Street Vegans

Chapter 5

Chad and West decided to approach the scrappy looking man just in case he might be helpful.

"Hey, scruffy!" Chad called.

The man turned around, swaying on unsteady legs and stared Chad dead in the face. He dropped his empty beer bottle, pieces of it shattering all over the ground. Chad recoiled at the drunken man's unsightly appearance and blatantly unfocused stare.

With Chad too uncomfortable to speak, West pipes up. "Can you help us? We're trying to look for people."

After an uncomfortable pause, the man slurred a response in a very noticeable Licentian accent. "For a price."

"What kind of price..." Chad hesitantly asked.

"You got any beer? Juan smells beer. If you got any, I want it," the homeless looking man rambled.

Chad's face screwed up in confusion as he contemplated many things, two being what on J's planet the man just said and how he didn't swallow his tongue saying it.

After finally stringing together what he thought the man had said, he spoke. "Who the fuck is Juan?"

"And how does he smell beer?" West added. "Bro, that party was like 3 days ago, how do we still smell like beer?"

West busied himself with bringing his sweater to his nose to see if he did smell like that disgusting alcoholic beverage. As the boys were both distracted with their own brainless thoughts, the man grabbed the neck of the shattered bottle which had fashioned itself into a handy weapon. He pointed it towards the boys in a very unsteady manor.

"Gimme beer or no deal white boy... other boy too," he said.

Finally bringing their attention back to the clearly unstable man in front of them, they both looked on in surprise. Chad jumps back and hides behind his friend.

"Why does everyone wanna kill us these days!" He cries.

"Juan isn't going to repeat."

The Licentian man threateningly thrusted his bottle shard towards the boys and the fight was on.

"By the crown! Again?" West complained as he ran over to the dumpster and pulled out a discarded metal rod.

While Chad was cowering behind his best friend, West stepped up and took a swing at Juan's shins. A good point of contact if he did say so himself. The drunken man was able to somehow lift his right leg in time but failed to lift the other one. This ended with the loud sound of metal on skin and a soft thud and he toppled to the side, landing in the dirt.

West, still in his fighting stance, awaited the Licentian's move, not wanting to hurt him more than absolutely necessary when a familiar clap of thunder sounded.

"What are you waiting for? This isn't a video game, go and open up a can of butt woopin' on his ass!" A disembodied voice (a vegan god) the boys decided to refer to as, "90s asshole" said from beyond the clouds. "And make the darker one stop crying!"

Chad chose that moment to emit a comically loud sniffle sound and continue his shuttered cries. West let out a sigh as he tried not to just collapse and give up at this point. Too much was happening and the boy really didn't have the energy for it. Sadly for him, the scraggly looking Licentian man swayed to his feet and took hold of the beer bottle again, running -more like falling- towards West in an attempt to stab him.

West just barely dodged the attack, getting nicked in the chest in the process and hissed in pain. He cursed under his breath before taking another swing, this time aiming for the man's arm only for him to somehow grab the pole and yank it from West's hands.