"They stood next to me and I to them. There were 12 of us in all, including myself and my trusted companion, each pair representing both a creature and a primary color. Our yellow iconography matching the very helmets that kept our heads safe and our vision focused to only what's in front of us. There was never any rhyme or reason to the selection, it was just something used to both identify and marginalize us. A reminder that we as corporeal vessels were replaceable.

"I remember waiting backstage. Asking, begging, pleading for anything but these shorts. 'They're a hindrance,' I retorted, when asked why I would instead prefer pants to baggy khaki shorts. Okay, maybe it wasn't a hindrance, but it was something to that effect - my memory, not too surprisingly, is more educated than my past self.

"Alas, the shorts were to stay, as were the helmets, as were the colorful shirts with gold insignia. The Big Face demanded it as such. Part of his big ritual, they said. Behind his ruby-red eyes was something that suggested he had been crossed this way before but there was nary a soul alive that say what happened. So we did as the Big Face decreed, lest we, too, find out what happened to the others who protested too loudly."

"A jovial man enters — He who is allowed to address the Big Face. 'Are you ready?' he asks. 'Let's rock,' the Big Face bellows. And so we began."

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