"What is with you?"

Chapter 1

Kenny's POV:

This year has been a really shitty one so far, Kevin moved away only a day after he turned 16 which was around 5 years ago now, Karen decided to turn into one of those vamp kids even though I've tried so many times to stop her from doing so, My Dad is starting to act weird around me and My Mom is drinking more than usual - which is already so much - and my best friend Eric the one and only Theodore Cartman has been avoiding me for 3 weeks now, and Cartman is known for being stubborn so who knows when he'll start talking to me again.

Walking on the outskirts of this shithole town has kind of been my only way for me to deal with overwhelming feelings of sadness and loneliness without bawling my eyes out. I honestly don't know why this helps, maybe it's because of the fresher air, no one being around... or being as far far away from where my Dad and "home" is all the time.

Walking on the road isn't the safest idea, but I don't care if I die anymore, I've died so many times only in the span of 15 years that dying feels like yawning now, it feels like second nature so much that I expect my death everyday, So I don't mind dying again, I just sort of wish it was permanent at this point. My life feels so much more different than it did only 7 years ago. It's given, because at that point I was 8 and now I'm 15 years old, but sometimes it feels like I've moved from one small mountain town to the next, except the people are all the same safe for a couple immigrants and the buildings are exactly the same. I think it might be that both everyone around me and I've grown up, so we're all different people, but I don't like it. I want it to go back to how it was when I was younger, not exactly oblivious, but more innocent at least.

Just as I start to walk back around to the middle of town, approaching the bus stop I see a familiarly fat figure waiting at the bus stop scrolling and texting on his phone, the infamous one and only Eric Theodore Cartman. What is he doing here? It's 4 in the morning almost 5, why is he here? Knowing how he's been with me so far, if I go up to him and actually talk to him, he'll either ignore me or run away so I decide to sneak into and hide in the bushes right behind the bus stop. I can't actually see his phone well enough to see who he's messaging but I can see what he and this mystery person is saying.

Cartman: "Dude can you hurry the fuck up?? It's cold out here, it's almost morning and I don't want anyone to see me, especially not Kenny."
Mystery Guy: "Yeah yeah, I know, this whole avoiding him because of this stupid crush is getting out of hand, are you going to talk to him again? you do know avoiding him won't make your feelings go away right?"
Cartman: "Shut up, that isn't true and you know it."
Mystery Guy: "Wow, I'm surprised you didn't hit me with your classic jew line, this must be serious for you! I'm pretty much here anyway fat ass."

Cartman was texting Kyle of all people to drive him somewhere? Where could he possibly want KYLE his sworn enemy to take him? And what crush?? Did Cartman have a crush on his girlfriend or something? if this avoiding has all been just because he doesn't want me to hate him for dating one of his exes I'm going to go ballistic. If I wanted to find out I could probably text Kyle or something to get answers, but I figure that if Kyle's working with Cartman against me for whatever reason, I'm not going to get an answer with a reply that actually answers any of my questions from him. So my only option is to basically spy I guess, It's not the smartest because if Cartman's hiding something from anyone, he definitely doesn't want that person finding out what he's hiding, but what is he going to do to me? Kill me? Yeah, right.

Kyle's dark green car pulls up to the bus stop about a minute after his last text to Eric, was he texting while driving? Anyway Eric quickly snaps his head from left to right, trying to make sure that no one sees him, idiotically not looking behind him, to where I was hiding, but I guess I was lucky he didn't have a more through look.

"Hurry up! Do you want to get caught, you're being obvious!!" Kyle hurries him as Eric finally but slowly crawls into the car. "Shut up Jew, don't be so loud Jesus!!" Eric retorts while climbing in, hurrying because of Kyle's words, "Oh there it is! The iconic line, so where is-" Kyle gets cut off by the sound of his engine while he drives away, I guess he didn't actually get cut off, but I can't hear him anymore obviously.

This is so weird! Sure, Eric's and Kyle's relationship got better over the years as they got older and less childish, and started hanging out more not only in the group but on they're own as the four of them divided into multiple different pairings but this is just really unusual for them, I was usually the first person Eric went to when he had a problem, not now that Eric seemingly doesn't want him in his presence anymore, but he would have assumed he would go to Leo (Butters) first instead of Kyle since Leo is so easy to manipulate people and Eric has a knack for manipulation to get what he wants, so what in the actual hell is going on with Eric?

~~Author's Note:~~
You might've noticed that half way through the story I stopped writing Eric's name as Cartman, that's because I prefer using Eric for him instead of Cartman, I did it in the begging to kinda ease into it, Also instead of calling Butters his nickname Butters, I decided to use Leo, because Butters is a goofy ass name, and I think that he wouldn't like his nickname as he got older. This fanfic isn't very canon-typical, I will be ignoring a lot of the more recent movies like South Park: Post Covid, But I will keep characters from the early seasons/movie of the show, Like Pip (he's dead in this), Damien, Gregory etc.
I'll also try to research all of the 'foreign kids' or kids that weren't permanent to the show and make them permanent to this fanfic, if i ever continue it, hope that i do lol!
this will be on both wattpad and ao3 so if you like one website over the other be my guest to check both out please.
Thank you for reading my late night motivation inspired fanfic, this was inspired by Scathed (A Kenman fanfic) by ReTordEd on wattpad, go check it out
https://www.wattpad.com/story/236243699-scathed-a-kenman-fanfic

Word count: 1192

- June