Saturdays at McDonalds was the best day of the week. No school before his shift, so Daisuke could put all of his energy to work. Lots of customers, which meant a busy shift, and the most employees calling out sick of any day which meant the most chances to pick up overtime. At least, as much as he legally could. Working at sixteen made things harder. But even on Saturdays, it could get better if you had the opening shift. Start early in the morning, get your six or seven hour shift done, be out by midmorning. If you didn’t pick up that overtime.

Today Daisuke had no intention of picking it up.

Slinging burgers and fries for all the regulars was pretty fun, but today he [i]should[/i] have been one of the people calling out sick. Getting roughed up by a bunch of pizza bots may not have been a believable excuse, but a series of stab wounds and general bruises and lacerations certainly was. He felt like he was held together with Band-Aids and Tylenol. Which wasn’t entirely wrong, but it didn’t change the fact that he really needed to work. Daisuke had gone out of his way to ask for more hours, he couldn’t be seen failing to take ‘em.

That was the really fucking weird thing, though. Yesterday, on the way home from school, he got into a fight with possess pizza delivery robots. It was completely true, but that didn’t make the concept sound [i]any[/i] less weirder. It was like there was a spot where something weird was believable in theory, fighting vampires or something, and then one where something was so goddamn weird that it stopped being believable even though it [i]actually happened[/i]. He fought sixty plus robots alongside his best friend and a guitar girl (apparently named Hitomi) using a manifested personification of himself and a signpost.

He was kinda numb to it, honestly.

It happened. He kinda felt like shit because of it, and he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do now, but it happened. It happening didn’t mean he was off from work. And honestly the normalcy helped ground Daisuke’s head. There was something therapeutic about the utterly normal routine of taking orders and prepping food.

Besides, Kimiko-chan was here. He noted the girls arrival right off the bat, even though he wasn’t manning the counter to take her order. A quick glance at the clock told him his shift was almost up, so he watched Hitomi arrive in focused silence and focused on wrapping up his work. Meeting all the pending orders, cleaning up his workstation, and tapping his manager to let her know he was clocking out. Within a few minutes, as the hour rolled over, he had clocked out and changed back into his street clothes.

He sank into a seat next to Kimiko and Hitomi without a word, rolling his shoulders and popping his scheduled dose of Tylenol with a gulp from his water bottle. Once he was done he finally gave both girls a small wave.

“Morning, girls.”