Fighting Kittens

Everyone crowded around the table, eyes wide, even Nathan, who usually didn’t give a quarter of a flying fuck about things like these. For about a minute, they stayed, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and then Pickles tentatively reached out his hand and whispered, “It’s so beautiful…. Doods, I wan’ it.”
Skwisgaar nodded his assent and shook his head in astonished wonder. Toki whimpered with need, and Nathan nodded and patted his shoulder comfortingly. Murderface was starting to drool.
“Boys?”, Charles asked, snapping them out of their reverie. Nathan looked up in a daze, then quickly looked down again, and Charles went over to assess the situation.
What he saw made him feel sick, worried, surprised, stunned and disgusted, all at the same time. As it turned out, the five most brutal men in the world were fawining over something so unbrutal, so shamefully not metal, it disgusted him. How they could even think to do this, he didn’t know. But they were staring at it, admiring it.
Nathan whimpered softly as Pickle placed an arm around his shoulder and stared at him, eyes fixed and for once not glazed with pot smoke and alcohol. Charles blinked and shook his head, turning to a Klokateer standing in the door.
“Where did they get this?”, he asked, and the Klokateer shrugged and muttered “No idea, Milord.”
Charles sighed and went out, deciding to leave them be, to let them watch what they were. It was their thing if the band fell into disarray.
After he left, Pickles piped up that they all needed to try this out. Nathan nodded eagerly, and so did Murderface. Toki and Skwisgaar simply sighed.
“Dudes, you know this is really, um, not brutal? This is really…. Wrong in every way?”, Nathan asked, just to make sure, and Pickles laughed and resumed staring at it. For about ten more minutes, they continued staring, and then Nathan asked them softly if they should get ones of their own. Everyone nodded excitedly.
“Then let’s go.”
About six minutes later, they stepped off the Dethcycle into the street where the mall was, looking around. There were bakeries and food shops by the dozen, a small grocery store, and various arcades or record stores. The one they were looking for was nowhere In sight. People bustled past, avoiding them, not even seeming to recognize them, and Nathan had to marvel at how much disguise a simple cap, flannel shirt and a pair of sneakers instead of his usual boots provided. No one commented on his long hair, his build, or his face, which all made him easily recognizable. Toki came running around the corner, pushing a shopping cart, with Skwisgaar chasing after him, and then, when the blonde was at the opportune moment to lunge at him, he shrieked and jumped into the cart. Pickles doubled over laughing, then stopped abruptly as he saw their target.
“Dere it is, doods! Dere’s ahr thing! Right in dat shahp!”
Nathan followed at a jog, as did Toki, Skwisgaar and Murderface. As they reached their quarry, Pickles pushed the door open and looked around. The man behind the counter blinked and looked up from the newspaper he was reading. For a second he simply stared at him, faint recognition somewhere on his face. Then it faded and he set his paper down.
“Help y’self, boys. We got every kinda’m here… red ones, black ones, white ones, grey ones. We e’en got us a couple striped ‘uns, if you’d like ta see dose… Yeah. Help yo’self.”, he offered, and Nathan grinned and replied with a nod. He wanted to talk as little as he could, so as not to give away his characteristic deep voice. The counter dude blinked again, then shook his head again.
When Nathan and Pickles had spent over twenty minutes looking for what they wanted exactly and not found it, he sighed and offered helpfully to “look fo’ wha’ you boys migh’ need.”
“Do you, uh, have fighting kittens?”