Chapter Text
Well, this sucked.
Gary wiped a chunk of what smelled like someone’s liver off his goggles, shook the ringing out of his ears and wondered if he had made the wrong decision.
It wasn't like they were really holding him captive, at least not anymore. He wasn't totally sure when they had given up on that. He wasn't even sure they meant to kidnap him in the first place. They had been hovering right over his mom's neighborhood when he lied and said he didn't remember the house number anymore. Stockholm Syndrome or whatever.
The guys didn't get paid as far as he could tell, but they got free meals and they had already given him a number and everything. They had all pitched in for one of those ice cream cakes when he survived his first raid on the compound-he didn't tell them he had accidentally locked himself in Venture’s lab freezer for about half of it. 36 was teaching him to beat-box. Sure, maybe most people didn't end up living in a room with 85 other guys who all dressed like butterflies, but he could swear they had become something like his friends.
Now most of them were in various sized pieces all over Venture's yard.
He had someone else's blood in his shoes and it felt super gross. Not just in a battle fatigued, "born to kill, sir" kind of way but actually gross, like it was getting in his socks. They weren't issued nearly enough clean socks.
Gary ducked into the nearest building that didn't look like it had anybody dying in it and nearly crashed straight into Her.
The bosses' girlfriend. Or number 2. Or something. He wasn't sure what else she did, exactly. Nobody was. 29 and 43 said she really was some kind of doctor but nobody had ever seen her doing any real doctoring.
She wore too much makeup, she had perfect black hair sprayed in place like a mafia wife and she smelled like something super expensive. She was crazy hot and kind of scary, like some kind of dragon lady, or the evil guy from GI Joe’s girlfriend if she smoked and swore a lot more.
When the door slid open she immediately stubbed out her cigarette with the heel of her boot. She didn't say anything, just crossed her arms and fixed him with an imperious eye. For his part, Gary tried to think of absolutely anything he could possibly say that wasn't "you always smell really great" or "are you really a doctor?" He finally decided to go with just being direct.
"Dr. The Monarch's Girlfriend, have you seen the Monarch?"
“No. Wasn't he supposed to be with you?"
Gary hoped he hadn't visibly winced. That voice was wicked unfortunate. She hardly ever addressed the henchmen directly, but it was sure clear enough whenever she and the Monarch were arguing. Or having sex. Or both. 24 said she had gotten a baboon’s heart when she was a baby and it had tried to take over her body. 46 said it was her uterus and that she had done it herself as part of her thesis in college, which seemed kinda unlikely since he had never seen her do any actual science.
Crap. How long had he been staring at her? What part of her had he been staring at exactly? She cleared her throat loudly and gave him a pointed look.
"Aren't you that kid that got onto the cocoon in Washington? Weren't we supposed to drop you off at home?"
"Nope. We dropped him off a couple weeks ago."
"Huh. Okay...aren't you supposed to be…I dunno, doing something, then?”
“We were supposed to be storming the Venture Compound, but the boss didn't give us the duplicate keys for the gate so 29 decided to just ring the buzzer over and over again until they got sick of us. You know, draw them out into the open. Then that huge guy showed up and now everyone except me is kinda dead. And I can’t find the Monarch. Again.”
“All of them? We sent like twenty of you. To open a gate.”
“They’re kind of scattered. It’s hard to tell.”
“And you can’t find the Monarch?”
“Nope. Do you think he’s dead?”
She shrugged. “Nah.”
“What if he is? What do we do then? Does that make you like a widow or...what is the villain version of a widow anyway?"
She sighed in exasperation.
"Sweetie, what's your number?"
"21 or 20. I'm not sure anymore. Do we move up a number when someone gets their arms ripped off or-”
“You haven’t been doing this very long, have you? Look. You at least know who I am, right? If the Monarch was hurt, I would have heard about it at least a dozen times already. Once he broke a toe kicking those steel doors out front and he just laid on the porch for like an hour yelling until someone came and got me. Anyway, he probably just went home. Be a lamb and go around and wait for the cocoon out front, he'll probably pick you up himself."
Dr. Girlfriend doubted that was likely to happen, but it got him out of her way regardless. She remembered him for some reason. He had a squeaky, excited voice and he had a question-or an opinion to share-about every goddamned thing in the universe.
She usually couldn't be bothered with remembering the 80 some-odd bodies at her beck and call. She tolerated them, mostly tried to avoid them. It was hard to conjure up affection or interest for anything so disposable but this one had been alive long enough to make some kind of impression on her, which was something even if she had already forgotten his number. It was almost a shame he was going to die.
Dr. Girlfriend waited until he was out of sight before slipping out the back door and heading towards the aircraft hangar on the opposite side of the compound.
Poor kid. He missed death by Samson once and now he probably thought his number would never come up. He was sixteen at most but fat enough to pass for twenty with the goggles on. She couldn't remember being that irritating at sixteen, but then again she chose not to remember much from that part of her life, so dim and far removed from the one she led now. All she remembered was that it hadn't suited her, even then.
Brock's Charger looked like had just been waxed. Probably tuned up, too. Too bad for him the boys always forgot to lock it. Sheila slipped into the driver's seat, pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and set the timer on her communicator for 61 seconds. Fifty nine for the car, two for good luck.
The engine turned over in less than thirty and she slammed the car into reverse just as Brock came through the hangar doors with a bloody Bowie knife between his teeth. She flipped him off as she drove past him.
She thought about picking up their surviving henchman on her way out, but she was on a deadline and it was that or stop for smokes, and she was on her last pack. The walk wouldn't kill him either. She made a quiet promise to herself that she would remember the kid's number, if he lived.