8-Bit crawled out from a barrel of coffee beans. With an eyeball twitching and wired awake from swallowing a few beans every few minutes, her body was a contradiction. Feeling achy and exhausted from the non-stop sounds of gunshots all night long, and the fact she was actually hiding in a crate of coffee beans for 12 hours straight.

She got up covered in brown stains, as she wore all white that day. She was trying to be defiant since it's past Labor Day, and you're never supposed to wear white past Labor Day. She was a rebel.

All around her was dead...seaweed. Because she was at the docks. What were you thinking I was going to say? She walked past the crates of drugs shipments that were abandoned and covered in blood. She could barely carry a few bags of pot, so she figured to at least sell it in Downtown, LA. I think now is a great time for people to be smoking some pot.

She walked past the cars covered in bullets, some engulfed in flames to the bus stop and patiently waited.

After a couple of hours a white dusty painted bus labeled Downtown Los Angeles pulled up.

As the bus door swung open, the bus driver stared at her covered in brown stains, bruised up, eyeball twitching, and smelling like pot. He shrugged. As 8-Bit sat on the bus seat, her muscles felt better and she pulled out her wayfarer glasses to go to sleep as the bus's slow progress to downtown lulled her to nap.

The sounds of police sirens and car honking woke her up. As she she looked out the bus window, the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hills had the HOLLY part fallen so it just said WOOD. She was downtown but there were riots everywhere. People huddled in blankets drinking out of tin mugs, bodies were laid all over the streets. While walking on the sidewalk, glass shattered from a convenience store as a thug ran out with some food, bullet flying. Food was a luxury now. 

Then she saw him. Oh no...not...Burnett! She recognized her mother's friend. She rushed to him as he lay on the ground, shot in the stomach.

“Burnett, wake up! Please wake up!” She pleaded as she gently shook him.

Burnett slowly opened his eyes and smiled.

“8-Bit, look at you, your mother would be proud, I'm about to join her.”

“No! Don't die you jerk!” She slapped him out of hysteria.

“What the fuck was that for?” Burnett moaned and softly continued, “Look, I want you to have this, reach in my pants pocket.”

“I don't want to pickpocket you.”

“Just do it! For fuck's sake, I'm dying.”

8-Bit uncomfortably reached in his pants pocket and pulled out a..watch.

“Those are for the fun times we could've had and to remember me by.” Burnett said while coughing up blood.

8-Bit started to cry.

“I also want you to have another gift, pull it out of my pants behind my belt.”

“Wait..what?”

“It's in my back, my belt is holding it up.”

“Uhh..okay.” 8-Bit reached around to his back and pulled out a framed picture of Chris Vaughn naked as THE ROCK.

8-Bit scrunched her face up.

“Lastly I want you to take my wallet and look inside.”

8-Bit reached in his pocket again, pulling out his thick leather wallet. Inside, pictures of various hot women, and movie ticket stubs they used to watch at the YouTube theater downtown.

One photo stood out which was the picture of a cat.

“That is ...TopCat..my ...son..please take care of ..him.” Burnett started to fade out.

“Wait, explain to me how this is genetically possible?!”

It was too late Burnett lay his head down in the peaceful slumber of death.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” 8-Bit raised her fist to the sky kneeling as heavy rain suddenly just poured out of nowhere.

“Daaaaaaaaaaamn Yooooooooooou!”

Mercedes exits her new shop only to find herself drenched by a sudden downpour. She looks both ways in an attempt to hail a taxi cab, but is immediately distracted by the sound of a wailing female not far down the block. Perplexed, she heads in that direction to find a woman dressed in what was once white, kneeling over the seemingly deceased body of a handsome man.

Well, crap. I'd wail too.

Approaching carefully so as not to frighten the distraught lady, Mercedes notices a scattering of photographs atop the dead man's chest. Amidst the pornography, she spies one lone picture of a...kitty.

"Excuse me, Ma'am? Is that your...uhmmm...kitty cat?"

The response wasn't one she could decipher, but it sounded as if it might have been in the affirmative, so she gently rests a hand upon the lady's shoulder.

"Let's get out of this rain, shall we? We can go find your kitty," she says as she gently pulls the woman to her feet and leads her to an approaching cab. Inspired, she reaches into her overcoat pocket and pulls out her talisman...a little plastic baggie containing a sparkly powder. She carried it everywhere, and today she finally knew why.

"Here. For you. It's unicorn dust," she says with a smile as she places it in the hand of her new friend. 

"Make you feel better!"

8-Bit stopped sobbing to the air and looked up at a ridiculously beautiful woman standing over her with really shiny layered hair, unknown to our times. Well it was really blurry because the rain was pouring into her eyes but whenever she wiped off the water with her arm, she sure looked pretty.

Her voice faded in and out to her amidst her hysteria. It sounded like she was asking, "Ex ....am? Is ... yor...uhmmm...kit..... cat?"

8-Bit muttered  back to her some undecipherable sobs, blinking away the heavy water  from her eyes,

"OH ooh..ono. aaaams colaage aays Rover!! Dooooo ohn haaaa..any chocoolate to give you?!" She sobbed.

8-Bit picked up a bunch of photographs crumpling up in the rain with her shaking hands. As she feels herself being lead to her feet by the gentle lift of the woman next to her,  she gets directed to the approaching black cab. Officers and medics arrive on the scene to carry the body away. The sounds of the woman talking to the paramedics was all but a blur to her.

The shutting of the cab door muted the sounds of the thunderstorm.

"I'm Mercedes."

"8-Bit." She pouts, her face swollen and puffy from crying and being wet.

She stared at the tiny plastic baggy on her lap covered in raindrops. She slowly pulls it up to her eyes and exams it closer and realizes it was something incredibly special. Sparkly, iridescent and luminous colors of pastel pinks, purples, and aqua. It belonged to her mother and many generations before. She hugged the woman next to her, soaking her shoulder in rainwater and coffee stains as she had found a real exceptional friend.