Chapter Text
In this part of California, the radioactive sun seems to pour out most of its energy. In these deserts, neither your past nor the name someone else gave you at birth matters. It is here that your brothers are the ones you are fated to meet on a gruelling journey, and the ones who die young, fighting back-to-back alongside you.
The headphones don't work anymore, but were they ever really needed? Stolen, spray-painted cars explode amidst the gunfire of multicoloured guns. Anything illegal is good.
Not a single star points the way. They have all conspired with the greedy pharmaceutical companies of great, distant cities. Companies that betrayed us, just as we, in turn, betrayed them.
Everyone gets what they deserve. Everyone dies. The question is,
do you smile before your death?
Those terrifyingly resilient cockroaches have become our buddies. Unlike people, they neither control nor despise us. The word parents is forgotten now; law is forbidden. Old comics are reread, and the truth is revealed. Dye your hair in the restrooms of abandoned gas stations. Start shootouts and always fire first. Never sleep. Either kiss or spit. Be everything they don’t want you to be.
Kill the fucking joy, make some good ass noise.
But this story doesn't begin with a rebellious anarchist bible, but with a broken-down Trans Am.
Party was stroking the poor steering wheel and brushing shaggy red hair from his face, all while chewing a banana gum and thinking about zombies and bombs. He kept starting the engine at the signals of his best friend, Fun Ghoul, who had already been tinkering with the car's innards for half an hour in simply insane heat, muttering curses in Italian in an old man’s way. He never spoke of his background because it didn’t really matter in those circles; everyone there was in the same boat.
The dice hanging as a charm from the rearview mirror would sometimes clatter against each other in the light breeze, making cheap, plastic sounds. Party Poison was craving cinnamon-spiced apples and a brief taste of freedom, and he wanted to get out of this random spot, where they’d been wasting hours all morning ever since the hood started smoking and making sketchy noises and Jet Star’d insisted on stopping to check the car, as soon as possible.
After another ten Southern-style curses and three thoughts about apple cinnamon, Ghoul finally let out a joyful and incredibly high-pitched sound. Inside, the Trans Am was humming steadily, as the engine had been left running at the last second. He waved his short hand to Party as he came out.
“We can continue driving,” Fun Ghoul murmured, brushing a thin, solitary braid of black hair away from his sweaty face with fingers that were dusty, rough, and reeking of gasoline.
Kobra Kid kicked the driver’s seat out of habit, twirling a yellow gun and glancing out the window from time to time at the fast-moving tumbleweeds and the fresh air. Instead of Dr. Death Defying’s usual radio station, a CD was playing. Bowie once sang of heroes. Now it is clear that they never existed at all.
“What is our plan?” Jet in the back asked, pulling a black pirate eyepatch over his scarred white right eye.
Poison was turning the steering wheel on a deserted road mindlessly. “To kill the bad guys and keep on being fucking free.”
“And where are we heading?” Ghoul queried, retying the rainbow laces on his chunky boots and bracing his feet against the glove compartment.
California sure sucked, but there was no other place in the world left for them.
“Somewhere far away.”