the man fired up. "THAT WOULD BE GREAT. While we're at it, I can link you to my eBay store. I got some great items up for bid. Do you guys like Daft Punk?"

"OH YEAH WE DO," Lunatic shouted.

"WELL THAT'S GREAT BECAUSE I AM SELLING MY COLLECTION!"

"WOW."

The police arrived to take in Waterfelon, while the two vigilantes had to listen to this man finish off their conversation with more insults against thm. In truth, Yomtosu Hirasaka and Yuri Petrov wanted to kill this man. But as the 12th and Lunatic, they had a responsibility to uphold a higher code of justice. In this case, that meant paying for the car they blew up, as well as buying a new copy of Random Access Memories and a copy of Interstellar 555. Another seller also had adorable Daft Punk bobble heads that they bid on, but they were outbid by some miscreant.

She had this really unfashionable bright pink hooded sweatshirt on with the words "PINK" printed in white around the breast area. The "PI" were on the left, and the "NK" were on the right, and in between them, a peace sign necklace dangled down. Her hair was bleached so it was almost as white as his own hair, but his was natural and gorgeous and not offensive to nature.

Yuri made no motion from his till and matched her dumb look from the other end with his own frowning glare. "What do you want?"

The girl said, while chewing gum, "Well, I, uh, I was jus' looking around, an' I was jus' wonderin', where's you guys' Cheese Nips at?"

Yuri twitched. That was a ridiculous question. First, he could not figure out who would want Cheese Nips. They were clearly inferior to Cheez-Its, and the Cheez-Its were currently on weekly special with other select Kellog's crackers. The second factor was just too stupid not to voice.

"There is a sign above each aisle. It says "snack crackers" on one of those. I'm no genius—but I am thinking that is a good route to take."

The girl chewed her gum for a while, and looked at him.

And he looked at her.

And she said, "Oh."

And he said, "Yeah."

And she said, "Thanks!"

And he watched her run off towards the aisles with her giggling friend. A customer squeezed his way past her and sat his basket of groceries onto the conveyer belt. It was an older man, with a shiny bald landing pad on his head, and a grey mustache. On top of the pile in the basket, there were containers of yoghurt. Below that layer were some boxes of mashed potatoes and some bananas. Below it all was some wheat bread.

"Did you find everything ?" Yuri asked, in a dry monotone voice.

"Oh, yeah, uh," the customer said. "I think so, yeah."

Yuri nodded and scanned the yogurts one-by-one, putting them in a plastic bag to his left. His eyes went back to the basket, and he lifted the bananas, only to see the indent they had left on the bread.

"Your bread is crushed," Yuri said.

"Huh?" The old man asked, looking up from the wallet he had been digging through. "Oh, wow! I must've not been looking when I grabbed it. I didn't realize it was smushed like that."

"Well, it was probably just fine when you picked it up," Yuri said, "but then you put bananas on top of it, and according to the naturals laws that govern this world, heavy things end up damaging less heavy things."

The old man gave him a curious look. "Well," he said, a little flustered, "aren't you gonna get someone to get me a new one?"

Yuri looked around. Their cart attendant and utility workers were all occupied trying to clean up a spill at register 4, three down from where Yuri was stationed. A customer was handing a gallon of milk over the till counter, where the credit card reader was, and the cashier, Mercy, did not grab the handle fully before the customer released her grip. The milk then fell onto one of the metal hooks extending from the bagging carousel, where the loops of the bag handles went. The hook punctured the plastic, and the milk went spilling out along the front end—that was less than two minutes ago, and so the workers who normally helped out with something like this were quite well occupied.

"Our other employees are busy right now," Yuri answered, vaguely gesturing towards register 4. "So, do you want the bread or not?"

The customer looked severely at Yuri. "I want good bread. I'm not paying for bread you guys smushed."

Yuri opened his mouth to speak, but he felt a sudden hand on his shoulder. He turned his head, and there was Yomotsu, leaning forward. His hand was feeling around the bread, which was sitting on the scale. His fingers found the indents where the banana had sat.

"This bread feels damaged," Yomotsu discerned.

"How perceptive of you," Yuri whispered.

Yomotsu raised his head up to the customer and smiled. "Good thing I happened to hear the sound of the bread being smashed and grabbed another one of the same type—as well as one that's similar but $1.00 cheaper."

The customer returned Yomotsu's smile and said, "Oh, thanks! I'll take the new bread—the one that's cheaper. Thanks!"

It was as Yuri scanned the bread through and finished the transaction that he noticed Craig, who had been standing within earshot for a while now, approach Yomotsu. When Yomotsu perceived the existence of his manager, he immediately turned and bowed slightly.

Craig slapped him on the shoulder and took him to register 10, where Yuri could still overhear as he proceeded with the next customer. "You keep this up, Hiro, and you're gunna be runnin' this place before long! Why, when I was your age, I started out as a stocker and worked my way up to where I am today from there. You remind me a lot of myself! I always was torn between my two loves: the grocery business and football. You ever play football, Hiro?"

"Never in my entire life."

"Spoken like a true football player—no one ever plays football. You breathe football. You sweat it. It shows up in your pee during drug tests, and the testers go, 'wow, this guy has football in his pee and probably drinks a lot of beer.'"

"I prefer Grape Fanta, actually."

"Haha, that's a good one, spunky! But I just wanted you to know you're doing great, kid. Keep it up, and a promotion might be in your future!"

Yuri looked over, dreadfully—what did spunky even insinuate, he wondered—and saw Yomotsu fully bowing on the floor to Craig, who had his hands on his hips and was laughing hoarsely. They were both in their green polos, with the white stripes going around the end of the short sleeves, and khakis, but they might as well have been wearing a servant's rags for one and an emperor's garb for the other. Yuri turned back to his customer with a sick feeling.

"Wow, that guy's a lot better than you are," his customer, said. It was one of the new hires, going on his break. "You really suck."

Yuri frowned. "Enjoy your break, Rocco."

The employee lifted his mocha chai latte and little package of potato wedges and went off.

Yuri heard a click, and he saw that his register light had been shut off. His direct supervisor, Luke, was right behind him. He looked ahead, and register 4 had returned to activity, so that all registers up to 6 were open. The lines appeared to be going down. Yuri turned toward his supervisor and braced himself.

"I'm sorry I have to do this, but we have to talk about your cashiering," Luke said.

Yuri nodded.

"Craig was watching your cashiering and talked to me in private about it. He was really impressed with how Hiro stepped into help, but he said that without his help, you were really lowering the quality of our front end. I don't know if I agree with everything he said, but he has some good points… You've been here for a while, and we haven't seen much improvement in you, Yuri. In fact, it seems like you're getting kind of careless."

Yuri nodded.

"Listen, I just know you can do better than this, and I—"

There was a scream nearby, and it came from register 4. Luke immediately bolted three lanes down and went to see what had happened. He began to softly rub Mercy's shoulder, to console her, as he had her explain calmly what was going. It seemed to be working. Yuri was too far away to find out what was happening, but he watched from afar. After all, his light was off, and he had nothing else productive to do. He could start cleaning his register or something, but that just seemed a little too unnecessary for his tastes.

Mercy was a nice girl. Most people at the store really liked her, but of course, even she had her enemies. Much of it, Yuri believed, was due to their jealousy. She was Luke's girlfriend, and that gave her subtle but noticeable preferential treatment, something Craig either was totally oblivious of or simply cared not to correct. She also was, by Yuri's and many other's estimations, quite an attractive young woman. She was a little on the short side, more slender than not, and had a rather pale complexion. Her hair was styled as a sleek and short bobcut. Her bangs were pure blonde, while the blonde on both sides of her head dipped into light blue at the end tips. She had strikingly beautiful blue eyes, but what really was attractive was her personality. She was likable, and therefore, some of the other female employees disliked her and gossiped about her consistently. It was hard to avoid those awkward moments in the break room.

Very rarely was Yomotsu on break when he was, and unlike his roommate, Yuri had not been interested in making friends at work. An employee had never said, "Yomotsu Hirasaka and Yuri Petrov are very nice people," partially because Yomotsu was Hiro of Rai Chestnuts to them and partially because no one really cared about Yuri. For a short while, he received attention for being the roommate and friend of the enormously successful and popular Hiro, but then they realized he was a different sort of employee. Yomotsu took interest in his work, and they took interest in his success and energy. They took interest in Yuri for Yomotsu's success dominantly, and when he ignored their interest, they left him alone.

Luke walked back to Yuri's register. He appeared to have recovered from the little scare, and so had Mercy, who was back to cashiering. The supervisor managed a smile and said, "Sorry about that. There was a package of raw meat had a little opening, and she got some blood on her hands—and, she's vegetarian, as you probably know, and that really freaked her out—but, she's okay now." He looked over his shoulder, and the smile was more genuine. She was back to her usual, upbeat attitude and was laughing with the customers about something.

"Anyways, I think you're someone who likes to get straight to the point," Luke continued. "Craig has told me that he considers you my #1 task right now. Our team in the front end is great. Our new hires are all appear enthusiastic and ready to be trained in. I will be working with them, of course, but they are likely to surpass you and get promoted before you do if we don't help you out. I put in a good word for you with Craig, because I know you can do better. But I don't think I have done my best to help you, so far. So, I have an idea."

Luke crossed his arms, and a different smile appeared on his face. He had something crafty on his mind, and Yuri now admittedly was curious. He had been apathetically, thoughtlessly cashiering. Now there was something actually worth considering—there was the mystery of what Luke might do. He was known for being quite stubborn, but also quite logical and almost always right in the end. He ran more than just the front end, some would say, and often had his way by making suggestions to Craig. Because Craig respected the young man so much, Luke was like a privileged confident—in on company secrets, able to have influence that very few others had. Of course, Craig was not the company owner—they rarely heard from him—but among the other managers he was a key player at Yum Yums. It was weird to think that Luke himself had only recently been made a supervisor, but even in the short period of time, he was making astounding progress in the company.

"I am going to spend every shift with you, from now on," Luke explained. "Mercy is going to be trained in as a supervisor, and she will cover for me so I can work exclusively with you for as long as it takes. Either you will improve, or you will be terminated—and I have staked a lot in you succeeding. I promised Craig you'd be one of our best cashiers, and he is taking a gamble. He was not planning on moving Mercy up like this, so your success may determine whether he regrets this decision or not."

Yuri nodded. "So, no pressure," he joked. He flipped his hair.

"But that's not all," Luke said, and the mischievous smile lingered. "But I'm going to be with you outside of work as well. We hanging out this weekend. Me, you, and Hiro. I will be paying for pizza."

His throat suddenly closed on him, and Yuri felt a cold sweat approaching. "What is the meaning of this?" He whispered, narrowing his eyes.

Luke chuckled. "Don't tell me you want Hiro all for yourself."

Yuri shook his head. "No, no, it isn't like that—"

"Because I could help out those rumors," Luke suggested lightly.

"There's rumors?" Yuri asked, rolling his eyes. "Why am I not surprised…"

"But how about it?" Luke uncrossed his arms and held out his hand. "Look, I moved into the area recently just like you guys, and I really don't have many friends here. I was blessed to have Mercy in my life, but she's asked for a little space, and I could use some guy friends to just hang out and play video games with. And, like I said, I'd be buying you guys pizza. Worst case scenario, you still get free pizza."

Yuri eyed him. He had literally no interest in socializing previously, but now that there was an actual possibility that someone else was truly interested in getting to know him, he realized that Luke did seem like a pretty cool person. He was always so friendly, especially towards Mercy, and he respected anyone who had this much confidence and determination to move forward. Even if Yuri did not care about moving up at Yum Yums, he respected whatever compelled Luke to make something of himself here. He was impressive. Perhaps Yomotsu was just a fad, who dimwittingly somehow had the whole store fooled into thinking he was something special, but Luke looked like as real a deal as anyone. He was Yum Yums through and through; his blood was Yum Yums.

"Only if it's pineapple pizza."