Chapter Text
When hell on earth became the new normal, Fun Ghoul was sitting in the back of a beat-up old Trans Am with his knuckles wrapped in bandages and a red-headed spitfire passed out in his lap from exhaustion and malnourishment.
Become a Killjoy, they said, it’ll be fun and if you’re lucky, you won’t die young!
It was not fun, and he was going to die young. It wasn't like that was unusual, but it was starting to grate on his nerves, the ever-constant fighting, the consistent plays on their life, everything.
Being a Killjoy wasn’t worth it.
At least, that’s what he thought at times like this, when he had to keep making sure Jet was awake so they didn’t crash and burn in a fucking ditch, and he didn’t know if it was bitterness or realism keeping the statement at the forefront of his mind.
“Where are we goin’, Star?” Ghoul could hear the exhaustion in his own voice, but it didn’t matter much. He and Jet were the only ones awake, considering Poison was passed out in Ghoul’s lap, and Kobra was curled up in on himself nursing a ray gun wound that had clipped his side.
Fuck, they were so, so fucked.
“Jus’... somewhere. You’ll fight with me, and I’m not in the mood.”
If Ghoul had been in a better mood, more playful, he would make some statement about kidnapping or joynapping, but as it was, he was exhausted and all he could do was nod. It didn’t matter what was happening, he supposed.
They were all going to die if they didn’t get medical treatment. Or, well, three of them were, and Jet would probably follow suit because living wasn’t cracking up to be what it was meant to.
The desert sky of Zone Three glittered red with clouds and somewhat visible stars, and through the dust and scratches on the windows, Ghoul could pretend he was watching the sunset and somewhat enjoying the fucked-up life he lived.
Lived. It was a funny word, wasn’t it? But he wasn’t going to get into the ridiculousness of dying; the art of living was worth so much more, and if he tried, if he tried tried tried, they were all sitting on the roof of the Diner watching the stars come out with some stale granola bars and blankets between them. And it would all be okay.
Would it?
That was Ghoul’s thought as he let his head rest against the window, running a hand through Poison’s hair to help make his dreams better, and fell asleep despite the jolting of the rocks underneath the Trans Am.
_
When Ghoul woke up, he was more concerned than anything.
He was half-slumped over the backseat of the ‘Am, a seatbelt slicing into his arm, and no one around.
That wouldn’t be so confusing if it wasn’t dark out. Ghoul knew desert dark, and it wasn’t desert dark. It was the kind of dark you got when you turned off a light in the basement and couldn’t run up the stairs quick enough.
So, it was safe to say he didn’t know what he was doing. The seatbelt was a bitch to unbuckle; Ghoul rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with a sigh, pushing the door of the backseat open.
If they had been kidnapped, he was going to throw hands, because he did not have the time for that. In fact, he had so little time to get kidnapped, that he wasn’t going to bother being angry.
Maybe they would feed him. That would be the best case scenario, and Ghoul’s stomach rumbled in agreement. Fuck, he did not like Power Pup.
When he finished pushing the back door open, he was disappointed.
Based on the amount of cars and people he saw, he had not been kidnapped, and he found Kobra sitting on the roof of the Trans Am with an apple in his mouth.
An apple.
Nevermind the fact that Kobra was very close to making out with that apple, tired eyes closed against the sudden sparkling lights in the not-so-dark distance. “Hey, Kobes?”
“What?” Kobra’s word was muffled from the apple in his mouth, but he didn’t seem to care, not even bothering to face Ghoul, though he let one of his legs hang over the edge of the car roof, in front of where the backseat door was.
“Where the fuck are we?”
It seemed like Kobra was not expecting such a basic question, because all he did was spit the apple out into his hand, with nothing more than a few teeth marks exposing the yellow insides of the fruit, and sighed softly. “I don’t really know. Jet said it was some place that could help us, but Poison threw a hissy fit and a half when he woke up.”
Because that was such a clear answer. “Er, will it help us, then?”
Kobra lifted what might have been the barebones skeleton of a shirt, had there not been a slash across the stomach ruining the faded design. Underneath, the skin was pale and bruised, but there were bandages slung around his torso.
Clean bandages.
Yeah, maybe he wasn’t so disappointed they weren’t kidnapped. Ghoul grinned, and there was a spark of happiness somewhere in Kobra’s eyes, but it was hard to tell with the cold demeanor the Kid gave.
Before he could ask where Jet and Poison were, the former approached with bright purple curls bouncing around their shoulders. “Hey, you’re awake!”
“Aw, don’t be so disappointed,” Ghoul said dryly, leaning against the dirty framework of the car. It didn’t seem to have any effect on Jet, nor their eye roll, but Ghoul didn’t mind much. “Poundin’ headache, though, and the Kid’s mackin’ on an apple.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” If Ghoul thought his tone was dry, and he did, then the Kid’s voice was like the Sahara desert. Or the Zones.
Ghoul didn’t answer, electing instead to turn his attention back to Jet Star. “You gonna tell us the official name of where the hell we are, Spaceman?”
“That I am, Ghost Fuck,” Jet said smoothly, boots crunching on the gravel covering... holy shit, is that actual pavement? It was! “The Underground, every Juvee Hall’s wet dream!”
“Doesn’t seem so impressive to me.”
“Nothin’s impressive to you,” Ghoul muttered, though he took care to make sure Kobra didn’t hear it. Nevertheless, it wasn’t that impressive, the more he actually looked around.
In fact, it seemed a hell of a lot more like if you were to take a skating rink, like the one out in Zone Two that Poison got kicked out of for breaking someone’s leg, and make it bigger, with more neon and less rotting beams holding the place up.
Actually, in that regard, it was a lot like the Underground was a fusion of a skating rink and a WalMart. Equally mysterious, equally ridiculous.
Neither Jet nor Kobra responded, but Jet nodded in the direction of further into skating-WalMart, and Ghoul took that as a gesture to look around with Jet’s careful guidance.
Yeah, that would’ve been a lot more fucking fun if Ghoul hadn’t nearly fallen to his death five feet into the damn walk, his toes scraping over the edge of a… a metal… a metal fucking platform? “What the—!”
Jet’s hand was wrapped tight around Ghoul’s arm. “And, uh, that’s what happens when you lose your balance. Keep, uh, keep steady, yeah?”
“You didn’t warn me I was going to die if I didn’t pay attention!”
“You should know that by now.” While Jet’s voice was harsh, their eyes weren't and Ghoul knew they didn’t mean anything malicious by it.
In fact, he knew that Jet would certainly be in tears if Ghoul were to walk off a cliff. It was the Kid and his blatant dislike of Ghoul that had Ghoul rattled.
Nevertheless, the two of them continued walking without so much as anything spoken between them. It wasn’t that Ghoul didn’t want to talk, it was that he didn’t know what to talk about.
So, he found something that the both of them could agree on, or more or less care about. Poison. “Where’s the crash queen? You seem to have come back with a lack of, well, sorrow in your expression.”
“Oh, he’s still kickin’,” Jet grinned, the type of grin you had when your estranged-save-for-the-holidays cousin performed the sickest trick in existence, even if they managed to bang themselves up so much it prompted an ER visit. “Kickin’, but, you know, a little busy being unconscious.”
“Well, isn’t he lazy?” snorted Ghoul, making the sarcasm in his tone easy to pick up on, because he knew that Jet wasn’t the best at figuring that stuff out. It was probably why they never talked to the Kid. “Unconscious for right now, or indefinitely?”
That’s when Jet’s face fell. “Yeah, that’s the thing. We don’t know. Or, I don’t know, and I don’t think the nurses know.”
“And the doctor?”
“Don’t know about that, actually. There weren’t any doctors the entire time I was there, and I was there until they finally said Poison was stable. No doctors, no set word for either of us.”
That wasn’t concerning at all, was it? Ghoul frowned, and he knew that the scar on the side of his mouth resented the motion, and he gave absolutely no fucks whatsoever. “Sounds like trouble. You know we attract it like magnets.”
“That would have been a great pin if you had said electricity instead of magnets, ‘cos, you know—”
“Poison can light up half a Neu—er, half a town and then some?” Ghoul knew which words he had to tread on; he knew what was safe to bring up and what wasn’t, but that didn't mean he was going to be an ass about it when he slipped up.
In fact, Jet didn’t even catch it, and if they did, they weren’t showing it. “Yeah! Destroya, it was impressive, wasn’t it?”
“I think my little light show was pretty cool, too.”
Jet rolled their eyes, though it was more affectionate than it was exasperated. “It was. But not as cool as lighting up a whole town! Arson is cool, but not that cool.”
“Says the person who can’t commit arson like I can!”
“No one can commit arson like you can, Ghoulie, dear.”
That was true, and Ghoul’s expression quirked into a slight smile as he felt a lick of a flame touch his palm, his own creation, burning so hot it was cold. He made that. He made that and, despite his pride, Poison’s bigger-and-better light show was bigger and better.
By the time he had figured out that he was willing to overcome his own dignity, Jet had led him to… He didn’t know.
The pavement walkway they had been on, a catwalk, eight-feet-wide with abrupt drops on either side led into another platform. It wasn’t solid ground, and Ghoul didn’t like that. Nerves twisted his stomach into knots, nausea knocking through his head.
Not solid ground.
Jet had a hand around his arm, though, a steadying figure, but that would’ve been far more helpful if Jet could fly. Alas, none of them had managed to get that ability. “It’s fine, ‘kay? These have held up for longer than either of us have been alive. Combined.”
“Yeah, and we have the shittiest luck on the planet,” Ghoul mumbled, though he tried not to sound so callous.
Jet was confident it was fine.
Ghoul was confident that heights should be illegal and sudden drops to his death should be optional and not a requirement. It was different than sitting up on the roller coasters in the old amusement park; when he did that, it was like a game, and it was his choice to risk his life.
He was the one who got to decide whether he thought the structure was safe enough to climb on, put all his weight on and therefore trust with his life.
He couldn’t do that on the catwalk.
Nevertheless, Jet was slowly leading him forward, and Ghoul pretended he could feel the sand under his feet, that it wasn’t the click click click of worn-down boots on a metal surface, that Jet was holding onto him because they were both touch-starved to hell and back. Not because of whatever the hell was going on in Ghoul’s head.
Ghoul’s head was, for all intents and purposes, a wreck. It was rather inconvenient, wasn’t it?
“You okay in there?”
Ghoul nodded, shaky, cursing himself to the high heavens for the way his voice shook. “‘M good. Poison better know we love him because if it was for anyone else -”
“You wouldn’t be doing this. I know, I know.”
That comforts Ghoul more than he would like to admit, and there was something about Jet’s voice that told him it wasn't that weird perception charm speak talking. Jet wasn’t trying to get him to believe in something that wasn’t real.
Jet wouldn’t do that to Ghoul.
Ghoul learned, very quickly, that maybe it was a good thing his hearing wasn’t the best, because he could see more people in one concentrated area than he ever had back in the Zones.
In the Zones, it was 900 miles of hope you don’t die on the road, have fun! But.. but here… in the Underground…
It was less like a wasteland and more like if you were to take Battery City and make it not shitty. Tthere was color everywhere. Color and people and noise. Ghoul hated noise.
Maybe it was because he grew up in a place like the Desert, where sound was a weapon and the silence of the Desert was a comforting backdrop against the harsh red of blood-stained memories in Polaroids, but the more he heard the more he wanted to tune it all out.
So much sound was bad.
Jet let go of Ghoul without a word, sensing Ghoul’s need to turn his hearing aids down and make everything just a little more safe. More safe, better than the Underground.
Every Juvee Hall’s wet dream, huh? Well, Juvee Halls could suck his…
“You sure you’re good?”
“Absolutely not. But I wanna see Poison, ‘cos you know his powers always act funky when he’s out of commission.” That part was true, but it certainly wasn’t the only reason he wanted to go visit Poison.
It was the reason he gave his head, though, so it could stop screaming danger, danger, not solid ground, get the hell out of there.
He wasn’t going to go back to the Trans Am. Besides, Kobra was back there and he didn’t want to spend any more time with Kobra than he physically had to, considering they lived together and all that jazz.
With a single solemn look, Jet continued leading the way through the maze of catwalks that Ghoul didn’t bother looking at. Everything was shining stainless steel and plain concrete, graffiti in every color of the rainbow and this and that and fuck that, fuck that, Ghoul couldn’t deal with that.
“Do you think he’s going to act up while he’s, y’know?”
It’s Jet asking, and Ghoul pretended he didn’t notice the way that Jet almost slipped up and said comatose instead of asleep, or the shaky filler they’d said instead, because maybe they both knew how much it hurt to say that.
Maybe that was because they’d had this scare before, and they both knew what happened last time. Except that was Kobra’s fault, not Poison’s own.
Ghoul shrugs, uncomfortable; it showed on his face and in the tense pull to his lips. “Dunno. Hope not, ‘cos it looks like a place like this is full of ‘lectricity.”
Before they could get much further in their conversation of concerns, they were rudely interrupted by yet another hundred foot drop.
You know, trying to play off fear with humor was working rather well, in Ghoul’s humble but superior opinion, if only because it made the beating of his heart sound less like panic and more like an over exaggeration.
He was a Snow Storm through and through. He wasn’t meant to be in this weird metal contraption of hell. Plus, there wasn’t any sunlight, and while Ghoul may complain about the burning of his shoulders after he spent too long working on the ‘Am, it was still a constant.
Jet pulled him to the side once again, on an uphill and progressively more narrow catwalk. So narrow, in fact, that about twenty feet in, Ghoul and Jet couldn’t walk next to each other without falling, which meant Ghoul had to let go of Jet’s hand, and…
Call him a baby, but Ghoul didn't like that. Not in the slightest. Nevertheless, he devoted his focus to looking around at the Underground in more detail rather than staring down at what would, in fact, be a long fall and a short death.
The Underground was white noise, large cliffs, and people. Those were the most prominent details, and the rest was muddled in the mix of everything everything everything. It was an onslaught to the senses and Ghoul could understand why other people liked it, maybe, but not him.
Killjoys were fickle creatures; they lived by the moonlight and they shot out through the sand dunes at a hundred miles per hour whenever they had the chance; they vandalized places they shouldn’t and their very existence was a blatant middle finger, as it was supposed to be.
But Juvee Halls, they laid back. They watched other people do the work. They hid in places like the Underground and wondered what was happening on the surface like it was a pipe dream.
It wasn’t. It was real and people died and it didn’t matter when you lived in the sewers like a rat in a cage. Trapped, but free, if you convinced yourself of that long enough.
It was a dangerous way to live.
And so, Ghoul decided he didn’t like the place. He was wondering where Kobra got that apple, though, because for freedom, he sacrificed things like fresh fruit and air conditioning and showering and laundry. (It was a net loss no matter what you did, really.)
“You holdin’ up back there?” Jet asked, far too relaxed for them to do anything other than set Ghoul’s nerves alight.
He was holding up, and then Jet had to startle him, and holy fucking fuck he was going to fall and die and fuck fuck fuck—
“Hey, Ghoulie,” Jet started, soft, frozen on the catwalk as Ghoul shook, his foot slipping off the side just enough to kick a few rocks stuck in his sole down into the void. “Do you want me to… charm you?”
If Ghoul didn’t know any better, he would assume Jet was trying to flirt him out of the situation. Instead, Ghoul knew what they meant, and nodded silently. An act of courage in itself, if you asked him, shaking like a leaf in an underground hellhole.
Jet’s voice was soft and pretty and light; it was a drop of water on a hot day and a daisy in a field. “Ghoulie, you’re not scared of heights. They’re your bitch. You know how this works.”
It was less like Ghoul suddenly believed them and more like Ghoul had no choice other than to let the meaning of the words wash over him; it worked its way through his veins, the magic, Jet’s voice, a pulling sensation that changed his system, that calmed his shaking nerves, that made the pit in the bottom of his stomach go away.
When he looked down, precariously, leaning his entire body over the edge, he wasn’t afraid. “Thanks, Jet.”
“You know it. We gotta go on one other catwalk and then we’re good, okay?”
By then, Jet’s power should wear off, though Ghoul didn’t know how good they were getting with that ability of theirs. Ghoul hummed regardless, practically bouncing down the catwalk, despite the way the metal seemed to shake underneath him.
It wouldn’t break.
If the Witch wanted him dead, then she’d have done it at a far more convenient time.
_
Poison wasn’t looking good. That was the easiest way to put it, and Ghoul swallowed at the idea that he would stay that way.
“Is he… y’know?”
There was a nurse walking by who caught his question. She had bright red hair, too, but her soft red eyes gave away that it was synthetic. Huh. “Is he dead? No.”
“I can see that he’s breathing,” said Ghoul, under his breath, the kind of judgemental that comes out when your friend is comatose in a hospital bed in a strange place with no doctors, not even on solid ground. Could you blame him for being uptight? “But how long is he going to be that way?”
The nurse shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
Gritting his teeth to keep from snapping, Ghoul forced his face to contort into a smile. It appeared more like a grimace. “Well, then, get someone who fucking does.”
She rolled her eyes, and Ghoul’s finger twitched with the urge to fucking punch her. He did that a lot. “We got no doc till the man in purple comes back. Boy genius knows it all.”
Oh. Someone else to be angry at. Ghoul was more than okay with that. Still, he had to play nice in order to get information. “Boy genius and man in purple, huh? Who’s that?”
“Dr. Benzedrine. He runs this place, you know. The Infirmary.” No, Ghoul did not know, and sensing this in his facial expression, the nurse continued on. “He’s the only actual doctor we have, and he’s sort of a big deal in the Underground. Where are you from?”
Was his desert lilt that heavy, or just his cluelessness? “Zones bitch at heart. But we’re talking about my friend here. You’re telling me your only doctor is MIA and there’s nothing anyone can do in the meantime?”
“Not unless you find someone with enough qualifications; someone crazy enough to run through all this chaos without missing a beat.”
Well, Ghoul had to give her that, but he wasn’t going to pretend that he didn’t flip her off as she walked away, barely listening to his next sentence, which he didn’t even remember himself.
Jet must’ve heard the entire thing, because they gave Ghoul a sympathetic look as he sat down in one of the makeshift waiting seats - nothing more than a few neon-painted five-gallon buckets by Poison’s bedside.
“I hate this place.” Ghoul wasn’t going to be quiet about it.
“And I don’t blame you for that. It doesn’t suit my fancy, either.” Then again, nothing that even vaguely resembled the city had Jet’s fancy, including medbays and places like that.
Ghoul knew why, and it wasn’t right to use that against them. He wasn’t going to be that kind of friend or that kind of crewmate. So, he didn’t bring it up as he shrugged, stiff and moody and oh-so-very-stereotypically a teenage boy. He didn’t care. “I hate this place and I wanna go home.”
They both knew they couldn’t go home without Poison. Or Kobra, for that matter, but Kobra wasn’t the center of attention he made himself out to be.
Jet didn’t bother trying to console Ghoul, though, because they both knew it was useless. “I used to come to this place when I was a kid. I know you hate it, but it’s pretty cool if you get past all the…”
“City stuff?”
“Yeah. The city stuff. I think you would like the showers. I know you hate being so grubby. Or the laundry! You could finally wash that stupid vest of yours, make it green again. They even have little tea shops.”
“What the fuck is tea?”
Jet sighed, heavy. “Snow Storm, most definitely. It’s like… it’s a drink that you can drink in a lot of different ways. Like coffee, but tastes better, and it has caffeine.”
“Coffee fucking sucks.”
“I know. That’s why I think you would like tea!”
Ghoul wasn’t trying to be a conversationalist, despite Jet’s efforts, and Jet gave up after Ghoul refused to answer; but both of their attention was pulled to the boy on the hospital bed as blue flashed across the infirmary.
Fuck.
Ghoul jumped up, his vest clinking with the weight of all the pins, rushing to the other side of Poison’s bed because it was no doubt going to be a two-person job; Jet got the gist, holding Poison’s other arm down without anymore than a fleeting eye contact with Ghoul.
“Where the hell is Kobra when you need him?” Ghoul’s already shouting, he knew he was, and it garnered more looks than he would like but it didn’t matter because Poison was the one garnering looks when another blue shock ripped through the infirmary, straight from the dim yellow lightbulb into Poison’s arm.
Jet hissed, gritting their teeth and holding Poison’s arm so tightly Poison’s skin was a sickly pale yellow. “Someone’s gotta get him.”
Poison electrocuted Jet.
Ghoul was next; Poison clearly had a problem with being held down, but it was the only way to make sure his system didn’t overload the same way it did when he landed himself in the whole coma mess in the first place!
“Someone get Kobra!” Jet shouted, as though no one had heard Ghoul, and on cue - “Fuck!”
It was the only thing Ghoul could yell to keep himself from screaming, and his fingertips burned burned burned where he was holding Poison, and it didn’t matter, because the lights were flickering and the medical equipment was going haywire and everything was wrong wrong wrong wake up Poison wake up wake up.
“Charm him or something!” Ghoul hissed, his jaw shut tight, trying to hold on, but he knew that he couldn’t, he couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t, not without getting hurt and Poison wouldn’t forgive himself if he hurt Ghoul and Jet and and and he needed to let go.
“I - I can’t!” Ghoul didn’t know whether that was because Jet’s voice was strained and panicked or because they couldn’t charm someone without their permission.
He didn’t care, either.
Other people were rushing near them, but all the nurses stopped short, blue sparks illuminating their necks from the burning of electricity where most of their wires were covered in thin synthetic skin; they couldn’t go close to Poison.
No one could.
Someone needed to get the Kid. But no one knew who the Kid was and holy fucking shit holy fucking shit—
Ghoul let go. He let go and Poison’s chest started shaking, shaking, up and down up and down like he was having a fucking seizure and he was still asleep and Ghoul’s hands burned and he took off running, running, pushing past the stagnant droids, past the other patients, out out out out.
The catwalks were the least of Ghoul’s concerns.
He damn near fell off another fucking ledge, but he caught himself from a quick death and jumped onto the nearest catwalk, all blurring blurring blurring together but what the fuck did he care?
They would all be dead if Poison overloaded again.
And, Destroya be damned, Poison had already electrocuted Ghoul enough for a lifetime, thank you very much, and what route did Jet take him on? Pink one, narrow one, wide then narrow one?
He was supposed to remember that backwards?
Fuck, fuck; Ghoul kept swearing to himself, of course he did, of course he needed to because how else was he going to cope with the fact that his comatose best friend just electrocuted him and he had no fucking clue where the only person able to calm him down was?
Yeah, maybe he was a little sensitive, if you couldn’t tell.
“C’mon… C’mon…” Ghoul murmured, over and over, turning this way and that, but unable to move, unable to tear his feet off of the catwalk because the Infirmary was in sight but he had no idea where the ‘Am was and if he found the ‘Am then he would lose the Infirmary and— “Kobra! Kobra fucking Kid!”
It would get drowned out in the white noise. In the sound of the music and the restaurants and the colors and that didn’t even make sense but it made sense to Ghoul and and and Jet was going to die and if Poison killed Jet then Poison would kill himself because he hurt someone and and and—
“Fuck is it, fuckface?” Kobra said dryly, clearing not registering Ghoul’s plight as Ghoul swung around to scowl, panicked and upset because of course Kobra glitched over here, of course Kobra had to act like a dipshit.
“It’s Poison. His— he’s— his powers!”
Apparently, that’s all Ghoul needed to say to keep Kobra from being a complete douchebag, because the smug and annoyed look fell off his face in an instant. “Where is he? He okay? Hurt anyone?”
“Just me and Jet. And, you know, he’s where the fucking blue sparks are coming from.”
Really, it was more like blue flashes, but Kobra didn’t correct Ghoul; instead, he gripped Ghoul’s arm withy a pained look, and Ghoul didn’t have the time to brace himself for the shock of cold that spread through his system like being dipped into hell and back.
He fucking hated Kobra’s glitches.
But the next time he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of the infirmary, watching Jet desperately try to hold Poison down by themself without covering his chest, because that was the equivalent of choosing a heart attack; Poison’s skin was beginning to turn translucent, his veins standing prominent and electric blue against the sickly lack of color, and fuck.
Kobra was four steps ahead of Ghoul;, shoving past the wall of stock-still droids and nurses; he knelt down by Poison’s bedside, putting a cold hand over Poison’s heart, over the searing cloth that was acting as somewhat of a nonconductor, keeping Poison from stopping Kobra’s heart.
What lovely family dynamics, huh?
Ghoul didn’t know what it was, and probably never would, that kept Poison from electrocuting Kobra. Only Kobra. Regardless, Kobra was cold as the dead and sweating bullets, cold sweat, keeping his hand over Poison’s heart, muttering something, something, maybe a prayer.
In the end, whatever prayer he was saying didn’t work.
Instead, the brightest flash of blue yet shot across the infirmary, hitting one of the glass panels overlooking the rest of the Underground, shattering the glass, and and and...
Kobra was still sitting there, kneeling, sweating, gritting his teeth with his eyes shut tight like he was having a nightmare. Maybe he was.
There was something interlinking their powers, som e thing, something, there had always been something and there always would be and Ghoul didn’t know what it was but it was keeping them both alive.
And, slowly, Kobra’s body beganmimicking Poison’s.
While the clock only read a few seconds, it was an eternity without a doubt; Kobra’s body began to take on the same sickly translucence, the same color winding up his veins from where he was in contact with Poison.
There was nothing Ghoul or Jet could do. They could barely get close to Poison, but they were watching, watching, and— no they weren’t.
Whatever Kobra was doing had some sort of reaction, because the blue flashes, taking and surging and giving and taking electricity, brought the entire Underground to a screeching, dark stop; the dim lights outside of the Infirmary keeping the entire place lit shut off completely.
But Kobra and Poison, Kobra and Poison were visible once their eyes adjusted to the light, and Kobra’s hair was flying from the wind Poison was somehow generating, and, oh, great, just what Ghoul needed a day after a firefight.
Wonder where the hell that doctor was, huh?
“Kobra, be careful!” It’s Jet, and they both knew it was useless to yell while the Venom Brothers were in their weird state, but it was Jet’s nature and Ghoul didn’t blame them.
He thought he could feel Jet trying to reach their magic, their ability toward the pair, but it got lost in translation. It always did when it came to those two.
They were going to hurt people.
They were, it was inevitable, especially since it was all going down in an infirmary with other injured people and Kobra needed to do something fast and Ghoul couldn’t lie, he’d never had much faith in the Kid to begin with. Too many letdowns and too many glares made a rocky foundation for trust.
All at once, the wind dropped. The blue dropped.
And with the blue flashes gone, Kobra collapsed, too, lying on the ground next to Poison’s bed, panting heavily and dripping sweat.
Without Poison’s powers in play, the Underground shot back to usual like a boomerang; the lights came back on and the droids started moving again; no more flickering, no more flashes, no more electricity.
The only sign of Poison’s powers was the mess covering the Infirmary floor and the broken window. Beyond the terrified expressions, everything was back to usual.
Back to usual. Because Poison could overload and accidentally kill them all if it wasn’t for Kobra’s weird sibling powers, and then it would all go back to normal, because it was just another day for goddamn Fabulous Killjoys.
Living with superpowers was… Well, it was certainly something. And, perhaps, it hadn’t been the best idea to make a crew solely of super-powered individuals.
But hey, that was in the past, wasn’t it? Too far in to stop.
The red nurse droid, the one that had been snippy with Ghoul earlier, was looking at him with wide eyes. “You… you guys have superpowers?”
“He does,” Jet supplied helpfully, weakly pointing at Poison. Maybe it was the magic of Jet’s voice, or how Ghoul’s body radiated far more heat than it was supposed to, but the nurse clearly knew.
It wasn’t like superpowers were illegal or anything, not in the Lobby and not in the Desert at least, but they were tricky tricky things to deal with.
Apparently, that layer of confusion and fear hadn’t hit the Underground yet. Oh, Ghoul bitterly wished he was the one who hadn’t met a super before. None of them would know what humble meant if a dictionary was shoved into their faces, and that included himself, he supposed.
“I— I can see that. How do you… deal with it?” The second sentence was far quieter, as though it was a taboo to not speak of the supernatural abilities making up some of the population. Like it was a crime, but it wasn’t.
Ghoul’s temperature rose as his temper, momentarily, flared. Still, he gave the nurse a tight smile, the same way he did earlier. “Very easily. Because, as you can see, we’re human.”
While Jet slapped him on the arm, it dissuaded Ghoul very little. He saw the way the nurse flinched, and maybe a spark of sympathy burned up his throat, but he bit it back. It wasn’t the time to regret his life choices, and it never would be. “Since we’re human, we know very well how to control our powers. That is, you know, a little difficult when you are unconscious because your own body betrayed you. I’m sure you know the feeling.”
That was crossing a line. Maybe Ghoul knew that when he said it, but it didn’t change the fact that he did, and maybe he didn’t want to take it back. He wasn’t an android, and he was tired of being treated like a freak and a monster because his powers were destructive.
He could burn the entire place down. He could. But he wasn’t going to, because he wasn’t like that. Because a monster would do that, and Ghoul was a person, despite what the name might suggest.
Some people couldn’t understand that. Some droids couldn’t understand that. But it didn’t make it his problem.
Nevertheless, the nurse’s eyes narrowed into a thin, hard-line. Anger. Pre-programmed in, huh? How did it feel to be so inhuman, Ghoul wondered, glaring right back with the same amount of malice. “Get out. Visiting hours are over while we clean up the mess he made.”
“Don’t you need patient info?”
“Family only,” the nurse smiled, and she saw the spark light behind Ghoul’s eyes. And she walked away.
Ghoul had had his fair share of bad things happen to him before. He’d had his mouth slit open, he’d had his family die, he’d had people walk away from him and people who killed in cold blood. But he’d never, never been told that he wasn’t his crew’s family, regardless of whether he was in their permanent line-up.
Ghoul’s jaw dropped, and not even Jet dared to touch him. He was radiating heat again, his fingertips flickering a blue light - not the same blue as Poison’s electricity, more like… more like that of the bottom of a fire, when it burns too hot for too long.
“Let’s… Let’s go.” Bothering with a nickname was pointless, and Jet knew that. They both knew that. Or maybe all three of them did, but Kobra was too busy groaning on the floor and, if Ghoul thought about the old horror books he’d taught himself to read, writhing like a possessed Victorian child to pay attention.
Ghoul didn’t heed Jet’s silent offer to walk together, storming out of the Infirmary with little intention of going back to the Trans Am. He was going to get himself lost, and in the process, he wanted to buy himself some cigarettes.
If he could find them.
Destroya, who the hell designed this place? Ghoul was going to have words, because he was fucking tired of being so confused and lost and nearly falling to his death because some toddler pushed him out of the way and the white noise was bad and he wanted his family. He wanted his family.
Because they were family. They were all family and that nurse droid could suck on a toaster in the fucking shower if she wanted to say that they weren’t. They were family; that didn’t mean they had to get along or that they had to understand each other in the same ways and she didn’t know a damn thing about family, did she?
Of course she didn’t. Droids never did.
And, fuck, maybe he was being cruel, maybe he was being biased, but Ghoul didn’t care. It wasn't his place to care whether she got her shit together or not, but it was his place to decide who his family was and wasn’t. Didn’t that count for anything?
Ghoul huffed, and ignored the smoke curling up from his fingers, up into the air before dissipating in the peripherals of his vision. He needed a smoke. Then he would calm down and he wouldn’t burn anything or anyone and fuck, fuck he just wanted to go home.
But he'd never had a real home and there was nowhere to go back to for boys who burn too bright.
So, instead, too turned every which way to figure out where he was going, Ghoul sighed, dropping down onto the catwalk; one of his legs was folded over the other, and the other was hanging off the ledge. People were walking around him, mindless chatter and boring conversations all mushing into one unpleasant buzzing in his ears.
They thought he was family, right? Jet and Poison?
Kobra was a wildcard, and Ghoul had always told the other two there would be a day when he would turn on them. That day hadn’t happened, yet, but they still fought as often as they could, like bickering siblings. A wildcard, that was Kobra, and Ghoul didn’t care what he thought. Right? “Are you… okay?”
Speak of the Devil, and the bleach-blond frat boy himself will appear. Stupid fucking glitching. “Do I look okay?”
“Uh, is that rhetorical, or…?”
“Yeah, of course it’s rhetorical,” Ghoul snapped, thumbing his nose up at Kobra, turning his gaze to the above catwalks.
They were like levels; each platform was like it’s own little city; they all had their own purposes and causes and destinations and… oh. The level idea would probably explain why there were, you know, giant signs illuminating each platform with a number on them.
Kobra sat down next to him, and Ghoul had too much pride to move away. He didn’t like how close Kobra was, though. “So. About Poison’s… thing.”
“Make it sound less like you’re talking about his dick, yeah?”
“Ew! Gross!” Kobra batted at his shoulder with a look of disgust, lip curled up, but a smile pulling at it nonetheless. ”I am most definitely not talking about any genitalia, gutter rat. I’m talking about his outburst.”
“You mean the one you just stopped with your bare hands and then came to find me, for some fucking reason? Shouldn’t you be giving that obnoxious nurse his info or something?”
“She didn’t need any. She was fucking with you. And, I’ll have you know, we’re walking back, it fuckin’ hurts trying to do this so much.”
Detroya, Kobra was a little whiny, wasn’t he? Then again, Ghoul supposed, he did just prevent a city-wide blackout and a frenchfried Party Poison in a hospital bed.
None of them except Poison had ever seen Poison truly overloading before other than Kobra. None of them knew the extent of their powers, and maybe that’s what made these encounters fucking terrifying.
Maybe if Kobra went haywire enough, he would, like, travel through time. Destroya, if he did that, then he was required to buy them all ice creams at some pre-Analog Wars truck or something. Ice cream still didn’t sound as good as a smoke. Nevertheless, Kobra continued on, clearly not sensing how little Ghoul planned on listening to him. He did that, sometimes. “Look, everything fucking hurts and, like, my heart isn’t supposed to hurt from glitching—”
“Sounds like emo poetry if I’ve ever heard it, loverboy.”
“Hey! Shut up! I haven’t ever written emo poetry, thank you very much. That’s Pepsi’s job. Like I was saying, though, everything hurts but Poison’s okay and you can go visit him later, yeah? For now, shouldn’t you stop trying to get yourself killed and, like, comfort Jet? Who was also kicked out?”
“Funny coming from the guy who got to stay with Poison. Where’s the hypocrisy?”
“I wasn’t,” Kobra spat, twisting his face up in Kobra’s signature anger. It never left him, the wildcard he was. “We have powers. We’re not really welcome in the same areas as non-supers because they don’t fuckin’ think we can control ourselves. So, no, I didn’t get to stay with him.”
“But you’re family.” Okay, maybe Ghoul just… didn’t want to listen to Kobra. He was allowed to make one good point a year, but that didn’t mean Ghoul had to listen to it. “You can prove that. DNA ‘n all.”
“It doesn’t work like that and you know it!”
It was true; Ghoul knew exactly how it worked and he had no doubt in his mind that Kobra had been kicked out, too. Less because he wasn’t family and more because of the terrifying display of superpowers. Wasn’t that fun?
Ghoul didn’t respond, and Kobra didn’t seem to expect him to. The silence they sat with wasn’t companionable; neither of them wanted to be there. Neither of them wanted to be in the Underground, a caged-in bomb waiting to go off while their best friend and brother respectively was sitting comatose in a hospital bed with biased nurses and Jet was who knows where.
Nevermind the fact that neither of them had ever even heard of the Underground before.
Safe to say, neither of them were having good days. So, Ghoul tried to act as though he didn’t want to punch Kobra in the face, virtue being that Kobra had a very punchable face. “So. Did they patch up your wound or did you do that yourself?”
“What, think I did it wrong?”
Ghoul rolled his eyes, once again repressing the urge to shove Kobra. Destroya, if only they were back on solid ground and he could shove Kobra without the threat of falling to their deaths. “No, I’m jus’ asking. Making small talk or whatever. While we wait for your brother—”
“And your crew leader!”
“—to get out of a coma.”
Kobra hummed, a sound heavy with the weight of something he didn’t seem to want to share with Ghoul. Ghoul didn’t mind. Plus, when Kobra slouched like that, he was far closer to Ghoul’s height, when they were sitting down. “I don’t wanna fight with you. I don’t… We’re stuck here until Poison gets better.”
That… Well, that wasn’t what Ghoul was expecting, that was for sure. He would almost rather try to make out the graffiti on the far, rocky cavern wall than try to figure out why Kobra was coming to that conclusion.
But Kobra kept talking. “And if we’re fighting, we’re not gonna accomplish anything. I have a feelin’ we’re about to sink to our shoulders in muck and I don’t need to be fighting with you while fighting for my life.”
“You don’t have future vision too, do you, you overpowered motherfuck?” What? Ghoul didn’t know how else to talk to Kobra. Did it classify as bickering if it wasn’t meant to incite a fight?
Kobra reciprocated the eye roll from earlier, swatting his hand through the air at absolutely nothing. “No, that’s not my thing. But…. offer still stands. Peace treaty for now, and then you can go back to trying to dye my hair in my sleep, yeah?”
“You did that to me!” Still, Ghoul knew that he was being offered something he couldn’t ignore. And it wasn’t like it was something serious, but it was also an olive branch, and if they were going to be family, they probably needed to be more than the estranged cousins who tried to murder each other at family dinners. “Uh… Yeah. Sure, I guess. We can do that.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. On your straightener, positive.”
“Only straight thing about me,” Kobra mumbled under his breath, and Ghoul would be lying if he said he didn’t smile; it was a cheap joke and they both knew it, but the both of them were smiling, and in that moment, Ghoul could pretend his life didn’t fucking suck.
Yeah, too bad it didn’t really work like that, huh?
_
“And you’re certain something is going to happen?”
Jet was, by far, the most observant of them all. Despite Ghoul having the sharpest vision, he didn’t notice shit, let alone small, miniscule details that slipped past other people.
Slipped past everyone except Jet.
Jet nodded, a grim expression flashing across their face like lightning striking through the heart of a thunderstorm. “We’re going to be stuck here for it.”
“Do you think we should hide, then?”
While it didn’t make much of a team base, Ghoul, Jet, and Kobra were all piled on top of the hood of the Trans Am, huddled with crossed-legs and bonking-knees and discussing what Jet saw.
Kobra scoffed at the notion, the angry war-chaser he was. Inexperienced in the laws of grief, but hungry to learn them; that was the Kobra Kid. “We’re not hiding from anything. This might be a good way to establish ourselves beyond Poison.”
Jet was the first to kick that idea out the window, and rightfully so. “Yeah, that’s not a good idea, not right now. Poison’s our brand, and he’s also the only reason we haven’t been shot on sight. He needs help, and we’re gonna make sure he gets it.”
“Why would we be shot on sight?” Once again, Ghoul was well aware he wasn’t the most observant, okay?
With a sigh, Jet pinched the bridge of their nose and turned their full attention to Ghoul. “Look, we’re Killjoys, and this isn’t a place for us, yeah? We’re open skies and motor oil, they’re more like sewers and spray paint. We just don’t mix. And, yeah, that sounds like the Outsiders, I know, but they just don’t like us.”
“I’m guessing that’s why we didn’t know about them before now,” said Kobra dryly, heavy-lidded eyes speaking exhaustion to the stars. Or would, if the stars weren’t covered by the fucking rock, and more because he had a feeling they were under Battery City.
Jet nodded once again. They seemed to do that more often than they didn’t. “Exactly. We have no idea where our place is here. We have to be under the radar whenever this big thing happens, when the doctor gets back.”
“Wait, wait,” Ghoul said, because of course he wasn’t caught up when Kobra was; Kobra eavesdropped more than he was willing to admit and they all knew it. “So, this is about that doctor dude missing? How is that going to spell disaster for the entire Underground? Did I miss something?”
“You want the watered down version or the actual version?”
Before Ghoul could answer Kobra’s question, Jet was already talking, smiling lopsidedly; it didn’t reach their eyes. It never did, anymore. “So, I did some poking around after I was kicked out of the infirmary, and the whole reason they’re missing their doctor? He’s just… MIA.
“And he’s not, you know, he’s not like a regular doctor. He’s a dude named Dr. Benzedrine, apparently he also, like, runs this place, or something like that. Whole crew, and no one’s seen any of ‘em in weeks.”
“Once again, what does this mean for us specifically?” Look, everyone had their issues, and Ghoul wasn’t going to be the one poking a wasp’s nest with a ray gun. “Leader dudes are gone, there’s a scramble for power, or a scramble over who needs to step up?”
Kobra shook his head, just needing to interject. “More like no one knows what to do. The nurses aren’t trained for surgeries and all that jazz; the marketplaces don’t know when to close, people don’t know when curfew is. Everything’s at a standstill, but gears have to keep turning eventually.”
Oh, fuck. Okay, Ghoul understood now. “So… How do we stay under the radar if our crew leader is in the center of it all, since missing doctor leader dude is, you know, a doctor?”
“Yeah, that’s another problem,” said Jet, their voice weighed down with exhaustion. More than exhaustion. Fear. “The platform where Benzedrine makes all his declarations, leader-type shit? Only accessible through the Infirmary.”
“Sounds like one hell of an infirmary,” Ghoul huffed, crossing his arms and ignoring the sliver of pain shooting up his arm.
“It is. It’s a med-bay, a lab, a pathway to the platform, on and on the list goes. This place isn’t organized at all.” Wasn’t it ironic that Kobra was the one saying that?
Nevertheless, that didn’t matter. Peace treaty and all. Ghoul rubbed his face, fingers coming away covered in cold sweat and dirt. “Fuck, we basically can’t do anything. Got it. Didn’t you say this place had showers, though?”
“I don’t know where they are, but yeah. There are showers.”
So, that was settled. They would wait for the inevitable declaration of war in whatever form it came in due to the lack of leadership pushing the Underground to a breaking point, like they’d seen happen time and time again in the Desert, and in the meantime, they would wait for Poison to wake up so they could get the hell out of there.
They would wait for Poison to wake up, and shower, and do laundry, and, hell, maybe even give the Trans Am a wash. Maybe even get some new paint! None of them had any carbons on them, but theft was easy if you knew how to do it right, and as loathe as Ghoul was to admit it, Jet was certainly a jack of all trades who knew how to do the best tricks.
Marketable skills, really.
It was a shame they didn’t have Kobra’s bike, ‘cos a place as big as the Underground certainly had a racetrack; Kobra was a motorbaby at heart, living on the fumes of fame he got from winning races and kicking up dust in the wake of his problems.
Well, when Poison woke up, they could go back to their base. Their home. And they would be family, and everything would be fine.