…

“Stress!”

“What.”

“We’re nearly home!”

“Your home yes.”

“It’s so cool you need to see it!”

“Yes, yes I bet it is.”

Stress and Urchiri were both walking down the incredibly packed street, mostly packed with people just watching the roads in anticipation of something assumably. Stress was having a hard time. Firstly, with this massive crowd giving him stomach pains and unwanted worry, enforced by all of the abnormal figures and outfits. Secondly was Urchiri slowly blending into the crowd and getting further and further away. He had no choice.

“Urchiri! Give me your hand or I’m gonna lose you!”

Urchiri quickly turned and stopped but got bumped while turning as she was too short for people to see while walking. She fell down on her back, catching herself barely with her left hand and sleeve, however she seriously couldn’t stand with the forest of legs surrounding her.

“Aaaa-agh o-OK!” she yelled as she raised her right hand, hoping for Stress to grab it.

“Aaaaand I gotcha!”

Stress had grabbed Urchiri’s raised hand quickly as he ran through a small opening, scooping her into his arms cradling her as he tried to run to a less crowded area with her. Looking down at her expression, Urchiri was both amazed and relieved.

“You’re awesome Mr!”

“Just Stress is fine.”

“You’re awesome Stress!”

“I heard the first time.”

“But I want you to hear it as many times as possible!”

“Please don’t, I get enough from a certain someone already.”

“What was that? The crowd is so noisy…”

“Doesn’t matter.”

…

“WE ARE HERE!” shouted Urchiri, Stress following up with a shushing expression due to not wanting to be found.

They were inside of a random alleyway, crowded like hell outside of it, and like any alleyway, it absolutely stunk of multiple things (fumes, rotten food, old items) and Stress was immediately put in a bad mood.

“You know, this place feels really… not cave-like in any way.”

“So you think!” she said with little wag of her finger, similar to that of a specific attorney plus another ego slip.

She walked up to one of the relatively large green dumpsters and grabbed a nearby tomato crate to stand on and open the dumpster.

“So you live in a dumpster?”

“Maybe…”

“THIS WAS THE CAVE YOU SAID ABOUT?! A DUMPSTER ISN’T A CAVE FOR GOD’S SAKE!” shouted Stress not realising that he was being a hypocrite to his prior shushing.

“Can you please not shout like that please…”

“Ok, ok. You ARE a child after all so I shouldn’t be so harsh.”

“Jump in!”

“UHM… Sorry I really don’t want to stink later and have my parents think deal with that so no thanks.”

“It doesn’t stink though!”

“You’re probably nose-blind to it if you live here.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you can’t detect smells anymore because you got used to them.”

“C’mon! Just jump in!”

Stress let out a comically large sigh before checking dumpster to see if it was really THAT bad.

There was a giant hole in the bottom of the dumpster, a dark ladder attached to it.

“Ok maybe I don’t trust you.”

She popped her head out of the hole and said “Just climb down here! I wanna show you!”

Stress decided to take the plunge, hopping into the large dumpster with his feet clanging against its half-intact bottom. The ladder, after grabbing it, had a certain feeling to it which felt icky.

“What the hell is on this ladder?”

“Sticky stuff on my hands!”

“Specifically?”

“I don’t know. My hands and feet are just sticky.”

“Have you washed them?”

“Yeah! I have a soap block! They are just sticky.”

Stress didn’t fully question it and just went down the ladder, which turned out to be really short and Stress just jumped down into the dimly lit abyss.

“Ah…

You live like this?”

“Isn’t it awesome!?”

“Well… it’s pretty nice.”

Internally, Stress was absolutely fascinated by how she had a place like this. More questions had flooded his mind, a feeling of déjà vu. Where did the food come from? How did she install this water container? What were the odd spiky candles for? Why have string lights in here when there isn’t any electricity? He needed at least a few answers. Or at least he would ask them if he knew where she even was.

“Hey, look up here!”

Stress looked directly up into the open hole he fell from, however right next to it was Urchiri. She was sat on the ceiling, upside down from Stress’s view.

“So, this is what you meant by sticky?”

“I am sticky!”

She steadily crawled down the bumpy curved edges of the hole. Stress meanwhile, was scanning down the hole, examining every nook and cranny he could spot within such a cramped (for him) dark space. In doing this, he starting to notice a decent amount of unopened food containers or just uneaten food as well as leftovers. He started to wonder…

“Hey, how do you get all this food?”

“Oh! There’s this nice lady who often gives me stuff; they come from inside the building outside.”

“The building this dumpster is next to?”

“Yeah. She has either long eyelashes or big spots on her face, but she always gives me stuff which makes me happy.”

“Wait, what building is the one outside?”

“Uh, I can’t read the sign.”

“Wait how am I gonna get outta here?”

“Just go in there.”

“But how?”

“Go in.”

“HOW?”

“By going in there!”

“BUT I DON’T STICK TO WALLS!”

“Oh… ummm…”

“This is fine.”

Stress, instead of trying to get out, looked around a little more to try to see anything else of note. In doing so, he was reminded of the questions he wanted to ask Urchiri.

“What are these candles for? Just light or?”

“They’re just like mommy and daddy! That’s why they’re here. Because they look like them!”

“Oh… well, where are they now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they just leave you here?”

“No, I came here on my own!” she said whilst putting her fist on her chest, holding her head up high.

“What even were they like?”

“They’re both really cool and nice to me!”

“Then why are you here and not with them?”

“…”

There was silence. After a while it might’ve hit Stress that he was asking extremely personal questions, so he promptly apologised.

“Uhm… going back to what I said earlier… How do I get out?”

“I don’t know what happened with them…”

“That’s not… Oh about your parents. Weeeeell I don’t feel like prying anymore so can you just tell me how to get outta this hole?”

Urchiri had nothing to suggest, she wasn’t really all that creative. All she had was…

“Wanna banana?”

“I’m good thanks. I just need a way outta here.”

As Urchiri sat on the wall munching away on her banana, Stress just walked around in the small area he could looking at all the random stuff again, and again, and again. He couldn’t really tell how much time had passed. It got the point where he just there doing absolutely nothing but thinking. Urchiri had gone to sleep on the tattered rug on the floor, snoring quietly to herself. Stress wanted to stand up and attempt to get out however, like him trying to get out of bed, his body just wouldn’t move, requiring him to use at least two thirds of his current brain power just to stand, which he did eventually. Well, it was half his brain power, half him hearing a sound above of a door opening, then closing, then locking followed finally by footsteps.

“Hey Beanie. Beanie! I have some leftovers for you!”

A mature female voice above immediately woke Urchiri as she turned to look directly up through the hole Stress wanted to go out off.

“Yay! Food!”

“Trust me, it’s not really anything great today. Also, I do need to be on duty soon, so I’ll be dropping this off then going.”

“Awwww, I wanted to show you this cool guy I found while at the fair today!”

“Wait. Someone else is in there? Where?”

“Just right he-!”

In the moment, presumably, the source of the voice was at the top of the cave hanging onto the end of the ladder.

It was a barely tanned, blonde-haired woman with blue make-up and what looked like face tattoos that resembled bubbles going up to her left eye from her neck. However, she definitely wasn’t human, that was what her spotted tail and lack of nose was telling him. She almost looked slightly familiar to Stress. But he didn’t have time to think about that part as she started to yell.

“Quick grab my hand! I have places to be right about now!”

Without question, Stress reached up to grasp her hand and get out of this inescapable pit that he’d been stuck in for ages. After a tight grip to his wrist and an “Aaaayuuup” when she pulled him out, Stress had finally got out of what he liked to call “The Urchin Trap” and he was thankful.

“Thank you so mu-“

“Sorry, but I really don’t have time for this, give this to her down there. And please do NOT enter again.”

She quickly ran off while putting on a uniform. A police officer’s uniform. He knew he’d recognised her, especially since she forced him unconscious and tried to kill him when he first entered this world. However, something didn’t make sense to him.

“If Urchiri remembers what happened after a time rewind, then how does she not?”

Stress didn’t have to even think that long for the answer to that question.

“Hold on, I only saw her once before. That was the first time, and obviously no one remembered that timeline. Simple enough. Thank goodness as well cause I really don’t wanna deal with that again.”

“Hey whatcha thinking about!”

Urchiri’s head popped right out the hole, and although looking quite whackable, she looked right up into Stress’s hands, which held the food that the officer had given him. Stress looked right down at her before just dropping the box of only three apple slices onto her large noggin.

“Ooooooowwwwwww… why did you do that!”

“You look small and squishy poking out of that hole, so I merely applied minor compression to your skull so test my hypothesis.”

“What.”

“Big words. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I like big words!”

“You told me before.”

Urchiri was now out of the hole, out of the dumpster along with Stress (with help of a separate box inside the dumpster). Stress did have even more questions now that he was out of the hole, however the first one was…

“If the officer came from this building, is this…”

He ran out of the alleyway. He nearly instantly got consumed by the immense crowd, now even more crowded than way earlier. Before he was able to be overwhelmed by the intense saturation and colours, he looked up at the sign on the building. It read “Poppers Dome Outer Staff Block C”. He then looked directly at the building next to it.

It was absolutely massive. A stadium-like structure that, from his angle, he couldn’t even make out its size. He also had no idea how he had not noticed the structure beforehand but that didn’t matter now, especially considering his convenient luck.

[On Sunday I’m going to see a concert! It’s at the Poppers Dome…]

The Poppers Dome stood right before him.

“Stress! Wait for me! I can’t run in this crowd!”

He had forgotten about Urchiri, although luckily, she got scooped up into Stress’s arms rather quickly considering what happened earlier; Stress didn’t want to take that same risk. However both of them now stood in a large open space in front of the dome, where there were multiple statues placed symmetrically around the space, leading into the dome’s entrance, all shapes like curved party poppers going inwards. Not only that, but the trees that were placed around inside elevated stone structures all had weirdly pale leaves in them with few colourful lights scattered amongst them. Even the ground beneath them was a beautiful mosaic of a hand holding up a peace sign amongst dots of primary colours. They weren’t even inside of the dome and already the aesthetics were off the charts.

“Stress! Do you like this place?”

“Yeah. I love what they did here, is all architecture in this world this cool?”

“I know right! It looks aweso-!”

“ARE Y’ALL READY FOR THIS!?”

A deafening roar from the crowd diverted Stress’s attention as Urchiri curled up to lower the noise for herself.

“POP-STER! POP-STAR! POP-STER! POP-STAR! POP-STER! POP-STAR!”

“WE WAITED HOURS FOR THIS!”

“FINALLY!”

“AAAAAAAAAH SHE’S HERE!”

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The crowd chanting only made the loudness worse, however such a presence was too much to look away from as a large vehicle cruised its way down the street towards the dome. The vehicle was only that large due to it having a stage built into its roof. Atop the stage stood at least 5 figures in a triangular formation, each figure wearing a giant frilly outfit which covered their entire bodies like massive pompoms. All except the centre of the group, most definitely the one people who so hyped up for.

Long rectangular eyelashes. Yellow curly hair with darker yellow streaks. An exposed abdomen. Attractive form. And many, many poppers dangling off her costume, some sprouting hands and glowing like stars. The centre of the group Mellows. The brightest of yellow eyes. “The Brightest Being” as some of the crowd shouted.

POPSTER!