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“Hold still, songbird.”
Always birds with him. Niki thought Quackity might just want to fly away from this sometimes. Then again, didn’t they all. Grow some wings, finally get to look down on everyone they were raging against to no avail. Sounded lovely, if she was being honest.
“Wait- Q, I just got home!”
“Too bad.”
A gunshot rang through the apartment, and Niki grinned, nodding to a terrified looking Wilbur stumbling through from the entrance corridor.
“Heya. Does he have a gun for me?”
“Like fuck I do, mi spitfire!” Quackity skipped after Wilbur, prodding him in the back with the barrel of a large machine gun. “Catch!”
Niki did indeed catch it, whistling in appreciation as Wilbur cast them dirty looks.
“This is not how you are supposed to treat family.”
She flipped him off without looking up, checking the gun was fully loaded. Excellent. And good to know Quackity hadn’t gone completely off his head and shot their sponsor and mole with a real bullet. They needed Wilbur, at least for now.
“Yeah, well, you two are barely related anyway.”
“She’s my brother’s daughter.” Wilbur sounded like he was making some stand against Quackity, and Niki looked up, grinning, wanting to see how this one played out. “I’d say I deserve some respect, especially for giving you two a place to stay.”
A blink, and there was a pistol jammed underneath Wilbur’s chin, and he was pressed against the wall. Quackity was grinning, gold tooth gleaming as he leaned in a little too close, on tip toes.
“Watch me give you a choice, songbird. You’re ours, like it or not.”
“Q. Step away from my uncle.” Niki fixed him with a firm look, hearing her own accent slip in. Quackity rolled his eyes, kicked Wilbur in the shin, and stepped back. “Thank you.”
Raising the machine gun, she closed one eye, and fired just barely a centimetre to the left of Wilbur’s eye. He shrieked, slipping halfway down the wall, any smugness at Quackity backing off shattering.
“What- Niki, I-“
“Didn’t say I didn’t agree with him. Go cover for us, and stop whining.”
It was honestly hysterical, watching Wilbur’s pride and self preservation play out, clear to see on his face. Frankly, it was a wonder they hadn’t broken him yet. Niki was growing worried about how close Quackity was getting, but not enough to kill him just yet.
Eventually, the politician settled for life today, and scowled, struggling back to his feet.
“Fine. I’ll be in my office. Doing politics. While you two commit acts of terrorism.”
“You do that, Schatzi.” Niki smiled sweetly, gesturing with her gun. Wilbur shot her a hateful glance, then flinched when Quackity fired another blank over his shoulder.
“There are other people in this building, they’ll call the police if you keep that up.”
“Surely you want that, songbird, so stop complaining.”
Wilbur hurried across to his office, slamming the door with the force of a man about to try to escape through a window again. Niki raised her eyebrows, and looked at Quackity.
“He’s not getting out, is he?”
“Oh, absolutely not. I left notes for him to find this time. It’s like an escape room, honestly.”
“Right. And you enjoy that?”
“Of course, mi spitfire.” Quackity faked a bow, that ended up half a curtesy as he got confused. “Shit. Not wearing a skirt today.”
“Stop calling me that.” Niki pointed the finger at him meaningfully, eyebrows raised. “I’m not yours.”
“Well, honestly, Ms Nihachu, my most esteemed partner in various crimes, what am I meant to call you?” Quackity rolled his eyes, shoving the pistol back into his belt. “And I need a minute to get changed, then I’ve got something for us to do.”
“Oh? Do I get to know what it is?”
“Nope. You’ll like it though.“
“I don’t trust you.” Niki surveyed him, gun still resting in her hands, eyes narrowed. “You might get me killed.”
“I’m wounded.” Quackity scoffed, turning to his room. “Go clean your knives, my makeup won’t take long.”
Niki watched him go, a hint of a smile on her lips. She was lying, of course. She trusted Quackity. Ridiculous, overdramatic, merciless Quackity, who could have her back without hesitation in a moment and trip her for a laugh the next.
It wasn’t a bad idea to sharpen her knives though. While she had a spare moment.
——————
“Where are we going, Quackity?”
“Patience, princess. A virtue, don’t you know?”
“Ich habe eine Waffe und habe keine Angst, sie zu benutzen.”Niki glared at his back, then at her own gun, then narrowed his eyes at the one in his back holster. “You have a bigger gun than me.”
“What of it, mi Instigadora?”
“I’m going to get a bigger gun than you.”
“You do that, firebird.”
“Please.” Niki frowned, genuinely pained. “Stop with the nicknames. I will turn you in to the government.”
Quackity turned around for a moment, looking over his shoulder to flash her a manic grin.
“Make me, Ms Venganza.”
Niki hissed under her breath, narrowing her eyes. That was a challenge, if she ever heard one. And it really was bugging her, wandering along canals and side roads, not even attacking anyone.
Quackity dropped his bag, the duffel landing with a clunk Niki didn’t have time to think about, and raised his fists in a playfully fighting stance.
“Come at me, fire girl.”
“Oh it is on.”
A spark coiled around her heart, and she sprang, throwing the first punch, which Quackity dodged fluidly, whipping around to go for her ankles. But Niki was already behind him, her arm already around his throat, and his strangled cry was all she needed to know that she’d won. Quackity always knew when he was on the losing path, and no amount of his thrashing was going to save him.
“Fear me, birdie.” Niki practically hissed in his ear, cutting off his air supply only long enough to make an impact. Then she dropped him, glaring down disdainfully. “Now, where are we going?”
Quackity gasped for a moment, sinking to his knees and rubbing his neck. Then, he snapped back to normal, jumping back to his feet and grabbing his bag.
“Alright, remind me never to fuck with you, spitfi- Niki.”
“I asked a question.”
Her voice was unashamedly severe, clipped and blunt, with no attempt to hide her accent. She didn’t hide behind giggles, and reassuring nothings, these days. She’d left those behind, along with any hope of sucking up enough to the higher ups to make them to notice what they destroyed.
“Geez, let me surprise you for once, honestly…”
“I don’t like surprises.”
Niki picked up a length of pipe, just lying on the ground, twirling it with interest. Quackity eyed her half warily, and she grinned. His apprehension turned to bemused concern, reassured she wasn’t about to bash his skull in.
“…we’re going to paint something.”
She looked up, confused.
“Why?”
Quackity shrugged, reaching into the duffel bag on his hip.
“We’re artists, remember?”
She remembered. Murmured promises, the night they found each other, hands held tightly as they watched marble burst into flame. An impossibility, made real. Just like what they were trying to do. Take down a system so entrenched in tradition and people’s brainwashed ideologies that they couldn’t imagine a world without it.
It had been wooden underneath. The cathedral. Fake, and very flammable. Quackity had promised no one would forget them. Niki had promised they’d never forget who they were. Neither of them had lied yet. Not to the people they’d tried to please, the same ones they fought in defiance of, not to each other, not to the world.
“Ok. Allowable.”
Quackity grinned, and set off again. Niki was still eyeing the bag. Spray paint, surely. It didn’t seem their style, but… it had a certain appeal. Violence hadn’t really been getting them anywhere.
Besides, if they didn’t act like kids, there’d be no one for the kids to look up to. That was the point, wasn’t it? To give them hope.
Niki decided she’d stick to pissing off politicians, and leave the philosophy to her dad.
“Alright. Here looks good.”
Here was underneath a tunnel that didn’t look like it had been used for the best part of a decade, and Niki’s expression seemed to show her reticence.
“Here?”
“Yep. President’s doing a tour, sources say he’s taking a boat ride through the city.” Quackity shrugged, like the impressive amount of research he just have had to do to find that was no big deal. It certainly wasn’t public knowledge. “This place’ll be front and centre, plus I’ve got a good wall a little way on.”
“Not bad.” Niki smiled, eyeing the damp stone. “Any designs in mind?”
Quackity dumped the duffel bag out, verifying Niki’s assumption as metal cans clattered to the ground. He picked one up, shook it, and tossed it over.
“Go wild.”
Narrowing her eyes, she surveyed her canvas, reaching for a part of herself she didn’t pay attention to often. The little girl in art class, told her imagination was a ‘little too graphic’. The secretary, hunched over a notepad she didn’t dare let anyone else see. The tattoos, the ones she didn’t hide anymore, of words they’d tried to hide, doodles turned into rebellion.
Quackity was right. He was the same, too, his scars a canvas that told a very different story to hers. But she’d seen his makeup, his clothes and sketches.
They were artists. And they could paint in more things than blood and darkness.
Niki spent a few moments thinking out her design, while Quackity didn’t even seem to hesitate, spraying a thick, crimson line straight onto the slightly curved wall.
Finally, she smiled, and started working. Quackity had given her pink, of course, but she quickly swapped it out for a bright green, short motions covering the dingy stone in colour. Then a black, nearly the same colour as the tunnel wall, and she kept going.
It was pretty impressive, actually, how well Quackity’s paint was adhering to this. Then again, it did feel deserted. Niki liked it, even if it was a little eerie. And to think, in just a few weeks, the whole country’s eyes would be on here. All at the push of a button. All at the whims of people too rich to care, too stupid to notice the world.
Funny how quickly she got distracted. It all lead back to anger, really. Quackity wasn’t wrong- was rarely wrong, for all she hated to admit it. Fire. She was fire incarnate.
The red paint streaked across the wall, across her vision, messy strokes coming together like they had always been meant to be. Niki blinked, blinking away blood, blood she hadn’t been meant to see. But she had, and she’d seen the fire too, and that would always live in her heart.
She hadn’t been meant to go with them. She’d just been a secretary, and assistant, someone to pass paperwork to and have make coffee. She hadn’t been meant to get on that plane, asked to hold a camera while one of the tech team arranged something. Hadn’t meant to be left alone in a meeting room thousands of feet in the air, awkwardly arranging paper and wondering if she’d be home in time.
She hadn’t been meant to see the war zone. But mistakes happened, they’d been happening to everyone, forever, until their mistakes took lives. And she had to stand there, while the media team busied their way around tidying up a murder scene for the cameras.
They’d taken her home, in the end. It had been written off as a professional experience, to see if she was ready. Ready for what? It hadn’t mattered. Niki had already been drafting her resignation. How could she stand by that? Not even fight, not even have a chance to hear whatever propaganda they gave them. Just stand there, smiling and playing nice, while the same people she batted her eyelashes at were signing death warrants.
Of course she couldn’t. Not when she’d seen the blood, heard the screams, and seen the people she thought were all was good in the word smile and practise rehearsed niceties, promises to do nothing but suck their land dry of everything it and it’s people could give them, never sharing, never letting anyone see their dirty secrets.
Her hands shook. They’d always shake, hearing those bombs. No one had even cared. It had scared her, more than she’d ever tell anyone, even Quackity.
Later, she’d asked Techno. Asked him why he hadn’t told her. He’d seen it, he must have, seen what they did to people, people they didn’t even see as people. He just shrugged, and said some things, you learnt not to question. Some things were better to leave in the past.
Except they were in the past. They were here, now, just in nasty, backwater places that might as well be living in the past. That was what they said. And that let them turn a blind eye, pretend the people suffering were no better than animals.
Niki wouldn’t. She was here, now, and she was the future. So, with a little help from Phil in the way of contacts, she’d found Quackity, and tracked down Wilbur to blackmail him with his brother and brother’s husband’s pasts. Turns out, no one liked their secrets going public, even family ones. Wilbur had caved pretty easy.
It had all been easy. And that only made her angrier, seeing people live, laugh and love while the world burned, just like in those framed pictures in homes of people as fake as their sympathies. Niki just didn’t understand why no one else did anything. Why did it have to be her? How had no one else seen the blood in their smiles, the lies behind charismatic nothings, hate and adoration turned into a rat race for the worst kind of power?
Niki hated society, but she hated the government more.
Quackity might think they could start over, with the right tweaks, but she saw the bitter truth. There was nothing good coming for people like them. And for her, it was scorched earth. Leave no trace of the evil. Destroy every last bit of it, because if even one of their lies survived, there was no telling how far it would spread. Like a virus. Like a parasite, leaching off its hosts, preying on their darkest desires until both of them were bled dry.
Lowering her hand, only now noticing the exhaustion in her arm, Niki took a small step back to examine her work, expressionless. Too much time in her own head did that to her. No point showing the world her truth, if it didn’t give her the same courtesy.
Still, she smiled. It had been a while since she did something like this. And not bad, either, for being out of practice. The closest thing she’d had to paint recently was the blood of a council member she’d written on a wall with. Messy, violent, just shocking enough for people to notice.
It was something she didn’t like to think about so much. Anger was easy. She could get angry in a moment, a flicker of outrage fanning the flames. But when self doubt crept in, it was like ash, smothering everything she held dear. If they were trying so hard to be noticed, were they any better?
She had no qualms about the violence, needs must, but she did worry they were turning to cheap thrills and scares. They couldn’t be just another voice in the crowd. They needed to be genuine, something for people to look to and see honesty.
Still, she smiled. Because her art was the closest she ever got to truly expressing herself. And this, this was honest. She glanced over at Quackity, who’d apparently finished a little while ago, and regarded his work.
“…that’s nice.”
Her eyes roved across the crimson and black paint, symbols and slogans interwoven in a way that drew the eye closer, following trails of thought until they branched into something else, something more. And everything was so stark, like blood against snow. Emotional, but not messy. Raw, but comprehensible. It looked like a screaming match, a rebel march, a protest and a revolution given voice, a collage of everything they’d promised to fight for.
“Thanks.” Quackity kicked the pavement, eyes flicking up to look at hers. “What… is yours?”
Niki looked back at her own work, seriously considering. It was less abstract than Quackity’s, yet a little less understandable. A green meadow, so tranquil as to almost seem alive, with one, lone teddy bear laying in the middle of a poppy patch.
Then, on the other side of a towering, glistening black wall, was fire. Ruin. The bear, for being abandoned, was the only survivor. And, of course, their- oh, how she hated to say their- country’s flag, flying high amidst the flames. A message, clear and unmistakable. They, these people, who’d see this and titter about truancy, laid claim to this destruction.
Niki shrugged, the thoughts behind it already drifting away.
“Yours will make more of an impact.”
“Not the point, firebrand.” Quackity nudged her, laughing. “Yours is beautiful. Be proud for once, jeez.”
“I’ll be proud when we burn them to the ground.”
Still, Niki was smiling, taking in both of their pieces together. Beautiful. Not a word she used often, or lightly. There was little enough beauty in this world, and she tended to find it in the smallest things.
Quackity tilted his head, just slightly, his good eye unreadable in his own way.
“What are we?”
He probably meant more than what he’d said. But Niki could only hear the same questions she’d asked herself, time and time again. As a society, they were sheep, mindlessly following whatever they were told for the base hope of reward. As a power, they were monsters. That needed no explanation. As a people… they were redundant, and flawed. This world had no need of liars.
But the two of them. Niki knew she shouldn’t think of them as anything more, anything special. They were just the people’s anger given voice, the anger everyone else didn’t know how to feel yet. Still, in that moment, gazing at their hearts poured out against a tunnel wall, she couldn’t help but shrug, and smile.
“You were right. We’re artists.”