Survival Of The Fittest

((Letitia May: Pregame start))

Letitia adjusted her sunglasses as she sat on the bench. She glanced down the road, tapping her Louboutin on the cobblestone. She could see the trolley coming nearby. She brushed some hair behind her shoulder and adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder.

Letitia had come to Essex Street for some shopping today. She had already found a bit of a haul, but there were more shops to head to. Also, lunch was further down the street, and she needed a break from all the shopping at her restaurant of choice. She could continue to walk, but she decided to instead hop on the trolley to get some relief for her feet.

Sure, it was kitschy, and it was going to be filled with annoying tourists. But hey, it was at least good for selfies.

The trolley pulled up to the stop, so Letitia stood up and grabbed her bags. She watched as a few overweight old white people stepped off, and then she quickly strutted onto the vehicle. She stomped on each step and dropped the fare into the bin. She then walked deeper inside, careful to avoid bumping into any sweaty people.

She found an open area near the back of the trolley and quickly sat down. Letitia really hoped no one annoying or unpleasant sat next to her. She was already getting her phone out to get a proper trolley selfie, and she didn't want anyone to bother her as she flipped through the filters.

Stormy Delacroix: Pregame Start

Today was a day that had seen Stormy getting Banished To The Outdoors. Not that he usually needed the push, but his mom had gotten tired of him pacing around the house and pointedly asked him to take his energy somewhere else. Nobody he'd texted had been available for a pickup basketball game at the park, and he wasn't feeling especially into playing by himself and hoping some strangers joined in, so he'd instead opted to wander. Salem wasn't huge, as far as cities went, and its colorful downtown lent itself to a good wander.

A lot of locals rolled their eyes at the kitschy witchcraft shops and tourist-oriented attractions downtown, but Stormy had always thought they were fun. He'd popped into a couple of shops, and he now had a little pouch of tumbled stones (Malachite, jasper, uh... jasper but in a different color, maybe? And a couple more but the names had already escaped his mind.) to show for it. He'd been kicking back on the trolley for a while, gazing out the window while it trundled around on its track, one earbud in. He held the pouch in his lap, sitting open so that he could turn the small stones over between his fingers.

It was a nice day, the kind where he liked to let his brain off its leash to run loose without an objective. Riding the trolley around and just watching the scenery go by, not really paying attention to the world on the other side of the window or the music beating in his ear, helped with that. Autumn was just beginning to turn Salem crisp and golden, like an apple pie.

Hm, it was about lunch time, wasn't it. Stormy hadn't really noticed that he was getting hungry until he started thinking about food.

When the trolley came to its next stop, Stormy sat up and took more note of his surroundings. It was hard to get lost on the trolley route, it being on a rail and all, but he still needed to pick out the landmarks and stores that he noticed to figure out what else was nearby. He was pretty sure that there were a couple of restaurants in the direction the trolley was currently going, so he could just jump off at one of those stops to grab food before resuming his meandering.

As he was looking around, his gaze swung over Letitia when she boarded the trolley, and he didn't fully process her until she'd walked past him and took a seat in the back. Since the trolley was only a little crowded at the moment, Stormy figured it wouldn't be too disruptive to say hi to her. He turned around in his seat, rising slightly to lean over and let one arm dangle behind it.

"Hey, Letitia! Whatcha doin'?"

Letitia settled on a filter that showed off her skin in a way that didn't make her look like a Real Doll. Her skin looked as delectable as melted chocolate, not as brittle as dried clay. She brushed some of her hair in front of her shoulder and raised the phone up.

Before she could take a single selfie, the figure in the row ahead of her turned around and greeted her. Letitia lowered the phone, glad the sunglasses could hide the disdain in her eyes. Stormy was a male cheerleader and goth kiddie. While Letitia could excuse the fact that their styles didn't align, his gullible and somewhat dense nature didn't make him as stimulating as he could be. Of course a weirdo like him would be glued to a trolley seat.

Of course, she wasn't going to allow Stormy to get in the way of her selfie opportunity or her Judy Garland-esque trolley fantasy, so she could at least be decent to him.

"Stormy," she said, her tone slightly sweet. "I didn't notice you were here. What a surprise."

Of course, she couldn't help but be subtly shady. After all, he wasn't that unique if he was just chasing a tired fad like goth.

"Oh, no worries!" Stormy replied brightly. Letitia's veiled jab soared straight over his head and sailed off into the distance to seek a new life elsewhere. He turned the rest of his body sideways in the seat so he wasn't twisted around, though the motion left his legs partly sticking out into the aisle. As long as nobody else got on and went straight for the back of the trolley though, it'd probably be fine.

"It's nice out, huh? Whatcha up to? Shopping?" He glanced at the bags piled next to her and deduced that she had, in fact, probably been out shopping.

"Get anything good? I got these." Stormy held up the velvet pouch of stones that he had bought and shook it so the contents rattled. That might not have actually done a good job of demonstrating what was in there if Letitia didn't already know. But hey, if she didn't know, she could ask. He'd have been happy to show off his haul; he didn't really believe in chakras and auras or whatever the rocks were supposed to help, but they were neat. Satisfying noise when they clacked together, pleasing to touch when he dug his fingers into the bag. 10/10 bag of rocks experience, honestly.

((The god of the underworld approaches))

The morning at the florist shop had been a busy one, and an experience far more intense than Hades was used to. The shifts he pulled were typically afternoon ones after school where he'd clean up shop, arrange pots, move bags of soil or pots from the front to the back or the back to the front. If Antony was going to call him in on a weekend, a weekend morning, then he knew he was standing before the floodgates as they were lifted open. As happy as he was to work, Hades had to admit this morning had really taken a lot out of him. What was more, he didn't have the usual perk of an hour or two in the quietest part of the day to arrange flowers as he saw fit, effectively being granted a small playground to practice artistry.

At the very least, Antony had let him select a bouquet of flowers to bring home. It was this very bouquet Hades had tucked under his left arm while his hand rested comfortably in his pocket to help secure his arm and trap the flowers. His right hand was similarly stuffed in his pocket with his fingers wrapped around his wallet for comfort. As he boarded the trolley, he withdrew the wallet with his fingers and hooked his thumb around the metal arm rail going up the stairs to keep his balance. After paying the fare, giving a small polite nod to the driver, and ignoring the probable look of disgust he got in return, Hades began moving to take a seat near the back.

Sitting in the very back would have been preferable, but it looked like some people were already sitting there, so he looked for the next best arrangement. That was when Hades took notice of Stormy. Throwing him a stronger nod with a faint smile on his face, Hades took the seat across from him and turned sideways, throwing his leg across the seat with his leg pressed to the interior wall of the car, similar to how he rode the school bus every morning. The conical bag holding the bouquet of variously colored roses crinkled as he adjusted in his seat.

"'Sup?" He asked simply, following Stormy's attention to note that he was talking to yet another kid from school, that being Letitia. She came across to him as basic, not Hades' type at all and certainly not somebody he'd talk to on his own, but figured everybody deserved chances on an individual basis, so with his smile all but faded, he gave her a muted greeting as well: "Hey."

((Josh James continued from A Picture is Worth… Something))

Josh and Amos boarded the trolly, near the back of the crowd waiting at this particular stop to get on. Josh threw in his fare, not looking much at the driver but rather back at his companion, mid-conversation.

" -- it's a comfort show. Like, a humorous look at a middle-class family trying to keep their heads above water in a tough economy. It's ok, but not my favorite or anything."

The Middle was, in fact, his favorite.

Both made their way to what seemed to be the only remaining space -- standing room near the back.

Josh was looking around not at anything in particular when suddenly loud, but somewhat muffled music started up.

"THERE SOME WHORES IN THIS HOUSE. THERE SOME WHORES IN THIS HOUSE."

That's pretty inappropriate, he thought. There were old people and all kinds of out-of-towners on the trolley.

"I SAID CERTIFIED FREAK, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK."

He looked around for a moment before feeling his pocket vibrate. Josh pulled his phone of out his pocket and --

"WET ASS PUSSY MAKE THAT PULL OUT GAME WEAK"

Someone had changed his ring tone.

Perhaps out of athletic reflex or perhaps trying to get the offending music as far from him as he could, Josh chucked the phone at Amos.

"Oh, huh, interesting."

It was real interesting how many things Norm MacDonald was in, even though he pretty much only played Norm MacDonald. Maybe Amos could check out The Middle for himself. He always heard it was like Roseanne but like, worse, but comfort shows were good enough sometimes. Then again it wasn't like Roseanne didn't absolutely get bonkers in that last season, like how could you just do John Goodman's character dirty like that?

Anyway, Amos followed Josh and paid the trolley fare and went back to clackalacking his fingers across his phone screen, exiting from the filmography list on Norm's Wikipedia page and back to the Twitter thread where someone posted a Tiktok about how someone straight up stole all the sinks from their school's restrooms.

Amos glanced up as someone's phone started to go off with a ringtone that was pretty vulgar (which, whatever, 2021) but he went back to his own phone.

That is until Amos glimpsed something flying at him in his peripherals just in time for his monkey brain survival instincts to take over. He didn't have time to entirely process what it actually was, but regardless he did a super cool defensive maneuver of yelping and just kinda swatting the phone away after getting smacked by it.

And, consequently, he sent Josh's phone flying at one of the other riders on the trolley.

It-Was-A-Dark-And-Stormy-Night began firing as many questions at Letitia as he could do before having to take a breath. Letitia pushed her Coach sunglasses off her face and raised her eyebrows. She didn't really feel the need to extend this conversation beyond idle chatter. Of course, the boy was more interested in showing off a velvet pouch that rattled. He seemed quite proud of whatever was in there, which Letitia couldn't muster the same enthusiasm for. After all, it's not like she had any idea what would be in there, and not because she was dumb. She just didn't mind that sort of crap.

"And, what is that, exactly?" she asked, gesturing to the bag. "Magic beans? Human teeth? Did an old gypsy woman sell them to you?"

Before she could find out the mysterious contents of the bag, another vampire boarded the bus, making cursory greetings to both Letitia and Stormy. Letitia had steered clear of the boy named Hades. The boy took his obsession with scene culture and Greek mythology too far for her to stomach. In a way, she was glad he only gave her a curt "Hey."

"James," she said, nodding to the boy.

Letitia hoped that the presence of another daywalker would allow Letitia to have some peace on the trolley before she disembarked, but peace wasn't possible when there was someone loudly singing about their pussy.

She glanced up and saw that two of the new boys who got on the trolley fooling around. Letitia grimaced and tried to look away from the boys, finding the pattern of the brick wall on the pizza shop the trolley was passing by way more engaging than those genetic aberrations. But she could no longer admire the brick pattern, as something collided with Letitia's forehead and broke her from its hypnotic effect.

"FUCK!" she loudly yelled as her head snapped back and hit the back of the seat.

Her forehead was throbbing, and the back of her head was now also reeling from hitting the hardened plastic. She looked down and saw a cellphone that wasn't hers in her lap.

"What...wh-what?!" was all she could blurt out as she rubbed her forehead and glanced around.

But as she rubbed her forehead, she noticed something wasn't on her head anymore. She touched the top of her head and came to a startling realization.

She quickly moved her back from the seat and turned around her. They were gone. Then she looked out the back of the trolley and saw them:

Her Coach sunglasses, which she dropped a Benjamin on, were lying on the road, getting farther and farther from the trolley. And now they were being crushed under the Toyota Camry that was crossing the intersection.

Whatever happened next, Letitia was sure she could get off on a technicality and a sympathetic jury.

Letitia didn't seem very impressed with the rocks, which y'know, fair, because she hadn't actually seen them yet. Before Stormy could actually show them off, the trolley picked up some more passengers, and he was distracted by the appearance of someone that he was sure would actually be interested.

"Hey man, what's up?" He asked Hades, scooting forward in his seat with his arm extended for a fist-bump. Hades, as usual, was not very talkative, but he had good vibes. Stormy could soak up the vibes. Between the crystals with their supposed mystical properties and Hades's good vibes, the trolley's chakras were going to be balanced in no time.

Or that would have been the case, anyway, if some other new person hadn't gone and ruined the vibe altogether.

Stormy wasn't really paying attention when the ringtone went off; he'd probably heard Cardi B's refrain about her parts at least once a week since the song dropped. It was a catchy song, whatever. He did snap to attention when his peripheral vision caught the projectile suddenly flying his way, and he jerked backwards without a second thought. Years of basketball made you good at avoiding things that came flying at your head. The problem was, uh, if nothing stopped the flying object, it'd just keep going until it found a new obstacle. In this case, Letitia's head instead of Stormy's.

"Dude!?" He followed Letitia's gaze and - Damn, what was the word, it wasn't smoldering because that was, like, romantic or something? But she definitely looked three seconds from going nuclear - zeroed in on the guy that had apparently thrown the phone. He was in their class, right? Who got on public transportation and just started throwing phones at people they went to school with??

"Hey, uh..." His attention split between Letitia and the guy she might be about to murder, Stormy wasn't sure where to focus. He half-rose from his seat, intending to situate himself between them until the situation defused. And promptly spilled the pouch of stones, which he had forgotten he was still holding, all over the trolley floor. "Aw, crap. Hang on, hang on, nobody move-" One arm raised to ward off Letitia, he slid out of his seat and started scrambling on the floor to try to collect the rocks one-handed.

"Hades," the boy patiently reminded Letitia as he adjusted in his seat till he was comfortable. Hades was not a fan of anybody using his birth name, not even his mother who for her part did her best to address him the way he wanted. The only holdouts, for the most part, were old and old-fashioned boomer teachers who read names from the student roster dispassionately and ignored any requests to use a nickname. Damn tenure.

There was no sense in getting mad about it, so Hades had brought his attention to Stormy again. He was just about to ask him about the bag that rattled as he shook it when things took a turn for the chaotic. The sudden blaring of somebody's ringtone wasn't a shock so much as an interruption, and Hades didn't care about the choice of ringtone either. He didn't care FOR it, but short of blaring actual porn or hentai sounds (the audio equivalent to wearing an ahegao outfit in public, in his opinion) people could just do whatever the hell they wanted.

It took him far too long to comprehend that a phone had gone sailing right by Stormy's head and clocked Letitia, her shades clattering off of her head and bouncing clear out of the trolley. It wasn't funny - it shouldn't have been funny - and yet Hades had to go to great lengths to swallow the smirk that was worming its away across his lips. Obviously, she hadn't found it quite so amusing and it looked like things were about to go straight to hell in a handbasket when Stormy interposed himself... only for that pouch he was holding to spill.

"Oh, geez," Hades said empathetically. The bagged bouquet of flowers crinkled some when he sat forward, edging along his seat to prepare to assist Stormy in collecting the fallen stones before they went the way of Letitia's Coaches. Having maneuvered and scooted his way to the end, Hades lurched forward... and the trolley happened to be taking a turn, adding far too much momentum and sending his head on a collision course with Stormy's.

Josh watched, mouth agape, at the series of events that happened. His eyes followed the phone as they knocked off a pair of sunglasses (destroy by a Toyota Camry) then fell into the girl's lap.

"What --," he sputtered at Amos. Ok, breathe. He needed the phone back and he needed to stop the ring tone which was still playing and he needed to avoid the girl from making a scene. But he also didn't really want to pay to replace the glasses by dipping into his own funds (though he wasn't using them for anything or saving for anything).

"I'll be right back, " he said to Amos quietly, hopefully.

A trio of what looked like foreign students were eyeing the situation.

He focussed on his goal and started making his way past all of the people towards the phone. On the screen was lit up "CALL FROM: SKIN BRO." The trolley turned, Hades smashed head first into Stormy and Josh wasn't holding on to anything. He fell to the right, landing in the lap of a mom and child.

"Sorry..." he mumbled and quickly tried to get back up. Shooting back up, he noticed that there was a giant lollipop stuck to the front of his shirt and that a warm liquid was running down his face as the back of his head hit something.

"My PSL!" said the woman.

The back of his head hit the cup she'd been holding, full of a pumpkin spice latte. Directly across the way were the seats with the Letitia, who had his phone.

oh sweet baby jesus what was happening

Amos was mortified as he watched the phone smack the sunglasses off of that twenty follower social media influencer-looking girl, and he promptly looked even more mortified as the clown car became a circus of physical tragicomedy with as much subtlety and class as The Three Stooges.

His plan of staying perfectly still also got sabotaged with the harsh turn of the trolley that sent him forward and subsequently slipping and sliding on one of the rocks, falling on top of Stormy's hand.

Letitia grasped the Cardi phone as she glared daggers into the throng of people before her on the trolley. She was prepared to chuck whoever was tossing phones off the trolley into the path of basic bitches cars like the Camry, and she was ready to throw hands.

Before she could do anything, Stormy and Hades were into their own shitshow. Stormy spilled all the rocks on the ground, which was the boring thing that ended up being in his pouch, and Hades was colliding with him trying to pick them up. Idiots.

Another boy was coming back, but he fell during a turn and crashed on some lady and her brat. There were cries about PSLs before another boy came in and stepped on Stormy.

This was all falling apart really quickly, and if Letitia was to get justice for her sunglasses, now was the time to act.

Keeping the phone in one hand, she stood up and used her other hand to hold onto one of the overhead railings.

"OKAY!" she shouted. "WHO'S THE BITCH WHO'S THROWING PHONES?!?"

She didn't care if it was rude to shout curse words in the presence of children. She wanted vengeance.

"STAND UP AND DEAL WITH ME FACE TO FACE! I'M NOT THE BITCH WHO GETS HIT WITH PHONES! I'M THE ONE WHO THROWS THEM!"

She glanced at the cacophony, waiting to see who would own up to the WAP Weapon.

Stormy had been told on occasion that his skull was pretty thick. Unfortunately for Hades, that meant that he probably got the worse half of their head-on collision. Stars still popped in front of Stormy's eyes as Hades smacked directly into him, but at least he didn't need higher brain function to react on reflex. The arm that had been up to hold Letitia back instead flew around Hades's waist to secure him so that he didn't go flying off elsewhere as the trolley jerked. Stormy dimly registered the soft crunch of the flowers Hades was holding getting crumpled between their chests.

"Fuck, ow, okay-" Stormy mumbled, not quite stringing a coherent sentence together while he tried to regain his bearings. He didn't have much of a chance, because the guy that he was pretty sure had been the one to fling the phone into the crowd in the first place came flying at him.

He was a tall and gangly dude, couldn't have weighed that much all told, but when all of his spindly weight crashed down on the hand that Stormy was still bracing on the floor, that shit hurt. "Ow!" In the heat of the moment, it felt like things were hitting him on all sides, and Letitia was screeching over everything, and the pain and sensory overload were enough to make Stormy's normally placid demeanor boil over.

"Man, what the hell is your problem!?" He snapped, yanking his hand out from under Amos and shoving him back with as much force as he could muster in his current position.

CRACK!

The sounds of the skull-on-skull collision rang in Hades' ears immediately after impact. His legs turned to jelly as he crumpled. As focus returned and the bright lights faded with the ringing, Hades found himself suspended off the trolley floor by an arm tucked under his armpit and around his back. He placed his free hand on Stormy's opposite shoulder in an attempt to struggle back to his feet, more rustling and crunching sounding between them. Hades looked down to see the bouquet he had been carrying was now in complete disarray, with petals mangled or fallen and stems bent. Well... so much for that.

Stormy was yelling at somebody over Hades' shoulder. He winced, since Stormy was the closest to his ear, but his yelling still didn't top the aggressive screaming from the back of the trolley that came from Letitia's cell phone-induced wrath.

Hades stumbled and struggled to keep himself righted as the trolley finished its turn. "Fuck..." he muttered, bracing himself on the back of a seat and now standing under his own power, allowing Stormy to break off and deal with whatever was going down between him and a dude he finally recognized as Amos. Jury was out on the normie-looking dude who'd gotten on with Amos, but Hades was sure he'd seen him in the hall at some point or another. As he tried to put a name to the face, his attention was caught by a woman staring at him from two seats in front of where he was sitting. When he looked, he saw a middle-aged woman with a Karen haircut glaring his way and shaking her head in disapproval.

What the hell did I do to her? Hades thought to himself.