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You’re barely five years old when you meet the Fabulous Four. Your mother is a distant memory and freedom is something you’ve never known. Loneliness is such a big part of your life, practically set into your bones by the ripe old age of three, and by five, you don’t think it’s ever going away.
You have no idea how much these four people are going to impact you.
You take to Jet Star the quickest. When Dr. Death-Defying asked if they could spare room in their crew for one more, his automatic answer was yes. He didn’t even consult Party Poison, which at the time didn’t seem like a big deal, but now you know just how much of one it really was.
He’s the first one to care for you in that special loving way since the last time you saw your mother. Sure, the people that were in charge of you back in the city would pat your head or tell you that you performed well on a task, but that was superficial. It didn’t mean anything. This is different.
Jet Star is the first one to hold you close, rock you to sleep, and tell you that you’re safe. He's the first one to tell you that you’re going to grow up into somebody worth being. He fixes your hair every day and he patches up your clothes when they need it, plus he always has a bandage on hand every time you get a papercut or scrape your elbow.
Fun Ghoul and the Kobra Kid quickly become your best buddies. They’re the older brothers you never had, and they’re your constant entertainment. They know every game you’ve ever heard of and tons you haven’t, and they come up with new ones on the spot if you start to get bored. You read together, you play together, you eat together, you make bombs together, you hack into computers together. And always together. The three of you get into the most mischief as a trio.
They look out for you, too. Kobra, with a grin stretched across his face and only a little tremor in his hand, passes you the least gross-looking can of grub when it’s time for a meal. One day when you’re feeling a little sad, Ghoul amuses you for hours on end with this stupid game he invented called “how long can we annoy the gang before they try to beat us up.” You’ve never laughed as hard as you did that time your crew threatened to physically throw Ghoul out of the car if he kept making fart noises with his mouth.
With them, there’s never a dull moment. You couldn’t ask for more.
Party Poison, though. Party Poison, leader of the Fabulous Four, with his deep red hair the color of blood and voice the texture of sandpaper and frown the toughness of steel, is not your favorite person. It takes a long time for you to warm up to him. And vice versa. In fact, besides yelling at you to get out of the way or to cry quieter, he won’t even acknowledge you. And it breaks your heart, though you would never admit it to him. You just want to be accepted. That’s all you’re asking for.
It does change, though. All it takes is one incident with one too many BL/ind rats that leads to a place where you can both sleep soundly knowing the other one is near.
There’s a long way to go before you both get there, but it doesn’t even start with you. It starts with Jet Star, who thought about the possibility of a life with someone like you before he even knew you existed. Without his kindness, you wouldn’t be here at all.
You owe a lot to him.
~~~
The wind is a gentle breeze, the sun is setting, and Jet Star’s thinking about something. Every time he gets a moment to rest, his mind beelines towards the one thought. The wish. He’s been nursing the idea for a good two weeks, but he just can’t hold it in anymore.
All there's left to do is just say it.
So he does.
“Sometimes I wish I could be a parent," he admits.
Right now, Jet Star is sitting on the hood of the trans am and his eyes are fixated on the toe of his right boot, arms around his middle like it’s the only way to keep him grounded. After so long keeping it to himself, it feels weird to hear it spoken out loud. Like he’s just revealed a dangerous secret.
Poison’s leaning against the driver’s side door, and when Jet speaks, he looks up from the newspaper he’s reading. He says nothing, but his eyes immediately give away what he’s thinking. Jet can feel the judgement radiating off him from here.
“In a better life, I mean,” Jet adds, like that’ll change Poison’s opinion. He lifts his gaze to the bleeding horizon, to the reds and oranges and yellows of the sinking sun looking some kind of bizarre painting, like the Phoenix Witch is taking a brush to the canvas of the sky. “But not like this. Ain’t right for a kid to be born out here.”
Out here. Out here, where they spend every single moment of their life wondering how they’re going to make it from one day to the next. True, this is no place for a child, but Jet Star can’t help but imagine how it would feel to have one anyway.
Poison shakes his head and looks back down at his newspaper. “It’d just be bait for SCARECROW.”
“I know. But still. You never wonder how it’d feel to raise a kid? Have one of your own?”
Jet knows that that thought has never crossed Poison’s mind before the question ever comes out of his mouth. Still, he braces himself for the answer.
"No.”
“Not at all?”
“Are you crazy? No way in the world I’d want one with us. Runnin’ around, breakin’ stuff, cryin’ all the time, eatin’ all our food. You think I have the patience to deal with that?”
Poison doesn’t wait for an answer. He just keeps going, dragging down Jet’s spirit with every question. “And where the hell are you even gonna get one? Steal it from the city, or what?"
It’s not like Jet Star doesn’t know that. He’s known for a long time that there was no way it’d work out. It’s just a wish, that’s all. Just a stupid wish.
All the same, as a gust of wind sends a tumbleweed rolling in the distance, he can’t help but ponder what a child of his own would look like. Would it have hair like him? Would it be tall like him? Would they have the same smile?
He'll never know.
“Honestly,” Poison continues, “zonerunners with kids are asking to get decimated. They slow you down and one day end up getting you blasted in the back of the head."
Jet Star shrugs, his throat drier than it was a minute ago. A hollow pang resonates inside his chest and the only way to describe how he’s feeling right now is deflated. He swallows thickly.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, not meaning any of it. He’s lying through his teeth, but it looks like Poison either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice. “I guess you’re right.”
Satisfied, Poison returns his attention to the newspaper. Jet just gazes into the sun and wonders how it would feel to hold a baby in his arms.
~~~
But the universe is a strange thing, and much to the chagrin of Party Poison and the surprise of everybody else, Jet gets his wish granted three weeks later. Or at least a form of it, coming in the shape of a five-year-old girl.
The day starts off fairly normal; the only thing out of the ordinary is when Ghoul knocks over their last jug of water and it pools onto the floor. Poison almost slips, swears, grabs a rag, and tells Fun Ghoul he better get his ass out to the water collector and hope there's some out there, otherwise the whole crew is going to have face dehydration. Luckily, it rained the night before, and as Ghoul brings it in a jug full of it and slams it on the table, a triumphant grin slides across his face. Poison flips him off and orders everyone to grab their shit and head out to the car. Ghoul bounds after him like an energetic puppy and claims shotgun.
First, they meet a trader out in Zone Two to exchange some scavenged vehicle parts for money. That stop goes smoothly enough, and with a bonus, too: Kobra Kid manages to raise the price ten carbons higher, and they walk away with their pockets jingling from the extra carbons. After that, they head to Dr. Death-Defying's station to drop off old building parts in exchange for information.
It’s cloudy outside, and the belly of the sky rumbles with warnings of incoming rain. They duck underneath the awning of the shack in a single-file line with Poison in the front and Jet Star in the back, and the doorknob nearly falls off in Poison's hand as he twists it. Each step of their boots on the rotting wood floor leaves clumps of sand and dirt in their trail.
The station, which used to be somebody’s old pre-Wars house, has a few different rooms. One is Dr. D's bedroom, one is Show Pony's, one is a bathroom, and one serves as a combination of both the main living space and a kitchen. The radio equipment is set up in the empty room at the end of the hall.
Party Poison strides down the hallway with firm footsteps and knocks three times.
"If that ain’t the knock of my favorite gang’s leader… come on in, y’all."
Dr. Death-Defying, legendary Zone DJ and broadcaster, sits at his desk with a tired look and piles of paper and CDs scattered everywhere. At their inquisitive glances, he shrugs. “Pony came back from their latest city run with enough info to keep NewsAGoGo busy for days… along with some other cargo. A special package, if you will. But this old man’s just sorting through a pile of demos from a bunch of Zone bands who all want to be the next Mad Gear. Busy work, but at least it passes the time, ey?”
Poison nods curtly. He doesn’t have time for small talk. Cut to the chase, give him what he needs, and he’ll be just fine. “Kobra’s got the parts you wanted in the trans am. Any news on Lobby patrols or the sunset sleep pills? What about the construction timeline for the power plants?”
So many things happen in Battery City every day, and Poison makes it his business to know all about it. The new power plants are the most concerning by far, though. Rumors of soul-powered assembly lines floating around are terrifying when you think about the implication of it: the bodies are long decayed, yet the spirits are never put to rest.
He could shudder just thinking about it.
Dr. D informs the crew on all the new developments Show Pony heard about while undercover, and though it’s not as much as other people could tell them, with the DJ they can guarantee the information is legitimate. He’s never once sent them on a wild goose chase, which is more than Poison can say for the rest of his former intel. There’s a reason D is the only one Party Poison relies on now.
When he’s given the gang all he’s got, Dr. Death-Defying nods at them. “Y’all are one of the more responsible gangs out here nowadays. Good group of kids,” he says, and it strikes Party Poison as an unusual comment. After all, the only thing they did was deliver some old car parts. But he’s ready to walk out and think nothing more of it when the pirate DJ calls Jet Star back.
"Hey, Star," he says. Party Poison's got one foot out the door and Kobra's out of sight now, already halfway to the car, but the remaining three freeze and listen.
"Yeah, D?"
"C'mere for a second, son, I got something to ask you." Poison's brow furrows and he’s about to object. Anything Dr. D wants to say, he can say it to all of them.
“Aw, just a little favor,” the wave runner says, waving a hand towards the others. “Gimme one second, sunshines, and he'll be back with ya before ya can blink."
"Come on, Poison, let's go wait in the car." Ghoul tugs on his arm and begrudgingly, Party Poison goes.
So, refusing to sit down, the crew leader leans against the door of the driver's seat with his arms crossed, coolly wondering what could be so important that Dr. Death-Defying needs to speak to Jet alone about it. In the back, Kobra and Ghoul sit quietly.
After more than ten minutes of waiting in stuffy silence, Poison coughs and makes a move like he's going to go inside. It’s at that exact moment when the door swings open and Jet emerges, carrying a box full of canned goods, and, for some reason, a bright pink backpack. Most peculiarly, however, is the fact that there’s a little girl trodding behind him with a toy robot clutched to her chest.
Poison eyes the two of them until they reach the car. The kid, which for some ungodly reason is still on Jet Star’s heels like some kind of overeager puppy, looks four or five years old. Her hair is in curls tighter than Jet’s and she’s wearing gray pants and a brightly-colored jacket that hurts his eyes from just looking at it. What he can’t get over is how small she is, but maybe his perspective is skewed. After all, he hasn’t seen a kid younger than ten or eleven since his days in the city.
Poison sees Jet Star’s eyes flicker over to him, but Jet glances away before Poison can send him a glare back. He holds the door to the backseat open and the girl slides in wordlessly as Fun Ghoul and Kobra Kid scoot over to make room. Once she’s safely in, Jet makes a move to round the car to the passenger seat, but Poison stops him with a firm hand to his shoulder.
“What the fuck is this?” Poison growls. He has to tilt his head up to make eye contact with Jet, being a full seven inches shorter, but he knows it’s still intimidating. Jet, however, doesn’t seem bothered.
“We’re taking care of her for now,” he says. His calmness just makes Poison angrier. “Dr. D asked me if we can watch her until he can find a place for her in a group home somewhere.”
Poison’s nostrils flare. “And you agreed without asking me?”
“There’s nothing to ask. She needs help, and we can help her.”
Poison’s mouth is set in a firm line. “If you think this is a way of getting around what we talked about earlier, I’m going to tell you again: we can’t take care of a kid. We don’t have the resources or time, and frankly, I don’t want her screwing things up. In fact, I don’t want her at all.”
Inside the trans-am, her eyes start to water, and, lip quivering, she hugs her robot as tight as she can.
“Poison, she’s right there. She can hear you. And you’re being a dick.”
“I’m being realistic,” he spits back. He lets go of Jet Star, almost shoving him backward, and gets in the driver’s seat. He slams the door and it shakes the car.
Jet Star needs to get his fucking head fixed. Nobody in their right mind with a crew as popular as the Fab Four would take in a kid. Especially when they’re constantly on the run.
Poison has half a mind to march this girl right back into the radio shack and demand that the DJ take her back. But the engine’s already rumbling and he’s got his foot on the gas by the time he considers that as a viable option. There’s no turning back now.
Poison comes to the conclusion that children exist solely to make his life suck.
~~~
Kobra has no idea why Poison’s so pissed. Maybe it’s because he hates plans changing without his knowledge or maybe it’s because he’s having a bad day, but either way, he doesn’t get an excuse. There’s no reason for him to be a jerk to Jet or the kid because of his own anger.
He heard and saw the whole argument, and so did she. He can tell she’s about to cry and tries to distract her. He doesn’t want to make Poison madder than he already is, but in his opinion, a sad kid is worse than an angry brother.
“You’ve got a helluva cool backpack,” he says. Those wide brown eyes glance up at him and he nods towards the pack. “Mind if I look at it?”
She holds it out and Kobra starts gushing over the way the glitter on the front shimmers in the light. Sure, he’s overdoing it, but he wants the girl to feel welcome. He can practically hear Poison tense up in the front seat, but he doesn’t care.
“Show Pony gave it to me,” she says.
“Oh, man,” Ghoul says, joining in on the conversation. “Maybe I can ask ‘em for one of my own. So us two could match, ey?” He nudges her gently with an elbow, and it could be Kobra’s imagination, but he swears he sees her crack the tiniest of smiles as she loosens her grip on her toy.
She tells them a little bit about the time she spent with Dr. D and Show Pony. According to her, the best part about the radio station is that Pony is there and that they let her brush their hair.
Kobra gets that. Show Pony has the prettiest hair in the Zones. He’s braided it for them before.
“Rest stop in thirty minutes at Chow Mein’s,” Poison interrupts. They can all hear the resentment radiating out of his voice, but no one comments on it. His anger is like boiling water threatening to spill over, and nobody wants to be the one to knock over the pot.
The rest of the ride is quiet save Kobra and Ghoul’s questions and the girl’s soft answers. Poison makes no noise and barely even moves besides shifting his grip on the steering wheel.
When they pull into the parking lot, only a few cars fill the gravel spaces. A group of young teenagers hang around the empty vending machines, but Poison pays them no notice and pulls into a parking spot. He shuts off the engine and gets out. Jet Star follows. Just before he closes the door, he turns around to the occupants of the backseat and looks them in the eyes. “Stay here.” It’s barely audible.
They see Poison round the back of the building and Jet follows him, but the two disappear from sight and the kid, Kobra, and Ghoul are left staring at each other. The latter mouths “one, two—,” and on three, muffled shouting comes from far away, obviously Poison.
“So, uh, we’re the Fabulous Four. I’m Kobra Kid, and that’s Fun Ghoul,” Kobra tells the girl over the yelling, because she’s been with them for almost an hour and they haven’t even introduced themselves yet. Also, he’s trying to distract her from Poison yelling in the background.
“Jet Star’s the one that brought you to the car,” Kobra continues, “and Party Poison… well, usually he’s not like this. He’s my brother, and usually he’s a lot nicer. But, uh, he’s the angry one.”
She nods slightly. “Pony told me ‘bout you.”
“What’s your name?” Ghoul asks.
She shrugs. “Don’t got one.”
That takes Kobra by surprise. In the desert, a name makes you who you are. So the fact that the city didn’t even bother to give her one is as bad as not giving her clothes or a bed. He would think even the people in the Batt would have enough decency to give her one, even if her own parents didn’t. Or couldn’t. He doesn’t know her situation.
But who is he kidding? Battery City and the people who run it are fucked up beyond repair. They wouldn’t care about naming one little girl unless it benefited their company monetarily or developmentally. Because that’s all they care about.
“So what did they call you?” he has to ask.
She informs them that she was only referred to as the girl, the subject, or, the worst of all, it.
Kobra and Ghoul exchange glances. They’re wondering the same thing. Why would the company call her the subject? Like she’s part of some crazy experiment?
At the moment, they don’t know how close they are to the truth. It’s something they’ll figure out somewhere down the road, gradually, bit by bit. They won’t be around for the end, the final display of the powers no one knows she possesses yet, which happens long after their final breaths, but they don’t know this. For now, Kobra and all the others will continue wondering.
“Ghoulie and me could help you pick one if you want,” Kobra offers.
“Nah,” she says, offering no explanation besides another little shrug. “Maybe later.”
He’s not going to push her, so this time it’s Kobra’s turn to shrug. “Okay,” he says. “If you want help later, you can ask me. I named myself two different times, so I’m pretty good at it. Also, if I were you, I wouldn’t ask the guy who calls himself 'Fun Ghoul.’”
She giggles. Ghoul punches him in the arm. “You’re a dick.”
“Young ears are listening, Ghoul, either fix your potty mouth or shut the fuck up!”
They all dissolve into laughter, even the girl. Kobra thinks it’s good that she’s beginning to open up. She already looks brighter and happier than she did earlier. And when they all calm down enough to breathe again, she’s the one that initiates the next conversation.
“Wanna see my crayons?” she says. “Dr. D gave me some from his desk.” Before waiting for their answer, she unzips her backpack and starts digging through.
Kobra leans over, and from what he can see, the contents of the bag range from a few neatly-folded outfits to a couple of tiny action figures to other things shoved so far down that he can’t even identify what they are. It’s packed to the brim, and he can’t help but wonder if the contents are all she owns.
The Kobra Kid feels a tug of sadness in his chest. She has next to nothing. No parents, no family, and no permanent home.
Even he was better off than her when he was her age. At that point, his mom and dad were barely around, but he still had Party Poison, who took care of him until Kobra turned sixteen.
Then Kobra was the one who started taking care of Party Poison, but that’s another story.
Every time he thinks about it, his anxiety flares up. He brings his thumbnail to his mouth, about to start up this nervous habit he has of chewing on it, before he can start, his wristful of handmade bracelets catches his eye.
“Oh, here, kid,” he says, pulling off a leather one entwined with pink beads. “Out here, we exchange bracelets with new crew members or friends."
Her eyes widen. "Like me?”
Kobra nods and she looks at him in wonder. "Might be a little big," he says, "but I have a small wrist, so it shouldn't be too bad. I made this one a couple weeks ago."
She slips it on, still in awe, and grins as it slips down to her elbow. "It’s so pretty!” she squeals, and she reaches over and gives him a half-hug.
Kobra Kid hugs her right back. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to him, but to her, it’s worth the world. Because the hug he gives her is the first one she gets in three years. Once she turned two, caretakers in the city pushed her away every time she tried for physical contact.
As they pull away, the sky booms with thunder. Ghoul visibly stiffens and Kobra lays a hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” he mutters.
The girl doesn't notice and she squeals in delight for the second time a minute later when rain starts pouring down. “I love storms!” she declares, and presses her nose up against the window to watch the droplets roll off the glass.
It’s then that Poison and Jet sprint back to the car, both sopping wet with hair plastered to their foreheads. Poison’s wearing his typical “I hate everyone” face, but Jet looks triumphant.
“Ghoul, c’mon.” Their leader tugs on the handle to the backseat and leans in. He’s got the same hard lines etched into his face as he always does, the shadows underneath his eyes, the scar down the side of his jaw, but something looks different. Something in his eyes. He looks weary. “Need you to help me carry shit from the trunk.”
Kobra glances at him. “What about us?”
“Stay with her. Make sure she ain’t stealing nothin’. Anything’s gone when I come back, she’s out.”
“Poison, please, I—” Ghoul protests, but he doesn’t get to finish.
“Ghoul. Parts are in the trunk.”
Kobra watches them trudge to the store, each holding bags full of auto parts and other stuff to sell to Chow Mein. Ghoul keeps glancing back toward the car with pleading looks. Making him go out in a thunderstorm is horrible, especially when Poison knows damn well about Fun Ghoul and rain.
Kobra wishes he could take back everything his stupid brother keeps saying and doing.
The girl twists her new bracelet around her finger. “What’d I do? Why’s ‘e mad at me again?” she asks softly.
Jet, who took Ghoul’s place in the backseat, shakes his head. Droplets fly everywhere and within a minute, the carpet is soaked with the water dripping off his clothes. “I dunno, kiddo. I’m sorry.” He ruffles her hair. “He’s upset, I guess. Thinks we don’t have enough room or rations for somebody else.”
“I don’t eat a lot,” she offers, like telling Poison that would solve everything. But she’s little; she doesn’t know.
Kobra smiles, but his heart isn’t in it. “It’s not that. It’s just one of his excuses.”
“Oh,” she says. Nobody speaks after that until Poison and Ghoul return to the car.
~~~
So that’s your first hour spent with them, the Fabulous Four. Looking into their gang like you're a visitor to the county zoo, just watching, waiting for them to do something interesting. Like an outsider.
On your way back to their hideout, you get your first glimpse of the chaotic lifestyle of a Killjoy. The storm ends after a while, Jet and Poison eventually air-dry, and you’re just sitting in the middle of the backseat, enjoying the feeling of riding in a car when Kobra leans forward and shakes Poison's shoulder. "Drac behind us,” he says urgently.
Fun Ghoul smirks beside you, then stands up. “I got this.” He pokes his head out the t-top and then pivots so he’s facing the back. You don’t know what he’s doing until you see the motorcycle in the distance. Before it comes close enough for you to make out anything other than the white coat of the rider, he fires a shot with that smoking green raygun of his and your pursuer falls off the bike.
You’re too shocked to do anything besides gape at him. But no one else seems fazed, and you begin to wonder how often somebody stands up in a moving car and then shoots somebody else dead. They seem like experts in this area.
Suddenly, the car hits a pothole and you all bounce up in your seats. Fun Ghoul, who’s still standing, loses his balance and lurches forward. Kobra dives over and grabs him before he can fall out and crack his head on the asphalt.
He sits down hard, eyes wide, breathing hard. You think he’s about to cry. You recognize those signs in yourself.
Then he whoops. “That was fucking awesome!”
You make it back to their shelter with no further incidents, and it seems as far as Jet Star’s concerned, you’re one of them now. Of course, Party Poison has a different opinion, but Jet pretends like that doesn’t even matter.
You get a tour of their current base, an old diner way out in the middle of nowhere along a main road Jet tells you is called Route Guano. The name sounds different than everything did in the city, not just because of the relaxed, warm way he forms his words, but also because the names sound so real. Genuine. Like a real person named them. In the city, you had districts and streets. Cobalt District and Chrome Street. Out here, you can walk a mile in any direction and find a settlement with fifteen different swear words in the name.
Naturally, you like this better.
After your tour, you sit down with three fourths of your temporary caretakers and eat a dinner of something you originally think is refried beans. It turns out to be canned dog food. Fun Ghoul doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, but Kobra Kid has to choke it down. You don’t think it’s too bad.
By the time dinner is over, Party Poison is nowhere to be found. Jet tells you he likes to sit on the roofs of buildings and that that’s where he probably is now, but Jet Star’s not going to go looking for him. You find out that Jet Star is scared of heights, and when you ask about that, you learn he’s never been to the city. You find that impossible to believe.
“Everybody comes from the city,” you say.
“Not me.”
“So then where’d you come from?” You can imagine his beginning from nowhere else but the inside of those wire fences and between those mile-high buildings. After all, that’s where everybody else you’ve ever known has come from.
“Born out here. Zone Six. Lived here my whole life.”
“You’re lucky, then,” you tell him, and he laughs, but not in a happy way.
“Yeah,” he says, but he sounds like he doesn’t believe it. “Yeah, I was.”
Later, you find out the early years of his life were just as hard as yours. In a different way, maybe, but both of you dealt with the same suffering. Pain doesn’t discriminate, after all.
He grew up drifting from crew to crew after he lost the people that raised him, and when everyone kept getting snagged by the Witch, he gave up and wandered around on his own. He was nineteen years old before he met Fun Ghoul.
You can’t imagine being alone for longer than a week.
A moment later, when you look back in his eyes, he’s far away. Like he’s thinking about something sad. You don’t have any words for him, but your first instinct is to slip your little hand into his big one.
That was one of the first things you noticed about the Fabulous Four. How big they looked. Everything about them is big. Everybody in the whole desert is big, really. Big and loud and old and colorful down to the bone, and they’re all a complete contrast to you, who’s small and quiet and young and the most colorful thing about you is that toy robot you carry around all the time.
But regardless, that big hand of his is warm and comforting, and you think your small one is the same for him, in a strange way, because he looks down at you and smiles a genuine smile.
~~~
“If it’s okay, this one’s gonna be your room.” Jet Star deposits her backpack beside the thin mattress, then grabs the brown canvas bag with his stuff in the corner. Originally, he’d claimed this one, but it’s not a big deal. He can go share with Kobra. It’s important that the girl gets her own personal area.
Her big brown eyes grow wider than ever when he tells her that. “But it’s got so much room!”
Without waiting for a response, she launches herself onto the mattress. She lands eagle-spread and grins as the springs inside groan to bounce her back up. He just watches fondly as she jumps up and does it again.
From the short briefing he got from Dr. Death and Pony, who brought her out when the other three had walked outside, he knows the conditions she lived in before. A cramped space barely big enough to count as a walk-in closet, let alone a bedroom. One small window near the ceiling.
In Battery City, saving space is a crucial factor in expanding the population, but shoving a kid in a five-by-five foot room is just cruel.
Really, it’s a surprise that her social skills are this well-developed. Dr. D said that the only human contact she had gotten in the city was from either a few attendants that would dress, feed, and bathe her or SCARECROW employees that would test her. Exactly what they were testing her on, he didn’t say.
“I’ll be in the room across the hall after I get ready for bed,” he says finally, turning to leave. “I’m not on watch tonight, so I’ll be there the whole time. You need anything before I go?”
The girl sits up and shakes her head, wild curls bouncing around her face. “No,” she says, her face shining pink.
“All right. See you in the morning, kiddo.” He’s halfway out the door, reaching back to pull it closed when she gets up and follows him.
He stops. “You good?”
“Uh huh.”
She doesn’t elaborate. Jet shrugs and starts his nighttime routine, which involves grabbing a flashlight and splashing his face with water from the collector outside. He passes Fun Ghoul and Kobra Kid on his way back in, who are both sitting on the step in front of the door with cigarettes and a game of cards. They glance at his little shadow curiously but don’t say a word except to bid him goodnight.
Jet Star’s back in his room and taking off his boots when she finally speaks. “Time ‘s it?”
Maybe she’s tired. Maybe she wants someone to tuck her in. He can do that, right? That’s what parents do.
Not that he’s her parent or anything. Because that’s definitely not the case. She’s just like a visitor. A tiny, quiet visitor who keeps following him around.
“Past midnight. You gotta go to sleep, honey.” He places his boots at the end of his mattress and hangs his jacket over the door. Yesterday was laundry day, so he’ll sleep in the shirt he has on now. He can change in the morning.
“But I don’t wanna be in there by myself.”
Oh.
“How come?” He sits down on the mattress and leans against the wall.
She shrugs and looks at the ground.
Okay. Jet gets it. She’s probably lonely, probably scared, and it is her first night with them, after all. She’s only known the gang since this morning, and she’s already seen Poison having a temper tantrum and Ghoul nearly falling out of the trans am and busting his brains open. Kind of a hectic first day for a Killjoy, especially a little one her age. He wouldn’t want to be anywhere alone right now, either, if he was her.
“You wanna sit with me?”
She nods and crawls into his lap before the offer is even completely off his tongue. Her eagerness almost startles him, but he doesn’t show it, only resting a hand on her head where she lays it against his chest.
He gently strokes the back of her head. As she sits with him, leaning into his arms, he can’t help but compare this to the scenario he’d been daydreaming about earlier. With her in his arms, he can almost imagine he’s a parent. With a little kid to take care of.
Even though she isn’t his own, she still needs a place to live and people to look after her. People to love her.
The decision is made. He’ll make the best of this for both of them. Right now, Jet promises himself that for as long as she’s with them, whether it be a week or month, he’ll do everything possible to give her a normal childhood. As normal a childhood you can get in the Zones, anyway.
Poison’s words from behind the Paradise Motel ring too loudly in his ears. This is temporary, Star, and I promise you that. All of this is temporary. She's gonna be gone soon, so don’t even think about getting attached.
All that begging to let her stay was worth it, though. One look and he knows she’s gonna be a brave kid. Might save the world one day, who knows.
Jet doesn’t know it, but the girl isn’t thinking about any of that. All she’s thinking about is how secure Jet’s arms are. How safe she is. And it’s nice to feel wanted, she finds, to have a sense of belonging. She feels that belonging just as strongly as she feels Jet Star’s heartbeat against the side of her cheek.
Before long, the girl is asleep. Jet doesn’t want to move and wake her up, so he just leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, figuring he’ll just rest until she wakes up and he can put her back in her own bed. That doesn’t work out, because within fifteen minutes, fatigue takes over and he’s out too.
Two hours later, when the Kobra Kid pads in at the end of his watch, he sees Jet propped up with the kid in his lap, both of them sound asleep. He smiles to himself and tiptoes back out, heading to Jet’s—now the girl’s—room for the night instead. Jet Star is sitting on Kobra’s blanket anyway and making him move would ruin the moment.
~~~
The girl acts as the Fab Four’s apprentice from her very first days. Every time something needs fixing, cleaning, demolishing, mending, building, or cooking, she’s right by their side. Her second day with them involves catching a scorpion, checking Kobra Kid’s blood sugar, hammering a couple of loose nails on the doors, watching Jet accidentally start a fire with the diner’s old stove, and trying on makeup. Not necessarily in that order.
But it’s on the third day when she really starts to learn things, and Fun Ghoul is the lucky one that gets to help Jet teach the girl how to treat a wound.
Well, actually, he’s just the patient. He doesn’t actually get to do anything except lie there bleeding and half-conscious.
At least this time the incident isn’t caused by his own stupidity. In fact, it’s probably the first time he’s gotten hurt without genuinely deserving it in the past five or six weeks. He’s pretty proud of it, actually, because he’s gonna have a sick scar down the side of his left thigh now.
Basically, it starts off when he uses his dazzling charm and superior wit to convince Party Poison that the crew deserves a night out to go see a concert from the next up-and-coming Zone band, Benny and the Trampolines, and all their supporting acts. Kobra and Jet stay at the diner with the girl with the reasoning that they’re too tired, and besides, what would they do with the kid if they all went out?
So Ghoul has the time of his life at the concert, ditching Poison the minute they get out of the car. He meets these three people with the coolest fucking hair, jewelry, and jackets he’s ever seen, gets right in the middle of one of the biggest mosh pits to ever grace the Zones, and even finds twelve carbons just lying on the ground that he, of course, pockets immediately. He snatches a couple wallets throughout the night too but throws them back to the owners after not finding anything worth keeping.
But obviously the universe decided he was having too much fun, because two hours and three bands into the show, a truckful of exterminators shows up to bust the party.
Motorbabies scatter in all directions trying to get out of the way and save themselves from getting shot in the head, and Fun Ghoul gets caught in the crowd. He’s shorter than the rest of them and ends up getting trampled, and when the air clears and the dust settles, he looks up with a cough to find a dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark everything-ed SCARECROW staring at him.
With that jet-black uniform to match her hair and makeup, she looks like a fucking corporeal shadow.
Ghoul grabs his blaster and pulls the trigger, but the battery chooses this most inconvenient time to die. So now he’s standing there like an idiot, weaponless, basically inviting capture and the resulting consequences of having his soul yanked from his body and living a life of numbness for the rest of eternity.
In short, he’s screwed.
The exterminator doesn’t say a word as she reaches into a hidden pocket and pulls out a knife. Fun Ghoul swallows thickly. Perfect. The end is approaching and he didn’t even get to spend the carbons he found.
Ghoul guesses it’s time for hand-to-hand, which he kind of sucks at, and he starts wishing he’d paid more attention when Jet Star showed him the best techniques for close-up fighting. But no, at the time he was too busy drinking a can of flat soda to be bothered to learn moves that could save his ass.
So, being the complete idiot he is with no other viable options in sight, he lunges toward her. Trying to get her knife or something, maybe. He doesn’t really know. Come on, his plan didn’t go any further than this.
He finds that grappling with her is just like wrestling with Kobra Kid, except on most occasions Kobra doesn’t have a knife in his hand and isn’t trying to kill him. So it’s actually not like wrestling with Kobra Kid at all.
After approximately thirteen seconds of brawling with the exterminator, Ghoul decides it’s just time to head out. Unfortunately, as he tries to pull away so he can courageously run in the opposite direction, she swipes downward and her blade cuts right down the side of his thigh.
He cries out and falls to the ground heavily. Blood is already saturating the leg of his pants and Fun Ghoul thinks he might’ve hit his head on the way down. He feels dizzy.
“Get the fuck away from him, city scum!” someone yells, and through the tornado of his head, Ghoul realizes it’s Poison.
A bunch of things happen that he’s not really aware of, but judging by the sounds of the scuffle, Party Poison eventually scares the exterminator off. Next thing Ghoul knows, Poison’s kneeling by his head and shaking his shoulders. “You good? You good?”
“Uh huh,” he mumbles, but it feels like he’s speaking through a mouthful of cotton. Poison somehow wraps up the injury with spare cloth and drags Ghoul to his feet, because according to him, Poison’s only a couple inches taller and he’s not strong enough to carry Ghoul all the way to the car like it’s their wedding day or some shit.
Ghoul gets shoved in the passenger seat and Poison floors it. “I’m gonna fucking die,” he moans, but Poison just tells him to quit whining because it’s distracting.
Back at the diner, he gets manhandled again, this time by a set of gentler hands that he suspects belongs to Jet Star, before getting laid down on two of the tables pushed together. He opens one eye and sees the girl standing in the corner, as far away from him as she can possibly get. “Knife wounds ain’t contagious, kiddo,” he says, but he winces and his voice cracks on the joke.
He sees Kobra and Jet exchange worried glances.
That immediately sets him off. Because they’re worried, he starts to get worried, and he starts breathing quicker, and another minute of this and he’s going to hyperventilate, and suddenly he can’t decide which one is worse: death by thigh wound or death by breathing too much. He starts to sweat, too, making his hair cling to his forehead and making everything worse, and he knows he must look ridiculous but he just can’t help it, and he’s really starting to get scared, and maybe he’ll actually just panic to death, and—
Then Kobra appears on the other side of Ghoul and offers his hand. He knows it’s Kobra even with his eyes closed, because first of all, nobody else in the crew has hands that cold, and second of all, there’s no way Poison would voluntarily be in this room with the girl, even though this is basically a matter of life and death. Fun Ghoul’s life and death. But Poison couldn’t care less.
Regardless, Ghoul grabs Kobra’s hand so tightly that he’s sure all the circulation to Kobra’s fingers gets cut off, but it’s either that or the previous option of panicking to death, so Kobra’s going to have to take the L on this one.
Jet Star opens the gang’s med kit, hands the girl a rag, and tells her to put pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding. Ghoul tries not to listen and starts thinking about how much it would suck to die right now. Not even heroically or anything, just lying flat on a table with people crowding around him and discussing the location of his arteries. Whatever that means.
A few moments later, Ghoul learns that nothing major got sliced except, you know, his skin, but also that he’s going to have to get stitches. Which is really shitty because this is the fourth time he’s had to get stitches for something in three months. He’s getting a little tired of Jet sticking needles and thread through his body. Can’t he find something else to sew?
“Watch this, girlie,” Jet says, and Ghoul squeezes his eyes shut. As Jet explains what he’s doing and how to do it, Ghoul wishes there was a way to close his ears, too. Listening to somebody explain the best way to repeatedly puncture him makes the process even more traumatizing even though he’s gone through this tons of times and should, theoretically, be used to it by now.
He yelps when he feels the sting of antiseptic and nearly howls at the first stitch. “Sorry, sorry,” Jet says when Ghoul’s limbs thrash out, narrowly dodging a foot to the face. “Just try to stay still.”
Easy for him to say. A thousand thoughts are running through Ghoul’s brain as red as the pain and none of them are nice.
Finally, finally, it’s over, and Ghoul bravely opens one eye. The needle’s gone, the sutures are in place, and the girl is right beside Jet, digging through the med kit for a bandage. He can practically hear the bones in Kobra Kid’s hand cracking when he lets go, but there’s nothing he can do about that. Maybe Jet’ll want to stitch that up too, huh?
“You did a great job with those last stitches,” Jet Star tells the girl, and Ghoul realizes something.
“You let a five-year-old sew my skin together?” he exclaims. She’s a great kid, but he doesn’t even like Jet messing with the needle around him, much less using it on him. So naturally he’s shocked he didn’t notice it before.
“Jus’ the last ones,” she whispers, eyes downcast. “Sorry.”
He lets out a shaky breath as Jet starts cleaning up. “No, ‘m not mad. I’m just… surprised. You got good hands, kiddo. As steady as Jet’s.”
Kobra leans over to the girl. “Big compliment,” he tells her. “You should be proud.”
Fun Ghoul’s just sitting there glad that the stitches are in and he’s not in immediate danger of bleeding out anymore. Jet tells him he’s gonna have to take it easy for a while, which is one of the few things Ghoul hates, and that the best way to heal as quickly as possible is to be calm, quiet, and still.
So basically, the opposite of everything he does on a daily basis.
He lets out a groan. “It’s not fair,” he whines. “All I wanted was to go have fun and I got carved like a pumpkin because of it. Now I can’t do anything.”
Party Poison walks back in the room and Ghoul stops complaining. Poison eyes him and Ghoul stares right back.
“Good job, Jet,” he says finally. “He’s back to his old whiny self and it hasn’t even been thirty minutes.”
Ghoul ignores the jab because there’s a lot he could say about Poison right now. Instead he merely comments, “The girl helped too.”
Everyone turns their heads in unison to see the response. He just gives a grunt of acknowledgement and walks right back out.
They wrap the wound with a bandage fashioned from an old t-shirt and transfer Ghoul into one of the booths so he can sit up. Jet scoops him up like he weighs nothing and carries him over, and Ghoul protests, but he’s secretly glad he doesn’t have to walk. He’s pretty sure his legs would have shaken if he’d tried, because the danger he was in with that SCARECROW is just now starting to settle in.
When everybody leaves the room, Poison comes back. He slides into the seat across from Ghoul and pushes him an already-opened can of food with a spoon sticking out the top. “Got some food.”
Ghoul takes one bite before shoving it back. "Thi' shi’ tas’s e'pired,” he says through a mouthful. Everything’s always expired, though, and it’s either eat it anyway or starve to death. But he’s not feeling particularly excited about a four-year-old can of mushy dog food.
Poison frowns. “Thought you ate anything.”
“Well, yeah, but not right now. Taste buds aren’t up for that after they almost died a brutal death. Along with the rest of me. But you didn’t seem to care about that part.”
“Aw, shut up. You know I care.”
“You sure are bad at showing it.”
Poison rolls his eyes. “I knew you were gonna make it. If I didn’t think so, I would've stayed in the room. And look at that, my intuition was right; you ain’t fucking dead now, are you?”
Ghoul is resisting the urge to grab the PowerPup back and throw it in Poison’s face. “I’d fight you right here if I was allowed to move.”
“You’d still lose.”
They joke back and forth for a couple more minutes, and though Poison’s playing around, traces of worry still haven’t faded from his face. Ghoul finally brings up the burning question.
“Were you not in there because she was?”
Poison stiffens. The air between them thickens. “No,” he says, but Ghoul always knows when he’s lying. He tells him that and Poison just looks away.
“It doesn’t matter,” Poison says, and before Ghoul can say anything else, he slips out of the booth and back to his room. Ghoul watches him go and sits there alone until the girl comes in and asks to braid his hair.
Of course, he lets her.
~~~
While Ghoul heals, there’s not much the crew can do. Poison mills around restlessly, his fingers twitching toward his raygun every so often. When he doesn’t have a cigarette and lighter in his hands, he’s clasping them together tightly, and with his head bowed and hair hanging down it looks like he’s frozen in the middle of a prayer. Nobody tells him that, though, because they know that even the mere mention of religion will send him straight out towards the dust and he won’t come back for a long time.
Jet and Kobra work on various projects and hobbies while they can. Jet sews up rips and tears in everybody’s clothes and plays basketball outside when he finds a ball in the dumpster with most of the air still in it. Kobra fiddles with his blaster and his Vend-a-Hack, looking for things to improve, and starts programming a patented drac-killing power glove that’s going to be awesome when he’s done with it.
Ghoul, as is the usual with him, just complains about everything.
The girl does a lot of coloring. Before long, papers filled with her million-carbon art are tacked to every wall and every surface in the diner. The only room that doesn’t have any is Poison’s bedroom, which isn’t a surprise. She makes up for it by using her brightest colors and the best parts of her imagination to cover the rest of the place in creativity.
Kobra’s repainting his raygun at one of the tables when she comes up to him with a drawing in hand. Wordlessly, she offers it out to him, and he puts the brush down and holds her picture up to the light for a good look.
It’s of him standing beside a cactus during a sunrise, but the cactus only comes up to his waist and he has blue hair and no eyebrows. Also, the sun is green.
“I love it,” he answers honestly. She beams and he ruffles her hair. “You’re our little artist.”
She scampers away somewhere else, and he finishes touching up the paint in ten minutes. Looks brand new, he thinks to himself, and proudly admires his work. Just then, Jet Star walks through the door with his hair in a ponytail and the girl on his heels.
“Please? How come you won’t?” They’re in the middle of a conversation, and she’s waving a book in the air. “I wanna hear it.”
Jet shakes his head, then glances at Kobra with pleading eyes. “I can’t,” he says. “I just… I just can’t right now.”
He keeps walking but the girl stops. “What’s up, girlie?” Kobra calls. She advances toward him slowly, shoulders slumping.
“Jet won’t read to me. I don’t know why he’s upset. I found this big book but he don’t wanna read t’ me.”
“I’ll read it to you, kiddo. Sit over here.” He pats the seat beside him and she bounds over, merriment restored. It’s this random story about a kid in a hotel and some mouse that becomes friends with him, but it keeps her attention. There’s a few illustrations throughout and she giggles at some of the scenes, and they make it almost halfway through before Poison passes through.
“Kobra, what are you doing?”
He resists the urge to roll his eyes. What does Poison think he’s doing? “Reading a story, dear brother. What are you doing?”
He’s not amused and it shows in his biting tone. “Don’t you have better shit to do than play babysitter?”
The girl’s mood visibly deflates, but Poison won't shut up. “You know she’s outta here soon. The minute D calls, I’m driving straight to the station myself to give her back. I knew it was a bad decision to let Jet keep her. Now all you three do is waste time with her.”
“Leave me alone, Poison,” he simply says. With a huff, his brother does, and Kobra waits until he’s out of the room to speak again.
“I think he’s right,” Kobra says, disappointed in himself for not being able to stand up for himself. “Maybe we should hold off on the story for now. We’re almost half done, anyway.”
Her face falls. “Okay.”
“How about we do something else together, though?” he suggests. “You wanna learn to read all on your own?”
That gets her attention and he doesn’t feel so bad anymore, not after seeing the way her eyes light back up. He tells her to stay there and grabs some paper and a few pens, then lays it all out on the tabletop. She listens attentively as he writes down the alphabet and explains vowels and consonants, and even manages to spell “fun” all on her own.
“We should show Ghoul that later,” he tells her. Then she surprises him by writing “kid.”
“It means you and me,” she explains dutifully. His heart melts a little bit.
So reading and writing lessons become the usual for a couple hours each day. During the second session, Jet Star conveniently wanders into the room and shyly sits down beside the girl. She passes him paper and a pen without a second thought or a second glance and he becomes Kobra’s next student.
Later, Jet confesses that he feels a little embarrassed that he’s older than both of them but can’t read. He doesn’t say it outright, but Kobra understands. He doesn’t press him for details on why, because he already knows, so that conversation ends. And Kobra’s fine with that.
With some struggling, they make it through a couple of harder lessons about reading and writing words that can’t be sounded out. Before long, the girl gets the hang of it and helps teach Jet when Kobra can’t get him to understand something. They make so much progress over the next three days that the two of them are able to surprise Ghoul by taking turns reading from that chapter book the girl found. He listens with wide eyes, and afterward Kobra offers to teach him to read too. He shakes his head. “I got these two to read me stories now,” he grins.
One evening, the girl pokes her head around the corner of the doorframe and into Kobra and Jet’s room. Kobra’s resting his head on Jet’s chest and holding up a week-old newspaper to scan for coupons and other shit, because he’s bored out of his mind and it’s way too hot to go to bed.
“Kobra Kid?” she whispers loudly. “Can I come in?”
He waves her in. She tiptoes over and plops herself down on the edge of the mattress. “Whatcha doin’?” she asks, all cheerful and bright, the way any kid her age should be. Lately, everything’s better when Party Poison isn’t around. Everybody’s happier.
“Lookin’ at a city paper,” he answers. “Nothin’ else to do.”
She crawls over. “Can I read it?”
He hands it over. Slowly, she makes her way through one of the headlines. Underneath sits a blurry, monochrome picture of a gathering of people with their hands in the air. It looks like a snapshot captured right in the middle of a Mad Gear concert. “Battery… City… to… e-elim—Kobra, what’s that word?”
“Eliminate.”
“Eliminate… de… des—does that say dessert?”
“Desert.”
“Battery City to eliminate desert ter-terror… terror… how do you say that?”
“Terrorists.”
“—desert terrorists. What’s that mean?” she asks.
Kobra looks at Jet for help. How is he supposed to explain that Battery City means them?
“Girlie,” Jet says, absentmindedly running his hand through Kobra’s hair, “you know how all the SCARECROWs and draculoids were following us?” She nods, watching both of them with eyes eager to drink in the information. “That’s because—well, it’s kind of because they want to get you back there, but it’s also because they think we’re bad.”
“What’d you do?” she asks.
Kobra smiles, but not because he’s happy. “Got free,” he says softly, and he thinks about the sixteen years lost to time while he was completely doped up on the delusions of the city. “Or never lived back there in the first place.”
Jet’s eyes look far away when Kobra glances back. He knows he’s thinking about all the pain Better Living Industries caused him, everything from the day he was born when his mother died all the way to losing four different crews in two months.
“But that ain’t bad, ain’t it?” she asks. Kobra aches for a time when he was that innocent, but then he remembers he never had one. Even from a young age, he was able to understand the difference between right and wrong. Battery City’s version of right and wrong, at least.
“To them, it’s one of the worst things you can do.”
Realization settles within her face, giving her the look of someone much older, much wiser. “So that means they hate me.”
“Yeah.” He looks everywhere but at her.
“Good,” she proclaims, her brows knitting together. Her nose scrunches up. “I hate them, too.”
With that, she drops the newspaper and curls up beside Kobra. She nestles her head in the soft spot below his shoulder and underneath his collarbone and closes her eyes. Before long, she’s asleep.
“She’s too young to hate anyone,” Kobra whispers, looking at the top of her head. He sighs heavily.
Jet Star gives a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “SCARECROW hates us. We hate them. It’s just a never-ending circle of hate, and kids get pulled into it too.”
Both of them are thinking the same thing. It may be never-ending, but that doesn’t mean this little girl deserves to deal with it.
“Y’know, she’s good at reading,” Jet says quietly, changing the subject. “Better than me.”
“It’s not your fault your letters get mixed up. You’re doing so well anyway.”
“Thanks.” Kobra knows immediately that something is bothering him; he can hear it in Jet’s voice. The reading isn’t the real source of his despondency, and he thinks he knows what is.
“You worryin’ about having to give her back?”
Jet murmurs a small “yeah.”
“Me too.”
“Doc told me to watch out for patrols. They want her back bad.”
“Since she’s so young?”
“Part of it. But he said there’s something… special… about her. Wouldn’t say what, but from what she said about how tight they kept tabs on her at HQ, I’m thinkin’ it’s something big. Somethin’ they can use.”
“Sounds pretty bad.”
“I’m thinking it’s dangerous for them that they don’t have her anymore. That she’s in enemy hands.”
“They’re gonna do whatever they can to get her back. That’s why Dr. D wants to put her in one of those orphanages in the outer Zones. She’d get care and she’d be pretty much off the radar. They’re so far out the way that the company figures it’s not worth it to chase after them.”
“Yeah.”
After that, Jet Star goes silent, and Kobra Kid figures he’s asleep. But when he turns around to check, Jet’s just staring off into space with a melancholy gaze that makes Kobra ache for him. He knows what’s going through his mind.
He knows Jet’s reliving all the times he’d stand in the middle of the market and watch the kids run around, all the times he'd offhandedly mention the “what if?”, all the times he’d straight-up quietly tell Kobra “I wish I had something like that” when they saw a crew member holding a swaddled newborn or a toddler in their lap.
All those times and all those wishes that, until now, could never be fulfilled. But now that he’s got a taste of what caring for a kid really feels like, his longing for one of his own just got stronger.
Kobra doesn’t know what Jet’s going to do when they have to let the girl go.
~~~
For the next few days, the routine is simple. There’s always some errand to run or someplace to go. One of the weirdest things, though, is that for those next few days, there isn’t a single firefight. Hell, the last time any of them even saw a BL/ind agent was at the concert Ghoul begged to go to.
It’s eerily calm. Calm before the storm, is what Poison is thinking.
He’s irritated. He’s always irritated at one thing or another, but this time it’s such a deep exasperation, a violent aggravation that stretches down into his veins and spreads throughout his bloodstream. This kid. This stupid fucking kid. She’s always in his way. They do their best to avoid each other, and Poison figures maybe the hatred is mutual, but even just thinking about her depleting all their resources and taking up space in both the shelter and the car makes him fume.
If Dr. Death had asked Poison what he asked Jet, Poison would have declined. Immediately. Anyone in their right mind can look at their crew and see that they don’t need to add any more problems. They’ve got enough as it is. At this point, all of them together are worth over a million carbons to Better Living Industries, dead or alive.
And that last point circles back around to why he’s so concerned that they haven’t seen any patrols.
Not even a single draculoid.
They’re waiting. They’re waiting for the crew’s guard to go down. They’re waiting until they settle in for the night, or until they head to the market, or until they stop for gas, and then it’s going to be an ambush. And Party Poison knows damn well that Jet—and probably Kobra and Ghoul—will be so focused on keeping that kid safe that they won’t even join in on the firefight. It’ll be up to him.
It’s going to happen. He knows it. He can feel it.
Jet would tell him he’s being paranoid. He’s not paranoid. He’s just thinking ahead. He, unlike some people, wouldn’t agree to taking on a responsibility that could possibly get all of them killed.
And fuck if it happens the very next day.
Fun Ghoul, the fucking idiot, said he was bored. Said he wanted to go for a drive. And when Poison got sick and tired of his whining and finally gave in, they all piled into the car. Kobra’s driving, Poison’s shotgun. Jet and Ghoul are shoved in the back with the girl between them, who’s sitting on the little hump in the middle that isn’t even a seat.
Everybody else is as happy as can be, though. Poison just chews his gum and stares ahead, unsmiling. Mad Gear’s first EP is blaring on the radio, and the others are screaming along, but Poison says nothing.
Until he looks in the sideview mirror and sees two small specks. Two cars, behind them, and approaching fast. White. Maybe a couple motorcycles back there, too. He can’t tell yet.
He switches off the radio and the car falls silent.
“Hey!” Fun Ghoul begins to protest, but Poison cuts him off.
“We’ve got shadows.”
That shuts everyone up. Poison twirls his raygun in his hand, feeling his pulse in his throat. Fun Ghoul leans out the window.
“Can ya get ‘em now, Ghoul?” Kobra asks. He turns around, keeping one hand on the wheel. “Or d’you think we can outrun ‘em?”
“Nah. They’re not close enough. But we ain’t far enough to get away without takin’ more damage than it’s worth.”
The cars in the distance visibly speed up. “You sure about that, Ghoulie?” Kobra yells. He turns back to the front and floors it.
All the anger he’s been harboring melts into determination for the time being and Poison sets his mouth in a firm line. Better Living cars can match the trans am’s speed. There’s no getting away from this one.
Then it blurs together like all claps do. Poison switches to autopilot, hanging an arm out the window and shooting rays that flash by like deadly rainbows, dodging the ones meant for him, and smacking his gum the whole time. Ghoul and Jet lean out the t-top parallel to each other and fire away. Kobra tosses his blaster back when Ghoul’s starts to run out of juice.
The girl swivels backward with pure fascination, craning her neck through the back window to see the action. At one point Poison thinks she might even give a cry of joy, which is ridiculous, because firefights aren’t something to laugh about. Dumb kid.
Within mere minutes, it’s all over. Ghoul blew out the front tires of both cars, sending them out of commission, and Poison may or may not have sent a shot to the gas tank of one of the bikes, causing a spectacular explosion that Ghoul giggled maniacally about. Poison picked off the dracs through the windows, and it was a good thing Kobra was driving, too, because though he can’t shoot for shit, he can handle himself behind the wheel during a getaway like that.
Still. Even though the whole thing’s over, when the rest of his crew is joking over roasted jackrabbit and cans of mushy carrots, Poison can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. That that little clap they had wasn’t it. That something bigger is coming.
He tries to voice the concern to Jet Star, but before he can even finish a full sentence, Jet interrupts him with a “Hey, man, gimme two seconds, I’m gonna get the girl ready for bed.” And then, without even waiting for a response, his crewmate walks away.
Party Poison thought Jet Star was the reasonable one, but with all the tender glances and gentle handling he’s giving that kid, Poison isn’t so sure anymore. Survival of the gang is more important than anybody, especially some stupid kid, but Jet seems to have forgotten that. Figures. Now there’s only one responsible person in this crew that’s working their ass off twenty-four seven to make sure they don’t get jumped by SCARECROW and have a draculoid mask yanked over their heads.
For the record, Poison doesn’t wait for Jet to come back. He just heads out and sleeps in the car. Nobody bothers him for the rest of the night, and when the girl wakes herself and the three others up screaming from another nightmare, he isn’t there to witness it. For once.
~~~
The Zones are scary, but not in the way you first imagined. The draculoids with their leering red smiles and the SCARECROWS with blasters and murderous intent in their eyes aren’t your biggest fear. You know that the Fabulous Four will protect you. Jet told you himself. Plus, you’re used to seeing draculoids around. They guarded the halls of the research center you lived in back in the city. Back then they didn’t really acknowledge you, but now you’re careful not to let any see you. Kobra told you there’s already warrants out for your re-capture, and the last thing you want is to do is go back to that place.
Besides, that’s not the scary part.
And the scary part isn’t Party Poison, either, though it might as well be. He looks at you with contempt in his eyes, and you still don’t know why. It can’t be that he hates taking care of kids, right? Because Kobra said that Poison took care of him when they were growing up all the time.
You don’t suspect that Poison will ever change his mind about you. But that’s fine. You’re okay. You have the other three. You’ll just pretend it doesn’t matter.
The scary part is all the memories.
You start remembering things a few days after meeting the gang. Visions of explosions, mushroom clouds redder than Kobra Kid’s racing jacket, the sounds of blasters firing into bodies, bones breaking, electricity blowing out, and other things you don’t want to think about. They come in your dreams, and you wake up filled with a heavy fear that paralyzes you. The only thing that you can do is scream.
So you do.
The first time it happens, Jet Star and Fun Ghoul come running. Jet gathers you in his arms, rocking you, making soothing noises, telling you that you’re safe. Like your mother must have done when you were little.
You cling to him like he’s a liferaft and you’re drowning in the middle of the ocean.
Afterward, when your screams subside to little whimpers, Ghoul tells you he understands what it feels like. He tells you that he gets the same bad dreams, and the only way he can calm down is to touch some part of somebody. He tells you that that’s why he always shares a mattress with someone else, so if he wakes up he can just reach out and touch their arm. Then he knows he’s safe, because he knows his crew will protect him.
Later, Kobra tells you he gets nightmares too. Just like you and Ghoul. But for him, they come more frequently, almost every time he closes his eyes. And unlike you and Ghoul, he can’t scream. He can’t even move. He just lays there, terrified, and waits for it to be over. He says Jet Star helps him by talking to him. Just saying words, just saying anything he can think of. And then he eventually comes out of it.
And you realize that’s why Jet Star is so good at comforting you after a bad dream. He does it all the time for the rest of his crew.
He doesn't have to, but he still does it for them.
And he does it for you, too.
~~~
They leave the diner the day after that clap.
DJs all across the desert keep sending out reports of increased Better Living patrols, and Cherri Cola, who somehow must’ve heard about the girl, basically announces that it’s her fault during his radio show. Kobra can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something about “increased patrols because of the Zones’ latest arrival.” Whatever it was, it made Poison mad. Poison doesn’t like Cherri anyway, because he’s too soft or something, but that broadcast sure didn’t help.
“Thanks to the kid, now we’ve gotta be on the run again,” he had grumbled. “Fuck this.”
Kobra didn’t point out that nowhere in the report did Cola announce their location and that there really wasn’t a good reason to leave. He just stayed silent and helped pack their shit up.
Unfortunately, they had to leave behind the mattresses they’d found, so that means sleeping in the car or in sleeping bags on the ground is gonna be their new norm for a while. At least until they find a better hideout.
He wishes Poison wasn’t so paranoid.
After a few hours, they end up in the southwest side of Zone Five, completely out of the way of everyone. Poison pulls the car behind a cluster of Joshua trees, like that’s going to keep it hidden, and orders them to set up a camp for the night.
Jet and Kobra gather sticks for a fire and the girl looks for small rocks. Ghoul fucks around with matches and nearly sets the sleeping bags he’s unloading from the trunk on fire until Poison makes him behave.
“PowerPup tonight,” Jet announces, and Kobra nearly pukes just thinking about it. Why they have to eat that when there’s a couple cans of perfectly good green beans stashed in the backseat makes no sense, but he supposes he’ll just suffer.
Jet tries to get the fire going as Poison pulls out a map, and together they discuss whether jumping an armored city truck to get better supplies is worth the possibility of a painful death. Kobra gets bored after about two seconds and heads over to Ghoul and the girl, who are drawing stick figures in the dirt.
“You wanna play tag?” Ghoul yells toward him with a grin. “She’s it!” He takes off running before Kobra even makes it all the way over there.
The girl looks at Kobra with mischief in her eyes, and they stare at each other. “Don’t you dare,” he whispers.
She lunges toward him and he practically throws himself out of reach. He sprints after Ghoul.
They play various games for the next thirty minutes, all of which involve the girl chasing them. Never ran this much in one day in my life, he thinks at one point, panting, hiding behind a tree and thinking he’s safe from the other two. Ghoul pops out less than five yards away, effectively scaring him to death, and Kobra suppresses a shriek.
Everything’s all fine and well until the sky starts to darken and the girl trips over something on the ground. A stone, a root, he doesn’t know. Whatever it was, it had to have hurt, and she’s biting her lip and holding her knee when he gets to her.
“Kobra, Kobra, it hurts,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. He gets a closer look, Fun Ghoul trailing behind him, and he sees the full extent of the injury.
It’s a skinned knee, which obviously isn’t life-threatening or anything, but her fall was bad enough to rip the leg of her pants. The skin is all torn up, dirt and pebbles stuck to the wound, and little spots of blood rise to the surface. It’s probably the worst injury she’s had, considering up until a while ago she lived in a place where it was impossible to even get a scratch.
“C’mere. Let’s go clean it up.”
She reaches out for Kobra and he hoists her onto his back. She’s not heavy, but then again the only other person he’s ever given a piggyback ride to is Fun Ghoul and he almost fell over in the middle of that.
By the car, he sets her down and grabs the first aid kit from the trunk, along with a water bottle. He can feel Poison’s eyes on him as he breaks the seal. Right as he pours out a small amount of water into his palm, careful not to spill any, Poison snaps at him.
"That's our drinking water."
Kobra looks up with the water still cupped in his hand. "She scraped her knee. I'm rinsing off the dirt."
"Not with our drinking water." Poison gets up and makes a move to grab the bottle. Kobra jerks it away from him, and Ghoul comes to his backup.
"What the fuck, man? She's hurt. We can spare a little water for her."
Kobra glances at the girl. She's watching this exchange with those tears in her eyes threatening to spill over. And he’s still got the fucking water dripping through his fingers.
"No, we can't." Poison grabs for the bottle again. Kobra’s tempted to flick the water in his face, but luckily he has just enough self-restraint to contain himself.
"Give it a break. Means so much to you, you can have my water," Ghoul says. Kobra's thankful for his interjection, because he himself has never been good about standing up to his brother. Ghoul, on the other hand, doesn't give a fuck who he makes angry.
"Not what I'm talking about. She shoulda been more careful. It’s her fault, so she deals with it."
"Poison, that's not fair," Kobra says at the same time Ghoul tells him to fuck off.
Poison looks down his nose at both of them, since Kobra's kneeling and Ghoul's eight inches shorter than him. "Gonna regret that when we're thirstin' to death." Then he spins on his heels and goes back to Jet, who's staring over with an incredulous expression.
"He's a bitch, girlie. I'm sorry about him," Ghoul tells her as Kobra cleans the wound. Distracting her from the sting. Ghoul's smart. "I'll beat him up later if you want."
She shrugs. Kobra's heart threatens to crack a little. "What did I do?"
That does it. Kobra's heart snaps in half.
"Ain’t your fault. He’s just sour 'cause he hates happiness and he's a dumbass who doesn't know how to be nice when he doesn't get his way."
Thanks to Ghoul, the girl’s just added two more swear words to her vocabulary, but this time Kobra doesn’t really care. There haven’t been any words to describe the way his brother is acting that aren’t four letters or end in “-fucker” lately.
She sniffles. Kobra unwraps the largest band-aid in the kit and presses it on, then dusts his hands. "You're all fixed up." He plasters on a grin for her sake.
A half-sad smile wobbles onto her face. "Thank you," she whispers, the two words faint enough to be blown away in the wind, and Kobra has never hated Poison more than now.
~~~
Soon, you get to hear first-hand how Party Poison feels about you. You knew all his opinions already, but hearing the words straight out of his mouth hits you harder than a real bullet to the chest. Eliminates that little seed of hope you had growing from your heart. Burns it right back down to nothing.
Since Poison forced the gang to leave the diner that you had grown to love, you’ve tried to stay out his way. Getting yelled at for skinning your knee was the last straw. You didn’t do it on purpose, but then again, he thinks every breath you take is for one reason: to bother him. By now you’ve figured out he’s never going to accept you.
You really didn’t want to make him mad, but Kobra told you he had to wash the scratches because otherwise you could’ve got an infection. He bandaged it up and soon it didn’t even hurt anymore, but Poison’s outburst about the water made you wish Kobra had just left it alone.
Sitting on the hard dirt with your back to one of the car’s wheels and playing with your toys becomes your only entertainment for two entire days. Fun Ghoul lays out a blanket on the ground and grabs this weird box with lights inside that he tells you is a way to call people. Their setup includes that phone thing, a couple cans of PowerPup with a can opener, a bunch of maps, and some pens that keep running out of ink. Poison opens that box and talks into that clunky old phone, quiet so that you can’t make out any individual words, but audible enough that you can hear him murmuring and occasionally pausing for the person on the other end to reply.
You go up to Ghoul once, but he’s busy with one of the maps. "Can't right now, girlie," he mumbles, not looking at you. You didn't even open your mouth to ask him anything yet.
Using your excellent powers of observation, you soon figure out that they’re radioing DJs all over the Zones, asking for details on the whereabouts of the next Better Living supply motorcade. Through good reasoning, you also figure out that they’re planning to attack it.
You hop up onto the hood of the trans am when Poison's facing the other direction and gaze out to nowhere like Jet Star is so fond of doing. The metal burns the underside of your legs where skin's exposed through the rips and tears of your pants, but it doesn't matter to you. You've got a throne right here and the sun is the spotlight shining directly onto your face.
Warmth is good. Warmth is everything the city wasn't. The city was cold, frigid, more than a few degrees too low to be comfortable. Makes you shiver right now just thinking about it.
You never wanna go back there. You won't let them take you back. You'd run for days to get away from them. You'd keep running.
Keep running. That’s all Poison ever says. It was his argument to get all of you out of the diner in the first place. We need to keep runnin’. Keep running, but it seems like right now everybody’s just hiding. Ain’t much running going on.
You’re getting good at pretending. Always have been; it was a skill that kept you alive and out of trouble back when you were in the hands of SCARECROW. Pretending that you weren’t hungry, that you weren’t tired, that you weren’t longing for something other than captivity bleached down to the bone.
Right now you’re pretending that you’re asleep across the backseat of the car with the doors open. It’s all going good and well until when you hear boots crunching on bits of rock and chunks of gravel inlaid in the ground. Without moving or even blinking, you know that two people are in the front. Poison and Kobra.
“Every time I try to talk to you about it, you walk away.”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it, Kobra! You of all people should know that!”
“Listen, I know you hate that she’s here, all right? She knows. Everybody knows. But you never explained why you can’t handle it.”
That’s the moment you realize that neither of them know you’re listening. You take short, slow breaths, trying to minimize the amount of noise your breathing is making and how much you’re moving.
“I just don’t wanna fucking talk about it, okay?”
“But you never wanna talk about anything, Party.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry. Just… come on. I just want to know why.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation. All I’m gonna say is what you already know: she’s a goddamn nuisance. Everywhere I try to go, she’s underfoot again messing shit up. I don’t want to take care of her. I want her out of my sight.”
“You can be such an asshole sometimes, you know that? Can’t you have a heart?”
Poison lets out a heavy, drawn-out breath through his nose. “The day we send her back to Dr. D is the day I get a heart again.”
Kobra takes his sunglasses out of his pocket and puts them on. Poison sits with his arms crossed beside him. They’re done talking.
Throughout that whole conversation, you pretend that you’re not listening. You pretend that you’re not in the backseat of the car hearing every word they say. You pretend that none of Poison’s harsh words mean anything to you. And by the time both of them exit the car, you’ve just added something to the list of things you’re able to pretend: that you’re not crying.
~~~
Raiding a supply truck takes days of planning.
Party Poison knows this firsthand. He’s raided plenty before.
“‘Runners keep sayin’ this time is gonna be two rounds. First truck goes in a couple days before the second. Never all at once. Can’t risk losin’ all their supplies to bandits like us,” Jet grins.
“I don’t think so. Why not just bring ‘em all in at once?”
They outline a plan for hours, debating most-likely outcomes, trading variables, heads bent down glancing at maps so old that the paper is soft at the edges. A crick starts developing in Poison’s neck and when he stands up to stretch, his legs are numb from underuse. Ghoul, who became bored and therefore useless about an hour earlier, launches a paper airplane into the air that hits Kobra in the back of the head. “There’s nothing to do,” he moans. “I’m tired of this.”
“We’re done now,” Poison says. They’re not gonna get anything else done, anyway. Might as well give up for the day.
Ghoul springs up, energy renewed. “Aw, fuck yeah!” he exclaims, then dashes to the trunk of the car and pulls out the radio. It’s the gang’s lifeline, the way they get almost all their news. Who’s dead, who’s not, and who’s about to be. Where BL/ind is and where they’re going. Who’s hosting the latest events and who knows the best places to get discounted grub that doesn’t taste like dog food that expired twenty years ago. All the stuff they’d be dead without knowing.
He cranks up the volume and Ghoul’s favorite band, the band he dragged Poison to a concert for, the band Poison absolutely hates comes blaring out. He’s about to yell at Ghoul to switch the station away from fucking Benny and those fucking Trampolines when it suddenly cuts out.
Nobody can get it to work. Shaking it, slapping it, and even numerous threats from Fun Ghoul won’t make it turn back on. He’s about to chuck the thing as far as the wind will carry it when the girl walks up.
Great. She’s gonna want food or some shit when they’re already stretching meals thin. Or she’s gonna complain, because children never shut up with their complaining.
She goes up to tug on Ghoul’s sleeve and whisper into his ear. Of course she picks the one that’s lost over half of its hearing, so he has to ask her to repeat whatever she says. He’s still holding the radio over his head, but before she can answer, it turns back on at full volume.
He lowers the radio suspiciously, glaring at it like it’s gonna jump out and bite him. Poison’s eyes are about to roll their way out of their sockets. “Bring it here,” he says.
Ghoul takes five steps forward when it shuts off again. Poison groans.
Ghoul reverses. It turns back on.
This is ridiculous.
Party Poison doesn’t have time for this shit. All he wants to do is listen to the damn radio and hear a couple broadcasts. He marches forward to take the situation into his own hands.
“Just give it to me.”
Ghoul hands it over and backs away with his hands up.
Poison changes the station, lowers the volume, and takes the radio back to where his brother and Jet Star are still sitting with their half-formed ambush strategy. Immediately, it changes to static and then quits working altogether.
“I’m gonna fucking scream,” he mutters. With careful precision to combat a head full of anger, he sets the radio down in a clump of dead weeds beside Jet Star. Then he goes back to the car and feels around for a few tuna cans inside the trans am console. The instant his fingers brush the lids, music blares from that goddamn radio and he jerks his head up so fast he hits it on the doorframe.
The girl is sitting in Jet’s lap. Poison sighs heavily and grabs another can and a plastic spoon because he knows that Jet’s gonna chew him out if he doesn’t, then trudges back. “Here,” he says, dumping the food in front of everybody. They can sort it out themselves.
They eat quietly, watching him fiddle with the radio. He turns it over, shakes it around, and puts his ear to the back before giving up. It just works now. Somehow.
“I’m gonna get my robot,” the girl says, then bounces back to the car. The music shuts off. She comes back and it starts playing again like nothing ever happened.
Poison looks up and finds Kobra staring at him with a gaze that all but confirms what he’s thinking. Kobra nods his head toward the kid so subtly that Party Poison thinks he’s imagining it.
No way. There’s no way.
The doc said she was special.
That can’t be it.
Then again, it just sounds like something Better Living Industries would do. He wouldn’t put it past them. To be real, he wouldn’t put anything past them, but this is crazy.
But if something freaky wasn’t going on, then why would Dr. D have made it a point to tell Jet she was special? He doesn’t trust that kid. Never has. Not since the second he saw her face.
Poison needs to check this out for himself.
Without explaining, he picks up the radio and walks a couple yards away. The program fades to static, then goes out completely. He walks back towards the girl and it starts playing again, as strong as ever.
Great. Now they’ve got a living battery tagging along. Or antenna. Power source. Whatever she is.
This is perfect. Just fucking perfect. Like that’s not gonna make BL/ind more eager to blow their brains out and shove them six feet underground.
Whatever. The quicker they pass her back to Dr. Death, the better. Out of sight and out of mind.
~~~
That night, when Jet’s laying down by the fire, Poison grabs his attention. “Hey.”
Kobra, Ghoul, and the girl are getting ready for bed, pulling sleeping bags and blankets from the trunk of the trans am. Jet already grabbed his blanket and Poison’s reclining on a sleeping bag of his own. The light from the fire casts strange glows on Poison’s face; shadows crawl over the edges of his features, giving him a strange look. It’s unsettling, but for some reason makes Poison look more real than he does in the sunlight.
His breathing is steady and his words are quiet as he asks the question. “You know we’re just lugging around a kid-sized battery, right?”
It’s such a bizarre statement that Jet Star has to take a second to process it. At first he figures it’s just Poison thinking out loud, because he does that sometimes, but he looks up and Poison’s staring at him like he should know what he’s talking about.
He props himself up on his elbows and glances left and right. There’s no battery in sight, kid-sized or not. “What?”
“That girl,” Poison says, like it should be obvious. “Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t figured it out.”
So far this entire conversation’s felt like he’s trying to read a book in another language upside down with half the pages missing. “Figured what out?” Jet Star asks, feeling dumb and really starting to resent Poison’s inability to share information without dancing around it.
“You haven’t noticed the radio never cutting out when she’s next to it? Or when the AC in the car works a little better when she’s in there with us? Even Kobra’s computer doesn’t run out of power if she’s nearby.”
Now that he mentions it, Jet realizes Poison’s right. “Maybe it’s a coincidence,” he says, but he’s not even convincing himself.
“Ain’t no way. You told us what the doc said. To take good care of her because she was ‘special.’ Why else would he say that if she wasn’t some freak Better Living experiment?”
“Because she’s young. And she’s a little kid. We have to take good care of her because she can’t take care of herself yet.”
Poison’s adamant on his theory. “You know what, I bet they’re tracking us. I bet she’s got a tracker or somethin’ and they’re watching our every move. This mission is gonna be a fucking disaster, I bet, because we’re practically telling them the whole plan. Because she’s always right up under us when we’re talking about it.”
This is the consequence of running with a crewmate so paranoid that a little kid becomes a tracking device in his mind. Every sideways glance, every yawn, every time somebody trips on an untied shoelace is a sign that they’re being watched and followed.
“Give it a rest, dude,” Jet says, completely aware he sounds like Kobra. At this moment, it doesn’t even matter. He’s sick and tired of hearing about every way this harmless child is ruining their lives and all the ways she’s going to get them killed. “Just leave it. It doesn’t even matter.”
Poison looks at him with disgust. “The safety of our crew doesn’t matter?”
That’s a hundred percent not what he meant, but he’s tired of hearing about Party Poison’s paranoia, so he shrugs in defeat. “Whatever.”
Poison scoffs at him. “When everybody besides me is good and ghosted because she brought those city pigs here, don’t start cryin’. Tried to warn you.”
He switches to his other side, facing away from Jet. Jet watches the steady rise and fall of his back until the rhythm changes and his breaths deepen. Listening closely, he can tell everybody else is asleep, too, because he can hear Fun Ghoul snoring and, if he strains his ears, the little breaths the girl makes when she’s dreaming. Kobra’s taking the first watch again, but he knows it’ll be his turn in a couple of hours. Better close his eyes and snag as much rest as he can.
Soon he’s sound asleep like the rest of them, dreaming things he’ll never remember. When he suddenly wakes up in three hours, he’ll rub his eyes and try to think of what stirred him. He’ll never know it was the same dream he’s had four times before, the one about the world where the sun shines warm and children are free to play in the sand without worrying about a bomb coming down.
~~~
“I am running out of underwear,” Fun Ghoul declares proudly the next day.
Kobra shudders. “Thanks for the announcement.”
“No, seriously, this is my third day in this pair.”
“I didn’t need to know that,” Kobra says, slamming his palms over his ears and walking to the other side of the trans am. Ghoul keeps following him. All Kobra wants to do is grab clean pants, but of all his are dirty and he can’t steal some because everybody else is wearing their last good pair too. “Really didn’t wanna know that.”
“I’m just telling you in case you decide to do the laundry.”
“I’ll do the laundry if you go bother somebody else about your drawers, man. Please. I’ve already heard plenty about them.”
Ghoul skips off with a shit-eating grin on his face. Kobra sighs and heaves the trash bag of dirty clothes out of the car, then gets to work.
Everybody has a job that they’re stuck with. Jet Star’s the full-time mechanic. Fun Ghoul repairs their weapons and assorted defense mechanisms. Party Poison keeps track of their carbon stash and food supply. Kobra gets to be the fucking homemaker and do everybody’s laundry.
Kobra supposes that he’ll still be washing clothes the day he dies. A grim thought, but there’s no way of getting out of chores.
Various shirts, pants, and yes, Fun Ghoul, pieces of underwear are draped from Joshua tree limbs to dry. Kobra figured he might as well wash his t-shirt, too, so now he’s just hanging out by the wet clothes like a skinny security guard without a shirt on. Luckily, there’s no wind and it’s not cold, so he’s fine.
What he really wants to do right now is go to the beach. He’s never been to a beach before in his life, but he knows he’d love it. If the real thing looks anything like those pictures in the magazines he’s read, he’d drive to the ends of the earth to see it. Gazing out at the ocean is the one thing he wants to experience before he dies.
While he’s imagining the waves and the sand and the seagulls in the air, the girl skips up. “You washin’ clothes?”
“Yeah.”
The girl points to a pair of boxers swinging from a tree limb and giggles, covering her mouth with her hands. “That’s funny, Kobra.”
He cracks a grin. Seeing his best friend’s underwear blowing in the breeze wasn’t exactly something he ever planned on viewing, but he’s got to admit it, is kind of hilarious.
The girl stops laughing all of a sudden, and Kobra looks around to see what’s wrong. But she’s pointing at him.
“Did you get hurt?” she says, and he realizes she’s asking about his scars.
“Nah,” he says, tracing one of them with his fingertip. “Had a surgery in the city a long time ago. So part of my body would match who I am.”
“Did they change your hair color too?” she asks curiously, unfazed by the answer, though she looks a little disappointed he didn’t get stabbed, sliced, or punctured in some heroic way. Top surgery isn’t that heroic, but it saved his life, in a way.
“My h—oh, no. I do that myself with bleach and dye.” Though he’s heard rumors the city has stuff that can permanently change hair color. He’d totally be up for some of that if he hadn’t had such bad experiences with city tech before.
“What color is Poison’s hair?” she asks. “His real hair.”
It takes him a minute to remember. The last time he saw Poison’s natural hair was when they left the city.
“Dark brown,” he answers. “Almost black.”
“How come he changed it? Never seen it dark before.”
Kobra shrugs. “He wanted to change everything he could. Didn’t wanna remember what happened to him in the city.”
The color suits him better, too. Red is loud and dangerous. Red screams freedom. Red is everything Battery City was not, and Poison was so determined to distance himself from that place that the harshest, brightest, most rebellious option was red hair dye. It saved Party Poison the same way that that surgery saved Kobra all those years ago.
“What happened to ‘im there?”
“Lots. He lost his job, stayed inside all the time, started—” Shit. Poison would kill him if he knew he was spilling his business to her. “I shouldn’t talk about it.”
“Well, was it bad?”
Could say that, yeah. It sucked, for him and Kobra both. Almost couldn't blame him for trying to erase everything. “Yeah. It was bad.”
“Did your mama yell at him when he was bad? Is that why you left?”
He reaches down and ruffles her hair. “Nah, that wasn’t it. Our mother wasn’t around then. Or father. It was just me n’ Poison.”
He sees the wheels turning in her head. “How come they let you be there alone if you didn’t have any parents?”
“After they were gone, Poison turned sixteen and applied for guardianship of me. They approved it, so in the eyes of the city, he was acting as my parent. So anything I did, he would get in trouble for.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Not until I ran away. But I knew that would happen, so I made him come out here with me.”
She scuffs her foot against the ground, tracing patterns through the dust. “That’s a good idea. You’re smart, Kobra.”
“Thanks, kid.”
“How come you’re so smart?”
He shrugs. “Got a big brain.” She furrows her brows at him. “Nah, I dunno. Planning ahead was a big thing I had to do before I left the city. Of course, everything went wrong and everything happened too fast, but sometimes pretending like I know what’s gonna happen helps.”
Still angry about that. Had an escape plan that stretched over three days to give him time to tie up all the loose ends and get everybody off his back, and then because of Poison it all fell apart and they had to leave in one night.
“Not like that,” she says. “Like with your computers. Your typing and your big numbers. The stuff that looks like a hard video game.”
Too bad it’s not just a big video game. Honestly, it'd probably be more fun, but at least his tech is relaxing. “My job in the Batt had me working with computers. I had special codes and stuff, and I know how to break into the city files and get information. All I need is a laptop.”
“You can get any information?”
“If it’s there.”
“Whoa.” That’s all she can say for a second. “How come you don’t know everything, then?”
With a hand around the flash drive hanging from his necklace, he explains it’s too dangerous to keep accessing information constantly. They’d know somebody was hacking the system, and with some creative thinking, there’s a thousand ways they could figure out it was him. He has to be extremely careful when combing through information from any SCARECROW computers because the unit can and will find the whole crew and murder them in cold blood.
In the middle of his explanation, Fun Ghoul runs back up. He’s not wearing a shirt either, but at least he’s got pants on. Sometimes he doesn’t think those are necessary, either.
Kobra has news for him: they’re always necessary.
“M’ clothes dry?” he asks. Sounds like it’s one word from how fast he says it, and he doesn’t take time to wait for the answer. He snatches an outfit off the nearest tree and sprints back to the car before Kobra can tell him that number one, those are Jet’s clothes, not his, and number two, all the laundry is still damp. Nothing seems to matter to him, though, because he doesn’t come running back. Who knows where he’s going or what he’s doing.
Kobra and the girl hang out by the drying laundry for a little longer since they don’t have anything better to do. Mostly she just asks him a lot of questions about his life and he answers the best he can, but sometimes the answers are too complicated so he just shakes his head and she asks something else.
Eventually, she asks about Ghoul and Jet and where they used to live. If they had an apartment in the city near Kobra and Poison and if they were all friends when they were little. He tells her no, the brothers didn’t even meet the other two until a few years ago, and then he explains what he knows of Jet and Ghoul’s backstories. After that she just nods and says that makes sense. He doesn’t know what she means, but he doesn’t question her. She seems to understand more than any kid he’s ever met, and with one look at her face and in her eyes, he knows that she knows things even he’s yet to learn. Wisdom seems to harbor a home inside her.
Looking at her makes him feel naive. Like she can tell his past, present, and future with just a glance. He knows it’s ridiculous to think something like that, but it’s just a feeling.
She’s not any ordinary kid. She’s something special.
~~~
Supply truck, raids, infiltrate, exterminators, fuel, trading, ambush, risk-taking.
These are all words you keep hearing.
You’re sick of hiding here.
All you want is to be on the run again. You want to ride in the car and meet other Zonerunners. You want to see Show Pony again.
But Party Poison says that the crew has to hide, so you can’t do any of this until they’re done with hiding. And they won’t be done with hiding until after they take down this supply truck.
You find all kinds of things to do to keep your mind off of being bored. It took a couple tries and a couple falls, but you can do a cartwheel now. Just have to make sure nobody’s standing where you need to end up or you’re gonna knock somebody over again like you did to Ghoul that one time. It was okay though, because after you apologized, he got up and did a handstand. You clapped in delight. Maybe a handstand is the next thing you should learn.
In the glovebox, they’ve got a lot of fun stuff. You find a few bottles of nail polish and a pack of markers that aren’t dried out yet. You paint your nails and scribble swirly shapes and hearts on your hands and arms. Kobra even lets you put polka dots on his cheeks so his fake freckles can match yours and Jet’s real ones.
Besides doing gymnastics and giving out makeovers, you make art. One evening, you use up all the paper the gang has on making a collage about cats, and you shyly ask Jet Star if you can take a paintbrush and put stripes on the side of the car. He exchanges glances with Kobra, who looks around like he’s waiting for somebody to pounce, but they say yes as long as you’re very careful and you keep your stripes confined to the front left side of the trans am.
You get a little carried away and some stripes accidentally make their way across the back of the car. When you step back to admire your work, something’s missing, and you think about the back of Jet Star’s jacket. This car has a spider and now stripes, but no blue stars.
You’re going to fix that.
It’s a flag, you remember him telling you once. Used to belong to a country that was here before Better Living Industries. Was called the USA, he says, but he can’t remember what those letters stand for. Doesn’t matter anyway. None of your crew was alive back then. Maybe Dr. Death-Defying remembers it, but to all of you it’s nothing more than a name. Couldn’t have been a good country, anyway, if it fell so easily to Better Living.
The paint drips a little but you can’t see it from more than a foot away, and since everybody else is so tall compared to you, maybe they won’t see it. You’re rinsing off the paintbrush—being careful about how much water you use up because of how you got yelled at last time—when Poison shows up.
You immediately freeze in place, but he doesn’t even pay any attention to you besides a glance out of the side of his eye. He looks different. He’s walking weird, not the way he usually does, and his movements are different. Instead of walking with every step precise and calculated, his shoulders are slumped and he’s not even looking where he’s going.
You watch as he walks far into the distance before finally stopping with his back to the base of a rocky hill. He’s got something in his hand, but you can’t tell what it is.
Somehow this is worse than him yelling at everyone. Maybe it feels worse because you don’t know what’s going on; you’ve never seen him like this.
You wonder if he’s sick. You run to let Jet Star know.
Jet’s in the middle of an evening prayer and you wait until he’s done before telling him what you saw, but he doesn’t react like you thought he would. Instead of jumping up and going to see what’s wrong for himself, he sighs deep and long. “Knew he was gonna do this.”
You ask what Jet knew Party Poison was going to do.
When he answers, he doesn’t just tell you the answer flat out. He tiptoes around it, and you begin to wonder if he’s lost the words to explain.
It’s actually just that he doesn’t want you to know. Finally, he gets to the point.
“When things get bad or he gets stressed, he likes to drink. But he never knows when to stop.”
You ask what’s wrong with Poison wanting water.
It’s not water, he tells you. Then you understand.
Dinner that night is very solemn. Jet’s somber mood is reflected by Ghoul and Kobra as they come over, and you figure you might as well make yours match too. Nobody talks, but at least you figure out how to get to your PowerPup without using a can opener. You know any one of them would help you, but asking when they’re like this, too still and melancholy, wouldn’t feel right. You know how Poison acts when his brooding is disturbed, and though you’re pretty sure the others wouldn’t be like that, you don’t want to take your chances.
So it’s very quiet, and you learn that stabbing a spoon at just the right angle of the lid will eventually pop the top open. You eat your food in silence.
Poison doesn’t come back. Fun Ghoul stretches out on the ground beside the fire and traces shapes in the dirt. Kobra curls up underneath a blanket beside the car. Both of them are silent before you even think about closing your eyes.
You go to Jet. He’s propped against the front wheel of the car, but as always, he welcomes you beside him. You scoot in so you’re leaning with your back against his side and grab his arm, resting your head against his bicep and tucking your chin into the crook of his elbow. He runs his fingers through your hair and you feel safer in his embrace than anywhere else.
“When I grow up,” you tell him sleepily, “I wanna get a car like this one, and ‘m gonna paint it orange, ‘n you guys can ride in the back.”
“Good plan,” he whispers. You don’t know that he’s thinking about all the things that could go wrong and get them dusted before they ever get to ride in your car. Neither of you know this now, but he’s right. Something will go wrong. You’ll never get a car, but even if you did, they wouldn’t ever get the chance to ride in it.
“I’m gonna paint a smiley face on the front,” you continue, “but it’s gonna be drippin’ green so BLi knows it ain’t one of theirs. ‘Cause I like smiley faces and it ain’t fair they get all the smiley faces in the city.”
“I like smiley faces too,” Jet Star says. Sitting close like this, when he talks, you can almost hear his voice rumbling from inside his chest. If voices were temperatures, his would be the warmth you feel in the middle of the day when you lift your face to the sky and the sun rays beat down on you.
“Jet?”
“Uh huh?”
“Think one day Better Living is gonna give up and be nice? Let everybody be free?”
With your back pressed to the side of his chest, you feel the rise-and-fall pattern of his breathing. “I don’t know, baby. Maybe one day.”
His tone, wistful and pensive, says he thinks otherwise. “I never wanna go back there,” you tell him. “Even if you gave me a hundred carbons.”
“You don’t got to go back, love. We’ll protect you. They’re never gonna take you.”
“Never gonna take me alive?” you say, because that’s something Fun Ghoul and Party Poison tell each other all the time.
Never let them take you alive.
You like that.
“Yeah,” Jet answers. “Never gonna take any of us.”
“Ya promise?”
“Promise.”
You snuggle up close to him and by the time Poison comes stumbling back to the trans am, too drunk to walk straight, you’re out like a light, dreaming of orange cars and stars and stripes.
~~~
It’s Jet’s job to take care of Poison when he gets like this.
Kobra can’t do it. Kobra did it all the time in the city and he can’t relive that again. And honestly, Jet doesn’t think Fun Ghoul could handle it either. So it’s up to Jet Star.
When Poison finds his way back to the car, Jet transfers the girl to the backseat, careful not to wake her. He grabs a couple of rolled-up towels from under the passenger seat and makes Poison lie down on the ground with them to his back like a body pillow. Then he settles down beside him to monitor his breathing.
He’s going to have a bitch of a hangover in the morning.
Jet wishes Party Poison had a better way to deal with his problems. He has a horrible feeling this is going to be the end of him one day. Maybe soon, if he doesn’t get ahold of himself.
Kobra’s still awake. He’s curled up too tightly and he’s too quiet, like he’s trying to fake it.
This is going to be another night where Kobra doesn’t get any rest.
Every time Jet looks at him afterward, he sees it. The bloodshot eyes and those dark circles underneath, the pale face and the shaking hands, the way he keeps blinking and the way he’ll wrap his arms around his chest like he’s trying to keep himself from falling apart. It’s not healthy. He’s already blacked out from exhaustion in the middle of a couple of firefights. If he doesn’t start taking care of himself now, he’ll never get better.
Everything about those brothers is tangled up; their health and happiness and safety are permanently twisted into one and the only way to straighten it out is to work together. But these past few weeks they’ve gotten worse and worse at doing anything productive with each other. It’s gotten to the point that even speaking to each other is worthy of a celebration.
And Fun Ghoul, too, who hangs around Party Poison constantly, either cussing him out or sitting on his lap, hasn’t been as playful with him lately. He’s been spending more time with the girl these days, and Jet knows that’s gotta be making Poison jealous, or at the very least irritated.
Jet Star doesn’t really want to admit it to himself, but he’s also kind of sick of their leader. He can only handle constant hostility for a while before it gets to be too much. It’s that bad attitude that’s feeding the tension among their crew, and the best option Poison saw was to get drunk and forget about it for a couple hours rather than deal with it.
“Jet, are you awake?” Kobra Kid comes crawling over, blanket in hand. He stops to look at Poison, gaze lingering over his unmoving body, then shakes his head and turns away.
“Yeah. C’mere, Kobes.”
Kobra presses his body against Jet’s side and rests his head on his shoulder. Gently, Jet pries the fistful of blanket out of his clenched hand and drapes the whole thing over both of them.
When Kobra speaks, his voice is cracked glass and his words threaten to snap in half before they even make it out of his mouth. “How come he keeps doing this?”
All Jet has to offer is an honest answer.
“I think it’s because he’s scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared of the next raid. And of the girl.”
Kobra’s head swivels over to the one in question. Jet can practically see the cogs spinning in his brain. “She’s the least scary person I’ve ever met.”
“Not her as a person. But to take care of her, we have to open ourselves up. Be real. Kids aren’t hardened yet, not like we are. She still laughs and plays and cries without that underlying brittleness we have from being out here so long.”
Kobra starts to connect the dots. “But Poison can’t do it,” he whispers.
“Yeah. When was the last time you saw him without that wall he’s put up? When he actually let himself show any weakness or any doubt?”
“I don’t… I actually don’t know.”
And that’s the problem.
The sun’s well on its way through midmorning when Poison finally stirs. By then everybody else is awake and quietly milling around, either setting up meals, freshening up with some spare water, or changing clothes. Ghoul pokes him and tries to get him up, but Poison swats at him and keeps asking for sunglasses. Jet finds a pair in the center console and Poison puts them on and sits up after puking twice, then keeps complaining about his headache. They pass him a bottle of water and watch him carefully.
Since Poison’s basically out of commission, Jet takes charge. He doesn’t like being the one making decisions about important stuff like missions and raids, but it’s not like anybody else is going to do it. So the responsibility falls into his hands.
He manages to glean some more information from a couple calls with DJ Hot Chimp and other radio rats. Turns out he was right when he suggested there might be two rounds of trucks, and the news just keeps getting better. One, full of processed foods, broadcasting equipment, and medical paraphernalia is supposed to be passing through about three miles from their current location.
The only problem is that it’s coming by in about sixteen hours.
That doesn’t give them much time to prepare.
Together, he and Ghoul make another plan. According to the new intel, the truck is going to be driven by two dracs with the possibility of one or two carfuls of more dracs or exterminators as escorts. They’ll need the element of stealth, so they’ll have to drive to a better location, leave the car hidden somewhere, and fight on foot. Fun Ghoul will pick them off from a distance since he’s the best shot out of the four of them by far. Poison, assuming he’s sober enough to help, will aid Ghoul in sniping. It’ll be Kobra and Jet’s job to get up close and take control of the truck while watching for any Better Living backup in the distance.
Then that brings up the issue of what to do with the girl. “We can give her the spare blaster. I’ll teach her,” offers Ghoul.
But Poison, who, most conveniently, is awake to hear this, snaps at him from where he’s laying down in the car.
“Don’t let her touch one. If she’s a spy for SCARECROW, you’re giving her an opportunity to ghost us all.”
Kobra asks if Poison really thinks the kid’s going to shoot them. “You never know,” comes the gravelly answer. “I don’t trust living tech.”
Fun Ghoul shoots a bewildered glance toward Kobra Kid. Jet Star just sighs.
Poison ventures back towards the group once to eat lunch, but mostly sits there and watches. Jet tries to explain his plan, but he can tell Poison’s not getting it. Jet gives up.
Eventually there’s nothing left to do. Kobra pulls out a book from somewhere and starts reading. Jet touches up the color on his raygun with some leftover paint and then begins patching up clothes. Poison takes a nap and the girl and Ghoul go take a walk.
And they wait.
~~~
You're not allowed to shoot a gun.
You don't want to, anyway, but even if you did, Poison wouldn't let you. You overheard him telling Ghoul that he thinks if you got ahold of one of their blasters that you'd shoot them all in their sleep. Ghoul scoffed and ignored him, but you were just sitting with your back against a Joshua tree pretending to color. You didn't want to move because then Party Poison would notice you and then he'd have something else to complain about.
You don’t want to shoot a gun, either.
It’s a hot, blazing afternoon and Poison is taking a nap in the car before that night’s raid of the approaching BL/ind truck. Fun Ghoul decides to take you for a “walk.” Really, he wants to teach you how to work a blaster, but he can’t do that anywhere near your leader. You don’t want to shoot a gun, but you go with him anyway.
He shows you the settings first. Stun, maim, and kill. Not all rayguns have settings like these; most only have the kill switch. He and Kobra snagged these fancy ones the last time the crew took down a supply vehicle, he brags. They got enough for the whole gang to have three each.
You frown. You haven’t seen any extra rayguns anywhere. Ghoul explains they sold the rest to Tommy. He says it’s too bad they didn’t keep one for you, but you know Poison wouldn’t let you anywhere near it even if they had.
You watch Fun Ghoul shoot. Three blasts, bright and hot and ready to destroy, sizzle into the side of a rock outcropping. If that was an enemy, they’d be scorched, he explains proudly. Then he tells you it’s your turn.
He hands you the raygun. It’s oddly heavy and too big for you to hold comfortably, so you grip it tightly with both hands.
It feels like it’s alive in your grasp. You can detect a faint buzzing, and you ask Ghoul about it, but he says he doesn’t hear anything. You know he can’t hear well to begin with, but maybe it’s just you.
You look toward him nervously. He nods encouragement.
Your finger twitches toward the trigger. You breathe in.
An instant before you fire the first shot you ever get to take, Party Poison comes into sight and starts shouting.
“Fun Ghoul, what the fuck? What the fuck are you doing? Get that away from her!”
You drop the raygun and fall backward in surprise and fear. You land hard on the ground. There’s an unhinged look in Poison’s eyes as he grabs the front of Ghoul’s shirt and yanks him closer. “What the fucking hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Teaching her to shoot,” Ghoul says, not pulling away. He’s brave. You wouldn’t be that brave. “If we get caught in a clap and she’s the last one standing, she needs to know how.”
The glare in Poison’s eyes can only be described as dangerous. Murderous.
“She isn’t. Allowed. To handle. Weapons.”
You start inching away, bit by bit, hoping Poison won’t notice. You don’t want to be yelled at. You don’t want to hear what else he’s going to say.
“You know what, Party Poison? This past week you’ve just gotten meaner and meaner. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. But now you’re completely fucking insufferable.” Fun Ghoul spits at the ground near Poison’s feet and you take off running before anything happens.
You don’t remember how to get back to the car. You scream for Jet, tripping and landing sprawled in the dust, only to get back up and keep going. Your palms are peppered with bits of gravel and they sting.
You don’t know where you’re going. All you know is that you’ve got to get away. You can’t handle any more yelling.
You run past unfamiliar landscapes. You’re lost. The trees and bushes and sand and dirt all look the same. When you left the car with Ghoul, there were mountains in the distance behind you. Now there’s no mountains at all. There’s fog everywhere. You can barely see your own feet.
You’ll leave. You’ll do the one thing that could make Party Poison happy. You’ll leave. You’ll go far away and you’ll never cross paths with any of the Fabulous Four ever again. You’ll leave and Party Poison will finally have a reason to smile again.
But where will you go? Maybe you can find Show Pony and ask them to take you somewhere else. You’d go anywhere as long as it’s far away from this crew, because their leader has made it obvious that you aren’t wanted.
Which is fine. It won’t matter.
Aw, who are you kidding? You’re in the middle of nowhere. Show Pony isn’t going to be anywhere near here. You’re lost. You’re so lost. You don’t have a radio, and even if you did, you don’t know how to work one.
Maybe it’ll be better if you just stay here forever.
You’re going to die here all alone.
You fall to the ground, curl up with your back against a rock, and sob. You just want Jet Star.
~~~
Jet Star’s relacing his boots when Fun Ghoul comes tearing back to camp with Poison right behind him. “Where’s the girl?” Ghoul demands.
“I thought she went with you.” Jet ties his laces and stands up. Something’s wrong. He can feel it like a punch to the gut. The next words out of Ghoul’s mouth confirm it.
“No, no, she got scared and ran back when he miraculously healed and showed up and started yelling at me,” Ghoul says more frantically, jerking a thumb towards Poison. “She should be here by now. I saw her leave.”
“Well, she’s not!” Holy shit. They lost her. They lost the kid. “Ghoul, we’ve gotta find her.”
Without saying anything, Poison climbs in the passenger seat of the car, slams the door shut, and crosses his arms.
Kobra jogs over. “What’s wrong?”
They tell him. Jet’s heart is racing. The girl. His kid. They lost her. She’s gone.
He didn’t know it until now, but this is his worst nightmare. Losing her.
And there’s Better Living personnel coming through the area in less than fourteen hours.
“Ghoul, why the hell were you all the way out there in the first place?” he asks, because if Ghoul hadn’t taken her so far, they wouldn’t be in this situation. He’s trying not to panic and he’s trying not to yell, but it’s getting harder by the second. His heart is running a race against time.
“I was tryin’ to teach her to shoot!” Ghoul says, tears welling up in his eyes. “I wanted to show her in case she ever needed to know!”
“You couldn’t do that here?” Millions of horrible scenarios are running through his head right now because Fun Ghoul had to go and fucking lose her.
“Poison said we couldn’t show her! We had to get out of earshot! Oh, god, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—Jet, oh, god, I'm so fucking sorry!"
Jet can’t remember ever being this upset. But with the girl missing, it feels like a part of him is gone, too. He wants to be angry at Ghoul, because he was the last one who saw her, but one look at his shaking frame and the teardrops rolling down his cheeks evaporates the anger.
“Come on.” Jet Star walks to the driver’s seat and gets in. “We’re going to look for her.”
Poison glares at him from the seat over but doesn’t say anything. He looks tired. He leans his head back on the headrest and closes his eyes.
Kobra and Ghoul grab the gang’s stuff and shove it all in the trunk, not giving a shit about packing it neatly, then pile in the backseat. “Radio Cherri Cola and tell him to be on the lookout,” Jet Star says. He steps on the gas and they start their search. “We have to find her before the supply trucks come through.”
Kobra and Ghoul look over the map and point out places she could’ve gone. Jet drives to every nearby location they can think of, and she’s not at any of them. They spend two hours going from place to place and up and down roads, and she’s nowhere to be found. Every stop makes it harder to breathe.
What if Better Living Industries got her? What if they took her back?
He fucking promised her that she wouldn’t ever have to go back. Now she could be in a patrol car and headed straight through those heavy iron gates back to her hell.
Jet Star can hear Kobra Kid gasping almost to the point of hyperventilation in the back. Fun Ghoul is crying quietly beside him. Party Poison says nothing. Jet Star thinks he might even have the gall to be asleep right now.
The sun starts sinking. Jet pulls over and tells them to get out and search on foot. They’re already driven past this area two times, but maybe she’s somewhere they can’t see from the car. He passes out these new portable CB radios that Cherri Cola gave them a while ago and prays harder than he ever has before that they’ll work.
Kobra, biting his thumbnail, says he’ll look east. Ghoul heads west with dried tears on his cheeks. Jet turns south, then pauses.
“Poison,” he says.
Party Poison, still in the passenger seat, finally opens his eyes. “What?” he says roughly. His voice sounds stuffy, like he’s been crying, but Jet Star knows that’s not the case. He’s never cared about the girl. Why would he start now?
“Get out. Look for her.”
“You want me to do it, too?”
Jet steels his voice, narrows his eyes, and draws himself to his full height of six foot three. “You’re going to go out there and fucking look for her because she’s a part of this crew. I don’t care what you think anymore. Every moment you sit here makes it that less likely we’re ever going to find her. You want the death of a child on your hands? Go. Now.”
Poison rolls his eyes and huffs like it’s the biggest inconvenience in the world, but he gets out and heads north. And right now, that’s enough.
Thirty minutes after they split up and set out alone, sirens ring off in the distance. Until now, Jet Star’s been combing the land, calling for her and pleading with the Witch to keep her safe, but to no avail. She’s nowhere to be found.
Those sirens are piercing, but they could only mean one thing: there’s a Better Living supply truck nearby. Permanent Killjoy settlements turn them on whenever there’s a SCARECROW in sight; they can be heard from miles away.
Dread fills every bone in his body.
Jet Star can feel hope slipping away, but he still searches. It doesn’t matter that it’s getting cold out or that he’s aching for a drink of water or that he can’t see through the fog. All that matters is finding her.
He starts running, combing through the sand dunes and the rocks, the trees and the clusters of bushes. Soon he starts recognizing the landscape. He’s been back through this area twice. She’s not here.
He can’t find her. She’s not here. They lost the girl, the kid he’s been protecting every day and every night since the goddamn moment he saw her. She’s not here.
She’s not here.
But he doesn’t give up searching.
~~~
You wake up.
You’re curled into yourself like a cat with your arms wrapped around your stomach. Your head hurts. Your nose is stuffed and your eyes feel puffy. You must’ve fallen asleep, because now the sun is much lower in the sky and the temperature has definitely dropped. You wonder how long it’s been.
You stumble up from where you were lying and look around. It’s almost dark.
Dark is scary.
You’re scared.
You walk anyway.
Five minutes into your terrified wandering, you realize what woke you up. Sirens. They're blaring intermittently from far away, but they're still loud enough to be heard. You rack your brain trying to think of what they mean, and you just barely remember Kobra warning you about them.
When you hear those, girlie, run. Run fast, because the rebel bases know there's patrols coming. Big ones.
That settles it. You sprint as fast as you can go in the opposite direction of the alarm. You won't go back. You're never going to go back to Battery City. You won't let them catch you. You won't.
You sprint so fast you trip again, catching yourself with your arms and scraping up your palms and elbows. Bits of gravel and rock stick to the skin, reminding you of when you hurt your knee and Kobra took care of it. But as you try to stand, your ankle buckles and you fall right back down. Pain shoots up your entire leg so violently that spots dance in your vision. You close your eyes and let out a tight hiss through your teeth.
And that's when it happens. You open your eyes to the sound of footsteps, and your glance travels up the black boots, the white pants, and the white coat, finally resting on the mask.
All the blood in your body runs cold and you freeze in terror. You can't scream because you can't even move.
Your ankle hurts and you're going to die.
You whimper.
Then the inside of the draculoid's mask lights up in pink and you hear the telltale sign of a raygun blast from behind you. The drac falls to the ground. You turn around to see your savior. Jet Star, you think, before you even look.
It's not Jet Star.
It's Party Poison.
Party Poison, with his yellow domino mask on and his gun smoking, with his red hair blowing out behind him in the wind and his Dead Pegasus jacket zipped up halfway, with his scowl and his sharp, sharp eyes. Party Poison, who’s only ever looked at you with hatred in his eyes, has come to your rescue.
“Come on,” he says. “We need to get out of here.” He holsters his blaster and grabs your hand and pulls you up roughly. You yelp and crumple to the ground.
“Can you walk?”
You shake your head. He groans, then hoists you onto his back like you weigh nothing. You wrap your arms around his neck and he takes off.
“Dracs,” he says. “‘Crows, too. They’re close. It’s like they’re following us or something. Maybe from that caravan.”
He carries you for a good fifteen minutes, saying nothing, just marching on in silence. A couple times you start to slide down and he shifts you back up, adjusting his grip on your legs. “Almost there,” he says after another five minutes, and you nod, forgetting he can’t see you.
Suddenly Poison staggers backward and you nearly fall off. He deposits you on the ground behind him and holds out an arm as if to keep you corralled. “Stay still,” he hisses through clenched teeth, and draculoids begin to emerge from behind rocks and grassy hills.
You cower behind him, shutting your eyes and covering your ears. You don’t want to see any of the action, but even with your hands over your ears you can hear the distant buzzing of zaps hitting skin. When your curiosity is too much, you look up. The fight is almost over, but it’s one lone SCARECROW in the distance versus Party Poison, who’s hunched over shooting with his non-dominant hand and pressing the other one to his side.
You blink and you almost miss what happens next. The same instant Party Poison fires, so does the Better Living agent, and they both collapse. The exterminator falls back and raygun smoke curls up from their head. You know they’re dead for good, and you’re mesmorized, staring towards the body. Then you finally turn around and see Party Poison on the ground, curled up and letting out a string of pain-flecked curses.
You drag yourself over to him even though your ankle protests. “You’re hurt.”
“No shit.” He’s in pain; you can tell by his voice. There’s an ugly red stain spreading from his side. Smoke rises from one of his shoulders along with the nauseating smell of charred flesh.
He reaches for something in his pocket with the hand that isn’t bloodstained. An oily rag, but it’s the closest thing either of you have to a bandage. He presses down on the bleeding wound as hard as he can, but his hand is trembling.
Some of his hair is stuck to his forehead. His mask fell off sometime during the fight and now it’s hanging around his neck from the string. You just stare.
“Get my radio,” he gasps, and you jolt back into action. It’s lying a few feet away in the dirt. After you bring it back to him, he uses the hand not busy with the bloody compress to fiddle with the knobs and buttons. Somehow he contacts Jet Star.
“Hey, it’s Poison. Found the kid but got trapped by a patrol. Took ‘em out but I got shot. Need help.”
“You’ve got her? Where are you? You’re hurt?”
Poison starts to tell him, but the radio falls out of his hand and lands on the ground. He tries to grab it, but with his injuries, even the littlest movement makes him grimace. You grab the radio and hold it where he can speak into it. He looks at you with a peculiar glance of something that you, if you didn’t know better, would think was gratitude.
Jet ends the call promising to get the car and come pick both of you up, telling you to stay calm. You could cry at that. Calm is impossible. It’s almost nighttime, you’re hurt, Party Poison is bleeding out on the ground beside you, and things could be lurking in the shadows. You start to shiver.
Somewhere, a coyote howls long and pitifully. Poison grabs your wrist tightly and, startled, you try to pull away, but his grip is strong.
“Where’s my gun?” he asks you. He looks bad. You retrieve it from where it lies beside his feet, careful not to burn your hand on the scorching end of the barrel, and hand it to him.
“Look,” he says, groaning through the words. He’s turning paler. “You hold it, check if it’s set to kill, then pull the trigger.” He demonstrates with one hand still clamped on his wound, and the raygun fires bright yellow in the air. He holds it out toward you. “You see anyone in the distance that’s not our crew, blast ‘em.”
You recoil. He yelled at you for holding Ghoul’s blaster just a few hours ago and now he wants you to shoot one? You can’t do it.
“I can’t,” you plead. “I don’t wanna, please—”
“Shoot!”
“I’m scared, I can’t—”
“Show me!” he says, wincing like each word is draining his life force. “I need to know that you can protect yourself!”
That’s the moment it clicks. He wants you to know how to use the blaster because he thinks he’s going to die.
You raise the gun and fire a bright red ray. Your arms shake, but not because it’s heavy. You look toward Party Poison, who’s got his unwavering gaze trained on you, and wait for a comment. All time seems frozen.
“Good,” he says, and then he passes out.
Your scream shatters the peace of the night as you beg for him to wake up. He won’t. Not even when you shake his arm. You’re gripped by a terrifying panic, every bone in your body scared that he’s dead. What do the Fabulous Four call it? Ghosted. You’ve never liked him and he’s made his hatred for you crystal clear since the moment you stepped into the trans am, but you think you’ll fall apart if he goes ghost on you now.
You look back at his body, the rust-colored stain spreading through his t-shirt and jacket, and try to remember what Jet Star told you when you watched him patch up Ghoul that one time. Stop the bleeding, he said. First thing you’ve gotta do is stop the bleeding.
Taking the wadded cloth, you lean over Poison’s body and press down on the wound with both hands and all your weight. Having no idea if it’s working or not, you shut your eyes and try to ignore the pain in your ankle.
Ages pass before a car engine becomes audible in the distance, but you don’t hear that. You only look up when two figures backlit by the full moon walk toward you. Fear ignites once again in the pit of your stomach, and you raise that bright yellow gun up in the air with your finger hovering above the trigger.
“Kid, it’s us!” The taller person raises both their hands up in the air as a surrender. Recognizing the voice immediately, relief sweeps through your bones and you start to shake all over. You drop the gun.
“Poison won’t wake up, he got hit by a SCARECROW, he might be dead—” you shriek, and now tears begin running down your cheeks and you can’t get a deep breath. You don’t know what’s wrong with you. You don’t even care that much about Poison, so why are you so upset?
Kobra runs to his brother and immediately starts tending to him, but Jet pulls you into a tight embrace and holds you while you let go of everything and sob. “I know, I know, I know,” he murmurs as you bury your face in his jacket. “It’s okay, love, I got you. Hey, I got you.”
“Jet, we gotta get him to a clinic,” Kobra says. “This is bad. We gotta go. We gotta go now.”
Jet Star tries to stand up, but you won’t let go. “Girlie,” he says, “I have to help Poison. I have to carry him.”
You drag in another shuddering breath, tears still rolling down your face. You’ve got a fistful of his shirt and don’t plan on letting go anytime soon, but Kobra pries you away. You fight him, kicking and screaming, but he holds you tight and soon you give up, dropping your head onto his shoulder.
Jet follows you two with Party Poison’s limp frame in his arms. You look back once and see that yellow domino mask still dangling from his neck. When you get to the trans am, Kobra hands you off to Ghoul, who runs up to meet you, and then helps Jet Star load his brother in the car. You sit in Kobra’s lap in the passenger seat because they have to set Poison down across the seats in the back. You don’t see how all five of you are going to fit in the car until Jet slides into the backseat too, letting Poison’s boots rest on his lap. Ghoul gets behind the wheel and drives faster than he’s ever gone before. The whole ride, Kobra’s chanting little prayers under his breath that you can’t quite make out. You can't hear the words, but you know what he's asking for anyway.
It feels like an eternity before you pull up in front of a dusty brown building, two stories tall and the biggest you’ve seen in the desert. Almost any building from the city would dwarf this one, but out here in the middle of miles and miles of flat land, it seems like a skyscraper.
Kobra passes you off to Ghoul, who hikes you up against his hip and carries you inside after Jet, who’s already got the gang leader in his arms again. “We need a doctor,” you hear Kobra cry to the receptionist, who’s really just a teenage Zonerunner reclining in her seat with her feet up on a school desk and a mouthful of bubblegum. She takes one glance at your crew before picking up a desk phone and radioing somebody, and less than fifteen seconds later two medics come rushing into the lobby with a gurney.
“Stay here,” Jet tells you and Ghoul, and then he and Kobra disappear with them.
“It’s just us now, kiddo,” Ghoul tells you, pacing back and forth. “Us young’uns can’t be trusted back there, I guess.”
You press your face against his shoulder. “I don’t want him to die, Ghoul,” you say, already fighting to keep your eyes open, and he pats your back gently in a soothing rhythm. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
“Me either, girlie.”
He keeps patting your back. Before you know it, your eyelids droop shut and you fall into the clutches of sleep.
~~~
Fun Ghoul is torn between being worried about Party Poison and relieved that the girl is safe.
He settles down heavily in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs all waiting rooms have. Besides the kid at the reception desk, there’s a couple other people in the corner. They’re all dressed in red and black, probably another gang. They all look as worried as Ghoul feels right now, and he has the idea that they’ve probably got a crewmate in the same situation as Poison.
Ghoul never drove so fast in his life, but he’s hoping he made it here in time for them to save Poison. Just from the glimpse he got of him in Jet’s arms, it was clear there wasn’t any other choice. Usually the crew will tend to each other’s wounds, but not this time.
He won’t deny it. He’s worried. Nobody’s told him anything yet.
He doesn't even know what room Poison’s in.
Poison hates hospitals, but there was nowhere else Ghoul knew to go. This clinic is one they’ve visited before, dropping off refugees from a bombing out in Four. It’s supposed to be one of the best in the Zones, operated out of an old warehouse that rebels in the Analog Wars found and repurposed as a shelter and infirmary for their soldiers.
A nurse eventually comes out and wraps the girl’s ankle, which wakes her up for a few minutes, but evidently doesn’t bother her too much, because within seconds after the nurse finishes, she’s asleep again. “We don’t have crutches her size or anything,” he apologizes, but Ghoul shakes his head.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “One of us will carry her until it heals.” The nurse nods, satisfied, and goes on his way, but not before Ghoul stops him and asks if he knows anything about Poison. He simply shakes his head, and Ghoul starts to feel an uncomfortable tightness in his chest.
Poison’s been such a dick lately, but if he fades out, Ghoul’s not going to be able to cope.
Two hours later, Jet comes back to the lobby. His hair’s a mess, two dark circles have a permanent home beneath his eyes, and he looks tired. Before Ghoul can ask, he says, “He’s alive.”
“And?”
“Shot twice to the side and once to the shoulder. Docs said if the girl hadn’t been stopping the blood with that rag she had, he woulda been vapor right then and there before we coulda ever got to him.”
“Is he awake?”
Jet pushes his hair back. “No. Kobra’s in there now, just sitting, but I don’t think that that kid is gonna sleep for the next couple of days. Not until Poison either gets better or…”
The rest of the sentence is left unsaid.
“Oh.”
Jet rubs his eyes and Ghoul can tell he’s about to keel over. “Yeah. Look, you want me to take the girl?”
No way he’s letting Jet do anything else. Not after all the stress he’s been through in the past twelve hours. “Nah. Go to sleep, okay? Lay back in the passenger seat or something.”
“Good idea,” Jet Star says, but drops into a chair right beside Ghoul and promptly falls asleep.
So now Ghoul’s alone with his thoughts, which is never a fun thing. He sits there with his back aching from that stupid plastic chair, with his arms around a kid he didn’t know until two weeks ago but would now die for.
Listening to her little breaths and watching her back rise and fall every time she exhales, he can’t fathom why Party Poison feels so much animosity towards her. When you take away everything else, at the core of it all, she’s just a little kid that needs a family. Needs somebody looking out for her. Needs somebody to care about her.
Out of everyone, he would have expected Poison to immediately accept her. After all, he was practically the only “parent” Kobra Kid got back in the city. You’d think he’d be used to taking care of children, right? But no. He won’t even speak directly to her unless it’s an insult or an order to get out of his sight.
Ghoul suspects it stems from Poison’s own insecurity about himself. He knows things about Poison that Poison doesn’t know about Poison, things revealed through drunken conversations at half past midnight and during stormy gray mornings.
If he was going to bet on it, he’d say that Poison’s hostility is because he doesn’t think he can do it. “It” being taking care of a child. His self-doubt is so deep-rooted that he doesn’t even want to try. Instead, he’d rather pretend she’s not there, and since he can’t do that, he gets angry about it. Then he takes that anger out on her and all of them.
Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that being Party Poison would really suck.
He’s got a Messiah complex, constantly expecting himself to be the perfect unfailing leader of a hugely infamous desert gang and part of the face of the revolution—if you can even call what they do a “revolution”—all while harboring such an intense lack of confidence in everything he does, to the point that all his emotions except anger shut down to cope.
That’s hard to deal with. Ghoul’s got his own issues, like the rest of them, but he has to admit Poison has it pretty bad.
It still doesn't give him an excuse, though.
The girl wakes up about twenty minutes later, and Ghoul rises from his seat, telling her to stay quiet and make sure Jet is okay. She nods, proud to have a job, and he promises he’ll be back in a few minutes.
He pads down the hall, peering into rooms until he finds the right one. It’s tiny, with just enough space for a couple of chairs and a hospital bed. He sees Kobra first, hunched over with his head in his hands, but Ghoul knows he’s not asleep.
Ghoul doesn’t like hospital rooms. They remind him of death. This one is no exception.
Poison’s in the bed, eyes closed, unmoving. Ghoul would think he was dead if he didn’t see his chest rising and falling. They peeled his jacket off and now it’s hanging from a hook on the wall. Underneath, he’s got on a black long-sleeve shirt, and one of the sleeves is pushed up to reveal an IV in his arm. Two thin blankets drape over his body, and Ghoul is struck with the thought that he’s never seen Poison this weak, this vulnerable before. Sure, he’s been wounded bad before, bad enough to pass out and lose a fuckton of blood, but it’s never been so bad that they had to take him to a Zone hospital.
In fact, they’ve never taken any of the crew to a Zone hospital before. They always just patch each other up right there on the battlefield with dust-covered hands and shaking breaths, dried blood caked underneath their fingernails and blaster holes dotting their clothes. From a papercut to pneumonia, they suck it up and deal with it.
So Fun Ghoul knew how dire the situation was the instant Jet Star told him to drive.
“Hey, Ghoul,” Kobra croaks. His eyes shine with the telltale signs of crying. He sniffles and looks up. “How’s the girl?”
“She’s fine. She took a nap. Jet’s sleeping in the lobby right now, but you need to get some rest too.”
He shakes his head. Ghoul could smack him for being so self-negligent—he’s going to fall back into the same habits of staying awake for days and then collapsing at inopportune times from exhaustion—but he knows how worried he is about Poison. “I’m fine,” he insists, the lie written all over. “I’m okay.”
“This isn’t good for you.”
A mix of confusion and exhaustion reveals itself on Kobra’s face. “Well, laser blasts aren’t good for him.”
Ghoul nearly snorts. Kobra’s got a point, though. Laser blasts ain’t good for anybody, though, it’s kind of a universal thing.
He catches himself immediately. Look at you, your immature ass, making jokes when one of your crewmates could be dust any minute. Fuck you, he tells himself silently, then goes up to Party Poison’s bedside. Kobra half-rises from his chair like a cat about to pounce on its prey, but Ghoul looks back over his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Kobra falls back into the chair. He runs his fingers back through his hair and grabs a fistful of it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says twice. “It just reminds me of everything we went through in the city and then when we first got out here and I’m—and I’m scared. I’m scared he’s gonna leave me alone again. I can’t do it a third time, Ghoulie.” His voice cracks in the middle of the last sentence and runs into a choked sob.
Ghoul turns around and pulls Kobra in for a hug, wrapping his arms around his neck. It makes a funny picture, because his best friend is like four inches taller than him and has to bend down so Ghoul can reach him, but it helps Kobra relax, so Ghoul doesn’t care.
“He’s gonna be okay. There’s no other option. He’s gonna be okay. You hear me?”
Kobra makes another muffled sob into Ghoul’s shoulder.
“You wanna pray to the Witch? I’ll pray right here with you.” Ghoul is a firm believer that the Phoenix Witch is nothing but a character in myths, bedtime stories, and campfire tales. Jet swears she’s out there; he’s a firm follower of hers. Cherri Cola and Pony both claim to have met her on lonely desert freeways, and even Poison confessed he saw her in a dream once. But Ghoul’s chalking it all up to mind tricks and fancy coincidences.
Kobra, however, nods. Ghoul grabs his hands, swallows, and keeps one eye open. Kobra closes both of his and his spindly fingers wrap around Ghoul’s like a lifeline.
He’s never prayed to anyone before, but from listening to Jet, he’d figured it wasn’t that complicated. Turns out it’s actually pretty hard. The words don’t flow easily and it’s hard to think of what he wants to say next when he’s already talking. His hands get clammy before the first word comes out.
“So do I just go ahead and start this? I’m gonna start it. Uh, dear Miss Phoenix Witch, it’s Fun Ghoul here. Don’t know if you’re listening or anything right now, but we really kinda need your help. Party Poison—you know Party Poison, right? Yeah? Well, Poison ain’t doing well right now, with the raygun shots and the lack of blood and unconsciousness and all, so me ‘n Kobra Kid could really use a divine intervention or whatever it’s called. What I’m saying is just… please. Make him be okay again.”
He opens the other eye. Kobra’s still got his head bowed and Ghoul realizes he’s gotta sign off or something. “Uh, that’s all. The end. Amen?”
This prayer business is stressful. Too much stuff to make sure you say. He doesn’t have time to do that on his own every day.
Kobra meets Ghoul’s eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but Ghoul knows what he means. You’re welcome, he sends back, and Kobra seems to get his message too.
Eventually, he gets Kobra to go back to the car and take a nap. He tells him to grab Jet and the girl on his way so they can get some rest too. He stays with Poison, still standing beside the bed, looking down at their gang leader and wondering how someone could go from so strong to so fragile in only a few hours.
He takes Poison’s hand. It’s cold and limp. He drops it.
Machines are beeping. Ghoul steps over to brush the hair back from Poison’s forehead. He tries not to look at the tube going into Poison’s arm or the pulse monitor on his finger.
“Please wake up,” he begs.
Poison does not answer.
~~~
They tell you Party Poison won’t wake up.
You don’t know how you’re supposed to feel about that.
He was mean to you. He was so mean to you. You hated him.
But then again, he saved your life.
And they tell you that you saved his.
You don’t know how you’re supposed to feel about that.
Your ankle hurts, but it doesn't hurt as much as the twist in your stomach and the fist in your chest when you blink over to Kobra Kid and see him shaking like he's got his own personal earthquake. He winds his bracelets around his wrist so tightly and so quickly that one of them snaps, sending beads rolling all over the floor of the trans am. You try to talk to him several times after that, but he just looks at you with uncomprehending stress and doesn't say a word. You don't think he can.
This happens, Jet Star explains quietly. Whenever something happens with Party Poison, he gets frozen in this state of panic.
You ask him what else happens with Party Poison.
Sometimes he disappears, Jet Star tells you. Or sometimes he goes out and gets drunk and doesn't come back until the morning. You’ve seen that happen once already. Or sometimes he goes out to clubs and returns with marks on his neck and different clothes than he left in.
He only does these things when he’s angry.
You believe it. From the few weeks you’ve spent around Poison, you’ve learned by now that he’s terrible at coping with his emotions. When he’s angry he’s a hurricane, a tsunami, and a winter storm all rolled into one. He is destructive, but only to himself.
Or maybe not. You think of all the times he made you cry. How all you had to do was sit too close or speak too loud or laugh too long and he’d yell at you. You didn’t deserve any of that. You’re barely five years old, but you know you didn’t deserve any of that.
The Fabulous Four camp out in the parking lot of this Zone hospital for two days without any new news about Party Poison. You spend most of those two days hip to hip with Jet Star, making sure you can touch part of him at all times. You never want to be separated from him ever again.
When he and Kobra go stay with Poison for a while, you grab Fun Ghoul, who keeps apologizing over and over for taking you out to learn to shoot. The guilt is eating him alive and you know it. He thinks it’s all his fault.
You tell him it’s not. It’s your fault for getting scared and running away. Wiping his eyes, he tells you maybe it’s Poison’s fault too for being such a jerk. Satisfied with the shared blame, you change the subject by grabbing his left arm and tracing the ink from his shoulder to his elbow. There’s gotta be seven, maybe eight different pictures shoved into that small space.
“Where’d you get ‘em?” you ask him.
“Everywhere.”
He got his first pieces in the city, you learn, when he was still homeless and scared and barely a teenager, and although eleven years old seems ancient to you, you know that’s young to get a tattoo. You ask him if it hurt, and he says it did, but not in a bad way, because it was the first thing to set him free. You nod like you understand.
Two fighting hawks, circling each other with claws outstretched and wings beating wildly, are memorialized in time on his upper arm. You ask him why he wouldn’t have gotten them somewhere else, somewhere they could be bigger and more intricate, and he shrugs. “Just ‘cause,” he says. “I wanted ‘em there.”
He’s also got this weird one with what looks like a bunch of twisty wires around a circle, and neither of you have any idea what it is. Which is kind of funny, because he’s got it permanently etched into his skin. Tells you he got it done in some sketchy bar in Zone One after he left the city because he thought it looked cool. Later, you learn it’s something called an atom, and you ask Ghoul what that is. He’s still got no idea.
There’s other tattoos, too, like the lit match, the skeleton hand, or the crying eye. Those were ones he got throughout the past few years, just paid for a new one whenever he felt like it. It’s interesting how they all fit together, not a single one out of place, even though none of them were planned.
As he’s telling you about each one, it strikes you as funny that he’d willingly get all these tattoos even though he hates needles. Or maybe he just hates needles that aren’t going to give him a fancy picture as the end result.
“How come you got that one?”
You point to the dying rose nestled just above the inside of his elbow. He draws away. “I don’t wanna talk about that one,” he mumbles. You don’t press him. If he doesn’t wanna tell you, he doesn’t gotta.
He will never bring it up again, and you will never ask him again. It’ll be something you wonder about long after they’re dead, something that you will wish you knew when you’re standing inside a tattoo shop about to get one of your own. Its meaning is something he’ll take to the grave.
Kobra Kid comes back to the trans am alone a few minutes later. You’ve never seen him so pale. He looks like he’s going to faint.
“What’s wrong?” Ghoul asks.
“He looks so bad,” Kobra whispers. “He looks like he did—like he did when he and I first got out here.”
You don’t know what he’s talking about, but it must be something horrible, because Ghoul reaches up and puts a hand on his shoulder. “He will be okay,” he says, pausing between each word like they’re the peaks of a mountain he’s desperately trying to climb. “We’re at a hospital. These are the best medics in the Zones.”
They may be the best medics in the Zones, but that doesn’t stop you from seeing the three or four bodies that get carried in by desperate crews that never come back out. Even good medics can’t stop somebody from getting bleached when it’s their time.
You turn away from the window when you see two Killjoys come out of the building with only a mask dangling from one’s hands. As you shift in the seat, your foot hits something underneath the driver’s seat. You pull it out. It’s a little plastic box filled with threads and beads. You pick it up and glance at Kobra questionably.
“You can use it,” he says softly. You wish you could do something to make him feel better. Then the pink bracelet on your wrist catches your eye, and you get an idea.
You spend an hour making two bracelets. One is red and black, and you’re almost finished with it when you find a couple beads with letters on them. Thinking all the way back to the couple of reading lessons you got, you manage to spell out “KOBRA” in big blocky letters. You hand it to him when you’re done and he starts to cry. At first you think he hates it so much that he just can’t hold his tears back, but when he regains control of his emotions he hugs you tight and tells you he loves it. You rub his back gently like Jet Star does for you when you’re sad or scared, and when he’s calm, you help him put it on.
You tuck the other bracelet in your pocket for later.
~~~
Jet Star has a headache.
His head’s pounding, but he can’t get his mind off two things. Feels like the world is on his shoulders right now. Kind of is, because right now, these two things are his world.
First, the obvious. Party Poison. Jet’s sitting at his bedside, waiting for any sign that he’s awake and healing, but he’s starting to lose hope. He knows deep down that if, Witch forbid, Poison blinks out, he’s going to have to take charge. Kobra won’t be in a good place emotionally and Ghoul wouldn’t know how to do it. Jet Star will end up running a wrecked gang of three until they wreck themselves.
The second thing is just as important. The girl.
Dr. Death-Defying said it’d be two weeks, tops. It’s been more than three. Jet’s radioed him a couple times asking if he has a definite date, but he keeps pushing it back. Frequent draculoid patrols are being a bitch in his area and there isn’t a good window of time to get her back to the station and situated in one of the orphanages. To top it off, all the homes that the doc’s called are full.
Not that Jet Star’s complaining.
He’s dreading the day they take her back. She’s all he really ever wanted. A child of his own to take care of, to protect, to play with, to love. He knows she’s not really his own, he does, but it’s easy to pretend with her hair and the way she laughs and that wistful spirit in her eyes.
Of course, no matter how much he pretends, she’s not. Never will be.
Nevertheless, he loves her the same way he would if she was.
He can’t remember the last time he cried, but when the girl has to leave the crew, there’s no guarantee he won’t start bawling.
He’s contemplating investing in tissues when Party Poison’s eyes blink open once, twice. Jet’s head snaps up and he leans forward, waiting.
“Jet?” Poison struggles to sit up. His eyes are glassy.
“No, no, lay down.” Thank the Witch he’s awake. “You’re okay.”
“Where am I?”
Jet lays a hand on his arm. Surprisingly, Poison doesn’t jerk away. Maybe he’s too weak. “We took you to the Sun Valley Hospital. Do you remember what happened?”
“I found the girl.”
“Yeah,” Jet says. “You got blasted a couple times. Almost got yourself ghosted, man, like for good. We thought we were gonna lose you.”
“Feels like I got run over,” Poison groans. “Twice.”
“They said you’re gonna have to stay here for a few more days. Rest up and heal.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“Not an option. You try to get up like it never happened, like you don’t have major blast burns and wounds, next thing you know you’ll be on the floor. Give it a few days, okay?”
Jet can tell Poison isn’t happy about it, but that’s not his problem. He’s seen too many incidents when Poison’s gotten injured and tried to walk it off and ended up making everything worse. He can’t take that chance with this one.
“Help me sit up, then,” Party Poison says, reaching for Jet’s hand. Since it’s not an actual hospital bed, just a twin-size mattress and frame that looks like it came from somebody’s bedroom, Jet carefully props him up against the pillows and headboard. When he’s done, Poison is wincing, but he lifts a hand in thanks. “Where’s everybody?”
“In the car. Kobra’s not doing well.”
“Shit, he's hurt?” Poison looks like he’s about to jump out of bed.
“Calm down. No. He’s worried about you. Really worried.”
“Shit. I… I know what he’s thinking about. I want to see him in a minute. What about Ghoul?”
“He thinks it’s his fault. Because he made you mad. Says he started it all.”
“I’ve gotta talk to him, too. Man. I… how’s, uh, what about—what about the kid?”
Jet doesn’t say anything for the next few beats, but he finally, quietly, tells Poison that she saved his life. When that processes, Poison looks away. He’s wearing an expression that rarely plagues his features: one of remorse.
“Can I… can I see her? I wanna tell her something.”
This takes Jet by surprise. After all, nearly a month passed with Poison showing complete apathy towards her, and now he wants to see her. Ironic, considering every time in the past he would walk away when he caught a glimpse of her.
Maybe it took a near-death experience to make him realize what a jerk he’d been. Jet hopes so.
He promises to bring the rest of the crew back in a few minutes, and when he leaves, he doesn’t realize Poison’s spent the last minute trying to blink back tears.
~~~
Jet Star comes back and tells you Party Poison is awake now, and that he’s okay.
Kobra Kid springs up and his trembling subsides in all but his hands. He grabs his jacket, shrugs it on, and is through the doors of the building before anyone can get another word out.
Ghoul’s face lights up. “Knew it,” he says. “Knew that bastard would get lucky again. Destroya an’ the Witch can’t keep him down.” He bounds after Kobra and it’s just you and Jet. You feel the weight of the little bracelet in your pocket and put a hand on it.
“He ain’t dead?” you ask. You figure you should check again to be sure. From how everyone was acting a few minutes before, you’d’ve thought the funeral was already planned. Now they’re acting like this news is the best they’ve ever gotten.
Maybe it is.
Jet shakes his head. “He asked to see you.”
This gets your attention.
“He said he wants to tell you something.”
You press down harder on the bracelet. “Can I go?” you whisper.
Five minutes later, you’re standing in front of Poison’s room. Jet carried you there since the nurse said you shouldn’t use your ankle if you can help it, but you told Jet you want to walk in by yourself. With only a little doubt in his glance, he sets you down and you stare at the door.
“Go in,” he encourages. You turn the knob.
Kobra and Ghoul are inside chattering nonstop while Poison listens, but everyone pauses when you limp in. It takes only a glance from the leader and the other two are shuffling out the door. You hear them halt in the hall just beyond the doorframe and exchange low whispers with each other.
You don’t move. You just stand still and sweep the room, absorbing everything. The dusty window. The tube going into Poison’s arm. The buzzing overhead light.
It looks like what a Battery City hospital room would look like after ten years of abandonment and disrepair. Maybe it’s all the foreign machines and the tasteful emptiness, but you don’t like it in here. Nevertheless, when Poison beckons you over, you take a few hesitant steps forward until you’re beside him.
He moves his arm and his blankets slip down. You can see one of the bandages wrapped around his chest peeking out from underneath his shirt.
“Girlie,” he says, and that’s enough to make your breath hitch and your heart thump a little harder. He never calls you girlie. In fact, he never calls you anything at all because he avoids talking directly to you altogether.
You raise your head tentatively, staring at his mouth. You don’t want to look in his eyes. His eyes are always angry. Too intense. Like looking at them will cause you to burst into flames and disintegrate into a pile of ash on the floor.
“I’m…” Then he stops and looks away. His hands grip the edge of the blankets and he seems to stop breathing. “I just…”
You realize he’s having as hard of a time saying it as you are hearing it. You wait.
“I wanted to tell you thank you.”
His eyes are no longer fiery. They’re just sad.
“And sorry.”
His voice wavers on the word.
“I know I was a jerk. You didn’t deserve it.”
His knuckles are white against the worn blue of the blankets’ hems.
“I know it hurt you. Every time I said something, I saw your face and I knew it hurt. I don’t have an excuse, but I wanted you to know I don’t mean any of it anymore.”
His shoulders slump.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, all he has to offer.
You pull out the bracelet you’ve been keeping safe in your pocket. It’s a leather cord with dark blue and red beads. There’s a white one shaped like a heart in the middle. You tap his hand and when he releases the blanket, you drop the bracelet into his open palm.
“It’s for me?”
Kobra Kid gave you a bracelet the first day you met him. Said exchanging jewelry was a thing that friends and crews in the Zones do.
You hope Party Poison knows about this custom. He doesn’t wear many bracelets.
Your eyes meet his. You’ve never looked at him for this long before. You always thought he’d yell at you.
“Thank you,” he whispers. And right here, right now, Party Poison begins to cry.
You’ve never seen him cry. You’ve seen Kobra and Ghoul crying, but never Poison. Until now.
He covers his mouth with his hand and turns away, but you know he’s crying. His shoulders heave with the effort of keeping quiet.
You have to stand on your tiptoes, but you reach and wipe away a tear from his cheek. He flinches when your finger makes contact with his skin, but he lets you do it anyway. When he looks at you again, it’s the first time you see the real him, the person underneath that invisible mask of overconfidence and insolence, the vulnerability of his character, how unsure every word he speaks and every move he makes is. You don’t know how you can see all this in less than three seconds, but you can. And it’s then that you really begin to understand why he is the way he is.
Without asking, you crawl up onto the bed beside him. There’s just enough room for you. He winces when you accidentally brush against one of his bandages, but you don’t see that, because you’re already resting your head on his uninjured shoulder. He pats your head awkwardly, like he’s not sure what to do, but it doesn’t matter.
“I’m sorry,” he says for the third time.
And you forgive him.
~~~
One week passes. Party Poison is discharged from the hospital. Since he’s still weak, he spends most of his time in the passenger seat of the trans am changing the radio stations and scouting for draculoid patrols. Jet helps him re-dye his hair when the roots start to show. His real color is dark brown, almost black, exactly like Kobra said. You have no idea how he manages to get the deep red to show up so vibrantly when his natural color is that dark, but you don’t ask. Keeps the magic in the process. You want to believe he can do anything.
Jet Star gives everybody haircuts. He trims the split ends for Poison, shaves one side of Kobra’s head, and even manages to untangle the rats' nest Ghoul’s got going on. He asks you if you want him to do anything for yours, but you decide not to get yours cut. They regulated yours in the city, chose the style and the length, and now that you’re out of there, you’re gonna embrace your hair.
That supply truck that they spent days planning to ambush? Another gang that was nearby managed to take it down, and it turns out there wasn’t even anything good in there. Somebody mislabeled hundreds of boxes, and the only things it was carrying were millions of rubber ducks. The dracs and SCARECROWs that Poison rescued you from had gotten lost on their way through Zone Six and were completely unrelated to the ones driving that truck. Plus, that exterminator Party Poison shot down? She was the same one that gave Ghoul the scar on his leg.
The crew drives around the Zones, picking up scrap materials they can swap for other parts they need. Jet takes you to the Mailbox once, and you write a letter. It’s to your mother. You decorate the envelope with swirls and hearts and you hope that it’ll find her, wherever she is.
Dr. Death-Defying still hasn’t called back about another place you can go, so for now, you’re still with the Killjoys. While you wait, you learn lots of things. Fun Ghoul shows you how to make a bomb, much to the chagrin of the others, because now they have to look out for two people who could possibly explode things at any moment instead of just one. Kobra Kid helps you more with reading and writing, and soon you’re able to read almost as well as him. He tells you you’re a fast learner, but you tell him it’s because you’ve got a good teacher. Party Poison finally shows you how to use a can opener, which isn’t the most impressive thing in the world, but it’s a useful skill and it shows that he’s trying.
And he really is. It started off slowly, because it was strange for both of you: a full one-eighty from shooting icy glares like raygun blasts toward you to immediately acting like he’s your best friend would’ve been ridiculous. And it wouldn’t have worked anyway. You both have to build a relationship over time.
So you do your part. You draw him pictures, and when he thinks you aren’t looking, he folds them and slips them into his pocket. You inch closer to him when the five of you are sitting together during a meal and unconsciously he’ll tap the spot beside him.
He does his part too. He talks to you now, calling you ‘sugar’ every once in a while. Kobra tells you he only uses that nickname for people the way he uses it for you when he genuinely cares about them. A few occasions pass where you fall asleep in his arms, and there’s one incident in particular when you wake up screaming from another nightmare and he’s the first one that gets to you. He picks you up like you weigh nothing and walks around with you on his hip, whispering to you that it’s all going to be okay. Even when Jet Star comes running, Poison doesn’t leave. Both of them stay there with you until you fall asleep.
You don’t hear their conversation. You’ll never know what they say, because you’re swaddled in the cotton of strong arms and the night sky, but it's an important moment. It's the moment Party Poison says that Jet Star might have been right.
He asks, “right about what?”
“Right about kids. Right about her."
It's the moment they realize that everything they've gone through so far is worth it. For you. Because you have brought happiness, laughter, tranquility, and understanding to their crew. You have, indirectly, changed Party Poison's attitude toward the whole gang. He's calmer now. Less angry, less unfeeling. He doesn't raise his voice as much.
The crew says you were the one who changed him. You, all three feet and five inches of you, were the one who changed him. For the better.
You don’t know any of this, because you did not hear their conversation. You were safe and sound in somebody’s arms, and at that moment, that was all that mattered.
But like all good things, it has to come to an end.
About three and a half weeks after Party Poison leaves the hospital, it happens. You’re minding your own business a few feet away from the car, scribbling over food wrappers and newspapers and concentrating hard with your thumb in between your teeth, when Jet Star approaches. He squats down so you two are on the same level and says that he needs to talk to you.
Immediately, you know where this is going.
It’s time for you to leave.
They’re sending you to live in an orphanage, where you will have no one to hug, and no one to laugh with, and no one to draw pictures for, and no one to read to, and no one that will care for you simply because they want to. At the orphanage, they will only provide you meals and a place to sleep, and you will have to find ways to keep yourself occupied and to somehow forget about the crew you loved that took you in and then let you go.
All this is running through your head, but the only thing you do is tuck your crayons back into their box, pocket your scrap paper, and stand up. Jet Star pulls you aside, far enough away from the car so you can hear him talk over the blaring radio, and you wait for him to seal your fate.
“Dr. D radioed me,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. Fun Ghoul does that a lot, but you tell him you don’t like it when he does that because then you can’t see the scars on his hands from bomb-making that you think are cool.
It strikes you that you won’t ever get to make another bomb with Fun Ghoul once they drop you off. Like you’re a package on somebody’s doorstep.
You say nothing.
“He, uh, said he’d been lookin’ and he, uh, found a place for you to go. Someplace where they can take care of you and dracs can’t get to you.”
You fiddle with the bracelet on your wrist. The one Kobra gave to you.
You’ll never get to make another bracelet with Kobra Kid, either.
“Said they’d be ready for you tomorrow. Got a bed set up and everything.”
You’ll have to fall asleep alone every night. No bedtime story. No candle burning softly, no crackling fire, no voices murmuring softly. Just darkness.
You don’t trust your voice. Your lip is already quivering and you clench your jaw to make it stop. Crying won’t help anything.
“Does that sound okay?”
You notice his voice is wavering too. It’s the thing that pushes you over the edge. You lurch forward and wrap your arms around him as tightly as you did when he rescued you and Poison. “Don’t wanna go,” you say. “I don’t wanna go.”
With some difficulty, he pries you off of him and holds you out at arm’s length so he can see your face. Your turn your head away. He’s going to tell you that you have no choice.
But to your surprise, his voice is soft when he speaks. “You really don’t want to?”
“Uh huh.”
What he offers next is something you didn’t even consider as a possible option. “You wanna stay with us, then?”
You’ve never wanted anything harder.
When you tell him that, he smiles. He smiles big. He smiles from ear to ear and you know you’re smiling the exact same way. “If you’re sure, then I’ll radio the doc and tell him the plans changed.”
You’ve never been more sure in your life.
He comes back thirty minutes later, a grin still stuck on his face, and tells you you’ve got a family now. And it’s right there with them.
~~~
So the happiest three and a half years of your life are spent with Party Poison, Fun Ghoul, Jet Star, and the Kobra Kid. You run with them the way any other crew member would, except since you fit on their laps better than a full-sized person would, you get a lot more cuddles.
You’re with them for the height of their “career,” if that’s what it can be called. Their faces start popping up on wanted posters hung throughout the Zones, and you take great joy in ripping some of those down with Kobra Kid. He doesn’t like the way they edited sunglasses into his picture. You just delight in the tearing sound you hear every time you pluck them from the wall.
All five of you are always moving. No more than two weeks in the same place, and that’s a stretch. Soon you start to feel like you’ve been in every inch of space in the desert, but that doesn’t matter. One day you’ll look back and be thankful you got to travel so much. It saves your ass more than once when you’re sixteen and grown up and running all alone.
They teach you so many things. Things you’d never think you’d need to know, but then the time comes and the knowledge they shared comes in handy. They teach you how to bargain for items you need but can’t pay the full price for. They teach you how to set a broken foot. They teach you how to find water when your canteen’s empty, your mouth’s dry, and you start seeing black spots. They teach you about heat stroke and waveheads, what to do when a patrol comes by and you’re unarmed, how to get back to base when you’re lost and all you have is the stars and the sky. They teach you how to steel yourself and pick through a body bag for clothes and carbons when you’re having trouble getting by, and they teach you what to do if you ever get a drac mask slapped over your head. They don’t teach you how to drive a car, but that’s okay, because you’re just fine riding in the back with the windows down and the wind in your face.
You learn about the Phoenix Witch. Jet Star tells you everything he knows about her, which is a lot, because he’s been a follower for as long as he can remember. He’ll pray at night and you’ll listen, and sometimes you don’t close your eyes even though you’re supposed to because you’re so enthralled by the view of the sky and the possibility that somebody could be up there.
“When we die,” he tells you, “we become stars. We’ll be up there shinin’ down on you every night, love, so if you ever feel lonely, just look up and make a wish.”
You remember this advice years down the road when they’re all dead and gone. It stings every time you try to imagine what Jet Star's voice sounded like, or how the Kobra Kid’s smile looked, or how Fun Ghoul used to laugh, or what Party Poison’s hands felt like.
In your teen years, it feels like a bullet to the chest when you claw at the edges of your memory for their faces. No matter how hard you try, you can’t remember what they looked like. The details faded away over the years.
You loved them and now you can’t even remember what they looked like.
You saw them die. You saw that final shot hit each of them and it felt like you were the one being blasted instead. It was the same pain you felt when you realized you’d never see your mother again, except multiplied by four. And the worst part was that you never got to say goodbye. It happened too fast, lives snatched away in the blink of an eye, and you watched it all happen.
You never got to say goodbye.
Sometimes you imagine what you would’ve said if you had a minute to talk to each of them as they laid there dying. After a while of wondering, you give up, because it’s only hurting you more to think about it.
And they went out quickly, anyway. Even if you would’ve screamed something to Poison by that wall, or to Kobra on that floor, or to Ghoul behind that door, or to Jet on that car, none of them would’ve heard you. They were dead the second those blasts hit.
You never got to thank them, either.
Several times when you’re so overwhelmed with grief and lonesomeness that you can’t even stand, you fall to your knees and lift your head to the sky. Tears blur your vision, but you’re able to pick out four stars that seem brighter than the others around it. You press your hands to your heart and you wish. You wish with every atom in your body that you could see them again, and even though you know it’s never going to happen, just thinking about it makes you feel better. Like there’s a little bit of hope left. And you keep wishing until your tear-stained cheeks finally begin to dry and you’re just staring up at the heavens.
They always told you there was power in a wish.
You don’t know it, but even the random events that brought you into the care of the Fabulous Four were the result of a wish. A wish of one person in particular, sitting on the hood of a car, wishing for somebody like you.
You owe a lot to him.