Note: Written for kink bingo, the (non-sexual; don't worry, this fic isn't mis-rated) kink being guns. Set immediately after the Rhinestone Eyes storyboard, presumes that when Cyborg Noodle left the roof Murdoc head inside and isn't in a position to see Noodle and Russ when they arrive.
This was what he got for fucking with a winning formula. Two decades his deal with Beelzebub had been standing and he hadn't heard a peep out of the old bastard since he'd filled his end of it by changing his middle name and signing up for Satanism. But it had been barely more than a year since he'd shaken on his new little deal with the rancid twat in the gas-mask and already his pink paradise, hours away from the nearest civilization, was under constant barrage by pirates headed up by the Boogieman himself. Pathetic show for a so-called infernal agent of hell, as if he had nothing better to waste his time on than going after one sinner the instant it looked like he planned to dodge his contract.
He'd suddenly learned the great big looming downside to living so far from land; no place to bugger off to when the shit hit the fan. He couldn't even make a run for the sub, bullets tearing the ground apart at his feet if he so much as inched his big toe out the door towards the docks. All he could do was keep the cyborg on constant patrol to ward off attacks, and try to suck down enough rum to forget how close they had to be to her power going dead.
Amazing it hadn't happened yet, really. Most of the time it seemed like she might as well run on fucking double-As, she ran out of juice so quickly. Spent more time wired up to the generator than she did doing her job- either of 'em!
The roof had become dangerous enough that even through the drunken haze he realized it was time to scamper on indoors, and though his lovely little secret room with its lack of windows and video feed of everything going on on the island was where he wanted to end up he stopped first at the studio to grab up the masters for all his recent music. Things might be heading to hell in a hand basket, but as long as he had those he'd already be well on his way to making it back to the top again once the latest mess was sorted out. There was enough to throw together a Psides if nothing else.
He was just stuffing the last of it in a sack when the windows suddenly exploded inward at a burst of gunfire, sending him flying to the ground in a spew of curses. The assault ended quickly, but when he peeked his head up he saw the plane already circling around to get another shot.
He swore, he was never dealing with pirates again if they all got this shirty over a little thing like being sold faulty weapons.
He was just considering whether he had time to make a run for it or not when the door was kicked open behind him. Before he even had time to turn there was another round of bullets and the plane was crashing out of the sky, cockpit windshield shattered and the pilot presumably equally wrecked.
"Good timing, you," he said to the girl in the door. He thought at first that it was the cyborg, even with the mask; her programming had always been a bit on the wonky side, wouldn't be too surprising if since they'd seen that footage of Noodle she'd gone and decided she needed a mask of her own to better take the real thing's place. It was the gun that did it, Noodle might've posed with a pistol for a couple of photos here and there but when it came to an actual fight she'd always preferred her blades, and she liked her fists and a few well-placed kicks even better. The cyborg was the one who went into fights shooting. Fuck, it was half the reason he'd given her all those guns, making the differences between them a little clearer when 2D kept getting all whimpery-weepy around her for the first few weeks.
Even when she walked up and hooked the barrel of her gun behind his neck and yanked it towards her, stepping back as the force made him tumble forward so he crashed to his knees instead of landing on her, he didn't realize the truth. Not until she jammed the muzzle under his chin, her finger just a twitch away from the trigger, and forced his head up to look at her.
The cyborg would never point a gun at him. Didn't matter how glitchy she'd gotten, the programming just wouldn't allow it.
"Noodle?" he asked, hardly able to believe it could be her and not just some new hallucination. He doubted he'd dream up the reek he was catching a whiff of now that she was so close, some fetid mix of rotting fish and halitosis. There were those who would say that if you stank badly enough for him to take note of it it was time to seriously reexamine your hygiene habits.
She'd have been one of them, last time he saw her.
She didn't say a word for a long while, long enough that he started getting a crick in his neck from the angle she kept his head forced back at. He didn't know how she could see a damned thing through that mask of hers but he could feel her stare on him anyway, the downward twist of her lips that was barely visible at the bottom of it the only sign he got towards the types of things she might be thinking.
Well, the gun at his throat might be another good clue.
Finally she asked, "What did you do, Murdoc," her voice rougher, scratchier, than it had ever been before. The part of his mind that wasn't occupied with trying to work out exactly what she might want him to say that would let him get away without any new holes in his person quickly tried to translate how it might sound singing. Not as sweet as it used to be, but if she could get a sexy throaty kind of sound going it could be a change for the better, give the fanboys something to salivate over. It was obvious just glancing at her that she'd never get the type of body that'd do it.
"What, love, this?" he asked in response to her question, glancing towards the chaos outside out of the corner of his eye. "All just ridiculous overreactions if you ask-"
"No," she cut him off sharply, shoving the gun up so the muzzle dug into his skin more uncomfortably than ever. "Four years ago, what did you do? Bad things always lead back to you, I know that."
"Me?" he asked, his tone carefully filled with wounded indignation. Probably wouldn't work on her, but might as well give it a shot. "I saved your life, love. That bastard Jimmy was-"
"I have already read that version. The pirates, their helicopters, why did they begin targeting me? The truth, Murdoc. Don't I deserve at least that much?" A note of pain entered her voice, until then kept flat and unaffected, and he flinched in spite of himself. As a general rule he had no problems at all standing in front of people he'd wronged and lying to their face to make himself come off as blameless, but this wasn't just some random slob who'd stood in the way of his fame or been good for a quick laugh. It was Noodle.
"All right, all right," he admitted grudgingly, "the manky bastards might-might!-have been trying to get back at me through you. Couple of deals gone bad, you know how it goes Noods. But come on, you can't think I had a clue what they were up to."
"...No. Whatever happened, I don't believe that it was deliberate," she admitted, her shoulders slumping though she still didn't let the gun drop. Instead she dragged it upward, grazing it over his chin and cheek until she could tap it against his temple just at the side of his left eye. "What happened to your eye, Murdoc?"
"I, err, don't rightly know, love. Y'know how things are when we're working on a new album. It's all a bit of a blur."
"How things are when you let yourself get drunk enough to black out," she corrected, and she actually sounded a little like her old self there, the only one who'd ever dare to take a bottle out of his hand if she felt he was getting too smashed to pay proper attention to her oh-so-important artistic vision. "I only ask because I cannot help noticing that we appear to have switched places." She tipped back her mask at last, allowing him to see what was beneath. "Now I am the red-eyed member of Gorillaz."
One of her eyes was reddish, sure enough, even more than his had ever been. A film of blood covered it, white and iris and pupil all, though it still focused on him just as sharply as it ever had when he'd managed to piss her off. Still, if she hadn't deliberately drawn his attention to it it would've taken him awhile to even notice it. The great burn scar surrounding it was rather more noticeable.
"What the fuck happened to you?" he asked, unthinkingly grabbing her chin and yanking her head sideways so he could get a better view. That was outright unacceptable, no one was allowed to abuse his band but him! Or Tubbo at times, when the he feeling particularly pissy, but it wouldn't be him; he wouldn't do shit to his baby girl.
"Did you honestly think I could be chased for four years-for your crimes!-without getting a scratch?" she asked, and the last of the vitriol seemed to seep out of her, her whole body drooping, sagging to the floor in front of him so they were at the same level, which would have been rather more reassuring if that damned gun hadn't ended up settling with the muzzle now digging into the pit of his stomach, her finger still against the trigger letting him know that however it appeared he wasn't completely in the clear just yet. "I tried so hard to hate you for that that I almost managed it, but then you... you..."
"I what, love?" he prodded. If he'd done something that convinced her not to shoot him straight in the face the minute she'd seen him he'd really like to know what it was, just in case it could be repeated with some of the other bastards who wanted him dead. The ones currently doing their best to shoot his little trash island to shreds, for instance.
"You wished me a happy birthday, you... you... asshole!" she exclaimed, pounding her fist against his shoulder with enough force to remind him just how strong she was; he almost toppled right over backwards at the blow. "You did that and I knew that whatever you did couldn't have been deliberate, that you had not sold me out to save your own skin. You would never have bothered if you had, not when it was so belated that no one would question your silence for you to at least pretend to care."
It took him a few moments to work out exactly what she was talking about. His radio shows were more of a blur than most things, and any time he'd spent too long thinking about her were the worst of all, happyish memories of things that had vanished out of his life sending him to the bottle faster, and more often, and with more drugs spiking it than anything else. "Heard that, did you?" he finally asked when he managed to drudge up a few vague memories of what she must mean.
"I have never stopped following the things you do, Muds," she said, even managing a faint smile, though it was a thin, sickly, ill-used looking thing, a far cry from the bright easy grins she used to beam out at everyone who came near her. "I am, after all, Gorillaz biggest fan." Then she tossed the gun aside at last, a bullet blasting out and making him jump when it clattered against the floor but only shooting into the wall instead of anything important like his tender fleshy bits, and she flung her arms around his neck. Though she'd seemed cool as a cucumber until then, the gun perfectly steady the whole time she'd kept it pressed against him, now that she was so close he could feel that she was shaking, a constant slight tremor. He moved his arms uneasily through the air around her for a minute before finally settling one hand between her shoulder blades, giving her a few awkward pats before letting it come to rest. "I'm home, Murdoc," she whispered against his shoulder. "Let's make wonderful music together again."
"...Right. Right!" he exclaimed, straightening up, his mind already bubbling with new plans for new songs. What the hell was he wasting time for when he finally had the best fucking lyricist and composer he knew of after himself back? They could spin a whole new number one album just based around her journey back and return! Wouldn't even matter if it turned out there wasn't enough of a story to inspire a whole fifteen, sixteen, songs, the fans would still lap it up by the millions just for having her face slapped on the cover. The real Noodle, back where she belonged at last! He'd even let her take over the first promo the way she liked doing, see how much they could milk her being the focus for on iTunes.
Then the sound of a plane engine whirring by too close to the broken window for comfort reminded him that they had more pressing things to worry about before he could drag her to the recording equipment across the room and find out what new songs she had clanging around in her head since he'd last seen her. He jumped to his feet, dragging her along with him, and began pulling her out of the room with him. "But first, to the secret lair! This'll be a treat for you, love, safest place on the island and you'll be the first one I've allowed in. Well, aside from that one weird bugger who keeps wandering around doing busy work for me."
Yup, even with the bullets still flying and a good hunk of the trash heap on fire, things were definitely starting to turn back his way.