Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The world has changed. Skies darkened and deserts grew ever quieter. Battle cries reduced to mere whispers, murmurings of days gone by. The once loud echoes of war disappeared, the blowing wind that carried the sound became stagnant air. Bright flashes of lasers, dancing through the night, are only remembered by scorch marks left behind, even those are being buried by the sand. The previously defiant have become the most subdued. Eyes that burned bright became blind and hearts that beat strong grew weak. The desert heroes disappeared. There is no fight left in the world, only submission. BL/ind is no longer an industry, it is an empire. An empire that has conquered the towns, the cities, several states, and now their sights are set on the nation. The world is turning black and white with little hope for color. Nothing remains the same.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: 8 YEARS AFTER DOOMSDAY

A child is running down the sidewalk, desperately trying to make it to the bus stop around the corner before he misses it yet again. Already having missed the first three times the bland black and white vehicle stopped, he would not miss it again. He COULDN'T miss it again, his forearm was still bruised from the reprimanding as a result of yesterday's tardiness. The young boy's black hair flew back as he ran faster and faster, seeing the vehicle stop ahead and begin loading up its dully dressed passengers. His feet pounded against the asphalt, starting to ache as they hit the concrete harder and harder, carrying him to the front of the bus just in time to stick his arm through the closing doors and trip the sensors. "Mean old, Martin," as the children called him, huffed at him in disdain as he reluctantly waited for the child to board and the doors to swing shut behind him.

"Thanks, Mr. Martin..." The child whispered as he made his way past the grumpy, wrinkled, old man, whose white suit was stretched tight around his impressive gut.

"Won't happen again runt." Martin growled as he swung the bus out in to the gridlock, joining the stream of vehicles headed towards the center of the city. The chattering of other children on the bus grew quieter as the gas guzzler made its way further in. Skyscrapers reached up to the heavens, the very tips of them touching the storm clouds high above. The glass buildings had recently replaced half of Las Vegas, rising up from the wreckage of older ones that were deemed useless by the new government. Huge screens hung off the sides of each, displaying the same smiling black face on a white background, the logo for the new paradigm. The same face took up residence on the boy's uniform, sitting on the left side of his chest. All of the young people riding the bus wore this same uniform, none were different. Backpacks, uniforms, including shoes and socks, and hair style were all mandated by the school. The girls' outfits were the same as the boys, just slightly more tailored. Their hair was to be pulled back in to a tight pony tail, and if you had curly hair it was to be straightened immediately. The boys could not let their hair touch their shoulders and eyes must be visible at all times. There would be no individuality amongst them. The young boy's hair was nearing his shoulders and would have to be cut before the end of the week to avoid yet another run in with the principal, a man you wanted to avoid at all costs.

As the bus slowed to a stop behind a long, perfectly straight line of other identical vehicles, the children stood up and in an orderly fashion exited out on to the sidewalk. Standing still in an equally perfect line until their instructor collected them. The school rose above the children as they grew closer, yet the school's flag rose ever higher. The young boy clenched his hands in to tight fists and took a deep breath as they stepped through the doors in to the building.

The walls inside were just as ghost white as the outside, the doors were deep black in color and the lockers matched them. Instructors led their lines of students to their individual classrooms, doors all shutting at almost exactly the same time. The boy was always last in line and he'd purposely let his foot linger to bump the door, resulting in a satisfactory late shut. In the back of each classroom was an enforcer as the instructors called them. They wore white tailored suits, with a black belt around their waists. Their masks were the only items of clothing in the entire city that had any splash of color on them. The big gaping red mouths, displayed the white fangs of the mask perfectly, the dark pits of their eyes bore right through you. They were meant to intimidate the children, yet the boy managed to find them funny somehow. The hair of the mask sticking straight up in to the air and the bushy eyebrows detracting from those ink pool eyes, it was almost comical.

Dangerous, they were absolutely dangerous though. They held the only guns in the entire city and on occasion would find a reason to remind you of that. Vastly improved over the previous models, the white hot lasers they shot out would surely kill you if they hit their mark, seeing as they basically aimed themselves with their new targeting software. Admittedly, the older models would do the job as well but they were were completely manual. At least, this is what the children were taught in their lessons.

"ELLIOT!" The young boy's head whipped around at the mention of his name, his eyes grew wide in fear. "Would you like to repeat to me what I've just said?" He gulped, his body already bracing itself for the punishment the instructor would no doubt deliver after class. "Well?" Her beady eyes seemed to burn holes in his. Reluctantly, Elliot shook his head "no" and his fists clenched as tears began to bead up. "See me after class." She growled and continued on with her lessons. Elliot took down every note he could, for fear she'd question him about it later and he wouldn't be able to prove he'd learned anything. His instructor was known to be the cruelest one at the entire school. She had a reputation for turning kids arms black and blue, and sadly it was completely legal. Ms. Loren loved it.

Government, Economics, and Humanities were Elliot's least favorite lessons of the day. He hated listening to Ms. Loren ramble on and on about the government, how important it was that they uphold the laws laid down by their leaders and his mind was too spacey to pay attention to any sort of reading. Elliot's eyes would often glass over as his mind drifted off, transporting himself mentally out in to the middle of the desert. His imagination would always take him to this dilapidated diner that appeared to be slowly sinking in the sand. The diner's walls were covered in symbols and words that he could never make out, but was fascinated by even still due to their bright colors. He often imagined what it would be like to live in this diner, to sleep on one of its torn up benches and how he would have food and water managed, but the real world would always come crashing back when the teacher slapped her ruler across his hands.

Elliot yelped loudly as his hands were lashed. Ms. Loren was enraged, her eyes burned with anger towards the child. "TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE!" All the other children were staring at him, fear and sorrow for the boy written across their faces. Well most of them, a select few were grinning at the prospect of watching a good display later on. Elliot was frozen in his seat until the enforcer from the back of the room came up and gripped his shirt, yanking him up out of the chair.

"Grab your bag." The enforcer snarled, giving Elliot's shirt just enough slack that he could reach down and grab his pack and cram all of his schoolwork in to it before getting dragged out of the room. The enforcer was silent as he pulled Elliot down the hallway towards the dreaded Principal's Office. The boy's heart pounded faster and faster with each passing moment, images of bruises up and down his arms and chest flickered in to his mind. He feared he would be put on display in front of the school as they beat him, a public reminder of what happens when you don't follow the rules. They stopped in front of the door while the white suit clad, masked man knocked on the door and waited for a response. When no sound came from inside the room, the enforcer let go of Elliot and moved his now free hand to rest on the handle of his gun. The boy gulped in fear, afraid that since the Principal hadn't answered, this enforcer was now going to take matters in to his own hands and kill him. "Do not move." The man growled from under the mask as he reached for the door and yanked it open.

The room was pitch black, the blinds on the windows were all tightly shut, it was even scarier than when the lights were on, which is saying something. The enforcer leaned inside, taking a hesitant step forward while drawing his ray gun, when suddenly a hand lashed out, grabbed the white coat jacket of the enforcer, and yanked him inside by it, Elliot fell backwards in shock and scrambled in reverse until his back hit the lockers on the opposite wall. He could hear banging and muffled voices, fists were being thrown inside the room for a few minutes before it went completely quiet. Elliot was frozen against the lockers, eyes practically bulging out of their sockets as his heart beat vigorously. Should he run? Where would he go? Back to class to report what had happened? No he couldn't do that, he couldn't because right now he couldn't even move.

"Come in here, kid." A voice emanated from within the dark room to Elliot's horror. It was deep, gruff voice that he could only imagine belonged to someone big and strong who was capable of taking down an enforcer. Nobody he knew or had ever seen was capable of doing such a thing, especially within the confines of a busy school. "I won't ask again." The voice grumbled and sparked a little bit of life back in to Elliot's legs. Reluctantly, he managed to get to his feet and slowly take a few steps towards the door before the same hand whipped out of the pitch black and grasped the front of his shirt, drawing him forwards.

Chapter Text

A door shut from behind Elliot, but he assumed he was already halfway in to the room which meant there was more than one being in the dark. His feet stumbled across the carpeted floor, pulled along by the hand that still gripped his shirt tightly.

"Lock the door please, dear." The gruff voice whispered. Elliot heard the lock on the door click and not a second later the hand relinquished its grasp. A chair squeaked from somewhere in front of him, before a soft blue light slowly illuminated the room. The glow of the computer highlighted the face of a thirty something year old man with an eyepatch over his right eye. The only visible eye was fixated on the young boy. The man's arms were crossed on the desk and for a few awkward moments he remained completely still. A shuffle of feet behind the boy reminded him that there was another person in the small room. He nervously watched as the second being walked past him like a shadow, slowly lit up as they approached the computer's light. Elliot thought these two people looked similar, maybe even related. They both certainly had big bushy heads of hair.

That's when he realized just how different these two were. Knocking the enforcer out should've been the first clue that they were clearly not residents of Las Vegas, but it was the hair that did it. It wasn't tamed back and tied down like everyone else, it was wild and looked a little bit grimy. Then he noticed their clothes. From what he could see, the man's dark leather jacket had sewn on, brightly colored patches on the left side of his chest and right shoulder.The teenage girl was a bit more visible as she stood up. She had a blue crop top on with red and yellow stripes running vertically down the left side of it. She wore tight fitting grey jeans that were riddled with holes around the knees. Her boots went up to the top of her shins and there was a bottle cap belt around her waist. The garments were all very, very dirty. She had a radio slung across her shoulders and clutched a pair of goggles in her right hand. Elliott's eyes narrowed in on what else was strapped across her waist. A bright, neon orange ray gun was strapped down in a holster on her hip. His heart started to pound even faster. Were they going to kill him?! His eyes flicked back to the man in the chair who was still staring at him.

"What is your name?" He spoke quietly to the boy before him. Elliot was too nervous to even open his mouth. The bushy headed man followed the boy's gaze to his friend's ray gun then asked her nicely to lay her gun as well as his on the floor at the boy's feet. His gaze returned to the young child in front of him, studying him from head to toe. Elliot shuffled backwards a bit as the girl placed the guns next to his feet. She smiled gently at him and then suddenly the room was filled with light. The man had, at some point, stood up and flicked the light switch on before re-taking his seat behind the desk. "We aren't going to hurt you, we just have a few questions." The man's single eye bore in to the boy's.

"I-it's Elliot. Elliot Sharper is my name." He said quietly, so quietly in fact the man had to lean forward just to hear him. The girl was still smiling at the boy, her clothes even more brightly colored than he thought now that the lights were on.

"Elliot, tell me this. Why were you brought to this office?" The man's fingers laced together on the desk, while the boy's eyes dropped to the floor. The guns lay near his feet still, his imagination pictured them somehow shooting him as they rested on the ground. They were grime covered and pretty beaten up, the designs on them were almost completely rubbed off. He could barely make out the words "because I said so" written on the end of the man's blue ray gun. "Hey, Elliot. We don't have a lot of time." His voice sent chills down the boy's spine for some reason. Fearing for his life, he reluctantly answered.

"I wasn't paying attention in class." He breathed. Shuffling his feet nervously.

"If that's all, then why the frightened look on your face?" The man knew that gaze all too well, the boy was shaken up by something before even stepping foot in the office. Elliot lifted his hands up and placed them on the edge of the desk in front of him, a bright red mark stretched across them, enflamed slightly from the severity of the smack. The man reached forwards, tenderly grasping the youth's hands and studying them carefully. "They punish you." His eye met the young boy's. "Why? Why does simply losing focus warrant this kind of abuse?" The question was quite serious, Elliot was unsure how to answer. Luckily for him, it was rhetorical. The man stood up from behind the desk, walking around it then kneeling down in front of the adolescent. His eye seemed to study Elliot's every feature. It made him nervous to be close to this man, he had no idea who or what he even was, but now that he was up close he realized something. The man's eye was not as harsh as he thought it was from across the room. It was soft, inviting, and looked like liquid chocolate, needless to say unexpected from a gruff looking man. Scars littered the tanned skin on the adult's forearms and peeked out around the collar of his shirt. His leather coat was a lot more battered up close, torn here and there and dust was a permanent part of its once porous material.

"Who are you?" Elliot blurted out before he could catch himself, flinching out of instinct, ready to receive a slap for questioning someone older than him. This clearly upset the man as his shoulders sagged slightly, a single tear built up in his eye.

"This is cruelty. Look what they've done to this young man." The ragged man looked to his female companion, who shook her head in disdain. Their eye contact seemed to last forever, slight shakes and nods of their heads let Elliot know they were having some kind of silent quarrel with one another. The girl looked worriedly at her friend then turned her sights back on to the kid. "Elliot, do you live with anyone?" It was an out of place question, Elliot thought. Why would he be asking who he lived with? Did he want to harm his family? It wasn't their fault! Or maybe it was?

"My foster family." The boy said mouselike. "Who are you?"

"And does this foster family treat you like this 'school' does?" The man's hands flew up to make little quotation marks in the air.

"No! They only punish me when-" He paused. Elliot had not thought of it this way. He was punished frequently at home but had never compared what happened there to what happened in class. He'd always thought there was a perfectly good reason his family had to punish him and remind him to behave. But what if there hadn't been a reason at all? What if they were just trying to beat the individuality out of him like the school was? Clearly knowing what the boy was now thinking, the man spoke again. "It isn't normal, kid. Families do not treat each other this way. Teachers should not be allowed to treat students this way. This 'way' is wrong." The man's voice got more aggravated as he kept talking. "Promise me something?" He let out a sigh, looking at the boy from head to toe. "Do not let them run your life. Protect yourself. You are unique, you are special. Don't ever let them make you think otherwise. This isn't how the world is supposed to be." The man stood up, collecting the ray guns at Elliot's feet then looking to his companion again before starting for the door, unlocking it and glancing out in to the hall in either direction.

"Kid, listen to him. Okay?" The girl smiled down at Elliot, then ruffled his hair gently before walking to the door. "Anything?" The man shook his head no, his wild, bushy hair swaying from side to side. Elliot took note of the back of the man's leather jacket. It had vertical red and white stripes, with a patch of blue and some white stars dotted on it, there was a black spider sprayed on over top of it. The colors alone dazzled him, but the symbol looked vaguely familiar; he couldn't quite place where he'd seen it before. Just as the pair prepared to run down the hallway and vacate the school, Elliot spoke up.

"Wait!" He yelped at first then quieted his voice when their heads swiveled to look at him. "I just...want to know who you are?" Elliot squeaked out. Looking between each other then back to him, the man drew his blue ray gun up against his chest.

"109 In The Sky..." The man smirked, then disappeared with his partner, leaving the boy standing there in the office wondering what on Earth just happened.

Chapter Text

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: 15 YEARS AFTER DOOMSDAY

Hours turned to days, day to weeks, weeks to months, and so on. It was almost seven years later, just after his fifteen birthday, that Elliot would get any sort of clue as to who the two he'd met in the school were. Honestly, he'd almost completely forgotten about that day. It was entirely by accident that he discovered anything about them at all.

First, he'd found out that their principal's absence was due to a small riot in a neighboring town, apparently the people there had claimed to see ghosts in the desert, which he was still unsure what that meant. It was important enough that the principal and former head of something called the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W unit had left immediately to see to it. Second, there were mentions of a duo roaming through the desert that an old security cam picked up. They were dressed like enforcers but were way too far out to have been part of any of the current deployments. Third, they had been headed in the direction of an old burned down building, one that back in the day had been used by the enemies of BL/ind codenamed "Killjoys." All of which Elliot had learned thanks to his new job as assistant to the aforementioned principal, now recently re-instated as Director of BL/ind headquarters. It was his job now to help the man sort and deliver files to whomever his new boss demanded.

Elliot was just glad that his days were no longer being wasted in the school, he was old enough now to work for the company and after pulling his act together, he was given this job. One of the highest ones a kid fresh out of school could earn. He should've been proud of himself. Elliot had been taught many things in the last four years. He was one of the best shots with a raygun, not really too big of a deal since they had their targeting systems, and had muscled up a bit during training. Elliot had also excelled in all his courses, managing to receive the highest scores on all of his exams after previously being a failure student. He could've become an enforcer, but they had decided his talents were best served apparently delivering files.

"Elliot Sharper, please report to the Director's office." The intercom called out. Elliot hung his head and sighed heavily, he slowly pushed the file cabinet drawer in the storage room closed and locked it behind him. Slowly standing, he briefly wondered if he could just ignore it but they would probably just send some enforcers to drag him in there anyways. He collected the files he'd set atop the cabinet and tucked them under his arms before making his way to his boss' office on the floor above him.

Getting in the elevator, he nodded politely to the other employees who were all nose deep in their own files then clicked the button for floor forty eight. Elliot quickly stepped out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened wide enough and made his way briskly down the hallway towards the large double doors at the end. His boss' private guard stood before the door, hands held behind his back and feet firmly planted shoulder's width apart.

This one guard's uniform differed from the rest of the enforcer's. His outfit was more like a combat suit with its extra laser and fire proof material, thick impact resistant padding, topped off with sleek helmet that covered his entire face. The biggest difference, though, was that it was black, absolutely solid black. It was quite the intimidating uniform to look at, yet his job was far more serious than the average enforcer's. Elliot couldn't stand to stare at him too long, bowing his head as he approached the doors and the guard stepped aside. Pausing before the big white doors, he took a deep breath to steady his suddenly quivering hands then opened them, stepping through in to the room.

"Ah, Elliot. Please have a seat." The bald headed man was at the window, looking out at the city below. "I trust you brought me the files I asked for?"

"Yes sir, all the information on desert towns and deserted buildings within two hundred miles of here covering the last fifteen years." Elliot neatly spread the folders out on his boss' desk, turning them so they faced the man's chair.

"Good work. Thank you." The older man paused, his hands swinging behind his back and locking with each other. "Now, Elliot, that is not why I called you in today. It's come to my attention recently that you have been seen looking through some of the files that I've asked you to bring to me in your time working here. Quite frankly, I knew you'd been looking through them already, but I guess my curiosity has finally gotten the better of me. So..." The baldheaded man turned around, folding his arms across his chest. "...why have you been looking through the files?"
Elliot froze. Here was this man before him that he'd feared for most of his childhood, staring at him like he'd done something horrible. His arms twitched in reaction to his fear, a side effect from the years of being slapped with a ruler from a person with the very same look in their eyes.

"Elliot." The man cleared his throat, his gaze hardening again.

"I...I don't know. I was just curious I swear. I just wanted to know-"

"Know what?" The man moved to his chair behind the desk, his eyes never leaving Elliot's as he walked. His hands gripped the back of his desk chair, squeezing slightly. He almost wanted to strangle the naive youth sitting before him, for daring to do anything but what he was told. Elliot's body shook from fear of the man's gaze.

"I just wanted t-to know what w-was so important about s-such old i-irrelevant documents." Elliot forced the words through his teeth, flinching when the man's posture went completely rigid and his face turned to a horrible scowl. Just as quickly as it happened though, the glower turned to a smirk and suddenly the man was laughing. Just laughing loudly before Elliot. The sheer sound made the young teen even more nervous than he was before. What did the man find so funny? Or was he just so enraged he couldn't think of anything to do but laugh?

"Irrelevant? You really thought any of those documents were irrelevant? My dear boy, everything in those documents is so far from irrelevancy. Anything I've ever asked you to bring to my office has a purpose." The Director's hand gripped the leather chair ever tighter.

"Just like you have your role in today's society, there is a specific reason every little thing exists as each and every one has their own role to play. Those papers in those folders contain every piece of knowledge needed to keep our company safe and in check." Elliot's boss reached down and pulled a drawer open on the desk, grabbing a nameplate and setting it on the table in front of the young man.

"That, was my given name some time ago. I had my place then like I have my place now. New names were given and people accepted their roles as they should. I see to it that every little detail in those files you bring me is checked over and re-checked as many times as it takes." Elliot's boss moved back to the window, but Elliot's eyes remained focused on the nameplate on the table before him.

He'd seen the name in the files and new what that name was responsible for. Without the owner of said name, which apparently used to be his boss at one point in time, the new society would never have been formed. This bald, steel-eyed man single handedly ended a rebellion just outside the old capital of Battery City by apparently blowing up the leader of the rebellion's. The other guy never had a chance, at least thats what Korse, the man standing at the window, had said. Every fiber of Elliot's being began to quiver in fear of his boss, someone he thought just had a bad attitude and a supreme sense of pride before now. Pride that was, apparently, well deserved.

"Now Elliot, there is something else I wish to ask of you. It has come to my attention that some years ago you were in my office with some...unwelcome...guests." Korse slowly looked over his shoulder at the young man frozen still in the chair, eyes glued to the nameplate sitting before him. Flashes of brightly colored outfits and wild bushy hair flicked across his mind.

"As you may now understand, what with your curiosity and all, it's very important that I know what happened that day." He looked the boy over and could see his hands visibly shaking. With a smirk on his face, he moved back to his desk and took a seat directly across from the quivering being before him.

"Elliot, you are in no way at fault for what happened that day. In fact, I would like to hear the information you gathered whilst in their company. You see, they are remnants of the rebellion, stray hairs that need to be smoothed out. I know you are a smart and capable young man, maybe one day even capable of taking my place here." Elliot thinks he sees a shudder run through the Director's body. "So tell me, what did you hear and what did you think about them?" Elliot slowly looked up at the man seated across from him, studying his face for a few moments in an attempt to calm himself, but it only resulted in his heart pounding even faster.

"I-I..." He cleared his throat. "I wasn't sure what to do at first. They were strange. Their clothes were pretty beaten up and they had a lot of scars on their skin. The m-man more so than the girl. They weren't even scared to have been caught in the office." Korse leaned forward, his eyes seemed to bored holes through his head like he could somehow suck the information out faster that way.

"They stayed calm and collected most of the time. The guy though...he got pretty mad when he found out how students were reprimanded. He didn't really say much information wise, just that this city sickened them." Korse's eyes narrowed slightly, obviously displeased with the lack of intel.

"What were they wearing, Elliot. Anything particularly definitive?" The man's intense, dark eyes sharpened. The veins on his hands seemed to inflate as they balled in to fists on his desk.

"W-well the guy...he had an eyepatch over his right eye and had on an old leather jacket with a few colored patches on it. I think there was some kind of red, white, and blue design on the back too. There might have been a spider on it." Elliot froze at the look that crossed Korse's face, one of pure unadulterated hatred. It shook him to the core to stare in those suddenly icy cold eyes.

"H-his...his ray gun..."

"What about it. The fire was practically dancing from Korse's eyes.

"It...it was blue." Elliot's hands white knuckled the arms of the chair, practically vibrating in fear. It was ingrained in to him after all, this fear of the man before him. All of those years in school hadn't faded from his mind.

"Are you sure?" He asked, leaning forwards across the desk in quite possibly one of the most intimidating ways. His dark, brooding face only inches away from Elliot's. The teen leaned back out of instinct, his hands gripping the sides of his chair as he gulped and nodded like a bobble head.

"P-positive...that's wh-what I saw." Elliot hadn't even started on the younger female companion but it didn't seem to matter. The man once known as Korse flung himself up out of his chair and paced the room, his hands clawing at his bald scalp. In one swift, violent motion the enraged man cried out and swiped the books off the shelf behind his desk, a commotion that did not go unnoticed by his private guard standing just outside the door. The black suited man opened the door and stepped inside, his hand resting atop his black, holstered raygun.

"Everything okay in here, sir?" That was the first time Elliot had ever heard the voice of Korse's private guard and he was astounded to hear that it was being modified. It came out mechanically, making the man sound more like a machine than anything. Why on Earth the man needed his voice to be scrambled like that, he wasn't sure but it terrified him nonetheless.

"EVERYTHING IS FINE! GET OUT!" Korse was infuriated still, pacing the room, each footstep falling harder than the previous. Elliot was sure he could feel even the ground trying to recoil away from the dangerous man's fury. "GET HIM OUT TOO!" The depilated man's long pointer finger stuck out accusingly at Elliot, who stood up immediately and backed a few steps away before hurrying towards the door. The guard grabbed him by the sleeve and pushed him out faster, practically flinging him down the hall before slamming the double doors shut behind them.

Elliot wasn't sure why his boss had gone haywire at the mention of the fluffy haired man and his friend, an incident that happened so long ago, but whatever the reason it wasn't good. He had a feeling that he'd just been caught up right in the middle of it. As the frightened teen headed down the hall towards his own small desk, he dreaded the moment he would be called back to bring the enraged man's next file requests.

Within the Director's office, a small, secret door slowly swung open from the bookcase. A short man emerged carrying a single file in his hands. As he slowly approached his pacing boss, his arm nervously stretched out to hold the file he carried out to the now deranged looking man.

"S-sir..." Korse's stone cold eyes landed on the man as he stopped pacing, his hands clenched in fists at his sides, veins popping out all over the place. "S-sir, the f-file you requested on Elliot Sharper." The Director took a few storming steps towards the little man and snatched the file from him, turning to his desk as the man hurried back in to the room behind the bookcase, shutting the door behind him. Korse took a deep breath and steadied himself before opening the file on his assistant.

He had a feeling this kid's background wasn't what it seemed, something he'd been questioning since the boy was one of the students at his school. There were no records of any Elliot Sharper being born within the city, just a current residence and supposed family names. Korse prided himself in thorough research and it had driven him mad when no further information was provided to him due to his...demotion at the time. Classified information he was, at the time, no longer privy to once S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W had been buried underground. After all he'd accomplished for the future of BL/ind too. A huff of anger left his lips.

As the kid went through the years of school, he'd suddenly changed from failure to over achiever in almost every field of education. The boy was proving himself to the higher ups and the excitement they'd shown for his potential at the time had driven Korse mad.

When Korse had been suddenly thrust back in to the company as Director not long after the school office incident, he knew there was a storm brewing and he jumped at the opportunity to potentially regain some of his former glory. Information was once again made available and he realized the ghosts of the past were somehow coming back to haunt him. It was his job to eliminate the loose ends he thought he'd done away with.

Elliot Sharper graduated and was up for grabs by any division. Head enforcer looked to be a promising position in his future, but some sick twist of fate worked in Korse's advantage and he'd secured him as his own personal employee. Thrusting him into the secretarial pool faster than anyone could blink, to his great satisfaction. The Director found great pleasure in knocking down any up-and-comers down as many pegs as he could. Especially Elliot Sharper. Especially after the incident in his office as principal.

Ever since the occurrence at the school, he'd not only despised but heavily monitored the boy. What did he see? What did he know about the people who'd quite easily breached the walls of the most secured school in the country. Any hint that the boy knew anything at all wouldn't come much later, until the Director had been informed of a potential breach of classified information.
From then on Elliot's curiosity worried the director of the enforcers, it wasn't like any child raised in a BL/ind city to be so inquisitive. It was simply not something they tolerated from birth, yet this boy's rebellious tendencies seemingly remained even after all his success as a student later on. He needed to know and the files had finally just landed in his hands.

Korse scanned the documents page by page, reading through numerous reports made by Elliot's teachers during school on how his turn around from failure student to near perfection was remarkable. There were a few accounts of his prowess with a raygun as well, but none of that mattered to the man. Korse had secured this document through numerous agents from a much higher up source, one who would no doubt see to his demise if he learned the current location of such a file. Scanning further through, Korse finally found the page he was looking for. Conveniently titled "CLASSIFIED." His eyes skimmed down the page until his heart skipped a few beats when a particular line of text caught his eye.

"It can't be."

Chapter Text

How could this be possible? How could this kid have survived? The little brat was supposed to have been taken care of along with his only remaining parent. Yet here he is, alive and well. "They're going to haunt me forever it seems." Korse growled, standing up and going to the bookcase, treading across all the neatly binded works scattered on the floor. Pushing in on the secret door, it slowly swung open and he ducked his way through the low entrance. There was an entire lab behind the shelving, outfitted with nearly every scientific machine one could imagine. He had gathered the most brilliant minds from different BL/ind cities and employed them here, where they would carry out their unethical experiments in secrecy. One such scientist, Amanda Haynes, had been the one responsible for a certain project that had resulted in young Elliot's birth.

It was an idea started by Ms. Haynes years before BL/ind started to become a major company. She was a relatively well off woman married to a handsome, young entrepreneur who was making a big name for himself. Everything was going just the way she'd imagined as a young girl, playing with toys in her backyard. She had her dark haired, blue eyed Prince Charming and her modest castle, a good eight thousand square foot home nestled in the hills, and she could deal with his parents keeping their distance, but the one thing that escaped her was her fairy tale child.

Amanda was not able to conceive. It was a devastating blow, but being the strong willed scientist she was, there had to be a way to fix their situation. She found it. Since she herself could not conceive, maybe she could modify the male body slightly to conceive and carry a biological child and fulfill her childhood dream. Not so surprisingly though, when her handsome young husband learned of her intentions, he bailed out of the marriage, declaring she was insane.

Everything fell apart for Ms. Haynes and she found herself just barely scraping by after her colleagues learned of her unethical intentions. That's when BL/ind stepped in, or rather Korse. The then younger and well built man told the beautiful young lady that he saw the potential in her research and made an offer to fund it so long as she was willing to work for the company and oversee other projects as well. Out of sheer determination, she agreed to work for the company and began her research again from scratch.

There were many unfortunate road blocks along the way. A lot was involved in changing the structure of a man's internal organs, not to mention the fact that they had to force his body to grow a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. More than a few times the body rejected the new organs and quite often the test subject would die. Once she got the body to stop rejecting the new organs, then the focus turned to getting those to properly function. Sadly, there were quite a few failed pregnancies amongst her test subjects, prisoners that had been "donated" to the cause, most only lasting a few weeks before being aborted by the man's body. Amanda was again devastated, coming to the conclusion that it was merely not meant to be. A few other scientists were brought in on the project and finally they discovered the issue they were having.

Pelvic inflammatory disease was running rampant. The men's newly grown uteruses were getting infected due to their weak nature. They simply weren't as strong as a woman's uterus and the disease was easily contracted. Not only would it damage the uterus, but it would spread quickly to the fallopian tubes creating large abscesses that would then rupture and damage them permanently. The diseased uterus would quickly kill any fetus growing within. Working hard on the issue, the scientists came up with a drug, similar to Penicillin, that once injected in to the vein, would attack any forming diseases and remain within the person's body for the remainder of his life. With that issue out of the way and one successful pregnancy later, Ms. Haynes was again approached by Korse.

The man came to her late one night and announced he had another patient for Amanda to perform her test on, one that might make her quite happy. Confused as she was, she agreed and was led in to her lab to find a very familiar face strapped down to the table. It was her ex-husband of all people in the world and nothing could wipe the smile from her face as she drug her fingers down his perfectly toned chest and abdomen. She would finally have her dream child with the man whom she still believed to be her knight in shining armor, a rather unwilling knight. A few weeks later he was prepared to be artificially inseminated with his own semen and an egg from Amanda, one of the few her body had been able to produce that was put on ice years ago. It was a success. Nine months later he gave birth via c-section to a very healthy baby boy with hair as dark as night and eyes as blue as the sea, a spitting image of his father. Ms. Haynes was ecstatic, but her joy was short lived.

Her ex-husband had grown attached to the little baby boy as he grew within him and the moment he got the opportunity, he stole the little babe away and wasn't seen again for quite some time. Amanda had tried to go after him and reclaim what she believed to be hers, but Korse stopped her. He ensured the distraught woman that the man would return, revealing to her that he was the man's father. The father she'd never met. His reasoning, when questioned about why he encouraged the testing on his son, was that the boy would never see true responsibility or amount to anything, so he wanted a grandson who could fill the shoes his father never could. A biological grandson was a must and seeing as how Korse's son had lost interest in women, he saw the experiment as his last resort.

Amanda's gaze turned to Korse as he entered the private lab from his office. The angry looking man waved her over and she practically sprinted to his side.

"Sir?" Her voice was mousey, her right hand at her side was tugging at a loose string on her lab coat in nervousness. Korse gripped her shoulder and held the file out in front of them both.

"It seems some of your handiwork has come back to haunt us." He growled, shoving the file in to her hands before taking a few steps away, locking his hands behind his back to prevent himself from knocking anything else over. Ms. Haynes opened the file, flipping through to the last page before letting out a shocked gasp.

"Well, how about that. Iero conceived naturally! After all those problems we had with him. This is amazing! I can't believe this happened! Why did nobody ever tell me about this? How remark-" Amanda froze in horror when she discovered that Korse was glaring down at her, now only a foot away again, eyes piercing her soul. "I-I m-mean..."

"The kid is my assistant." Amanda's eyes went wide as she stared at the man, vaguely recalling meeting his assistant one time before in his office but only briefly as he dropped the requested files and left. He was an average height boy with dark hair, hazel colored eyes, relatively skinny but for the most part muscular, and extremely bright for his age. How interesting that he was a result of two prominent figure heads amongst the Killjoys.

"Elliot Sharper has been inside a BL/ind city for years and I'm only now finding out who he is. He was supposed to have been killed as an infant along with his father. At least, that's what I was told. It's a problem Amanda. A problem like my son was and my grandson still is." Ms. Haynes looked down at the mention of her former prince and her estranged son. Her little fairytale child that never met her expectations and her now deceased ex-partner.

"That brat of yours is still out there destroying our manufacturing facilities whenever he can get his grimy little hands on information about them." A flicker of anger spread across Amanda's face as her former father-in-law showed his disdain for her child. She quickly looked down though afraid to show her dislike of the man. "Back to the point. Elliot is an issue that needs resolving."

"Or is he a tool that needs using?" The mechanical voice spoke up from behind Korse, who turned to find his private guard standing inside the lab now, arms folded across his chest. Fury rose up inside him at his guard's unauthorized entrance in to the lab.

"And who exactly told you that you could come in here, let alone leave your post? I do believe I KICKED. YOU. OUT." Korse snarled as he took a few steps towards the man, balling his fists, but his guard remained undeterred, the only sign of movement was the sudden position of his hand on the hilt of his sleek black gun. "How dare you even think to pull your gun on-"

"I may be your private guard," his mechanized voice growled out, "but you do remember who assigned me to you." The gloved hand shot out, digging the pointer finger in to Korse's chest. "He sent me a message saying some very private files went missing and that a certain scientist," the helmet turned so the closed visor faced the short little scientist, now cowering behind his equipment, before turning back to Korse, "had been caught on camera taking them." The bald man took a few steps back away from the accusing finger trying to put a hole through his chest, glaring sideways at his dimwitted thief as he did. There were so many ways he could see this going and none of them were good, but the black suited man remained motionless where he stood.

"You're lucky. He's actually kind of glad you know now." The man walked forward and started around Korse, circling him like a shark. "Think hard, you have THE Fun Ghoul's son in your possession, can you even see the possibilities here? Or has the great Korse lost his touch?" If the bald man could see the black guard's face, there would most likely be a grin from ear to ear. "Here, let me help you. Imagine it. A slip of the tongue to a random Killjoy out in desert and the news will spread like wildfire. He'll know within days and do you think he'll sit idly by with the knowledge that his son is alive? Or do you think he'll come for him?" The man paused for a brief moment, thinking something over briefly before resuming.

"No, actually, come to think of it he's probably gotten smart and stopped trusting everyone or...he'd probably just send out his little lackey Kobra Kid to do it for him. He hasn't come out of hiding since his precious boyfriend was...well...taken care of and I doubt that'd would change. Soooo, here's a better thought for that brain of yours to ponder, what if you sent the kid to him? Send him out with the instruction to keep his name and face hidden, let him work his way to finding Ghoul. Let them figure it out on their own and by the time they do, a convenient little tracker planted on the boy will have led us right to him. They'll find each other again just to lose each other for good. We'll have hopefully not one but two of the MOST wanted 'joys in custody and the boy, well, he's disposable or maybe even useful depending where his loyalties lie at the time." The gloves clapped together in finality before the man stopped circling his prey. "Think that over for a while, I'm sure the boss might appreciate your SLIGHT amount of effort." With that, the suit clad man retreated from the lab, leaving everyone's hearts at a standstill. Korse included.

SHEEPHOLE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA: 17 YEARS AFTER DOOMSDAY

It was quiet. Elliot had never heard such silence before. There was absolutely no wind, no cars or people bustling about, no machines beeping in an office, and no BL/ind commercials running back to back on a city center screen. It was a complete and utter wasteland before him. The idea of just walking out in to the middle of this empty desert in no particular direction was daunting. Korse had thrown together a pack with some basic provisions - and shit, was it the most unhelpful sack of crap he'd ever seen- and otherwise gave no direction to the boy besides just telling him to take the first step and keep walking southwest towards a former Killjoy hot spot.

Apparently the location had some sort of sentiment for their targets, it was immediately deemed a good starting point in their endeavor to exterminate the remainder of the resistance. Why Elliot was the one thrown out in to the sweltering heat, he had no idea, but here he was already feeling the need to shuck his boots and dump the pile of sand that had already begun to build up inside them.

Clad head to toe in black leather, Elliot could already feel every inch of his skin getting coated in thick sweat, acting like lube between his flesh and the stiff material. There was a serious lack of ventilation in the outfit and he briefly wondered just how long he'd be able to stand the layers before starting to shrug them all off. His survival training over the past year had taught him that protecting his skin from the sun was more important than comfort, but his mind wanted to scream out that he'd die from the dizzying heat before he'd ever get the chance to actually fry his skin. The thick, heavy boots sunk further in to the sand with each step, his legs already getting tired from fighting the evil stuff after only a mile of walking. He kept glancing back behind him as if waiting for the black Pantera to return, trailing a whirlwind of dust behind it with Korse stepping out and saying this was all some sick joke he played on his employees at some point. Elliot new better than that, unfortunately. The bald headed man would love to probably just leave the him out here and come and kick at his decaying corpse in a few weeks just for fun.

After walking for what seemed like forever, there was suddenly a change in the landscape as a lone ridge rose from the ground not too far off from where Elliot was trudging through the desert, little puffs of dirt rising behind each boot as he moved along. The rocky formation looming up out of the sand appeared to have little pockets here and there where the shade seemed to gather, as if even it wanted to hide from the sun itself. Shade would be good for a little rest, a few sips of water, and maybe a few seconds of shut eye before he moved on again. Elliot's body had toned up quite a bit during his extensive training for this mission, but being in an air conditioned, tile floored room was a far cry from the barren desert landscape surrounding him now.

The sun literally felt like it was trying to claw its way through the leather encasing him, trying to reach its desperate little fingers to his skin where it could burn and boil the flesh to its great desire. Elliot could almost imagine the tentacle like extensions reaching down from the big fiery ball to grasp at him. The sun was evil like that. Clouds had always encased the sky above the BL/ind cities, at least over Las Vegas they did. He wondered briefly why the sun really did barely ever shine there, but quickly decided that they'd probably manufactured some cloud machine and forgotten to tell anyone. They made a lot of weird inventions in that city, it wasn't a far flung idea to control the clouds. With an exasperated sigh he kept moving along.

The ridge seemed to be moving further and further away as he drug his feet through the sand, his pack half falling off his shoulders. It wasn't fair. How come the ridge got to keep all it's shade to itself? Why couldn't it just stay put and share with him? Then he realized just how muddled his brain had become over the last hour. Heat exhaustion was starting to hit him hard. The sun had begun its descent about a half an hour before, but it's fiery fingers still clung to anything they could as the body of it sunk slowly below the horizon. The temperatures hadn't moved at all though like he'd hoped for. Elliot kept on moving as much as his tired legs could, each boot getting heavier and heavier as they collected sand along the way.

Finally the little grains of sand started to grow in to rocks, then boulders as he approached the ridge at last. The landscape was dark all around, the cacti only barely illuminated by the moon, seemed to reach their arms higher to the sky as if they too wanted to leave the hot sand they grew up around. Finding a small cave nestled in the side of the ridge, Elliot pulled out the small flashlight he had and scoped it out for any slithering or skittering critters before laying down his pack and collapsing next to it. He couldn't move for an hour until his body slowly started to cool off and he decided he was safe enough remove some of his garments.

The boots were flung at the back of the cave as quickly as possible, flinging sand all over the place as they flew through the air. Elliot's feet were red and raw from rubbing against the sand in his boot all day, blisters forming all over them. His sunglasses were gently laid on the pack, wanting to preserve those more than anything to protect his eyes for as long as he could. Then came the mask, a thick leathery thing that covered everything from the eyes down, attaching itself to the top of his jacket all the way around his neck with a series of snaps and zippers. Once that was off, the jacket and undershirt quickly followed suit, all landing in a big heap of pungent, sweat induced stickiness on top of the boots. The air finally started to cool around him, allowing him to take a full deep breath and relax, resting his head on his bag.

Lying there under the stars in the mouth of the shallow cave, Elliot couldn't help but be awed by their beauty. Sparkling up there, dotting the inky black sky as far as the eye could see. Those long dead suns, flickering in the vast expanse of sky, still reaching out and eager for someone to still gaze upon them. There was nothing like this in Las Vegas, nothing quite so spectacular for sure. When the clouds would occasionally separate enough to form foggy looking gaps, there would only be a few of the twinkling balls of fire visible through the haze. This was something else entirely. He couldn't sleep now, not while he was able to see so many of them with such an unimpeded view. Maybe being out here wouldn't be so bad after all. A coyote howled in the distance, a forlorn sound that sent a shiver down his spine. Then again, maybe it would be a lot worse.

Chapter Text

SHEEPHOLE VALLEY: 9 YEARS AFTER DOOMSDAY

Falling asleep had been a process, but waking up was a marathon. The sun peeked over the mountain right at six in the morning, bathing everything in golden light for a few spectacular moments before the heat started to settle in alongside it.

There was a light wind building that whistled through small gaps between rocks along the top of the ridge line. Annoying, high pitched wails that stirred the cave’s sole occupant from a near dead sleep long after he should have been on his feet. Elliot sat up, groaning to himself as every muscle in his body pulled tight in a long, drawn out stretch accompanied by the mother of all yawns.

Tired eyes blinked away the remnants of sleep and squinted out at the bright light that was steadily creeping closer towards their owner’s feet. As Elliot sat up and took in his desolate surroundings, sand fell from his clothes, having been blown around during the night by intermittent gusts of air. His hands rose up and brushed through his hair, feeling the grime and grease building up in his dark locks.

“Gross.” He growled out, throwing his hands back down to his sides in defeat as no matter how hard he ruffled the dirty tresses the sand just kept falling out.

All the training he’d had and he still could not get away from the need for cleanliness. It was ingrained in to his brain to be as clean as he possibly could and this build up of filth covering his body after just one day in the desert had him wanting to crawl out of his skin. Elliot wished he could shed it off like a snake and feel the smoothness of clean skin once again.

Skittering noises to his right had him leaping upwards in a moment of absolute fright before he realized it was just the claws of a small bird scraping the ground as it hopped around the entrance to the cave. Now that he was fully standing, he let out a big woods of breath and sighed heavily before turning to begin the process of redressing. His chest was bare and the breeze felt good in the shade, a few moments more though and he’d be baking in the sun.

The undershirt smelled absolutely repulsive and Elliot had to hold his breath while he slipped the soiled garment back over his head. The socks he’d stuffed underneath the jacket had to be beaten against the cave wall a dozen times before the sand being shaken loose lessened. Even then they rubbed like sandpaper against his blistered feet. The boots got a thorough shakedown for good measure as well, after close inspection for potential critters.

The heavy leather mask had somehow gone missing from the pile of smelly clothing, though. Elliot spent several minutes scouring the cave before walking to the edge and looking down. Spotting the face covering fifty or so feet below stuck against the side of a cactus, seemingly having been blown off the pile during the night. Elliot would have to recover it to protect his face against the hot wind and reflection off the sand.

Pulling his jacket on, Elliot checked the one piece of tech aside he was allowed with him. A satellite phone small enough to wedge in the tiny inside pocket of his jacket. It was nearing eight in the morning when the screen lit up upon removal. A full four hours past when he should’ve been on the move again. It was going to be much tougher on his body the later in the day he started moving, giving it no time to slowly acclimatize to the building temperature.

“Well,” Elliot voice cracked, throat rough and dry, “better get a move on.” After he picked up the useless bag of junk he’d been given, slid on his sunglasses, and checked his surroundings for any forgotten items, his legs took the first few difficult steps away from the cave into the sweltering heat.

***

“Kid’s wearin’ way too much leather.”

“Hush. He’ll figure it out, hopefully he inherited his father’s brains and not his dad’s.” There’s a snicker from the younger of the two.

“That’s not fair, his dad’s plenty smart. Just maybe a bit pig-headed. He lucked out a little on the height side though.” Now it’s the older’s turn to chuckle a little. As the pair looked down from the top of the ridge, watching as the figure below made his descent and got smaller by the minute, they couldn’t help but silently make the same promise that they would watch over him just as they had all of these years. No matter what, they’d keep him safe.

SHEEPHOLE VALLEY: 9 YEARS, 3 DAYS AFTER DOOMSDAY

“Join us for a better life and a better future. Join us for a better life and a better future. Join us for a better life and a better future. WHAT A LOAD!” A hand flailed around in the air, feet stumbled forwards, swaying a bit in their path from side to side. Where skin was exposed from lack of covering was red and blistering, the sticky sweat of three days previous had turned to a dry, salty layer. “Join us for a better life…” the hoarse voice whispered out into the quiet air.

It was the understatement of all understatements to say that Elliot was not doing well. All that training, all those useless wasted days spent practicing and nothing had even come close to preparing him for the desert. His eyes burned behind his sunglasses, his water supply was nearly empty after a few delirious moments the previous day. A few moments when he was sure he was going to die and had chugged nearly an entire canister’s worth in one sitting. It hadn’t done anything for him except reappear a few moments later, after his stomach protested the sudden influx of that much life giving fluid, and leave him one whole canister down in his supply.

The desert stretched out all around him, going on forever and ever it seemed like. No matter where his eyes landed it was dirt, sand , more sand - oh look a cactus!- and then some more dirt and sand. Ever since he’d left the ridge he’d been unlucky in his quest for shade. Only receiving relief and collapsing to the ground with his leather jacket bundled up in the sand under his head when the sun sank below the horizon.

Until last night that is, when he’d woken up in the middle of the night to a coyote snuffling its nose against his feet and he’d promptly launched himself to his feet, barely able to snatch his pack before taking off. Leaving the jacket at the mercy of the coyote’s curious teeth. Of course it was much later when he realized he could have just pulled out the raygun stuffed in the bottom of the pack and scared the animal off, but far too late for that now.

Now he was sans jacket, his arms bare to the sun’s evil rays, dragging his tired body along as his mind slowly drifted back toward delirium. Of course, that’s when everything seems to go wrong.

A bright, white hot beam of energy flies past him, just narrowly missing his left shoulder. Elliot is slow to react for a moment before everything comes raring back in to focus. He immediately jumped to his right, whipped around, and shoved his hand down in to the pack to lock on to his raygun. It should really be stowed in the inside pocket of his jacket, but oh wait! That’s gone now. Maybe his boot? Maybe now isn’t the best time to be thinking about proper raygun placement?

Elliot’s eyes wheel around, looking across the desert for any sign of where the laser had been fired from, but aside from the literal heatwaves dancing across his vision, a few lone cacti spread far between, and a small ridge to his left, he couldn’t catch anything. Then, just as suddenly as the first, another ray flies past him, and another and another until there’s a whole barrage and he’s quickly turned around and sprinting across the desert.

His tired, weary, dehydrated body only gets him so far before his legs buckle underneath him and he goes down. This was not his element, it reminds him. City boy can’t handle the desert. It mocked. Elliot thrust his arms out in front of him in a sad attempt at trying to crawl, but there’s a heavy weight pressed down on the small of his back out of nowhere and his limbs fully give. The sand is hot against the side of his face, it burned the tender flesh and his sunglasses were knocked loose on impact, resting a few inches away in the dirt. The mask he’d worn was stuffed in the bottom of his bag, having grown tired of feeling the sweat gathered behind it drip in to his panting mouth, after only a few hours on the second day.

A glance back over his shoulder reveals a knee high boot pressed down on his body. Elliot’s hazel eyes slowly follow the boot up a dirty, jean clad leg, to a very male shaped waist and torso, until they blinked through the blinding sun at a bandana wrapped face framed by a wild mess of dark hair. Two bright blue eyes stared down through the dirty, dark tresses before the tip of a bright blue raygun blocked them from sight.

“Who are you?” The voice was so quiet, it barely registered in Elliot’s ears. “What’re you doing out here?” Barely a pause between questions.

“M….mmfff-“ The boot pressed down hard just as he’d tried to answer in to the sand before it backed off a bit, letting Elliot lift his head ever so slightly. “M-my nme’s El…liot…’s…’scaped-“ The beginning of story he’d been instructed to give slipped off his tongue in a lazy drawl. It was going to be hard to remember the rest when his mind and body felt so far away, so worn. Elliot had practiced it enough though, maybe he’d be able to fumble his way through enough. “I ‘scaped f-from-“

The weight on the small of his back suddenly disappeared before there was a soft plopping sound of something hitting the sand. Elliot glanced back over his shoulder just in time for two hands to grab his shoulders and yank him backwards until his legs sprung out in front of him from the shift and he plopped down on his ass. Elliot’s eyes struggled to focus through the sudden bout of dizziness, but when they did. The piercing blue eyes were right in front of him, mere inches away from his face.

“Your name.” The other demanded again. Despite the fact that he’d had a blue raygun shoved in his face a few moments before, it was this close proximity to the other that made Elliot realize what he was face to face with. A Killjoy. His mission had just reached its first goal. Find a Killjoy, then find the rest. “YOUR NAME!” The Killjoy barked out, reached back for the raygun lying in the sand a foot away, it must have been what he’d dropped a moment ago, and flung his free hand against Elliot’s throat and gave it a light squeeze.

If Elliot had been better prepared for the environmental situation at hand, if his body had been properly adapted to the desert before being thrown to the wolves essentially, then he probably could have spun this situation around and been the one holding the Killjoy’s throat. That would not be the case in the moment though, he was too tired, too weak and he had a mission. If the interrogation avenue wasn’t an option then he’d go with his second option. Friendship.

BL/ind had taught him that outright violence often didn’t work in their favor in the past. Elliot would have to employ a different tactic more than likely to find the remnants of the resistance. They’d taught him what they believed were the right things to say, the right topics to bring up to at least get a Killjoy’s interest peaked. What they hadn’t told him though was why it was important to be sure to give them his name. An alias would have been his first thought, as he’d read in the documents they almost always went by pseudonym. Doctor D, Show Pony, Ritalin, Jet Star, Kobra Kid, Fun Ghoul, Party Poison, they’d all been recurring names in the files so why give his name if they’d kept theirs secret long ago? Wouldn’t that still be the case? Wouldn’t he need to make his own alias to fit in with them, gain their trust? Apparently a big, fat no had been the appropriate answer to his question.

“Elliot.” He rasps out through the chokehold, feeling the pressure squeeze just a bit tighter. “M-my - agh- my n-name’s E-Elliot.” The bright blues staring down at him narrowed even further before the hand on his neck suddenly shifted to his jaw, the raygun aimed at him moved forward, a brief moment of panic swam through his veins before it just brushed his hair from his face then dropped down to the Killjoy’s side.

The hand on his jaw turned his face from side to side before the other pushed himself back. The raygun was slipped in to a holster on his side and suddenly two hands were stretched out towards Elliot, waiting for him to respond.

Elliot couldn’t believe this sudden turn in events but grasped on to the hands anyways and allowed them to pull him to his feet where he swayed for a few unsteady moments. A canister appeared in front of him, the contents swished inside. Gingerly, he took it from the other as he kept his eyes locked on to those blues, watching every movement. The cap was already partially unscrewed, leaving him to just pop it off and tip the contents out in to his mouth.

Water. Sweet, slightly cool water. His eyes couldn’t help but roll back. It should have been his first thought how the cool water was just that, cool, but he just kept taking slow sips, careful not to repeat the events of the previous day. After a few more swigs, he capped the canister then immediately noticed the other was no longer directly in front of him. The dark haired Killjoy was digging through his pack.

A moment of panic flitted through Elliot as he watched the other upend the contents on to the sand. The satellite phone stood out on top of the pile, but the raygun was nowhere in sight. The other man’s hand disappeared in to the bag and, ah, there it was. Still stuck in the bag, but now drug out in to the light.

The bright white gun glinted in the hot sun as it was twisted this way and that.

“This is different.” The voice was a little louder, a little gruffer than before. “How?” Those eyes were trained back on Elliot once again, the raygun lowered but still gripped tightly in his hand.

“G-grabbed it, from an enforcer.” Elliot cleared his throat. Come on! You’ve trained for this, now act like it. “Grabbed it from an enforcer while I was escaping. Thought it’d be useful, but out here…there honestly hasn’t been much use. I thought they would follow me, but apparently I’m not important enough.” The blue eyes narrowed once again before they flicked away, back down to the contents of the bag. The satellite phone was immediately picked up, inspected, glared at, and then promptly thrown in to the air where his own white raygun blasted it to bits. Elliot’s heart jumped in to his throat at the loss of the device, but it was only there for emergency to begin with. A dire need if his training failed him. Desert heat aside, he wouldn’t let the training fail.

“For obvious reasons I’m holding on to this.” The man shoved the raygun back in to the bag, then grabbed the few remaining food items and shoved those in too as well as the nearly empty and single full canisters of hot water Elliot carried. “That way.” A long pointer finger suddenly motioned at. Elliot turned his head to follow the finger’s line and just saw a lone saguaro a few hundred feet off. “Move.”

Here we go. The first few steps burned the muscles in his legs from moving again, but he trudged toward the saguaro, the shift of sand under boots followed behind him. As he approached, he noticed something hidden perfectly behind the spiky plant, right in its shadow and hidden from most angles. A motorcycle, a dirty worn down vintage bike from at least a few decades ago sat quietly in the sand. The front and rear tires were clearly made for the sand, having paddles instead of the usual tread. How on earth had this machine snuck up on him though? Unless, it’d been here the whole time and Elliot had just been so out of it he’d become completely blind to his surroundings. That seemed to be the likely option.

“Get on.” The man spoke, his dark hair swirled lightly in the breeze, tips just brushing the tops of his shoulders with their jagged cut ends. Elliot moved forward, swung his leg over the bike and slumped on to the rear of the seat. Once the Killjoy had planted himself on the bike in front of him and moved it a few feet back away from the saguaro, the bike was flicked to life. A loud, but deep rumble accompanied by the vibration in the seat and the smell of exhaust, caused something unprecedented to happen. A smile. An actual smile bloomed across Elliot’s face for the first time. A zing of excitement shot through his body and just ask quickly it all faded.

Elliot was enjoying himself for a brief moment. He had a mission, a mission that immediately had the upward curve of his mouth falling back in to a hard line. The bike began to move forward and sped off across the desert sand.

***

SHEEPHOLE VALLEY: 9 YEARS, 3 DAYS, FOUR HOURS AFTER DOOMSDAY

The moment the bike sputtered to a halt, Elliot woke. Not having realized he’d fall asleep, his arms unintentionally wrapped around the man’s waist to steady himself on the bike. He reeled backwards, nearly toppled off the back of the bike before he caught himself and whipped his head around, taking in his surroundings.

The bike had come to a grinding halt just a few inches away from an asphalt road. An actual road, laid out here in the desert. Elliot couldn’t believe there were actually any signs of civilization out here, even though he knew better than that. He knew the Killjoys had stayed in run down buildings, abandoned warehouse, and middle of nowhere shacks left behind by previous generations, but after all the nothingness he’d experienced the past few days, he was thrilled to lay eyes on something made by man once again. Aside from the bike he sat on and the physical person in front of him of course. The road kind of paled in comparison to those two he guessed.

The bike just sat quietly for a few moments before Elliot realized there must have been a reason for the sudden pause in their travel. The dark haired man in front of him wasn’t moving either, but his head was facing south. At least he thought it was south. Then he hoped momentarily they were still headed in the right direction, but maybe he’d been totally turned around out there without realizing that either.

Elliot followed the direction of the man’s gaze and realized that far out in the distance was a weirdly shaped mountain. The longer he looked though, the more his eyes widened and he realized what he was actually seeing way off in the distance. Battery City.

The dark haired seventeen year old had been taught the story of Battery City throughout his schooling, but never once did he ever think he’d lay eyes on it, even from this far away. It was practically just a hazy outline but if he squinted hard enough he could make out the tallest building that rose up in the center. The old capital city for BL/ind. That had been the Director’s headquarters at one point, where he’d run the notorious S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W unit way back when. Back when his boss had been even more of a major ass-

“AGH!” The sudden forward motion of the motorcycle had caught him off guard. He flung his hands out and gripped the man’s shoulders in front of him and held on for a few moments before returning them to his thighs as his heart rate slowly came back down. Elliot swiveled his head around just enough to glance back at the fading outline of Battery before turning his eyes to the dusty road ahead of them.

It was less than thirty minutes later when the bike came to a grinding halt and Elliot’s eyes were already wide as saucers. There it was. His assigned destination. The diner.

Chapter Text

HALLORAN SPRINGS: 9 YEARS, 3 DAYS, 4 HOURS AFTER DOOMSDAY

The wind is picking up again. A heavy sigh escapes the driver of a faded red, nineteen seventy nine Camaro that’s definitely seen more bad days than good ones. The car’s motor is making small little sounds as it starts to cool. There’s a hand still on the keys, having just twisted them to the left to kill the engine, and the other is resting on the top of the wheel supporting a scruffy chin on the back of it. A set of hazel eyes peer out at the desolate landscape through dark tint Aviators held together at the bridge by wire.

BANG! The driver jumps about a foot in his seat as a hand comes down on the passenger fender. There’s a rough looking woman standing there with a fist now resting on the previously crinkled metal.

“You finished daydreaming, yet boss?” There’s irritation in her voice, but also an undercurrent of amusement. It’s an odd combination of feelings but it’s her usual ninety percent of the time. The driver grabs the piece of rope that ties the two ends of the inner door handle together and pulls to get it to release, shoving the door open with a good push at the same time.

Once he’s up on his feet, pulling at the end of his shirt where it rode up against the seat, he stretches his limbs. Putting his glove covered hands up to the sky and moving up on to his tiptoes in a full body stretch, he quickly debates whether he’s in the mood to respond to her or not. He decides, as he comes back down fully on to his feet and rests his arms at his sides, that he’s not really in the mood to talk, but she probably won’t let him get away with not saying anything either.

“Yeah, shit’s in the trunk.” The words are whispered, but the woman is moving towards the trunk and prying it open before he can even turn back around to face her. The trunk groans and fights until finally it pops open and nearly whacks her in the face.

“Stupid piece of shit.” The woman punches the underside of the trunk lid to get it to pop up all the way in to place where it won’t come slamming back down on her head. “When are you going to let me find you a new ride, boss? This things had its run. Time to just let this hunk of junk die.” Now it’s the shorter of the two’s turn to get irritated.

“It’s a good car. Leave it alone.” The man’s eyes narrow, heading towards the trunk now and pushing her aside, reaching in to grab a box full of seemingly random parts that his female companion was aiming for. He hauls it out and perches it on the driver’s side rear corner, keeping his hands on the sides to steady it.

“Sure it is. Thing almost shit out on you in the middle of the Mojave, remember?” The man huffs in annoyance, shooting the other a glare that he realizes doesn’t quite make its mark from behind his Aviators.

“That’s why you’re going to fix it, isn’t it? I got the crap you needed. Now stop talking shit and get it done.” The woman steps back, mouth drawn downwards. Her head is shaved on one side, the rest of her hair is pushed off to the other where it’s flapping in the breeze. It’s been dyed green halfway down, but it’s so faded out it just looks like she spent too much time in chlorine. She’s a thick line of muscle from top to bottom, having spent most of her new life underneath the various dirty desert dwelling jalopies. Having been a mechanic for high end luxury vehicles before, the relics she works on now are all pieces of shit.

“Yeah, I’ll fix this heaping pile of absolute dog shit, then you’ll get your ass moving on out of here.” She was definitely a smoker in her previous life. The grittiness of her voice even more audible when it drops down a few octaves. There’s a snort of mild amusement from the man and her eyes narrow to near slits.

“Yeah, you’ve been saying that for a few years now.” The man lifts the box off of the corner of the car and starts making his way towards the open garage door, heading inside and dropping it down on a dusty metal table next to a sheet covered, vaguely car shaped, object.

“Amazing it’s taken so long for you to get the hint.” The woman retorts, shifting on her heels to turn and enter the garage behind him, passing on the opposite side of the table, but her gaze doesn’t turn to him, instead it goes to the corner of the room. Her blue eyes flick over the sheeted paperweight taking up majority of the space, various knick knacks and tools resting along the top of it here and there. “When are you going to let me take a look?” There’s a loud bang behind her. Clearly something was taken from the box and dropped down on the metal table as loudly as possible, she doesn’t need to turn to feel the heat from the other’s glare.

“Never.” He growls. “Do not bring it up again, Vaya.” There’s a brief period of silence before he apparently resumes rustling around in the box. That’s when she turns, when his eyes are downcast and no longer burning holes through the back of her head.

Vaya watches him as he places part by part on the table. Watching his fingers as they slide off each object, watching the way they bend and flex. How the tattoos, barely visible through all the dirt and grime on his skin, stretch over his knuckles as they clench then slide back as his hand relaxes. She trails her eyes up from his hands to follow the assortment of ink littering his skin as it goes up his arms, hidden from view a quarter of the way up by one sleeve and three quarters up the other. The yellow of his shirt has been browned by oil stains and dirt. Years and years of it.

Vaya is, quite frankly, impressed the shirt has lasted so long, albeit a few little holes and tears here and there. Really more so that any of the garments the other wears, except maybe his boxers because she’s seen those tossed out in the trash before, have lasted as long as they have. As she trails up the yellow sleeves, past the black stripes decorating them and hits the edges of his dark green vest, she finds herself in a momentary moment of awe.

There have been plenty of Killjoys that have passed through her little ramshackle shop, needing various things done to their rundown road queens, so it’s nothing new to her to see the flash of a brightly colored raygun or outfits that look like the rainbow threw up on them. Yet, this man is something different. Vaya can’t help but watch in fascination sometimes as he mills about, his dark hair just now long enough again to be pushed around by the wind after having been brutally shaved off in a moment of rage a while back. This short man with an even shorter fuse is one of them. One of the original Killjoys.

Fun Ghoul, as they used to call him, is a force to be reckoned with in a fire fight. Vaya’s seen that for herself first hand. The man is better at building up explosive’s than anyone she knows, but he isn’t worth a damn when it comes to cars, or at least he pretends not to be. The sheeted object behind her is proof enough that at one point he’d been invested in a vehicle more than just keeping it on the road and occasional bouts of protectiveness as he is now.

As her eyes trail over the dark leather inside of his vest’s collar and reach the next expanse of decorated skin, she’s drawn upwards to the scorpion just below his ear, the ends of his hair just barely brushing down over the top of it. She’s flashed back to years ago when he first showed up at her doorstep, driving a tow truck of all things, and asked her if he could store something with her. Turns out that something was a crumpled tin can of a car, with the remnants of a spider sprayed across the hood, its legs all crumpled where the metal was shoved back in to itself.

Vaya remembers the moment the sheet came off the car on the back of the tow truck, her eyes lighting up in recognition immediately, then even further in absolute horror. The thing was absolutely annihilated. No one could have survived a wreck like that; she immediately prayed they were all safe. One look over towards the man standing in her yard, with one of his hands reaching up to rest against the twisted metal was all it took to know her prayers didn’t matter. The look on his face will forever haunt her.

The tears sliding down from lifeless looking eyes, following the clear paths of their predecessors through the filth on his skin. The way his chest heaved, but he made no sound. Then the real moment where she recognized him for the first time, when her eyes landed on the scorpion forever etched in to his skin. Immediately she knew it was over. If the rumors were true about who he was committed to, then Party Poison was dead. Possibly even the others, but in that moment the grief he was going through went far past familial.

Then her mind was thrown for a much greater loop when another ‘joy came by not long after and told of another rumor spreading through the Zones that they’d apparently had a child together. A ridiculous notion, she’d thought. Ghoul would later inform her during his second visit, almost a year later, that the others were alive and that he had indeed been a parent for a brief period of time. When she pushed to find out what happened to the kid, or how two men even managed to have one, he went quiet and left once more. It took another two years for him to come back again and Vaya promised herself she would never bring his family up again.

“Vaya.” Her eyes wrench away from the tattoo and meet his. The Aviators now hanging off the collar of his shirt. Ghoul has one hand resting on the now empty box and the other is on the table. “What is it?” Apparently she’s been silent too long.

“Nothing. Just, get out of my hair and let me get to work.” Ghoul nods, picking the box up off the table and heading back outside where he deposits it back in to the trunk, slamming it down behind him. As he trails off around the corner and out of sight, she can’t help but hope he doesn’t leave again. There will be a time, she believes, when he’ll leave and she’ll never see him again.

As Ghoul rounds the corner and pulls the door to the tiny little diner next to the garage open, he has to pause. His eyes flit up to look at the rusty old EAT sign directly above him, staring long enough that he starts to notice where the paint has peeled off a bit more since the last time he looked at it. It’s a nice distraction from the thoughts that threaten to creep up every time his hand lands on the handle of a diner door. Surprisingly, most of the hideouts nowadays are rundown diners. Maybe it isn’t so shocking though, they seem to hold up far better than shacks and abandoned desert homes. Still, there are flashes of reds, blues, yellows, blacks, and whites that dance across his vision whenever he enters one and nothing he does fully keeps them at bay.

Inside the diner, it’s the usual layout. Sweeping bar extending most of the length of the room with booths crammed up against the window, leaving about a three foot space between where the remaining barstools sit and the benches. Unlike the usual diner though, each booth is packed full of boxes filled with various canned foods, the diner’s countertop has become a workspace for various projects ranging from rayguns in a million pieces, all the wiring for quick homemade explosives, to a microwave being pieced back together.

Ghoul hopes to God he can fucking finish the microwave at least. Then he’ll figure out the electricity issue and then maybe he can finally eat some of that damn ramen he found boxes of at an old truck stop just down the road. Ghoul muses for a moment that he could always boil it over a fire, but he has no patience for sitting around tending to a flame. In fact, his patience level runs thin most of the time. It’s a struggle to keep in one spot for too long. Hence the raygun that lays in pieces months after he tore it apart to fix it or the Camaro that has needed these parts for twice as long and he only just decided to let it be worked on.

The need to keep moving - keep running - has been ingrained in to his being for years now, but only over the last nine has it reached its peak. Ghoul can hardly sit still for a few moments let alone days. If he stops, if he even slows down for a little while, then the memories come. Memories he absolutely refuses to relive, wishes he could stamp out like a flame. Yet, they’ll come, regardless of how much he fights it. Even just the brief reminder of what lay underneath the sheet in the garage has him wanting to bolt as fast as he can, repairs on the Camaro be damned.

The diner door swings open and Vaya steps in, her eyebrow is already quirked up when he looks over at her from where he’s frozen just a few feet inside the diner.

“You alright, boss?” Vaya’s hands are clenching at her sides, opening and closing repeatedly like a fish’s mouth. When he doesn’t respond, she just sidesteps around him and reaches over the counter, fishing out her gloves from behind it before turning and heading back outside. She pauses right beside him though. “If you’re itching for something to do, that window in the bathroom is still jammed open. Lets more of that blasted heat in than the hole in the ceiling.” With that, she’s back outside, heading towards the Camaro.

Thankful for the distraction, Ghoul makes his way quickly towards the bathroom. He makes a sharp left and then a sharp right in to the men’s room where the small window is slid open wide and the heat is wafting through. The little bathroom seems to just lock the heat in and after a few attempts at pulling on the window, there is sweat rolling down Ghoul’s back. Deciding to shed a few layers, he shucks off the shoulder holster with his raygun in it and sets it down on the closed toilet lid, then does the same with his vest. The yellow shirt is much more preserved where it hides under his vest. Even caked in layers of dirt and reeking of so much built up sweat it would make anyone’s mother cry, it’s one of the better preserved articles of clothing than what most ‘joys are lucky to find.

Resuming his position, with his hands gripping tightly on to the window. Ghoul plants his feet again and pulls with all of his might. The window budges just a hair and he smirks ever so slightly at the progress, but resumes yanking on it as much as he can. There’s probably an easier way he could do this, but his mind is appreciating the laser focus on one single job. The flex of his muscles as he pulls, the way his hands move to increase their grip on the frame, and the tips of his hair waving in the breeze just barely in front of his eyes, they’re all good distractions. That is until he happens to glance over at his reflection in the mirror.

The way his body is positioned as he’s pulling on the window has his arms slightly raised over his head, his body tilted backwards, and it’s all led to his shirt rucking up jut a bit on his torso. It’s enough though. The brief moment of single minded bliss shatters in a heartbeat the moment his gaze lands on the jagged scar running across his lower abdomen. Ghoul has just a few moments where his mind is just blank, but then they come. The exact memories he’s trying to avoid. Betrayed by his own damn body.

Ghoul can practically feel the cold tile of that damn hotel bathroom all of a sudden. He can feel the phantom pains run through his knees from when he collapsed down on them then crawled his way over to the bathtub and gripped on tight to the edge, moaning in pain. Then it’s like he’s there, he can see the bathroom in his mind. The textures of the tile, the smell of fresh linens, the cleanliness of it all. Ghoul can almost feel the weight of his midsection and the agonizing grip of the contractions. Like he’d ever forget the way they felt in the first place. The door comes crashing down in his mind and there he is.

That face he tries so hard to forget, standing there looking at him wide eyed as another comes rushing in to the room, shouting something back at the one in the doorway.

The memory flashes forward, to the feel of warm hands touching him on his back, brushing against his arms as they move things around him. Then there’s the vivid, white hot pain of the blade slicing him open, the warm rush of blood seeping from the wound, followed not much later by the worst tugging sensation in his life then emptiness. He remembers how alone he felt briefly before there was suddenly a warm, tiny body being pressed in to his arms.

“Ghoul! Ghoul! Hey!” Someone was shouting somewhere far off then a new white hot pain, one definitely not a part of this memory and immediately he snaps out of it, launching to his feet and flying from the room much to the other’s surprise. Ghoul flies through the diner and bursts through the door out in to the sunshine, barreling towards the Camaro. Only when his hands land on the car’s flank does he stop. His breathing is uneven and he’s on the verge of hyperventilating but at least he’s out of there. At least he’s not in that hotel.

“Ghoul?” Vaya’s voice startles him, but he doesn’t turn around. It isn’t the first time she’s caught him locked in a memory and helped him escape with a quick slap across the face. His stinging cheek the only clue he has to what she did and has done in the past.

“‘m fine.” Ghoul chokes out, his body is trembling and there’s a bunch of sweat starting to drip down his face. The memory has faded away, but it’s left him a temporary mess and reminds him exactly why he wishes more than anything that he could just forget. With each drop dripping down off his skin on to the Camaro’s dusty body, his hands shake less and less. Ghoul focuses his mind on watching the drips plop down on to the paint and dry up almost instantly. It’s repetition he needs. Drop, dry, drop, dry again and again until he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin. Until the memories have completely faded.

Only then does he realize that Vaya has a hand on his back and is rubbing soothing, vaguely circular patterns across his shoulders. Ghoul quickly starts to straighten, rolling his shoulders to shake her hand away. The woman sighs and her hand falls away. The crunch of gravel signifies her departure.

It’s not that he’s not grateful for what she does for him, for all of her help when he’s so messed up he can’t even seen straight. He just finds himself utterly opposed to anyone’s attempts at comforting touches. Slap him, punch him, or even kick him in the gut that’s all okay, but no soothing hands. No warm embraces. Ghoul can’t bear them any longer.

The last person he let so close wasn’t even able to keep their eyes open for more than five minutes at a time let alone return the loving embraces. They were too little, too young.

“Fuck.” Ghoul’s head is starting to spin just a little again, his fingers twitch with the beginnings of shakiness once more. Distraction, he needs distraction. Pulling one hand up, he rips his glove off then clenches it in to a fist and brings it down hard against the fender. The flash of pain, the sting of his skin breaking open against the metal is perfect. Repeating the process again, Ghoul brings it down even harder. Again and again, increasing the force of his punch with every swing until his knuckles cry out in pain and there’s smears of red being left behind on the Camaro. He pauses mid punch, watching the blood drip down off his hand where his sweat had dripped before. The pain is satisfying, pleasantly humanizing. Grounding. The fists unclenches and he drops his hand to his side, letting it drip blood down on to the dirt for a few moments before he retrieves a bandana from his pocket with his other hand.

As he takes a moment to wrap his bloody knuckles in the nasty fabric of the more than well loved bandana, his mind assesses his state of being. There’s not even a tendril remaining of what thoughts he had before. Good. That’s good. Keep moving, keep running. Forward, forward, and never back.

“Hey!” The shout makes him jump and spin around, facing the diner. Vaya is half out the door, motioning with her head for him to come over. It’s the expression on her face that has him moving back inside behind her though. She’s walking at a brisk pace, heading past the bathroom. Ghoul steps up his pace as he nears the door, turning his head so he doesn’t even catch a glimpse of it right now. Vaya throws the door straight ahead at the end of the hall open and then waits for him to enter before slamming it shut, locking the door behind him.

The room is soundproofed out the ass. The walls and even the floor, underneath the sparse are various colored rugs, are lined with thick sheets of the sound dampening material. At the far end, there’s a table that’s been riddled with various screws and pieces of wood used to patch different parts of it back together. In the center of the table sits a radio, with a dusty microphone just a few inches in front of it. Static echoes out across the inside of the room, but there’s something breaking through the noise. A voice attempting to breach the sound.

Vaya plops down in the rickety wooden chair placed just in front of the desk and slides the mic towards her, leaving a trail in the dust. Ghoul steps up to her right side, placing his wounded hand on the desk next to her. He catches her gaze flicking to his hand, but luckily for him, she ignores it for now, instead reaching to the radio and turning the dials as she tries to clear up the sound.

Slowly, the voice becomes more audible. It’s a man, that much is easy to tell, but the words are still just garbled enough that it’s hard to make out what he’s saying until Vaya’s name stands out in the static. Frantic now, her hands twist at the knobs and keep twisting until finally they catch a few partial words.

“Vaya! Th…krrrsssshhhhzzztttt. …traff….krrrshzzzt….din…”

“Shit, it’s Overwatch. Come on you stupid ass hunk of military junk!” Vaya is hitting the side of the radio like it’s an old electron tube television. I reach forward and grab her hand to stop her from almost outright punching the ancient machine before giving another attempt at turning the dials a little more. Overwatch does quite literally what his name suggests. He’s our eyes and ears in the desert, the overseer. The man is a shadow, quite literally capable of just walking in to Better Living without so much as a glance made his direction. Overwatch’s number one priority though is guarding one specific diner.

“Vay…krrrsssshhhzztthhh… …traffic…krrsshhzztt … Poison’s diner.” The static dies. The voice is gone. Ghoul’s body is as stiff as a statue, hand frozen on the dials. He vaguely registered Vaya saying something to him, but just like before the memories are coming swimming back, unlike before he’s going to move before they fully catch up. Ghoul’s moving towards the bathroom before Vaya can get out of the chair. Storming down the hall, boots thundering against the aging wood floors and creaking as he turns heel sharply. The vest and shoulder holster are grabbed off the closed toilet lid in a flurry of movement, then are thrown back on to his body before he can even make it the short distance to the diner doors.

“I’m coming with.” Vaya’s voice announces clearly and Ghoul can’t find it in himself to even tell her off. There’s traffic at Poison’s diner. That was the message. Someone is in his old home. A place that’s been off limits to anyone for a long, long time. Ghoul made sure of that himself with a warning no one dare defy. Poison’s diner. It used to be their diner, the Killjoy’s home. Now it’s a ghost, a headstone, a memory that someone is traipsing all over.

As the pair clambers in to the Camaro and the key twists, bringing the vehicle to life, Ghoul makes a promise that whoever is desecrating the only thing he has left of his family will wish they’d never been born.