Deep Fried: a CCG Mystery

Chapter 3

The ruckus inside of McDonald's was already gleaming. There was the all too familiar setup: one line for food ordering, and another for returning and correcting. It seemed the McRib was the new poppin' trend on the block. 

"I hate my life," Hooguro complained as he stirred the fry vat. He'd been forced to infiltrate McDonald's so he could bring Naki free happy meal toys. Shousei seemed to be enjoying being Ronald McDonald a little too much.

"What may I get you gentlemen?" Nico, stylishly decked out in cheeseburger yellow fake nails and golden M embroidered jeans, asked at the cashier counter.

Amon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The detailed menu dazed him. "Hmm...get me a McRib and fries. And a large drink," he said intelligently.

"Haha! Petty!" Tsukiyama chuckled from his purple lamborghini outside, watching the lower class with binoculars.

"I want a parfait and fries and a shamrock shake!" Juzo demanded.

"Juzo, I thought you were trying to be healthier this month," Shinohara protested, shaking his head.

"I am! I'm getting a green shake!" Juzo said happily.

"Hey a**holes! What the h*ll are you doing here?!" Marude shouted, angrily stomping in with Mabuchi accompanying him like an overprotective bodyguard.

"I thought this was a public restaurant?" Amon frowned.

"Why are you asking us that? You're the one that came barging in," Akira replied coldheartedly.

"Ha! I eat McDonald's every d*mn day!" Maru bragged, chuckling proudly.

"I'm looking forward to seeing a heart attack in person," Mabuchi smiled contently.

"Yo, it's Chuck!" a hip gangster chuck e cheese employee grinned, giving finger guns. Mabuchi nodded stoically and gave him the secret gesture, fingers in the shape of a block of cheese.

"Big Mac sama, I'm having difficulties ringing up the food," Nico whined, pursing his purple lips in distress.

"Give me a minute, a**hole!" a grumpy voice yelled from the manager room, where he was finishing up an episode of the hottest new tv show, Smashed Brain Child.

The large man came stomping out, his beady eyes narrowing cruelly when he saw the investigators. "Ew," he commented.

"I heard that," Takizawa said angrily, putting his small hands on his hips. He'd forgotten one of Hoji's most important safety lessons: don't instigate fights with fast food employees over 30.

"Mr. Shinohara, he smells like cooked flesh," Juzo said.

"Nonsense, I'm sure it's just the quarter pounders," Shinohara chuckled.

Big Mac angrily typed the order in with his sausage fingers. "One of you'd better get a McRib!" he demanded, shaking his finger angrily as he stomped back to his "office" (spare room full of crusted fry vats).

"That's a little...suspicious," Amon remarked, nodding to himself as his head was filled with intelligent thoughts. What would Mado say in this situation? Probably "did I forget to order fries?".

They got the table with the high height chairs. "Here's my notebook on the case so far," Hoji announced, getting out his ebay-ordered colts notebook. He liked to watch football with Takizawa, who was too weak to actually play any of it.

"This McRib tastes funny," Amon commented, wiping the cheap barbecue sauce off his lips.

"What do you think, Juzo? Didn't you eat a child once? Or was it a monkey at the zoo?" Shinohara asked, holding out a bite of his McRib. However, the stitched child was too amused by Marude having fallen out of a rickety chair to care.

"This is too off topic for me to care about," Takizawa complained, getting out his latest novel, Corgi Confessions by Caroll O. Knipe. Hoji gave him a friendly bonk on the head for being so disrespectful.

"I think manager 'Big Mac' made it very clear to us that he's a rib person. Why don't we schedule an interview with him?" Akira asked.

"No. We need a more stealthy approach. A way to get him to admit his heinous crimes," Amon frowned.

"Guys, we don't know if he's actually done anything yet," Shinohara chuckled. His kindhearted nature was thwarting the investigation.

"Yeah, he's just a mean fat bald guy with a passion for ribs! Nothing suspicious about that!" Juzo laughed.

"Enough of the sarcasm, Juzo! You know I can only understand so much!" his adopted father protested.

"So 'Big Mac' is his alias..." Hoji nodded, writing it down in his notebook.

"No, I think that's just what the drag queen calls him," Takizawa said.

"It'd be great if he'd leave a condemning message at a crime scene. Like, 'I like kids, sincerely, Big Mac'," Shinohara nodded.

"I can hear you talking about me! Well guess what! I didn't do sh*t!" Big Mac hollered from the counter.

"H-He's onto us!" Takizawa exclaimed. Turned out, he was only yelling at a lone parent who had dared accuse him of spitting in the chicken nugget breading. While McDonald's was not above frying and selling severed chicken heads, spitting in the breading was not something they endorsed.

"Hey! Let me have some of your fries!" Marude yelled at them from across the restaurant. He was building a fry mountain with Mabuchi. Akira raised her middle finger. She strongly disliked single middle aged men with too much time on their hands.

"Well, that was delicious," Hoji commented, patting his mouth with a handkerchief with mini Mado heads sewn onto them. When the morbidly gifted old man had died, the CCG had produced merchandise of him to spread his legacy.

"Hey Fruity! Clean that mountain up!" Big Mac ordered petty Furuta, who was working as a janitor to earn extra cash for a Rize plushie from ebay.

"Gladly, master," the slick-haired emo replied, smiling at the thought of all the fries he would get to collect.

"Well, see you at the office, b*tches! And by the way, don't be jealous of my new bike!" Marude laughed in the parking lot.

"Maru, that's not a bike, that's the disabled scooter from Walmart," Shinohara corrected.

"Mind your own business, fata**!" the consistently enraged middle-aged biker yelled, getting on the disabled scooter. His motorcycle funds had been rapidly depleted. Mabuchi sat in the kid basket.

As they left, Big Mac watched suspiciously from his office window. "They're onto me..." he muttered, taking a bite of a hunk of child.