R1M8 Shopping Cameo

The evening before the biggest, most important sporting event in the history of mankind…

Agora Row - St. Jude’s Cathedral

By all means, St. Jude’s was an oddity, one that, although a landmark of the very commercialized and fast-moving Agora Row Shopping District, stood as a symbol of an era long before it ever could have been constructed. Perhaps it was its proximity to the eccentricities of both the spillover strip and the college town that allowed it to exist.

Father Blue Brother wondered about such things often. Well-versed, well-traveled, he knew much about when this sort of church was in style, and Los Fortuna wouldn’t have yet been on any such maps at the time. It seemed that the place had popped up in the last thirty years or so, a rise in folks seeking religion sending them into many different metaphorical flocks, with St. Jude’s in particular likely inspired by the popular waves of relevant subcultures of the 1990s and 2000s.

This building’s so new, but I feel almost the same kinda energy that I do when I set foot in Notre Dame, or the Sistine Chapel, Blue pondered as he wandered the building, I need t’be good to this place, keep it afloat. He thought back to the other week, the encounters his group had had with a certain Cairo Satori, not long before their most recent publicity stunt saw two Stand Users locked in an IKEA. If I’ve signed on with someone pullin’ stuff like that, they better be dang good fer footin’ the bill…

“Getting acclimated well, Father?”

Blue jumped in place a bit, then turned around, placing then the familiarly youthful voice to the face of the boy now standing in the entranceway of the building. It was a teenaged boy in a purple aviator hat with a matching feather plume, sharp in facial features and predominantly purple fashion sense, capping off the look with a pair of goggles on his face. Blue had seen him once before, having been accompanying Cairo when they first darkened the door of Bad Apples’.

His posture was self-important as ever, but this time, remembering what he had mentioned, Blue could only speak to him with empathy. “Yeah, lad, I’d say as well as I can be. Yerself? Ya have my condolences about yer uncle… An’ that after yer’ mother, father, brothers…”

The smug-looking boy grew uneasy-looking for a few moments then, looking away at the clear sensitive subject, easing his nerves by reaching into a handbag and consuming a fistful of candies. “Yes, thank you, I am… Doing better than I was. And those other losses were… A long time ago, now. But I didn’t come here for consolement, understand. I hear that a friend of mine has you under contract?”

“So it’s business, then?” Blue didn’t feel especially happy to be discussing things like this at his church, but didn’t want to shoo this guy away, either. “I won’t keep ya, then… Say what ya gotta.”

“I don’t know how much footage for them you have or have not been getting,” he said, “but there is a place and time tomorrow where I think you will be of utmost help. Consider it… a ‘scoop?’ I think that’s the best saucy-silly word for it… Anyway, yes, a scoop.” Blue nodded, and so the purple kid continued, “the Woods at Aurelio’s Gold Knights are having a baseball game against the Stardust Future Technical School.”

“Aurelio?” Blue asked, “that Superintendent’s still doin’ school stuff with a danged serial killer out there? M’phone’s gotten the Amber Alerts! I hear the news ‘bout what they find o’ who’s gone missin’ out there!”

“Yes, that’s just it… I worry, then, that something may happen there, and if anything went awry in that town, I think it would be such a deep, dark tragedy. With you there, though, and recording on the behalf of a hallowed e-celeb, I think there’s a chance the entire circumstance of the game might be more honest, lest someone make a callout post that absolutely cancels that killer into every life sentence they deserve. And worst-case scenario, if this killer tries to strike there anyway, then you could get the footage of your life.”

Blue looked towards the walls of the building, noting the weakening of one of its arches. “Sit a ballgame fer’ an afternoon with the camera running, keep the game safe, clean, an’ honest, an’ maybe get paid to save lives… I got no reason t’refuse-'' He turned towards the purple boy, only to see that he had already begun to leave. He grumbled a bit about how it was rude, but honestly… He couldn’t stay mad at the kid.

Guess I gotta be ready for a scrap, too… Should probably get some rest early tonight, then. Maybe let ‘em know where I’ll be at Bad Apples, tell ‘em I’ll be late fer’ lunch.