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Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 26: Youthcrime
Part 4: Send in the Klownz
13 november 2014.
Shira’s apartment. Shira calls Jennifer on the phone. “Goin’ badside. Somebody there I gotta meet. Wanna come?”
“Come? No bloody way I’m letting you out of my sight!”
“Better knuck up, then. There might just be a wee bit of trouble comin’ our way.”
“I’ll take the blue kit today. Don’t wanna mess up the yellows, after all.”
“Me, I’m stylin’.”
“So who’s taking us?”
“Remember those gorgeous twins we met at the Bangor Jail? They got just what we need.”
over Puget Sound. Jennifer: blue sailor fuku, letter jacket. Leila: black uniform from an unknown school, black tights, black ninja boots, black leather jacket. Shira: tie-dyed dress shirt, pleated tartan skirt, striped absolute-terror stockings, black stomp boots, flight jacket with Spanner-tag insignia emblazoned on the back. Ace Harding flies the aircar. “You’re goin’
badside?”
“Yep,” says Shira. “Someone we wanna talk to, and we gotta go through Bludz and Predatorz turf to reach ’em.”
“We’ll get you close,” says Deuce, “but we can’t join you.”
“No prob. Better you stay safe. This kind of danger’s our specialty.”
“Who knows,” Leila adds, “we might cash in a few Slashers.”
“If you say so.”
South Seattle. When a city neighbourhood becomes sufficiently dense, there’s enough people on the streets, or looking down onto them, that it becomes far too risky for any gang to hold. Above a certain critical mass, the city polices itself. But neighbourhoods the density of a small town or a suburb are unsustainable in a large city filled with strangers. They become slums. The worst slums become what Cascadians call “badside.”
Some true urban districts are forming in Seattle’s southeast quadrant, known as South Seattle. Most of them are concentrated around the light rail stations. But most of the quadrant remains suburban. Downtown is Styler country. But badside, the War Tribes rule.
The Harding twins drop the girls off near the Beacon Hill station, close enough to downtown to be fashionable and safely away from the slum districts. As the aircar takes off toward Bremerton, the girls enter the station, descend the elevator to the platform nearly fifty meters below, and buy their tickets. On the train, Shira spots Lefty Lucy sitting alone; she sits next to her and has Jennifer and Leila take the opposite seat. “Well, well, well.”
“Yo, babe, what’s stylin’?” She kisses Shira on the lips.
“You two know each other?” asks Jennifer.
Shira winks at Jennifer. “Style Planet’s a small world. Lefty Lucy, this is my cousin Jennifer Blair.”
“As in the girl from Blake Island? Sweet! Say, what’s it like bein’ the Loca Fantoma’s cousin?”
“It has its perks.” Jennifer winks.
A young man dressed up for courier work pokes his head over the seat. “‘Loca Fantoma’?”
“Oh hi Tad,” says Shira. To Lucy: “Fellow courier back in Bremerton.” To Tad: “Remember the day I first brought my hoverboard? Those two Spic slashers that tried to rob the place? I dared ’em to beat me up? You didn’t see me either. I did mad damage every hit, while all they were punching was air. Anticristo officially dubbed me ‘una fantoma loca.’ I thought that would make a way stylin’ handle, so I’ve been ‘Loca Fantoma’ to the underground ever since.”
“Oh,” says Tad. “Never figured anything like that.”
“Oh, you were too busy trying to get above water to notice.”
Lucy shoots Tad a jealous look. He backs down and returns to his seat. She says to Shira, “So you girls
still stuck in Bummertown?”
“Well, you might have heard there’s been trouble going down there lately.”
“Knowin’ you, Shira, I bet you be causin’ trouble right in the middle of all that.”
“Only for the troublemakers. They deserve it.”
“Speakin’ o’ trouble, if you girls goin’ badside, better watch out for Klownz runnin’ loose.”
Shira holds up her fighting-gloved left fist. “Trouble finds us, we’re ready.”
Shira, Leila, and Jennifer get up and grab straps as the train approaches Rainier Beach Station. Lefty Lucy (standing half a foot shorter) grabs Shira and plants a hot kiss on her lips. Jennifer can see Shira visibly blush. She looks back to see Tad blushing even more furiously. When Lucy gets done with Shira, she sees Jennifer silently ask for a kiss of her own. Lucy grins, puts her arms around her, and kisses her too. She turns back to Shira and says, “Your cousin’s a real good kisser.”
“She better be. I’ve been doing her for eleven years.” Shira winks.
As they leave, Lucy calls out the streetcar door, “Hey, don’t get your girlfriends in trouble!”
“You mean the klownz better not get in trouble with us. See ya!”
“Holla back!”
Once the train departs, the girls discuss strategy. Shira says, “I’m familiar enough with this area to say, once we leave the station area, it’s all jungle, so we better prepare to fight.”
Jennifer straps her kubotan to her wrist beneath the coat sleeve so she can slip it out at short notice. “I’m ready.”
Leila has hers holstered to her belt. “Same here.”
Shira pats her yo-yo pouch. “Let’s go.”
On cold late-autumn nights when the sun goes down early, badside streets get eerily deserted. “Nobody here,” Leila observes. “Is this a bad sign?”
“Damn right it is. Too dangerous for civilians.”
Jennifer smiles sideways at Shira. “You know I’m really here to keep trouble off your back, girlfriend.”
Shira winks back. “If trouble’s looking for me, cuz, it’s in for a big surprise, whether you two are here to reinforce me or not.”
Suddenly they are surrounded by a gang of big men and their girl toys in fetishistic leather and spikes. Leila rolls her eyes. “Oh brother.”
Shira smirks. “Well, well, well. Speak of the devil.”
They are the
Predatorz. With a “z”. Once they considered themselves Juggalos, part of Insane Clown Posse fandom, a subculture with special appeal to those suburban youth who have always hated middle-class blandness and overcompensate for it with feral wildness. But quickly it attracted bullyboys who formed street gangs that gave it such a bad name that the subculture expelled them even before the coup: the infamous Klownz. The Predatorz are the oldest of the Klown gangs in Seattle, eternally warring with the other gangs of Badside, crusading alongside them against the “fag” city.
They murder. They rape. They’ll even do it for a price, the bigger the better. For they are the Predatorz.
With a “z”.
The Predatorz still speak “gangsta” (Shira says “wanksta”), betraying the ICP origins of the Klown underground. They still paint their faces, though now they prefer the black metal fashion of corpse paint along with their Mad Max fetish gear. They named themselves after evil Hollywood space aliens, so Shira likes to make illegal-alien jokes at their expense. The Stylers reserve their greatest contempt for the kinds of “B4dd d00dZ” who think violent machismo is the essence of cool.
She flashes devil horns at the biggest of the Predatorz. He is Bob Zilla (or Bobbzilla), their leader, whose rep among the Klownz is heavy, but not heavy enough for the Loca Fantoma. He’s currently out of jail on bail while he awaits trial for the murder of a mentally ill homeless man whom Shira had befriended. “Yo Boobzilla! Wuzzuuuuup!”
“Aw fawwwwk! What the
fuck you doin’ here, Loca fuckin’ Fantoma?!”
“Oh, I was just doin’ my biz when all y’all decided to go all baka wanksta on me and get in my way. So get out of it.”
Bobbzilla cries out to his crew, “Yo dawgz, scope the smokin’ hot babesicles my hoe Loca Fantoma done brung us!” To Shira: “I mad pimpin’ now!”
Shira holds out her right arm to stop Leila. She looks at her and sees a murderous look on her face. She pulls her into her arms, kisses her lustfully on the lips, smirks sideways at Bobbzilla, and mocks, “Leila Shelley’s
my smokin’ hot babesicle, if you wanna know. But she’ll play with you if you want. Just don’t expect to survive. Oh, and the blonde? Remember Blake Island?” She winks evilly.
Several Klownz gasp in fear; some of their molls flee screaming. But Bobbzilla remains unmoved. “You bitches be rapin’ our turf—”
“I’m sure Gub’nor Wally and his COPCO mercenaries are all pleased to know that.” Shira points at Bobbzilla as if surprised to find something new. “Hey! Is it just me, or you all been heavy man juicin’ in my absence? Man, you’ve grown some mighty mighty bitch tits! You’re gettin’ bigger out front than Chesty Morgan, Boobzilla! I bet your balls be shrinkin’ to match!”
“An’ how big’s
yo’ pythons, ho?” Zilla flexes a pair of overpumped arms as grotesque as Scott Steiner’s.
“You just ain’t gettin’ it, Boob. If you and your roadkill army don’t get outta my way and let me do what I’m here to do, I’ll be hard stylin’ on your asses like Devil May Cry! So beat it or eat it!”
Double G, Bobbzilla’s second, spits, “Fuck y’all, fuckin’ bitches! Y’all ain’t no
Men! We gonna whip y’all into proper submission, yestaday!”
Shira laughs at him. “Well, you better be ace with that whip, ’cuz the way you be juicin’, the only thing keeping y’all Men’s the illegal prescription!”
Double G rushes Shira to tackle her. Shira trip-throws Double G with ridiculous ease. “Wow. I mean, wow. So that’s the kind of candy ass shit y’all call Manly.”
Jennifer ostentatiously yawns with feigned boredom. “This Challenge’s gonna be easy peasy.” Two Predatorz attack her from behind; she unholsters her mini spade and whips it into the side of one’s head, sending him careening into the other, knocking them both down as they speed past her. “Yawn,” she faux yawns.
Bobbzilla runs at Shira. He telegraphs his next move: he intends to power punch her. When he throws his punch, she disappears. He swings wildly at nothing. Nothing hits him on the back of the head and laughs. He takes more wild swings at nothing. Nothing kicks him in the tailbone, then hammers down on his shoulder with her elbow. He screams and roars and swings and claws and continues to hit nothing while Shira dodges and weaves and goes behind him and through his legs and hides right in front of his eyes. Tired and dizzy, he flails until his flails degenerate into arm twitches. Shira hops onto her arms and double kicks his jaw, lifting him up a meter and sending him backwards several. Then what was nothing pops into plain view in the form of Shira’s mocking face staring down into Bobbzilla’s as he lies half-conscious, sprawled supine on the pavement.
After taking out a few more Predatorz, Jennifer yells at Shira, “Watch out for the girls! Don’t let your guard down!”
Shira winks at her. “Don’t worry, love. I hate these boy toy bitches even more than you do.”
Right then one of the female Predatorz jumps Shira and hangs off her back, holding her by the neck. “Stop bangin’ on my man, ya pervo bitch!”
“Hmph!” Shira trips her and falls backward to land on her as she lands hard on her back on the hard pavement. “I love you too, darling.” She snaps her head back to break the gangster girl’s nose, making her yell in pain and break her grip. “Baka.” Shira springs up to see Jennifer kick another gangster girl toward her; she intercepts her for a backdrop. The first one rushes her and speeds right into a roundhouse that sends her flying sideways. The gang girls keep their distance from Leila.
The Predatorz take a rest to pick themselves up and try to figure out some kind of strategy despite their obvious inability to think. Sensibly, they stay away from Leila. Shira and Jennifer take defense position in the center of the circle of Predatorz forming around them. Just then, another gang arrives. This one’s black. They’re also here to rumble. Leila smiles. “And here come the Bludz.”
“Like the cavalry, even,” Jennifer adds.
Shira shouts toward Bobbzilla, “Yo Klownz! Your Niggaz so-called friends are calling y’all girls!”
The Predatorz turn completely around to face the black gang. The Bludz, one of the New African syndicates, are bigger than all the Klownz combined. The Predatorz and Bludz trade an escalating volley of obscenities, then rush each other to fight once the insults have reached the level of “fag.” Each gang throws a Challenge at each other and each gang accepts, so the girls get out of the Predatorz’ way to avoid being run over. Not wanting to be caught in the middle of a Team Challenge, they sneak away from the fight.
The battle quickly becomes dangerous enough that several of the more paranoid slum dwellers call the cops. Sure enough, screaming sirens announce the arrival of the riot police. The girls make sure they’re absent when the real rumble begins.
Shots fired in the background, tear gas in the air. Navigating a warren of shanties and twisted back alleys, Shira says, “Now it gets worse.”
“As if we weren’t running into enough trouble already,” says Jennifer.
“So we make like ninja,” says Leila
“Let’s hope they don’t find us.”
“They didn’t see us leave,” says Shira. “Besides, they’re awful preoccupied right now.”
“I hope you’re right. I had a bad feeling about this even before you called.”
“So where’s this meeting?” asks Leila.
“This way,” Shira says. She points toward Lake Washington.
Jennifer explains, “There’s a New Rave commune camped out in Seward Park.“
Leila says, “I assume this has something to do with the gangsters trying to kill your mother.”
“Wally’s a sore loser,&dquo; says Shira, “so I suspect he’s hiring hitmen. We’ve got friends at the commune we think can help somehow.”
“If you say so.”
Shira grins. “C’mon, let’s go!” She takes both Leila and Jennifer by the hand, and they head together toward Seward Park. No cops or gangsters come around to molest them, though they do beat up a mugger on the way.
to be continued...
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[
Revision 1, 12/14/11: edited from the original written for
NaNoWriMo 2010.]
