TRANSMISSION 21
(POV: Party Poison)
“We hold in our hearts the sword and the faith… swelled up from the rain, clouds move like a wraith…”
I exhale heavily, then try to breathe in more of the words that have laid buried for so long.
“Well after all, we’ll lie another day…. And through it all, we’ll find some other way… To carry on through cartilage and fluid...” The action of the pencil stops for a moment, and I frown. Dig deeper. “And did you come to stare or wash away the blood?”
I can almost hear how the acoustic guitar is going to sing with me, dripping with regret and sentiment. It leads me to a chorus. “Well tonight, well tonight, will it ever come? Spend the rest of your days…” Now what? “Rocking out just for the dead… Well tonight, will it ever come?”
I’m lost again. I stop and read over what I’ve got so far, mentally playing out the melody that guides the words. Otherwise it’ll disappear without a trace and I’ll be left with nothing but a disjointed poem. The words are right. They are. The song is about… well what do you think it’s about?
“I can see you awake any time in my head….
“Did we all fall down? Did we all fall down? Did we all fall down? Did we all fall down? From the lights to the pavement. From the van to the floor. From backstage to the doctor.” I take another deep breath and force myself to keep writing. “From the earth to the morgue. Morgue. Morgue. MORGUE. Well tonight, will it ever come? Spend the rest of your days rocking out just for the dead… well tonight. Will it ever come? I can see you awake any time in my head…”
That’s exactly it. “All fall down, well after all…”
I lean back and close my eyes for a split second before fear of falling asleep forces them open once more. Then I read over the song a few times. Wrack my brain for a title.
Desert Song.
I scrawl those two words across the top of the page and then it all feels complete. Freeing, since I’ve gotten all that stuff off my chest. I can’t wait for a private moment when I can try singing it… sometime after this radiation storm, for sure.
I don’t know what to do now, but I gotta stay awake…
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TRANSMISSION 22
(POV: The Kobra Kid)
Nearby our spot, Gerard is frowning over a pad of paper. I’ve been watching him protectively for a while, staying up to make sure he does. I haven’t had him back long enough to lose him again… Come to think of it, I will never have my brother back long enough that I could stand to lose him. There’s no way I could ever be “okay” with him dying or leaving. No way in hell.
I can feel the warmth against my body of yet another person I could never stand to lose, and I like it despite the crushing heat inside the truck. Reinly. I can’t stop asking myself how I got so lucky that I found her. She is a constant and comforting presence, radiating strength that keeps me going if you’ll excuse the weird expression. That’s just Reinly for you; so incredible I can’t help but get confused trying to explain it, even to myself. All I know is that I would do anything for her, anything to make her happy, and anything to protect her. Which is funny considering she is the one who has been doing all the life-saving…
“I feel like I should be telling you not to worry… but that makes no sense. I mean, I would worry if it was my brother. Er… I mean, I AM worried for Party, but… you get what I mean, right?” Reinly stumbles through putting her thoughts together, which makes me smile. “What? What are you smiling at?”
“You.” I take off my jacket. “You just… have no idea how great it is when you talk like that, do you?”
She furrows her eyebrows cutely. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just…” How to put this? “It’s just nice that I don’t have to pretend to be cool for you.”
“Because I’m so uncool?” She giggles. “Lucky for you I kinda like that.”
She grabs me with both hands cradling the back of my head and pulls me in for another kiss. After the initial intellect-melting ecstasy of it, I update the mental tally to exactly four kisses. Yeah, I keep track. They’re meaningful enough that they’re worth keeping track of. I put power behind the action of kissing her back, making it intense because I know that I can. I know that Reinly accepts me, and I don’t have to hesitate. We don’t have to pretend that we want to ‘take it slow’, don’t have to follow the usual social course of playing it cool and hiding what we’re feeling. And think about it; we could get shot dead any given moment. We don’t have the time to waste on playing it cool. Being out on the Zones may be dangerous, but occasionally it has its upsides.
Watching your big brother because he has a concussion and might slip into a coma if you let him go to sleep? Not one of them.
Reinly catches me staring at Party. “Your brother’s a pretty good guy.”
“Yeah…” We haven’t gotten the chance to talk one-on-one much, and subsequently haven’t discussed Party Poison since he came home. “I’m glad you guys get along.”
“I think I cheated by making him coffee that first day.” She says. I laugh a bit.
“Maybe so, but he really likes you. Approves or whatever.” I smile at her.
“Good… You guys are really different from each other, you know that?” She cocks her head, looking at me curiously.
“How so?”
“Well… He’s really… I dunno, he’s Party Poison. What can you say about him?”
“Yeah… there’s really nobody else like him. We just call him sassy.”
“Huh…” She frowns. “That’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? It’s sass.”
I chuckle. “Yeah. So I guess what you’re saying is that he’s sassy and I’m…”
“Relax, baby, you’re just my type.”
I know. I can’t believe how perfect she is either.
“You should go be with him.” Reinly says with concern. I nod, pulling away from her and crossing the small distance to where Party is working on the whole ‘stay awake’ thing.
“Hey, kid.” He says with a weak smile. “How’s the missus?”
“She’s… wait, WHAT did you just call her?”
That smile of his starts to look a bit impish. “Oh, you KNOW what I called her. So… uh, how about this weather?”
“Yeah, how about it?” Being that we’re in the middle of the desert during a radiation storm, it’s just about shitty. “So you wrote something?”
His eyes flick to the ground. “Well, there’s not much else to do around here, so…”
“Oh—that reminds me.” For a long time, I’d been carrying a small black notebook on me, a notebook full of things written and drawn by Party. I used to read out of it in my down time before he came home, when I thought he’d been ghosted. But it doesn’t belong to me any more. “Here. Sorry I kept forgetting to give it back.”
“I wondered whatever happened to that old thing.” He takes it and turns it over in his hands. “Thanks for keeping it safe.”
“No worries.” I reply. A hint of embarrassment flashes across my brother’s face; he doesn’t like to think of people knowing about the amazing things he creates. That bothers me because Party Poison is the most talented person I know. I think back to secretly listening in on him singing his song ‘Famous Last Words’ to himself while doing the laundry one day…
It was early spring out in Zone 6, about a year after our escape from Battery City. Before we found Missile Kid. I remember that I’d been hanging around and flipping through sexy magazines with Fun Ghoul… but I realized that I’d left something out in the garage. I can’t remember just what it was, but it was the reason I went out to the garage that afternoon. The sun outside was getting dim. I heard his voice and froze. Somewhat under his breath, my big brother was singing… I hadn’t heard him singing (apart from singing with the radio) since before the Fires, since he’d been Peter Pan in a school play.
“I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone.”
There was this stunning clarity to his voice, this cutting quality that just grabbed you by the face and forced you to listen. Remnants of a New Jersey accent gave it a sound that was entirely unique, but there was more to Party Poison’s voice than just the sound. He put real, believable emotion into it, making everything he sang hit home. He didn’t even really do it on purpose, he naturally sang from the heart.
“… I see you lying next to me. With words I thought I’d never speak… Awake and unafraid, asleep or dead? ‘Cause I see you lying next to me, with words I thought I’d never speak. Awake and unafraid. Asleep or dead?”
I couldn’t help but edge closer to the sound, hypnotized by the delicate tremble to his words, peering in through the door that had been left slightly ajar. He was transferring wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, smiling to himself a bit as the words he formed stabbed into the air. He had a remarkable amount of control over his voice and could use it like a weapon, if you know what I mean. He could wield it.
“I am not afraid to keep on living.” He sang as he emptied the lint trap. “I am not afraid to walk this world alone. Honey if you stay, I’ll be forgiven. Nothing you can say can stop me goin’ home.”
As he turned the dial on the dryer and pushed the button to make it start, he went into a second repetition of that amazing chorus. I was so enthralled, I didn’t realize that the fact that he was now leaving the garage meant he was coming for the door. The door where I was just standing there like an idiot. I wonder if my expression was at all similar to his when he opened the door and I was there. Let’s just say the both of us sorta jumped out of our skins at that point.
But it’s a good memory.
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Things go by slowly, but it’s okay because I’m surrounded by my favorite people. I mean, we’ve go my brother, my two best friends, my girl, and a handful of people crazy enough to fight alongside us just hanging out, waiting for the deadly weather to pass. Could be worse, right?
Atomic Peach-Blossom and Dead Bunny are talking about something while laying out tarps to sleep on, and it leads me to notice that the two of them are sort of close. “So what’s the story with those two?” I ask.
“Well, Atomic led the rescue mission that sprung Bunny and Ranger out of Neon District Hospital, so my guess would be that they’re friends because of that.” Says Jet. Fun Ghoul cocks his head.
“Those two are from the hospital? ‘Cause when you say ‘Neon District Hospital’… that’s the fake hospital, right? They run the trafficking operation out of there?” He asks, giving Bunny an appraising look. She’s currently cracking up over something Atomic said. Party Poison and I nod.
“Yeah, that’s the place.” Ritalin Ranger overhears us and chimes in. “That and uh….. Dammit… What’s the other one?”
“Oh, oh, it’s somewhere in Arizona.” Party Poison says, wracking his brain.
“Serenity Falls, right?” I add. Ranger nods, scowling slightly in thought.
“That sounds right. You guys ever been up there?” He cocks his head, causing some of his blonde-and-red dreadlocks to spill out over his shoulder.
“Naw,” Jet shakes his head, “We don’t really get out of California much. I think Eternal Thunder’s raided there before…”
“Yeah,” Says Fun Ghoul, “Thunder really gets around.”
“That’s cool. Thunder’s… um… I really like her. She’s nice.” He glances at Eternal Thunder, who’s cleaning her sawed-off shotgun across the truck, and he smiles sadly. I think he probably wonders about her backstory and such, but Ranger doesn’t seem the type to ask.
Eternal Thunder. I remember that strange day last year when we met… She was in a Better Living Industries body bag, barely alive. Trust me when I say you’re better off not knowing what they did to her, the horrors they inflicted. Making her healthy again became an obsession; it sickened me to imagine the Pigs succeeding in destroying such an amazing person. I couldn’t let her go, let her die… funny, I guess that’s a pattern I have. People just aren’t allowed to die on my watch. I can’t take it. Anyway, things didn’t get easier for her when she got better. She is still living with scars… like the needle tracks on her arms and the twinges of pain her heroine addiction left behind. Sometimes you can see it in her eyes, the sudden hunger for chemicals, the battle she has as she forces herself to not shoot up again. People always make the wrong assumptions about why she isn’t talkative; I remember this one girl talking behind her back about how she was “stuck up just because she’s pretty”, someone else saying she was antisocial and giving her dirty looks. None of that shit is even the slightest bit accurate, and my blood boils a little when I think of how people have treated her based on stupid assumptions. She is quiet because she is constantly fighting for control over her own mind. She is nice and good and loyal. You just have to look past the fact that she’s not “okay”.
“So you’re pretty much Dead Bunny’s bitch, right?” Fun Ghoul grins at Ritalin Ranger. He laughs a bit. There’s nothing like Fun’s sense of humor to lighten my mood, which is good since I’m so flashback-prone and life’s hard and stuff.
“Something like that.” He gives her one of those looks, the ‘I’d end my days with you in a hail of bullets’ look. The look that has started passing between Reinly and I.
“Heh… You guys are like the longest-lived Killjoy couple I know of. Ten months, right?” Asks Jet Star. Ranger’s sort of drifted a bit closer to where the four of us have been hanging out. It strikes me that this is a little bit odd; generally Ranger doesn’t socialize with those of us who are not Dead Bunny.
“… Well, it’s been like a year and a half since we met. Longest-lived couple? Really? I thought Kobra and Reinly beat us out for sure…”
“Oh, we’ve only been together two months.”
“But the two of you are so tight…” He stares thoughtfully into space for a second. Damn, the kid’s got some nice eyes. You just can’t help but fixate on them, they’re so light. Anyway, what he says makes me smile.
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, well, regardless of what a good couple Reinly and Kobra make,” Party Poison gives Ranger one of his sassy diva looks, “You’re our relationship bitch from now on.”
Ranger laughs, slightly nervous. “Oh-kay?”
“It’s just kind of impressive is all. I mean, you’re what, like sixteen?” Jet Star asks. Cocking his head a bit, Ranger nods. “Yeah.”
“Oh, love doctor, what is your secret?” Fun Ghoul has grabbed Ritalin Ranger by the wrist, gotten in his face, and says what he says very dramatically. Gotta love Fun.
“Uh……………………” The younger Killjoy is blanked with confusion. Jet Star grabs Fun Ghoul by the collar of his vest and forcefully pries him off of Ranger, causing the two of them to get into a good-spirited little brawl of sorts.
“It’s okay, kid, don’t mind Fun. He’s kind of a psycho, but he’s relatively harmless.” Party pats him on the shoulder. I roll my eyes and sigh.
“Sorry everybody’s being weird right now. They’re usually not this bad—“
“Heyyyyy.” Party Poison grumbles at me, acting deeply offended. I shake my head at him.
“I think they call this cabin fever….” Fun and Jet are still going at it.
“Right, right.”
“I’m gonna make you eat your ‘fro, Jetasaurus!!!” Fun says with one of those psychotic expressions on his face.
“But that’s the secret weapon you moron!!” Party tells him off. “How will we survive without the majesty of the ‘fro!?”
“You guys are idiots.”
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(next morning)
Noisiness wakes me up. Sleeping on hard surfaces in slightly awkward positions doesn’t affect me like it did when we first broke out of Battery City… The Zones can toughen you up. A shaft of sunlight hits the inside of the truck, but I’m the only one woken by it. Someone has opened the door to our little sanctuary. My hand instantly goes for my holster.
But Party Poison is a few steps ahead of me.
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(POV: Party Poison)
I rested through the long night right next to the door, and it’s really working out for me right about now.
“FREEZE!” I bark, my ray gun snapping instinctually into headshot position. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the blinding morning light, so whoever I’m currently giving a facefull of barrel is nothing more than a vague silhouette to me.
A vague silhouette with his ray gun pressed into my chest.
“Woah… Party Poison?” The figure cocks his head.. erm… I mean HER head judging by the voice.
“Who’s askin’? You one of us?” The picture is starting to get clearer as my eyes adjust.
“Fuck YES I’m one of us!” She giggles, lowering her weapon. By now I can get a good look at her.
She’s pretty short, like Fun Ghoul short, and her getup has that true Killjoy quality of making it hard to know where to look first. It’s like caffeine for your eyes. First off, she’s fuckin’ gorgeous in the face, even with her mask on. She’s got short black hair with RAINBOW tips. Like, legitimately rainbow-colored. Same story with her jacket; it’s spray-painted to also be a rainbow. Rainbow is kind of the theme here. Her jacket is open, revealing a cutoff pink tanktop with white stars on it. She’s rockin’ a pair of shredded black skinny jeans and insane combat boots that hit her knees. Her mask is half rainbow and half black, and there are exes over the eyes. She’s got piercings to the point that she has absolutely no hope of making it through airport security; a ring in her nose, as many as possible in both her ears going pretty much all the way up the cartilage, and snakebites. Pretty adorable. Anyway, she’s got tats on her hands and carries two ray guns, one rainbow and one silver.
Seriously, I am so awake now I could skip the morning coffee.
“Good, ‘cause I’d hate to shoot such a cute little thing.” I grin sideways at her, holstering my own yellow ray gun.
“Same here, Red. Oh, and I should mention that you look just like your wanted poster.” She pinches my cheek (weird.) and brushes past me inside. “Da fuck a bunch of Killjoys campin’ in a hole like this for, anyway? You kids get caught in last night’s storm?”
“What’s going on….?” Somebody mumbles. It’s Kobra, who’s setting his gun down.
“Well, honey, I saw a couple trucks crashed on the side of the road and figured ‘free provisions, yaaaaay’, but instead I found you guys.” She’s strode across the truck at this point and crouches next to my drowsy, confused little brother. “Having a sleepover, are we?”
“We got caught in the storm.” He bristles, pulling away from our unexpected visitor and sitting up, which causes Reinly to stir. At this point, everybody’s staring to wake up.
“Who are you?” Asks Reinly, brushing some of that blue bedhead out of her face.
“The name’s Skyline Dreamer, sweetheart. Driver, spray-painter, tattooist, and Zonerunner extraordinaire.” She sticks out a tattooed hand for shaking, but as Reinly is half asleep she doesn’t really get the message. “You can just call me Sky, though.”
“Right… sure… hiya, Sky.”
“Ohmigosh so good to meet another Killjoy!” Trills Dead Bunny. You can tell she slept in her makeup by how it’s all... smudgy. “I LOVE your jacket.”
I notice the back of Sky’s jacket at that point; there’s an indigo unicorn on it, and underneath that is says “DREAM”.
“Thanks, little one.” She grins.
“You guys get some breakfast, okay?” I tell everyone. Assorted nods follow. Sky and I step out of the truck.
“The road’s clear, by the way. You crazy kids need any help carrying all this loot? You ARE taking it back to the Steakhouse, right?”
“Yeah, sugar, that’s the place. You’re welcome to run with us if you’re up to it.”
“Might as well. Strength in numbers, right?” She shrugs. She’s got kind of…. Breezy vibe, ya know? Like she’s confident and she knows she’s badass. I dig her ironic sense of humor, too. “So who’s the gang?”
“The guy in the red jacket is The Kobra Kid, my little brother. The black haired guy with all the tats and the guy with the ‘fro are my two best friends, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star. The really young girl is Adrenaline Extermination, and she’ll kick your ass. The blue-haired girl with the golden eyes is Reinly Night. She and Kobra are in love. The boy with the dreadlocks is Ritalin Ranger, and the girl who complimented you on your jacket is his girlfriend Dead Bunny. The girl with the bangs and septum ring is Eternal Thunder. The guy in the gas mask is Laceration Gravity. There’s also another girl in the group, Atomic Peach-Blossom, but she’s got awesome ninja powers so I doubt you saw her. That’s our gang—oh, and the dog’s name is Jasper.”
“One big happy family or whatever, eh?” She laughs a little. I guess it is a pretty big group.
“Well that depends, would you say ghostin’ Dracs counts as good wholesome family fun?” I raise an eyebrow at her, smirking slightly. Her expression is similar.
“Yes.”
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END PART 10
Awwww yeah!! Doubled my record for progress in a fanfic!!!!!! Oh, and I guess I should give you all a formal explanation; we have a new member in our fabulous cast so yaaaaaaaaay. XD A warm Zone 6 welcome to the lovely miss Skyline Dreamer, aka. Formydyingwish.
And now I must be signin’ off, my motor babies.
OVER AND OUT
