67 Helter Skelter 2 Electric Boogaloo

Little James is standing closest to me, holding a confetti cannon aimed right at my face that I think I am going to become intimately familiar with in a moment.

He is wearing an asymmetrical costume or reds and blacks with an elaborate joker mask and hat combo with those bits of fabric hanging off either side and above his head, each with a jingling bell at the end.

His mask also has a large cheshire grin on it, similar to my own except his isn't blacked out like mine is. Finishing the look is a letter J in the same location as Mr K's K and just as fancy looking.

Then off to one side there is another pair of capes. One of them is a tall, buff man who's mask covers only half his face and is chequered red and black with each of the squares having a heart of the opposite colour inside of it.

Next to him is a shorter, more stocky man who's mask covers his whole face and is pure black with only a large red heart taking up the upper half of its surface while there is a letter A that looks like it has been drawn over twice where his mouth would be.

It actually looks kind of cool. The letter does, at least.

At the same time, on the other side of the room there is another three people, though only two of them are standing together, the two non capes might I add.

The one alone is a young woman, probably younger than me at a glance, though still way older than mini James, so maybe 15 or so?

Seems about right.

She's wearing a mask that is basically exactly the same as My K's, just with the letter Q instead of K and somehow it's only then that I actually get the card theme and assume them to be 'King' and 'Queen'.

With the age difference, I sincerely hope that that is a purely symbolic thing and not in reference to any interpersonal relationships, else I might have to actually teach little James something responsible.

What would he think of me then?~

The final two are both wearing normal clothes, though with a lot more red than one would likely normally wear, so I assume that is the gangs main colours.

It only took me a brief moment to glance around and take in the faces, or masks, of everyone present, which means that the moment I look away from the two non capes, I have no time to say anything before a plume of confetti smacks right into my unmasked face.

"SURPRISE!!!"

I ignore mini James' shout in favour of staring blankly at the floor and pretending that the confetti cannon hurt me more than it did, which is not at all.

"...ow." Is my lame response as I turn to look accusingly at Jinx, forcing a tear to my eye.

He just chuckles at my glare and I decide that the floor is comfortable and don't bother getting up as I roll to face little James.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got this niggling sensation that I was expected?" My annoyed tone does a poor job of hiding the amusement beneath it, but that amusement does and even better job of hiding the genuine annoyance that I am feeling.

I was supposed to surprise them yet I got the tables turned on me, how lame.

It's kind of fun though. I wonder how they knew I was coming? I'm pretty sure there shouldn't have been anything or anyone to let them know.

The only answer I can think of is that March called ahead to exact her revenge as quickly as possible, but that doesn't really check out for a few reasons, such as the fact that she's never spoken to either of them before in her life.

"Yup! Jinx came up with this surprise for you after hearing about what you were gonna do to him!" Mini James exclaims, showing exactly zero regard for selling out his compatriot.

Something that Jinx clearly doesn't appreciate as my accusing eyes land on him once more.

As we continue staring at each other, the tension in the room rises slightly, everyone becoming slightly nervous. Well, everyone except us Clowns as the next moment I start laughing with Jinx and little James joining in shortly thereafter.

The others in the room let out some weak chuckles but I ignore them as I get to my feet and wrap little James up in a hug, spin him around and finish by throwing him at Jinx.

"WAAAHH!!!" The sound of his joyful scream as he flies for Jinx is quickly followed by the crashing sound of both of them falling into a pile of broken stalls.

Suddenly the smell of blood crashes into me and I realise that Jinx has been impaled by one of the stool legs.

"Hahahahahahaha!~" Naturally instead of moving over to help I just burst out laughing even harder, bending over with one hand on my waist and pointing at him with the other.

Eventually things calm down. Little James gives Jinx an injection of 'anti-bleeding' which works as advertised and we end up sitting around a table, the three of us, with everyone else standing or sitting around the edges of the room.

"So!" I start with a clap. "What's new?~"

Little James looks to Jinx but he gestures for him to speak, which he does with fervour.

"I am 𝘴𝘰 glad you asked! First of all I started that gang like what you said. We're called Red Hearts, in memory of Red Branch since we ended up taking in most of their members when the gangs all collapsed, oh yeah, the gangs all collapsed after your show but anyway.

"Red branch fell apart, same as Street Saints and then when I was founding the Hearts this guy shows up at my door and he's all like 'Hey I know you're starting a gang and all and it just so happens that I have a bunch of people looking for a flag to rally to since their bosses mostly kicked the bucket' and I was like, hell yeah that's awesome!

"Turns out that guy was some dude called Solomon who used to be a part of Red Branch, and like, the right hand of Cu or something. Anyway it turns out that he's kind of a dick cuz he was totally down with betraying Cu and he's also a massive pussy so sometimes I call him sex but he can see the future sometimes and that's how we knew you were coming-"

"PAUSE!!" I shout, interrupting his passionate story telling.

I bring my hands up to form a T and take a deep breath.

"Time out. You're saying that one of the leaders of Red Branch betrayed the other and then came to you offering you manpower?" I ask, confused as to why that would happen.

"Yup!" He exclaims with a smile, giving no further explanation.

"...Right. And where is this Solomon guy now anyway?" I hedge with a twitching brow.

"Oh, he's right over there." I turn my head to follow where he's pointing and find myself looking at Mr K.

Huh.

Did not see that coming.

Kind of explains why he reeks of fear even with the confident smirk on his face though.

"You know what? Just finish your story time. I'll save my questions for the end." I decide, leaning back and gesturing for him to continue.

"Right so anyway, he came over and was all, 'Hey I got people, you need people' because apparently I was willing to offer him a better life than Cu offered, which I didn't know but that's future seers for you I guess so now he's my right hand but he probably won't betray me like he did with Cu.

"'Cuz like I said, he's a big ol' pussy and it's kind of an open secret here that I'm a Clown and they all know that you're a Clown and they 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 have all seen what you're capable of, so he won't turn on me just to avoid you. Thanks for that by the way!~"

I find myself snorting a chuckle and as I turn back to Mr K I find him to be a lot less confident looking which makes me grin wider.

"Happy to help.~" I drawl as I take a slice of jerky from a pocket and take a bite.

"Uhuh. But yeah, Red Branch merged with me and what I had at the time to become Red Heart and I finally decided on a cape name! See, I'm going for a theme, so Solomon is now King, or the King of Hearts you know? Her over there is Queen, though she used to be known as Melty."

I turn over to look at the girl and observe as she seems to shiver the moment my attention falls on her. Not very 'queenly' of her.

Ah well, she's only young. She has plenty of time to get better.

"Then there's Jack, he used to be Siegfried," he gestures to the guy with the chequered mask before moving to point at the guy next to him, "and next to him is Ace, formally Smith, Red Branches Tinker who made all of Cu's spears."

With introductions out of the way, he pushes his chair out and stands on it, striking a pose.

"Then there is I!! Joker! Hahaha!~" His over the top laughter widens my ever present smile and as he jumps back down into his chair he leans forward with his elbows on the table and a face full of expectation. "Well? What do you think?"

I huff a laugh at his question and don't hesitate to respond, as honest as I have always been with him.

"I won't lie.. it's fucking 𝘢𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦~ I mean holy shit! You sure have done some work.~" He beams at my praise but I'm not finished talking and my next words come out more mischievously. "Certainly better than calling yourself Princess.~"

Little James suddenly chokes on nothing and slams his head on the table while Jinx is suddenly far more interested in the conversation.

"Princess?" Jinx asks and I am more than happy to explain.

"Yeah~ he said that his old 'home' was like the tower and his uncle was the dragon, which makes me the knight in shining armour and that leaves him as the princess.~"

Jinx starts pointing and laughing at mini James, even as he groans into the table.

"It made sense at the time." He groans out, drawing out the last word.

Suddenly he sits up and claps, loudly announcing, "As I was saying! The cities gangs went through a whole reshuffle and now I basically control the entire underworld of the city. The Street Saints as well as Bathory from Red Branch came together and reformed themselves into Holy Saints led by Romulus cuz I guess he was getting inspiration from the Holy Roman Empire with his name.

"But they don't really amount to much, with little to no territory and hardly any normals working for them. The only other gang was Famine but since they were basically founded on racism, they didn't really have anything to do now that there aren't any singularly racial gangs left and we came to a deal where they basically work for me now.

"Red Hearts manages the drugs of the city, a lot of which were designed or improved by yours truly while Famine, now rebranded as Dollars manages the protection rackets. Though I tried to do that thing you told me about where we forcefully lower rent and then make them pay what they're saving to us so that we aren't actually costing 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 any money, just the land owners and no one likes them anyway.

"But that distinction helps with our image as people just see us Red Hearts as the drug people while all the 'violent' criminals are with the Dollars. Not much else has happened I guess. The Heroes got a couple new protectorate members and managed to convince one of the Rogues to join their Wards program but that didn't really matter since one of their other Wards decided to quit and go vigilante anyway.

"Also I think that other Hero group was planning on leaving the city, so that's cool I guess. Oh! Oh! I'm also a millionaire now! How crazy is that? Turns out that controlling all the drug sales of a city with like, 800,000 people in it makes you a shit tonne of money, not that I can use it all myself since I gotta pump it back into the biz, but it's still fun to say.~"

Holy shit, he's already a millionaire?

I mean, I knew there was a lot of money to be made in drugs, plus the protection shit and whatever else he has going on, but 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯 that did not take long.

It takes me a moment to close my gaping mouth from the shock of everything he's told me and when I do I end up speaking in a breathless voice before my brain can even catch up with what it is I'm saying.

"Damn kid, thats... 𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨." I all but whisper before I turn to face him, looking him dead in the eyes with a smile full of the pride that I feel burning in my chest.

The next words that come out of my mouth are filled with such truth that no one could ever claim them to be a lie and they cause tears to glisten at the edges of little James' eyes even as a thousand watt smile takes over his face.

"I'm proud of you."

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Ugh, this pit stop is taking longer than I thought it would.

Also yeah, shit has changed thanks to lusia's actions in the time she's been gone. I have no idea if it's reasonable for him to have made over a million bucks by now or not but fuck it, it sounds nice to say.

Also also, you guys are so fucking funny sometimes. It's honestly such a blessing and I love all y'all commenters for it. Seriously, every single day I read through every comment I've got since I last checked and every single day I end up laughing at least once at something you lot have said or a gif you've posted. I thank all you frequent commenters, it means the world <3

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

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