Play With Me: A Banana Bus Crew Fan Fiction

Chapter Twenty Eight

"Take this, Jigglesworth." Ohm said as he handed Anthony a 'Kart'. He was holding it. Without a problem. It was lighter than he expected it would be and that made him doubt its full potential as a racing tool. It seemed to have a big enough seat for Anthony to sit in, but, still, the heaviest part of it was the engine up front and the console on the deck. It had four screens. Ohm began to explain as Anthony wrapped his arms around the light Kart and took it from him.

"The far right screen is your map. The screen to its left is your place, and the two screens beside that are your items. If you hit a box on the track, you get randomly generated items and can choose when to use them pushing the red button under the screen."

There was a silence.

"That it?" Anthony asked.

"Yup." Ohm said. "Gas and brake on the floor."

"Not the instructions, Ohm! I mean are you really going to make me do this shit?"

"Jiggly-"

"Fuck you, Ohm."

"I'm sorry, Jiggly!" Ohm apologized between giggles. 

"If you were sorry, we wouldn't be doing this!"

The Banana Bus Crew retreated to the track that had been constructed around the entire perimeter of the lake. In a small subsection of the Colosseum seats, the friends who were not racing found places to sit. Smii7y and John separated themselves from the group, kicking their feet up on seats in front of them. Brock and Evan made new signs. This time, using rainbow glitter.

The racers sat their Karts on the starting line and sat inside. The lake was wide and as a result, so was the track. There would be no laps, just one run around. The course was littered with a group of boxes every few yards. The racers jumped in their Karts.

"Lui!" Ohm said, catching the attention of his friend who was nodding off a few seats away from Smii7y and John. The call woke him.

"What do you want, Ohm?"

"You should count down!"

"...No."

"Please." Ohm begged. "It'll do Jiggly good to see a friend at the line before the race starts."

Lui huffed and stood up. "You're a bitch, Ohm."

Lui walked down as far as he could and then jumped down seven feet from the stands to the track. He sat at the right side of the line. Anthony was now the closest racer to him.

"You ready, Anthony?" Lui asked.

"No."

"Believe in yourself, Anthony!" 

"...No."

"Bu-"

"No." Anthony said. "Lui, listen to me. I'm going to lose this race. I've lost often enough to know that. I'm either going to lose by a long shot, never had a chance. Or I'm going to be winning. I'll be a mile ahead. All of you will be cheering me on. There with be this moment of hope... Then something will happen. Totally unexpected something that will be more than an unlucky green shell. Why? I don't fucking know. But something always happens... Start the countdown Lui."

Lui backed away slightly and couldn't break his stare from Anthony. He was shocked, not by the demoralized tone of his friend, but by the confidence in his statement. He started the countdown.

"Three!" He shouted. "Two!" Engines started revving to get the initial boost. "One!"

They were off.

Eyes were fixed on the race, the collection of items, the attacks, the drifts. Nogla's silence, however, was the most unnerving part of it all. This was usually the time that he'd be throwing around insults or smartmouthed comments, but there was none of that.

They were all no doubt interested in the outcome, however, the most exciting part of this race was not happening on the track, but in the stand. Some time in, Ohm began to hum a song familiar to everyone there and, without complaint, they all began a small choir as the race went on.

Evan knew the song, but he didn't participate. His attention lied elsewhere. Fixed on the race, but mostly, on the scale of the track that Ohm was able to construct in such a short time and the amount of effort he had put into this particular piece of the architecture to make it resemble the actual game as much as possible. How important was this to him? Despite having been here for what seemed like a long time, it seemed as though they had yet to fully explore everything that this place had offered. What other games had Ohm reconstructed? 

As he drifted off into thought, hie eyes wandered. He snapped back to reality for a moment when his eyes caught onto something peculiar. On the other side of the lake, he spotted a strange looking item box. He was not entirely familiar with Mario Kart, but the box seemed wildly out of place; the color, pink, the shape, indiscernible from it current rotation angle. Anthony, Paper Bag Man, and Bane were getting very close to it. Ohm noticed that Evan hadn't been participating in the song. He was going to strike up a conversation, but Evan did that for him.

"What's the pink box?" Evan asked. Ohm paused for a moment.

"Blue shell replacement." Ohm told him. "They're more complicated than I thought they'd be... Our friends are cool, huh, Evan?" Ohm said, his mask shifting with a smile and his eyes bright. Evan looked at him and then back at his group of singing friends. He zeroed in on Delirious and remembered the secret he had trusted Evan with. He smiled.

"...Yeah." Evan said. "They are."

"I'm happy I have you guys!" Ohm told him. "I missed having all of you, but one thing I know is that I'll always have at least one of you. I thought you were all mad at me for taking Brian-"

"We are." Evan interrupted.

"Not all of you."

"What?"

"Not all of you."

"I heard that, Ohm. I meant, what do you mean?"

"You all stopped talking to me, but another one of our friends reached out to me the other day. Apparently, as I suspected, he didn't know. Or, more like him, he didn't care."

"...What the fuck are you talking about?"

Ohm laughed. "I was invited to play Fortnite the other day! I had fun."

Evan's heart sunk. It was at this moment that he turned back to the course and caught the strange box at a convenient and revealing angle. It was in the shape of a pink pig.

Bane picked it up.