Meathead

The cool ambient lights surrounded Ren and his friends in a blue glow as they sat around a hibachi grill. Ren and Maxis sat opposite of each other on matching blue sofas, smacking their lips at the sounds and smells of freshly grilled meat.

A red hue colored their cheeks, and the faint smell of alcohol mingled with the sizzling meal before them. Ren had been eyeing a particular slice of beef for some time. To his dismay, Maxis had his sights set on the same strip.

The two glanced up at each other for a moment.

"So it's come down to this," Ren said, hiccupping.

"Heh. You're no match for me, small fry," Maxis said, smirking. "I got years of fitness on my side. What have you got?"

"A brain, for starters. Oh, and wit."

"Sure. Sure."

Sunny munched on a graham cracker, amused by their playful jabs. It'd been a busy week, and Sunny missed seeing Ren and Maxis go at it like this.

Ren and Maxis clacked their chopsticks together. The food would be done in five, four, three, two…

The match was over in an instant. Ren was fast, but Maxis was faster.

"As I said," Maxis taunted, "fitness, my man." He rubbed the slab of meat between the chopsticks, clicking his tongue.

Ren sighed, looking to his left.

"Oh, shit! What the fuck is that?" Ren bellowed, pointing at something to his left. Maxis's head snapped around, and that was all Ren needed to seal the deal. Whipping his sticks through the air, he snatched the succulent beef from Maxis's hand, nearly causing Maxis to drop his utensils. In Maxis's hubris, Ren found victory.

"Like I said. Brain and wit." Ren completed the remark by stuffing the beef in his mouth, sighing in contentment. "Good thing there's other, smaller pieces for you to chew on."

"Bastard," Maxis grumbled. "Playin' dirty."

"Not my fault you weren't paying attention." He shrugged.

Sunny giggled.

Maxis settled for a smaller slice of beef and slurped it up. "Strange, though," he said, continuing the conversation from moments early, "that the insurance company is working as quickly as they are. I thought this shit would take a month or two minimum."

"Yeah," Ren said, the remnants of irritation rising and boiling his blood.

"Sorry about your June, by the way."

"Don't be," Ren said in a more aggravated tone than he intended, "it's not like she got hurt or anything."

"Thankfully. But still. That's gotta be irritating."

"Yeah." Ren snapped his sticks together before snatching up another piece on the grill. "Yeah, it is. She's got a lot of nerve getting all pissed off at me for what I do, then turns around a pulls a stunt like that."

"I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it, yeah?" Maxis took a drink of his beer. "She's always had trouble understanding that sorta thing."

"Only when it applies to her. She's just as frail as anyone else. Just wanna know what the fuck is goin' on, ya know?"

Maxis nodded sagely. "I hear ya."

"God, it scared me shitless when Sigg called. You don't open a conversation by going, 'oh by the way, my bar got shot up.' You start by tellin' the guy his sister is okay. Then," Ren gestured like he was moving something over to the table beside them, "you tell me about the shooting. Fuck, man."

"I take it the two of you are still arguing about it, then?"

"Yeah. She doesn't get it."

Maxis nodded, and the two continued to pluck away at the grill in silence, Sunny occasionally grabbing strips of her own. She mostly preferred to stick with her graham crackers.

"Any news on the Denizen?" asked Maxis. "Seemed like Scales was willin' to pay good money."

"Got docked pay 'cause I contaminated the sample," Ren said with exaggerated air quotes and a mocking voice. "I don't know how the hell he expected me to get him liquid without ruining it somehow. I wasn't exactly expecting the whole damn Denizen to be gone."

Maxis frowned. "The whole thing? Gone?" He scoffed. "And no one reported it?"

"Nothin' that I've heard," Ren shrugged. "The whole thing is really fucking weird, man. This thing wasn't like the Denizens I've dealt with in the past. There was something different about it. Hard to put my finger on it."

"Liquid?" Sunny asked, gulping down the meat she grabbed off the grill.

Ren stared off into the distance for a moment and thought. The way he figured it, Sunny was there the entire time. Considering what happened, she seemed pretty well adjusted, so what harm would it be to divulge some information?

"Weird stuff. Don't remember seein' it when we killed the ugly fuck." He clacked his chopsticks together, gesturing for Maxis to take the last piece of beef. Maxis shrugged while Ren thought. "Didn't look like anything I'd seen before. It was shiny and full of rainbows or some shit."

Maxis snickered. "Iridescent, you mean?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever. It was like gasoline or something, man. Real weird shit."

"You're sure the thing didn't bleed that stuff?"

"No," Sunny answered, shaking her head, "it didn't. I saw. Ren did a bunch of damage to the Denizen. Nothing irid… irideecent?"

Maxis groaned. "Iridescent. Big word. You can just call it rainbow stuff."

"Rainbow stuff," Sunny said, nodding. She leaned against the sofa and pulled her legs close to her chest. "Stuff like that was around my papa's train accident."

That can't be a coincidence, thought Ren.

Ren's instincts told him there might've been something of a connection between the two incidents, but he wasn't about to tell Sunny that. The last thing Ren wanted to do was stir up memories of her old man. The kid had enough on her mind, to begin with.

Ren tried to think of something to get Sunny off the trail.

"Nah, the two aren't related."

Ren and Sunny locked eyes. He knew that stare from a mile away. Ren glanced at Maxis, and thankfully, Maxis appeared to get the hint. She didn't believe a word that was coming out of his mouth.

"Probably not," Maxis said before draining the rest of his beer.

"How come?" asked Sunny.

"Well, trains got gasoline and all kinds of other rainbow-filled black gunk around," Ren explained. "It would make sense that the stuff is around an accident like that." Ren caught Maxis rolling his eyes. He had no idea what he said was wrong, but he decided to keep going with it. "There's no way the two things have anything to do with each other."

Sunny hummed and stared at her shoes as she rocked back in forth in thought. Hopefully, Ren's words would be enough to deter her.

Maxis flicked his head toward a nearby pool table. "Wanna play?"

"Yeah." Ren stood up and made his way over. "My feet are feelin' restless, anyway."

"It's the new arm, man," Maxis said, following him. "That thing startin' to feel natural at all, by the way?"

"Yeah, oddly enough." Ren rolled his shoulder and grabbed a pool cue from the rack behind the table. "Starting to feel like it belongs to me. And hey, the Jitter Mark isn't there anymore, so I'll take it."

"Glad to hear it, bro." Maxis grabbed a cue of his own and rubbed the tip with a block of chalk before tossing it to Ren.

"I don't need this."

"You know how it is. Dad's rules. Don't let him catch you not usin' it."

Ren sighed and chalked the end of his cue before placing it on the table's edge. "How you wanna do this?"

"Standard stuff, I guess. Banking a ball earns a point. Double or nothing if you wanna call a shot."

Calling a shot had become a regular rule between the two. Ren had learned quickly that Maxis was a mean pool player. Not that Ren was complaining. He was happy to accept a challenge. After a while, though, it became clear that whoever went first usually won the game. It was rare that either of them missed their shots. So, to make the game more interesting, they allowed the players to call shots. Bank the ball in a called hole, and you'd double your points.

There was a catch, though. Sink the eight-ball and buy the other a drink.

"Scales tell ya when he'll get results back?" Maxis asked as he dragged the balls to the center of the table using the rack.

"Nah. Vague as ever." Ren clicked his tongue. "Probably gonna take him decades if he's complaining about a little bit of spit in his sample.

Maxis paused, frowning. "Spit?"

"Yeah, I had to use my soda cup to collect the stuff."

Maxis's frown deepened. "No wonder he's upset."

"You kidding me? You're taking his side? It's all I had on me!"

"I don't take anyone's side." Maxis lifted the triangle off the deck and walked to the side opposite Ren to line his shot. "But that was pretty stupid of you."

Ren groaned. "Okay, whatever, fuck you too, man."

Maxis snickered, and the balls scattered with his shot. It'd become a bit of an unspoken rule between the two of them that Maxis would start by splitting the stack. Of the two of them, Maxis had a slight advantage. Ren chalked it up to being a bar boy.

Sunny perched on a nearby sofa closer to the pool table, watching with bright eyes and a wide smile. She much enjoyed watching them go at it for a bit.

"Your move." Maxis let the cue slide down his hand so the fat end hit the floor. He grabbed a chalk stuck in a small groove beneath the table and rubbed it against the tip before blowing it off.

"Scales seems a lot more uptight lately," Ren commented and leaned forward to get a better view of the balls. He tilted his head from one side to the other, his eye on the striped ten-ball. Ahead of it was the striped thirteen-ball. A smirk stretched wide across his face. "Thirteen, left corner pocket."

"Calling shots already?" Maxis scoffed.

"You know me."

"Yeah, damn fool you are."

"We'll see."

Ren pushed against the inside of his cheek with his tongue, clamping down it gently with his molars. He shifted the cue between his index and thumb fingers, holding his breath.

Tonk!

The ball soared across the table, clipping the thirteen-ball with a clack and ricocheting between the walls of the right-most corner. The thirteen-ball moved steadily and clunked into the corner as Ren had predicted.

"Booya, bitch!" Ren cried. "One ball and you're already on the ropes."

"This is just beginning, old friend" Maxis growled as he observed the table.

"Scales was really mad, then?" Sunny asked, reminding Ren of the prior conversation.

"Oh yeah. Dude's too uptight, for real. I mean, it's just a bit of spit. And he knows it's from me, doesn't he have like, my DNA or something? Should be easy to sort out if he's as great as he claims. Maybe he's a sham after all."

"I don't think it's quite that easy." Maxis regarded Ren with an incredulous shake of his head.

"Maxis," came a voice from the stairs. It was Sigg. He motioned with his head. "Come here. I need to talk to you for a moment."

Maxis sighed and set his pool cue against the wall. "Duty calls. Be right back."

"I'll watch your balls for you," Ren said, laughing.

Maxis followed his dad up the stairs, and Ren leaned against the wall, sighing. "How are you holding up, Sunny?" It'd been a while since they discussed the fight with the Denizen. Ren knew Sunny was a tough cookie, but even brats choked up occasionally. He wanted to be sure she was okay.

Sunny looked down at her feet, taking her time to respond.

"I'm doing fine."

The tone of her voice said she wasn't being entirely truthful with him, but Ren knew better than to pry when it came to Sunny's emotions. Her father's circumstances were still a sensitive topic and probably would be for years to come. Ren regretted that the Denizen discussion likely brought up some awful memories.

"Well, uh," Ren scratched the back of his neck, "if you ever need to talk to someone, I mean… I'm here. If you need it." Ren's cheeks began to burn, and even he knew it had nothing to do with the alcohol.

Man, why am I so bad at offering emotional support?

That shit was too complicated. What good did it do to dwell on stuff that was in the past, anyhow? Best to live in the present and take things as they come. There was only so much a person could do about their circumstances. Bad shit happened to good people all the time. It sucked, but oftentimes there was nothing you could do about it. It was best just to approach it with a smile and make the best of things.

No matter what.

Sunny offered him a bewildered stare. Damn it, he must've come off like a fool.

"Don't worry," said Sunny. "I will."

"Great," Ren said with a forced smile.

"Hey, guys, sorry about that," Maxis said, descending back down the stairs with a fresh new beer in his hands. He took a swig of it and breathed a sigh of relief. His face was noticeably redder than it had been before he left. "That hits the spot. Too much goin' on lately, man."

"What was that about?" Ren asked.

"Eh," Maxis shrugged his shoulders, glancing at Sunny. "Weird shit goin' on with the bar is all."

"You mean besides the shootout," Ren said with dripping sarcasm.

"Oh, shut up." Maxis paused, his gaze nailed to Sunny. "Eh, I guess Sunny's seen plenty of this action already, so it couldn't hurt to tell ya. Our shipment was late. Not by just an hour or two, either. We're talkin' a day. Well… they found the shipment around Scarrow's End. Come to find out, the driver was torn to shreds."

"The fuck? Like, ripped apart?"

"Yeah," Maxis scoffed, "and it gets worse. Holes were ripped out of the side of the truck. Looked like huge claw marks, so they think it might be some big Denizen we haven't seen yet." He shrugged. "Workin' theory, anyway. This is the third time it's happened in a week."

Ren furrowed his brow. "Shit, you've lost three shipments?"

"Oh, no, not us," Maxis corrected. "This is the first time this shit's happened to us." He took another drink of his beer and nearly tripped over an imperfection in the floor. Catching his balance, he went over to his pool cue and grabbed it with his free hand. "Third time in the city. We ain't the only ones with this problem. Seems like it's only happening to shipments with meat is the weird part. Bastard must be hungry." Maxis frowned and made several exaggerated hand gestures as he spoke.

"So, Dad's talkin' how we should start armin' the drivers just in case this happens again." Maxis sniffed. "But this is the first time this sorta thing has happened to us. Really jumpin' the gun as far as I'm concerned. Getting' them armed and trained, and makin' sure it still fits under the clause of our insurance policies and… man, it is just too much work to think about, ya know? We got enough shit goin' on as it is."

"Whoa, hold on now. The Denizen I fought off was reported by a handful of dumbass teenagers only a day after an incident. How the fuck is something like that staying hidden for so long?" Ren asked. "Shouldn't someone know what this asshole looks like by now? Or where it hangs out? Fuck, anything?"

"I dunno, man." Maxis sighed and walked up to the opposite side of the pool table. "Just reportin' as Dad's tellin' it to me. I don't know much more than you do. Was my turn, yeah?"

"Uhhh." Ren couldn't remember. "Yeah, I guess."

Maxis lined up his shot as he spoke. "Cops found the stuff, though, at least. The missing shipment, I mean. It's gone bad, obviously, and most of it was eaten anyway, so I guess that's a loss. But since these events are gettin' more common, I'm wagerin' it's just a matter of time until someone catches up with it. Usually, they're pretty good about this stuff."

"Was the meat in the forest? Where Ren and I fought?" Sunny asked.

Maxis glanced at her and smiled. "Yeah, that's right. In the forest. That place is gettin' scary to walk around in lately. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, Ren."

Ren rolled the pool cue between his hands as he pondered the situation. Was a coincidence? The Denizen he'd fought was fiercer than he'd usually dealt with, so much so that he'd nearly become an amputee. But the event wasn't strange enough that Ren could call it a unique incident. Sure, denizens like that were rare, but they weren't unheard of.

Still, though, Ren thought as he observed his new arm. Why do I have this nagging feeling?

"Don't let it worry you," Maxis continued. "They'll catch the Denizen eventually."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Ren.

Maxis took his shot, and the ball glided across the table at a gentle pace. It bounced between a pair of striped balls, landing in the same corner pocket Ren had scored in only minutes ago.

"How's that for a called shot?" said Maxis.

"Yeah," Ren muttered, lost in thought. "Wait, what the fuck? That wasn't a called shot, you cheater."

"Yeah, it was." Maxis laughed. "You're just not payin' attention is all. Like usual."

"I think you're a mumbling fucking drunk is what I think you are," Ren snapped.

"Sounds like the talk of a loser. Why don't we make this more interestin'?"

"Yeah, I agree." Ren reached into his pocket and slapped down enough cash for a few drinks. "Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, cheater?"

Maxis clicked his tongue. "You're in for a world of hurt."

---

Sunny walked the school halls with a sense of determination in her chest. Despite what Ren, Maxis, or anyone else would think of her, she'd have to investigate the event behind these trucks. The connections were too similar and too consistent. Ren may have meant well, but Sunny had been around trains her entire life. There wasn't a single part of the locomotives with such a peculiar-looking fluid in its engines. Of that, she was certain.

Wandering memories of Papa resurfaced in Sunny's mind. His warm smile and captivating voice were just as fresh in her mind as when she rode with him on the trains. She had no idea how she could perfectly encapsulate her father's visage, and she didn't have the time to dwell on him. Not right now. Not when there was such a fantastic lead right in front of her.

Sunny couldn't put Ren in danger, not after what happened to him. Even if she were to come to him with the problem, there was no way Ren or June would let her investigate this matter. Sunny would need to remain quiet if she wanted to follow this up. This meant there was but a single person in whom she could place her trust.

Not to mention that he could be terrifying in the right circumstances.

"Benji," Sunny said, catching her best friend as he exited the boy's restroom. "I need to talk to you."

The teal-eyed boy blinked, gaping. "Uh, sure. What's this about? Did I do something wrong?"

Sunny shook her head. "No. Come with me." She instantly snatched up his hand and led him outside to the bleachers where nobody could hear them. She continued when she was sure it was just the two of them. "I got a big score."

Benji's eyes widened. "Uh, what? What are we talking about?"

Sunny paused, bowing her head. "On my papa's accident," she said whispered.

Benji gasped. "No way. What did you find out?"

"Well, that's… umm… promise you won't laugh?"

Benji stuck out his pinky. "Promise." The two wrapped their pinky fingers around one another, smiling warmly. "Tell me."

Sunny adored Benji. Of all the kids she knew at school, he was the one she could trust most. He was a timid boy, roughly a year younger than she was. Like her, he usually got picked on by the other kids for the way he dressed. An old plastic basket rested around the bend of his arm. It was shaped like a pumpkin and colored a vibrant mix of blue and purple. At some point, Benji had cut the eyes and mouth out so he could occasionally wear it as a mask. This would invite further ridicule, and Sunny took the chance to stand up for him whenever she witnessed it.

Unlike the other kids, he had a sense of fashion just like her. He had a bowl cut, though it was a bit unruly compared to what Sunny usually saw. Benji wore a varsity jacket, blue shorts, and dark blue boots that looked black in the proper lighting. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye, and Sunny wondered if he still had an eye under there or if it was simply for show. She abstained from asking, especially since it was a constant source of ridicule for Benji. He earned the nickname Pirate, so Sunny had to assume the eyepatch was an item of necessity.

"Thanks, Benji. I knew I could count on you," said Sunny. "There's so much to tell you." Sunny released her pinky from Benji's grasp and clasped her hands behind her. "Remember when I told you there was some strange rainbow-colored liquid at my dad's accident?"

Benji nodded. "Yeah, I remember."

"Ren, mentioned that he found some of the same stuff where he and I fought a Denizen."

Benji drew a deep breath, his eyes widening. "You're joking. The same stuff?"

"It's gotta be, right? I mean, I've never seen anything like it before."

"That's great! But… are you sure? I don't like to doubt you when you find these things, but did you get a good look at the stuff?"

Sunny contemplated telling a white lie but shook her head at the thought. "I didn't actually see it," she admitted. When Benji frowned, she continued. "But really! It's gotta be the same stuff! It's not just that, either! There's claw marks, meat problems, all the same events line up!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Benji said, putting his hands up, "let's slow down. I don't even know what's happening. Claw marks? Meat? I'm confused."

Sunny sighed. "Sorry. I'm just excited to finally find something that could tell me what happened to my papa. I know these events have something to do with each other."

"Start from the beginning, then." Benji smiled. "Retrace your steps, Sunny."

"It's a bit of a long story," Sunny said with a nervous laugh. Sometimes Sunny wondered if she and Benji were more adult than Ren and his friends. Benji didn't seem to think anything bad of them, but still, she liked to look the part of a mature girl whenever he was around. It might look like she was grasping for straws if he knew the information came from a pair of drunks.

"That's fine," Benji shrugged. "But school is going to start pretty soon. Why don't we wait until lunchtime? I don't wanna get in trouble again."

"Oh, right! Sorry!" When she thought of everyone else listening in on their conversation, Sunny hummed and shook her head. "Actually… let's plan a sleepover and talk about it then."

Benji blinked. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely." Sunny grabbed Benji's hand and jogged back to the school with him in tow just as the bell rang.

I got an idea.