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Psyche scratched her nose.

"I used to be V's childhood friend. He was a package delivery boy in the upper neighborhoods. Really friendly teenager. Cute, mannered. Even though he wasn't in Mither's upper class, every person he delivered to loved him. Every single mansion-owner adored him. He was only like, 15 at the time. It was his first job. I always greeted him at the door."

Booboo guffawed.

"Yo, what? I did not expect that..." Jimin stared into space, absorbing the words spoken from the #217 slated to star in his performance. "You and V were friends? What happened? He never told me about his childhood when we were together. He was a delivery boy? A fucking box slinger? In Mither's mansion sector? That's fucked."

Psyche brushed a long strand of her hair out of her face. A gust of wind ravaged Avalon's Yard, blustering against their bodies hanging off the side of the incinerator. Jimin burrowed his face into her sleeve, covering his eyes from the dust whipping against his side. Psyche swallowed.

"Yep, he was a delivery boy."

"What did he deliver? Porn mags to the upper class? An overpriced subscription of those boxes containing varied snacks that all taste like cardboard? Newborn children?"

"Hah!" Psyche shook her head. "No. V helped a local company deliver light fixtures and other heavy furniture to the wealthy. You'd be pretty fucking surprised at how often rich patrons change out their furniture. New fluffy chairs, weekly entertainment machines, lengthy carpets, luxury beds, massive sculptures...V delivered it all. My parents consumed quite a bit. They were catalog pointers. The kind that point at a glossy picture of an object in a magazine and have it on their doorstep the next day."

Jimin sucked in a breath. "I wanna be a catalog pointer! For sex toys, for escorts! I'd point at something on the page and BOOM! I'd get it instantly! You, I want you, vibrator! I want you, you beautiful fucking woman with red hair! Please I choose you, Psyche! Hah...did it...did it work?"

Psyche cleared her throat. 

"No. Back to topic."

"So how were you two friends?" Jimin pondered, tracing inappropriate images into the layer of dust on the incinerator behind Psyche. His pointer finger violently smudged a few dicks and guns onto the surface of the burning beast. "You said he was 15 years old? So this was before HIS RISE AS A NERDWANG! I'LL KILL YOU, V-"

"Quiet! Ugh, should I climb off the incinerator? My shoulders are aching from holding you up. Especially since you aren't helping carry yourself much. You keep moving around, to make those stupid pictures! Jimin, stop wiggling..." 

Psyche felt as if she were babysitting a larger version of Pan, urging the child not to shake too much in her arms. When Jimin didn't answer her after a while, she started descending the long ladder.

"No, don't move! I need to finish my picture, NO! STOP PSYCHE! YOU'RE MAKING ME RUIN IT! THE DICK IS CROOKED! NOOOOO!"

"Tough shit." Psyche fought against Jimin's incessant whining and kicks. "I won't finish my story unless you calm your ass down. Pan is probably wondering what we're doing out so late, and I need to bring him back home before nightfall."

"Home?" Jimin stopped moving. "What do you mean, home? You mean, your home? You aren't staying in Avalon's?"

"Nope. This place is disgusting. I'm not sleeping overnight in a trash graveyard. You can, but that's not for me, no thanks, Booboo."

Now crestfallen, desperately craving a smoke, and immensely hungry, Jimin fell limp in Psyche's arms. His head bumped against her shoulder every so often, jolting his brain around. By the time they reached the bottom of the ladder, Jimin was too dizzy to stand and had to be carried the rest of the way back to the red tent.

"Can you finish the rest of the story now?" 

Jimin allowed himself to be readjusted so that he was hanging onto Psyche in piggyback position. His arms dangled off the front side of the red headed warrior's neck. His cheek brushed against her poofy ponytail.

Psyche hummed an affirmation. She wide-stepped around a leaking gas tank, straightening out her wrinkled vest. In her pocket, she could hear the light crinkling of Jimin's apology note next to the rainbow blunt he had rolled for her.

"Me and V became friends one day, when he was delivering a new chandelier for my bedroom. I personally didn't give a shit about the light fixture, but my parents did. They were constantly buying me things I didn't need, throwing their money away to 'beautify' our mansion. V had to carry a massive box up the stairs to the second floor, and even though he was pretty strong, he couldn't do it on his own. He was struggling."

"Weak SAUCE!" Jimin shouted into Psyche's flaming hair. "Weak V, weak sauce! Struggling, struggling...struggling...your hair smells really good by the way. Next time you come over to rehearse for the performance, please bring your conditioner so I can rub it all over my body. Okay! Weak sauce V. Continue your story."

Psyche stomped on an empty egg carton and frowned. "You're sick. Really sick. Anyway, V almost fell down the stairs, but I saved him-"

"Why didn't you let him! YOU SHOULD HAVE LET THAT FUCKING NERDWANG CRUMPLE DOWN THE STAIRWELL, NEVER TO GET BACK UP AGAIN!"

"Right...right, but I didn't want a murder on my hands. Would you hang on tighter?" Psyche hopped once to get Jimin higher into her hold. Since he wasn't actively holding onto her neck, he constantly slipped down her back like a lazy slug. "So I helped him move the box. My whole family's lineage contains bodybuilders, and I got the strong gene too."

"I bet that means you have GREAT STAMINA in beeeed!!" Jimin sang out. Suddenly, he sneezed without covering his mouth, yelling straight into Psyche's ear as his mouth released a collection of its inhabitants. He sniffled once before clapping his hands in front of Psyche's face. "AHem! AhEm. Excuse me, darling. Next!"

The woman rolled her eyes, trying not to think about where the spray of Jimin's sneeze was in her hair.

"Gross...so after I saved him from being crushed by a chandelier, he asked if I wanted to be his friend. I said sure. He was nice enough. As the years went by, whenever he would drop something off at our house we'd chat, and he'd sometimes stay over for dinner. My parents liked him a lot, thought he was the perfect man for me. Even though he wasn't in the upper class at the time, they appreciated how much he looked out for me. His societal position didn't matter."

"WOAH! WERE YOU TWO FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, PSYCHE?" Jimin groaned disappointedly. "I WANT THAT! UGGHHH, DID V SERIOUSLY BEAT ME TO IT?"

"No, we were nothing of the sort. You're being seriously fucking annoying right now, so I'll skip to the main part."

"I like skipping. But I hate hopscotch. I always threw the hopscotch rocks at the other kids when I was younger. The teacher yelled at me, and one day I threw the rock at her-"

"JIMIN!" Psyche released the performance director onto the ground. 

Booboo Dirtypants landed right in a pile of plastic bags and paint cans. The paint slathered itself on his clothes, sliding up his brown coat and covering the plain white tank he had on underneath. For a moment, Psyche thought Jimin was going to explode with rage. His forehead was measurably pinched, arms swatting at the paint cans that poured their contents onto his clothing. 

Grumbled profanities left his lips. His legs wiggled around the puddles of paint. The violent shh shh shh of crinkling plastic bags matched his venomous fuck fuck fuck's.

Psyche felt guilt seep into her forcefield. 

"Oh. I'm sorry, I uh, I didn't realize there was paint right here-"

"So you like it rough, huh! You like hurting people, huh? Are you a sadist too?" Jimin's angry face suddenly morphed to joy. "That's good news booze, Psyche! I'll jot that note aboutcha down on my hand with this paint here."

Lazily, the man began to scrape paint off the ground and scribble something on his hand. Psyche's mouth hung open as he finished shaping the message on his skin. Jimin stood up shortly after, facing her with bold determination. 

Then, he showed her his palm.

'Apology only VaLid if KiSs on M0uth.'

A bellowing laugh left Psyche. 

Even after spending hours with this strange specimen in Mither, the majority of his behavior was still largely unpredictable. 

He was mean one moment. Childish the next. Two seconds later, he was bordering on nice. Then, in a flash, he grew extremely violent, angry. Then calm. Then meditative, then joyous. 

Always sexual. Never satisfied. 

It reminded her of someone whose emotional faculty buttons were being pressed randomly by a curious child put in charge. The mental youngster commanding the emotional control board in Jimin's mind must have been drunk, high, or both.

Every emotion, expression, action...they occurred on random, exotic intervals that hardly took into account the time of day. The only thing predictable about Booboo was his high libido and the communicative frustration anyone felt when trying to tell him something. 

"Fuck no, Jimin. I'm not kissing you. You can wash the paint off the material...or I could just buy you new clothes. I have lots of money. That's all the apology you're getting." 

Psyche shook her head, trying to bite back her smile. Booboo looked like an idiot all covered in paint.

Jimin lifted his head to the yellow clouds hanging low in the sky, pouting. "Fuck new clothes! I want a kiss! WHY WORLD, YOU FUCKING BITCHASS WORLD! YOU LET EVERYONE ELSE SLEEP WITH EACH OTHER LIKE BREEDING RABBITS, AND WHAT DO I GET! WHAT DO I GET! I GET NOTHING! I GET PAIN! I GET NO ONE! I'LL KILL YOU, V!"

Psyche sighed. "Let's head back to the tent. I still didn't finish my story."

"You still didn't kiss me, either."

"Not happening."

"Fine."

Jimin pulled out his revolver and shot a nearby TV. 

The 2003 television exploded with the force of the shot, flinging glass shards haywire. Psyche's eyes widened, and she gripped the edge of her sheathed katana in case she needed to move quickly to protect herself. 

Jimin stood frozen for a few seconds after the shards of the trashed device completely settled. His eyeballs followed the trail of smoke curling out of the gun. Then, he held the smoking barrel up to his nose, inhaled the toxins deeply, kissed the side of the gun, and repocketed the killing tool known as Powpow.

Then, he walked next to Psyche's side as if nothing had happened.

"Okay. Tell your story." Jimin started off at a fast pace, prowling over articles of garbage with an unreadable face. "I've got my listening ears on."

Psyche shakily tightened her ponytail. 

"You scare me. A lot. A lot. Anywho, after a period...V disappeared from his delivery job. I didn't see him for months. Completely gone. Didn't visit my family, didn't show up when packages did. Someone else delivered the goods for him. I waited and waited, for months, but he never showed. Admittedly, I was disappointed. I missed his acquaintance. No, that did not mean I liked him romantically. He's not my type. Stop looking at me like that, Jimin!"

Jimin kicked a bullet-hole can off to the side of the path. "Looking at you how? Like I'm about to ask what your type is? I already know what your type is."

"I swear to God, don't say that you're my type-"

A startled cough. "Wasn't going to say that."

"Yes, you were."

"Was not! I was going to say that your type is someone super buff like you, ripped and roaring. A complete BEAST like you, Psyche. A marvelous sexy beast like you-"

"Stop."

"Was I lying?" Jimin paused by the entrance of the red tent. "Also, we shouldn't go in. I don't want Prada overhearing our conversation. Her repeating the details of how wild you and V got-"

"Jimin I will unsheathe this katana." Psyche furrowed her brows, striding towards a patch of relatively clean cloth in Booboo's front yard where she could sit and finish the rest of the story. "And to answer your question, no, that's not my type. Also, I never got wild with V. Whatever you're implying, it didn't happen between us."

Jimin sat down beside her. "Oh, THANK THE SEX GODS! Alright. Finish up and get to the part where you hate V's ass and want him dead."

"Eventually. So, he was replaced by a new delivery person. I wondered where he went. Asked around. I didn't know it at the time, but later I discovered that he was working in the Underground. You know, delivering. Making profit selling illicit, smuggled goods. Where you get your weed from. Where Mither's worst sell their organs and fraudulent goods."

"Cool shit, that is." Booboo crooned, changing his leg positioning to pretzeled legs. He picked avidly at the dirt under his nails. "The underground has a lot of shitty, but fucking cool, things to buy. I'm an avid consumer of the Underground."

"I know." 

Psyche winced as a portion of Jimin's fingernail got flung into a rusty can. It landed with a high-pitched ping. The performance director released a snort of accomplishment and pumped his fist in the air. "WOO! Score. Continue."

"V worked for the Underground. Sold a ton of shit. Made tons of money to finance his darker ventures. At some point, when Mither's militia caught onto his lawless selling behavior, he took on the innocent delivery boy persona for a few months to ward off suspicion. He came back, but I could tell he was different. Changed."

"It was then he adopted the religion of assholism." Jimin nodded deeply like a wise sage. "Trust me, I know what being inducted into that belief system feels like. V must've walked around with a stick up his ass twenty four seven. It's pretty easy to spot the symptoms."

"Precisely. And alongside his new assholistic personality arrived a new goal in his mind. He wanted to rise to the top. He wanted to become the richest, most powerful man in Mither. And he was willing to risk it all. That was around the time he met you, I think. When he was gradually rising up in number but not fully at the position he is now."

"Uh huh. Makes sense." Jimin bit off another chunk of his nail. "So why did he kill your family? Boredom?"

"No, no...V doesn't do things out of boredom. Everything he does is always planned. He has Plan A, B, and C ready to go in his head in case of an emergency. All his plans are pristine, well thought out." Psyche stared at the incinerators in the distance. "Well, his Plan A was to steal my home. He liked the mansion so much from the all time he spent in it. Plus, he had to money to afford it from his work in the Underground, even if he wasn't in the upper class."

"So he threatened your parents to give it up to him? And they didn't listen?"

"Kinda. Well, I didn't listen. I fought for the house, argued with V about it for a while. He told me his grand plan for remodeling the house and eventually taking over Mither. I called him insane. I told him to leave and never come back. I told him I'd fight him with my new katana if he kept pestering us. He didn't bat an eye. He pulled out the threats. He told me he needed my talent in fighting to help him train him and his new men in the field of combat. They were going on dangerous missions, and they needed fighting ability. I said no way, why should I help him if he was trying to steal my family's mansion? He threatened to buy the house out if I didn't comply, using his connections. So I was forced to agree to his conditions."

"You were V's combat coach? That's fucking sexy-"

"I worked with him only until he took my house away. He was planning on doing it the entire time, that entitled fuckhead." Psyche balled her fists. "He stole what my family had built up for years. In one day. With one high stack of cash and a connection to a city official. He ordered his men to remove all belongings from the house within hours. Everything from my childhood. Gone. Every single object, given away or destroyed. The only thing he left me was my katana. THAT FUCKHEAD! So I got back at him, I got back at him the next month, after my family and I had moved out into a small, rented house pod...this was when he had already been dating you for some time, when his hair was dyed white."

"...woah..." 

Jimin couldn't peel his eyes off Psyche's angered features. He found them gorgeous, addicting to stare at.

"Woah is right. Woah is FUCKING RIGHT. I snuck into my old house, where he had already started renovating. He'd added a bunch of new rooms, walls, corridoors. It wasn't even my old house anymore; it was his lair. It disgusted me to the core. When I snuck in, I could hear him on the upper floor, in his room presumably, shifting things around. His servant staff had left, gone home for the night. I thought the house was empty, other than him, but I was wrong."

"Wait...wait a sec..."

"I trashed the kitchen." Psyche continued. "He stole my home, and I was so pissed. I trashed the kitchen, breaking things as fast as I could with my katana. I got as far as the living room before I heard the pair of footsteps coming down the stairs. That's when I knew there were two people in the house-"

"THAT WAS YOU?" Jimin covered his mouth. "I remember that night! That was the first night V took me home to his mansion...and we...yeah. SO THAT WAS YOU! V WAS SO PISSED, HE SWORE HE WOULD KILL the parents of the person...who had escaped...oh."

"Yep."

"Oh." Jimin's hand dropped from his mouth. "Oh."

Psyche sighed. For a while, they sat there in silence. Jimin bit the inside of his cheek as they watched a few garbage pieces tumble down a nearby pile, nearly hitting a few mutant seagulls feasting on questionable parcels near the base. 

Psyche spoke up.

"I'm only going to say this once, because I hate saying it. But I feel like now is the perfect time to say this, since you apologized to me and we're making headway on the production."

Jimin waited. Watched the woman. 

Before his eyes, Psyche cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed passionately to the sky.

"I HATE YOU, V! WE'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, V!"

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izzizz thoughts

you take the moon and you take the sun!

hello! i wanted to let you know that if you ever feel like flying, look up at the sky! that way, your point of view is limited to a bird's territory, the open, airy fields of complete freedom! oh, freedom!

have a beautiful day, wherever you are!

izzzzzzy.