"Almost Green"

"Like Calling Up Thunder"

Day one.

Just like any other. First came the shock and confusion. Yelling, screaming, wailing, disbelief. Having spent all his life amidst dirt and dust, Andy had no idea what the fuss was about.

She was livid. Absolutely, utterly disgusted and revolted. Fuming, even. 

Croissant really disliked the library’s interior. Why? He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Dust? Dust was a natural part of life. They were all molded from dust, all would turn to dust, eventually. Like W did, poor bastard. Law, bless his wretched soul.

They slipped a little check from Emperor’s office into their pockets and went shopping. Not the fun kind, the necessary kind. Andy learned just how much of a savvy money-spender the girl was, seeing her calculate each milliliter of dust-killing detergent, comparing prices for hours and always settling on the cheapest crap they could find. “A dolla’ saved's a dolla’ earned, baws!” She’d coo, casually dropping a ten liter tub of Lungmen’s “Brother Clean” onto the poor merc’s shoulders. Where did all that energy even come from? She definitely didn’t look the part, nonetheless pulled her weight tenfold. Andy could only struggle and groan, pushing their overloaded cart through the halls of this capitalist kingdom that was some Section Five shopping center.

They came back late. Very late. Sprinkle in a flat tire on their way back, the lights had already long gone dim by the time they arrived at the doorstep of Pacifc Empire, the library welcoming them with its eerie silence and creaky floors. Unloading half of their haul took an hour or so, the rest much longer. Croissant’s watch beeped in the middle of their little sisyphean task, signaling the end of her shift. Not a second did she waste, throwing a chirpy “Aight, I reckon that’s enuff from me fa’ today!” and leaving him there to carry all those detergents back inside on his own.

He could barely fall asleep with all that leftover back pain.

Day two.

He really wanted to take a day off. 

His legs hurt, his back hurt, his heart hurt, his brain hurt, filled with nothing but empty plans for today that would remain unfulfilled. How he wanted to just lay in bed, do nothing from sunrise to sundown, rot under the sheets and watch the city live its course from behind the cozy cover of a snug blanket. Or maybe call up Lem and ask her out, somewhere. Would she accept? Did she work mondays? Would she even want to…? Everything hurt.

And it kept hurting as a loud banging ensued at the front door at around six in the morning.

Expecting the worst, a posse of bikers or homeless raiders, he opened it with a gun in hand, giving the person on the other side a little scare.

“Whaddya need all ‘at firepower fa’, baws? ‘S just me, lil’ ‘ol Croissant!”

And before he could even respond, she was already halfway into the main hall, checking for dust on his desk and clicking her tongue. There went his feverish plans of bed-rotting and date-going. Within just a couple minutes, she had him mixing and tossing around bubbly concoctions of cheap chemical waste, spilling around the floor, forming lakes and entire ecosystems of bacteria-killing troops. How they colonized the entire area within seconds was quite the feat. Platoons of foam, supported by artillery bombardments of various toxic fluids, all raining down upon the poor indigenous populations of dust and dirt alike, crushing their meek resistance with little to no issue. Croissant, the high commander of their tiny war-force, stood proud, towering over Andy, the field marshall, who kept mumbling absolute nonsense, his coffee-deprived mind working overtime to keep him from falling asleep.