I laughed as Kobra shoved me off the motorcycle. I landed in the dust, still laughing, as he pulled his gun on me, pointing it at my head.

"Take it back" he growled.

"NEVER!" I replied "I stand by my original statement. You and Poison share a brotherly stink, you need to shower more often."
I had been teasing Kobra the whole drive to the abandoned petrol station, and he had finally snapped, just as we arrived. This was our first time out raiding by ourselves, now that I was finally seventeen.

"Take it back." He repeated, a grim look on his face as he tightened his grip on the gun. Sweet Jesus. Even when he was joking around, he really did never smile.

I laughed. "Fine! You don't stink, only Poison does. Tell him to shower."
Kobra actually cracked a hint of a smile, then shoved his gun back into its holster and extended a hand to help me up.
He leaned back against the rusted motorcycle we had stolen from Drac’s a few years back.

“Well off you go, raid it then.” He said, tipping his tinted sunglasses back over his eyes.
I sighed in frustration. Kobra could be a right dickhead when he wanted to.
I sighed again, pulled my bandana over my face, slipped my sunglasses down and grabbed my gun from where it was holstered at my hip.

“Let me demonstrate how the professionals do it.” I answered sarcastically, strolling into the abandoned petrol station.
It was completely abandoned, and there didn’t seem like much left worth stealing. A couple of magazines which could be interesting, a pile of batteries I decided to grab, just in case Ghoul had figured out a way to charge them yet. In a corner on one of the shelves I found some ‘feminine supplies’ I would need, along with a box of condoms. I slipped both into the duffle bag, and placed on top of them a couple of boxes of crackers I had surprisingly found. The crackers would make a nice change from our usual diet of dog food.
I looked around one more time before exiting the building.

“Any trouble?” Kobra asked from his position at the motorcycle. I noticed he had taken his gun out of his thigh holster and was casually tapping it against his thigh.

“Nope.” I replied. “What about out here, any trouble.”

“I thought I heard a car engine in the distance, a few minutes ago, but I haven’t seen or heard anything since then, did you find anything good?” He rapidly changed the direction of conversation.

“Some magazines… oooh! I found some crackers!” I named everything as I pulled it out of the bag and into the motorcycle compartment. “Some batteries for Ghoul, some stuff for me, some stuff for us…” I trailed off as I held up the condoms.
Kobra Kid grinned and grabbed me around the waist, swinging me around.

“Fun times for Emerald and Kobra when we get back to the diner!” he whooped loudly, continuing to spin me around him.
I laughed giddily. I had been in love with Kobra since I was about fourteen, things had really started to heat up between us in the last eight months or so, much to my excitement.
Kobra had just turned nineteen, I had been seventeen for a couple of months now, I didn’t know how long it would last, especially since we were so young, but I really hoped it did last.
Kobra finally put me down, I stored everything and then we climbed on. I wrapped my arms around Kobra’s waist as he started the bike.
I heard a noise, almost like an engine rumble, but half ignored it, thinking it was an aftereffect of Kobra starting up the bike, in retrospect, a bad idea on my part.
We zoomed off down the side road the petrol station was on, and turned on to Route Guano, heading towards the diner where we spent most of our time. Me, Kobra and the rest of the Fabulous Killjoys.
We were about five minutes down the Route when I realised my earlier mistake. The roar of another engine could faintly be heard over the sound of the motorcycles engine.
A car full of Dracs was tailing us.

“Shit.” I tapped Kobra on the shoulder three times quickly. Our signal for ‘danger’.

“Status,” was his only response.
I looked behind us. The white car looked to have four Dracs in it, a standard patrol.

“Standard, visual on four, I suggest we pull over and take them out.” I replied.

“Agreed, begin countdown in 10,”
It was almost comical how quickly we slipped into formal code when we were threatened.

After the 10 second countdown was up, Kobra executed a half turn spin with the motorcycle, while I stood and started shooting the Dracs.
That was when things started to go really downhill.
We were now facing three Drac cars, each with four Dracs apiece, as well as four Dracs on motorcycles.

“What the…” Kobra echoed my statement of surprise.

“Where the hell did they all come from!” I yelled over at Kobra as we fought for our lives. There was the two of us against about twenty Dracs, and more kept appearing, seemingly from nowhere.

“They’re still fucking appearing out of nowhere!” he yelled back to me. It seemed every time we shot one down, another appeared to replace it.

I was now making evasive manoeuvres between shots, these Dracs had higher powered guns than our old battered ones, and their charge would probably last longer too.
Suddenly the Dracs all ceased returning fire on us, as the passenger door on the rear Drac car opened, and out he stepped

“Korse,” Kobra and I spoke at exactly the same time

“The one and only.” He held his arms wide as he spoke, his voice soothing, and ultimately creepy. “How are my two favourite Killjoys today? Scared? Anxious? A little… loved up?”
The way he talked, the very tone of his voice made me want to vomit. He spoke so condescendingly, his voice oozed so much sarcasm, and on top of that he was a creepy old robot dude-thing.

“What do you want Korse?” Kobra yelled at him. I looked up at Kobra, he seemed really angry, a lot angrier than what this situation called for.

“Am I not allowed a casual visit with my favourite Killjoys? No? Why ever not?”

“Leave Korse, now. Or we’ll kill all your Dracs and you.” Kobra threatened.

Hmmmmm. Super angry. I didn’t understand what was wrong with Kobra. Sure, Korse is a dick who shows up every few years and tries to kill us, but his weakness was that he was scared of the Killjoys, scared of what we can accomplish.

“I think not dearest Kobra Kid,” Korse almost sang. “Restrain them,” he told his Dracs.

Kobra and I immediately started shooting, but more Dracs had appeared out of nowhere while we had been engaged talking to Korse.

I shot two Drac’s within the next two seconds, Kobra beside me was consistently shooting the Dracs with his gun in one hand, and holding a knife in the other.
We killed so many of them, but not enough. After about 10 minutes of rigorous fighting, involving not only ray guns, but throwing knives and even a baseball bat, we were overpowered. Bound, gagged and thrown into the back of a white van.

The van started up, and we jolted around in the back, while the two Dracs driving laughed and jeered at us.

I refused to let myself cry, I refused to show weakness to them, but I slowly felt despair fill me during the drive that I estimated to be about six hours long, roughly the travelling time from where we were to Battery City.

Battery City. I hadn’t set foot anywhere near the place in years, mainly because it was always surrounded by Dracs.

The van stopped for a second, then started again, I figured we had just passed the checkpoint into the city through the tunnels.
Worry filled me again, I was worrying about what would happen when we got to headquarters, would Kobra and I be separated?

Ten or so minutes of driving later, the van jolted to a stop. I could hear yelling outside, and looked over at Kobra. He was lying on his side, like me, and shot me a wink. I think it was supposed to be reassuring, but it sort of wasn’t. I shot him a glare in response and he laughed. Well, I think he laughed, it was hard to tell with the gag and everything.

Secretly, I had something super important to tell Kobra, but now wasn’t the time, and I couldn’t speak anyway.

The back doors of the van flew open and we were dragged into the harsh sunlight, landing hard on the concrete ground. I managed to twist and land on my shoulder instead of face first, Kobra wasn’t so lucky. I had the urge to laugh at his disgruntled expression, but, still gagged.

We were hauled to our feet and marched inside the building. I tried my best to memorise the route we were taken, through various hallways, up sets of stairs and three different elevators.

The lead Drac stopped and knocked on a door, then entered, we were dragged in after him.

Korse was seated at a desk. Behind him was a wall of windows, through which you could see most of Battery City as we were so high up.

“Ah welcome, welcome, nice car ride? No?” The condescending tone was back, and it was succeeding in creeping me out again.
Neither of us answered him. We had been through dealings with Korse in the past, and knew roughly how to deal with him, although none of us had ever been captured and brought to the city ever before.

“Untie them and check them for weapons.” Korse instructed the Dracs. They had already taken out our gags when we were waiting outside Korse’s office.

We were untied and I stretched out my wrists and rolled my shoulders, loosening the muscles. They had already confiscated my ray gun, but the Drac also found the knife I kept in my boot, but not the one in my bra, as when he had tried to search there I kneed him in the groin and claimed he was trying to cop a feel.

Unfortunately, they found both Kobra’s ray guns, and all five of the knives he kept concealed. We had one knife between the two of us, and it wasn’t looking good.