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It starts with violence. It starts with fists swinging on the playground and bruised knuckles. It starts with bright red-purple-black blood splattered across childrens split lips and broken noses. At age 9, ██████ doesn’t know anything– except how to throw a good punch and how to bite someone till they bleed. █████ knows that his big sister wants to be his big brother, and he knows how to swing a baseball bat, and how to throw out your pills, and that the kindest people in Batt city all have a bite to them.
Most importantly, most clearly, worst of all, █████ knows he’s sick. Not like his brother is, all mind twisted topsy-turvy lock-you-in-a-mental-facility or DIY-mastectomy sick – but still sick. He knows his heart whirrs and clicks and his blood is all weird colored. He knows the electricity – the ghosts – that keep the city alive keeps him alive, too.
██████ learns about Destroya when he’s 11. Its another school fight sending him running away from the Dracs that want to drag him off to white-roomed static drug-spiraling juvie hall. They don’t bother following him as he runs, wheezing and chest whirring all the way to the slums. He collapses on the ground the second he is safe, next to a busted up porno droid turned preacher. The droid's eyes are lifeless, half powered down and fading. And he turns to █████ with a flickering expression. Pain.
“Let me help you,” he says, like a broken prayer, like a scratched record. The droids are in so much pain, and all he can say is “let me help you”
They give him a home, away from school-yard fistfights and robot mommies and daddies. They teach him about Destroya, about their savior, about freedom. The droids show him, after he gets all scraped up in a fight with a junkie, that his blood is not blood, not really. That under his skin and muscles is all wires and tech. He’s not like them – too human, but seemingly too android, too.
His mamma, long before she was taken away and replaced with silicone and metal, had told him that he was born very, very sick. His heart didn’t beat like the other kids, and his lungs were too small to fill up with air. She told him that BLI made him better, fixed him, and now he’s just as healthy as his big sister.
He begins to doubt that at age 12, the first time he coughs up oil and blood. As the droids look at him with pity and sadness, as they build shrines to Destroya to keep his heart pumping. ██████ doesn’t know anything – except that he’s going to die.
Cursed are you above all livestock / and all wild animals! / You will crawl on your belly / and you will eat dust / all the days of your life.
When he just surpassed his 12th birthday, when he’s too weak to run and too sick to fix any more, is when █████ is told to run. The droids, or, at least the ones he knew, gathered together, pushed whatever supplies they could gather – food, carbons, half written bibles and pill bottles – and shoved it in a bag, then in the boy's arms. They tell him to find Destroya. His humanity will keep him alive outside the city walls, and Destroya will preserve his robotics. They beg him, before his heart stops ticking, to run, to pray, to find their god. Destroya will save him – he will save Destroya.
And so, it starts with clock-work heart ticking seconds he has left as ██████ jumps the walls, electricity sending his body into convulsions and making his breathing halt for a moment longer than worrisome. When he crawls back up, covered in sand and oil, it's mid-day. The sun is hot above him; he sweats motor oil and gasoline.
He follows a highway – a sign reading Route Guano – to an outpost filled to the brim with desert rats all trying to buy and barter goods. He walks through the area, and he sticks out like a sore thumb. His blond hair and pale skin makes him look like a ghost amongst the brightly colored revolutionaries. People aren’t afraid to hassle him, shove him around and try to get him to buy their shit. It takes a while, but he’s able to shove himself out of a crowd and find a stall that has tech.
The kid in the stall – black hair, bright green monster-glove-claws and goggles – looks up at him with wide eyes. The kid can’t be any more than nine, yet it’s selling home-made bombs like they’re hotcakes.
“Um–” He mutters, and that's enough to get the child to look him up and down pensively.
“Names Fun Ghoul, wha’dda ya want?” it asks, voice heavy with some sorta desert accent he’s never heard before.
“Um–” he repeats, looking over the half-broken contraptions “You sell tech, yeah?” its a stupid fucking question.
“I sell bombs. Big bombs, little bombs, radio bombs, car bombs, pipe bombs.” It begins to list its wares, shaking and shivering with excitement, and ██████ cuts it off.
“Um–” again with that stupid umm, umm, umm.
The kid turns away from him and starts fiddling with one of the half-made bombs. It completely tuned him out.
Somebody places a hand on his shoulder, and the kid jumps. It's a girl, not much older than Ghoul with bright yellow roller skates and ponytails that jut out from under a monster mask. “Sorry about Ghoulie, it can get kinda cranky.” and he stutters again– it?
“I’m not cranky, newsie” Ghoul snaps back “I just don’t have time for Batt Rats who’re probably gonna keel over from heat stroke or withdrawal before they even get a name”
“I got a name!” He speaks up, and suddenly everyone in the whole market is looking at him.
Someone in the crowd speaks up “not out here, you aint!”
Ghoul continues to fidget with the bomb, hands trembling in frustration. It jumps at the sound of someone yelling and everything goes bright red-white-and bloody, motor oil blue.
██████ doesn't know anything - he apparently doesnt even know his goddamn name, or why he’s dying, or why they call the Ghoul an it or why it is laughing and laughing and █████ can't hear anything. Its all ringing and hissing, and there's blood pouring down his face, dripping from his ears onto a stark-flashbang white t-shirt. The red almost seems to glow in the desert sun, and █████ doesn't know why that happens either. But he knows The Ghoul smells like napalm and shakes like a off-the-fritz porno droid, and there's big goggles and heavy headphones that shielded it from its little explosion. Its stand is kaputz, but other ‘joys knew well and good enough to keep away from Fun Ghoul and News-A-Go-Go’s stand. ████ does not know that. He does, however, know that its ears are not bleeding; The Ghoul is talking to him, laughing, and, for just a small spark, a quiet tremor, a split-second neuron fire, he knows he's never gonna hear again.
This is how ██████ learns there's no hollow threats in the desert. So, when he starts screaming, shrill and hissing and jaw snapping “ I'm going to kill you! I’m going to bash your skull in with a fucking rock!” he follows through. The Ghoul lays on the ground, spitting acid and scratching at █████ , but the lights go out as the side of its head is slammed into a pile of stones. He can’t hear it scream - can’t hear the sound of bone crunching or blood splattering or people shouting. This is how Kobra earns his name. A stone to the head.
He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
When Kobra wakes up, he’s on a cot– it's dark, and the room is illuminated by the dull glow of fairy lights and colored bulbs. The girl from before – Newsie – is sitting across from him, seemingly fiddling with some machinery. That's when he realizes that the room is filled to the brim with half built droids and radio bits and bobs. Next to her, Fun Ghoul is fiddling with it’s headphones. Kobra jumps up, and he thinks he might have let out a yelp or a swear, because both kids are looking at him. Newsie starts speaking, but all Kobra hears is ringing, ringing, ringing.
Ghoul was dead. He killed it with his own bare hands. He felt the blood spill and bones fracture, and Ghoul is there, looking at him wide-eyed and giggling. Newsie stands and passes him what looks like janky, half put together earbuds. She points to her ears. Kobra adjusts the earbuds in his own ears with a strange grimace. Its all just ringing, ringing, ringing…until
“Kobra? Kobra– they workin’?”
The girl was still looking at him with wide eyes – one radiation green and the other violet purple. “Kobra?” She repeats, and he starts to realize that she’s talking to him. Calling him Kobra.
“What?” he stutters out, stupidly.
“Are the mics workin right?” She asks, and he nods.
“But–” he points to Ghoul “I killed it– I killed it I know I did–”
Ghoul smiles, teeth seemingly sharp and glinting. “You did, bat rat! It was pretty badass. I deserved it, too.”
“You should be dead!” Kobra shouts, pulling at his hair. “You– how are you here?”
“The Witch likes me!” and that means absolutely nothing to Kobra.
Newsie steps in and puts a hand on Kobra’s shoulder. “Death ain't….being ghosted is different out here. The Phoenix Witch looks out for us, sorta like…dying just…aint death.”
“Like Destroya” Kobra replies solemnly.
Ghoul shifts, twitches, almost uncomfortably “how’d you know about Destroya, bat rat?” it hisses
Kobra hesitates for a long moment. He’s pretty sure if he explains everything, the duo’ll cut him open and sell him for spare parts. He answers in half truths “My mama got turned to a bot when I was little, learned how droids worked from the lobby dumpsters to fix her when she broke. They told me…”
Ghoul makes some strange noise, like a cough or hiss. “Well it’s bull. There's no Destroya. No big metal savior. Bots are just bots – they aint even sentient, they don’t need a god.”
Kobra falls silent. His trigger finger is twitching. He’s thinking, remembering, the way Ghoul’s head split open so perfectly on that rock. Kobra wants to break its jaw– wants to crack its skull again and again until the creature can’t muster a word. He doesn’t. He doesn’t, because it made him deaf and its sister fixed it, and he needs to be fixed. He needs deft hands and good tech, so he shoves his trembling hands into the pockets of his worn, dust-covered jeans and looks away. “Whatever.”
“You need a haircut.” Newsie changes the subject. “And a new look.”
Kobra doesn’t say much. He’s got a name, and he doesn’t even understand it. “Yeah?”
Newsie nods once, then twice. “Yeah. I got an idea. Ghoulie, gimme your knife” With a grimace, Ghoul passes her a knife, well used and obviously hand-made.
Then, Newsie gets up, shifts so that she’s sitting in the cot and Kobra is sat in front of her. She runs her hands through his hair, and he prays she doesn’t notice that there's no heat coming from his skin. “Ignore Ghoulie, it’s sensitive.” She tells him, and Kobra doesn’t believe that a creature like it can be sensitive.
“Yeah…” Kobra mutters. He reaches up and feels his head. His hair is singed, almost burned off on one side. “Um…can you match this on the other side? But…keep the top long” Mama and Brother always liked his hair long – he does too.
Newsie hums to herself and starts to work, firstly cleaning up the burned area. “Ghoul, put on a show, will ya?”
Ghoul mutters something or another but turns on the old, faded TV. It looks through a pile of stuff before pulling out a large black thing and putting it into the tv. A movie starts to play. Kobra doesn’t recognize it, but it strikes a chord.
He watches for hours as a woman– The Bride, Kiddo, – hacks and slashes her way through armies of ninjas, and Kobra is in-fucking-love. He needs to learn how to do that. What grabs his attention most of all is her jumpsuit, bright, blinding yellow and black and blood-red. It's the first time he’s ever seen a yellow that vibrant.
Ghoul laughs to itself as the credits start rolling. It turns to Kobra and witnesses something it aint ever seen before – a genesis. There's this look on Kobra’s face, all bright and glowing, full of fire. The Kobra is all fire, all burning rage and bright light – Sodium Chloride in some sizzling, metal-burning acidic way that’ll dissolve everything he touches. Gone are the days of city flash-bang white– Magnesium, Titanium, Aluminium be damned. That kids glowing; he’s bright Yellow killjoy-colored manic.
The first thing Kobra says is a quiet, almost harrowed “I need a fuckin sword”
“You like it?” Newsie asks, shoving a mirror in Kobra’s hands and turning his head so he can see the cut. Its shaved on both sides – his right, the one that wasn't burned, has a delicately cut symbol into the side: a cobra baring its fangs.
“It's…” Kobra tries to come up with a word– desert slang. “It’s fucking ace! ”
Ghoul laughs loudly, genuinely, bubbling and almost light. “You’re getting the hang of it, bat rat” it reaches forward and pulls him out of the cot “We gotta get you some clothes! C’mon, we got plenty.”
Kobra just follows it to a closet thats stuffed with junk. He can see Newsie switch out the movies, but Ghoul is tugging at his arm to get his attention. “Kobra, Kobra, c’mon. Kiddo,” it repeats, tugging and tugging until Kobra is back looking at it. Ghoul is grinning ear-to-ear, and it’s holding up a shirt, bright yellow animal print.
Kobra takes it, eyes still watching that faded tv. The next movie is playing, the title showing up The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Kobra’s never seen it, but it looks like another one of those western movies. He picks up on it quickly – Ghoulie likes samurai, Newsie likes westerns. Scenes from Kill Bill are still rattling in his head. Kobra thinks, quietly, that he likes ninja stuff, too.
Ghoul starts speaking, loud and annoyed, with syllables Kobra doesn’t understand. The sound isn’t all too familiar, but he thinks he can remember his brother speakin’ it– no– no watching it. It was on some beat up video-cam that Kobra had fixed up for him– the show had big robots and action and swords, and his brother had explained that they were speaking Japanese.
Ghoul and Newsie speak Japanese, too. They speak it fiercely, loud and– theyre just bickering. Kobra knows they are bickering because even with a completely different vernacular, they sound like him and his big brother. Even in a whole other language, Kobra knows siblings when he sees them.
He wonders where his brother is now. The thought makes his chest ache more than broken cogs or dying batteries ever could.