Archive of Our Own

Gerard “Party Poison” Way was desert born.

Really, to hear others talk he was desert royalty- a member of the Jersey crew, the son of Sand Storm and Lightning Party, and most importantly of all, the grandson of Hell Fighter. She was one of the most respected crash queens in the sands, could outrace any motherfucker on wheels and outpunch anyone brave enough to try and more than she was respected, she was loved. Her crew, and Gerard's, was a mix between two families, the Ways' and the Toros', with a few outliers who had been married in. They weren't a huge crew, but they were large enough to require an encampment when they settled into a new area.

The Toros' were renowned for their skill in mechanics; a Toro brat could take apart any machine set in front of them and put it back together working better and with parts to spare for trading and every rat in the desert knew it and respected them for it. They were also known for their welding and regularly took jobs redoing cars and other technology for less tech-inclined crews for tradeables or favors. Nearly as known for their wide smiles and kind dispositions, the Toros were a highly desirable ally in the sands and an even worse enemy to have.

The Ways', on the other hand, had a more diverse range of talents, each Way being some sort of Jack of all trades; from hand to hand combat, to the steadiest hands and zapper in the dunes, to data collection and analysis, and even a few stall holders in the traveling bazaar, their interests varied nearly as much as their personalities.. They were a little more stingy with their fees, being the cold shoulder to the Toro sunny smile, but most Zone punks knew it was more likely to get a favor out of them if you asked a Toro first. The families were so intertwined that two have a promise from a Toro was to have a promise from a Way and the opposite held true as well. For a while, they'd had a small group of outliers who'd been Tumbleweeds, smugglers and traders who went through the walls between Battery City and the Zones like magic, but that small group had split off years and years ago, when Hell Fighter was seven or so, a little older than Gerard, and with them the Jersey crew's secret way into and out of the inescapable Battery City.

Gerard didn't have many friends. He didn't talk to adults often, because they always called him motorbaby' and even if fifteen was years away and he hadn't killed a drac yet, he wasn't a motorbaby. He was a big brother now, and big brothers didn't do baby things anymore. Ray, born with the Toro-specific frizzy hair and wide smile, was his only friend in the whole world and the only person his own age, which was eight, thank you very much, he'd ever really met. He didn't count Mikey as his friend, because he was his baby brother, but if he hadn't been related to Gerard, than Mikey totally would have been their friend, even though he was only five.

“Hey, Mikey!” Gerard poked his brother's face a few times to wake him up. Mikey liked to sleep forever and ever but today, of all days, he couldn't. He'd be late if he didn't wake up soon, and then he'd never get his name, and everyone else would have their desert names and Mikey would just be Mikey, and everyone else would be safe behind their code names while Mikey wasn't . Gerard would never let that happen, he'd do anything to keep Mikey safe, even if it meant waking him up and risking making him cry. Gerard hated when Mikey cried, but it was a necessary evil because Mikey needed his name and he was finally old enough to pick it.

“Gee?” Mikey slapped at his hand, voice mumbling and sleep soft. Gerard gripped his hand and shook it, “Wazup?”

“Come on, Mikes! Today's name day!”

“Noooo,” Mikey whined and turned over to go back to sleep. Gerard shook him again.

“Mikey? Mikey, get up, Mikey you gotta get up so you can get your name!”

“Don'wanna.” Mikey mumbled into his pillow, sounding close to tears already. Gerard quieted down and then crawled into Mikey's nest, curled up around him and pulled a tattered blanket over their heads. Mikey turned and looked at him, eyes wide in the darkness and shiny.

“Gee?”

“Why don't you want a name?” Gerard asked, voice hushed, “Don't you want one like Ray and me?”

Mikey shrugged but he shuffled closer and hid in Gerard's arms, his chubby baby arms wrapping around Gerard.

“What if I can't think of a cool name? Party Poison and Jet Star are awesome.” Gerard translated Mikey's mutterings, which made him laugh.

“We'll just think of one now!” He said instead, “That way, you'll have one ready when you need it today.”

“Really?” Mikey asked, voice less shaky.

“Really.” Gerard said firmly. They laid together, safe under their blanket until Ray joined them, and then they were even safer because Ray pulled another blanket on top of them to help hide his bushy hair and they thought of the coolest name ever for Mikey.

Hours later, Gerard and Ray set together, the only other motorbabies (Gerard's face twisted just thinking the word. Mikey was a motorbaby, Gerard was an adult) in the crew, watching as Mikey was led out of their family's tent in a small leather jacket and blood red face paint. His cheeks were striped horizontally like the warpaint in the pictures in the old books Lightning Party liked to show him, and there was a long stripe running from forehead to chin, chopping his face in half.

Hell Fighter, Helena to Gerard and her family and close friends, Elena to their crew, and Hell Fighter to anyone who didn't just call her that crazy fucking crash queen, led Mikey by his little hand until he was in the center of the crew's circle. The whole crew went deathly silent as she handed him an unloaded ray gun and helped him point it to the ground, showed him how to place his hands and talked him in a whisper into the proper shooting stance. She made sure he was steady and it wasn't too heavy for his arms and then she loaded it with enough juice for a single shot and kneeled next to him, helping him aim into the empty desert around them, away from camp and crew and towards the Better Living scum Gerard knew was lurking out in the sand, waiting to strike at them.

“Ready, motorbaby?” She asked. Sand Storm and Lightning Party watched proudly to either side of Ray and Gerard, as their crew headman fitted Mikey's hands on the trigger and then pulled her own fingers away.

Gerard held his breath, gripped Ray's hand hard.

Mikey fired into the desert and the recoil visibly ripped through his body and forced him back a few steps. And then he laughed a little, shaky but there, and the whole crew cheered-Ray and Gerard loudest of all.

“Welcome, Kobra Kid,” Hell Fighter shouted above the cheers, “Our newest little Zone rat.”

-

Gerard knew, in an offhanded and uninterested way, that having three kids in the crew was weird. No other crew had more than two, if they had any at all, or at least he hadn't met them yet. Hell Fighter said that the three of them had been meant to be shipped off to Australia, where most of the motorbabies were sent along with any of the city kids who had somehow escaped but a tragedy had occurred, whatever that meant, and a bunch of kids died or something and so Gerard and Ray and Mikey had gotten to stay with their crew. Gerard was a little thankful for the tragedy, but he'd never said so out loud. Hell Fighter always looked so sad when she mentioned it that it really hadn't felt right to say.

It had never really occurred to him before, that the desert was dangerous. It was his home, his safety. Where everything he'd ever known and loved was found. He knew it like the back of his hand, could shoot straighter than quite a few of his own family and most of the Toro family as well and could tell one sand dune from another with ease. Sure, he'd encountered a drac before, but never alone and never more than one. He'd shot his first one at eight, a few days after Mikey's naming ceremony, and hadn't really looked back since. He'd proven that he was old enough and he'd made his first kill so no one called him motorbaby anymore, not even Hell Fighter or Sand Storm. He'd racked up a pretty good count since his first kill, usually managed to shoot at least one drac out when he tagged along on patrols or visits to the bazaar with his grandmother or mother or father.

He knew it had dangers, but Gerard had never before been afraid.

He'd never been scared of the desert in his life. Not until Hell Fighter had been killed right in front of him.

They'd been talking, about how the camp might be attacked soon because they'd gotten in a tiff with a rival crew, when there had been the familiar sound of a zap being discharged and she'd gone down right in front of him, nine years old and watching the surprise and then rage and then blankness of death follow each other across her face as she bled out on the sand. Helena Fucking Way was supposed to die in battle. She was supposed to go down in a fiery crash, in a blaze of zap blasts and with the blood of Dracs covering his hands. Instead, she was shot in the back of the head. Her blood left in a fucking wave, the stench of charred flesh and hair hit him in the face at about the same time as her blood. He'd never forget the feeling of the warm red staining his skin for the rest of his life.

He screamed, loud and long and so scared, and then the whole camp went up. Drac masks were everywhere, so many, more than Gerard had ever seen in one place. More than he'd thought could ever exist. One caught him in the head, rushed by and slammed the butt of his zap into his temple with no hesitation and the next thing he knew, Ray - no, Jet Star, the camp was under attack and real names were dangerous, he just had to remember what Sand Storm had taught him and everything would be okay, Jet Star was shaking his hard, calling his name until he opened his eyes.

“Poison!? Poison, wake up, please wake up!”

“J-Jet Star?” Gerard-Poison asked groggily, rubbing at his aching head. He wanted to cry a little bit, but he was an adult so he couldn't do that. He could ask Sand Storm to kiss his forehead though. Her kisses always made the ache ease a little.

“We're under attack!” Jet Star nearly wailed. And then the sounds of battle rushed back to Poison's ears and they were filled with screams, both familiar and Drac.

“Kobra,” Poison said immediately, struggling to stand up.

“Razor Wheels has him,” Jet Star said, pointing to the figure of his father running towards one of the crew's cars, Kobra Kid in his arms and reaching over his shoulder towards them, paper pale face a slark mask of terror.

“Come on,” Poison rasped, his lungs filling with smoke from the burning tents and sand and his ears ringing with ray gun's discharging and screams. He gripped Jet Star's hand hard and was pulling him towards Razor Wheels before he was really even walking himself. Going from laying stagnant for minutes to full tilt running made him want to throw up. Or maybe that was the image of Hell Fighter, the last image he'd ever have of her, playing over and over like a video in his brain. Maybe it was the stench of her melted skin and innards and hair still in his nose. Maybe it was the gaping hole in his chest, swallowing everything inside of him.

Razor Wheels was already driving away when they caught up, the tires squealing and kicking up a cloud of dust as he flung open the passenger door and they fell into the passenger seat in a painful pile of limbs and frizzy hair. The door wasn't even completely shut before he was peeling off, the dust cloud kicked up dusting out the image of their home at war.

“What about the others?” Poison asked, desperately righting himself and Jet Star. He looked into the back seat and reached over to catch Kobra Kid's hand so he could squeeze it reassuringly, a silent 'don't cry'.

“They'll catch up or they won't,” Razor Wheel said as gently as he could. He'd never had the way with words for them like some of the others. Poison was thankful for it this time.

“Are they all really…?”

“I don't know, Poison.” Wheel said slowly, but they both knew that it was as good as any lie he could have told. No one was escaping that fire pit with their lives. Nobody except the four of them. Poison wanted to scream and sob and beg the Sun and Sand to turn back time, stop it from happening. But that wasn't the way of the desert and he didn't have time to mourn, not for Sand Storm or Lightning Party or Hell Fighter or any of the others. He had to protect Kobra Kid and Jet Star, because the blood pooling around Wheel's feet said it wasn't going to be in his abilities to do so anymore soon. Even at his age, Poison knew when too much blood was too much blood.

The car squealed hard and fishtailed for a few seconds but none of them flinched, or at least Poison didn't see Kobra or Jet Star flinch and his body was too numb to flinch, and then they were stopped and Wheel was getting out of the car, with a serious “Stay fucking put.”

They stayed fucking put.

Wheel made a scene by a large rock in the sand and then a group of four were emerging from seemingly no where. Wheel leaned against the rock and even in the fading light of the day, Poison could make out the bloodstains. Jet Star shook hard next to him. Poison tried to wonder offhandedly if seeing his father dying slowly was worse than not having seen them at all before they died, like Poison and Kobra. He thought about wiping the blood off his face, it had cooled and grown tacky but had dripped and smeared in their mad dash to the car and by now it had to have completely covered his face. His arms were too heavy. He left it.

Finally, Wheel motioned to the car, held up three fingers, and the four figures were nodding and one was supporting Wheel back to the car.

“Okay, motorbabies,” Wheel said and Poison didn't even put up a fight over being called a motorbaby after having made a kill, “Here' the deal. I need you to...to go with this man, okay? He's going to take you into the city.”

“No,” Jet Star said desperately, shaking even harder, gripping Poison's free hand, “No, dad, no,”

“Hush,” Razor Wheel said firmly, and then opened their doors for them to get out. They did and he swept them up in a tight hug. They all clung back hard but Jet Star was the last to let go and Wheel had to pry him off. Poison wondered if the numbness in his chest would go away soon and he'd feel the same way as Jet Star and Kobra. He wondered if being in the city, easy to get into but impossible to get out of without help, expensive help, would make it easier or harder to mourn. He thought of never feeling the sun on his face, the sand against his skin, of never seeing his mom and dad playfully flinging sand or his grandma hugging him. He didn't ever want to feel again.

“Go with him,” He motioned to the stranger again, and took a breath, harsh and shallow, “And stay safe. Keep each other safe. Come back home when you can. Understand?”

“No,” Kobra said pitifully, shell shocked and trembling almost too much to stand.

“Yes.” Poison said. He didn't know what to do for a moment and then he touched Wheel's shoulder and frowned, his lips trembling. He wanted to feel something but the closest he could get was untensing his face enough to show whatever his face would show.

“We fucking love you, motorbabies.” Wheel said harshly, voice clipped with emotion, or maybe pain, maybe a mix of the two, “Don't ever forget that. This is your home and you'll avenge us.”

“Yes.” Jet Star tried to get out, but he just burst into tears and hid his face in Poison's shoulder.

“Yes.” Poison said firmly, “We will.”

They followed the man like they were told, but they could still see when Wheel collapsed into the sand and the desert commenced with taking his body back into her sandy folds.

Poison was stone faced the whole way, through the twists and turns of unfamiliar desert and then wall, the sewers and then alleys. He'd not be able to even pinpoint when they entered the city, having used some underground tunnel or something. He didn't much care at the moment.

“P-Poison,” Kobra said fearfully when they emerged into a street, surrounded on all sides by buildings, crumbling or otherwise impaired and unsafe looking.

“Word of advice,” The man said, the only words he'd spoken to them other than a harshly whispered “Shut your yaps,” or a command of some kind, “Drop those pretty names. Better Living scum'll be flocking the streets here and you'll be picked off like that,” he snapped, “Iffin' they hear names like that. Desert whelps like you'd be pretty pickin's for one of them.”

“...thanks.” Poison-Gerard said, letting the insult slide because he was only nine and he might be able to take the douche, but he wasn't sure, “Where do we go from here?”

The man shrugged, looked them over and seemed to take pity on them and pointed left, “That way's a shelter for kids like you. They'll put you up for 'bout a month, get you on your feet. Then you're on your own.”

“Thanks.” Gerard said again. The man shrugged, disappeared back into the twisting and turning deathtrap of the alleys, and Gerard led the last of his family on.

They were put up in a small room barely big enough for the three of them to lay on their backs side by side, but the floor was covered in thin blankets and pillows that were pretty comfortable when piled into a nest. They burrowed together into the nest they'd made in the corner after Ray had taken his jacket off and used a ripped up piece of his shirt and spit to scrub Hell Fighter's blood from Gerard's face. Gerard didn't argue or fight, just let him scrub until he was satisfied, and Gerard held them both while they cried themselves to sleep in the dark.

Once they were both sleeping, Gerard let himself slowly shake apart in the safety of isolation. He didn't sob or make noise at all but when they woke up the next morning, his eyes were caked with salty crust and his cheeks were swollen and red, just as his eyes were. No one said a word and they spend the day in the room, ignoring hunger and thirst until later when Mikey couldn't handle it anymore and cried quietly into Gerard's shoulder about his stomach hurting. Gerard left Ray in charge of watching Mikey and went to find out how they were meant to support themselves in their new environment. He missed the heat of the desert almost immediately. The world was...wetter some how. Cool and wet. He hated it. He missed the sand under his feet. The ground felt too solid and when he fell it didn't shift under him, just stayed hard and abrasive against his gloved hands.

His knees stung. He got up and ignored it because he might have been a stupid kid pretending to be an adult before but now he was almost too old and skinned knees were the last of his worries with mouths to feed. He patted himself down, found a few tradeables on his person that he'd planned to give to Jet Star as thanks for fixing some piece of tech or another he couldn't even remember now. Instead he gave a pretty bead to an older girl, a teenager probably, Gerard didn't care. She was too small to pose too much of a threat though, if he pinned her down first.

He knew city kids fought dirty but he was bigger and stronger (he didn't know if he was big for his age because he'd never met another nine year old except Ray, and rarely was there a Way bigger than a Toro) and if he could get her hands behind her back, he'd be okay. He didn't have to fight her though, because she took the bead and then told him what he needed to know, like where the markets were and how he was supposed to get tradeables to find food (anywhere big enough to hold a stall and doing odd jobs, stealing, or trash diving). He thanked her, voice still dead to his ears, like he wasn't really there with his body. She looked a little freaked, so he left quickly. Ray probably hadn't gotten all of the blood off. He found a stall selling bread, but it was soft and light, not what he wanted at all. He bought two anyway, along with a jug of water. It had taken about half his stock of tradeables, but he stuffed the rest in his boot and didn't complain. He just dragged it all back to the shelter and snarled at anyone who looked like they even thought about trying to steal it from him. They left him alone.

He made it back to the room and Mikey clung to him hard for a few seconds before stepping back to let him shut and bolt the door closed and then set his findings out, which included a small job listings page he'd gotten from a bin rat on his way 'home'.

They ate one loaf, though it was soft and not nearly as filling as the bread they were used to. The water was far worse. In the desert, the water was almost always clear, or at least boiled. This water was sludgy, stale and tasted of metal. They drank it anyway and hid the rest of the food and water under their nest, in the corner and protected from their weight by a particularly firm pillow. Ray used some of the water to finish cleaning Gerard's face. It didn't make him feel anymore human. They slept and this time, no one cried.

The next day, Ray went out and left Gerard in charge of Mikey, who didn't sleep nearly as long as he usually did. He was up almost before them. They didn't talk, but Mikey burrowed into Gerard's chest and Gerard pet him absently, the both of them dosing for hours until Ray returned with two pockets of small tradeables. He'd been a pretty good pickpocket in the desert, all of them were pretty okay at it after years of playful practice on their crew. It wasn't playful anymore. Gerard went out again later and tried to find a better food source. Instead, he stumbled onto chocolate and fruit. He brought home a little bit of each, as a treat, along with a plastic bag of dried meat that tasted like shit and smelt even worse. They ate half the meat pile, the rest of the water, and then split the apple and peach with each other, before finally breaking the chocolate bar up into three. The chocolate was a hit. They tucked Ray's bag in the blankets and pillows without opening it because the smell of the dessert was beginning to penetrate the haze Gerard had perfected in his chest.

The fruit and new bread and dirty water made all of them sick. Gerard threw up more than either anyone, weakest stomach of the three, and to punish himself he drank more of the sludge water and threw up and drank more until his body finally stopped putting up such a fight.

-

They'd been kicked out of the shelter a month into their stay almost exactly, and had slept on the street for two days before they met Matt. They'd barely been surviving, doing odd jobs every few days and stealing what they could when they couldn't find jobs.

“Hey,” a kid said, from the shadows of the alley Gerard had picked for them to crash in that night.

“Fuck off,” Gerard said firmly and pulled the only weapon, a switchblade, they had from his pocket, brandishing it at the kid. No one was above getting stabbed, no matter their age.

“Hey, hey,” the kid raised his hands to show he was unarmed, “I don't wanna fight. I just wanna offer some assistance.”

“Fuck you, you're like seven.” Gerard said firmly. He didn't trust seven year olds, Mikey notwithstanding.

“No, listen, I've seen you guys around,” The kid grinned, big and gap toothed, “And like, you look a little lost. Desert born?”

“How'd you know?” Ray asked, frowning from where he was mopping at Mikey's forehead with a rag. Mikey was coming down with something, hopefully nothing worse than a cold, but their luck had obviously run dry a month ago and even a cold was dangerous in this weather.

“You've got the look,” The kid shrugged, then shrugged harder, “But listen. My name's Matt. I got an empty basement for ya', if ya' want.”

As much as Gerard didn't want to admit it, he did want. And Mikey needed it.

“If you're lying,” He said firmly, “I'll fucking gut you and hang out out to dry.”

“Got it.” Matt nodded seriously, “Now follow me, knives.”

They followed.

Matt was a strange piece of shit, but he kept his promise. The basement was warm, only a little drafty, and had a pile of musty blankets and pillows. Ray pulled his pack off, the only things they had from the desert, the pack he'd had on to take with him on the bazaar trip planned for later that day. They hadn't been able to open it, it was too much to handle even for Gerard, the scent nearly overwhelming him.

“The guy who used this place died a few days ago,” Matt shrugged, “You need it more than he does. No one knows it's here, promise. That mailbox blocks it from view and there's a cool lock and everything.”

“How'd you know about it?” Ray asked, looking around carefully. The door leading to the house was boarded up and barred, which was fine by them. The only entrance was the window they'd come through in the first place, a few feet off the ground.

“We were friends, me and him.” Matt said, looking a little sad. Gerard automatically touched his shoulder with two fingers, frowning.

“I'm sorry.” He said, as gently as he could. Matt frowned at him, then hugged him tight. Gerard tried not to gasp out loud and then carefully tapped Matt's back. Being so close to someone not Ray or Mikey nearly sent him into a panic, but Matt had just saved their asses so Gerard tried not to murder him.

Matt stepped back and nodded, “You're in the city now. You can't do the desert ritual thingies anymore. They'll know. We hug here, when we're sad or we've lost someone. Light a friggin' candle.”

“...okay.” Gerard said carefully, “I'll remember that.”

“Good. Wouldn't want you to die after I went through all this trouble. Now let's go through that pack and see whatcha' got.”

They opened the pack, with Matt's confused help, and apparently they'd brought in a gold mine and had just been sitting on it for awhile. The tech in the bag, a little outdated by desert standards, was cutting edge in the city market right now due to the tech delay between the two, even after a month of bumming around, and there were a few others small things that could help them amass a fortune if they traded carefully. Matt took Mikey out, after he recovered from his cold and under Ray's watchful eye while Gerard went out to try his hand at pickpocketing. They went through trash, which was how they discovered that Mikey had a great nose for cool stuff. They gave half of it to Matt, but he picked a few pieces out for his family and shoved it back at them.

“It's to get you guys on your feet.” He explained, “Don't be dumb. You can pay me back later.”

Matt ran into them a few days later, a few bigger kids on his heels and looking for a brawl. Ray usually wasn't all that into violence but he had started itching for something to distract him and Gerard would literally punch himself in the face if it wouldn't have worried Mikey so much so they had no problem giving the shitheads what they were looking for awhile Matt watched in awe from behind them. When the city kids had run off a little more bloody than either Ray or Gerard, Matt tried to thank them. Gerard just, for the first time since they got to the city, laughed.

Matt taught them how to swindle too, something none of them had any practice in. Gerard missed the desert a lot more, the longer they were in the city. It was so straightforward there, none of this lying and shadowy bullshit. Give him a zap and a target anytime over this tricking people out of their food.

Matt disappeared sometimes, a few days at a time or a few hours on some days, to go see his family. Gerard offered once, to go with him, but Matt had just laughed and shaken his head.

It was one of those times, when Matt had disappeared with plans to return the next day, when a bomb had been dropped half way across the city. They felt the aftershocks of it after the initial blast wave even in their basement and the screams from outside were loud, if short lived. It went back to normal soon after.

Matt didn't come back the next day, or the day after.

They told Mikey, two day's later when he finally asked where Matt had been, that he and his family had relocated to the desert but they'd been in such a hurry that he hadn't gotten the chance to say a proper goodbye. Mikey was sad, but neither Ray nor Gerard thought they could handle the upset that knowing what really happened would cause.

That night, Mikey went to sleep first, and Gerard and Ray touched each other's shoulders and frowned and lit a candle for Matt. They put it out before Mikey woke up.

-

City food affected their bodies differently than their usual diet. It wasn't noticeable on Mikey, who's skinny frame just filled out to a more healthy level. It wasn't so bad on Ray either, but the weight Gerard put on and couldn't seem to lose, no matter how much exercise he got, due to their diets made him feel self conscious until he finally just stopped giving a shit about how he looked. He turned twelve, eventually, and he was introduced by acquaintances to the altered BL pills. Instead of numbing you, turning you into a Ritalin Rat, they made everything loopy and rosy. He took them nearly everyday, for almost two years, before Ray caught him and Mikey, as old as Gerard was when he started taking the damn things, stole some to try himself. Gerard had never been so scared in his life, not since the massacre, as he'd been watching Mikey react negatively to the drugs he stole from the guy who was supposed to be protecting him.

They sold the drugs off the next day after Mikey had recovered, kept just enough for him to be weaned off so he didn't go through cold turkey withdrawal. It didn't stop the painful wracks as his body detoxes almost two years worth of drug use from his system along with the small amount of BL drug still in effect but Ray held his hand the whole time and once Mikey forgave him for almost killing himself, he held the other. Together, the three of them made it through Gerard's fucked up mistakes. They traded most of the booze off too, because with the drugs gone, Gerard had almost turned towards it instead and he just couldn't risk it, becoming dependant on something else and having to relive the Hell of detoxing when Ray or Mikey inevitably found out. They kept one bottle, though, and set it aside.

“What for?” Mikey bitched when he saw Ray setting it up high in a cabinet, where Gerard just couldn't reach.

“For when we get out.” Gerard said simply, “Desert booze is shit compared to city booze. We'll trade a fortune for that bottle.”

“When we get out?”

“Yes.” Gerard said simply, like Mikey hadn't implied that he thought they'd be...not getting out.

They'd grown up, little by little, year by year, in this God forsaken city, and they'd integrated into the culture. But Gerard still missed the desert, still missed the fucking sun on his skin (it was always cloudy in the city, the sun was never able to quite break through) and the sand in his pores. He had forgotten what clean water tasted like and what the lumpy bread had felt like in his stomach, but he could never forget the feeling of freedom, of racing through empty miles with his mom and grandma while Mikey trailed behind them with their dad and Ray tried to outrace him. He missed his home, and he knew Ray felt the same, even though Mikey didn't much remember it.

The city was...different, and surprisingly hard to grow accustomed too. Gerard had always been led to believe that city life was easier, that the people in the city were lazy, but it was quite the opposite. The desert was more open and free, but the city was just as difficult to live in. They were in constant danger of BL discovering them. Every vixen (none of whom they had never come into contact with before, but were apparently the city's equivalent to an Exterminator and led by a lady everyone referred to in hushed whispers as Death Adder), drac, or BL employee in the street was feared by them just as fiercely as they were hated. They were outsiders pretending to fit in, but it had been difficult at first and they never would have made it without Matt's guidance.

The factions, rebel groups who fought against BL from inside the walls like some of the desert crews did from outside, knew each other by name, by their real, actual names. Names were strange and yet another thing they had to adjust to i they wanted to live. The city people found desert names exotic, almost pretty. To Gerard, their codenames were safety. Sometimes, it felt like 'Party Poison' was his real name and 'Gerard' was his alias. Touch was another strange thing, probably what Mikey had the most trouble with. Touch was so common in the city that to not touch was considered strange. Gerard grew used to complete strangers clasping his shoulder and smiling widely at him while in the larger markets, of seeing kids play wrestling in the street, holding hands, clasping arms, hugging almost an obscene amount of times.

Though their cultures were different, nearly opposite, after days, weeks, months, years, they settled-never content to be so, but biding their time. Sometimes the homesickness got to be too much though, and they'd light a candle between them and talk about home. Gerard would say something soft, almost inaudible, about missing the sun or the sand, some way to connect with the only thing he'd ever believed in on a spiritual level. Ray would tell them about how badly he wanted to feel the sand smoothed metal of a desert machine under his fingers, the rough bandages of the medical supplies his father had taught him to use. Even Mikey, who remembered so little, missed the feeling of the sun on his face and the hot desert wind in his hair. Gerard sometimes wished that Mikey could remember their crew, their family, enough to miss them, but then he felt the acid rain against his heart or saw the look of pain on Ray's face when he thought about them, and wished as hard as ever that Mikey never remembered a thing about them.

They didn't move out of the holed up basement in all their time in the city. Instead, they made it a home like they couldn't in the desert. Over time, they create a nest of blankets in the corner, piled with tattered pillows or pieces of unwearable, untradeable clothes. They hid it under a dirty tarp to make it look like just another hidden area in case someone ever did break in. In another corner, there was a small pile of food and water, mostly canned food traded in the factions for little piece of tech Ray had found and fixed up. They even had instruments, something they'd never thought to have again after the ones shared in the Jersey crew had been destroyed by the drac attack. They'd been a surprise for Mikey's birthday, or as close as Gerard could get to it since they didn't know the exact date anymore, just that it was around that time of year. Mikey could play bass, had been learning when in the camp, but it had been so long that it was like learning it all over again. Gerard had never seen him smile that wide before. The other was a guitar, which Gerard could play passingly, but Ray excelled at.

Gerard had never needed an instrument to play, because he preferred to sing. When they had excess, he'd go to the seedier markets (which had taken him forever to find and even longer to convince that he was trustworthy of their most precious goods) and trade canned food or even a blanket for music and their lyrics. Most of it was from before the Helium Wars, when all the big rebels recorded their songs and put them on albums and released them around the city through little, square music players and they'd been written down and sold that way. Not much music was released now, but it was beginning to pick back up and Gerard thought that was pretty milkshakes, sometimes thought of what it would be like to join a faction and maybe he and Mikey and Ray could record their own album and use it as a rallying cry.

Instead, he just traded for a contraband notebook and a set of mismatched colored pens to write his own words. He never showed them to anyone, not even Mikey and Ray, because they were just small snatches of lyrics to music he could always hear playing in his head but didn't know how to write down on paper. Eventually, he traded one of his personal things to a girl who taught him to read the music sheets he'd traded for and how to write his own and he taught Ray and Mikey when he'd finished his lessons (three days' worth of food, but worth it to all of them) and they played the music roughly on their bass and guitar, with Gerard singing, in their dirty basement.

It was the closest to freedom Gerard had tasted in a long, long time.

Gerard had been sober for going on two months when they acquired Shrimp.

Shrimp wasn't his real name, but it was what they called him when he came up. He was a small thing, all scrappy bruises on his cheeks and knuckles and cuts littering his face and arms, his hair was fucked up but pretty colorful for a city slicker (“City rat,” Gerard said pointedly at Mikey, who looked contrite and nodded), and when he could get his hands on a guitar, had the skills of a typhoon, jumping everywhere and loving it so obviously it was almost obscene. He always seemed...sad to Gerard, but he never let himself think about it. He had to make sure Mikey was safe (Twelve and rebellious until he saw the remains of a raid on a neighborhood. Dead covered the streets, bathed the walls in splattered red stains. He was quiet after that, even for Mikey, and talked even less than usual. He always listened when Gerard told him to do something. Gerard missed the rebellious streak, if only a little.) and Ray, too. He didn't have time to get distracted by some small scrap of a kid who spied on them or (if he could work up the nerve) set close by and listened to them play a few songs to pass the time.

Shrimp followed them around often, but would disappear for weeks on end sometime before he showed up again. Everytime he left, Gerard thought of Matt and something like panic would well up at the thought of the kid never showing up again, just disappearing into a bomb like Matt had. He hadn't meant for the kid to somehow dig his way in but he was so much like Matt, even had the same fucking smile that lit up their whole face and knowing, weary-but-excited look in his fucking eyes, that it was nearly impossible for Gerard to draw on the hard desert center of his heart. But he did it, dug deep inside of himself for that 'turn it off, don't care' oswitch until he finally found it and made himself stop caring about the strange kid whose name he didn't even know.

Gerard was sixteen when he first heard about a way out, a way back home.

It didn't matter that it was probably impossible, getting back out of the fucking city, but Mikey had been asking around (and of course he'd inherited the people skills Gerard had always lacked, it only made sense) since he was old enough to understand that he wasn't from the city, hadn't ever really belonged and never really would. He hadn't been able to turn up anything real, until he brought home a small scrap of paper with a coded address on it. Mikey had inherited more than the Way people skills, he'd gotten Lightning Party's gift for understanding code and analysis, was a pro at the hand to hand combat Gerard had taught him until he even surpassed his older brother's admittedly novice skill and had shown yet another affinity for maps (which Ray had taken a passing interest in, until he noticed how Mikey was much better at remembering and drawing out maps of the city territories).

Half the time, Gerard thought that Mikey was the real Way and he was a body snatcher, a BL plant who had replaced the real Gerard Way and just hadn't been activated but he didn't begrudge Mikey having those connections with his forgotten family. Mikey had studied codes and how to break them and make them under a surprisingly cool codemaster who went by the name of Mick (“Mick Jagger”, the guy grinned wide through his big lips, looking old and cool at the same time the first time Mikey had stumbled into his 'office', yet another hole in the bottom of a building that led to a basement) for a week's worth of canned goods and a pillow. They struggled for food for two weeks but it was worth it when Mikey came home excited about learning a new trick or a better way to do something he'd already taught himself. His brother was a genius, and if it meant losing food to ensure he was taught everything he needed to be taught to flourish in their hard world, Gerard would do it.

He stayed under Jagger as his pupil for nearly a year, until the man went missing one day. Mikey didn't talk about it, never brought him up again, but he studied every scrap of paper and program on his shitty laptop and holopads until he'd memorized every line and taught himself every trick he could. And then, with Gerard and Ray at his side, he burnt or broke it all.

His lessons made the code to the first meeting place on the scrap of paper easy to decode, a simple math and switch method Mikey hadn't even needed paper to work out.

“Think we should?” Ray asked quietly, looking at the paper. Shrimp was a couple yards away, watching them curiously. He never said a word, and at first it had unnerved Gerard. Now it was just something Gerard thought of when he thought of the kid and it was hard to find it annoying. It was a little endearing. It made him want to take him under his wing, protect him so he never had to talk again if he didn't want to.

“Yes.” Gerard finally said, instead of continuing on his useless thoughts, “We definitely need to try. This is the first real lead we've ever gotten. I'm not going to let it slip by.”

They talked about it a few more times as the date of the meeting came closer, barely noticing that Shrimp was even there anymore, but when the day finally did arrive, Gerard was still surprised to see Shrimp and a woman who could have been his older sister or a younger mother with him. It was strangely reassuring to him that Shrimp had someone with him, wasn't all alone in the sack of shit world he lived in.

There were quite a few people who had shown up, all huddled together into a small crowd in front of a sturdy looking table. Two men, obviously Zone punks, stood on the table, waiting for a little bit longer before they started the meeting.

Gerard found a spot, close to Shrimp but far enough away to not look like he'd chosen the spot because of the kid, and the three of them settled in to wait.

“Hey,” The taller one finally raised his hand and the room went quiet, “So, I'm Whole Oats.”

“And I'm War Baby.” The other waved his fingers and a few mumbled hellos echoed around the quiet room before it went silent again.

“So if you're here, it's because you were smart enough to break our code,” Whole Oats continued, “Or you know someone smart enough.”

It was silent and Gerard wondered just a little if that had meant to be a joke. Given enough time, he probably could have broken the code, with his rudimentary knowledge.

“This,” War Baby saved his partner, “This room right here is filled with people who want out. Who want to try their luck in the desert. Most of you probably haven't even seen the fuckin place but you know it's gotta be better than this.”

A few people mumbled and a quiet murmur of assent filled the room. Gerard stayed silent, still not sure if they were the real deal quite yet.

“The desert, it's a hard place to live. Maybe harder than city life.” He shrugged, “Maybe easier. Whole Oats and I wouldn't know, we've never lived here. We only have a day left before we gotta get out or our Tumbleweed will leave us here and take our round trip payment with him. We'd love to take you with us, every single one of you, but we all know that no Tumbleweed would take so many, even separately, and especially without some high payment, which most of you probably couldn't afford anyway.”

Gerard felt Ray shift next to him. Mikey couldn't remember their Tumbleweed,but Ray and Gerard had had many a conversation about just what Razor Wheels had traded for their own passage, three shell shocked motorbabies covered in desert born signs. Tumbleweeds had been killed for much less and many of them refused to transport more than one kid, two if they were the daring kinda guy. They'd decided together to think of the car in payment and not the location of a freshly deserted crew camp.

“In this room,” Whole Oats threw his arm out wide, “is a group. You are partners. Together, you'll be able to escape. Together you'd be able to overpower BL, you'd just have to find a way out. By ourselves we are weak, but together, we are strong.”

A louder murmur swept through the crowd. Gerard wasn't impressed. There didn't seem to be a plan, no previously set way out. Whole Oats and War Baby looked ready to bolt at a moment notice, with or without the support of a rebellion.

But it was a start. With this number of people, only fifty but sure to grow as a solid plan made itself known in the right circles, they'd surely be able to make it out, maybe even with only a few casualties.

Whole Oats spoke for a little longer, about how he and his crew were going to have a support system outside the city, ready to be placed wherever they found their exit. Someone asked him why they were bothering with helping a bunch of city rats like them and War Baby shrugged and said, “Everyone deserves to be free.”

Something about it rang false to Gerard, but he'd spent so much time in the city, surrounded by people who literally worshiped deceit like Gerard had worshiped the sun and sand in the desert, that that particular bell in his head never stayed silent for long anyway.

Eventually, the group scattered as the sun got closer to the horizon and Gerard made his way to War Baby and Whole Oats carefully, not quite sure where to stand with members of his own home, after so long in the city.

“Hey,” He said, nodding his head. It made him nervous, talking to anyone who he wasn't trying to barter with. He'd never had good people skills, something he'd never picked up with his socialization being limited to Ray, Mikey, and enemies. But it was too much to pass up, getting any information straight from a desert source on their home. He could literally feel the need to know anything at all about home that his natural anxiety about talking to others faded away enough for him to approach.

Whole Oats gave him a once over, and his eyebrows rose, “Well, hello there, motorbaby.”

Gerard wanted to sag with relief, even if he'd just been called a motorbaby, a name he'd shed when he was eight, and was probably old enough by now to have grown out of anyway.

“I'm made.” He said instead, raising his own eyebrow. He could be smooth, too.

“I'm sure you are,” War Baby said, amused and a little skeptical, but inviting nonetheless, “And what're your names?”

“Party Poison,” Gerard said and felt a rush go through him at the words falling past his lips for the first time in years and years. He nearly wanted to cry. But he wouldn't, not in front of these guys. Maybe later, when he was alone for a little bit and he could just sit and appreciate how right it felt to say his name and know it to be true. He hadn't felt like Party Poison since he left the desert, hadn't felt like himself since his grandmother's blood at touched his skin.

War Baby looked a little more skeptical, “Party Poison was part of the Jersey crew. They were wiped out nearly six years ago. It was all over the desert, those three motorbabies were some of the only ones left in the desert at the time.”

“Six years?” Ray said wonderingly from next to Gerard. Gerard caught him as his knees gave out and Mikey moved to his other side to support him. Gerard was feeling a little dizzy himself.

“We've been here six years?” He wanted to scream, but his voice was steady and a little hollow. Six fucking years. His family had been dead for six years. The hole in his stomach had been open for six fucking years.

“Oh, kids,” War Baby dropped the skeptical look, touching Gerard's shoulder carefully.

Gerard covered his face with his hands, tried to pull back his facade of control. It'd do no good to get upset. It would make them look like motorbabies, and worse, it would lose them the respect they were trying to earn. The first Zone rats they'd seen in six years and they were already falling apart.

“I'm Party Poison,” Gerard...Poison said firmly, looking up. His eyes were red rimmed but his face was set, not cold but firm. He had to be. He wouldn't let the city or Better fucking Living destroy him, not now. Not when he was so close.

“And this is my crew,” He gripped Jet Star's shoulder and felt him stiffen under his hand, regain his height.

“I'm Jet Star.” Jet Star said, voice a little shaky but growing firmer with each syllable.

“I'm...I'm Kobra Kid.” Kobra said slowly. He'd never gotten to introduce himself to someone new. He'd barely been old enough to remember their names, let alone his own, and he'd been way too young to introduce to strangers. Crews with kids, even crews as powerful as the Jersey crew, appeared weak and weakness in the desert was how they'd been sold out in the first place.

It made Poison want to glow, to hear his brother reclaiming himself, what was lost when they were taken.

Whole Oats touched their shoulders, mourned their lost crew with them for a few seconds while War Baby did the same. And then it was over.

Poison would be lying if he said that it wasn't comforting, the mourning ritual of his people, after so long in the city. He'd grown used to touch, had even picked it up himself, but he couldn't say it would be a hardship, losing that familiarity with strangers when they got back home.

“How exactly did you get here, motorbabies?” War Baby asked, dropping his hand away from them.

“We're not,” Jet Star frowned, and Whole Oats nodded.

“After what you've been through,” He said almost sadly, “No one in their right mind would think of you as a child.”

Poison didn't know what to say to that so he just gripped Kobras fingers back with his own when his brother reached out for his sleeve.

“When our crew was attacked,” Poison cleared his throat. He'd never spoken about it, outside of the dark nights where he set with Jet Star, Kobra asleep between them, “When we were attacked, Razor Wheel was able to get us away. The three of us.” Jet Star gripped the hem of Poison's jacket and they were connected, the three of them, like they'd always been. It gave him the strength to finish his story, abridged and shortened though it was, “He hired a Tumbleweed to get us in, gave them the car. They pointed us to a shelter and we picked ourselves up.” Matt was a secret that even now, years later, Poison could not put voice to.

“Brave.” Whole Oats said after a few seconds of silence, “We all thought you'd been taken. Razor Wheels gave his colors for you, huh? Who'da thought...some of your crew's allies hoped when no kids' bodies were found, but...”

“No one survived.” Poison said. It was no question, though it had meant to be.

Their faces answered him.

Poison hardened himself, “How long are you staying?”

“We leave tonight,” War Baby shrugged, “Working on the outside while this group works from within. Would you be willing to take the lead?”

“Us?” Kobra asked, looking and sounding just as shocked. His face didn't usually register so much emotion but it had been an emotional conversation.

“You,” Whole Oats nodded, “And maybe a few of the more initiative driven people from the crowd. You'll need to find a way out. Torture a Tumbleweed. Something.”

Poison immediately disregarded that suggestion in his head, “We'll do our best.”

“Milkshakes,” War Baby smirked, fists on his hips as he looked around, “With the Jersey crew leading the charge, no way can it fail.”

Poison tried not to feel too warm. They weren't the Jersey crew anymore, they'd lost that home. But they were something, something that was going to be great.

They just had to get home first.

-

Gerard, for all that the city had worn him down and grated him into a pale imitation of his former self, had always been a leader. He had a habit of taking charge, standing up when no one else would or even when he felt those standing just weren't up to his calibre. The only time he'd ever allowed himself to be lead was when he'd been too high to understand that he was even being lead, the two years a haze now that Ray had beaten him into halting his downward spiral, so it wasn't much of a surprise to Mikey or Ray when he inserted himself into the planning stages of the exodus and made himself known.

There were a few others, a broad, blond kid who looked to be around Mikey's age and three women, with a smattering of followers behind them, but Gerard was the most comfortable in his position. He'd been bred to be a leader from a young age, and even with six years under his belt away from home and two of those as a barely functioning Ritalin Rat, he fell into the role like it had missed him dearly.

The night after the first meeting, once they'd waved Whole Oats and War Baby off, he took a shitty pair of shears to his long, greasy black locks and had Ray bleach it blond. It was tame in comparison to the vibrant hues their people usually dyed their hair, but it was the best he could do since the turquoise dye he'd been using had disappeared off the market along with any other appealing colors.

They argued a lot, while planning. Gerard's assumption had been correct and when word got around that it hadn't been a hoax, over five hundred people in all had joined into the run, which Gerard had started to refer to as the Black Parade Rebellion due to the sea of dirt smudged faces and dark clothes their followers had at all times. There were supplies to be thought about, getting into contact with people in the desert and setting up relief camps for the people who got out. How to deal with the fact that some of them wouldn't be getting out. Gerard argued for a stealthy approach, finding a way out and allowing a steady trickle instead of a mass removal, which would draw attention. A woman, who was known only as Blue, argued against his idea and said more people would be able to get out if they went together and he was out voted two (he and the broad blond named Bob) to three (Blue and the other two women).

With that plan in play, tradeables were collected to be used as payment for letters and notices to be sent to the desert. Gerard had been too young to have memorized the bazaar's route but he did know that at one point in the year, the traveling market settled close to the city. With Whole Oats and War Baby's promise to get support from outside, Gerard felt reasonably confident that the bazaar would be in place when they finally announced the day they'd chosen but most of the city rats were poor in both carbons and tradeables and wouldn't be able to afford necessities even when they were made available for trade or sale. Blue, though not desert born like Gerard and his crew, seemed to know more about the crews that had risen to power in their time away so she was left to ask the bigger crews for charity.

Months passed, slowly when they happened but so very fast when Gerard looked back. Replies eventually began to trickle in, months after letters were sent. They lost nearly a hundred and fifty followers in the months between replies announcing that there would be crews with packs for those who survived the rebellion. The only stipulation was that any motorbabies who made it through would be taken to Australia, no exceptions. When this was announced, another fifty disappeared, but were replaced with larger families looking to keep their children safe. Some kids were brought in and abandoned in their usual meeting space.

Gerard lost weight, though he barely noticed. It was a mix of skipping meals so he could spend more time negotiating the rising prices in the area due to the larger population of revolters and stressing out over arguing with Blue about their decisions. It wasn't exactly fun, but when they fought about it, it always ended up coming to a better decision than either of them had initially put on the table. Bob might have been Gerard's saving grace, if he could call anyone that.

With Mikey and Ray spending their days going from person to person, asking around and searching for their way out, something no Tumbleweed would out to anyone, Gerard was left to keep his own temper in check in a volatile situation, which had never been his strong suit. Bob was calming, helpful suggestions always at the ready to bridge the gap between Gerard's more careful decisions and Blue's aggressive movements, and able to keep Gerard from jumping off the deep end and upturning the table to attack someone when one of the other's made an asshole-ish comment or Blue turned down a suggestion before it was properly considered.

Shrimp hung around too, though Gerard tried not to let himself notice. He was too young, would be one of the one's shipped off to Australia with the other motorbabies, and it would due Gerard no good to get any more attached than he already was.

Bob, though, didn't seem to have that problem. It had been a little shocking, the first time Gerard had walked into the meeting room to see Shrimp on Bob's shoulders, their fingers tangled together for balance and Shrimp's feet kicking lightly against Bob's chest. They'd been talking and when Gerard came into the room, Shrimp's face had gone pink and Bob had bodily knocked him to the ground and sent him on his way. Shrimp had been smiling and Bob's lips had been twitching and Gerard told himself that it was good that Shrimp had someone to watch out for him, and it was even better that it was Bob. He saw them around sometimes, digging through trash or in the market. Bob liked to drum and occasionally Gerard, Ray, and Mikey would see the two of them jamming on one of the rent-a-ments. Shrimp's guitar skills had only grown better since Gerard had originally heard them and Bob was a decent drummer and together, they complimented each other and played short and fast and hard.

Shrimp was also the one who gave them the break they needed and told them about a hole in the wall.

“Hey!” His voice, young and a little creaky but still loud, brought through the latest argument like glass, “I have a suggestion!”

Gerard gave him a considering look but didn't speak. Shrimp didn't talk often, but Gerard liked to listen when he did.

“Look, my mom knows a way out. I'll show you.”

Blue narrowed her eyes at him, “What, why didn't you say anything earlier, kid?”

Shrimp glared back at her and Gerard squashed the amusement building before it got too fond and became more painful than amusing.

“Because it's already been discovered. They left it open, didn't close it off. I don't know why. It's probably being watched, but we've been frozen out and there aren't any other options.” Shrimp seemed to lose his nerve at the end and shrunk into Bob's side, who punched him but then hugged him and muttered something.

“Okay, kid.” Gerard finally said carefully, after a few seconds of thinking, “Show us.”

And he did. He didn't move from Bob's side the whole time, led them through twists and turns in allies, until they were led to a piece of the wall, close to the center of the city. Though there were only six dracs, Gerard could see that it was just too dangerous for everyone, cameras and BL reaction time working against the spot.

They observed the hole in the wall silently for nearly an hour and then returned to the meeting room, Shrimp and Bob ahead of Gerard and speaking to each other in quiet mumbles Gerard didn't care to understand. He'd seen Blue's face.

“We can't,” he said as soon as they were in the safety of the room, but Blue was already talking, glaring at him,

“This is our chance. We're using it.”

“Hundreds of people will die,” Gerard bit out, straightening up to his full height. It made his back ache a little, after so long hunching over, in on himself, but he couldn't stand for this.

“And all of us will die if we don't find a way out. You've been outvoted, kid.”

Gerard wanted to scream, but then Bob's hand was on his shoulder and Shrimp was looking a little scared. Bob just looked resigned, like he knew this would happen from the very beginning.

Gerard took a breath, gripped his wrist hard for a few seconds to channel himself and smiled at Shrimp, the first smile he'd ever given him directly. He touched his fingers to Shrimp's shoulder and tapped, nodding his head, “Thanks, kid. You did really good today. My crew and I owe you a lot.”

“Y-yeah,” Shrimp said shrilly. His voice was deepening. Gerard wondered how old he was when they'd first met. Just two years after Whole Oats and War Baby had made it in, started this and left, he had grown a few inches and made his hair almost as weird as Gerard's dirty platinum hair, grown out from the previous crop now but not as strange as Shrimp's shaved sides and flopping almost-mohawk. Gerard couldn't think about that though, how their little stalker was growing up, so he smiled at him again, nodded at Bob, and walked out to go find Ray and Mikey and tell them what was happening.

“Ray, Mikey,” He said finally, when he'd tracked them down. They'd returned home a little early, Ray having to wrap up a hurt wrist while Mikey watched expressionlessly.

“Gee,” Mikey grunted, wincing a little while Ray moved his hand carefully.

“What happened?” Gerard asked, locking the window behind him and moving to grab a cigarette from their single pack. They'd been rationing it, but fuck that. His nerves were ready to explode.

“Fell wrong. Fuckin cat.” Mikey shrugged a little, “What's wrong, Gee?”

“We found a way out.” Gerard said and lit up, taking a deep inhale of the stick. It filled his lungs and burnt but the placebo was already loosening his limbs. He dropped into their nest and tilted his head back to stare up at the dirty ceiling. For the first time, he wondered just who lived above them. They'd always entered from the back because there was no entrance to the basement from the front, and the back was where the alleys were. The front of the building was all BL territory. Had they been living under BL drones? Maybe a family, maybe a single man or women with only a droid for company. Maybe a Ritalin Rat like Gerard, or a BL drone. A scientist.

He took another drag and let the smoke out slowly, cloud the area in front of his eyes. He must have been out of it because the cigarette was nearly gone.

“Gee?” Ray asked, like he'd been calling him for awhile.

“We found a way out,” Gerard repeated, to which Mikey nodded, “But it's compromised. I was outvoted. We're going for it.”

“No,” Mikey said, actual shock in his voice, “Half of us will die!”

“I know.” Gerard said softly, finishing off the cigarette and putting it out against his jeans, “I fucking know. I was outvoted.”

“Gee, that's…” Ray said carefully.

“I know.” Gerard repeated.

They didn't speak the rest of the night, just opened a can of kibble because they'd run out of bread and hadn't had the chance to get more yet and shared it. Gerard could just barely laugh at the faces Mikey pulled.

-

When the news broke, they lost almost a hundred followers, but a few more families joined, bringing the total count of kids that would be marching to a solid thirty, with nearly fifty teens just out of motorbaby age range who couldn't be shipped off if they managed to get out.

Despite that, Gerard couldn't stop the excitement at the thought of getting out. He knew there was a chance he'd die, that Ray and Mikey could be hurt or get killed or worse, but he didn't think he'd mind, dying, as long as he felt the sand against his skin one last time.

The closer the set date came, after they'd scouted and scouted for a long time and found that the guard of six never really let up but never got heavier either, and though there were three BL cameras stationed close by, Gerard could feel himself blossoming. Even better than his own growing feelings of joy, were watching Ray and Mikey experience it.

Ray was brighter, somehow, than he'd been since they'd been trapped in the city. Even his hair was brighter, his eyes happier and clearer. He'd lost his colors when he'd been taken, but they were finally coming back, seeping into him slowly, a little more day after day. He had no trouble adjusting to the thought of finally getting out of the city, a place he had never once thought of as 'home' in all the years they'd been there. There was much that he'd forgotten, but he decided to brush up on his medical skills, learned from his mother, by revisiting a few of the free healers to talk to them and learn as much of their craft as he could before they were on their own again and taking care of the three of them became his sole responsibility. He also went about stealing a few different mechanical parts and relearning the more intricate workings of technology. It came back naturally, because it was just as much a part of his blood as the sand and the sun was, and he'd stayed in practice as much as he could by working on small gadgets to trade or sell in the markets.

Mikey was no exception to their excitement, even the sand present in his blood awakening at the thought of returning to the home he'd never known. Though only fourteen (“I'll be fifteen soon, Gee. Shut up.”), he'd managed to keep up with the older kids he ran with sometimes, practicing his fighting skills and his mapping, doing what he could to stay relevant and up to date without Gerard or Ray's help.

They were ready to go home.

And, finally, the day came when the rest of the rebellion was ready too.

The meetings between Gerard, Bob, Blue, and her two assenters had stopped once they'd decided to use Shrimp's abandoned Tumbleweed exit and with it, Gerard and Bob's partnership. They saw each other occasionally, never went out of their way to avoid each other, and Gerard still caught Shrimp following he and Mikey and Ray on slow days with Bob in tow, but they hadn't spoken for awhile. It came as a surprise, then, that his crew and Bob, and even Shrimp, would be leading the march. Blue would be near the back, herding the Black Parade in the right direction, while Gerard and his crew would be leading. Bob had agreed to stand with them, and with him, Shrimp and Shrimp's female relative. They stood at Bob's shoulders, like his crew. Bob had been to the desert before, he and Gerard had had that quiet conversation once, and only once. His name had been Noise Control and with the lose of his family, was the lose of his way to the outside world. Gerard had wondered offhandedly at the time if Shrimp and his mother/sister had become Bob's new crew and seeing them now, in the present, he was sure that they had. He hoped that they would make it out.

“Okay,” He said, clearing his throat to gather the attention of the roughly two hundred abused city born who had actually shown up in front of him. They'd gathered in the original warehouse, too large a group for everyone involved to fit into their usual meeting spaces.

The crowd fell silent and he glanced quickly to Mikey, to Ray, looking for some kind of assistance.

Mikey gave him an unimpressed look and Ray grinned at him and that was all he needed to keep going.

“As you all know,” He straightened up, shoved the hair from his face so he could speak clearly, “We've been planning this for...for a long fuckin' time, and it's finally here. This is your last chance to back out because it only gets dangerous from here.”

No one moved. A baby started to cry and was hushed back into silence.

“Once we make it through that wall, there will be relief crews just out of sight of the wall, with packs. A little farther than that is the bazaar, a marketplace for anything else. Any and all children will be put in the center of the group,” He said firmly, “And if I or any of my crew see you try to sacrifice any of them to save yourself, I will ghost you myself.”

No one said a word but the crowd shifted and there was soon a small crowd of children, centerfold but farther to the back of the crowd so that they'd be closer to the front when the march started.

“Follow me, don't get lost because we aren't stopping. If you have a weapon, stand towards the edges and fight back.” He took a breathe, clenched his fists, “Some of us won't make it. Some of us will not survive this march. But you will die protecting your fellow people. Your life won't be in vain, and that might not hold comfort for you but there are at least thirty children in this crowd that will have you to thank for their lives when they take this system down.”

There was a low murmur, anger and discontent but not at Gerard and Gerard knew that.

“If you do die,” He said softly. The room went silent but his voice seemed to echo, “If you do go down, then go down fucking fighting. Take every single piece of Better Living scum that you can with you.”

It stayed silent, but the energy had changed, grew more electric. Gerard could hear the sound of ray guns being charged and ready to fire.

He jumped off the table, nodded at Bob, who was close to Shrimp and Shrimp's relative with his arm around Shrimp's shoulders protectively, and the six of them made their way to the front. He saw Blue and her friends and followers fanning out along the edges of the parade, zappers out and at the ready. No more children were crying.

“Let's go.” He said under his breath and started to walk. Mikey and Ray, flanking his sides, slowly spread out but always stayed in his line of sight, something he was thankful for.

They walked for nearly twenty minutes, separating into smaller groups but not losing sight of each other as a whole until the alleys came into view. Shrimp took the lead then at a nod from Bob, led them through the confusing alleys with a confident step he didn't even seem to notice. The kids followed him, and Bob and his relative stayed close to him as well until the exit finally came into view and he melted back into the group.

It was so close to the city center, BL headquarters, that Gerard was having a hard time moving his feet into the near suicide. They'd be on the parade in a matter of minutes. The hole wasn't large, barely big enough to fit three people if they shoved and squeezed, and if Gerard had been a few inches taller, he'd have to duck to fit through.

Gerard took a deep breathe, dropped his arm and took aim with his borrowed ray gun. Three of the dracs went down before the others noticed them and by then it was too late for the dracs to do more than call it in, though the cameras had picked the shots up clearly. The parade dissolved into chaos.

With little authority, despite Blue's screaming to keep formation, many lost their nerve and shoved past the children to get out. Like ants, they shoved and pushed until they'd made it through and scattered into the desert. Gerard shoved against the urge to race through and into the safety of the sand and the sun, could literally feel grains of sand against his skin and needed it like burning, but he still tried to fight back when he was pulled along with the front runners, the people behind pushing him through before either Mikey or Ray.

When he got out, he barely noticed anything, not the sand under his shoes, the ground feeling right for the first time in eight years, not the sun on his pale skin or the feeling of home just waiting to wash over him and drown him. He didn't feel any of it until Mikey and Ray had appeared behind a group of running men and they'd clasped hands and gripped each other tight before breaking apart to start directing the panicking people towards where Wild Oats had told them the relief crews and supplies awaited them.

The screaming started when only half of the parade had made it through, maybe fifteen kids in that half. The other half must have been separated, were still inside. Gerard looked back through the hole, over the heads of the people, trying to spot the kids. Instead, he spotted the gate no one had bothered to point out yet. The bars were thick but far spread, a kid could fit through or someone insanely skinny, but no average adult would get through and he watched in growing horror as it began to fall. A tall blond shoved through the crowd still inside, knocking people over and to their doom because no way they could get up and then out in time and Gerard realized that it was Bob, shoving through the crowd to get to a small figure. Shrimp.

Bob made it, as if he'd flown across the distance between them and they hugged hard before Bob was shoving his small body so hard he flew through the closing entrance, the last through before the gate closed fully and nobody else was getting through.

Bob was still on the other side of the gate, stone faced as the rest of the rebellion was surrounded by dracs, vixens, Exterminators and even, all gods above, scientists. Instead of panicking, because panicking had been what had gotten them into the mess in the first place, Gerard moved back to the gate.

“Get the kids!” He shouted desperately, “Get the fucking kids out!”

Bob was the first to react, followed by Shrimp's relative and the two of them managed to start an assembly line to get the last of the kids through the gate. They were all skinny, small and malnourished looking from growing up with shit food and even worse water and they all fit through, thank the Sand and Sun. He looked at Bob, into icy blue eyes clouded with fear and grief, but brave and firm. Gerard wanted to scream. Instead, he continued to pass kids down the line, from Bob or Shrimp's relative to Ray to Mikey to a stranger, on and on until they were safely in a big van with open back doors and terrified little faces peeking out.

The woman was crying, looked scared but fucking tough as nails. Gerard wished that he'd known her, at least a name. At least knew something about she and Bob, whose fate at best would be death and at worst would be being taken by the scientists for BL testing. She would have been a great fucking crash queen.

“Keep him safe,” Bob said suddenly, barely a whisper between he and Poison, voice dripping with pleading. It almost made Gerard sick, hearing strong, stoic Bob sound so accepting of his imminent death, “Keep him safe, even though we can't. I have a crew waiting, just get him there, please. They'll take care of him.”

Gerard nodded, just a little because his throat was constricting and he didn't know if he could control the moisture in his eyes. He wanted to say something, 'I'm sorry' or 'This is my fault', but he couldn't make his throat work.

They got the last kid through and Bob's eyes slid away towards Shrimp, who was already covered in blood from the massacre he'd been in the middle of before he'd been saved. Gerard had to leave him, leave the gate to carry the last kid to the overly stuffed van and hand her in. She was barely large enough to fit in his arms and he was shaking too hard to trust himself enough to hand her off without dropping her.

When he got back, the carnage had only grown worse and he was rushing forward to grab Shrimp before he saw, but it was too late because that was his relative on the ground, literally ripped apart with a rapid drac on top of her and Bob was bloody and beaten, being dragged away.

Shrimp wasn't screaming, but he obviously had been and his mouth was wide open. Gerard wondered numbly how he hadn't heard it, but then realized that it had been camouflaged by the screams of agony coming from behind the wall. His small body was covered in blood and he was still on the ground, sand from the light wind wafting through the air sticking to the sweat and blood on his face.

Gerard-Party Poison now, couldn't leave him. Not after Bob begged him to make sure he was taken care of. Poison looked down at himself and realized belatedly that he was covered in blood, his hands crimson from the bleeding kids and the massacre that had been going on around him as they tried to get the motorbabies out.

Poison turned his eyes to the gate, forced himself to watch the massacre that he could have prevented if he'd just argued harder, convinced everyone that taking that exit hadn't been their best bet. If he'd just been better.

He covered Shrimp's eyes with his hand though, because he was just a fucking kid and he should have been in the van but it had already peeled out of view and it was too fucking late already, for a lot of things. Shrimp clung to his wrist, sobbing hard and breathlessly, having thrown up already and needing something to stabilize himself.

It was a long time before Poison let Kobra yank him away from the sight he could have stopped. Instead of punishing himself visually, he kneeled and hugged Shrimp close and tight until Shrimp went limp in his arms and then he stood and silently herded him in the direction of the relief crews. He had to find Bob's, Noise Control's, crew. He'd drop Shrimp off with them and then...and then, it was up to the sand and the sun, if they accepted Shrimp into the desert's arms.

It didn't take long, most of the crews had cleared out and there were only a few left with packs ready for survivors. Most didn't look very sure that there were any more.

There weren't.

“I'm looking for Noise Control's crew.” Poison raised his voice, looking across the smattering of desert born. He wasn't ready to feel anything yet, not the sand or the head of the sun, or the way his blood was singing. He thought feeling any relief, even at being home, right now would make him throw up every single thing in his body, stomach, throat and heart included. Or maybe the hole in his stomach would finally consume him and eat him alive.

“That's us.” a four man crew approached, the leader having raised his arm. Judging from their masks, they were a part of the Used crew, if that crew had kept that particular mask in the eight years of absence.

Poison touched his shoulder, had to work hard to keep more off his face than just the frown customary, and carefully pushed Shrimp, blood splattered and shell shocked and completely silent, between he and Noise Control's crew.

“I'm sorry. Noise Control died protecting him. His last request was for me to bring him to you, and to ask you to care for him.”

“Why wasn't he on the van,” the leader asked, drawing Shrimp into their oddly dressed, eight arm embrace. He didn't go willingly, clung hard to Poison's grip before all at once going limp and barely being caught in the octopus of arms.

“He slipped through,” Poison said carefully, not letting his brain work, just stating facts, “He's older, barely in the range and he wasn't with the other kids when they were put on transport. Will you do it or not?”

“We will. Noise Control might of not been of our crew, but he was one of ours.”

Poison nodded, reached out before he could stop himself, towards Shrimp, but clutched his fingers tight to his hand and stepped away, into Mikey and Ray's space, “Thanks.”

He couldn't make this hard or either of them, couldn't see Shrimp's face when he left him with these strangers, no guarantee safety or family or crew for him. Matt's face flashed, overlapped by Shrimp's, behind his eyelids and the hole grew bigger.

“No problem, Party Poison.” the man said, smirking.

“You know me?” Poison asked, feeling his back tense.

“After this? The Black fucking Parade Rebellion? Your name is gonna go down in history. Bazaar's that way.” He pointed west and Poison's eyes cut back to Shrimp, taking him in, blood splattered and broken, and knew that it was his own fault that Shrimp had lost everything.

“Thanks.” He said again. And then he and his crew left Shrimp there.

Each step, it grew, not easier to let it all fall away but harder to keep a hold of the feeling of devastation. It was over and that was the way of the desert. It was over, it didn't matter anymore. Living in the past got you killed in the present.

Gerard wouldn't die. Not now. Not after coming so fucking far.

“Lets go to the bazaar, first. Try to find some weaponry. Jobs.” He regretted having lost the zap he'd borrowed in the rebellion, but there was no way he'd find it now.

“Gee.” Kobra said, sounding a little scared, a little lost and confused. Poison threw his arm around his shoulder and squeezed him close, shoved his face into Kobra's hair and let a few tears fall for a few minutes. Kobra didn't say a word, but he pushed closer and Ray enveloped them both in a hug. It was nice, in a twisted and painful way, to be so close to them after losing so fucking many. He'd never been fond of Blue, but he'd never wanted her to die, and Bob-fucking Bob, who'd be better off dead than dragged off by Better Living scientists.

“Welcome home, little brother.” Poison finally grunted, and pulled away, “And it's Poison now, Kobra. We're in public.”

“Yeah,” Kobra nodded, biting his lip, “Sorry. I'll get better.”

“I know you will.” Poison smiled, shoving his hair from his face and wiping at the tacky blood on his skin. He tried not to think about the original tacky blood, the blood he'd never felt like he could completely remove it. Hell Fighter's blood was imprinted on his skin, like an invisible tattoo-sometimes he could forget it was there, but never for long.

His hair reflected light pretty well, but he thought about dyeing it something darker. A blood soaked lock, matted with blood and bright red, fell into his eyes and he caught sight of it.

-

He felt bigger but in a good way as they entered the bazaar. He was home, this was his turf, no matter how long he'd been away, and his perpetual slouch lifted as he walked through the mix of bloody survivors and desert born. As they walked, they got mobbed a tiny bit by thankful people who'd survived, even a few desert born who'd gotten trapped family or friends returned to them. It made him feel better, that they'd helped people even in this tragedy.

He walked straight and proud, not bothering to pretend to be anything other than who he was, here at home and finally free again, like a tied down bird who'd fucking pecked it's way to freedom until the string had broken as much as it's beak. He was the leader of the the Way-Toro crew, the last of the Jersey crew, a survivor of the Black Parade Rebellion. He was Party fucking Poison, and he finally felt like himself again.

When the thanks had died down and the people had dispersed, they spread out a little to get a feel for what had changed and what had stayed the same.

Many of the faces were familiar (much older, desert wear on their rough, lined skin like badges, but still the same faces from his childhood), and their goods were the same (more advanced, more so than what they had in the city, which was expected) but the lingo had changed just slightly, new words being thrown into barters and conversations, things they'd have to learn to get a headstart at home.

“Gee,” Kobra started, then stopped himself and frowned, “Sorry. Poison,”

Poison just laughed and threw his arm around his shoulders again, hugged him to his side as they walked down the middle of the bazaar, “Don't worry about it, Kobra. You're learning. Soon, it'll be natural.” He kissed his cheek, wet and loud, just to see the look on Kobra's face as he flushed red and shoved him away with a loud “No, gross, dude!”

Jet Star laughed, loud and hard and had to stop in front of a short row of cars (sandy, beaten up, but all reliable and good, all desert-made or stolen from BL and made better) to bend over and breath through his loud gaffing.

Poison watched him, both of them, in amusement, feeling the relief slowly dripping into him. They'd made it out.

“Do my eyes and ears deceive me!?” A loud, scratchy voice broke through the three of them and Star finished gasping for breath and wiped the tears from his eyes as an older crash queen stepped out from behind an almost sparkling silver Trans Am, which Poison had refused to let his eyes rest on for fear of the need to own it overcoming him.

“Could that be the Toro laugh? And the Toro hair!?” She threw her hands in the air, a strip of taut, tan skin flashing between her tight pants and black vest, tattooed arms reaching to the sky, “Oh, Sand and Sun! I've completely done it now, I've plain gone mad! The Toros' went extinct years and years ago!” She laughed at herself and dropped her eyes but Star blushed and scrubbed at his hair almost shyly.

“Well, actually, I, uh, I am a Toro. The last, I've been told.” She blinked at him, and her mouth slowly opened as if she was going to speak, though it took her quite a few seconds to get herself together.

“You? Little Jet Star, is that really you?” He blushed again and nodded.

“Uh, yeah, that's me.” Poison watched her face, tried to sort through distant memories of another life to place her, “I've been in the city. Just got out actually.” He motioned to Poison and Kobra and shrugged, “My dad managed to get the three of us out of the ambush.” If the news had traveled as far as Whole Oats and War Baby had implied, there was no need to specify what ambush.

Poison just frowned, thinking hard and ignoring the appraising eyes that fell onto him, until it finally struck him with a crystal clarity.

“You! Cherry Bomb!” he finally cried, grinning.

“And you, Mr. Party Poison!” She laughed and threw her arms around them both, her short stature forcing them to bend almost in half so she could reach them comfortably, “You little shits! I knew you weren't dead! No one believed me but no way did BL wipe out the Jersey crew, not completely. And this,” She moved passed them to give Kobra his own appraising look, “If Poison's still kickin', that must make you Kobra Kid. You were just a tiny motorbaby the last time I saw you-barely had your sand legs on.”

She pulled him into her arms, not seeming to care that Kobra had been way too young to remember her, let alone who she was, specifically.

“Uh, yeah…” He finally choked out. Poison couldn't keep the smirk off his face at the flush that covered his brother's cheeks but he filed it away to tease him about later, instead of at the moment.

“Oh, wow, it sure is great to see you guys. Hell Fighter and I go way back. Used to run together, us old gals, before she got all mature an' shit.” She laughed again, “And with her and the others' gone…” She touched their shoulders carefully, a sad frown pulling at her lips for a few seconds before she was continuing as if she hadn't stopped talking at all, “I thought that when they couldn't find you, it was the worse. But who'da thought that scatterbrain dad of yours…” She gave Star another warm look and glanced around before beginning to pull Poison's coat, forcing him to follow her, with his crew following behind.

“Come on, come on, you boys are covered in blood. You've been gone awhile, haven't ya? Nearly a decade, I'd say. Come and rest in my tin can, you can clean up and settle a little. What a blood bath. Heard you were involved, Poison, just thought it was a crazy coinky-dink.”

Poison winced, saw Shrimp's face in his mind, covered in blood, screaming, but he tried to blink it away and nod, “Yeah. It took us a real long time to get a way out. Had ta' take it or we'da died in that city...I wanted to show Kobra where he came from, where we came from, before we died.”

She nodded, leading them into her home base, a van with a wide, flat bed layered with blankets. The four of them climbed in and set together in the shade, away from the sun. It was missed very much, and they were glad to have it back, but after spending so long in the cloudy, cool city for so long, it was almost overwhelming and it was nice to have a break from it for awhile. Poison's skin was already beginning to burn in some places, but he could feel it tanning in others, like his body was grabbing onto the familiar and long lost light and dragging it back into him.

“Understandable, understandable,” Cherry Bomb was saying. She offered them each a bottle of water and a piece of lumpy bread. Poison nearly cried taking it, ripping it apart carefully to ration it. He savored the simple taste of the bread, so different from the foods they'd eaten in the city, clean and filling and simple. He'd never appreciated the taste of clean water as a motorbaby, but he did so now, sipping slowly and carefully, letting it cleanse him.

Kobra didn't know yet, how to conserve his water intake like Star and Poison or how to ration his food to make it last, so he only drank when he saw Poison do so and he made sure his bread was ripped apart like Star had ripped his. Though they had been in the city for so long, Poison and Star had always tried to keep their diets as close to their desert foods as they could in the hope of making it easier to reintroduce themselves. At the time, they'd not known just how long it would take to return home, but keeping their diets simple made it much easier to readjust. They wouldn't have nearly as many problems as the city born who had been able to get out would, but they wouldn't escape the hunger pains the first few weeks or the craving for more water than they could afford to drink a day.

They were home though, and that was all Poison cared about at the moment. Everything else would come as it may, but the biggest goal had been accomplished. Everything else was just an added bonus.

She let them eat in silence for a total of two minutes before she broke in excitedly, like she just couldn't wait to hear, “So, you're back home now, kid. What'cha gonna do?”

For a second, Poison felt like Helena was staring at him through her, like his grandmother was sitting across from them, proud and smug and excited to know what he had planned. And then it was just Cherry Bomb again and Poison blinked slow and fuzzy. He remembered, vaguely, meeting her for the first time. He'd been young, a little older than Kobra had been when they'd left the desert. Cherry Bomb and Hell Fighter had been pretty tight, Cherry Bomb having been an honorary Jersey member. He and Ray had spent hours upon hours in different cars, playing games and hiding from the hot sun, just relaxing on the wide back seats while Cherry Bomb and Hell Fighter fucked around and laughed together.

“I'm not sure. We're not sure.” Poison admitted with a frown and looked at his lap. There was a loose string on the hem of his shirt and he started playing with it between three fingers, “I think…”

He looked at Jet Star, then Kobra, eyebrows drawn, and both nodded with similar brow action, “We want to help people, in any way we can. We want to do what we can to take down Better Living. They're the reason we were taken from our home, the reason our family was taken from us. They're the reason the people in the city suffer,” he thought of Shrimp, felt his throat contract and his eyes burn, “and the reason we and ours suffer. I want to end them.”

Cherry Bomb looked at him, really looked at him, up and down and inside of his head, like she was staring into his center, and then a slow grin stretched across her tanned, lined face.

“So, kids,” she stretched, back arching and arms raised high, a thin stretch of smooth, tanned skin revealing itself again (much to the amusement of Poison, Kobra's face went red again) before she settled back down and her shirt lowered again, “Whatcha got to trade with?”

Poison shrugged and pulled his pack off his back, the only pack they'd managed to save from the risen prices of the area the rebellion had been congregating in. It was the same pack they'd brought out from the desert, Jet Star's at the time but since having fallen to Poison to care for. He emptied it in between them, spreading it out so all of the tradeables were visible.

“Just some valuable we've been able to collect. We had to use most of our supplies for proper food and such once the Black Parade got underway. Traders saw the opportunity and prices skyrocketed in the living areas.”

There wasn't much left, but it should have been enough to get a decent start, some clothes and bedding, a wad of carbons, knives and a bottle of alcohol could get maybe a few week's worth of supplies, a car if they could convince Cherry Bomb to let them take one on credit and pay her back when they'd settled back into their lives. They'd had more, after hawking everything they had owned in the city, but they'd ended up giving a lot of it away to poor revolters who had nothing to their names.

“Oh, that's a beauty.” Cherry Bomb interrupted his thoughts, grabbing a vibrantly red-orange scarf from the pile of tradeables. It was good quality, Ray had picked it from a BL truck heading towards the city center months ago and they'd stored it in a good place to keep it safe. Not silk, but soft like it, and durable. Good for warmth, bandages, even a wrap for a baby if one was needed.

“Here's a deal for you boys,” She ran the scarf through her fingers and played with the shifting colors, twisting her wrist this way and that to watch light reflect, “I'll point you in the right direction of Dr. Death Defying. He's like...I don't even know. He plays music on the radio, for one.”

“Music music? On a radio?”

“You heard me,” She nodded, “BL can't get their dirty paws on it or him, so it never stops when he wants it to play. But that's not all.” She leaned forward, voice lowered until Poison had to nearly get on his knees to hear her, “Dr. D's also the center point for the rebel crews. Zonerunners have started answerin' ta him and if ya're lookin' for something or someone, he's the guy to see. You want some Better Living blood, you get in with him.”

“What's the price?” Poison asked with a raised eyebrow, feeling like it was maybe too good to be true. She'd been close with his grandma, but close enough to give a kid she hadn't seen in eight years the location of someone that important? He wasn't sure.

She just laughed, light and happy in a way that Gerard could never remember feeling in his life, and held up the scarf, “This pretty little thing. We don't get much of these colors anymore. Neon's the new in, motorbabies these days just don't appreciate a good blood orange.”

Poison couldn't help but laugh, nodding, “Yeah, sure, crash queen. You can have the scarf if you give us this Dr. Death Defying.”

She smirked and went back to shifting through the pile again, picking out the long, glass bottle of city whiskey. It was the last bottle of alcohol Poison had held onto, specifically to trade, once Star had forced him into sobriety. City alcohol in general was much better quality than desert alcohol, which Poison had learned when he'd tried to get a feeling of being closer to home by drinking some smuggled shit.

“And this treat? How about...give me this and two of those blankets and I'll let you have that Trans Am out there, the one you were eyeing like a pretty lady, Poison. It's always been Helena's favorite kinda gem and it wouldn't feel right, seeing the last two of her line and the last Toro and not give them what I know she'd want them to have.”

Even Jet Star looked surprised, his bushy hair somehow managing to convey his shock like another facial expression, “That is far, far too generous.” Poison shook his head, though every fiber of his body was demanding that he take any chance he could get to get that perfect car outside to be his.

“I won't take no for an answer, mister. I've been tryin' ta' find that car a good home for her for months and you were almost literally born to have it. The three of you take good care of my girl, got it? She's a true jewel.” She pulled the whiskey to her and grabbed a nice blanket and then the rattiest of the bunch from the small pile of bedding. The four items she'd chosen weren't worth even half of the Trans Am, let alone the location of such a big player in the rebellion. Poison just closed his eyes and nodded, reaching out to touch her hand carefully.

“Thank you.” he said with feeling, “I don't know how to thank you.”

Kobra nodded hard next to him and clutched his bottle nervously, watching her carefully while his fingers worked at the BL labeling. Jet Star looked just as overwhelmed as Poison was feeling.

“Stop it, stop it,” She waved them off, scoffing. She reached behind her, twisting a little to reach, before there was a tinkling sound of metal knocking together and she twisted back with a ring of four keys after a few minutes.

“It has four keys, since that's the average number of people in crews like yours.” She tossed the ring to Poison, “Speakin' a' which, what's the crew's name now, Poison? Gonna keep going by Jersey?”

“New Jersey?” Jet Star offered, joke a little hollow, which made Poison laugh and feel a little sad.

“No,” He finally shook his head, “That's not us anymore. Who we were is dead now. We're new. Different. We don't have one yet, I don't think. I guess we'll pick one out in a few days, after we get settled in. By now, our old turf's probably been ransacked and reclaimed. We've gotta get in contact with this doctor, find some way of getting supplies and carbon, some place to bed down. We won't accept anymore kindness from you, Cherry Bomb.”” He cut in, before she could offer.

She just sighed, loud and dramatic, and grinned at him teasingly, “Oh come on, Party Poison. Don't be such a killjoy.”

Kobra laughed, dorky and loud for the first time since Gerard had told him they'd be leaving the city, and slapped Poison's arm, “Party Poison, the killjoy. I like it. It fits.”

“Fuck you,” Poison pouted, leaning over to poke Kobra in the cheek, “You're just as bad as me, if not worse.”

“Don't be children,” Jet Star rolled his eyes, but he was amused. His hair gave him away, “You'll make Cherry Bomb kick us out of her tin can.”

Cherry Bomb laughed, the rough scratch of her drawl familiar and soothing to Poison, even after not having remembered her voice for so long, “I think the three of ya'll do just fine. You'll be fabulous, fit right back in.”

“Yeah, that'll be us,” Jet Star snorted, “The Fabulous Killjoys.”

Everyone went quiet for a few seconds, and then Poison smiled, big and wide, “Cherry Bomb, I think you just gave us our name.”

She laughed again, like a fucking bird in the sky, it made Poison want to start flying and never stop, so loud and free, his strings finally cut and his wings spread wide and just waiting for that fucking gust of wind, “You're welcome. Now, pay attention. I'm gonna tell you where to go to get the good doctor's location. He won't be around much longer here, with your parade over.”

Kobra leaned forward, looking almost excited, for him, “Okay, okay, we're listening. Promise.”

“Eager, aren't cha?” She winked at him, and he went pink again.

“Okay, listen up. The people you want are a few booths down, to the left. Just go visit them, and you can come pick up the Trans Am later.” She took a thick, black marker from under a pillow and flipped Jet Star's arm over to the smooth underarm, and wrote down the booth number and then drew a simple symbol with two uppercase 'D's, one backwards and sharing backs to each other.

“That's his symbol. They use it to show each other that they're safe. Make sure they see that on your arm.” She moved to Kobra's arm next to repeat the symbol, then finally, Poison's.

“There,” She set back, replaced the marker, and shooed at them with her hands, another smile on her face. “Now go, get shit done. I'll be here with your car.”

“Thanks, Cherry Bomb.” Jet Star said, nodding at her. Kobra nodded in agreement, and Poison touched her hand again, seeing Helena in her again and almost wanting to stay, just for a little longer.

They left Cherry Bomb's van and took a few seconds to adjust back to the light and heat of the sun and the sand under their feet. It was a little difficult, getting their sand legs back after so long on solid ground, but now that he had his balance back and a plan to enact, Poison felt more and more in his element. They walked for a little bit, looked at a few things as they went, before they found the booth they'd been sent to.

It was manned by a tall, skinny as shit dude with a helmet and skates on, and a shitty banner attached to the dirty white table which read, WKIL home of the slaughtermatic sounds in shitty spray painted stencil. Poison almost itched to fix it, feel paint touch his skin for the first time since his grandma had died, but he ignored the itch and looked at the crash queen behind the banner. He was possibly the most flamboyant man that Poison had seen since he entered the desert, but the familiar oddities made Poison want to fix himself as well, cover himself in art and escape the blandness that the city had imposed on him. That he was covered in, even now. The stranger wore a white shirt which cut off before it even reached his stomach, with thick black lettering reading 'NOISE', and black underwear over a pair of white tights with blue polka dots. He had a helmet on, but the sun reflecting off of it made it too difficult to read.

He didn't say a word, not until Kobra made an 'um' noise and offered his arm, showing the symbol Cherry Bomb had scrawled onto his skin, “I think we're here to talk to Dr. Death Defying?”

The dude didn't respond, but he nodded and turned his head towards Poison and Star, who showed their own symbols before he nodded again and lifted the visor of the helmet, voice muffled as he said, “Got it. Come with me, boys.”

He turned and skated off, much to Jet Star's amazement (“How do his skates work in the sand? I have so much catching up to do, oh my god.”), and they followed him after they figured out that they had to jump over the banner and table to do so. He led them for maybe a mile in the heat, not seeming to tire. Kobra started lagging first, not far but eventually enough to be noticeable. Jet Star lagged second, and finally Poison, but the three of them shoved through it and made themselves speed up to catch up to the the skater. Finally, a large, graffiti covered tent with no entrance visible, but surrounded on all sides by pieces of plaster and wood leaning up against it came into view and the skater shoved at a piece of wood until it slip up easily for the four of them to file through. Inside was cooler, filled with equipment and machines that Poison noticed made Star's fingers twitch. Jet Star clenched his hands instead and gave him an impressed look behind the skater's shoulder.

A man wheeled himself into the main area of the tent in a wheelchair, sunglasses and a thick beard. He looked pretty badass, which Poison found pretty impressive.

“And you'd be?” He asked, voice deep and confident, authority and calm dripping from him steadily.

“I'm Party Poison. This is my crew, Kobra Kid and Jet Star.” He motioned to them, then held his arm up a little to show the mark, “Cherry Bomb send us. Said you might have some jobs for us.”

The skinny skater snorted from against the wall, having removed his helmet, though the bottom of his face was covered by a damp bandana and now leaning against the wall, “Jobs? For city slickers fresh out of that massacre? I don't think-”

“If you ever,” Poison interrupted, voice steady and dangerous, because no one insulted his crew in front of him and not with fucking derogatory terms like city slicker, “call me or my crew 'city slickers' again, I'll gut you and stomp on your fucking excavated stomach. We're desert born, we've always been desert born, trapped in that God forsaken city or not. But that shouldn't even fucking matter.” He turned to the skater, one hand on his hip and the other hanging loose but obviously ready to fight. Kobra shifted next to him, ready to spring at a moments notice.

“We've come because a family friend told us you were the place to go if we wanted to help. If all you're gonna do is be a prejudice asshole who has obviously never lived a day in the city if you think it isn't just as hard living as here, then we'd be better off going it on our own. Come on.” He turned to leave, Kobra and Star following without hesitation.

“Wait.” The man in the chair stopped them, sounding a little impressed, “Who'd you say sent you again?”

Poison looked over his shoulder, gave him a once over while he thought over whether he even wanted to answer the douchebag's question, before he shrugged, “Cherry Bomb.”

“A family friend, you said?” The only friends that desert queen's got are dead by now. Which one are you?”

“Poison and I are Hell Fighter's grandsons.” Kobra finally said, after a look at Poison, “And Jet Star's the last Toro. Jersey crew, before it was...”

Poison looked at the skater, unimpressed and hard, when he lost his footing on the skates and sprawled on the floor.

“No way. Those kids died years ago. It was the talk of the town for months. The great Jersey crew, wiped out in one blow.”

“Those kids,” Star finally snapped, “Were sent to the city because their whole crew was massacred in front of them.”

Poison set his hand on Jet Star's shoulder, squeezed tight to calm him down.

“It doesn't matter where we're from or where we've been.” Poison said firmly, “We're home now, finally, and we want to do some good. Are you gonna let us help, or are we gonna do it on our own?”

The man in the chair laughed, loud and opened, offered his hand to Poison, “Yeah. Yeah, we got a few jobs for you. What'd you say you called your crew?”

Poison smiled, taking his hand and shaking firmly, “We're the Fabulous Killjoys. You?”

“Dr. Death Defying. Most call me Dr. D. This here's Show Pony.”

The skater didn't look too happy about it, even under his bandana, but he offered his hand and Poison shook it, not bothering to look too happy himself.

“Got a place yet? Weapons? Supplies?”

“We got a car.” Poison shrugged, “Some blankets, a few tradeables. That's it.”

“Great,” Dr. D clapped his hands, “Not too much to carry, unattached. Any allies? People from that parade we should go seek out?”

Poison thought about Shrimp. He thought about saying 'yes', about going back to the bazaar and tracking him down, letting him join them, welcoming a fourth Killjoy, taking him under his wing like he'd half done since the kid had showed up. He thought about Matt, about his promise to Bob, about the ache in his stomach, that giant fucking back hole.

“No.” He said firmly. That chapter of his life was over. Shrimp was on his own. Poison had to let him be because he'd only make life worse for him in the long run.

“No, nobody.”

-

Poison left Kobra and Jet Star with Dr. D just long enough to go back and get the Trans Am. He thanked Cherry Bomb, left a few more of the tradeables in her van when she wasn't looking and, before going back, used the last of the tradeables to buy three zappers, some simple but sturdy Demon Shark Deluxe models. He figured Dr. D would have some paint for them to borrow, maybe some supplies for a couple of days while they got their shit together, but he didn't want to rely on anyone for weapons but himself and his crew, so he got the three best zaps on display that he could afford with the wad of carbons and drove back to the tent.

He was right, there was enough paint to design their guns (Jet Star decided on a blue body with red and white accents and the words 'BECAUSE I SAID SO' painted on by Poison for him. Kobra settled on red with white details and detailed the 'deluxe' of 'demon shark deluxe' instead of painting over it. Poison took the longest to decide but finally painted his zap yellow with some pink detail work.

He figured that since it was his zapper, he could get as pretentious and ironic as he wanted to and painted on 'give me money' in Japanese, a little bit of a slight against Better Livings' origins, and then the three of them took the paint and attacked the Trans Am's shiny, perfect silver paint. Poison got to design one side, Kobra the other and Jet Star got the hood and front shield. In an effort to extend an olive branch, Poison asked Show Pony to design the back of the car. In the end, they got a mix and match of colors and personalities. Kobra had gotten snarky and used his whole side to paint an ancient American flag design, so Poison painted the whole door black because it was one of Mikey's pet peeves, to have a black car when it got so dusty, and spray painted the Spanish word for 'go' on it because it was the only word he knew, then doodled a little bit on his remaining space and gave it some jagged marks along the tire.

Jet Star got the most expansive, told Poison just what he wanted and then made him carefully trace out with chalk and paint a kickass spider with sort of a lightning bold design on its back. Show Pony showed his loyalty to Dr. D by throwing stickers and slogans for the radio show on every surface he was allowed, then painting LOOK ALIVE SUNSHINE along the back. When they were done, the four of them stepped away and Dr. D came out to look and even added a few stickers and paint to the wheels. The Trans Am was completely transformed. Beautiful and different.

“Would you destroy something perfect in order to make it beautiful?” Poison asked out loud as they all looked at the finished car, shining in the dying light of the sun.

No one said anything, but they all knew what their answers were. The proof was right in front of them, disjointed and ugly and covered in color. Covered in creation and beauty.

“Let's go inside, boys. We'll set you up some supplies, a place to squat for awhile. I'll tell you what you can do for us, here at WKIL.”

Poison didn't argue, just followed Dr. D and Show Pony inside, his brothers at his side and their art still shining in the last rays of the sun.

-

The diner was in Zone 6. Their family had once run in Zone 4, but Dr. D said that with the hell he planned for them to cause, it would be better if they were as far as they could be from the more dangerous Zones on their off time. Zone 6 was a little weird. The acid rain wasn't as bad here, though it was no picnic, and of course there was the traveling club, Hyper Thrust. They'd checked it out, when Mikey was asleep, but it hadn't much appealed to them. Too much drunken android sex.

It was nearly a week into their stay in the diner, while they were still setting up the systems and finding the quirks and crannies of the place, when they got a note from a runner from Dr. D asking them to meet up with a convoy taking children from the Black Parade Rebellion and some motorbabies to the ports. They'd run into trouble and had nearly lost a van of children so they'd requested more backup and Dr. D figured that seeing Poison again would calm the kids down.

They met up with the convoy in Zone 5, stopping just long enough to introduce themselves before they were all driving again. The van was in the middle, a scout almost a mile ahead and a tail almost a mile behind watching their backs, with the Killjoys on the left and another crew on the right, three cyclists zooming in and out behind the vans as a first line of defense.

They drove for hours, stopping at every other Dead Pegasus station to gas up before they were hitting the red line again, down different routes and desert. Poison had no clue where the ports were, or how to get there, but it wasn't his job nor his crews to know that. They just had to follow the vans and protect the kids inside them.

They didn't stop until nearly pitch blackness, when it was too dangerous to drive in such rough terrain, and the four crews set up camp while the kids got settled in to sleep.

The crews shared a fire, heating cans of beans or dog kibble over the open flames using tongs or just holding the top of the can with their leather covered fingers and trying not to singe themselves. They set up a watch, two crews at the fire and two on look out every four hours so they could all eat, defrost in the freezing desert by the fire and sleep a little before they switched out. Dr. D had been right and having Poison with them calmed many of the panicking and scared children, so he spent a lot of his time sitting with them and talking.

The Killjoys didn't talk to the other crew on their shift much. They were older, more grizzled and hard than Poison ever wanted he or his crew to be, and they didn't take kindly to a younger crew having been called in for backup. The motorcyclists on the other hand, were really cool. Yeezus was apparently the head of one of the more powerful city factions and he'd offered his, his bodyguards, and his apprentice's services to take the kids. The bodyguard went unnamed, an intimidating women with long, dark hair and dangerous eyes that watched everyone and everything carefully, even the children.

The apprentice though, was different from both of them. His name was Pete, he looked a little older than Kobra but a little younger than Poison and he was a creepy fucker.

Poison liked him, a serious look in his eyes when he was guarding the kids and no play when he was riding, and Poison liked how happy he was, even through all the pain and shit he'd obviously gone through. Something was off about him, but he didn't seem dangerous and he stayed away from the kids, so Poison didn't mind the shine that Kobra took to him much. Pete and Kobra spent a long time together, at the fire and during patrol, just talking around the disgusting smelling canned gel they used as fire fuel and cracking each other and the kids up when few of the older ones got the nerve to join them.

Poison felt like he'd settled into his role as a leader, for real, by the time they got the kids to port, after a little over a week of driving. They stayed at port and watched the ship (A BL ship, white except for the black lettering and logo, big and filled with kids being taken to safety) disappear into the ocean, like it and the precious cargo it carried had never been there.

They all traveled together for two more days, the vans leading the less traveled crews back to more traversed paths before they split up into different directions, Yeezus and Pete and the lady all back towards the city and the Killjoys back to the diner.

“Bye, Pete.” Kobra said, when they were saying their goodbyes. Poison was shaking Yeezus' hand, but he couldn't help but overhear the sadness in his brother's voice.

“Bye, Mikey.” Pete said, just as sadly. They hugged, tight and almost painful and Jet Star had to tug gently at Kobra before they let go.

“We'll see each other again.” Pete said firmly, optimistic.

“No we won't.” Kobra said sadly, realistic.

They waved and Kobra didn't take his eyes off Pete, not even when he and his crew were a pin prick in the horizon, and didn't turn around until even Poison's razor eyesight had lost them.

If he didn't talk much, even for him, for a few days after they returned back to the diner, no one mentioned it.

When they got home, and Poison nearly wanted to cry that they had a place to call home, surrounded by walls thick to keep sand out and the sun beaming harsh light outside. They parked the Trans Am under the overhang in the back, where there looked to once have been gas tanks but was now a bare, acid rain protected parking lot.

Dr. D gave them a week to catch up on sleep, finish fixing up the diner to their standards (alarm systems Jet Star sold his mechanical services out to get, a computer for Mikey to use when they finally got around to starting up their retrieval missions. Poison just needed to settle, make places for himself and his crew, prove that the building was theirs by painting on the walls and fixing up a few of the more broken down areas) before he sent them another message that had the three of them driving to his newest location. The week of constant driving and the on and off he'd been doing lately had fixed Poison's admittedly weak driving skills and by the time he pulled up beside the familiar tent, his hands on the wheels were confident and Kobra wasn't clinging to the passenger seat for dear life.

“Dr. D.” Jet Star offered his hand only to huff a breathe out when Dr. Death Defying yanked him down to hug him tight, slapping his back.

“Nice ta' see ya', kid. Now lets us get inside,” He motioned them forward, “got a job for you. Entry level, to get you guys started. We'll see your skills, what you've got to work on.”

“What's the job?” Kobra asked, rocking on the heels of his boots once they were all inside and the wooden piece had fallen back into place. Show Pony greeted them warmly with some cool water and bread and even a few pieces of dried meet to eat while Dr. D rummaged through a pile near his radio station.

“There's gonna be a supply of BL goods, but my Zonerunner barely had enough time to get the coded info down before he had to jet. Didn't have time to crack it, and I figured we could test Kobra Kid out.” He pulled the paper out, thin and nearly see through with small, thick, black lettering hand written in code, which he read over before handing to Kobra.

“That's the info. Think you can crack it?”

“Give me a pad.” Kobra said instead of answering. He took the gritty holopad when Show Pony gave it to him and set with a stylist. Eventually, they all grew bored of watching him scribble on the screen with his brows furrowed and moved over to look through Dr. D's music collection.

Nearly twenty minutes after they'd left him, Kobra set up fast from his hunched position and stretched out, letting what sounded like his whole spine snap back into place before he handed the pad to Show Pony and showed Dr. D the paper, “There.”

“Hm…” Dr. D gave him an approving look, looked over the paper, now uncoded, and gave another nod, lifting his sunglasses up to rest them on his head.

“Not bad, not bad. Especially for a kid your age. Think you guys are ready to intercept some hot goods? Looks like it's a truck for tech.”

“Yes.” Poison said immediately, “We're ready.”

“Good.” Dr. D motioned to Show Pony, “Pony'll go with you and show you the ropes this time. After this, I'll probably have you going after data. My last data crew got ghosted.”

He didn't look too upset, but that didn't mean anything. Poison still touched his shoulder and they shared a respectful silence and then went back to business, “Take this.”

He gave Poison the paper, who handed it to Kobra, who tucked it into his pocket immediately, “Get your ass to Zone 3 and set up your ambush. If you get the good stuff, you can have your pick of it before we send it off to the family camps and my Tumbleweeds.”

“Seriously?” Jet Star asked with a raised brow.

“Seriously. Now get goin'.”

Poison nodded again, “See you, Dr. D.”

“Take care of Pony.” Dr. D said with a smirk, which made Pony slap his shoulder on his way passed.

“Take care of yourself.” Pony snipped back before he followed the Killjoys to the Trans Am. Kobra magnanimously let him sit in the front with Poison while he slipped his long body into the back with Jet Star and they were off with one extra person and a new plan in action.

They reached their place in Zone 3 with nearly three hours to spare so Show Pony showed them the best areas to hide the Trans Am, where good spots were to station a look out and a number of other small tricks and cons he'd picked up over the years.

Finally, a small dust cloud formed on the horizon and they got in position, waited to strike.

“Now.” Pony whispered, only a few seconds before Poison would have done it. He didn't hesitate though, and so the Killjoys didn't hesitate either. Instead, they fired into the windows of the truck and it swerved as the windshield splintered and spiderwebbed, wrecking all chances of sight. The truck hit the pot holes they'd dug into the road and, with a loud squeal of tires leaving the salty asphalt, it tilted onto its side and continued to skid across the sand until it came to a stop.

Two dracs climbed out, moving slow and careful but still the same mindless movements Poison associated with them. He took them out with a single shot each, fast and quick. It came back easy, shooting dracs and handling his ray. He'd set up a shooting range behind the diner and practiced until his hand had been steady again but he hadn't gotten the chance to test it until then.

They opened the back of the truck, carefully and as a unit in case it had been a transport vehicle for something a little more dangerous than originally thought.

“Are those…”

“Yeah.” Jet Star said, already salivating at the thought of getting first picks of the boxes upon boxes of tech in front of them.

“This is cutting fucking edge. Look at this shit.” Jet Star nearly gushed, holding up a square, shiny thing Poison couldn't name if his life depended on it.

“That's great, Star.” Poison laughed, holstering his weapon after carefully checking everything around them, “Come on, we gotta flip this bad boy back onto its wheels and kick out the windshield so Pony can drive it to the checkpoint. We'll let Dr. D see if it's important before we take him up on that offer he made.”

Kobra made a sound, long and sad, and sounding nearly too much like a puppy for Poison to keep a straight face.

Together, the four of them were able to rock the truck back onto it's wheels and Jet Star pulled out a pen laser, which Poison hadn't even known he carried, and cut around the edges of the windshield so Poison could kick it with the heel of his foot until it shattered completely.

“Gee, thanks.” Pony said sarcastically, “I've always wanted to have glass dig into my ass while I drive two hours. You guys are the best.”

“Just tryin'a fulfill the fantasies.” Poison said dutifully and patted the glass covered seat for him.

Pony flipped him off but he was laughing so Poison didn't take it too hard. Instead, they watched Pony drive off in the stolen truck and then got back into the Trans Am and followed him.

“Great job, guys. This is a real find.” Dr. D said as soon as they were in earshot. Already there was another crew unloading the truck, boxes upon boxes of tech that would help not only desert crews but the people in the city as well, when it made the rotation.

“Did you find anything you wanted?” The doctor asked, wheeling over to meet them and clasping Kobra on the shoulder.

“We wanted to make sure it wasn't real important before we took anything.” Poison replied, “In case it was tech someone else might need real bad.”

“First pick.” Dr. D said firmly and motioned to the piled boxes, “Go, Killjoys. You guys deserve it. Pony, too. Great job with the newbies.”

“They're naturals.” Pony shrugged, “Poison's a little slower than me, but a lot more patient, I'll give him that.”

Poison just laughed and followed Kobra and Pony, Jet Star already drooling all over the boxes as he sorted through one carefully.

When there was a box full of parts Jet Star said he couldn't live without and Mikey had picked up a better data pad for the diner, they stored it in the trunk of the Trans Am and went back to the tent to say their goodbyes.

“Like I said,” Dr. D held up a thin folder when they were inside, “You'll mostly be on data collection since I lost my crew. This convoy is about four days out so you'll have a little break. All the info is in this folder. Think you can handle it?”

Poison held his hand out with a smirk.

-

The Fabulous Killjoys made a name for themselves, wrote it in Better Living blood, their own sweat, and the defeated tears of their enemies. Though mainly on information and data retrieval, the missions weren't paper pusher jobs and often included fighting and kidnapping dracs and Exterminators to pull information from them, and even a Scarecrow or two if it called for it. They'd send the info (coded, decoded, discs, maps, whatever they could get their hands on, whatever Kobra could understand and translate to the rest of them) and then they would get a new mission and it would start again. They had a regular runner, Agent Cherry Cola, who was a part of the crew that ran as Dr. D's security detail, and h quickly became a close friend of the Killjoys, along with his crew members Fuck machine and Anonymous Witness.

Over time, months and weeks of constant working and proving themselves to the Zone rats who had doubted them after spending eight years in the city, they rose up in the loose ranking system of the crews and material they were sent to retrieve grew more important and vital to the safety of those in the desert.

Poison grew used to having to fight for his place with crew leaders, had been punched and kicked and had fought back just as hard more than he'd ever fought as a kid. He was no Kobra, but his hand to hand skills weren't dismal and it wasn't long before people learned that just because he was merciful, kind to a degree many had never seen before, didn't mean that he wouldn't shoot someone in the head, especially for threatening his crew. Jet Star had to prove his mechanical genius over and over and over, until he developed his skills enough to be the best around.

Like Poison had always told anyone who would listen, Jet Star was a Toro and a Toro could rip something apart and put it back together with less parts and working better than it had beforehand. Kobra, like Poison, had gotten teased and picked on just as much as Poison and Jet Star, but got into many more fights than either of his elder crew had due to having such a short lid on his temper. Eventually, it became clear to anyone hoping to fight him that he'd inherited his old crews fighting skills and the fighting tapered off as the Killjoys gained respect throughout the crews who had once mocked them. Poison didn't feel like he had many skills outside of leading his crew, but the one thing he was good at was shooting. Neither Kobra nor Jet Star had the best of aim, but Poison could hit anything he could see between the eyes with one shot.

Over the years that they readjusted to the desert, they made a place for themselves. No one had not heard of the Fabulous Killjoys, led by the infamous Party Poison. No one claimed that they were no better than city scum and no one dared to steal from them or challenge them in a fair fight.

They were given their own wanted posters by Better Living, using pictures they'd deliberately let fly spies take. They were chased on sight, which did make their jobs easier than hunting the dracs down.

The bad thing about being on BL's radar though, was Korse.

“Korse?” Poison had asked, sitting on the floor of Dr. D's tent and cleaning at the singe marks on his jacket, from the last Exterminator the Killjoys had taken out.

“Korse.” Dr. D nodded, serious, “He's the leader of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.”

“Let him come then.” Kobra sneered, “We'll fight him.”

“He's different from anything you've seen before. Dead, somehow.”

“Like a zombie?”

“Like a drac with the mind of a 'crow, kid.” Dr. D shook his finger at Kobra, “And ten times as dangerous. Never, ever fight him alone. Not even with your crew. Just run and keep on runnin'.”

“Whatever.” Kobra slouched and crossed his arms, but he'd listened and was looking a little nervous.

“Don't worry.” Poison said when Dr. D had wheeled away to go talk to Pony and Jet Star about some of the equipment, “Korse won't touch us. We've got each other, right?”

“All we need.” Kobra said firmly.

It was three missions later when they finally met Korse, leader of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.

He was a tall, imposing figure, standing tall in the back of a BL jeep, zapper out and aimed towards the sky. His skin was so pale it nearly reflected the sun, put the basement pale Poison had been back in the city to shame, and his face was drawn and thin with dark sunglasses perched on his long nose. His head was bald, and his clothes were black, except for a white BL smiley face on his chest..

Poison shot him in the shoulder..

He'd been aiming for his head but Korse had ducked and the shot had nailed him in the left shoulder, just above the straps marking him as a Scarecrow. T and the shot had nailed him in the left shoulder, just above the straps marking him as S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W. The shocked look on his face, at the time, had been pretty funny as they sped away before the jeep could catch up. Had Poison known it would have started an obsession in him in him, a creepy lust for Poison's defeat at his own hand, he probably would have missed on purpose.

“He wants your body.” Kobra said simply, after nearly five encounters with Korse. He was only there every few missions, like he knew some of the missions Poison would be sent on, but not all of them.

“That's disgusting.” Jet Star said firmly from next to Poison. Poison just gripped the wheel tighter and tried not to let the feeling of being watched bother him.

Within a few years of being home, the Fabulous Killjoys had risen into infamy, wanted posters up at every gas station with other crews who had managed to get a spot high enough on BL's shit list to be singled out instead of just a few. instead of just a few Dead Peg stations closer to the city.

Poison had never wanted to become a figurehead, someone for anyone else to idolize like younger crews had began to do, but the more famous and known they got the more good they were doing (or at least that was the logic he was following),), so they did what they could for the betterment of their home and the people who lived in it. His crew was the best, his two brothers, the only people who had never strayed from him. They were faithful to him, and it almost (it did) scared him because even when they argued, once his plan was set, they would follow it without doubt. Like they thought he could never fail them.

As a child, he'd been told by Helena that he'd always be put in positions of power, it was in his nature to lead, and that he'd always need to do his best to protect the people that trusted him. He'd leaned too heavily on Jet Star and Kobra for his parents' tastes but Helena had understood that he'd never wanted to be a leader, had never wanted to be in charge or whatever. He'd just wanted to help.

In the city, Gerard had forced himself to take control, to do what needed to be done because Mikey was just too young and Ray had retreated so deep into himself after leaving their home and his father in the desert that if he hadn't done it, they would have died in the first few days.

Now, years later and old enough to do what they'd always wanted to do, help, Kobra and Jet Star followed him without hesitation. Their loyalty gained him others' loyalty as well and though they didn't accept others into their crew, didn't want to grow big like Jersey had been, they gained many friends and allies. For as many allies that they gained though, they gained enemies. Korse's special interest in Poison was dangerous, too dangerous, so they always had to be careful in public, never too trusting of strangers in case they were sold out like their own family had been.

The Killjoys didn't play politics (or get close to other crews, as Gerard's short lived relationship with Poetic Tragedy from The Used crew had shown), and for the most part they were too busy fighting dracs and hunting Exterminators, stealing into a base of one of the many outposts manned by BL employees in the desert to really hear or care about their latest popularity boost or fall. To many, they were heroes. To others, they were extremists who went too far and were going to get BL called down on all of them.

The three of them knew, though, that the tides were turning in their favor, in revolution's favor, and they were going to be a flame that lit one of the matches. Still, their enemies were powerful, and even so far out in Zone 6, they weren't always safe from danger.

“Poison!”

Poison, for the first time in ages, had been able to track down a full set of paints and had been using them on a tightly strung, white blanket instead of a canvas. His head snapped up as he heard his name, newly Firetruck Red hair sticking to his forehead with sweat and eyes still a little hazy from the trance he'd been in while painting. It was only half complete, a technicolor sunset he'd had in his head for awhile, but at the sight of a familiar bike speeding towards him and his name being called even from so far away, he closed his paints and wrapped his palette in clear wrap, carefully saved for such a purpose. He was putting them away when the bike skidded to a stop close to him. The driver didn't even put the kickstand up, just let it fall with wheels still turning while he raced over, yanking his helmet on.

“Dewees?” Poison asked, tense and looking behind Dewees, ready to see a whole army of Dracs, “What the fuck, man, what-”

“The Legacy!” Dewees gasped, leaning over to rest on his knees and catch his breathe, “Leathermouth's bringing The Legacy on you!”

“What?” Poison turned at Kobra's voice, found he and Jet Star coming out of the diner, confusion and worry on their faces, “What did you just say?”

“The Legacy!” Dewees nearly yelled, “W-We were just, we were putting down explosives, nothing big, just an abandoned warehouse BL uses to house Dracs sometimes in Zone 3,” He paused again, yanked his canteen out to drink deeply and stand up straight, cleared his throat so he could talk, “We didn't know it was occupied. But-But, shit, man, it was fucking occupied, all right. Greaser saw the cars, two fucking BL Trans Ams, a little like yours except they were pink. Bright pink with a blue BL face. Oh man, Ghoul and I were gonna hightail it, but the others wanted to keep going. I swear, if I'd known they were gonna try to pin it on you guys, I never would have let them.”

“Pin it-What? Dewees, what the fuck did they do? Skip the static, give us the fucking news!”

Dewees rubbed his face, “They made Ghoul blow up the cars, man. He blew them sky high, past the big ball in the sky, to the fuckin' moon. They were wrecked. And one of 'em came out.”

“You're sure it was Legacy, man? Abso-fucking-lutely sure?”

“Yes,” Dewees said immediately, “I'm positive. He came out in a pink jumpsuit, Poison. Holy shit, he was so pissed. I thought we were going to die, I swear. Ghoul and I already had the van ready, we needed to get the fuck out of there and motherfucking Greaser has had it out for you guys forever, you know that,”

“Dewees,” Poison said, feeling his heart slowing to almost dead in his chest, “What the fuck did Greaser do? What did he do?”

“He said, 'Present from the Killjoys,'”, Dewees covered his head, “And he told them where Dr. D's located right now.”

“For fuck's sake,” Poison barely breathed out, “How did he know where he was, Dewees?”

“He,” Dewees squeezed his hand, still hiding his eyes, “God fucking damn it, he went through my shit and found his location from a transmission Dr. D sent directly to me. It was supposed to be locked. I think he made Ghoul unlock it.”

“He made him?” Jet Star frowned, “Your Ghoul seems to have a problem saying no.”

“He's fucked up,” Dewees said darkly, “They fuck with him a lot, okay? He's really protective of me and Hambone and they use that against him, especially fucking Hambone, but that isn't the fucking point. We have to go, Dr. D sent me to go get you guys. All of his crews are out and if Legacy comes down on him-”

“Let's go,” Poison said tightly, “Dewees, you're leading. And if something happens to Dr. D,” Poison made a fist, “Leathermouth is as good as fucking dead, you dig?”

“I dig.” Dewees said darkly, “Now hurry, we gotta fuckin' hurry!”

He yanked the helmet back on and moved to pick his bike up while Kobra tossed Poison the keys to the Trans Am and they piled in.

Poison peeled off after Dewees, cursing under his breathe.

“Poison,” Kobra said carefully, setting a hand on his knee, “Focus, all right? We'll get there.

“We'd better. And Leathermouth better be fucking ready for when I get my hands on them.”

Dewees wasn't far ahead of them, swerving just slightly every few seconds, like he was distracted. James Dewees, city born and refusing to conform to the norm of using a different name, was a drifter when Poison had first come into contact with him nearly a year after the Killjoys had been returned to the desert. They'd met through Dr. D, who had put them together because Dewees was a Tumbleweed, though he mostly bought rather than smuggled himself, and then sold like a trader. He was the only man Poison trusted with the Killjoys' materials and weapons and if Poison had something specific in mind that he or his crew needed, they went, exclusively, to Dewees. He was a cool dude, smart and fucking hilarious, chill and trustworthy. Poison trusted him with his life (though not with Kobra or Jet Star's, which was good enough for Dewees). He was even one of the replacement DJ's for WKIL when Dr. D couldn't broadcast himself due to being on the run, or even when he came down with some sickness due to the VMA injury he'd gotten during his participation in the Helium Wars.

The one thing, the thing that made Poison keep a small but necessary distance between Dewees and the Killjoys, was Dewees' habit of running with Leathermouth. Though he'd been a drifter when they'd first met, he'd since fallen in with the only crew that Poison could honestly say he hated.

Leathermouth was a hate group, as far as Poison was concerned, a terror cell just as bad as Better Living and with even less of a disregard for other crews. They were all about bombing and fighting, picking fights that were better off left alone and holding ridiculous grudges that made no sense to anyone else. Poison still had no fucking idea what he'd done to piss Greaser off enough to get shit like this thrown at them.

“The Legacy…” Jet Star rubbed his face in the back seat as they zoomed through sand and air, Kobra checking their zaps and reloading all of them to their full capacity, “What the fuck are we gonna do if they show up, Gee? We can't win that fight.”

“No one could win that fight,” Poison said grimly, “But if they show up, we'll fucking have to, Ray.”

“This is such bullshit,” Kobra said darkly, “If Dewees' fucking friend could grow a fucking pair,”

“Hey,” Poison nudged him, “Let's not put blame on the kid. He's fucked up, if what Dewees said was true. That just makes these shitheads even worse, abusing a kid like that.”

“Whatever.” Kobra said, slumping.

Dr. D, Poison knew, was in Zone 5, which was a lucky break for them. They'd have a better chance of beating The Legacy there with Dewees leading the way and only a Zone away. Dewees was the fastest rider in the desert, could get from one Zone to the next is almost half the time it was take a car or other crew to cross it and Poison knew Dewees was going slow enough for them to keep up, even with his baby going as fast as she could. Jet Star had been meaning to put in some new speed boosters, but the parts were hard to come by and they'd been distracted with missions for the last few months.

Finally, finally, the familiar tent came into view, free of smoke or pink jumpsuited individuals, and both Dewees and Poison slowed as they came into view. As much as Poison wanted to skid to a stop and rush inside, he needed to be alert and prepared for an ambush. If Dr. D was dead, he needed to protect his crew above everything else.

“Stay.” He said firmly, over Kobra's objections and, leaving the key in the ignition and the engine running, stepped out of the car and approached Dewees, who was pulling his helmet off.

“Lets go.” He said firmly, to which Dewees nodded. They both drew their zappers and walked over slow and careful, as silent as they could be with the wind whistling around them, practically howling. It would rain soon.

“Dr. Death Defying.” Dewees called into the tent, “Pony?”

“Fuck Machine?” Poison tried, “Witness?”

“Anonymous Witness isn't here, she had a mission.” Fuck Machine's voice came from the tent. She shoved her way out, ruffling her dark hair and frowning at them, “Guys, it was a fucking late night. What are you doing here, and why the fuck are you armed?”

“They aren't here yet,” Poison said, nearly slumping with relief. He dropped his zapper and lifted his hand, not bothering to turn around and see Kobra and Jet Star get out of the Trans Am and join them.

“Leathermouth fucked up again,” Dewees said grimly, “We need to get you guys moving.”

Fuck Machine frowned and smoothed her ruffled skirt, bright red lips and shark features, killer legs and combat boots making her look ready to take down the Legacy all on her own.

“What? Why?” She asked, already going back inside, “Guys, Dr. D! We gotta go! Emergency packing up, everyone up!”

Pony groaned but stood from his place on the floor while Poison and Dewees followed her in and Kobra and Jet Star stayed out to keep watch, “What? Fuck Machine, what happened?”

“Linds?” Dr. D grumbled, wheeling out of the only sectioned off area in the tent, a place specifically designed to give Dr. D a comfortable place to sleep, “Machine, Poison, Dewees...something happened?”

“Leathermouth fucking gave away your location,” Poison said darkly, “To The Legacy.”

“What!?” Fuck Machine didn't stop in her packing, but her voice cracked in outrage, “What the everloving Fuck!?”

“I know,” Dewees shook his head, “I know, I know, I didn't even know they had it. I think they made Ghoul break into my transmissions and get the location.”

“Those fuckheads,” Fuck Machine nearly snarled, “I'm going to rip them apart,”

“No time.” Poison said darkly, “We need to go go go, they could be here anytime.”

“Poison!” Jet Star yelled, “Dust cloud!”

“Fuck,” Dr. D said with feeling, “Pony, go get the van. Fuck Machine, you start loading equipment. If it's replaceable, leave it. If it isn't and you don't have it in the van in five minutes, leave it.”

“Got it, boss.” Pony said and slipped out the back to get their van ready to go. Fuck Machine started loading faster, putting things in metal boxes to be packed away fast. Already most of the room was in a box with a table of tech the only thing left to throw into back of the van. They'd obviously been in the middle of getting ready to move on the night before but the show had run later than usual due to Dr. D having to direct traffic around a fire that had started in Zone 2.

Poison and Dr. D left through the front, where they watched a dust cloud quickly approaching. It grew bigger and bigger as the van in the back was filled and the tent was torn down and packed away. In under five minutes, the tent was gone and all that was left in its place were a few pieces of tech. Even Dr. D didn't fuck around when the Legacy came into the picture. The Legacy was a scary story told to motorbabies to keep them in line, a horror many crews prayed to the Sun and Sand to be kept safe from. Run by The Beibs, a Scarecrow whose skills were rumored to be beaten only by the heads of the Exterminator branch, 2Chainz and Shane Morris, it consisted of five unnamed Exterminators. Rumor had it that all of them had the skills to be promoted to 'crow but they wanted to stay a team and so had all turned down the offer, which was when The Beibs swept in and took over their crew. They liked to wander the desert, wreaking any and all desert communities they could get their Better Living scum hands on.

“Go,” Poison said, “We'll hold them off.”

“You can't-”

“Go.” Kobra said firmly, “We'll do it. We have to.”

“...You get out fast, kids.” Dr. D said softly, touching Poison's elbow, “Don't be a hero.”

“I'm just a man,” Poison smirked, confident and as foolishly brave as he'd always been, “not a hero.”

“Dr. D!” Pony shouted. Fuck Machine hurried over and started pushing his chair, moving faster than if he'd been left on his own to roll towards the van.

“Dr. D!” Dewees called after him, “I'm so fuckin' sorry, sir.”

“Not your fault, James!” Dr. D called back as he was helped into the back of the van with their gear, “Just remember what I fuckin' told you about Leathermouth!”

“I will, man.” Dewees said seriously. They watched the van upthrust the speed and Poison would bet anything that Fuck Machine was driving. She's always been a rubberburner, the fastest crash queen he'd seen since Helena.

“Shit.” Jet Star cursed, bringing their attention back to the approaching cloud, “It's fucking Leathermouth.”

“Oh,” Kobra said and gripped Poison's arm tight, “Keep your fucking cool, bro.”

“No promises.” Poison said darkly.

“What the hell are they doing…” Dewees rubbed his face, “What the fucking ever loving fuck are they fucking doing!”

The van pulled up slowly, stopped and opened up to reveal maybe six guys. They wore matching brown jackets and sunglasses, their hair was a mix and match of neons and bright hues, and Poison wanted to punch every one of them in the teeth.

“Dewees.” Greaser said, stepping forward, “Ghoul's lost his shit.”

“What the fuck did you do to him? Where is he?”

Greaser rolled his eyes, motioning to Hambone. Poison didn't know any of them, he'd never met Ghoul or most of the men from the van, but he'd had contact with Greaser before when their crews ran into each other during skirmishes or when the Killjoys got called in to stop Leathermouth from doing something stupid, and Hambone was one of Greaser's favorite followers, “Hambone here told him you'd gone off to face Legacy and he just lost his shit. Started screaming and freaking the fuck out, tried to break my fucking nose, the bitch.” Greaser shook his head, “Look, you need to go calm him down. We're heading out and if he doesn't stop, Hambone is gonna put one between his eyes.”

“He's just a fucking kid!” Dewees snapped, “Why the fuck would you tell him that!?”

“There's no such thing as a fucking kid in the desert,” Greaser said coldly, “If he can't deal with it, then he needs to die anyway.”

“For fuck's sake,” Dewees nearly growled. Poison had never heard his voice sound so disgusting before, “Ghoul is the best fucking thing to ever happen to Leathermouth, you wouldn't be able to do nearly as much damage as you do without him! He's not even eighteen yet!”

“Fuck off, Dewees,” Greaser sneered, “You think just because the fucking city slicker came from the Black Parade Rebellion that he deserves some special fucking treatment? He doesn't, the little shit needs to get his act together or go back to the fucking slums and become a zombie! We don't have time or need for some weak bin rat!”

Poison lost it.

He came back to himself bloody. Kobra and Jet Star had his arms, pinning them to the ground while Dewees held his legs.

“Get the fuck off me!” He was screaming, sounding terrifying to his own ears. He'd never heard himself sound like that before, but fuck, the kid wasn't even Mikey's age and they were purposefully triggering him and blackmailing him into blowing shit up for them. Worse still, the kid was from his rebellion, he'd led that parade, this kid was one of his, and they'd fucking...His mind was hazy and all he wanted to do was shove his fist as far down Greaser's throat as he could.

“Calm the fuck down, Poison!” Kobra hissed, covering his eyes with his hand. Poison went completely still, stopped struggling and took a deep breathe. Without his eyesight, he couldn't do shit and he knew it, and it had always been how Mikey and Ray calmed him down when he went off.

“You got him.” Dewees said quietly, “Poison, you got him. If you don't stop, you'll kill him.”

Poison didn't say anything because now that he was breathing, he could feel the speckles of drying, tacky wetness on his face and fingers, taste the familiar copper tang of blood that wasn't his own.

“Okay.” He finally hissed out, “I'm calm.”

Kobra lifted his hand and the sun blinded him for a few seconds longer until he could blink his pupils back into obeying him and they released him.

He set up and let his eyes settle before they landed on Greaser, bloody and ripped apart and out cold on the ground. His fingers had defensive wounds on them but Poison couldn't feel a single place where he'd obviously made it through Poison's defenses, judging by the blood on him.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Hambone was saying, hovering over Greaser awkwardly, no idea what to do.

“I gotta go take care of Ghoul. You guys should get out of here before Legacy shows up. They wouldn't be too far behind these idiots.”

“Whatever,” Poison said darkly and stood. He shrugged off Kobra and Jet Star when they tried to help him but did take the offered rag from Jet Star's leg pocket to wipe his face and knuckles off.

He turned to go, then stopped and turned back, glaring at the Leathermouth crew, “If you ever put Dr. D or my crew in danger like this again, I will rip you apart.”

Hambone nodded when no one else made a noise.

Poison drove away, Kobra and Jet Star sitting silently in the car with him, offering support when he needed it.

His hands shook on the wheel but he face was a hard, steady mask. He needed a fucking Slam Chaser, but Jet Star would never let him drink anything, especially not at the moment. Shrimp, bloody and broken and long-suppressed in his memory, was in front of his face everytime he blinked. Poison wondered if he'd ever fully disappear.

-

“Okay, kids,” Dr. D said over the transmitter, “This is a big one. This is serious stuff. You dig?”

“So we can't sent it with the usual runners?” Jet Star guessed, sounding like he didn't want to know the answer, “Was he compromised?”

“Cherry Cola has gone missing,” Dr. D confirmed, sounding sad, “411 is he was in a firefight with some dracs, it went Costa Rica, he lost his zap and got pixelated.”

“Shit,” Poison rubbed his face, “Fuck Machine and Witness? They okay?”

“Goin' polka dotty tryina' find 'em.” Dr. D said softly, like he didn't think they'd ever find him. They wouldn't, Poison knew. Not if he'd been pixelated.

“Shit.” Kobra said softly, “Shit, Dr. D. We're so sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Dr. D said gently, “Definitely not your fault. But I need a new runner for you guys. Any ideas? I'd send my usual, but your info is much too valuable to send off with any of 'em.”

“Got it. I'm sure Dewees'll have someone in mind.”

“You gonna talk to Dewees?” Dr. D said, surprised, “He said you'd cut contact.”

“I was pissed,” Poison said reasonably, “And I had a fucking right to be. But it's in the past. He's a...friend.”

“And the best Tumbleweed you know, right?”

“Right.” Kobra said with a shaky smile. Though it'd been nearly a month, Kobra was still a little shaken by the Legacy scare. Gerard had told him their story as a scary bedtime story when they were still in the city and they'd always fucked with his head a little after that, something Gerard hadn't seen coming or he'd never have told him the stories.

“Okay, sit on that info for awhile, 'til it cools down, okay? I'll send Dewees your way tomorrow and you can ask him for a list.”

“Got it, Dr. D. Killjoys out.”

Poison ended the transmission and then broke the transmitter in half, then into fourths and buried it in the sand.

“You sure about Dewees?” Ray asked when they got into the car. Gerard pressed his head to the wheel and shrugged, tried to ignore the headache forming.

“Gee?” Mikey asked, “We can find our own runner.”

“It's nothing.” Gerard sighed, rubbed his head and set up, “I'm just still so fucking pissed. But it's nothing. I trust Dewees, even if he makes shitty choices about crews, and he's connected. This will be a good healing process. Start somewhere small and rebuild, right?”

“Right…” Mikey said, “If you think it's a good idea.”

“It is.” Gerard said, “And maybe Ray can finally talk him into a few new boosters for the car. Make her fly, maybe.”

Ray laughed, which was the point, and it broke the tension building. They joked around, played a cassette tape Dr. D gave them, and tried to forget that Cherry Cola had ever been their friend.

-

“Dewees,” Poison said warmly and drew him into a tight, one armed hug. Dewees returned it with a grin, looking a little relieved.

“Poison, hey,” he shuffled a little, looking awkward, “Listen,”

“Don't worry about it.” Poison shook his head, “It's in the past.”

“Seriously?” Dewees said slowly, “I mean…”

“Seriously. It wasn't your fault.”

“...I brought you a list,” Dewees finally mumbled, looking a little more relieved as he pulled out a paper with a few names on it and gave it to him, “But uh, I actually have a favor.”

“A favor?” Poison raised an eyebrow, “I dunno if I'm the person to ask for a favor right now, man. I said all was forgiven and forgotten, but…”

“No,” Dewees shook his head, “Look…” he looked over his shoulders, like there were spy flies around or something, “I'm gonna level with you...I know a lot of people you could use. But uh, there's someone I would really, really appreciate you using instead.”

“Who?” Poison asked with a frown, looking over the list.

“He isn't on there. I didn't want to risk Leathermouth finding the paper and seeing his name. I want you to take Fun Ghoul.”

“What,” Poison said dumbly.

“Wait, wait, okay, just listen,” Dewees said, holding his hands up, “Just, hear me out, okay? Please.”

“...fine, fuck, whatever. Why the fuck would I take Ghoul as a runner?”

“Fun Ghoul is a great fucking kid, okay? He's so fucking young and he's so fucking angry, Poison. But he isn't soulless, not like the other guys. He's not here to cause more pain and misery, to make everyone just as pissed and hurt as they are. He just wants to take Better Living down and he's gotten sucked into this group he can't handle. He's gotten in over his head and I'm fucking leaving, before it takes me down with it. I want him out too, I want to save him at least, because I couldn't save Hambone before it was too late.”

“Why don't you just take him with you?”

“Because I'm leaving, Poison.” Dewees said softly, “I'm going into the city, and I mentioned it to him and it almost sent him into another attack. He won't go back to the city. And I figured, he's from the Black Parade, I know you've always been a little protective over your kids, so...”

“Shit,” Poison groaned, rubbing his face, feeling that ever present hole in his stomach pulse, “Right in the chest. You're going for the heart, huh?”

“I need to save this kid, Poison.” Dewees said with feeling, “Look, I'll mention it to him okay? I'll send him your way and if it doesn't work, you don't like him or he's a bitch and won't work with you, you can have that list and use whoever. They're all trustworthy as me, they all want to give their lives to take BL down. But I'm begging you to let me try to get Ghoul out before it's too late for him.”

“...shit,” Poison cursed and kicked at the sand under his feet, “You so fucking owe me. Send him our way.”

“Oh, fuck, thank you,” Dewees said, grabbing Poison's hand and squeezing, “Seriously, I owe you so much,”

“I want fucking speed boosters for the Trans Am,” Poison said darkly, “And fucking paints, and the most up to date computer you can get your hands on for Kobra, got it?”

“I swear, you'll get all of that. All of that and more.” Dewees said with a grin, nodding hard, “Whatever you want.”

“And if he fucks up,” Poison stabbed his finger into Dewees' chest, “It's on you.”

“Definitely, I promise.” Dewees nodded again, rubbing the spot Poison had poked, “He'll be by sometime next week, probably. That cool with you? And if he tries anything you don't like, your conscious will be clear.”

“Fine, whatever.” Poison rolled his eyes, but he stilled bumped his fist with Dewees when he offered his fist and they parted ways with a smile.

“You did what!?” Mikey demanded when he got back to the diner and told them the plan.

“I...hired Fun Ghoul?” Gerard said with a wince. He'd completely forgotten Mikey's dislike for the mysterious Fun Ghoul, and Mikey was not taking the news well.

“For fuck's sake, Gerard!” Mikey threw his hands up, “Are you trying to get us all killed?! That guy is a ticking time bomb! He literally makes time bombs for funzies!”

“He almost got us killed!” Ray agreed, frowning in that 'I'm so disappointed' way of his. It made Gerard's stomach twist, but it was too late to back out now.

“Look guys,” He sighed, “Dewees was fucking begging us to take this kid on and he's one of ours. It's not set in stone, just one test run and if we don't like him, we send him on his merry way.”

“Yeah, right,” Mikey sighed loudly, “You're gonna adopt him and he's gonna stick around and have a freak out fit and kill us all.”

“And Dewees is leaving too,” Ray sighed and collapsed into the nest, “Just great.”

“It's not all bad, Mikeyway,” Gerard offered, “Maybe you'll really like Fun Ghoul. And Dewees could do a lot of good in the city. He's a great Tumbleweed, he'd help move people out into the desert for fucking free.”

“Yeah,” Mikey sighed, “Great for them. It is, really,” He said when Gerard gave him a sharp look, “I'm just saying…”

“I know, it's a stupid move.” Gerard sighed, “But it's something we have to do. It's not easy being a fucking good guy, okay?”

“I know.” Mikey said darkly.

“We'll just have to see.” Ray said, shrugging, “We'll have to see how it goes.”

“I hope he's a total shit and we all hate him and he has to leave and never come back.” Mikey glared, crossing his arms and huffing.

-

Fun Ghoul showed up the next week and he was decidedly not a total shit that they all hated, forced to leave and never return.

He met Jet Star first because Jet Star was the best judge of character between the trio and both brothers trusted him much more on the matter of people then they trusted themselves or even each other. He met Kobra afterwards, who was the sorest over the Legacy incident and who really did trust Jet Star's judgement but wanted to see the kid for himself before he consented to handing over his hard won information to him. While they were awkwardly speaking to each other, Jet Star joined Poison in the back room, where they kept the food, water, and bedding.

“What do you think?”

“He is...weird, man.” Jet Star shook his head, “But otherwise, he's okay. Nothing crazy about him. He's just...distant. Very closed off. I feel like we can trust him, but don't go sending him off with the best info just yet.”

Poison frowned but nodded. He was a little worried it wouldn't work out and he'd have to send the kid off on his own again.

“Okay,” Kobra said, entering the room, with a small, sandy person following him. He was a short little dude, compact like a city born usually was with long, dark brown hair, a guarded look in his hazel eyes and so many tattoos on his skin that he could have been considered a walking-talking art exhibit. His mouth and nose were covered by a bandana, which he pulled off as he walked in.

“This is Party Poison,” Kobra said, voice blank but Poison couldn't detect any anger underneath.

So the kid had won his crew over, kind of, that was a good sign.

“We'll leave you guys to talk and patrol a little while you fill him in and set him up.” Jet Star patted Poison's shoulder and he and Kobra left, neither acknowledging Fun Ghoul, but not ignoring him either as they did so. They were giving them space so he could make his own judgments and he appreciated it.

“So you're the infamous Fun Ghoul, huh?” Poison said softly, standing from his chair to walk over.

Ghoul's head snapped up at his voice and holy shit.

“What,” Poison said softly, his eyes going wide.

“Shrimp?”

“Greasy!” Shrimp, (holy fuck, it was the kid! It was their stalker! Holy Shit!,) said with a voice similar to Poison's own shocked words.

“You're Fun Ghoul!? You're alive!?” There had been a BL wanted poster for him, usually tacked up near the Killjoys, but his face had always been covered by the red 'X' and Poison had never bothered looking close.

“You're Party Poison.” Fucking Shrimp said, there and whole and looking steady and alive, nothing like the blood spattered, ragged little face Gerard had made himself forget just so he wouldn't see it every time he closed his eyes every second of every day.

He looked different. Taller and stronger, still small and compact like his relative, like a city born. His skin had tanned well, and he looked competent and capable and Poison's tongue went dry.

“Shit,” Poison said thickly, stepping closer. Ghoul didn't move towards him, but he didn't move away. His fucking bambi eyes fluttered when Poison touched his cheek and Poison felt his throat constrict. He just wanted to touch him and make sure he was real, the kid Poison remembered and the man who was inspiring completely different feelings in his gut, in the same person.

“Fuck,” Poison finally said, voice thick and slow, “I can't believe it's you…”

He'd thought for so long that Shrimp was dead, buried under sand or a drac mask after Poison had left him and fucking doomed him to the Sun.

If asked, Poison would say that he wasn't sure who kissed who, but he distinctly remembered that Fun Ghoul leaned up on his toes to kiss him. It was dirty and fast and desperate, Ghoul pushing and pulling until and the next thing Poison really remembered was having Fun Ghoul (Shrimp!) under him, against the wall, their bodies pressed hard together, rutting, faux-fucking against the wall (and he wasn't a kid anymore, neither of them were, he had fucking grown up and he'd gotten harder around the edges, and Poison just couldn't keep his hands off).

And then they were really fucking, on the mattress in the corner Jet Star had salvaged from a burnt out hotel a few Zones over. How he'd convinced Fun Ghoul to let him do it Poison didn't know, but he remembered tight heat around his fingers, slicked with Better Living lotion, pressing inside all careful and slow to the broken noises Ghoul made. Three fingers in, four, and then Poison couldn't wait anymore and Fun Ghoul's knees were bent to around his ears, feet high in the air and arms yanking Poison down so they could kiss as desperately as the near-gentle pumps of Poison's hips and slow, careful drag of his cock in and out of Ghoul was. When Ghoul came, he clenched his eyes shut with the force of it, but Poison kept his open, even if only partially, so he could watch Ghoul's face, take in the dirty, pretty features he'd fucking missed.

“O-oh,” Ghoul stuttered out when Poison had collapsed on top of him. His nails were still embedded in Poison's back and he could feel the sting of any number of cuts and scraps from Ghoul's long nails. His body felt great, like he'd had a full body orgasm. He didn't want to move, but he was getting sensitive and he knew Ghoul must have been feeling it too so he carefully lifted himself up and slipped out of the warm, shivering body under him. He felt Ghoul nuzzle into his shoulder and couldn't help the flare of warmth in his chest. He pressed light kisses to Ghoul's neck, trailed his lips up and down against the elevated pulse point, hands rubbing gently along the tanned thighs still hugging his hips.

“I-I…” Ghoul took a breath, shuddering under Poisons' gentle, teasing touches, “I should go,”

Poison didn't think he'd be able to let go. He'd lost him once, had left him behind with The Used crew, hadn't gone back for him like he fucking should have and could never pry out what had happened to him from Poetic Tragedy (one of the reasons they hadn't worked out), and it was like he'd been given a second chance to keep him safe, with Gerard and his crew. He'd be damned if he let himself lose the kid-this man, who Poison had already failed, again.

“Don't.” He said softly, pressing another kiss to Ghoul's lips, “Don't leave again. I'm fucking sorry I left you in the first place. I never should have done that.”

“Can we,” Ghoul said, voice going for hard but cracking and then shattering in the middle, “Can we not?”

“Okay,” Poison agreed immediately, nodding, “Yeah, okay, we won't. But don't leave, okay? Not yet.”

Ghoul didn't answer for a few seconds, but he nodded and hooked his heels behind Poisons' knees so that they were completely intertwined, bent up together with one of Poison's hands on the bottom of his back, helping his arch into Poison as their bodies stirred again.

Jet Star and Kobra returned at some point but it must have been while Poison was making Ghoul scream because they didn't bother them all day. It wasn't until late, with the sun nearly going down, that Poison finally let Ghoul go. Kobra and Jet Star didn't say anything when they walked past, outside to the bike Jet Star had fixed up for their runner. They were lucky Poison was letting him go even then.

“Here, this is yours.” Poison said, patting the seat, “It goes pretty fast and it's pretty sensitive, so…”

Ghoul rolled his eyes, but he smiled a little, “I'll be careful, Poison. Seriously.”

“I just, sorry,” Poison ran a hand through his head, “I know I'm being really intense, and it's probably creeping you the fuck out, but it's just…” he shrugged, “It's like a second chance, I dunno. I left you, man, and I shouldn't have. I regretted it the second I turned around, but I was too fucking stupid to see that. I'm so fucking sorry, I just,”

“Hey,” Ghoul shoved his shoulder a little, giving him a look, “We're here now, right? Maybe you were supposed to have that second chance. But I don't like being controlled, I sure as fuck don't like being babied and I like my space. Okay? I'm pretty pretty fucking calm right now, but I'm also pretty fucking sure it's shock and 'well-fucked' dulling everything.”

“Yeah, I understand, and usually, I hate those things too! I'm not like this, I swear!” Poison groaned and rubbed his face, “Shit, okay, here,”

He handed him a bundle of information, some less important things that they'd been sitting on for about two weeks which they really needed to get sent before it lost relevance, “Here. You know where Dr. D is?”

“Yeah,” Ghoul took the package and nodded, “Get this to him, stay there the night, drive around tomorrow for awhile, come back and repeat, right?”

“You got it.” Poison nodded, “And if you run into trouble?”

“Burn it, break it, swallow it, destroy it.”

“It comes down to you or it, you drop it and run.” Poison said softly, “Don't lose your life over this, got it? Nothing is as important as a life.”

Ghoul didn't say anything back, just got on the back and secured the information in his jacket.

“You know,” He said, before starting up the bike, “Leathermouth wasn't anything like that.”

“We're nothing like Leathermouth.” Poison coughed, crossed his arms, “Now go, they're expecting you in two hours.”

He revved the bike, tested his weight and balance and Poison watched quietly. He wanted to ask him to stay again, and the fucked up part was that he thought Ghoul would, just because he asked. Poison knew Shrimp had been gone for him, puppy love or hero worship, or a weird mix of the two but Poison wasn't a pedophile and had never even had a thought about this happening. But this wasn't just Shrimp. This person was...he didn't even know. But Ghoul had said he liked his space and they really did need to move that info before it got too old to be useful, so Poison took a step back.

“Be safe.”

Ghoul hesitated before he drove off, reached over and dragged Poison back to him, kissed him hard, “Don't fucking leave, okay? I swear to God, I just found you again, don't you dare,”

“No,” Poison nodded, kissing him soft and careful, “We'll be here.”

“Whatever.” Ghoul said, but he pushed Poison away so he wouldn't get hurt when he started the bike and zoomed off, hitting the red line before he was even out of sight. Like he wanted to hurry there so he could hurry back.

Poison rubbed his face, and tried not to think about how much he'd missed seeing the stranger, the little stalker who he'd always felt a little protective over. Leaving him, when he'd finally let himself think about it, had been like reliving losing Matt. The difference was, losing Shrimp had felt like sending him to the epicenter of the bomb, knowing it was going to go off. Having that off his chest, knowing that Shrimp hadn't been murdered out there all on his own, was like being able to breathe deep and not feel a disease rattle in your lungs. He had him back, had a small connection to the city, to when his life was simpler than helping lead a rebellion and it was all about keeping Mikey and Ray safe, and he didn't plan to lose him again.

Ghoul came back two days later, having been held up by a Zone 4 raid and a small clap with a pair of dracs.

Poison kissed him for a long time while Kobra and Jet Star were on another, unnecessary, patrol, and let Ghoul fuck him, hard and rough and just as great as last time. He knew he was overwhelming Ghoul but he didn't really care and Ghoul clung back just as hard. Poison just wanted to keep him this time. He needed to keep him safe. He'd promised Noise Control that he'd keep him safe and he'd failed that promise. He could fulfill it now. He was ready for that responsibility, this promise to Dewees replacing that broken one with Noise Control.

Ghoul made his heart beat feel real.

“Poison…” Ghoul muttered, covering Poison's face with his smaller hand, pushing him a little, making a grin spread, “Go to fucking sleep, asshole.”

“I'm just happy.” Poison said simply, “Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you,” Ghoul rolled his eyes, then rolled them even harder at Poison's ever mature, “You did.”

“You're actually five.” Ghoul couldn't help but laugh. It made Poison's chest warm again.

“Shut up,” He said instead of saying 'I know it's really fast but stay forever', “You have another load to run tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

“I hate you,” Ghoul announced, but he sounded amused and he shoved Poison down and made himself comfortable on his chest, so Poison did not give a single fuck.

It became routine, pretty fast.

Ghoul would return from a run and spend the night with Poison, who had moved a few blankets and the mattress to a smaller offshoot of the back room, what was probably at some point the freezer but was now just an empty room with three shelves high off the ground and a thick door that was great for keeping the rest of the diner from hearing he and Ghoul fucking.

He'd leave and he'd return the next day. They didn't always fuck, though that was quite often what it devolved to. Sometimes, they had conversations, about things that had happened or people they'd known. Ghoul had laughed for hours when Poison told him about how he and Poetic Tragedy had ended, which had involved a lot of wasted paint, a pissed off Kobra and a blue-and-orange Tragedy. Poison got to hear about the first time Dewees had shown Ghoul how to wire a bomb, which he'd excelled at due to his mom's previous training, and how it had gone off in the van. Luckily it hadn't been a huge blast, just big enough to soot up the back of the van and everyone in it and burn a hole through the metal to allow the dust and sand picked up by the wheels to fill the inside up.

Nearly a month passed, and Poison felt lighter. He'd never been unhappy, just himself and his brothers, but something had always felt...missing in him. Like there was something not there that should of been. When he was younger, he'd had a feeling that it might have been Shrimp and now, older and maybe more mature, it was still the same kid who made the hole in his stomach stopping hurting a little. Ghoul filled a place next to him that Ray and Mikey had, obviously, never tried to. Ghoul didn't sugarcoat anything he said, didn't try to spare his feelings and let him know when he was being an idiot in a much faster and harsher manner that Ray or Mikey ever had. It should have made Poison mad, but it actually only made his chest feel warmer and warmer. Ghoul made him happy.

“Hey,” He said softly into the darkness of the room. Ghoul grumbled against his chest, still breathing a little hard from their actions a few minutes before.

“Hey,” He finally said back, when Poison didn't continue.

“Be a Killjoy.” Poison said daringly. He hadn't spoken to Kobra or Jet Star about it, hadn't even mentioned it to them as a possibility, but he wanted it more than he'd wanted anything since he'd wanted out of the city. He hadn't wanted anything for himself in so long, had always been focused on his crew or what Dr. D needed, or what he needed to do to continue the good fight. He wanted Ghoul to be a Killjoy, to be more than a runner, but an actual member of his crew. He wanted Ghoul to have a bigger reason to stick around then that Poison was easy for him.

“What?” Ghoul pulled away from him, frowning at him in the dark, “Dude, you've barely known me for a month and you're inviting me into your crew? You don't even know my name. Did you ask Kobra Kid and Jet Star? You remember who my old crew is right?”

Poison didn't care that he didn't know Fun Ghoul's real name. It was just a fucking name. He knew Fun Ghoul. He didn't care that he ran with Leathermouth, or that he was quite obviously fucked in the head. So was Poison. They all were. Every fucking body was fucked up in someway or another, but Ghoul made him feel better about his own shit and he hoped that he had the same effect on him.

“I've known you forever,” He said seriously, touching Ghoul's cheek.

He felt his skin flush, just like Poison loved, “You saw me a few times when I was a kid, years ago. You don't know me.”

He was totally trivializing their whole past, but whatever, Poison could deal with that.

“I want to.” He said softly and pulled at him until Ghoul slid close enough for him to hide in face in Ghoul's hair, “I want to know you. I don't know what it is, but I know you were meant to be here. With me. With us.”

“...I-I'll...think about it. No promises, Poison!”

He might as well of said yes, for all that Poison was concerned, but he didn't push. He just smiled into his hair, “That's all I want.”

And then he rolled on top of Ghoul and kissed him, because he couldn't control himself enough not to.

Poison didn't bring it up again and neither did Ghoul, but Poison wasn't going to let him forget.

“Hey,” He set in front of Ray and Mikey, after he'd seen Ghoul off with some actually important info and a hard kiss, and pulled his legs to his chest so he could rest his chin on his knees, “You guys have been avoiding him.”

“No, we haven't.” Ray said firmly, but he didn't look at Gerard, just kept tinkering with the tech he and Mikey had been working on all week.

“Yes, you have.” Gerard rolled his eyes, “You've been ignoring him, and he's noticed, and that is why he won't stay more than a day or two at a time.”

“Why does it matter?” Mikey frowned, also not looking at Gerard, “You guys are just fucking right? What does it matter if we don't like him and he doesn't like us?”

“It does matter!” Gerard frowned back at him, staring until Mikey looked up at meet his eyes, “We aren't...we aren't just fucking, okay? I really care about him. I...I wanted him to join us, maybe. For real.”

“Gerard.” Ray said carefully, setting down his tools, “You've known him for about a month. He used to run with Leathermouth. He literally is the reason that The Legacy almost killed Dr. D.”

“No,” Gerard shook his head, “He isn't. Dewees and you were right, Ray. He's fucked up. He's really not okay. He's a little broken, a little jagged. Sometimes he clams up so hard I can't even touch him, and sometimes he wants to talk about things that are like fire on my tongue to even think about. Sometimes, he hurts a lot and it hurts me, and sometimes I hurt a lot and he understands.”

He played with his fingers, running the pads of his middle and pointer over the seams in the palm of the opposite hand, “And I feel...I feel good around him. More than it was with Tragedy. More than anyone other than you two. He's special, you know?”

“No,” Mikey said carefully, “I don't know. At all.”

“Mikey, please,” Gerard said softly, finally breaking eye contact because he couldn't look at his brother and talk about his feelings anymore, “Just try. Introduce yourselves. You'll love him, I swear. He's...he's great. I...he's great.”

“...yeah, whatever, okay.” Mikey finally conceded, “We'll talk to him. But we aren't going to be his new BFFs, got it?”

“Yes, you will,” Gerard grinned, looking up, “But think what you want for now.”

The next night, Ghoul returned and instead of running to meet him like he usually did, Poison let him walk in by himself, passing Kobra and Jet Star tinkering around on one of Kobra's old computers. Dewees had pulled through and sent them all of the things Poison had asked for so they were dissecting Kobra's old tech for parts.

“Hey, Ghoul.” Jet Star said distractedly. He didn't even notice the way Ghoul nearly lost his footing. That had probably been the first non-business related thing Poison's crew had ever said to him.

“Uh, hey…” Ghoul said carefully back.

“Nice ride?” Kobra asked, just as carefully. But he was being friendly, for Kobra, and that was all Poison had asked for.

“Yeah,” Ghoul nodded, continuing sarcastically, “great scenery. Real diverse..”

Kobra laughed, thank God, and Ghoul continued on, tense in a different way from when he'd come into the diner and with a little smile on his face that made Poison's face hurt.

“Hey,” Poison said quietly when Ghoul finally made his way over, “Everything go according to plan?”

“Yep,” Ghoul said, not stopping until he was on his toes and kissing Poison. Poison wasn't going to argue.

The next day, sore and loose and pleased, Gerard dropped into the booth across from Ray and opened their supply list.

“We should probably go into the bazaar soon, refresh our supplies.”

“Yeah, probably,” Ray nodded and set aside commission he'd been working on, “We've got about a week off and then it's another mission.”

“I'm getting itchy for it,” Gerard nodded, “Too much sitting around.”

“Ditto,” Ray nodded, “Mikey left to go visit the Motorbaby caravan. It's gonna be in the area so he went to escort them.”

“Did he take some food for them?”

“Yeah, two loaves of bread and some water.”

“Good,” Gerard nodded, grabbing at the marker they used for the supply lists. He started marking things up and over and then flipped the page and started making a new list, things they needed to replenish and replace.

Finally, he handed it over and nodded, “That should be it, I think.”

“Gee,” Ray bit his lip and turned the notebook and pointed to the numbers next to the food and water supplies, “This is too much for us. There's an extra ration.”

Ghoul walked out of their 'bedroom', yawning and messy haired, loose and relaxed and weaponless. Defenseless, and not even caring. Poison felt his mouth go dry and he couldn't stop the small, dopey smile on his face.

“Is there, Star?” He asked distractedly, watching Ghoul fondly.

“...nah, Poison. There isn't.” Jet Star smiled carefully, a little pleased himself, “Four rations is just about right.”

Ghoul stretched a little and knelt down next to his pack, pulling out a piece of bread and a bottle of water. Poison wanted to find something for him that he'd never had before. Chocolate, ice cream, something special. He wanted to find something, be special for him.

“Hey, Fun Ghoul,” Jet Star said, unexpectedly. Fun Ghoul stood and turned, frowning a little.

“Yeah?”

“We got a mission in about a week. You in?”

Poison felt his mouth go slack, for just a second, before a smile slowly formed on his face.

“Yeah, sure. If you guys'll have me.”

“Great.” Jet Star grinned, “You'll be here, then?”

“Unless you've got something you want me to run?”

“Nothing that can't wait.” Jet Star shrugged, “You haven't fucked up yet. Figured it's about time for a break.”

Ghoul laughed a little, taking a drink and shrugging, “In that case, I'm going back to bed. You coming?”

He raised an eyebrow at Poison, who laughed and stood.

“Yeah, whatever. We can go out for those supplies later, Star?”

“Definitely. Take a nice, long nap, Poison.” Jet Star smirked at him. Poison couldn't even care as he followed Ghoul back into their room.

-

Poison didn't even remember what the sniping at been about. After Ghoul had driven off to deliver his next load two days early in an angry cloud of “Fuck off, Party Poison!”, Poison couldn't even remember what had started the stupid fucking fight. He'd been irritated due to a blotched mission that Ghoul hadn't even been on, and Poison had made a snide comment and Ghoul had snapped something back and it just exploded. Kobra and Jet Star had left for a supply run almost as soon as the yelling had started and for what felt like the first time in a long fucking time, Poison was alone.

“Shit!” He yelled out loud and kicked the wall until his foot went numb. He limped inside, practically tearing his own hair out.

“I'm sorry,” He called into the empty space, “I'm so fucking sorry, I'm sorry, please don't…”

He hated it, absolutely hated it, when people left angry. He hated when people he cared about left mad at him, with their last words filled with anger and aimed to hurt and what if Gerard's last words to Ghoul were 'you're such an asshole'? What would he do if Ghoul died with his last words to him being 'fuck off, Party Poison? He'd never told Matt how much he'd cared for him, he'd never told him how thankful he was, how much Matt had saved them. At least his family had gone down fighting, Matt wasn't even ten fucking years old, taken out by a fucking bomb, by Better Living, by the same fucking monsters running all over the desert, all over Fun Ghoul's route to Dr. D.

He thought back to all the faces, those who didn't make it out of the city, he thought of looking into Bob's eyes, into Ghoul's mom's eyes, both knowing exactly what was about to happen to them and fearing it. Ghoul-Shrimp's face the last time he saw him before Poison left with his crew, left him all alone to be hurt and abused by people who had turned Ghoul into such a hard person. It all just repeated, ran through his head over and over, his last fucking words to one of the three people in the world who had come to mean something to him, more than anything or anyone else ever had, being you're such an asshole, he couldn't do it, he couldn't survive if Ghoul died thinking Gerard was mad at him, had hated him, if Ghoul's lasts word's to him were fuck off'.

He went to their freezer, curled up in the small, private nest they'd made, and hid his face. He wanted to scream how sorry he was, how so fucking sorry he was, he hated when people left angry, because what if they never came back?

“I'm so sorry,” He whispered into the darkness and then was silent. Regret ate at him, starting in his toes and getting all the way to his stomach before he had to run outside to try to throw it up. Ray and Mikey came back at some point but they didn't go looking for him. If they'd known, he knew, that Ghoul had left in the middle of the fight, they would have been with him because they'd been on the receiving end of one of his freak outs and knew how badly it affected him. He half wondered if Ghoul had done in on purpose, a sick mind game he played when he got angry. He knew he was being irrational but he couldn't help it, he was just so fucking scared Ghoul would be like Matt, would disappear and never show back up, that Gerard was sit and wait and wait for him forever and he'd feel the vibration of a bomb and they'd get a report over the radio, 'Fun Ghoul's been ghosted, sorry Poison,' and that would be the end of Fun Ghoul and Party Poison.

Gerard couldn't stand it.

He set up all night, didn't sleep a wink, just waited until he'd heard Ray and Mikey go to sleep after a tense conversation in front of the freezer door and then went to wait outside.

The sun rose slowly over the horizon, but Fun Ghoul didn't return. Gerard wondered if he was crying, felt his cheeks, but the tips of his fingers and cheeks were numb from the cold. They thawed after a few minutes in the sunlight, but he didn't notice. He didn't go inside until the clouds had turned acid purple and the first, burning drop of acid rain fell sizzling into the sand nearby.

“Gerard,” Ray said firmly, “Come inside before Mikey and I drag you.”

Gerard stood up and walked inside, biting his lip as he moved to the front window.

“H-he left,” He said carefully, when a silence had fallen over the diner. Mikey stopped click-clacking keys and turned to look at him, “He left in the middle of the fight. He left angry. What if...what if I never…”

“Gee…” Mikey said sadly. He stood and set next to Gerard, settled his windy arm over his shoulder and kissed his cheek, “He'll be back. He just needed time to cool down.”

“But what if-”

“No,” Mikey said firmly, “Part of fucking loving someone, Gee, is trusting that they'd do anything so they can to come back to you. Even when they're pissed.”

Gerard didn't say anything but he nodded and rested his face against the cold window, wondered what it would feel like to kiss in acid rain. If it would feel as nice as kissing in clean rain, like the old books had described.

Ghoul came back almost two hours after the rain had stopped. His jacket had a few new holes in it, as did the bandana he'd tied around his face, but he was seemingly unharmed. Gerard didn't even wait for the dust cloud to reveal his small figure on the bike before he was out of the diner door and rushing to him. The bike hadn't even come to a complete stop before he was grabbing Ghoul's face and kissing him with as much fucking feeling as he could, fuck the bandana. He wanted, he fucking needed to show Ghoul how much he meant to Poison, to Gerard, even after only a few months. Ghoul was meant to be with them, to be with him, and Gerard had known it the moment he set eyes on the skinny little runt.

“I was so fucked scared you'd left, you giant fucking asshole!” He shuddered out between kisses, once the bandana had finally fallen and his fingers were tangled in Ghoul's hair. He felt his eyes stinging but he didn't know if he would be able to keep the tears in, didn't know if he'd even care. Acid rain on his cheeks.

“I was so fucking scared you'd died and I'd never get to tell you-” he broke off, couldn't admit anymore of those fears out loud. Instead, he just kissed him again, hard and tasting like his tears. He wondered if Ghoul could taste the acid, like he could feel it in the hole in his stomach, the muscle and blood surrounding it burning like fucking fire.

“I-Poison, I…” Ghoul tried to say something, his arms going to Gerard's waist and pulling him close, rubbing his gloved palms over his hips and back soothingly, “You really...you cared that much? That something had happened to me?”

“Of course I did, you idiot!” Gerard couldn't help but yell because what the fuck, when had he ever hid how intensely he cared about Ghoul? He twisted his fingers through Ghoul's hair, kissed him again and again because he was there, he was alive, “What kind of question is that!?”

“I-I just…” Ghoul's fingers threaded through the floozy red of Gerard's hair, moved his head from his shoulder gently so he could press a sweet kiss to his lips, “You're an idiot, Poison. I'm not going anywhere. K-Killjoy for life, right?”

“You,” Poison laughed wetly, kissed him again, hid his stupid fucking tears, “You stickin' around? For real?”

Ghoul smiled, slow and softer than Poison had ever seen anyone smile at him before, “Yeah...Yeah, I think I found something to keep my fancy for awhile.”

Poison couldn't help the blush, but he still squeezed him tight, couldn't stop his voice from shaking when he said, “You can't leave angry anymore, okay? We-We have to talk it out, o-or just go to another part of the diner or something, but just, don't…”

“I get it,” Ghoul nodded, squeezing him back in an intimate huge, “I won't leave like that again, okay? I'm real fuckin' sorry, Poison.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. I'm sorry, too.” Poison nodded, and wondered if he'd ever come down from the feeling of warmth and actual god damned happiness in his chest.

The next month, Jet Star and Kobra Kid went missing.

After that, it was a daze of sex, misery and Shrimp-Ghoul-Frank.

Gerard didn't remember much at all. He just knew that Ghoul had told him his name, Frank, that Gerard had told him his own and Ray and Mikey's. He remembered that there'd been a raid on Zone 6 in their area, and that he'd made a suicide pact with himself. He remembered that he would have died there, in the fucking diner, surrounded by his brother and best friend's memories and fucking dracs, had it not been for Frank.

He appreciated Frank's arm around his waist the whole time he spoke with Dr. D, how he didn't leave Gerard's side no matter how often Gerard knew he itched to go out and do something about their crew's murder. He vaguely remembered that Ghoul had finally gotten with the program and told Gerard that he loved him, and Gerard knew that he had finally gotten to say what he'd wanted to say since that stupid fight, even if it had been dampened by the bone crushing loss of his whole world. Gerard knew those things, and he even rememberedsome of them, but not much else. The only solid thing in his life was Frank, the steady presence next to him, never faltering, never giving up on him and the never ending ache of the hole in his stomach expanding to eat him alive from the inside out.

“It hurts,” he said one night, into the dark of their borrowed tent, “Frankie, it hurts so much I can't even feel it anymore...where the hole ends and the rest of me begins.”

“I know, baby,” Frank whispered into his hair, “I know, I know.”

And he did know, had lived through his loss and grown stronger for it. Gerard wasn't strong. Poison was strong. Poison could deal with the death of Kobra Kid and Jet Star, but that was how Frank had dealt with his loss, he had let Fun Ghoul deal with it instead. That was how Frank had lost himself for so long, letting himself be overtaken by someone he wasn't. He'd become Fun Ghoul and left Frank behind. He'd already begged Gerard not to let that happen to him, not to let Party Poison overtake Gerard . Gerard didn't know if there was any other option, though. He wanted to be with Frank, didn't want to leave, in the sense that he could never be alive again but he wouldn't mind being a zombie with Frank at his side, which was so fucked up he didn't even have words. But with each day that passed without his family, without Mikey and Ray next to him, he could feel every part of him dying from the inside out.

Mikey and Ray showed up almost a week into their stay with Dr. D and the Zone 6 raid survivor camp.

Gerard didn't really know how to feel. He was happy, beyond happy, beyond relief. He couldn't put into words how good it felt to touch Mikey again, to wake up to 'GeeGeeGee!' again after thinking he'd never again hear his little brother say his name again. He would never be able to explain to anyone how good it felt to have Ray's arms around him, have his fluffy hair and his wide smile consume Gerard in a hug. But it also didn't feel real. Gerard Way never got good things for long, he was a rabble rouser and a tragedy magnet and he'd lost so much and it almost felt like a dream, to have Mikey and Ray suddenly returned to him, a fucking disgusting trick BL or God or even the Sand and Sun were playing on him to punish him.

But they were there, at least for the moment, and Gerard would rather take the momentary happiness and face the neverending grief at the end than stay in the empty void he'd turned into. They talked for hours, after Frank had brought them to Gerard and then disappeared, and Gerard told them about Frank saving him, about how he'd almost given up without them, how much he fucking loved them so much and how much he missed them, how he'd felt like he was dying the most agonizing death known to history with each day that they had been gone. He finally fell back asleep, exhausted from crying and laughing and clinging to them both as tightly as he could. Half asleep as he was, he still felt Frank come back, still pressed a kiss to his pulse and whispered love you, Frankie before he went back to sleep, willing to wake up into the nightmare he'd been living. When he opened his eyes to see Ray and Mikey barely a foot away and Frank still in his arms, he cried for so long that he ran out of tears.

They went home a few weeks later, after Dr. D had had the right people through to make sure it was still completely safe and resecured after Better Living scum had stormed through it. They probably could have left sooner, but Ray and Mikey had been severely dehydrated and underfed after walking through the desert for so long, surviving on emergency rations they found in abandoned buildings every few days and using left behind radios to try and place where Dr. D was. They'd been picked up by a traveling crew and dropped off close by to Dr. D's encampment for the Zone 6 raid survivors, where they'd found Frank and Gerard.

Gerard also needed a little time to recover, his emotions and his mind still a mess he wasn't sure he'd ever recover from. The first three days, he wouldn't let either Mikey or Ray out of his sight and Frank had played patient butler to all of them, bringing them food and water and helping any random Bones going over their wounds. Ray had done his best but his medical training was small wounds and emergency services while the real Bones made it to the scene. Mikey's thigh had an infection and Ray's feet had blistered so bad due to half a shoe he'd lost in the initial crash and burn of their bikes while they fought off the drac ambush that he'd not been allowed back up for nearly a week while it healed. They'd caught the infection early and with two weeks worth of medicines for each of them, their wounds wouldn't be life threatening.

Gerard would have felt back about using Frank as a serviceman, but Frank never complained and at night, he would sit next to Gerard and run his fingers through his bright red hair, humming whatever song Dr. D had played over the radio that day.

By the time they got back to the diner, Mikey and Ray had completely relaxed their guard around Frank and had evenstopped treating him like a malicious ghost feeding on their leader's life force. Gerard knew it freaked him out at first, but after awhile he got used to it and the four of them fell into a pattern.

“It's so weird,” Frank said into the blackness of their room one night. The darkness was like their security blanket. In the cover of night, or simulated night when they went to bed early, it was like they could say whatever they'd needed to say because the dark would protect them from judgement. “I'm just getting used to you caring about me, and having two new people doing it too...it's scary. The last time people cared about me…”

“I know,” Gerard said gently, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. Frank always cried when they talked about his mom, and Bob was an even sorer subject to speak on. Frank blamed himself for them both, but Bob's kidnapping was probably the worst thing Frank ever could of witnessed, “I know, Frankie. But...but sometimes, you can't stop it, you know? Some people just make other people love them.”

“You're such a sap,” Frank laughed, a little weak but still genuine. Gerard would be the biggest sap in the world if it kept Frank smiling.

It took a few missions for anyone to notice but Kobra was the first, which was understandable. He was the first to really see the way Ghoul filled a place in the group that they hadn't even known they had needed to fill. It had been the three of them for so long that they hadn't, not even Party Poison with his almost creepily intense feelings for Ghoul, really known how he would fit in until Kobra had finally pointed out that he and Ghoul had become a team.

“It's like this,” Kobra said the next time he and Poison were sitting in the booth together. There was only one functional booth in the diner, the others having been ripped up to use as storage space or the like. Jet Star and Fun Ghoul had gone out for another supply run to fill up the stocks after a surprise visit from The Used crew, who had come to visit Ghoul. Apparently they still kept in touch with Noise Control's last wish, making sure he was as safe as he'd let them make him.

“See, during missions,” Kobra continued, marking on a piece of paper with a marker, three 'X's with a 'p', 'j', and 'k' over each one respectively, “”It's always been you and Jet Star, both keeping an eye on me, because I'm pretty much useless until everyone gets close enough for me to start punching or I have a computer. Ghoul fits in with me in battle, more than he clicks with Jet Star or even you. He watches me and I watch him so you and Jet Star can fucking focus on each other instead of me. You're way too protective and you put yourself at risk trying to keep me safe when I don't need you to. Ghoul doesn't do that. He knows when I need help and when he needs to back up, let me do what I need to do, and watch out for himself. And I do the same.” he made another 'X', put a 'f' on the top and circled the 'f' and 'k' 'X's, then the 'p' and 'j' 'X's.

“We're a team,” Kobra said firmly, “And Frank finished the team. Get it?” he circled all four of the 'X's and pointed at his drawing.

Poison didn't say anything for a long time, looking at the paper before he turned his eyes to Kobra and grinned, big and goofy and wide, “You're such a loser, Mikeyway. All you had to say was you like him too and you want to be partners on missions more often, oh my God.”

“Shut up.” Kobra said, tapping the paper with the marker and leaving little ink dots behind, “Look at the math, Gee. This shit doesn't lie. I don't have to like him, I'm just saying-”

“That you like him.” Poison said triumphantly, “And you want to be best friends with him and give him the talk about fucking your older brother!”

“No!” Kobra threw his hands up, but his face was heating up and his eyebrow twitched like when he was lying and Poison couldn't stop the laughter until Jet Star and Ghoul got home and Kobra explained his logic again, flipping the paper over to do his 'X's shtick again.

Jet Star started laughing, but Ghoul looked a little embarrassed and a little pleased. Poison, even through his tears of mirth, didn't miss the grin his brother and his lover exchanged, or their stupid secret handshake.

-

Once a year, Gerard learned as Frank integrated into their little family and became a part of their unit, Frank disappeared for four days. It was on the same date every year, he later learned, and Frank had warned them beforehand that he would be gone though he was secretive about exactly where he was going. He checked in with Dr. D every day, so Poison didn't worry too much while he was gone and he'd been especially nice to Poison just so he didn't have to leave on a bad note because he'd learned just how much it upset him. During the four days, Poison didn't mope exactly because he was a grown ass man with important, grown ass man things to do, but he wasn't ashamed to say that he was a little extra bright on the day Ghoul came home. He never told them what he did those four days that he was gone, but they found out the next year when he took them along.

“So what are we doing?” Poison asked as they walked through the bazaar. It was uncomfortably close to the city this time of year, as it was every time the anniversary of the Black Parade came around if Poison wasn't mistaken, and it made him nervous and fidgety. Zone 1 always made them uncomfortable, but Ghoul looked just as comfortable here as he did in Zone 6, the result of spending so much time in the first three Zones due to Leathermouth, probably. They'd stopped in front of the only stall selling real flowers in the bazaar, which was a little bizarre but Poison wasn't going to mention it. They'd already stopped by to say hello to Cherry Bomb and tell her about the adjustments they'd been making to the Trans Am, but Ghoul had been anxious to get back to his goal.

Ghoul just held up a finger to his lips and kissed his cheek before he went back to trading a loaf of good bread for two flowers, two pieces of wood and a single, long nail.

“I'm renewing my vows.” He finally answered when the transaction was complete and he was leading them out of the bazaar and towards the city walls.

“What vows?” Jet Star finally asked, the first to get the guts. Poison was getting a sick feeling in his stomach at the look in Ghoul's eyes, a nearly heart stopping longing reflecting wetly.

“The Black Parade Rebellion,” Ghoul began, and Poison new and still wanted him to stop, to turn around and go back to the diner and forget that that terrible day ever happened, “I...I lost….everything. My family. My-My mom, and...and my best friend. Bob. Y-you might remember him.”

Poison remembered Bob. He remembered looking into those calm, almost pleading eyes, 'Keep him safe, even though we can't.' He remembered Frank's mom, remembered taking kids from her steel steady hands, remembered her tears every time her eyes slid deliberately over Frank, nearly comatose in the sand.

“E-every year, I come back.” Ghoul took an unsteady breath but he kept walking, lead them back to that place, blood stains still on the once pale wall and surrounding city side, still stained deep after all these years. Still a warning sign for any who saw it.

“F-Frankie…” Gerard finally choked out, but Frank shook his head.

“I'll avenge them. This is my vow and I make it every year here, with these.” He dropped to his knees, near three other crosses from previous years, probably. He set the pieces of wood in a vaguely crosslike position, placed the nail and tried to use the palm of his hand to nail it in. Gerard flinched hard, wondered if this was the way Frank had nailed the nails in every year before as the first sharp scent of blood hit his nose. Frank didn't even flinch.

“Frank,” Mikey finally managed to say, dropping right next to him and wrapping his arm around his shoulders like Gerard should have done, if he hadn't been nearly overwhelmed by his own guilt and sadness.

“We'll help,” Ray said firmly after a moment of silence. He set next to them, pulled the cross slowly from Frank and started using the blade of his knife as a hammer instead of his palm.

Gerard finally got with the program and set across from Ghoul. He leaned forward and cupped Frank's rough, tanned hands, keeping the light pink petals of the flower safe between them.

“We bury them, right?”

Frank nodded, eyes getting wetter as they worked, “Y-yeah, under the cross.”

Together, they set the cross up and buried the flowers underneath it, making sure the wood was deep and stayed.

“Now what?” Kobra asked softly.

“Pray.” Frank said simply, slowly folding his hands and bowing his head.

Gerard, Mikey, and Ray, being desert born, had never prayed to any god. They prayed to the Sand and the Sun, like most desert born, and considered God or any of his kind to be a story told to naive children. Usually, any other day of the year, Frank was along with them. Maybe it wasn't what Frank meant, because he and his mom were both city born and Gerard, for how much he had stopped the stupid prejudice that some desert born still held for the city and it's people, couldn't imagine wanting to pray to Smog, Deceit and Shadows. But he folded his hands, bowed his head, and prayed to every single thing he could think of.

God, the Sun and Sand, the Smog, Deceit and Shadows that city born prayed to, every religion he could think of. He didn't know what to pray about, so he just spoke in his head, projected as loud as he could for anyone to hear that was willing to listen. He talked about everything he wanted to change, everything he wished he could save his family from going through, wished he could save every person from going through, and how much he wanted to change the world.

They stayed there until morning and Frank didn't really break his stance, but he didn't get mad when Gerard, Ray, and Mikey eventually had to stop and stretch out a little. They didn't talk about it afterwards, when they'd returned to the diner, but Ghoul still gave Poison a small, grateful look when he realized that they'd redoubled their efforts to fight Better Living.

Chasing down a roaming Exterminator, months later, was how the Killjoys met Shane Morris.

“You guys good?” Poison asked with a frown, pulling over at the nearest Dead Peg station to fill up.

“Yeah,” Ghoul whistled, clutching his arm close, “I'm good. Won't be fighting anytime soon though. Probably gonna pass out, soonish.”

“Bed rest and pills.” Kobra agreed, a look of pain on his face and holding his whole body unnaturally still.

“Seriously,” Jet Star said, voice even higher than usual, “How did a regular old Exterminator get a weapon like that?”

“It blew you like ten feet in the air,” Ghoul said with awe, “I want one.”

“No.” Poison said immediately, “Oh no. You'd be shooting everything.”

“I would not!” Ghoul said unconvincingly.

“Just sit,” Poison said firmly, though he couldn't keep the smile off his face, “Just sit and I'll get you guys home.”

“How'd you not get all beat up?” Kobra said with what passed as a pout for him, which was sticking his bottom lip out just a little.

“I listened to my own advice and stayed away from the mouth of the zap, unlike some people.” Poison smirked, “And that was why I said it in the first place. But did you listen? No.”

“I listened!” Ray whined, because he always whined when he was in pain.

“But you didn't dodge,” Poison laughed and got out of the car before they started another conversation. He filled the car up and paid with some freshly stolen carbons, not that the Dead Peg attendant minded. When he returned from paying, there was another car in the gas area, a man in a gray jumpsuit leaning against his car while the gas pumped. Poison's stride skipped a step.

Dead Peg was a neutral Zone and Poison knew he'd be in the wrong if he started shit with BL here, no matter the reason, so he ignored him and continued towards the Trans Am, picking up pace a little when the BL face on the side of the car revealed itself to have to crossed out eyes. Exterminator.

“Poison,” Kobra whispered when he opened the driver door, “Poison, that guy has a pulser. The car won't fucking start.”

“Shit, what the fuck? Exterminators are never so close together if they aren't partners,”

“Maybe they were partners.” Jet Star said from the back. Ghoul was nearly passed out, breathing deep and ragged, looking too worried for Poison's comfort.

“Don't worry.” Poison said firmly, “I'll take care of it.”

“Poison-” Kobra said carefully, “You can't-”

“Call it in.” He said firmly, “I'll take care of it until backup comes.”

“What if there isn't any backup?”

“Then I'll take care of it.”

“Gerard-” Ghoul said from the back seat, sounding panicked and slow, “Don't-”

“Love you guys.” Poisons said with a grin he didn't quite feel but knew he needed to show, “Call it in, Mikes.”

He shut the door before anyone could say anything else and, after checking his zap (only a few shots left , shit, he needed to recharge it but he didn't have time), he turned and swaggered confidently to the halfway point between their two cars.

“Hey,”

The suit turned around slowly, revealing a tanned face with big, black sunglasses covering most of his features.

“This is neutral area, man, but if you don't turn the pulser off, we'll have to ignore that.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, whelp.” The Exterminator said harshly, but his lips had curved up into a gruesome smile, “Now why don't you go back to your car before you get yourself hurt.”

“Love to.” Poison said, voice friendly and body loose, “But I can't leave until you turn the fucking pulser off, so if you'd be so kind as to do that,”

“I ain't got no pulser.” The Exterminator spread his arms wide, and was going to say more had the attendant came not come out.

“We got a problem, gentlemen?” she said tensely, holding up the zap she always had under her counter.

“Not if he doesn't make one,” Poison said firmly, looking from her to the Exterminator, “He's got a fucking pulser on. My crew can't fucking leave until he turns it off.”

“Sir,” She said, “This is neutral ground. Turn it off, or gas don't flow for the dracs, got it?”

The Exterminator pulled a face at her, but he reached over to the trunk of his car and banged on the left, top area. The engine of the Trans Am reveed and Poison tried not to show his relief.

“Sorry, Poison,” The attendant said, “Sometimes people don't wanna respect the rules.”

“No problem,” Poison shrugged, itching to get out of there before the Exterminator recognized his name.

“Poison?” The Exterminator said slowly, “Now you wouldn't happen ta' be Party Poison, would ya?”

“And if I am?” Poison couldn't help but snap back, because he was an idiot and the universe had it out for him.

“Now, I gotta friend who's just been dyin' ta' meet you,” The Exterminator grinned again, lips pulled back and curled up on his tanned cheeks. He stepped out from behind his car and moved over to them, offering his head, “Shane Morris, it's a pleasure to finally meet Korse's pet.”

Poison spat on the ground between them, “I am no one's pet, asshole. Especially not that deranged monster's.”

His blood had run cold though. Shane Morris. Shane Fucking Morris. Just his luck, running into a fucking head of the Exterminator branch with his crew out of commission and his weapon barely charged.

“Ya'll both need to step back.” The attendant said firmly, lifting her zap, “And head on out.”

“With pleasure.” Poison snapped and started to turn. Morris grabbed his arm though and Poison just didn't have enough control in him to stop his fist from slamming into the man's face.

Morris took a step back and let go of Poison's arm with the force of the punch and Poison stepped back himself, putting distance between them.

“You need to go.” Poison said tightly, “Before we wreck the nice lady's gas station.”

“Ya'know.” Morris said, swiping the small dot of blood at the corner of his mouth up with his tongue and licking it off, “I think the place needs a little more color. Some nice blood red. It'd match your hair, Poison.”

“Leave.” The attendant snapped, “Both of you need to get the hell off this property before you do something I'll have to make you regret.”

“We're just talkin',” Morris said, tone soothing and snakelike, “Don't get your panties in a twist, we're leaving.”

“Yes, we are.” Poison turned and marched back to the car, staying alert for any sounds of attack behind him.

The attendant screamed and Poison hit the deck just as a zap blast flew past where his head had been.

Fuck!

He rolled behind the nearest gas tank and drew his zapper, checking it again just to make sure before he got on his knees and picked over the top. The attendant lay on the ground, still, and missing her zap. He found it in Morris' hands, a manic smile on his otherwise still covered face.

“Party Po-o-o-oison!” He sing-songed, “Come o-o-out and pla-a-a-ay!”

Poison took the shot, hoping that he could take him out before any actual battle had to go down. Morris ducked, dodged to the side and the shot was useless, glancing harmlessly on the wall of the sandy tan building.

“Nice try,” Morris hummed, flipping his zap carelessly, “I heard you nailed Korse with it. The big stick could use a thing like you around. Might keep him on his toes. I wonder if I'll get a reward for bringing you to him? Or should I kill you to piss 'em off?”

Poison ducked again, threw a quick prayer towards the sun and found the Trans Am with his eyes . Kobra was still on the transmitter probably, but he could see Jet Star watching him through the window, face just a mask of worry.

He could do this. He had to. For them.

“I wonder what they'll call me when I take down Shane Morris?” He called back, looking over again to see that Morris had gotten closer while he was distracted. He had to stop worrying about the Trans Am and focus on the fight.

“You? Kill me?” Morris laughed and Gerard took his chance, shot at his chest instead of his head. Morris wasn't quite fast enough and even though it was a bad hit and the suit absorbed most of it, he still grunted and rubbed the soot mark on his side where the hit had landed, “Oh, you're good with that thing. But why don't you stop hiding like a coward and come face me instead of taking cheap shots?”

Poison didn't fucking move.

“Yeah, okay,” Morris smirked, “Be that way.”

He aimed his zap at the station Poison was hidden behind and Poison prepared to duck behind the neighboring one, legs bunching and tensing for the leap. His heart jumped into his throat and nearly choked him when, instead of pulling the trigger, Morris slowly dragged the barrel until it was on the Trans Am, “If you won't come out, maybe they will. Come out, come out, Killjoys, I have a present that your fearless leader just doesn't want!”

“Here!” Poison growled, voice steady and ringing in the quiet, “Right here, asshole.”

He stood up, stepping away from his cover but keeping his zap up and aimed at Morris, looking for any chance he could get.

“There you are!” Morris laughed, though his eyes were cold, “I was wondering where you'd scampered off too. Ready for our showdown, cowboy?”

“Showdown?”

Morris tossed his zap aside, much to Poison's shock and opened his arms wide, “You're from the Jersey crew! Or, at least, you were, before we killed them all.” He laughed again.

Poison tensed, barely held his finger off the trigger. He didn't know why Morris had thrown down his weapon but he didn't want to shoot before he found out.

“Shut your fucking mouth. Don't talk about my crew. You don't ever deserve to say their names.”

“I don't wanna say their names,” Morris shook his head, “I want to see their skill. Come on, Party Poison, show me what the Jersey crew was known for.”

He pulled a knife from a sheath in his pants, long and wickedly curved with an obvious point, well-sharpened. He tossed it to Poison, letting it skid the last few feet to bump harmlessly against his boot. It had a twin, sheathed on his other leg, and he pulled it free. He turned the blade so it glinted in the sun, the shimmer a little shiny somehow, like the blade had been dipped in water.

“You want me to...what, knifefight you?”

“That's exactly what I want you to do, Poison. I was there, ya'know? When we wiped out your fucking cockroach infestation of a crew. But it was all Toro's, or fucking Tumbleweeds, shit like that. I didn't get to fight any of the useful ones. That was all Korse and 2Chainz. I want my turn. So pick up the fucking knife, Party Poison. Or I will exterminate the last of your stupid fucking crew and the rest of your new one.”

Poison's pulse jumped, blood rushed through his ears, loud as fucking thunder. He dropped his zap, knelt and picked up the knife. The blade was covered in a thin film of something the sand didn't stick to, but when he brushed a finger against it his skin sizzled like he'd been burnt. This was going to fucking hurt, oh fuck.

He hadn't even stood up fully when Morris was in front of him, bringing the knife down in an arch. Poison fell backwards, bit his lip to stifle the loud gasp of pain as the blade cut through his shirt and into the top layer of skin. Oh shit, oh shit, it was like concentrated acid rain dripping directly into his veins.

He scrambled back, kicked out and managed to slam the heel of his foot into Morris' knee. Morris didn't go down but his knee gave out and he was at the right height when Poison got his hands under himself and centered his body, twisted around and caught Morris across the face with the heel of the other foot. Morris made a noise of pain and there was a cracking sound, what was probably his jaw being dislocated. maybe broken. While he was down, Poison scrambled up and caught his breath, touching the still burning slice across his chest. He'd fucking liked this shirt too. Blood seeped, sluggish. The acid or poison or what the fuck ever it was had burnt the edges of the wound, slowing the blood flow but burning like hell.If he died, Morris wanted to make sure it was a slow and fucking painful.

“Shit, kid,” Morris laughed wetly and spit out a mouthful of blood. He gripped his crooked jaw and there was a snapping noise as he put it back into place without a single expression forming, “Pretty flexible, huh? Korse'll like that, if I don't keep you.”

“You're disgusting.” Poison spat, adjusting his grip on the knife, “Let's fucking do this.”

Morris straightened up and was after him again almost faster than Poison could blink. He had size and speed over Poison, but the longer they fought, the more Poison was categorizing his movements. He fought like a dust angel, straight forward and brute strength his biggest asset. He caught Poison's cheek, his forehead, was trying to blind him, Poison realized. Panic tried to swallow him because without his eyes, Poison couldn't imagine doing anything ever again, but he forced it down and ducked to swipe at Morris' stomach. Morris dodged to the side and Poison, using that momentum, twisted in a circle and brought the blade into his side. Blade melted through flesh fast and hard and Poison felt every fucking inch of his weapon disappear into skin and bone, felt the give of human. He didn't let up though and he twisted the blade as hard as he could, like he was jimmying a fucking lock or something.

“You fucker!” Morris said, voice a mix of amusement and pain. Poison didn't see the knee coming until it had caught him across the face and he tipped over, losing his grip on the knife and taking a foot to the face and then the gut for his trouble. He felt something crack when the steel toe made contact with his chest before he grabbed Morris' ankle and tried to knock him over. Morris just laughed and didn't budge. Instead, he brought his boot down on Poison's chest and the pain that flared up not only from the still bleeding slice but his possibly-broken ribs took his breath away. He twisted around to protect his chest and tried to catch the air back into his lungs.

“You're pretty good. Not as good as me, but,” Morris seemed to shrug, though Poison couldn't see him. He took his boot off of Poison, nudged his side and before Poison could react, rammed the toe into him. Poison made a soft noise because all of the air he'd managed to keep in disappeared. He curled up, but it didn't stop the next kick or the next. By the time Morris was done, Poison's vision was blurry with lack of air and pain. His whole body ached from the rain of blows, and he was pretty sure one of his fingers was broken, having gotten in the way while protecting his head. Morris dropped to his knees next to him, shoved him onto his side and caught his chin roughly between two fingers, forced him to look dizzily up at him.

“You're very pretty, Poison. Maybe I will keep you for myself. Korse can have that carfull. With you out of the picture, I wonder how long they'll last.” he grabbed a handful of Poison's hair, yanked his head up and turned it so he could see the Trans Am. Kobra had opened the door, managed to get partially out of the car before his limbs had given out. He'd probably been the most hurt during the fight with the other Exterminator and had Ghoul or Jet Star been in any shape to fight, they'd of had trouble getting out of the back with Kobra in the way. Poison felt blood drip from above his eye and it stung, involuntarily forcing his eye shut. Half blind, looking at his beaten crew, he felt his heart in his throat and could do nothing but clench his hands in the sand. How could he have let them down like this? How could he have failed them so badly?

The sand escaped his fingers. He tilted his arm just a little, let the bleeding gashes seep blood into the sand around him and he prayed for a fucking miracle. Something that would help him.

The sand was silent, but his brain was not.

Desert fighting was all about strength and fucking honor, no tricks or underhanded slights in a fight. But he didn't just know desert fighting. He was desert born, but he'd been city raised for a huge chunk of his life. City fighting, he could do.

Fuck honor, his crew was in danger.

His hand gripped the sand around him again and he felt Morris tense just a second before Poison twisted and hurled the fistful of sand into his eyes. Morris stumbled back, blinded and Poison followed the painful pull on his hair, threw himself into Morris' stomach and tackled him to the ground. He clawed at his eyes, desperate, and felt his fingernails rip into skin. Blood soaked his fingers, pooled in Morris' eyes and that was it, Morris was blinded. Poison panicked for just a second and Morris nearly bucked him off, looking pissed and ready to go in for the kill. Poison had to do it first. He wrestled the blade from Morris' hand and, still half blind and losing himself to the panic, jammed it, blade straight down, into Morris' throat.

The blade made a sizzling noise and Morris screamed, loud and furious before he trailed off into a jerking, gurgling noise. Poison didn't let up on the knife, rode out Morris trying to weakly shove him off.

“Stop,” he finally said, looking down at the Exterminator, “It's fucking over.”

Morris snarled at him, gave one last howl of anger, and went still. Poison watched the life, or whatever passed for it in Better Living scum, leave his eyes. His face was left frozen in a mask of anger and pain.

Poison didn't move for a long time, just stayed on top of him, keeping the knife in place, terrified he'd come back to life and manage to kill him, to hurt the others even more, to still be alive somehow.

“Party Poison,” a voice said from a distance. Someone touched his shoulder and without thinking, Poison grabbed their hand and bent it nearly back to the arm, sending the stranger to the ground with a snarl.

“Hey! Hey, friend, we come in peace! It's over, Poison! Look at me, recognize my voice!”

“...Fuck Machine?” Poison finally guessed. He couldn't see out of his left eye, the side the voice was coming from, his heart was beating so hard and so fast it felt like he was choking on his own heartbeat. His hands shook where she gently pried them off of her wrist and throat, and by the time she'd moved him to the ground, his whole body was shaking.

“Kobra-” He tried to get out, but she shushed him.

“Don't worry, baby, they're coming.

She pulled a rag out to start wiping at his face, getting rid of the blood blinding him until he could use both eyes again. When he looked over, Pony and Witness were helping Jet Star and Kobra towards him and Ghoul was limping over on his own. He managed to get to Poison first and just collapsed on him, heedless of the noise of pain he made.

“Never, ever, ever,” Ghoul nearly snarled at him, kissing him anywhere he could reach, “do something that stupid again, do you understand me, Poison?”

“Don't you fucking dare,” Kobra said, voice sounding mildly put upon to others but to Poison, totally wrecked.

“I hate you.” Jet Star agreed.

“I can't believe you killed Shane Morris.” Ghoul said softly, “Holy shit, Poison, that was…”

“I can't even remember doing it.” Poison admitted, “All I could think of was that he was going to hurt you and I couldn't see. I panicked.”

“You panicked a knife right into his throat, my friend.” Witness shook her head, pigtails bobbing, “And managed to stab him in the side. You're pretty banged up, though.”

“I don't feel it.” He said honestly. With his crew safe and around him, he didn't think he could feel much of anything other than relief for a while.

-

Gerard could feel the pain eventually, when the endorphins and adrenaline he'd been mainlining finally left his system. He felt the pain so much that Frank had forced him to take four pain pills to knock him out. When he woke up, he was back in the diner, head in Mikey's lap and gentle fingers working through his bloody hair with a sopping wet rag, removing sand and blood.

“Hey, bro,” Mikey said softly, concentrating on washing his hair out.

“Hey,” he tried to say. His throat protested though and he ended up weakly hacking until Mikey helped him sit up so he could drink half a bottle of water in one go.

“Slow, you dumbass.” Mikey took the bottle away and helped him back down.

“Everything fuckin' hurts.” Gerard whined, voice still quiet.

“Yeah, you broke two ribs, asshole. And a finger. And your fucking nose. Your lucky Frank likes you for your fucking personality, you stupid fuck.”

Gerard tried to laugh, but it hurt his chest too much. Mikey went back to washing his hair and he sighed, closing his eyes.

“Where are-”

“Ray's sleeping. Frank's out kicking cacti so he doesn't kick you. Go to sleep, Gee.”

“'kay,” Gerard hummed and let himself be pulled back under.

It continued that way for nearly a month, the three of them recovering rather quickly while Gerard stayed on bedrest. It took Frank a while to forgive him, but eventually he started sleeping next to Gerard again. He even smiled at him sometimes, when Gerard told a good enough joke or when they were just in a room alone. He knew he'd scared him, possibly most of all. Frank had lost so much, it must have been pure torture to have to watch someone he loved die right in front of him, underable to help. Gerard knew he'd gotten off lucky with the nasty glares and the silent treatment for a few days.

He wasn't sure how long it took him to recover, but it was after Gerard had been allowed to take the finger cast off when Ray came home from the bazaar with a wrapped, brown package.

“Hey, Frankie, I got you something.”

“Me?” Frank blinked, not even looking shifty about his name, “Why?”

“Reminded me of you.” Ray grinned and tossed it his way. Frank caught it with a nervous look at Gerard, who motioned for him to open it with his newly freed fingers, just because he wanted to stretch them. He was maybe a little excited to see what it was too.

Frank opened it carefully, untying the rough string and unfolding the packaging to reveal a Frankenstein's Monster mask, matching his zap.

The wide grin that split across his face made Gerard want to explode and the amused laughter that burst from Mikey almost lit the match.

That night, Jet Star and Kobra both left for the night, Jet Star to go visit some mechanic friends and Kobra to see if he could flirt his way into Anonymous Witness' skirt yet and hang with Show Pony for a while.

Though it was just nearing sunset in the real world, alone together in their freezer, it was pitch black and comfortable. Gerard had Frank pinned with his body, surrounding him, because it always made Frank relax (and Gerard had never said it out loud and probably would never, but Frankie's kinky side was something he'd never seen in anyone else before. It was rare, only when Kobra and Jet Star were gone overnight and they were alone, but he'd let Gerard do whatever he wanted; tie him down with bandanas and touch him, sweet talk him and call him sweetheart and angel and touch him like he was Gerard's. It always amazed him just how much Frankie trusted him, with his body and his heart) and was kissing his shoulder and neck tiredly, nearing asleep.

“Hey...Hey, Gee,” Frank said into the darkness, hesitant and whisper soft.

“Hm?” Gerard hummed back, nuzzling Frank's hair, just taking in his smell.

“You...You know, about my revenge plans?”

“Yeah?” Gerard said distractedly, hand stroking down Frank's thigh, “What about it?”

“If...When I leave, to fight them.” Frank suddenly got choked up, went quiet and pressed his face to Gerard's neck. Gerard stopped touching him, and cupped the back of his head instead, frowning as he pressed his face to the side of Frank's, offered comfort while he waited for Frank to continue.

“When I leave. Will you guys come with me?”

“Jesus, Frankie, what kind of question is that?” Gerard frowned, sitting up and resting his weight on his elbows so he could look over Frank, making out the almost scared look in his usually guarded eyes, even in the dark, “Of course we're coming with you. We're family.”

He felt something in his stomach tighten, wondering what they'd done to trigger one of Frank's many, many abandonment issues. If he'd somehow triggered the one he put there himself.

But Frank just smiled up at him a little, all open and honest and fucking gorgeous. Gerard got the overwhelming urge to just fucking kiss him, and he could do that, so he did. He leaned down and Frank seemed to have the same idea because he leaned up and they were kissing, soft and not like them at all except for how it was still exactly like them.

“I love you, asshole.” Frank whispered, just barely audible in the silence of the room.

“I fucking love you,” Gerard said loudly, “And I want the whole world to know it. Now go to sleep, idiot, we have shit to do tomorrow.” He rolled his eyes, but it was too fond to be annoyed and they both knew it.

Frank just kicked him and turned, shoved against Gerard's chest and forced his arm around Frank's waist so he could snuggle closer. Gerard just smiled a secret smile into Frank's neck and kissed his skin. He closed his eyes and waited until Frank's breathing had evened out into sleep before he really settled down to rest himself.