Chapter Text
Destroya be damned, if Kobra had to move at all within the next four hours, he was going to kill a man in cold blood and call it revenge.
Considering the fact that he was in the completely wrong Zone, he would have to move, and he’d have to move a lot. It didn’t - it wasn’t right. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.
Sure, he wouldn’t be driving, but the motion itself threatened to spill his stomach out onto the ground, and he was going to be late to the meeting he’d fucking called, wouldn’t he?
He was already a day late, something like that. However long it had been since the radio call.
It was the damn desert, in the overbearing, bright sun, and he wasn’t sure whether he was sweating because he was burning up inside or whether it was cold chills, his body pushing and pulling against the dimension he was trapped in.
You’re not supposed to be here, a voice whispered in his head, sinister and demanding and always there when he was exhausted, when his body threatened to give out and put him back into the Hell he’d been born into. You’re not with them. You’re not normal.
As though that was anything new. An old taunt, sure, but it wasn’t meant for his mind; it was meant for his body, flickering and transparent across the ground; he could see through his own hand when he had enough energy to squint, when he had enough energy to open his eyes in the first place.
This wasn’t right.
He was fine a day ago. He was fine getting his bike and he’d been fine the entire trip there. Yes, he’d been in the Infirmary beforehand, but that hadn’t been for anything like this. His ribs didn’t even hurt, though they were supposed to.
Why did he feel like shit?
Something happened. And - and maybe he was just delirious, but it wasn’t that he was in a different goddamn world when he glitched, but seeing it from a different angle, and whenever his body sunk into that dimension, that different angle, everything felt different, colder than the pinpricks he was used to. Something happened.
“Are you okay?” Sandman asked, for the third time, crouched down next to Kobra with a wet rag held to his face. Maybe he had a fever or something.
Honestly, someone could tell Kobra that he was the damn reaper of the dead right now and he’d probably believe them. It wasn’t that every muscle in his body was sore, because they weren’t, and if they were, he’d probably file for emotional distress, but his - his hands, his arms, his legs, they were sore like he’d run a damn marathon or, like, like -
He couldn’t even think of a good simile.
So instead of answering the question, Kobra groaned, rolling his head to the side from the ball he’d curled himself into, too hot and too cold all at once. “Do I - do I look okay, motherfucker?”
“Did you want me to answer that honestly?”
“I want you to shut up!” Kobra winced at the volume of his own voice, of the way it made needles stab into the back of his forehead, and he couldn’t even lift his damn hands to make it stop because they were clear and half-faded into what Kobra liked to lovingly call, the Hell dimension.
Woo! Great fucking Sunday.
It better be a Sunday. Kobra hated Sundays, so maybe they were just trying to get back at him.
“D’ya think it’s… y’know, safe, to get you into the truck?”
Sandman’s hesitant, and while that’s sweet and all, Kobra wasn’t in the mood to deal with all the tentative-ness or whatever the word was, not with bile rising in his throat and his hands burning as though he was Ghoul or something. “I’ll - I’ll be honest, I think I might just throw up if you do that.”
Yeah, no, the idea of sitting in the stiflingly hot passenger seat listening to old CDs while sand and rock rolled underfoot wasn’t settling well, anywhere in Kobra’s body. He just - he wanted to be home.
Poison always knew what to do when stuff like this happened. But of course, Poison was still hogging all the sleep in his goddamn coma in the one goddamn place they couldn’t find him and - oh, oh, that made Kobra feel worse, okay, okay.
“We gotta get down to WKIL,” Sandman frowned, and if Kobra knew any better, he’d think Sandman’s eyes were sparkling with recognition, despite the fact that he was an Underground born through and through.
He must be out of it.
Nevertheless, Sandman continued, glancing between Kobra and the truck with furrowed brows, a puzzle that didn’t fit together. And then, eventually, with a mock grin tugging at his lips. “Y’know what? You can sit by your bike. Keep her company so you can, like, not deal with the passenger seat and not vomit on the seats, yeah?”
“Sounds like a terrible idea,” Kobra mumbled, and it was because he didn’t know if his stomach liked the idea of being in a truck bed any more than it liked the idea of being in the passenger seat, but he supposed Sandman was right - if he really didn’t like it, then he could just push over the side.
And 27 would be right next to him, anyway, and Destroya only knew that nothing wrong could happen near her. Maybe his spell of bad luck was because he hadn’t given her the touch-up job he’d been intending to do before that fucking firefight that started all of this.
“- Ra? Kobra?”
Kobra blinked. And blinked again. And then his eyes focused on Sandman waving a hand around his face, and belatedly realized he must be getting off track, though he didn’t know if there was a track, considering his legs felt like jelly in a goddamn ocean. Something like that.
The ocean and jello seemed like a bad combination.
Ugh, he didn’t even know what he was saying; he was little help when Sandman picked him up, mostly just trying to keep limbs in working order - and he wasn’t that fond of being carried bridal style, but there was little he could do to protest that.
Now, see, with 27 in the truck bed, it meant that he could go on either side of the bike - but they couldn’t put the tailgate down, because that might fuck things up and they didn’t need any more disasters, so it was a… journey trying to get a fully grown eighteen-year-old into the truck bed by the arm strength of a nineteen-year-old who probably barely scraped 5’7.
“What are you laughing at?” Sandman mumbled, half-propping Kobra’s very useless ass on the side of the truck, jumping onto the tire to get better leverage.
“You’re short.”
“I will scratch your precious bike until you are begging me to stop it and then, and only then,” Sandman hummed, completely straight-faced, moving boxes out of the way of where Kobra would, presumably, be sitting, “Will I grant you the sweet release of relief by splattering gloss all over the bike and leave, and I will make sure you never recover from the trauma.”
Kobra cackled, despite his lungs angrily yelling at him to stop - from the way they seemed to rattle to the way his heart was leaping through his chest, balancing precariously on the truck and trying his damnedest not to fall. “If you so much as touch my bike with ill-intentions I will make sure you never walk straight again, darling dearest.”
“Awe, at the pet names stage already? How quaint.”
While Kobra wasn’t quite sure what the word quaint meant, and he couldn’t say he was all too happy with the way he was getting man-handled into the truck bed, he couldn’t say he detested it, either.
He felt like shit, sure, and he sure as hell would love if it was Poison with him and not Sandman, but it wasn’t the worst, if he had to admit it.
Eventually, he ended up sitting criss-cross, with his back against the indent within the bed for the tire, looking lazily up at the sky.
At the very least, he wasn’t liable to fall out of the truck - his hands and legs had stopped flickering, stopped acting like he was a damn ghost in the making, but at fifty-miles-an-hour with a queasy stomach and guilt settling far back into his chest, he didn’t know if that helped at all.
He should be with Poison, really. He should still be in the Underground searching for Poison every waking moment until he was found - he should be in the Underground helping Jet find Poison, not - not in the Zones with Sandman.
He didn’t even know what Ghoul was doing. Sure, he didn’t get along with Ghoul, but a crew was still a crew.
Try as he might to put it any other way, but he’d run away again, hadn’t he? Ran away from the stress while the going was still good and left everyone else to do whatever the hell they wanted to do, whether they needed his help or not.
Destroya, talk about being a shitty friend. No fucking wonder he was getting sick - not just in the head, for once, but physically, too. Kobra never should have left the Underground, intentions be damned.
Maybe that was why he was getting sick. His body knew that he shouldn’t be here, and his mind knew it, too, even if he was trying to ignore it.
And - and he did feel better, the further they went, closer and closer to WKIL - from Zone Four to Zone Two, where the Station was, far closer to the Underground.
That wouldn’t really be the solution, he knew, but… It was close enough, for now, nausea edging into the back of his mind, until he finally felt like he could breathe again without vomiting, the wind throwing his hair every direction at the high speed.
Once he got to WKIL, he’d need the radio gang’s help with finding Poison. If he was out here, he could enlist help, and then maybe the sickness would well and truly go away.
You don’t belong there, either, the voice in his head cackled, the one from earlier, the one that always showed up when he was feeling particularly like shit. Or whenever he was having a breakdown, but his powers and his mental state happened to mirror each other a lot, hate it as he might.
Kobra laid back, shifting to where his back was flush with the ridges of the truck bed, staring up at the sky now that the wind resistance had lowered significantly.
Just get through the day. Today, the day after, just keep going.
Usually, the one to tell him that was Poison, but right now, it was the one thing he had to tell himself, and honestly, Kobra didn’t appreciate the sudden change of tone. His own was bitter, whereas Poison was always optimistic, bright in the way only a revolutionist could be.
Poison’s anger burned like a falling star, capturing everyone’s attention and directing it. Kobra’s anger burned like a supernova, distant and burning until he destroyed himself, and mantras like this were no exception, bitter and biting until the words stung his skin.
It would be a long day.
_
“Time to wake up, sleepy-head.”
Kobra hissed something along the lines of fucking fucker, batting away whoever’s hand was trying to wake him up - until, of course, a round of nausea hit his stomach, forcing his way up his throat, and he scrambled to sit up, half-thrown out of the truck bed on his own accord.
Kobra’s eyes scrambled around wildly; Sandman, truck, 27, WKIL, sand, sunset, but he didn’t move from his position, waiting for the feeling to ebb away, to slow its mad descent, but it didn’t.
In fact, all he ended up doing was dry-heaving, his stomach churning with nothing in it to vomit up.
Half-collapsed along the wall of the truck bed, Sandman gave him a sympathetic smile, tentatively reaching out to rub his gloved thumb along the back of Kobra’s palm. “I gave you a few minutes, didn’t wanna wake you up just yet. Everyone’s - uh, everyone’s inside.”
Great. Right. He had to talk to people.
Kobra didn’t bother forcing a smile, not knowing what the state of his teeth would be, and instead wrinkled his nose in distaste, slumping from his then-vigilant posture. Fucking hell. “Do they know anything yet?”
“Only what you told them. And… uh, what Ghoul told them.”
“Ghoul?”
Sandman took one look at Kobra’s raised brow and winced, avoiding eye contact. Like Kobra would be mad or something. Why would he be mad? “Uh, yeah. Ghoul’s here too, apparently. Was crashing on the couch before you called the impromptu meeting.”
And Kobra… didn’t know how to react. Ghoul. Fun Ghoul. Part of his crew Fun Ghoul. Bomb-maker. Guy Kobra had abandoned when he ran away from all of his problems, as per usual.
Maybe it was his own guilt that made this so difficult.
Sandman cleared his throat, clearly giving Kobra time to say anything if he wanted to. And… and he did, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say, so nothing at all came out of his mouth. “I, uh, I can tell them you’re feeling under the weather if you want. Considering you do look pretty sick.”
“Oh, I’ll take a day off when I turn green and fall over,” Kobra huffed, trying to awkwardly jump down - which was a little difficult when he struggled to throw his legs over the side anyway, arms shaking with the effort it took to hold his body up.
Despite the bandages and stuff, maybe his ribs had gotten infected and made this super bad or something.
It would make sense, though his ribs didn’t ache and they didn’t feel particularly bloated or swollen, nor irritated in the slightest. Fuck. He’d still get it checked out.
Without a word, and a distant look in his eyes, Sandman offered his hand for Kobra to grip, help him get out on his own accord; his pride wouldn’t let him accept anything more than a hand for support.
Nevermind that he tripped when he did get to the ground.
Sandman was careful, careful not to touch Kobra too much, save for his shoulder and upper arm to help him up, and Kobra flashed him a closed-mouth grin, trying to put on the easy confidence he usually had.
Or usually faked, but the premise was still the same, no?
They would all be waiting for him. And maybe Ghoul could explain, but he couldn’t fill in all the details. Neither of the two Fabulous Killjoys could answer the most pressing questions: where the other half of their crew were, and what the hell was happening in the Underground.
Hopefully, Sandman would be able to explain that part.
Fuck, Kobra might need to sit down, the queasiness coming back into his stomach at full-force, no disregard for how he was supposed to see all of his estranged friends all giving him concerned looks.
Sandman returned a reassuring smile, letting go of Kobra’s bicep to knock on the metal doorframe of the Station, half-hidden by a sand dune, though their cover certainly wasn’t helped by the truck sitting out front.
Oops.
For a moment, Kobra hoped no one would hear the knock. That he could go back to his restless sleep in the truck bed and everything would be fine, because he didn’t - he didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t want to admit that to anyone other than himself.
So, naturally, someone had to answer near-immediately, before Sandman could even knock a second time; someone with the notorious pink streaks in blonde hair.
DJ Hot Chimp.
“Nice to see you kid,” she grinned, looking past Sandman’s shoulder, over to Kobra himself - he knew he most likely looked pale and sickly, but he felt sick as hell, so it was fitting, he supposed. “And, uh, nice to see you too. Still have the gloves, huh?”
“Part of the look,” Sandman shrugged, tense; Kobra almost had the guts to ask what the history was there.
But that wasn’t part of his business and he didn’t even know if he could walk twenty-feet on his own, but it was no good idea to get involved in someone else’s past, not right now.
Nevertheless, Chimp moved to the side, allowing them both to amble into the relatively cramped radio station - that tended to happen when all of them were there. Sandman, Ghoul, Dr. D, Cherri, Chimp, Pony, Newsie, himself.
Made for one hell of a crowd, and Dr. D’s stacks of vinyl records weren’t all too happy with their bumbling presence.
And everyone was looking at him - in concern, in confusion, he didn’t know, but they were all - all staring at him and Kobra didn’t know if he could do it.
He wasn’t meant to be in the spotlight. That was where Poison belonged. That was where Poison lived, and cast the rest of them into shadows, and he used to be okay with that and now he was wishing for it, someone or something to be there so that he could get some peace, time to collect his thoughts and make sure he wouldn’t get caught in another bout of nausea.
“Hi,” Kobra said weakly, waving his hand around in what was supposed to be a greeting, and ended up just being awkward - and knocking his elbow into one of the posters on the walls, some old band named Seether or something like that. “Uh. So you all made it, huh?”
“Yeah, and it looks like you barely did,” Newsie snickered, her arms crossed - she was never one to beat around the bush, but her appearance alone could tell you that.
If Kobra had to describe her in as few words as possible, it would be boots and boobs.
He used to have a crush on her when he was younger and she was the coolest person in the Zones, but now he knew she was just as much of a disaster as them - and her fishnets still hadn’t recovered from the many, many times she accidentally sprayed a can of spray paint in the wrong direction.
Regardless, Newsie’s blue-and-black color scheme hadn’t changed from the last time they’d seen each other, and neither had the choppy, shoulder-length blue hair and bangs, or vaguely steampunk goggles resting on her forehead.
Paired with the thigh-high fifteen-pound black platform boots, she was a force to be reckoned with, no doubt.
“Yeah,” Kobra mumbled. Damn, he was hoping no one would bring it up - it had to be the first thing out of Newsie’s mouth, then. “Anyways, so I hope you’ve all gotten each other up to date on what’s going on…?”
“You mean compared the cryptic bullshit you gave us over the radio and Ghoul’s choppy reflections on the same thing?”
“Yeah, that,” Kobra nodded, gesturing vaguely over to Ghoul - who was trying to sink behind everyone, into the wall. His hair was washed, and he was in one of Dr. D’s old shirts, so he must’ve had something going right. “So you got all of it?”
“That’s not how this works,” Chimp sighed, leaning against the wall, of course, having to be the one cool one in the room - the one with sense, at least, and only then did Kobra look around again and notice that Sandman was trying to hide behind him, too.
Damn, the same thing, huh?
Kobra shrugged. “It can work that way if I want it to work that way, and I want it to work that way.”
“No, it doesn’t -”
Dr. D cut Newsie off before she could get another word out, blue eyeshadow-covered eyes narrowing into a glare - at Kobra, not D, though Kobra wanted to know what the hell he did wrong to get the treatment. (He could probably name a few things.) “So, to recap, Kid - Poison’s in a coma, Star’s… somewhere, you’re here, Ghoul’s here, Sandy’s here, and you got the gang together why…?”
For the longest time, Kobra didn’t answer, wondering what, exactly, had been going through his head - and he couldn’t place it.
It was covered in fog, and he dare not poke at that, perhaps because he didn’t feel like dry-heaving for another five minutes from the lack of contents in his stomach.
Luckily for him, Sandman took over for him, pushing past Kobra’s shoulder to where he was visible to everyone, though Kobra didn’t pretend he didn’t notice the way the former barely touched him. That felt great on the ego. “We think you can help. And some of you have more experience than others in fields like this, so....”
“So, what? You thought you could just waltz in and demand help and that we need to give you our time?” Ghoul was scowling, arms crossed much like Newsie, and for a moment, Kobra could see the sibling resemblance - the anger in their expressions matched.
Damn, was that how he and Poison looked sometimes? Startling.
Sandman scowled, a look that ought to look unnatural on him - and to Kobra, it did, used to either the easy smile lounging on his face or the callous, unreadable expression from back when they were in the Underground meeting.
“I didn’t call this meeting, and I’m not calling for your help.”
“And yet you roped my crew into it well enough, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t do that!”
Ghoul scoffed, throwing the excuse to whatever Hell he deemed necessary. “Sure you didn’t, but it was your crew leader that attacked your Infirmary, it was your villain that roped us into that run, it was your business that got us all tangled up in this!”
Sandman’s jaw was tight, scanning over Ghoul to see… something, he didn’t know. There’s history there, too, Kobra thought, silently backing away from the argument before he could get roped into that as well.
“It was your comatose fucking friend that brought you there at all,” Sandman mumbled, the heat draining from his expression drastically - for some fucking reason, when Kobra thought that if anything, he should be getting more pissed off.
That was how Kobra operated, anyway.
Ghoul didn’t answer, a glower saying everything he couldn’t, and Sandman quietly continued, his gloved hands balled into a fist. “And I don’t give a shit that you don’t like me, or that you think I’m worse than you because I don’t have a deathwish, so get it through your thick fucking skull that I’m here, and I’ll stay right where I need to be.”
No one acknowledged that.
Instead, Pony cut through the tension by skating back behind a stack of records, their bright hair peeking out underneath a Skull Candy helmet - homemade, of course, and probably repurposed from a snowboarding helmet. “So, dolls, how the hell are we planning to help people we can’t locate?”
They didn’t have the full story. Kobra knew that.
And he knew he should tell them, but there was something tight in his chest that screamed no, no, you can’t know, you can’t know we fucked up. Or maybe that was just the ball of sickness threatening to reappear, but still, the notion was there and it wouldn’t leave his pounding head.
Something was wrong!
“We can, uh,” Kobra started, furrowing his brows and trying to find the word on the tip of his tongue, unable to figure out whether he just - whether he forgot it or whether he couldn’t force it up his throat.
Fuck. Fuck. Going back to WKIL didn’t help.
You’re not meant to be here, that voice sing-songed, at the same time Kobra’s vision blurred, a TV-sort of static across his peripherals, loud, loud, loud.
“Kobra?”
Fuck, fucking hell, why was Chimp’s voice so loud? Loud loud loud, everything was way too loud!
You don’t belong here. Don’t you get that now?
Something was wrong, not with him, not with his body, not with anything - anything around him - nothing was right, nothing was right, why was nothing right?
Kobra snapped his eyes open - when had he closed them? - slumped against one of the Station’s walls with a knocked-over stack of CDs next to him, staring straight at Ghoul. “What the hell did you do?” Kobra asked, weak, his voice threatening to go out on him again. “What did you do?”
It wasn’t Ghoul’s fault. He knew it wasn’t Ghoul’s fault.
But it was. Something was wrong, and it was Ghoul’s fault, and he didn’t know how or why, but Kobra knew when to trust his gut - it had kept him alive for eighteen years, and this was no exception.
Ghoul was glaring at him - or did he look concerned? Did it matter?
Why the hell did - ?
Kobra gasped, his free hand flying to his ribs, his ribs, how did he forget about his ribs? They hurt, they - they ached, ached, a burning hole in the center of his chest like his heart itself was melting from all the pressure, and that wasn’t physically possible, but something was - something was wrong and someone needed to fix it.
Someone needed to fix it now.
“He’s - he’s fucking dying over there! What the - Ghoul?!”
Distantly, everyone’s voices blended together, all the syllables and tones blending into the same wave of sound, loud loud loud.
His eyes were screwed shut again, but it made - it helped block out the sound. Hands clapped over his ears to make sure - to make sure that nothing was wrong, nothing was wrong anymore, even though his ribs made him want to curl up into a ball and sleep forever, this would do, this would do, this would do.
“Get him help -”
“What’s going on?”
“We don’t -”
“Try picking -”
Sound faded out. It wasn’t loud anymore.
It wasn’t that kind of loud anymore, at least.
It should be loud. Kobra should really be concerned that it wasn’t loud - that he wasn’t able to pick apart voices or that the tension was slowly starting to drain out of his body, that the pain was in the back of his mind rather than the forefront.
He wasn’t, though, and let it all flow away from him, in the same vein as when something important happened and everything else faded to the background. Fitting, no?
_
Kobra groaned, instinctively reaching for a ray gun by his side.
Call it a force of habit, and it was, but it was the most important thing to have by his side, and he was sourly interrupted by his arm twinging in protest, swiping right through… Something.
Kobra hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but he could feel the cold air pass through his arm when he should’ve collided with an object, and waking up wasn’t so hard when fear was pumping through his veins like adrenaline.
Here. He was here. In the real world.
The colors weren’t inverted and it wasn’t cold like it was when he glitched, it wasn’t cold and hellish and somewhere you never wanted to stay. That didn’t mean he was all in the real world, though, frowning at the way his arm flickered in front of his face.
Hey, nothing hurt anymore! Not even his ribs, though he vaguely remembered those being one hell of a bitch before he passed.
Wait, where was he?
Glancing around, he sure as hell wasn’t at WKIL anymore, though he didn’t know if that was… Shit, if he was flickering when he woke up, did that mean…?
“Yeah, dipshit, you appeared here. Sorry.”
“I’m not a dipshit.”
“Considering you appeared out of nowhere next to my dinner, I think I can call you a dipshit.”
Kobra finally adjusted to the light, squinting at the harsh streetlight raining down on him; he was… Yeah, there was that question again - where was he?
And when he pushed himself off the pavement gravel embedded in his palms, glancing to his side, he found a can of PLUS; “Dinner, huh?”
“Close to it,” the person speaking shrugged, and Kobra glanced over at her, finally - she was nice-looking, a pack of cigarettes tucked into her lap, though she wasn’t trying to hide them, and Kobra instinctively wanted to wince and look away.
Not because he felt bad for looking at her, or felt like he shouldn’t, but because it reminded him a lot of rather… unstable things he’d done back in the city.
An android girl, with a mop full of unbrushed blue hair. They were in a back alley of Battery City, most likely the Neon District, and Kobra didn’t even want to know how he’d gone so far when he was in so much pain.
(It wasn’t like he’d ever felt at home in the City, after all.)
“How did you get here, kid? And who are you?” the android girl asked, raising a brow, black-lined lips twitching in amusement.
She didn’t seem all too concerned about a killjoy appearing out of nowhere next to her dinner. So, Kobra wasn’t going to be the one to make it a big deal.
“I’m the Kobra Kid,” Kobra said, but suddenly he felt a hell of a lot more stupid saying it, and he didn’t quite know why - maybe because he was still a little blurry on what the hell had just happened and the android girl was staring at him with that same amusement on her face, making him squirm, though he was sitting cross-legged on the ground with jeans that hadn’t been washed in two weeks.
Nevertheless, she nodded, decisive, as though she’d thought he would say that. “Nice to meet you, Kid. My name’s Blue.”
“Original.”
“Good at keeping lost in the system,” the android girl - Blue - shrugged, lifting her pack of smokes and setting it to the side, out of Kobra’s line of sight. “What about you, Kid? Why are you here?”
“Oh, I appeared out of thin air,” Kobra said, dry, if only because it was true. He’d been saying something before he glitched, but he was in far too much pain right then to remember it.
Blue rolled her eyes, flicking him on the head. “Smartass. You one of the metas ‘round here?”
“How’d you guess?”
“ Appeared out of thin air, really gave it away, kid. Where are you supposed to be?”
Kobra sat up, slumping against the brick wall like she was, and only feeling mostly like a child as his legs straightened in front of him, weak and weary and Witch, he didn’t know what that had been, but he was way sorer than he had any right to be.
“I’m, uh…” His voice lowered, a subconscious habit from the city that he’d tried - and succeeded - to kick years ago. “I’m from the Zones. Zone Two.”
“Three hundred miles out, huh? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” She asked, her voice drawling, a shake to it that was reminiscent of wires not rerouting power as quickly as they should.
Three hundred miles. Three hundred miles from where he was supposed to be, and Kobra had no way of getting back - he couldn’t glitch another three hundred miles. His conscious record was something like… twenty miles, maybe?
(It was a work in progress, alright? Usually, there was a lot more on his plate than trying to push at his abilities, see how far he could go or what he could do. That was Poison’s thing, because Poison actually knew how it worked.)
Kobra didn’t say anything, glancing around as though he didn’t know where he was - didn’t want to know where he was.
The Neon District. Battery City.
The last time he’d been here, not of his own volition, he’d been something like a mindless soldier following orders, but at the very least, his head hadn’t been a mess and he hadn’t known he had superpowers.
Escaping the City would’ve been so much easier if he could’ve teleported him and Poison out, though he’d learned long ago that his power never breached the bounds of Battery City’s walls - like something in the concrete itself was preventing Kobra from going any further.
Oh, that just made his day, didn’t it?
“You need to get home,” Blue murmured, and when Kobra glanced at her, she wasn’t staring at him so much as staring through him, past the neon and the dirt layered into his skin.
It wasn’t a question, and there was nothing for Kobra to say - nothing that he should say.
What the fuck was going on around here?
Blue continued, though, before Kobra was scrambling for anything to say, anything to do; she took a cigarette from the crumpled package out of his sight, lighting it with a flick of her finger, and Kobra didn’t ask. “You’re one of the rebels out of the Desert. You were on the break-in at the droid store, weren’t you?”
How did she know that?
“Yeah, I was,” Kobra swallowed. She wasn’t asking, she was telling, and he was just - was just acknowledging what she was saying. “It was - it was a med run. There were med supplies hidden in the bottom of the boxes.”
“I know it was. You were there. You were the distraction, weren’t you? Along with the Chordettes boy. What happened on that run, Kobra Kid?”
“Nothing happened,” Kobra answered, the first thing to pop out of his mouth, and why he even answered in the first place, he didn’t even know. Why did he answer? Why couldn’t he leave?
Why did he appear next to her, of all people?
Blue raised a brow.
Kobra cursed.
“Nothing happened save for the explosion and subsequent falling out of the plan. That was - that was all. It’s… it’s kind of a blur, honestly.” And that much was true, though he didn’t know why he was telling her that, either - he was compelled.
(But that was impossible, wasn’t it? She was a droid. Maybe he just needed someone inconspicuous to air his dirty laundry too. Something told him that was a horrible, shitty idea, but he had a lot going on, alright?)
“And why is it a blur, kid?”
That was… a good question. He’d chalked it up to the adrenaline, and the fact that the blast that scraped his ribs had hurt like hell and he’d done his best to block it out, but…
But it was blurry before he’d gotten hit, and he didn’t actually remember it.
Kobra’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again, his surroundings getting blurry with a tingle in his fingertips, that rush of movement that always encased him when -
But he didn’t want to glitch!
“Why is it a blur?” Blue asked again, her bright, unnaturally blue eyes staring him down, an icy shock to his system, but not in the same way Ghoul’s or Newsie’s eyes were; blue as in manufactured blue, but something she wore with pride.
Palms digging into the gravel and pavement underneath him, grounding him, staying here, where he was, teeth grit, Kobra spoke, strangled and lost somewhere in his throat. “I - It’s - I don’t know why it’s blurry.”
“What did the Witch tell you, Kobra Kid?”
Kobra Kid. She didn’t say his name right. She - she wasn’t saying his name, not her, but someone - some thing else, and this time, it was Kobra’s choice to speak, voicing the theories swimming between his ribs, behind the band around his heart that kept him from ever spitting truth into a world that didn’t care for it, didn’t care for him.
“It’s not the Witch’s fault,” Kobra said, quiet, dropping his voice down low enough that the artificial wind couldn’t pick apart a word. “It’s not her fault. She didn’t want this. It’s Ghoul’s fault. It’s our fault. How do you know about that?”
Blue sighed, and the theories swimming around Kobra’s ribs stopped, abruptly losing all their sustenance. “I don’t know, kid. I think it’s my fault, too. Whatever it is. This is why you don’t separate from the people that care about you, you hear? The Lobby doesn’t care about its crowns until they’re gone, and -”
Despite Blue cutting herself off, Kobra nodded to let her continue, gritty blond hair falling in his face as he did so. Witch, his hair even smelled cold.
The worry would come next. For now, Kobra would listen, listen to Blue’s word and the lilt to her voice - far more Desert than Battery City, but that was impossible, wasn’t it?
“The Lobby lost its heroes,” she said, a dare on the tip of her tongue that Kobra couldn’t place. “The Lobby is abandoned and alone, and the City has its claws sunk deep into everyone. The kids disappearing off the street. The neon paint riddled with monotone. The ‘droids disappearin’ just a street over. We are alone, now.”
“And the - the Juvee Halls? Aren’t the Juvee Halls supposed to… to protect all of you?”
Blue laughed, mirthless, something shaking in the pit of Kobra’s stomach as he thought of all that could mean. “The Juvee Halls are another lost cause ‘round here, kid. They aren’t ‘joys. They’re just people, and dying for their cause is like a rat dying to get a chunk of cheese. It’s not worth it.”
“And… And…” This was where he was supposed to engage his critical thinking skills, but Kobra’s mind could only work so fast until he settled on the right thing to say with his nails digging into the pavement so hard they would bleed. “And the Suitehearts? Don’t they guide the Lobby, too?”
“Gone. Lost causes. Haven’t seen ‘em around since the doctor went MIA, raid gone wrong, and the med supply you went on. Word gets around, kid.”
Word gets around.
Word gets around. Of the raid gone wrong and the Suitehearts stepping down, and - and did word get around about him, too? About the way he ran away from everything? The way he left Jet and Ghoul and comatose Poison, just because he couldn’t handle it all?
“I - I need to get to the Underground,” is what Kobra ended up saying, a knot in his chest with every heartbeat, guilt settling over his being like a second skin. He couldn’t acknowledge it.
If he acknowledged it, then she would, too, and his dirty laundry was just that: his.
Blue hummed once again, something that burned with the truth. Truth Kobra wasn’t going to share, something she was judging him for, and by Witch, judgment day was upon him in a way he couldn’t fathom.
Judgment day was an android who knew more than she was letting on, and something about judgment didn’t sound so much the end of days, like Kobra had seen in some of the books he’d pillaged over the years, but familiarity he hadn’t sensed in years.
(What familiarity? He didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but it felt of his mother, and nothing with her involved was more than hushed glances and tight smiles. Maybe it felt like… the woman his mother was when she was in the same room as Poison. That sounded about right.)
“You need to get down to the Underground, and you need to get the rest of them there, too. The DJ knows what I’m talking about, though he doesn’t know it yet. The Chordettes boy. He needs to be back with his crew. Can you manage that?”
“And why should I be listening to you, who I’ven’t the slightest clue as to how you got that information?” Their meeting at WKIL - that had been private, for them only, and no way their frequencies worked the same in the City as they did in the Desert.
“Cause and effect and consequence,” said Blue, “That’s all there is to it. I am consequence. You are affect. My - my girlfriend is cause. You’ll learn, soon. If you’re alive by then. Find the Chordettes boy and bring him home; find the doctor and bring him to life; find the revolutionist to find the bomb. It’ll make sense. It’ll make sense.”
Before Kobra could ask any further, Blue gave a flick of her finger, smoke tendrils dancing in the air from the cigarette she’d brought to her mouth, and that was all Kobra could see, focused in on the smoke as though it was a homing beacon.
The smoke, of course, drifted up to the air; Kobra’s gaze drifted toward it, but when he snapped his eyes back to the ground, to Blue, out of his stupor, he found nothing more than dark space and the fading outline of a city alley.
She’d done something.
But what had she done?
Blinking, Kobra readjusted to the new light source, but it wasn’t - it wasn’t dim like… No, no, it was… he didn’t…
Oh.
He was in two different places.
That wasn’t concerning at all, was it?
Nevertheless, he squinted, narrowing his eyes against the sudden onslaught of stimuli that he didn’t quite know how to process, and it stopped - not in, not in too different places, but in one concrete area, and when Kobra’s eyes catch on his surroundings, he couldn’t help but groan.
Great, right where he wanted to be.
And that wasn’t sarcastic, not really, but he - He didn’t know. Something about it didn’t feel right, a weight on his back, another world to hold on his shoulders.
The Underground was just as Kobra had left it, though when he’d gone, he’d been holing up in the Infirmary and certainly didn’t have his back on the cold metal of a catwalk, his arm hanging off the ledge.
No one was around, either, and excuse the pun, but that certainly cemented Kobra’s dread of the situation; the last time he’d been in the Underground and he couldn’t see anyone other than the people he’d been traveling with, his brother had been kidnapped.
His brother.
Poison.
That was why he was down here - Kobra scrambled up, coughing a storm up from his lungs when the cold, biting air made its way down his throat; the blinding light above him was for a… a restaurant, of some sort.
Who the hell was still open at -?
Oh. That raised a good question. What time was it?
His eyes were… were heavy, though he couldn’t place when he’d gotten tired along the way; when he blinked, lights flashed across his vision and for a second, for a split second when he opened them again, the dark, muted colors of the Underground were a neonscape; neon and dark shadows flying to the sides and neon attached to everything that a killjoy had ever touched.
And he understood that.
It faded as quickly as it came. Kobra couldn’t be sure it’d even happened.
(Maybe he was delirious. Some things certainly make more sense, wouldn’t they?)
Lying there on the catwalk, no one around to judge him to tell him anything cryptic or tell him to get off his ass, he let the loneliness in his chest wash over him, drowning, suffocating.
Runaway. Coward.
That’s what he did. He ran away from his problems. From his crew, who needed him. From his family, who - who he didn’t deserve in the first place, and he’d simply proved that.
He’d abandoned them. He didn’t even know where Poison and Jet were; Poison could be dead for all Kobra knew and he’d have been driving back to the fucking Diner for no other reason than he wanted his bike and the familiarity burned within his bones like a beacon home.
Poison could be dead.
Death was part of the job, part of what he’d signed up for when Poison had dragged the two of them out of the City. Death was inevitable, all-encompassing, burning through the few living things in the Zones to its target.
Death was not meant for his brother. But Poison could be dead in a ditch somewhere, and Kobra wouldn’t know; all because he ran away from his problems and was…
A wildcard. That’s what Ghoul called him, though only in passing and never out loud, never to his face; the Kobra Kid is a wildcard.
And Ghoul’s right.
Ghoul was right. Kobra was a wildcard; didn’t know where he was going until he was already there and dragging other people into his messes because he needed a shoulder to lean on and a bridge to burn.
At the very least, it was Sandman this time. Someone who already had a crew and didn’t like Kobra to begin with; the number of relationships Kobra's burned because he couldn’t keep but bring them into his messes was astounding.
He needed to get up.
Jet was still in the Underground, somewhere; Ghoul was out in the desert, as was Sandman, so the other two - three? - Suitehearts should be in the Underground as well. And, of course, Poison.
If Kobra got off his ass and found them, it would make his life a whole hell of a lot easier.
With the heavy hum of nausea in his stomach, an anchor, easy sounded like a good plan. If only he knew how to find Jet.
(He didn’t need to find Jet.)
“Not many people around here are willing to nap on the catwalks, y’know,” someone said above him; Kobra groaned.
He didn’t want to deal with people, not when he had a thousand things going on. He didn’t need conversation added to any of them.
The voice continued. “They especially don’t take naps on the catwalks after going MIA on their crew, but I guess I did the same thing.”
Wait.
Kobra’s gaze snapped to the voice, to the figure, and while they were upside down in Kobra’s vision, it was unmistakable - Jet. Jet Star! Jet!
Scrambling to sit up, Kobra banged his elbow into the cold metal, a grin stretching over his face. “What can I say? Curiosity killed the cat. I am a very curious cat.”
Jet didn’t share the same grin. “You’re a lost cat if anything, Kobra. Where - where were you? Do you know where Ghoul is?”
“Something tells me we have communication issues.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Jet huffed, their arms crossed, and fuck, Kobra’s guilt was starting to eat him alive; Jet looked far more worn than Kobra had ever seen them, even after that firefight, with exhaustion in their eyes that could only come from a bone-deep weariness.
No wonder they were tired.
They were down here, in the Underground, alone, because Kobra was a jackass and didn’t stay when he should’ve because he ran away.
Though, Kobra did suppose, his own deserting habits didn’t matter, because he was here now, and he had to help Jet, and… And, Destroya, he had a hundred other things to do if they were counting what happened back at the station and what he’d talked about with Blue.
That didn’t matter, right?
For the moment, it didn’t matter.
(Kobra’s chest ached. He didn’t know why. He’d figure it out later. It would be fine by then, right?)
Eventually, though, Kobra sighed, pulling himself up into a sitting position and dangling his legs over the chasm that housed the Underground, over the catwalk. “A lot happened. I’m - I’m sorry, for… for disappearing. I’ll - I’ll explain everything soon, I - I swear.”
That was a lie.
Jet must’ve known that, too, but the shrug they gave wasn’t disappointed. They knew Kobra too well. “I found Poison. Or - where Poison was. He’s awake. He’s awake, and - and alone and… and I don’t know, beyond that.”
Poison was awake.
Poison was awake and Kobra wasn’t there for it.
Poison was awake and no one had any clue where he was.
The combination of events made the ache in Kobra’s chest multiply sevenfold, but he choked back nausea bubbling up in his throat for the fifth time that day, thoughts spilling out of his mouth unbidden.
This was all connected. It had to be. It was all connected, and somehow, someway, Poison was the missing piece that would connect it all together.
“I think we cause the end of the world. The end of the killjoys. The end of the rebels.”