Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. This fic is a sequel to Yellowfur's fic Price Tag, a oneshot which came out not too long ago. This fic is a bit longer (3 chapters), and takes place in the same setting, not long after. It features cartoon characters from Metalocalypse, Zatch Bell, X-Men Evolution, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teen Titans, Death Note, Xiaolin Showdown, Venture Bros. and more, plus a special appearance by a character from the video game series Soul Calibur. Should be quite a show. No OCs, no self-inserts, just dark action, dark humor, dark setting, and general darkness. Expect a new chapter next Monday, and the final chapter a week after.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the shows or characters used here, their respective creators and networks do. Yellowfur owns the Price Tag setting, although if anybody wants to use it, permission will likely be easy to obtain. I only own the contents of this story.
Price Tag: Boarding House
"Ahhh!" A little girl, no older than eight, ran through a dark alley. Her pink, lacy clothing was caked in dirt and grime, as were her wide-eyed little face and long, reddish-pink hair. Tia had been on the run for a while, and until now, she had the good fortune not to run into the wrong people.
Besides being rising stars in the death metal community, the five men who formed Dethklok moonlighted as being the wrong people.
The end of the alley was suddenly blocked by a broad figure, the starlight and darkness casting him in near silhouette. "Schtop!" William Murderface ordered, hefting a large hammer-axe combo on a long, two-handed pole. He slammed the hammer to the ground. Tia screamed, turned back and ran the other way.
The other end of the alley was also blocked by a shadowy figure. "Sorry about this, little girl, but ya know, it'd be somebody else if it wasn't us." Pickles the Drummer (doodily doo) pulled two smaller axes from the collection on his belt and threw one. Tia dropped to the ground, and the axe flew over her head and embedded in a garbage can. She whimpered as she got up into a crouching position, Pickles holding his position as Murderface closed in.
"It's for your owns goods," another person called out. Toki Wartooth had gotten up onto one of the rooftops on either side of the alley, and was expertly drawing back an arrow in a spiked longbow. "Othawise, you'd just be livings on the streets for anotha two week before gettings hunted downs." He fired an arrow, but Tia screamed and a translucent green barrier formed around her, blocking the arrow and splintering it before fading away.
"That'sh pretty impressive right there," Murderface said.
"Yeah, but we can just wear her down until she runs out of shield, I guess," Pickles said. "I mean look at her. She's all little and tired. There's no way she can last for long." He pulled back an axe to throw. This time, Tia formed a circular shield between her and Pickles. Pickles threw the axe at a crooked angle (much like his crooked smile), and it glanced off a wall, bouncing around the shield. Tia shrieked as the axe sliced off some of her hair, coming dangerously close to decapitating her. While she was off-guard, Toki fired another arrow that left a slash on her shoulder. "Now, Murderface!" Pickles ordered. Tia put up her circular barrier again, but Murderface began mercilessly pounding it with the hammer, cracking it. The fat bassist turned the weapon around and drove the axe blade into the cracked part of the barrier, and it shattered under the pressure.
"Shay goodnight, little girl," Murderface said grimly. Suddenly, a scream from above caused him to look up. A huge, round, bald teenager in jeans and a leather jacket with the sleeves torn off was holding Toki in a crushing bear hug. "Hey! Chubby!" Murderface screamed. "Let go of our rhythm guitarisht! I'll fuck you up!"
"See? This is why I like rap, yo. None of this hunting-down-little-girls crap. Rappers only kill each other." The face of a small, ugly, yellow-eyed teen with greasy light brown hair leered down from the other rooftop, then suddenly lashed out with an inhumanly long, olive-colored tongue. It grabbed Murderface's axe, and in his surprise he let it be yanked away.
"I don't know, the early metal was great." Next to the second one, a third young man appeared. He was just a little on the tall and muscular side, and had a rough look with a dark brown mullet. Unlike the first, these two wore dark bodysuits with some metal plates sewn on in a ramshackle semblance of armor. "Sometime in the last ten, fifteen years, these guys fucked it up."
"Well, well, if it isn't the Brotherhood Boys," Pickles said, his voice calm and even. "Hey, fatso, how 'boat you let go of Toki, and I don't kill your two friends right off the bat?" he had drawn two more axes.
"Those are bold words," the third one replied with a sneer. "Things aren't looking so great for you. I know the rest of your band is still some ways away, one of you is in a bind," he gestured to Toki, who was yelling incoherently and flailing his bow around with a free hand (the spikes unable to scratch his captor's skin), "and one of you is unarmed."
"Hey, heh, douchebag. Murderface is never unarmed!"
"Eh?" Avalanche looked down. Murderface had drawn a flare gun from his pocket and fired it… at Toad's face. Toad screamed and dropped the axe/hammer back into Murderface's grip. Toki finally slashed the Blob's face, which was weaker than the rest of his body. Although he didn't do any real damage, Blob was surprised enough to let go, and Toki jumped down two stories into an open dumpster to escape. Pickles threw an axe at Avalanche, which he jumped back and away from before it could hit him.
"Get the kid!" Avalanche yelled. Blob obediently threw a rope ladder down with one hand. "Little girl, get on if you want to live!" Tia obediently grabbed on and started climbing up, but Blob yanked the entire ladder into the air and caught her, saving her from decapitation by Murderface's axe. "We've got what we came for, now let's get out of here!"
"Oh no you fucking don't!" Pickles threw another two axes, and Toki, who had since popped out of the garbage, fired an arrow. Blob turned and shielded Tia from the arrow with his back, causing it to bounce off harmlessly. Toad jumped over one axe and spat something viscous from his mouth, which blinded Pickles and caused him to scream and claw at his face. Avalanche took the other axe in the left arm with a yell, but raised his remaining arm and concentrated. The ground shook, knocking Dethklok off their feet.
"Let's go, let's go!" Blob took a few steps back, and leapt over the alley, leaving them all on the same rooftop. Avalanche took out a walkie-talkie. "We've retrieved Tia. Repeat, we've retrieved Tia. We're in a hot zone, I'm injured, we NEED EVAC NOW!"
"One evac, coming right up," a dark, alluring female voice replied.
Meanwhile, Toki had grabbed onto Murderface's hammer head. Murderface reared back, and swung upward as hard as he could, launching Toki up to the rooftop Blob had just been on. "Die, you bounties takers!" Toki nocked an arrow with a glowing tip, and fired.
"Damn, too late!" Toad screamed. "I don' wanna die, yo!!"
"NO!" Tia yelled, and the circular shield returned. It absorbed the arrow and reflected it back in Toki's general direction, missing him and hitting the next building over. When the arrow struck, the tip exploded like a rocket-propelled grenade, destroying most of the building's upper floor. As one, the Brotherhood breathed a collective sigh of relief, and then a black flash engulfed them. When the blackness was gone, so were they.
"Ugh, that was a total bust," Pickles mumbled as the three of them walked out of the alley. He had gotten Toad's goo out of his eyes, but it still caked his face. "They escaped, we lost the bounty, and we spent some of our best ordinance."
"I don't think we can even chalk up a moral victory here," Murderface added.
"You're right. We really can't. We… we got our asses handed to us, plain and simple."
"I needs a shower," Toki complained.
"Yeah, me too." He noticed Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Nathan Explosion pull up in the Dethcycle. "How'd you guys do?"
"Well, we found both of the others," Nathan said. "Blondie got away. The fuckin' Brotherhood rescued 'im. It was that really fast guy."
"On the other hands, we dids get one," Skwisgaar proudly displayed a corpse resting in one of the sidecars. It was another small child, with reddish hair, white footy pajamas, and curiously, a duck bill. His throat was slit, and a sword was lodged in his back; blood was all over the sidecar. "Soes, you know, it isn't totallys a loss."
"He'sch bleeding all over my schidecar," Murderface observed with a growl.
Skwisgaar chuckled. "Well, that's life, right? You works and you works, and thens some ungratesful little childrens bleed on your seat."
Nathan grunted. "How about you?"
"The rest of the Brotherhood showed up and snagged our kill," Pickles sighed. "I'm almost glad. Ya know, slaughtering children is pretty brutal, but it sucks. Even we feel bad."
"Yeah, and the one we got's only worth 120 grand," Nathan observed. "Alright, we'll slaughter some adults next time! Come on, let's go drop this body off at the Station." They hopped in, Murderface placing the dead child between his feet. "New idea for a song title," Nathan said as they drove off. "Dead Kid in a Sidecar!"
Tia opened her eyes. She, Avalanche, Blob, and Toad all stood in a dark room, away from the threat of Deth. Well, they stood, Blob had been holding her like a football since he jumped the gap between rooftops. As he gently set her down, Tia asked, "Where… where are we?"
"We're at the Boarding House," Avalanche said. He glanced out a boarded-up window, then gingerly touched the axe lodged in his left bicep and winced. "Shit!"
Smiling in spite of herself, Tia took a look around. The room featured four bunk beds, each of the eight bunks showing some degree of personalization. Two boarded up windows still let in a small amount of light from the moon, stars and streetlights (at least, the few that still worked on this street), and there was a lamp, but it was shut off. Despite the late hour, none of the beds were occupied. She was in the Boarding House. Things were going to be okay. "Am I safe here?" she asked.
"Not really," Blob said. "Nobody's truly safe anywhere in the city. But here you should be okay until we can get you out of the city. I'm Fred, by the way. This is Todd, and Lance."
"Thank you all," Tia said.
Before they could reply, three people entered. One was a teenage girl in a purple cloak. She had the hood down, revealing grayish skin, dull purple hair, and a red diamond on her forehead. "Good, you're all back, and you got her." Her voice identified her as the one on the walkie-talkie before. She frowned. "That's a nasty axe. How deep is it in?"
"Pretty deep," Lance replied, his voice strained. "Dethklok's getting good. I'm going to need stitches when we pull the axe out."
Raven nodded. "Go find Clay and Katara. Clay's good with a needle and thread, and Katara can do some healing. Wanda, help him out." The second person (a young woman with spiky black hair, an ankh necklace, and various ragged black and red clothing under a red coat) nodded, and helped Lance out of the room despite her own right arm being in a sling.
The third person, a skinny guy of Lance's age and height wearing a light blue bodysuit, walked into the room with a boy on his shoulders. The boy, blond with huge amber eyes, appeared shell-shocked and was clinging for dear life to a pair of silver tendrils of the guy's hair. He had black lines leading downward from his huge eyes to the bottom of his face, and he wore a strange blue cloak with a white ribbon on the front. "Hey, little girl, I brought a friend of yours." He lifted the kid down, whispering sharply to him, "Kid, let go of the hair or I'll take you right back."
"Zatch!" Tia hugged Zatch, who was still shaking. "What's wrong? Where's Kanchome?"
"They got him," Zatch whimpered. "I tried to hit them with my lightning, Tia, but I missed, and the knocked me down, and when I could see straight again… they killed him and I saw!" They hugged each other, crying. "They were gonna kill me…"
"But I saved you!" Quicksilver added positively. "I'm Pietro, by the way." He looked at Fred and Todd and sighed. "The other one had a sword in his back when I got there," he reported with the air of one who talked about this kind of thing as often as the weather.
"Fred, comfort them, you're better with kids," Raven sighed.
"Not really." But he tried anyway. "Aww, I'm sorry, you two," he said, crouching down. "We can't save everybody. But we save whoever we can, and that's you two tonight. Listen, you guys cry it out, and then we'll take you to see Mystique. Everybody who comes through here has to talk to Mystique."
Did you enjoy? What could I improve on? Criticism is appreciated, so feel free to leave some in a review. Next chapter: Lance gets medical attention, and Zatch and Tia are sent to see... Mystique. Also, we meet some of the other people in the Boarding House, and learn a little more about what it does in this nasty city.