Survival Of The Fittest

(((MARINO RAFAEL HALL-AMADOR - PREGAME START)))

...damn, these brownies are really good...

Marino lay on his couch, looking up at the ceiling. He held a cheesecake-swirl brownie to his mouth as he took another bite. The fudgy chocolate bar suited the creamy cake filling well. The taste felt like ecstasy as he felt his mouth water. It was a good thing he had smoked a few joints before then. The air reeked of weed and freshly baked goods, which he tried airing out of the window. Thankfully his mom was at work right now, but he should probably cover up the smell soon. Maybe with Febreeze or something...

Unfortunately for him, he was bored out of his mind, having nothing to do except for eating brownies and smoking pot. He's already done most of his homework and chores around the house, so now he was just there, on the couch getting high. He just hoped his friend wasn't getting board as well.

Absolutely sunken into the plush of the sofa was a tall and toned figure, head craned up at the cieling and eyes unfathomably red. The man had toked his fair share of doobies in his time with this circle. And yet, as he lay swirling in a pool of sofa, air, supernatural and immeasurable warmth, and himself, it was made utterly clear to those surrounding him that he remained God's lightest weight when it came to the consumption of the sacred bud. He parted his lips, as if in a trance, and a sound came out. Extended and reverent in tone. A prayer.

"Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude."

[Manuel "Mañana" Hernández continued from Lead Nike Shoes]

There was very little Manuel left inside Manuel at the current moment. At least in terms of cognitive function, and thinking about nasty things like the ramifications of getting caught. Things like "movement" and on occasion "breathing" were beyond him. Or rather, below him. All of that garbage was forced out so his higher brain cells could have room to function well beyond their presumed maximum capacity, granting to him visions of world-changing wisdom in great multitudes and at great pace.

"D'you ever think 'bout, like... about how, like... 'spera..."

At great pace.

"...There was a first guy ever to smoke?"

REVOLUTIONARY.

"Like... like sum caveman smelled summ... burning leaf and went nuts. There was a first guy... ever... t' get high."

Wonderful things absolutely worth thinking of to pass the time while Manuel's brain received a bubble bath and a five-star massage from some ghost that had entered his nervous system along with the psychoactive-laced smoke. Christ this stuff was better than alcohol. Why wasn't it legal everywhere again?

The smell. He always found the smell pleasant

((Chester Bissette continued from deserve this)

Bissette sat on the floor, leaning back as he took a long, deep breath. He usually never ate weed brownies, he had his dad’s stash that worked well enough, but he just wanted to partake in the brownie making. He cleared his throat, clearly not too high yet but getting there.

“Well, uh…. Cannabis was originally cultivated in Central and South Asia..it was the earliest plants cultivated. They were using it for shit like rope. Proto-Indo tribes were burning them during the…copper age, you know the Bronze Age and…it was for ritual ceremonies and it just spread from there.”

His words were quiet and stumbled in as he calmed his head. After humiliating himself trying to make amends and almost going deaf, he deserved some tranquility.

((Emma Drakenberg-West continued Remember When MTV Meant Something?))

...How the hell did Emma get here?

Should she blame Beelzebub? Wait no. She wasn't here.

She was at Marino's place. Maybe it was some of Beelzebub's weed that Marino had and put into brownies? Good fuck, she loved the taste of those brownies.

"Hey... does... is the weed making us smart? Is it making you more smart?" Emma couldn't say much. She was scrawled on the floor, standing up to the ceiling. Her eyes were that special type of pink that looked how baked she was. Was reefer supposed to make her a communist now or something like that movie made by the rock n' roll hating anti-gay closeted homosexuals? She was already well far-left, like DAMN, she should've called Heather to come here with her. What was that bitch up to?

Emma wanted something to kill the stress and make her numb.

Maaaaaybe eating weed-laced brownies while already smoking some blunts seemed overkill, but...

...god they taste fucking good...

"If it did... If it did make us smart... I'd, uh... I'd use this as a way to help me study..." Marino answered to Emma. Now that he thought about it, maybe getting high might be a good way for people to get smarter. Looking back, he always had these zany ideas whenever he got high, like making an apple pie by only using whatever's in the kitchen. It certainly was making him feel smart. Hell, a couple of his friends are doing a history lesson right now.

"Riiiiiight... D-doesn't South Asia have... uhhh... y'know, Indiana?" Marino talked to Mañana and Chester. "What if those guys tried... tried to make tea leaves or something for the gods... but then they got high when burnin' them? They must've seen gods then..." He chuckled at the sudden brain blast.

"'t TOTALLY doessshh..."

Manuel's consciousness was elevated to the eleventh plane of existence. The absolute world of matter and kinetic energy wherein he could do, or more importantly, think, no wrong. He just needed some fellow members of the circle, blazed out of their fucking skulls in their own right, to reflect on... and that's exactly what he got when Marino started talking. Manuel's eyes widened, albeit very slowly, and he got another REVOLUTIONARY idea.

"Duuuuuuuuudes."

Another exaggerated drawl on account of barely being able to feel his own tongue.

"We should... we should... we should make the weed tea. Then we could like... find out which Gods are real."

Absolutely flawless logic, backed up by the most empirical evidence known to mankind (Marino said it happened). In Manuel's current state of unparalleled wisdom, he ruminated on divinity and its relation to the sacred bud. Through liquid ingestion, the proper barriers could surely be breached, and the four teenagers lounging in an apartment high off their asses could see the face(s) of God(s). Not like he had anything better to do today.

"...I think it's gunna be the Egyptians."

Bissette clicked his tongue “Nah, nah, I can’t do tea. It messes with my stomach.” He shook his head, feeling the effects of THC, slurring his words a bit.

He rummaged around his pockets, coughing and groaning as he pulls out a familiar little baggie with the Devil’s lettuce “Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna get another kick. Anyone want one?”

"South Asia...Asia? America? ...South America?" Emma was trying to rationalize her geography. Carmen Sandiego would be disappointed in her. "What the fuck... is soooOOOOOO special about Indiana? It's only where them.... Wait shit no I'm thinking Reno." Emma wanted to get up, but she must have gotten a major dose of THC to get her so blazed. She stumbled on the floor, while Manuel thought about brewing up weed tea.

"Isn't that called... Nirvana? Not the band... like... like... the place. Is it a good idea to check on the gods? What if Ymir kills us?" Emma mentioned with her Norse knowledge. She didn't give a shit on those Egyptians. What the fuck do the Egyptians do? They already built a black pyramid like 10 or 20 minutes away from her place.

"Like J-Cheese Louis..."

(For context, anything that Marino says in Spanish will be in this color.)

"Ehhh... I was kinda hoping for hitting up the Greeks..." He said, looking at Emma with red eyes. "Y'know... we'd be riding on pegasuses... and traveling around the place, like, uhh... I dunno, Athens or shit..." That'd be a dream for Marino, riding a winged horse with a hot goddess by his side.

Marino looked over to Mañana. "I'm not a tea guy myself... but I'd be down for something like that..." It didn't sound like a bad idea in their state of mind, maybe if they grabbed a kettle and tea, then just boiled water, they'd have something to drink. Marino was about to get up until he began to question his actions.

What kind of tea would pair well with weed? Better yet, what kinds of tea did he have?

"So, uhh... what tea do y'all wanna drink?"

"Nawwww, naw nawwww, dude the greek're like... they're like..."

He'd forgotten what he was going to say mid-sentence. Like the words had fallen out of his mouth. Shit, what was it gonna be? "They got too many relation issues"? "They're rapists"? "They're white"? Very low key, the genius brain was failing. He contemplated this Flowers for Algernon-esque state of being while he continued to stare at the ceiling groaning very quietly. Ascendence and descendence alike and in concordance. However, genius brain was reaffirmed once Marino asked a question and he was given the opportunity to answer.

"Greeeeen."

Like the weed. If you have weed tea it's. It's green. It's

REVOLUTIONARY.

Bissette gagged at that. Green Tea. Ugh.

He snagged another brownie, stuffing it right in his mouth as he leaned back and looked up "Fuck it, let's go meet the gods. Green Tea!!"

"Isn't...green tea.... Chinese tea? I don't see how we can see some rapist god with green teeeee...." Emma said, trying to gain her footing. Emma was confusing green tea for standard matcha, but in an ironic sense, she was correct to say that green tea was actually Chinese. Maybe the weed was making her smarter than it seemed.

"As long as it's not that kombucha shit, that thooossee hipster tikar (bitches) keep drinking." Emma managed to stand up, until she realized something. Her pink eyes made it evident that she had no idea what she was doing.

"You people better not burn this place down and get yourselves killed, just because that you're high..."

"...?" Emma thought she heard something after feeling a sudden chill, but she assumed that it was the weed still lingering in her system to play tricks with her mind.

"'Kay... Green tea it is..."

Marino lazily got up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. Every step he took was weightless under his feet, and his vision felt hazy. He took a wrong turn and hit his head on the wall, but soon found his way to the pantry after confusing it with the fridge. Looking past the cereal and coffee, there were a few boxes of tea from his mother, but no green.

"Sorry guys... we're out of the green..." Marino's voice felt like it echoed through a cave. "But, uhhh... We still got some... some herbal... some Earls... Oolong..."

Herbs?

Like...

Oh yeah, it was allll coming together now.

With the amount of strength it would take to lift a five ton weight, Manuel pulled his head from its position of eternal rest against the unreasonably comfy couch which belonged to his buddy (Marino). He'd accomplished this monumental task in order to facilitate the even more daunting journey of trying to focus on Marino in the state he was in. He got there, eventually, picturing his hermano in arms through all them pretty little waves that currently made up most of his sense of vision. He had this big, dumb grin on his bigger, dumber face which spoke volumes of his geeeeeniuuuuus.

"Toma el té de hierbas. La hierba... se debe beber... con más hierba."

He had never drunk tea in his life. This was a non-issue at this moment, however, wherein anything in the known universe was possible.

Bissette groaned, leaning back as he rubbed his head and slurred his words, now speaking with some broken French

‘Je m'en fiche... apporte-moi juste de l'herbe à boire.”