Things Fall Apart

Everything in the Wasteland had been quite calm, recently. And it was not good.
It was the same kind of overwhelming stillness they had experienced before the Sandstorm to end All Sandstorms.
Except, this time, it was an entirely different kind of outburst coming up.
But it wasn't the time yet.
The days were long. Nobody really knew what to do with themselves, they just sat in silence, inside, outside, together, alone, or they ran, they mourned, they kissed, they rehearsed... But in the end they would always come back empty-handed. There was nothing to report on the Rebel Radio.
It was as though life had stopped.
They had time for everything now.
They had time to think
Party Poison didn't like to think. He didn't like to be still. He only ran fast because, had he slowed down, he would have lost his balance. But he didn't know that even falling felt like flying just for a short second.
And he could hear ancient bones cracking and the sand being replaced with radio static.
He never took his mask off anymore.
Kobra Kid was there too, always. And, at least Poison took care of him quite a lot. Now he had time to listen.
With amazement, he had learnt to decipher his Silences, and had discovered a whole new pattern under the thick coat his brother had stretched over his bare bones. Behind his mask was a face, and behind his face was a mind.
Only now Poison had started to realise that maybe the Silence had blurred his brother's self and had led people to forget about him a bit too much.
As though he had became The Silence himself.
But, behind all these isolating layers Kobra had wrapped himself into to protect himself, somewhere, Poison thought there might have been Life. He had decided to slowly start digging for it. To understand.
And that was something important enough to keep his mind occupied.
It had been six years after all.
And Poison wondered.

Now that Poison cared about Kobra again, Cherri Cola would always wake up alone. He never actually had any friends, really. Kobra seemed happier now, though, which at least cheered him up a bit but at the same time torn his heart a little. He knew - too well - that the Wasteland's ravaged ground was no place where love could grow.
He didn't expect anything much from life nowadays. He had always been a loner.
He would take long walks to and around the Trash Lords, observing Bat City from all its angles, growing, buzzing, living. And maybe that was the biggest surprise of all. Because, as bad as they all thought the BL/ind was, their city was still living. And all their hearts kept on beating.
Cola understood there was no definite Good and Evil. Just one side and another. The BL/ind's ideas weren't all Wrong, just too extreme, sometimes, and their people sure didn't feel like the Bad Guys. He knew that, would the Rebellion win and take the power, life wouldn't get any better.
But, had he expressed that out loud, Cola would have been called a traitor, and he knew that.
And so he shut his mouth.
There were many things that Cola knew but never said. There was nobody to listen to him anyways.

That day, Cola was taking his daily walk around the Trash Lords, when he spotted them. Black and White stains, trailing up the Zones to the Trash Lords.
Things were finally moving.
He sprinted back to the Radio House as quickly as possible.
"Doctor D!" He yelled "Doctor D!" Doctor D immediately got out of the Radio House, wondering, to meet a panting Cola.
At his sight, the latter stopped running and tried to catch his breath again before exclaiming.
"Dracos! A good dozen! Coming up the Trash Lords!"
Doctor D laughed a frank husky laugh.
"Yes!" He shouted excitedly "The game is on again!"
He came back in the Radio House, Cola on his trail, and grabbed his walkie-talkie connected to all the Fabulous Killjoys.
"Doctor D. to the Fabulous Killjoys, Dracos in the Trash Lords. If you want a fight, well, you've got it, boys."
And, less than ten minutes after, the Trash Lords beheld seven little masked figures, treading behind the piles of garbage the more quietly they could.
With the Dracos were at least thirty citizens. They ranged from babies to seniors, girls and boys, and were all so different they could have been picked at random, all, but for the look in their eyes. A look carried on the wind through Radio static straight to their hearts.
That look was Hope.
These ones wouldn't surrender.
And the Dracos were here to exterminate. It was Hope they were after.
"Let's go!" Party Poison said.
And they went.
Even though Dracos weren't as dangerous as S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W agents, being seven against a dozen of them wasn't such an easy task. And maybe a few citizens were harmed or killed during the following fight, but it didn't matter much.
The lives that mattered were the Fabulous Killjoys'.
And maybe that was a little bit sad.
It had been their first fight together ever since they were back. For some reason, nobody had ever ventured in the Wasteland to get them back. Things had been quite calm since then, and they had slowly drifted apart, not willing to kill much anymore after their common traumatic experience.
But now the adrenaline of the killing ran in their blood again and made their hearts beat a little faster. They were loud. They were powerful. They were infinite. They were heroes.
And gosh did that feel right.
The Fabulous Killjoys were born again.

In a few minutes the fight was over.
The remaining citizens stood in silence, as blinded by the four proud figures standing above them on the dune, masks on, guns steaming, black bloody stains on their feet.
Party Poison, Fun Ghoul, Jet Star and Kobra Kid.
Four legends.
"What are you lot here for?" Doctor D. asked loudly with his deepest voice, his Radio voice.
A young slender boy who mustn't have been more than twelve years old replied for them all.
"We're here to fight."
"And who are you, young man?" Doctor D. asked, unimpressed "and how can I know you weren't sent by the Better Living Industries to spy on us?"
"My name is Val, Val Velocity, I am twelve years old and I wish I could be a better person but I'm not. I acknowledge and respect you, Killjoys, but I think that rather than sticking around and imitate, we'd better go our own way, create our own gang and write our own story."
That one was a born leader. It was obvious. He reminded Doctor D of a younger version of Poison, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Then so be it." He said. He wasn't worried much about these people's future. Not with a boy like him on the lead.
Soon enough, they were all gone, but not before Val Velocity approached Party Poison, teeth clinched, and an angry impertinent look in his eyes : "I'll be greater than you."
Poison knew this wasn't true. Nobody would ever be greater than him, because he had been the First. And the Firsts are the only ones who matter.
In the end, only corpses remained. Black blood on the white sand.
Corpses, and a tiny lone figure kneeling in the middle.
Against all odds, it was Poison, the roughest, who went down the dune, took off his mask and knelt next to her.
"Aren't you going with them?" He asked gently.
"No." The little girl, who mustn't have been more than six years old, replied. "I don't know where to go."
"Don't you have any parents?"
"They're dead."
The little girl raised her head and looked at Poison with big hazelnut eyes hidden behind her curls. Something snapped inside of him.
"You could stay with us..." He whispered gently "we could be your family..."
"They said I was a time-bomb." she replied innocently "is that true?"
"No. Of course not..." Poison replied warmly. "You're just a little girl."
And so she slipped her small delicate hand in Poison's, and they all came back to the Radio House that way.
There was a sour taste in Kobra's mouth.
And he was the only one to keep his mask on long after the fight was over.
Because they had ran out of idea of names to call her, she simply was The Girl. But not just any girl. She was special.
She would be the end of the Better Living Industries. For some reason, Poison had decided so. But, maybe it was The Loss of Bunny and Bandit that had drove him a little bit insane, and maybe he had fallen for The Girl as an emotional replacement for his own daughter, writing her destiny as special so she might be preserved.
But he might as well just have heard it from the Witch.
And, because Poison was Poison, and because the Killjoys all respected him, The Girl became special and was being treated as so. She had to stay alive.
And nobody could have had reached her this time.
However, she was a very ongoing and adorable little girl, and soon enough all the Killjoys were crazy about her. And she became Everyone's child.
And, because she was Everyone's child, Kobra Kid was Nobody's.
And he hated her.
She had drawn Poison a little bit away from him again, just about when he was about to understand.
And he hated Poison too.
It wasn't so much about his brother's care now but about hurting him, hurting him in the cruelest ways possible, as much as Poison had hurt him himself.
Because he had no right to just deny his own brother's identity, tear him away from home, capture his dreams and redream them, bottle up the air from his lungs and light out his voice, keep his heart locked in a secret place in order to keep it safe and then lose the key.
Before Everything Went Bersek, before the Helium Wars, Poison and Kobra had once found a little wooden box buried in the sand by the seaside. And Poison had kept this little box, hoping that, one day, he would find the key and unlock all of its secrets.
That was where Poison kept his brother's life safely locked in. Kobra knew. And it seemed quite amazing to him, how his whole life could fit into such a little box. But then, he had never really mattered much.
And he had known how to unlock it all along, but Poison wouldn't let him out.
Poison lived like a shooting star. Blindingly bright and fast, crushing everything else on his way.
Kobra didn't like to be a collateral damage.
Kobra didn't like to be Kobra.
He wanted to be Mikey.
And he wanted to scream. He wanted to yell. He wanted to cry. He wanted to tell everyone. He wanted to love somebody else.
He wanted to live.
But he just couldn't anymore.
And it was all because of Him.

By the Postbox Shrine, by the sunset, Fun Ghoul awaited, making up rhymeless rhymes, singing songs that nobody wrote, drawing patterns with sticks in the sand.
Things were starting to get better and he felt it. He just hoped that, with the time, Poison would learn to love.
Because it was Poison he was waiting for. And it always was Poison who kept him waiting.
He suddenly noticed his lovers' silhouette detaching itself on the setting sun over the dunes. And, he knew what to do then.
"I don't want to kiss and touch, today." He said decisively, once Poison was close enough for his voice to reach.
"Oh?" Poison looked really annoyed at Ghoul's refusal "Tell me what do you want to do, then?"
"I want to play piano."
"Real funny, Ghoul. We don't have a piano."
"I had a piano, before."
"I don't talk about before. The past is dead and things will never be the same."
"What were you, before, Poison?"
"Poison has no "before"."
"I was a pianist, before. I played in galas and operas sometimes. That's where my wife and I met."
"It doesn't matter anymore."
"I miss the piano so much, sometimes. But I miss her more. Her and my kids as well." He paused, breathless. Everything had just came out at once. Had he gone too far? But because Poison didn't reply he carried on. "Their names were Lily, Cherry and Cole. And they were all I cared about in this world."
Ghoul did not cry. And Poison's comeback did not come.
"Why are you telling me this?" he whispered after a while.
"It's not good to forget about the past, Poison, you cannot grow that way."
There was a long silence during which Fun Ghoul didn't dare to look up from the sand, afraid of his friend's reaction.
"I would very much love to hear you play, when things will get better again. When we come back home, I'll find you a piano first thing and listen to you play, I promise." Poison eventually gently whispered. It surprised Ghoul, it was as though he had suddenly became a completely different person. Maybe that was who he used to be, before.
"Do you still believe in it, you?" It could almost have been a breath. "That we will live to see the world be whole again, that we will ever come back Home?"
"I don't know. I don't want to think about it. But maybe hope is the only right thing to do, sometimes." Poison said. And Ghoul couldn't discern his expression in the dark.
"I told you." He said "Now it's your turn."
Poison scoffed, half amused, half desperate.
He hesitated for a long time before eventually talking again.
"When I was a child, I decided I wouldn't live past the age of thirty. Thirty is not young not old, a dieable-viable age. I didn't want to grow old. Things have happened since then, of course, I even got and lost a lover and a child who didn't even make it past three, and it seemed so unfair that, as the one who wished to die all along, I'm the only one who survived. And the closer I grow to that age, the more desperate I feel. As though I was slowly falling apart, slowly dying... It feels as though every event in my life is precipitating me straight to that point. The day I die. Soon I'll be thirty years old, you know. I have to die before. Each breath I take is killing me a little bit more."
Ghoul didn't know what to say. He just sat there, in silence, listening, understanding. And because there was nothing else to say, he acted.
"I could play for you now, if you like." he whispered gently, smiling.
Poison nodded, unconvinced. How Ghoul would find a piano right now seemed a mystery.
But he knew his friend was a little crazy, sometimes, and maybe he could just pretend, if that made him happy.
The sun had completely set now, and Poison could hardly discern Fun Ghoul's features in the incoming darkness.
"Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata." Fun Ghoul said. And he started playing.
To anyone else but them two, the night would have seemed completely silent.
But Poison listened.
But Poison heard.
And when it was over, tears were streaming down his cheeks.
But it was so dark that nobody knew.

Notes

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