Street Vegans

Chapter 3

After a couple minutes of jogging, the two boys found themselves on the outskirts of a festival just a ways off from the dock. Wanting to simply calm down for a minute after the scare they just had, Chad decided they might as well check out the celebration. They rushed into the middle of the action to see festive strings of little banners, the Licentian colours of green and yellow on them and fairy lights to illuminate the swiftly dimming area.

The smell of food and sound of Licentian guitar wafted around the area and the boys decided to take a bit of time out of their journey to explore the small fiesta. They found a booth selling churros and decided to get a few each, seeing as they hadn't eaten in over 24 hours and were famished. As West was stuffing his face with the delicious dessert, he started to feel an intense sting in his arm and he became light headed.

"Well I guess the adrenaline wore off..." West muttered as he pressed his hand hard to the stab wound in his arm.

Chad looked at his friend only to see a pretty large dark patch on West's dark grey hoodie. "Bro! You're bleeding pretty badly!" He exclaimed.

"Yeah, being stabbed in the arm will do that to you," West chuckled. "Can you maybe help?"

After a moment of thinking, Chad looked around to see if one of the booths possibly had a first aid kit. A town wide party, there's bound to be someone with a first aid kit, right? Not too long after, Chad found a vendor who had a first aid kit and he asked to borrow the bandages so he could help his friend. Luckily for him, the vendor was pretty nice and offered to wrap West's wound herself.

Cleaning West's arm with an antiseptic wipe from the kit, the woman wrapped his arm and after feeling satisfied with her job, she smiled at the two boys.

"It seems you two are having quite the day, so here," she said before handing West a nacho sombrero by placing it on his head over top of his hood.

West looked up at his new hat, a noticeable weight to it and then back down at the nice woman. "Thanks. I appreciate the help and kindness." He smiled then turned to Chad, chuckling dumbly. "Heh heh, I'm a sombrer-bro."

Chad snickered and both boys bid the woman goodbye before they continued walking outside of the pleasant town. Finally, after what Chad would deem too long, the best friend's finally made it to the dock. That whole little excursion really made the two boys wonder why the car couldn't just drop them off at the dock instead of making them walk a good part of the way there, but what's done was done and they couldn't change it.

Both boys got hyped up when they finally reached the dock and saw a single boat in the water and a very bored looking fish man looking at something on his phone.

"I wonder if his hair is naturally like that," Chad stage whispered as he looked at the fish man's brown, green streaked hair.

"I can hear you, you know," he said, unamused.

"Oh... Well is it?" Chad queried.

The fish man sighed, entirely ignoring the question. He went back to swiping at his phone boredly.

"Hey, um," West pipes up. "Sorry to bother you but is this your boat?

"Well I'm sitting in it, aren't I?"

"So you're the ferryman then?" asks Chad.

The fish man looked appalled. "Ferryman? The fuck? Are you two brain dead or something? This is clearly a row boat."

West sighs, "can you take us to Reject Island?"

"I could."

"Great!" Chad exclaimed before excitedly hopping in the boat. West climbed in after and the two boys waited expectantly for exactly one minute with no movement before Chad spoke up again. "So... are we going soon?"

"Oh, what? I said I could take you, not that I was going to."

"Well take us there!"

"Please," West added, shooting a glare at Chad.

The fish man groaned. "Fine! I guess if I have to."

With that, the fish man finally put his phone away and grabbed the ores. Chad's mood lifted a bit as the fish man started rowing away from the shore... at the speed of a snail stuck in molasses. After a small eternity of moving a whole 3 centimeters, Chad was starting to get really impatient. It started off with him awkwardly rubbing his hands together as he hoped the hybrid man would start gaining momentum. That could only last so long though before Chad was getting annoyed with the hybrid's speed (or lack thereof.)

"Hey, can you go any faster? We kind of have a time to keep," Chad asked, tapping his foot against the wooden bottom of the small row boat.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do these look like the arms of an Olympic rower?" The fish boy asked, spreading out his arms for better view.

"Um... I don't know. You're wearing a spacesuit," Chad commented.

The man looked at Chad with an intimidating "I'm so done with you" look and Chad decided to focus his gaze on the water instead, pursing his lips.

"You know, I'm not even gonna get involved with whatever you two are arguing about," West commented.

There were a few more moments of silence.

West started humming.

The fish boy looked angrily between Chad and West, trying to figure out which one of them was making the noise. Without stopping the boat, the fish man started talking.

"Okay, if whichever one of you annoying fuckers doesn't stop humming 'row row row your boat' I'm flipping you out and you can fend against the ocean monsters yourself."

"Please do," West commented.

"What!? No!" Chad piped in.

West said nothing.

A few more moments of silence.

Ten minutes passed.

Twenty minutes.

Chad leaned a bit closer to the fish boy. "So, you never answered my question. Is that your natural hair?"

The fish man let out a loud groan. "Yes! Are you happy now?"

"Very," Chad replied, sitting back in his seat with a smug grin.

Fish boy rolled his eyes and continued slowly rowing. Chad crossed his arms before beginning to tap his foot again.

"You know, we could swim to the island faster than this," he said.

"Well if you want, I can always toss you into the ocean and you can swim there yourself. I won't hesitate bitch," the fish man replied.

"Just, because it would be faster doesn't mean we'd want to do it. Besides, then our clothes would get wet and we'd have to take off our socks," West added, sending a look to Chad.

"Yeah, it was meant to be a threat for you to hurry up anyways," Chad said.

"Just putting it out there, if you're so sure you can swim there faster, you can get out of my boat and take your chances with old Gregg."

"Who's that?" asked West.

"I'm old Gregg!"

"What the fuck!" Chad screamed, sounding an awful lot like Britanny and nearly jumping out of the boat in surprise.