Chapter Text
MAYDAY MAYDAY.
Red alert, Code grey second class. The grass has flown, the sun is gone, angelus sleeps in a bloody throne.
Would the man with a song in his heart and his little bird friend join the flock of seagulls as they fish for a burst of static where the red fern grows. 速く進む, 警告, ばかな話.
I repeat. There has been a code red on rainbow.
To any of you motorbabies out there who have a clear conscience: keep your pedals to the metal, your hands in the air, and don’t pay no heed to any white noise because Killjoys never fucking die.
Commence transmission loop: MAYDAY MAYDAY.
* * * *
All of the storybooks were about girls and boys who had two parents and who lived in houses with green yards. They went to school and sometimes they had siblings and dressed in pink frilly things. Usually they lived in big cities but some of the books were about kids who lived in neighbourhoods where they had lots of other kids as friends, or in forests where they made houses in the trees and helped animals. Sometimes they had magic and could fly; sometimes they turned invisible or got smushed flat, and sometimes they were just ordinary kids who were trying to learn a thing or two about the real world.
Grace’s life wasn’t like that. In fact, the list of things she didn’t have compared to the kids in the books was pretty well endless. She’d never seen a forest, she didn’t have a mom, and the only time she’d gotten to play with other kids was in the Day Groups back in the City, and then the boys never let the girls use their toys.
But now, now Grace lived in the desert, with her dad and three guys who were basically kids. Instead of playing board games, they shot cans and wrestled with each other, and sometimes when everyone left, Grace would play with her dolls and nobody made fun of her for that. And these boys actually let her use their guns and Kobra taught her how to kick Party Poison so he would fall over, which was pretty funny.
She used to think her dad was pretty normal too, before. When he worked in the buildings all day and came home at night. That was before the desert, before he worked all day just to protect her from the sun and acid rain and sandstorms and men in white who came to kill them. Before their newfound family picked up Fun Ghoul. Before they started running from his past.
Before she watched her new friends die.
Before she saw her dad come back from the dead.
* * * *
"Step on it, step on it!"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Are you bleeding? Don't fucking bleed on my seat, dicksmack!"
"Hold her back, hold her back! Don’t let her fall out of the fucking van. Fuck. Fuck. Why couldn’t fucking Kobra have come through the doors, Jesus Christ that is a lot of blood."
“Left here, Tommy.”
"Yeah, fucking drive would you? Stop staring at my fucking leg and watch the road."
“I’m fucking trying. Fucking get your goddamn shit out of my goddamn fucking face.”
“Fuck you, ow, drive fucking straight.”
“If I do that, we get shot full of fucking holes, motherfucker, shut up and let me do this.”
Everything faded to a low static and Grace strained against the arms holding her back. All she could see was her dad, thrown back on the hood of their beloved car by the light from a Scarecrow’s gun. It happened over and over again, until there was just the halo of his curls around his face left in her mind.
"Grace."
She opened her eyes, blinking past the images seared on her eyelids as the words broke through the bubble of numb silence that had formed around her. There were voices talking, yelling words she’d stopped paying attention to at some point. The sounds of the van's tires squealing on the wet pavement came back to her first, with Show Pony's quiet hiss when he looked at the singed hole in his tights where blood was freely seeping. She felt a spot of cold on her side: it was the metal tires of Dr. D's wheelchair. She belatedly realized he was waiting for her to stop straining for the door.
"Grace?" he repeated, his voice cutting below the static of Tommy and Show’s arguments.
"Yeah," she croaked, her voice hoarse from screaming. She turned away when he let her go, only now realizing she was crying and she didn’t want him to see.
The van swerved then, and Grace slipped away from Dr. D, falling with the motion of the car at the same time as Show Pony.
"Fucking drive straight, woman!" Show shouted, steadying himself on Grace. Why was he still wearing his roller skates?
“I’ll fucking drive how I fucking want to, fuck off!” Tommy shouted back from the front. “You want to die, fuckhead? Clean up your pansy cut or get these BLI shitheads off my back!”
Grace took a deep breath as Show Pony yelled at Tommy. Show was hurt, as clearly evidenced by the bleeding wound on his leg, and Grace had watched Kobra stitch up enough people that she thought she might be able to do it too. Dr. D was recording a transmission and broadcasting it through a static-filled channel and everyone else in the van was busy yelling so Grace slid away from Show Pony and dug the Doctor’s first-aid kit out from under the seat.
"Sit your shit down, Show Pony," Tommy snapped finally. "If you fucking brain yourself while I'm driving, you'll have only yourself to blame."
"Fine," Show said back. He skidded to the seats in the back, beside where Grace had buckled herself in.
She cleared her throat when Show calmed himself enough to stop tossing his sweaty hair out of his face.
"Hey," Show said, looking like he'd only just realized Grace was in the van as well. "Hi. Grace. Uh."
"He's tryin' to say that he's glad you're alive, angel," Tommy said.
"Yeah," Grace said, trying not to hear the unspoken "unlike your dad and his friends". "You got shot."
"Huh?" Show asked, screwing his pretty face up as he glanced down at his leg. "Ah, fuck, yeah. Listen, under the seat is a --"
Grace held up the first-aid kit. Show Pony gaped for a half second and then nodded. "Right, well, inside is the --"
"Salve, disinfectant, gauze, tape" Grace said, rattling off Kobra's preferred list of burnfix tools.
"Uh, yeah," Show Pony said, the ghost of a grin flickering across his face. "You really know your stuff, huh?"
Grace shrugged and reached for Show’s leg when he stretched the burn in her direction. She had to unbuckle her seatbelt to be able to get at the long-limbed man’s wound, and she found it hard to steady her hands as she got to work. “Kobra taught me a few things,” she said, not mentioning that Kobra hadn’t taught her to calm her nerves from jelly to steel in the face of singed flesh and blood. She got by well enough, with Show only letting out one high-pitched squeak when she first pressed the cloth with disinfectant to the open wound.
She let Show appraise his leg when she finished wrapping gauze around the burn salve and taped up the wound. “Shit, that feels good.”
“Not too tight?” Grace asked, sliding the first aid kit back to its home beneath the seat.
“Just right,” Show said. “I guess those crazy fuckers did a pretty good job of teaching you before they....”
Everyone fell silent and Grace gritted her teeth against the past tense, against remembering Fun Ghoul as he’d turned away from her and her dad only to get shot to death in that glass coffin of a building.
Show gulped. “I mean, uh. Be...before...uh...fuck.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Tommy snapped from the front.
“I don’t know the protocol here!” Show squawked. “Never had a fucking kid in the car with their parents -- fuck!”
“Dipshit!” Tommy shouted. “What about JJ? You fucking flatfish shitster --”
“At least I’m not a flatfaced fucking swervequeen --”
“Pinface --”
“Jackrabbit-eyed --”
The bickering was cut off by Dr. D, who cleared his throat, hung up his headphones, and said: “That’s enough.”
Show Pony looked chastised. Grace could only see Tommy’s sunglasses in the mirror, but the silence in the van was thick when D turned around from his seat at the mixing table, where he’d been belted in since the van had taken off so few minutes ago.
“No more name calling. Nobody in this car is six years old.” He removed his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “And there’s no need to talk of the Killjoys like they gone forever..”
“Well, yeah, but,” Show said, glancing nervously at Grace before he cleared his throat. “I mean, what if they don’t come back this time? Ghoul’s already been back twice, why would he come back again?”
"Three times," Tommy corrected.
“Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of our fine feathered friends or their prey. So until our intel can get us word that the ‘Joys are good and incinerated, we’re going to operate under the assumption that they’re crawling and fighting back. I expect we’ll get a message from the inside any minute now. Grace,” Dr. D said, turning to Grace. “Why don’t you sit up front with Tommy and scan the stations for me.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Grace said, glad for the chance to do something, anything. She scrambled past Show Pony and over the central console in the front, careful not to jostle Tommy on her way.
The woman shot Grace a quick grin, which looked wicked sharp with the rest of her face obscured by her overlarge sunglasses. “Are you gonna be my zonebro, little angel?”
“I guess so,” Grace said. She returned Tommy’s grin with a smile of her own and reached for the dials as they sped through a long tunnel, heading for the endlessness of the dusty desert.
* * * *
She only heard one word, but that and the deep tones of the voice were enough to make her sit up in her seat and scramble to click back to the wave before it could disappear into the nether.
The word was: “Sandman.”
“It was KLSK,” Show muttered, his voice suddenly close to Grace’s ear.
She pushed his white hand away from the radio buttons. The Doctor had given her the task of finding the right signal, not Show Pony. She’d accidentally skipped over the channel but she wasn’t going to lose the signal. Not now.
“Go back, go back,” Show said.
“Shut the fuck up, crash queen,” Tommy snapped. “Let angel do her job.”
Grace’s eyes were swimming by the time she stumbled back to the voice, focused so hard on the dull blackongreen numbers of the radio frequencies.
“-- be advised --”
“There!” Show shouted, his voice quickly overwhelmed by Grace and Tommy shouting “We know!” in unison.
Show slid back to tug the Doctor their way, away from the radio console where he’d been scrambling and broadcasting for close to an hour now as Grace pressed the up button to get back to 106.2.
“It was two stations under KLSK,” Grace muttered to Show Pony, but she watched Tommy when the woman pulled their van to the side of the road, waiting for her signal.
“Crank it, motorbaby,” Tommy finally said, her mouth grimset.
Grace turned the volume dial as high as she dared, and...
“Commence transmissions loop.”
“Good job,” the Doctor said, his eyes approving when Grace checked his face in the mirror.
“Tedious fucking job you gave her to do I fucking hope you think she did good for it,” Tommy muttered, but there was a hint of a smile on her mouth.
“Everybody shut up,” Show muttered, as the transmission started again.
* * * *
Today at 1800h, the group of outlaws colloquially and collectively known as The Fabulous Killjoys broke in to one of the Better Living Industries’ downtown locations. Following this breach in their outer defenses, the Company rallied their forces as the Killjoys fought valiantly, trying to escape with their lives.
They did not succeed in their attempt.
At 1830h, the bodies of the Fabulous Killjoys were brought in for examination. This was documented in the Company’s public files, which are available at their website.
At 1900h, the bodies of the four Killjoys colloquially and commonly known as Party Poison, Fun Ghoul, Kobra Kid, and Jet Star were sent off for decomp.
At 1925h, the incineration of the Killjoy corpses was documented in the Company’s public files, which are available at their website.
You are hereby advised to not fight back or to hold mourning in any arena, as any mention of the Killjoys in public now carries a maximum sentence.
This has been a message from the Sandman.
End transmission.
* * * *
The dark voice said: “Commence transmissions loop” and Tommy turned off their radio before anyone else could reach for it.
“Fuck,” Tommy muttered.
Grace stared at the radio, unwilling to look anyone in the eye. She didn’t want to see their pity, and she certainly didn’t want to see the video of her dad dying on the AM replaying in their pupils.
Dr. D said nothing for a long moment, and when Grace turned around, at the breaking point of wondering when someone was going to talk, she saw that D was staring at Show Pony.
Show looked stricken, like he’d personally witnessed the Killjoys burning to ash. His face was white, but Grace watched as the delicate line of his mouth moved down, down, down.
Finally, Show glanced around, eyes darting wildly from what Grace realized was Tommy’s eyes, to Dr. D’s, to Grace’s own, where they settled. She held her ground against his gaze, which was firm and on the edge of hard, and Grace tightened her jaw. She wasn’t going to cry. If Show Pony thought she was going to cry...
He looked away first, ducked his head down.
“I don’t believe it.”
“What?” Tommy asked, jaw hanging open.
Dr. D’s head moved, and Grace saw that his eyes were approving. “Good.”
“Fucking what the fuck,” Tommy spat. “That was Sandman, D. Fucking Sandman, the...you fucking said that if he fucking said, it’d fucking be. Just because Show says --”
“I don’t just say,” Show snapped, eyes hard. “I didn’t just...D, I didn’t just say it. Grace. D. Come on, you heard the way he was talking, that wasn’t his usual speech, I...”
Grace tugged on a ring of her hair. Show Pony had looked like he’d believed whatever it was he’d been about to say, like he really thought this Sandman guy was lying.
“I did say that our intel would let us know what happened,” D said finally, when Tommy had calmed down enough to just be breathing hard in her seat.
“I don’t like false fucking hope,” Tommy muttered. “You know that.”
“That-- I know,” D muttered.
“I’m not gonna pretend they’re fucking alive if they’re burned to a, fuck. Grace, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting you’re --”
Tommy looked like she’d just stumbled over something she should have left hidden, but Grace was an empty shell operating on autopilot. None of this, the bright neon of the van or Tommy’s blood red lips, seemed at all real. A kamikaze crew who lived out of a van and surfed on static to get themselves fed? Right.
“All I know is that if Sandman’s telling the truth,” Show whispered, eyes closed against whatever he was afraid to see in Grace’s face, “I don’t fucking want to live in this world any more.”
“That’s our problem,” D said. He put a hand on Show’s shoulder and Grace watched as the slender man leaned into the touch. “That’s what Sandman is saying. If he is telling the truth, and I’m not saying he is, but if... well, that’s what he wants. He wants us and everyone out there to think they’re good and gone. See if we can hash it out without our long-haired friends to back us up. We’re pretty strong. Used to be at least. So we gotta act like they’re dead, but we don’t gotta think that they are. We gotta keep living for them.”
Show nodded, and Tommy nodded, and Grace realized the Doctor was looking at her and waiting for her to nod too.
Like she was part of their gang.
Everyone waiting for her to finish thinking so they could kick the rocks off their roof and drive down the road.
Only.
Only, Grace wasn’t a part of this radio crew. She didn’t belong in this van, with these people.
“I got one problem,” Grace said, and her voice sounded shaky but still strong even to her ears.
“What’s that?” D asked.
“You said, and Sandman said, and BLI said that the Killjoys were dead.” Grace said, forcing herself to not fiddle with her hair like she’d seen her dad do so many times. Like Fun Ghoul did when he was looking at Party Poison. Like Party Poison did when he thought Kobra Kid wasn’t looking. Like Kobra Kid did when he looked out at the desert, thinking about Thriller.
“Honey, we watched them die,” Tommy said.
“We know they come back, but you can’t come back if you don’t have a body,” Show said.
“That ain’t what I mean,” Grace said, folding her arms across her chest. “I mean the Killjoys aren’t dead.”
“They can’t be dead,” D said, a glimmer of a grin tugging at the corners of his eyes. “Can they.”
“No they can’t,” Grace said, and she grinned too. “My name is Grace and I am a fucking fabulous Killjoy. And I’m as alive as BLI is ever gonna get.”