Party Poison was feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders as he sat slumped over a broken table in one of the booths in their diner hide-out. A can of Power Pup was open in front of him and half eaten, but he couldn’t face anymore.

The screams of the female Killjoy echoed around the Diner and Party Poison visibly flinched every time she cried a little louder or whimpered through her tears. He was feeling sick at the mere thought of what she was going through and didn’t know how his comrade, Fun Ghoul could stand to be the trained medical officer of the team when he was forced to inflict this kind of treatment on someone without anaesthetic.

There was a sickening crunch from the kitchen and Good Time howled in agony once more. If he didn’t trust him with his life, and love him like his own blood, Party Poison might have punched Fun Ghoul from just hearing the anguish he was inflicting upon the girl. But whatever he was doing, it was necessary to her survival.

When they’d finally gotten her back to the base she’d not been able to keep herself from slipping in and out of consciousness. Party Poison couldn’t even remember how he’d managed to get her from out of the Trans Am but he’d done it with unparalleled speed. Without the usual precautions, he stormed through the base door, frightening his friends, and they all began the process of saving her life – a long and tedious task of trying to establish quite what was broken or bleeding the most.

Fun Ghoul had taken a set of shears to her clothes and started by cleaning off the grime that had become caked on during her battles in the desert. They had wiped her clean of all the dirt and sweat and began to clean off the Ghost Glitter from her thigh wound – a glistening acid gel that slowly ate away at whichever target it found – a Draculoid chemical war weapon with deadly consequences. The more they cleaned the deeper the wound got and the closer to bone they came. When it was all gone, Ghoul applied a cactus sap that had been found to prevent the continued damage of the Ghost Glitter.

Needing some fresh air, Party Poison gathered all the bloody rags they’d used to clean her up and went to start rinsing them with steriliser before they stained.

It was these small moments – menial tasks or errands - that he took for himself away from the group that allowed him to truly release himself from the stress of leadership and the lifestyle of rebellion in 2019. When he shut his eyes and thought back before the fateful days of 2015, he could almost remember what it was like to not have to constantly be ready for action. But it was an almost memory. Diluted and stained from years of loss and destruction, a truly distant past of a long lost time.

Before the flames... Before the desert.

He felt tired, and he felt old and his brow furrowed deep with long, heavy worry lines.

The kitchen door swung open and a sweaty, urgent Ghoul stormed through with blood pouring out a cut on his ear. “Poison, I need you in here she’s fighting back and I have to set this foot bone properly or she’ll never ghost again. Come hold her down for me, please?”

“Ghoul...” Party Poison stood up and faced his friend, a bit green around the gills and looking like he’d rather bathe in acid. “Is there-“

“Jet Star and Missile Kid are out getting her medical supplies. It’s just Kobra and I in there and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t essential.” The shorter man rushed straight back through the kitchen doors, knowing that Party Poison wouldn’t refuse him.

***

She stirred from a restless, sleepy haze.

Behind her swollen eyelids came flashes of unfamiliar faces, bright lights and rainbows of laser beams. The back seat of a car. Leather, cigarettes. The scents of yesterday.

She rolled onto her side and an odd sensation washed over her. A dull ache? Nothing like what she’d ever experienced before. It grew and grew, washed over every cell in her body. Her toes tingled and her fingers began to buzz. What was that shaking? A silent ringing resonated around her head. It got louder, and louder, and louder, and...

“ARGHHHHHHHHHH!” She screamed and sat bolt upright. The sensations became too much and she was awake and aware and fear rolled over her in waves. Her eyes were wide open yet unseeing.

The room was pitch black and cool. She felt around her and she found metal. She was on a metal table of some kind. She was sandwiched between fabrics. A soft, woollen layer draped over with some care and a courser, more robust sheet underneath.
As she began to panic, she remembered the massacre on Getaway Mile. The mission, met concluding in a catastrophic collision between a never ending swarm of Draculoids. Her comrades, her family, lost to her forever.

Hot salty tears swam down her face, stinging in places. She put her hand up to feel them and was surprised to feel gauze wrapped around one hand and a restricting cast holding her elbow in a stiff embrace. With her good hand she felt the bandages, sniffling uncontrollably and trying to reel back her emotions and find her strength.

She would have to mourn later. More importantly, though, where the hell was she?

***
Party Poison could never really sleep anymore. There were too many graphic images of destruction for him to ever truly let himself go. He was dozing when he heard the scream and he bolted out of his booth, hand already reaching to his holster in the dark.

There was a small clatter from the kitchen, and he relaxed his hand around the laser gun. Carefully, he picked his way across the diner to the doors, sighing at the small sounds of distress coming from inside.

There was no electricity in the zones. And lighting up your location was a sure way to get ghosted in moments, but Party Poison knew there was going to be some amount of confusion when he walked into the kitchen unannounced. She’d been unconscious for quite some time and he was still technically a stranger. Killjoys were known to be jumpy and after her impressive display of knife skills, he’d rather he stayed alive. It wasn’t ideal, but he pulled out an emergency glow stick from his stash of battle supplies. As the metre long stick flashed into life, casting a light blue glow across the diner, he reminisced at how his childhood self would have run about with it pretending it was a “lightsabre” from a favourite movie of his.

***
There was a flash from outside a set of doors. A shadowy set of feet were clearly visible.

Good Time focused on the light, unable to make out anything in the room she was in to arm herself with. She swung her legs over the side of the counter and just as she was about to try and hide, the door swung open and a figure entered the room slowly with a glow stick, casting light over everything.

She shielded her eyes for a moment, stars dancing in her vision and she squinted for a few moments waiting for the laser beams to hit her and kill her.

When there was no flash of a gun, she slowly lowered her arms to get a better look at the situation.

She could just make out a flash of inky red hair and a blue-ish leather jacket in the odd glow of the light. He was the man from her sleeping visions. He’d been in the car with her, she’d saved his life. He’d held her down as his friend tortured her.

“You.” She hissed with venom. “You tortured me!”

“We weren’t torturing you. We were trying to fix you.” He sounded bemused, uncertain of the direction the conversation was taking. “I rescued you, why would I torture you? Your injuries were extensive and we’re sorry for what we had to do but you were going to die.”

“Where am I?” she narrowed her eyes at him, unsure about what to think of his story. It would explain the bandages.

“Zone 5. Our base.” He took a tentative step towards her, hoping not to spook her.

She pretended not to notice him advancing, if he were going to hurt her he would have done so by now, she reckoned. There was something about him that made her feel safe as well. “Where in Zone 5?”

“I’m not telling you that. I don’t know you yet.” He scoffed a little at the ridiculous question. As bad as it sounded, the Killjoy movement was made up of rebels and anarchists, freedom seekers and any number of non-conformists. You didn’t hand out your coordinates to anyone, unless vital to do so. BetterLiving/industries were formidable enemies that lurked in every corner of American getting what they wanted. Better to be safe than sorry.

“And there’s the Killjoy attitude I’ve been looking for...” She cocked her head to the side, ignoring the throbbing in her back. “You took a risk bringing me here. You’ve used many resources to help me live. I know this and I am indebted to you. How long have I been asleep?”

“Nine days. If I’m honest, I believed you were never going to wake up. We had to give you a lot of Power Potion.”

“That’s why I feel so...” She lifted her broken arm up in front of her and saw the glowing evidence of the powerful healing drug glistening just under her skin, like an unbroken layer of water rippling gently.

“Yeah, it’ll take a while to wear off.” He sighed a little, eyes focused steadily on her as she flexed her hands and tested her feet – one cast reaching all the way up her leg. It was then he noticed she was just wearing one of his black t-shirts and some underwear, her long blonde hair matted and tangled all the way down her back. He gulped down the odd sensation that pooled in his chest and cleared his throat slightly to cover it up, shifting on his feet and looking away from her for a moment. “I’ll just go and get you something to wear, and we’ll try and sort you a makeshift crutch and you can have some food if you’re up to it?”

He hurried from the room to root through a pile of random clothes leaving Good Time in darkness once more.

It took him a few minutes but he end up finding a pair of old Levi’s, a white cropped t-shirt, a red sleeveless hoodie and he grabbed an old leather jacket he used to wear when he was a few years younger. It wasn’t much but when she was able to move they’d go scavenging for something she liked later.

He stopped himself. ‘They’d go scavenging’. He shook his head and groaned. She wasn’t his friend and this wasn’t the old days where you met people and stayed in touch. She would be gone in a matter of days and it would be just him and team again.

He pulled all her stuff together and marched back through the kitchen doors, dumping it down next to her where she sat on the metal workbench. “None of it will fit, and the jacket is mine I’ll need that back sometime.”

“Hey, no problem. This is great.” She pulled the hooded sweat and the jacket on over the top of the t-shirt she was already wearing and went to pull on the Levi’s when she hesitated, “These are not going to fit over my cast.” She announced, clearly musing on an idea. “Can I cut them? Shorts are better for the desert anyway.”

Party Poison just nodded, looking around for her combat boots where he remembered seeing a large sharp hunting knife when they removed them from her to operate. Wordlessly he handed it to her, hilt first, and as she expertly sliced and ripped the jeans and struggled to pull them on, searched around for something she could lean on to walk.

“Oi, dude. Any chance you can help a girl out over here?” He looked over and saw her comically attempted to touch her toes with her plastered arm. It took all he could to keep a straight face as he walked over and took the clothes from her, gently working them over her leg cast, his fingers hooked through the belt loops, dragging them slowly up her legs. She began to try and shuffle them over her bum whilst sitting down and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes and flush a little as he carefully tugged her off the workbench and held her as she balanced on her good foot, pulling the shorts right into place and releasing her to do the buttons up herself.

He stepped back and left her leaning against the counter; thankful the glow stick illuminated the colour from his cheeks. He released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. She finished her struggle with the buttons and looked up with a slight smile and their eyes met.

“I’m not used to getting help with putting my clothes on.” She quipped and let out a small laugh. He smiled slightly and turned away to carry on his search for a crutch. He thought he heard a small groan leave her lips but couldn’t decide if it was just in his head.

Notes

Hello again!

Really got my words on with this chapter... Sorry if you find it a bit long! As per usual, I like feedback so drop a comment below!

Big love.
ALICE.
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