🕸𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍🕸 | Hazbin Hotel OC

Chapter 9 | Fun Times at the Market :)

A few days had passed, and Leeroy and Tajin strolled down the streets of Pentagram City, looking for some food to steal. There was a market lined up out on the streets where all sorts of imps from the Wrath Ring had come to sell the food they had grown in the gardens. None of it looked exactly like what Leeroy expected... large, decapitated hell-pig bodies, otherworldly vegetables, and something that seemed to be dangerously close to a sinner's dead body.

Tajin walked down the streets, examining everything that he walked past with an indifference that almost frightened Leeroy. Perhaps one would get used to such a terrifying sight after living in Hell for over two decades, or maybe the lack of sleep they both got the night before got to him. They were both kept up all night by the sounds of Tick angrily losing every single game she played against Voxito.

Sometimes, Leeroy's head would start spinning and he'd be able to see information about the people around him. This person was named Karlos, he felt annoyed, and at some point, in his past he had accidentally murdered a family of four while drunk driving.

That one was named Janica, she was feeling disgusted, though her brain continually attacked her over the way she treated her siblings in life. The ability to stare into someone's very soul seemed fitting for Leeroy's creep personality, and if he honestly thought about it, he loved learning about all these people.

Unfortunately for him, though, man cannot survive on stalking alone. His stomach rumbled and his pathetically small arms felt weaker than usual. He caught up with Tajín again.

"Is any of this stuff any good? It all looks so..." he caught a glimpse of someone pulling apart some kind of dead animal behind him and shuddered. Somehow, this looked even worse than the slop they had served him in prison. And that stuff didn't even have color!

Tajín nodded his head. "Most of it is pretty good, especially when you throw some of this onto it," he explained, tapping on a lump inside his jacket pocket.

"Put what on it?" Leeroy obliviously asked.

Tajín sighed and mumbled, "Estás desesperada." He pulled out the hidden object, revealing it to be a small bottle of Chile Tajín powder. "Add a bit of this to anything, and it makes it a hundred times better."

Grabbing the bottle from Tajín's hand, Leeroy read it over and paused. "Tajín is a spice?"

"You didn't know?" Tajín replied, raising an eyebrow. "It tastes good even if you just eat it by itself."

Leeroy laughed. "Does that mean that I can start calling you 'Spice' now?"

Tajín's face flushed, and he snatched the spice bottle away from Leeroy. "Oh, come on."

"Whatever you say, Spice," Leeroy chuckled out, grabbing onto the side of a vendor's cart.

"Yeah?" Tajín snapped, stopping to stare at Leeroy. "Well, at least Spice is a better nickname than Eyes." He folded his arms. A passerby with flowing black and red hair rolled their eyes at the interaction before snagging a strange devil-fruit. Leeroy stared as they took a bite and their hair color changed to bright orange and yellow.

They ran their fingers through their hair, their arm suddenly looking like it was made of rubber. They dropped a few dollars on the stand and stretched their legs to nearly 20 feet tall, taking two giant steps away from the market before disappearing out of sight.

Damn, Leeroy was hungry.

Very perfectly, there was a sudden commotion just a few yards down from where Leeroy and Tajin were "shopping." A gunshot rang out and everyone turned to see what the damage was, and low and behold, it was none other than the cartel that had tried so hard to steal the home that Leeroy had stolen fair and square.

The vendor next to him, a stout man with a mustache twice the length of his face, started cursing in French at the cartel, grabbing a fish and charging at them as if it were a weapon. Leeroy took the opportunity to snag an aquatic corpse and shove the whole thing in his mouth. The bones stabbed into the roof of his mouth, and the taste offended every part of his soul, but he lowkey liked it.

Tajin looked on in disgust, torn between yelling at Leeroy and running away from Mr. Castaneda (the new, official name for Tajin's cartel boss father). The cartel shot another bullet into the sky—it accidentally shot down a creepy hell-bird thing—and the leader cleared his throat, gaining everyone's attention.

"Mis amigos, today es your lucky day! Our premium drugs are going at a special rate, a whopping 33% off 1.5x your order," the rat advertised, his disgusting yellow teeth pulled into a hideous smile.

Leeroy looked up; his mouth still full of foul fish meat. He did some quick math in his head, and nodded in surprise that the rat was able to figure out the numbers to have a "sale" without dropping the price of anything. Nobody jumped on the offer, however, and they all just stood there. Except for the French guy, who was still charging at Senor Castaneda with his weaponized fish carcass.

The one that Leeroy faintly remembered as being called "Tooth" cocked a pistol and shot the vendor right between the eyes. Some people backed off and others simply resumed their business.

With the vendor now dead, Leeroy shoved another fish in his mouth before grabbing as many as he could carry. Tajin still just stood there, squinting. His hand rested on his pistol.

"Whaf a' yu doin'," Leeroy asked, his mouth still full. A bit of fish bone was dangling from his teeth. "I fought yu said he waf a cowar'."

"Oh my god, pulgita, don't talk with food in your mouth," Tajin parented, glaring at Leeroy with a renewed look of disgust. "Ugh... this is too sad to watch. Take this." He pulled out the Tajin powder and stretched to pat some of it into his mouth. Leeroy's eyes went wide, and he smiled in delight when the seasoning hit his tongue. He swallowed.

"Sorry. That stuff's good, Spice! Can I have some more?" he exhorted. While he was reaching for the bottle, without waiting for Tajin's consent, Tooth suddenly spotted them and pointed with his weird flipper-hand.

"Boss, look! It's your son and that idiot that killed us!" he said, like a good henchman.

Tajin's yanked the bottle out of Leeroy's reach and shoved it back into his pocket before grabbing onto the fly and running. "Shit, shit, shit! We can't let them catch us!" Tajin exhaled. Leeroy stumbled, as Tajin made him double over when he grabbed onto him but caught himself and ran along with the mouse.

The entire cartel, which consisted of about eight people, started chasing after them. Senor Castaneda chewed on something. "Disculpa me, mis billeteras, I've got a bug to squash," he spat out, aiming his own gun at Leeroy's head and firing.

Jokes on him, though, Leeroy is the main character up in here. He threw his head down just in time, the bullet only taking off a bit of his antennae. More like half of it. What were they even used for, anyway? They didn't even store blood, apparently, as no thick, hot liquid poured out onto his minty-green hair.

Tooth the shark, Harry the tiger, Liam the abysmal creature from the darkest pit of imagination, and the five other unnamed cartel members were gaining on them. Could you really blame Leeroy for running slow, though? He had like 12 pounds of stolen fish in three of his arms, and with those non-existent muscles, of course, that would slow him down.

With his free hand, Leeroy ripped up a chunk of wood off a broken market stand, waving the makeshift stake in the air. Tooth caught up with the fly and grabbed him, only to be greeted by the foot-long splinter shoved into his shoulder. Tooth hissed and loosened up, and Leeroy added insult to injury by slapping him in the face with one of the many fish corpses he had.

"Haha, loser, you weren't expecting that. Now, back off, or else I'll--"

Leeroy got cut off by Harry punching him, square in the face, knocking him out. He dropped all his fish, too, so that sucks.