That's Why Head Injuries Are Unhealthy
Disclaimer: I do not own Repo! Never have, never will - don't deserve it, cos Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich did a wonderful thing for the world by putting it out there. Anything alluded to in this fic is most likely not something of mine. Also, the concept behind this fic is not mine. I'm borrowing it from my brother Jareth. He's known as StellarRaven on here, so I encourage you to go and check out his fics!
Also, this is bound to be slightly ridiculous.
The alarm had gone off like it tended to do, profanities and insults had been exchanged, and gunfire had been slung their way. It was a good thing that, while the bad guys had guns, their aim generally sucked, digital corneas or no. However, the black-armored morons were nothing if not persistent little buggers, so on they kept charging and on he and Shilo ran through the snow. He had been out collecting Zydrate - she had been visiting her mother and father; both of them had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The skinny black-haired girl wasn't much of a runner, so, unable to bring himself to abandon her, the Graverobber had grabbed her arm and taken off running. He supposed adrenaline lent her speed and endurance, because she kept up with him all right for a good while - during a brief pause, she started to hyperventilate though, so they couldn't stick together. Another shot came too close for comfort and they took off again, whether she was ready or not.
"Shilo, run!" he yelled, vaulting over a tombstone and pulling Shilo around it by her forearm. "You can make it! I got a way out!"
Shilo's dark eyes widened, but she did as she was told, running until he couldn't see her anymore - he didn't see her duck behind a giant statue of the Archangel Michael to watch what would happen next. He stayed where he was, waiting for those GeneCo morons to get just a little closer. When they were in close enough range, he whirled around to face the enemy - he obviously couldn't fight them, but he'd be damned if he couldn't outsmart them. Sure enough, they stopped where they were, unsure of what he was about to do next; it was always lovely when human curiosity overrode strict orders, he thought. For several moments, the two sides sized each other up, neither being about to make the first move. Like an oil slick on the ocean, a slow grin washed over his face and he stood stock-still for another minute, just smiling at them as if he had some sort of brilliant secret.
"Good night, gentlemen!" he announced, turning smartly on his heel and tearing off in the opposite direction, dropping out of sight before the GenCops could figure out what had just happened.
"Did any of you see where he went?" the squad leader asked his subordinates, recieving a bunch of head-shaking in response. "Dammit!"
He paused for a second and scanned the area around them - no signs of movement, either the Graverobber or the girl with him - and let his shoulders fall.
"Well, that idiot's out here all the damn time," he mumbled, figuring they'd have another opportunity in the near future. Back in 'leader mode', he turned to his squad and ordered, "Move out!"
It had been one of those bizzare twists of fate, really - a freak accident, if you will. When the Graverobber had dropped out of the sight of his pursuers, what had happened was that he had taken a funny step, as happens to everyone sometimes. His boot caught on a little chipped bit of rock on the ground and trying to catch himself just didn't work with the snow on the ground, so down he went. He hadn't had enough time to so much as brace himself before he heard an unsettling crack!, like bone hitting marble. For that was exactly what had just happened - one wrong step and he had hit his head on a marble-covered grave. He felt his blood run cold in his veins as every muscle in his body tightened frighteningly. The colors of the world blurred in front of his shocked, wide-open eyes and swirled inwards to form a pulsing black abyss.
After what felt like only a few minutes, but could have been almost any amount of time, the world started to come back into focus, so he decided to try and straighten himself out - 'walk it off' happened to be one of his life's mottos. He got up and looked around as more of his surroundings started to un-blur in front of his eyes. Right away, he noticed something had gone very funny, and not in the laughing way. First, he noticed that, even though snow still blanketed the ground, he was no longer freezing - it may as well have been a warm spring day! Second, and even more unusual, was the fact that the snowflakes that had been falling had frozen exactly where they had been when he fell and hung suspended in thin air. Out of curiosity, he poked one of them and it drifted away as if in zero-gravity. Slowly, he raised a hand to his forehead, where he was sure it had impacted with the cold marble, but found nothing - not even a bruise or a scrape, or anything like that. Something brightly-colored near his right foot caught his eye and he looked down to see...
"JESUS CHRIST!" he yelled, jumping back.
He saw himself, still sprawled on the ground, halfway draped over the grave he had fallen on. A disturbing amount of stark red blood - couldn't be anyone's but his - stained the snow around him and the marble he lay on. His eyes widened, then he blinked a few times - when that didn't make the image go away, he screwed his eyes shut, rubbing them hard as if trying to erase said image. This had to be a dream, or a nightmare, or a hallucination, or something... anything but reality. His head spun, his guts clenching - he felt like he had swallowed a sizable chunk of dry ice and wondered if there could have been mist coming out of his ears or something. Muttering "Jesus fucking Christ" under his breath, he put his face in his hand as he continued his vain attempt to push that image out of his brain.
"Jesus? Ohohoho!" laughed a musical voice. "No, not yet. You will be seeing Him soon though, believe me!"
The Graverobber nearly jumped out of his skin - if anyone else ever saw this, his reputation would be utterly destroyed; nothing phased the Graverobber, dammit! He swung around to face whoever had just surprised him and his eyes widened to dinner-plate-size at what, or rather who he saw. There before him, smiling beatifically, stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in all his days. A sort of glow radiated off her, gold and ethereal and her golden-blonde hair fell in wide, perfect waves to her trim waist. Two sapphires glimmered regally at him from her face - no, those were her eyes, he reminded himself, now more than ever wondering what the fuck was going on. In her right hand, she held a handsome tome bound in gold-trimmed brown leather with a pair of wings embossed on the cover. This gleaming female creature somehow managed to look pure, maidenly, and untouched in her pristine white dress - was that a toga, of all things? - that revealed a generous amount of leg and breast. He couldn't help it - a good pair of legs undid him every time, not to mention what he saw up top, so he just couldn't stop his jaw from hitting the ground.
"Who're you!?" he sputtered, trying not to be completely obvious about undressing her with his eyes.
A high, melodical sound answered him as the woman laughed.
"Oh dear! I have not introduced myself, have I?" she remarked more than asked asked - for as beautiful as she was, she seemed a touch scatterbrained. She inclined her head to him and he felt himself go weak in the knees; scatterbrained or no, she had him wrapped around her little finger already! "My name is Angelique and I shall be guiding you home tonight."
Graverobber tilted his head and blinked at her, then looked around rather stupidly - something just wasn't right here! Rather than trying to figure out what it was, he decided to get rid of the image; he could file her away for later... memory. With a nasty crunching sound, he punched himself in the side of his head, hoping to knock some sense into his obviously-malfunctioning brain. It had no effect, didn't even hurt! Had he accidentally stuck himself with the Zydrate gun? That thing had been an accident waiting to happen, now that he thought about it. Shaking his head until he thought he might go cross-eyed, he finally looked up at the beautiful woman for an explanation.
"Okay, I'll bite," he said at last. "What the hell's going on here?"
"Heaven, of course!" the gorgeous blonde answered, as if it should have been obvious from the very start. "It is your time, is it not?"
Looking down at his own broken self on the marble grave, at his blood staining the snow, then back up at the beautiful woman, Graverobber felt the color drop out of his face.
"You can't be serious!" he yelled, gesturing wildly at his own corpse.
The woman - Angelique, she had called herself - gave him a withering look that said quite plainly that she got this reaction a lot.
"Dead serious, if you will quite forgive the pun," she informed him, holding up an ornate wristwatch - it was old and tarnished, and looked like someone had at least once tried to destroy it with a hammer. "You see this watch is your life... and it stopped."
Swallowing hard, Graverobber studied the watch - Angelique seemed to glow a bit brighter at that.
"Jesus Christ..." he choked out - was this for real!? Was this really it!?
"Jesus? Nah, you won't be seein' him," a sassy voice interrupted. "You're comin' with me."
Feeling his guts lurch unpleasantly again, the Graverobber swung around to face the owner of the new voice. His eyes widened appreciatively at the ravishing creature they fell on. She had lovely, wavy, golden-blonde hair as well, but she had hers pulled up into a high ponytail at the back of her head and decorated with a black leather hair-corset. As he dragged his eyes down over her body, he absently brought his hand up to his mouth to remove the small collection of drool forming at the corner of his lips. Her ample chest nearly spilled out of a blood-red leather corset and her hips - he had to admit to being a sucker for great hips too - were luciously accented by black leather short-shorts that laced up the sides. She had encased her shapely legs in thigh-high black leather boots with heels at least six inches tall. Strapped to her left hip was the most impressive laced-leather bullwhip he had ever seen in his life - his mouth practically watered at that.
"And who might you be?" he asked, not bothering to hide the lascivious note in his voice and not restraining his eyes from trailing shamelessly over her perfect body.
"I could ask you that same thing," she shot back, checking a small black leather-bound notebook in her left hand. "Information I got here says you don't have a name other'n Graverobber!"
He growled at that - the name was a serious don't go there subject - and decided to ignore it this time. The woman didn't seem to notice his irritation and continued to flick through the notebook. Her hand inched towards her whip and, watching her, the Graverobber noticed that the black notebook wasn't in her hand anymore. Now it floated about six inches in front of her and she seemed to be studying it quite intently. Giving him a very sexy-librarian-esque look over the top of the notebook, she informed him "Also says you're comin' back with me tonight." His eyes widened - he would go anywhere this woman asked him to! Then his brain sort of flared up a bit.
"Wait a second," he interjected. "Where are we going?"
The woman smiled the sexiest, most sinister smile he had ever seen in his life.
"Why, Hell of course," she purred at him. "Fire and brimstone and all that good stuff!"
While a very significant portion of his anatomy screamed at him to go with her and damned be the consequences, he forced himself to think with the head on his shoulders and took a step back, away from both women. Very deliberately not looking at what absolutely had to be an illusion, he turned around and stared off into the snow, still frozen in time. He took a few deep breaths, his stomach tightening at the fact that his exhaling breath formed no telltale wispy cloud in front of his mouth. This... could not possibly be real, he kept telling himself - he had to be dreaming or something. Slowly, mechanically, he raised a hand to the side of his throat, prodding his jugular vein where a pulse should be. When he found none, he pressed a hand to his chest - there had to be a heartbeat there - and again felt nothing. He took a few steps to the side and sank onto a tombstone.
"So let me get this straight, ladies," he started, looking from one beautiful face to the other - he realized with a brief jolt that they were identical twins as they stared back at him. "I'm... dead?"
The twins nodded in unison, Angelique smiling sympathetically and the other one, who hadn't introduced herself, smirking evilly.
"Ah," he confirmed, wondering why the hell he continued with this charade. "And I'll be going with one of you?"
Already, the wheels and cogs in his head were turning and spinning. He had never found a situation he couldn't talk himself out of. All it had ever taken him was the right hook for the crowd - after all, his business was as much about performance as results. He watched the twins flash their eyes at each other - Angelique's eyes had gone as hard as stones and her sister looked ready to shoot lightning from hers. Ah, sibling rivalry, he thought merrily, focusing on each twin in turn. He wanted to go for the angel first - trying to corrupt her was bound to be a hell of a good time - but arousing the wrath of a spitfire like her sister did not seem like the wisest decision. First selection made, he sidled up to the dominatrix and playfully attempted to sneak a look a the notebook still floating in front of her nose. It snapped closed on its own and the leather-clad blonde raised her eyebrows at him.
"Can I help you?" she asked, her tone as solicitous as she could make it.
"I never got your name," he told her, figuring she'd respond well to an aggressive approach.
A girlish flush found the tips of her ears and she grinned at him.
"It's Demona," she purred seductively. "Remember that - you'll be screaming it later."
Graverobber winked in return as he volleyed back with "I'm sure" - then a shrill voice interrupted.
"Do not listen to her!" Angelique huffed, her own face just ever-so-slightly flushed. "Her given name is Damiana - which I happen to think is much prettier and does not make her sound like a pretentious twit!"
Oh yes, sibling rivalry - so much fun to play with, the Graverobber thought in manic glee.
"Oh shut up, Angie!" Damiana/Demona snapped back, her ears smoking a bit. "You're just jealous 'cuz---"
The cause of Angelique's jealousy never had the chance to air, due to her shrieking "I told you to stop calling me that three hundred years ago!"
"ANGIE!" bellowed the demon woman, causing the Graverobber to step back a good six feet for fear of endangering the safety of what little bit of a soul he supposed he had left.
The twins continued exchanging insults and screaming at each other - Graverobber found it quite interesting that the Battle of Trafalgar had been caused because of Angelique's anger at her sister's dating Vlad the Impaler. "Ladies?" he tried to interject. Damiana - he decided a name that meant "demon queen" fit her better overall - nearly melted a nearby statue by breathing fire on it and Angelique smacked her on the head with the handsome leather tome. Twice, Graverobber dove out of the way as Angelique - who could not aim for all the tea in China - slung holy beams at her sister. "Ladies!?" the Graverobber hollered, shielding his eyes from the godly light. Damiana lashed back with her whip and he found himself wishing he had a box of Raisinets so he could just sit down at watch. Once they got the physical aggression out of their systems, they wound up back on screaming at each other. "Ladies!" yelled, trying to get them to calm down before they broke his eardrums - he kind of needed those. The screams of "Harlot!", "Bitch!" and "You take that back!" rose in volume, pitch, and speed, until it sounded like listening to a pair of budgies arguing. Graverobber stuffed his fingers in his ears and, after a few moments, could take it no longer.
"WOULD YOU BOTH SHUT UP!?" he roared, his face red from overload - he had lost his mind, hadn't he?
Angelique and Damiana rounded on him, their anger not diminished at all - the angel radiated holy, righteous fury and the demon looked like she might spit fire any second now.
"You watch your mouth!" they screamed as one.
Cowed by the incredibly powerful women, the Graverobber took a step back, trying to select his next words carefully - cheesy as it sounded, his very soul depended upon it.
"I... was simply wondering which of you lovely ladies would be... escorting me tonight," he smiled as graciously as he possibly could and hoped the beads of anxious sweat on his forehead weren't too obvious.
"Me!" they chorused, answering at the exact same time and glaring at each other because of it.
Angelique stepped forward, her perfect hair not at all ruffled from the previous fisticuffs - she drew her chest up proudly, immediately catching the Graverobber's attention while Damiana seethed.
"My dear sister, it is my duty in faith to save as many souls as possible from the horrors awaiting them in your... master's... domain," she proclaimed archly, her voice snooty - he figured she had to be the elder of the twins. "And this man has shown valor in the face of the evils of the world."
Damiana snorted, puffing acrid smoke out of her nose.
"He's a drug dealer, a scoundrel, and a really bad egg," she sniffed in Graverobber's general direction. "He even smells like one!"
Graverobber opened his mouth to protest that no one who slept in a dumpster regularly could smell like roses, thank-you-very-much, but glanced at the singed gargoyle and closed it.
"He is kind to those in need!" Angelique announced, puffing up and making a sweeping gesture in the direction Shilo had run - Graverobber's stomach sank at the thought of her. "He protected an innocent girl!"
Damiana laughed out loud at that, a high, screeching sound that reminded him of the Wicked Witch of the West.
"He almost got her killed!" she shouted back. "And he exposed her to the world of Zydrate addicts and drug whores!"
Angelique turned bright red at her sister's crass words.
"We could go back and forth like this for eons," she told the dominatrix, as if she had the final word; the Graverobber gulped as he realized these two literally could go on for eons. "Why not just let me have this one?"
Her tone said that she had pulled the old 'because I'm the oldest and I said so' card - Damiana wasn't taking that for a second.
"If you're going to be so picky, why don't we just add everything up and see where he goes?" she suggested, in that manipulative, sneaky 'I'm the little one and I have a diabolical scheme to get my way' voice that the Graverobber knew so well from dealing with Amber Sweet.
Angelique considered this for a moment, consulted her book, and looked back at her sister suspiciously.
"Well, I suppose it is rather odd that the both of us got sent after him at the same time," she acquiesced before puffing back up and adding "But I did get here first."
As Damiana flicked through her notebook and a fancy, state-of-the-art laptop materialized out of nowhere, Angelique studiously pored over the tome in her hand a bunch of string appeared next to her, about at her shoulder-level.
"What the hell is that?" Graverobber dared to ask.
Angelique smiled... angelically - it kind of made his teeth hurt.
"It's a quipu, an ancient Incan counting device made with color-coded knotted string," she said, as if explaining something to a backwards five-year-old. "The Incas were absolutely fascinating - lived in the highest mountains in Peru and raised llamas. Beautiful really - before the orestias disappeared - but it was quite the shame that for all their ingenuity, none of them discovered underarm deodorant."
The Graverobber blinked, deciding he didn't want to know what the fuck an oresti-whatzit was - what had he been expecting, an abacus? He had become intensely nervous - just one tick-mark on one side or the other would decide where he was to spend the rest of... well... forever. The knot in his chest grew until it was nearly the size of his unbeating heart. He had finally found it - the one situation he couldn't talk his way out of, now that he saw how trying that had gone. Angelique's quipu lengthened in a few places, shortened in others, and changed colors as Damiana's laptop emitted a bunch of bleeps and blips and other computer-ish sounds. This process went on for a good solid fifteen minutes before both sisters looked at each other, red in the face.
"What do you mean it's exactly the same!?" they both shouted at the same time. "This has never happened before!"
The Graverobber's jaw dropped - surely this couldn't be!
"Has it?" asked Angelique.
Damiana frowned in contemplation.
"Well, there's that one singer a while back - the one who did the hip thingy," she tapped her chin, thinking again. "And that one guy with the tail..."
Angelique looked mightily annoyed.
"Well, I've got his sins right here, down to the last hundredth---" exclaimed Damiana.
"-- and I have his just and righteous deeds right here, to the same!" finished Angelique.
Damiana gave her sister a look.
"Do you have to talk like that all the bloody time?" she griped, causing her twin to flush.
"Let's go over it one more time," Angelique grumped, dropping her regal speech. "We're not God, so one of us could have made a mistake."
Damiana muttered something that sounded like 'So you finally admit it' - which her sister steadfastly ignored - before turning back to her laptop and small black leather notebook. By the same token, Angelique stuck her nose back into the glorious brown tome and her quipu strung itself out, apparently in high overdrive now. Graverobber watched in bemusement as these two beautiful women sat floating in midair, deciding the future of his everlasting soul - hell, until about half an hour ago, he didn't even think he had one! He found himself almost mesmerized by the quipu, the way the strings lengthened and shortened themselves and the way the colors changed so fast - did people really use those things way back when?! Damiana's laptop made an odd plunking noise and she cursed, clicking madly on something. With Damiana's computer error, the whole production took about twenty minutes, which seemed to be fine with Angelique as well, so she could be that much better assured that she was right. The process came to a halt and both sisters stared at each other again.
"Well damn," they chorused, Angelique blushing at her own language and Damiana smirking at it.
Damiana floated above the gargoyle she had singed, one knee crossed over the other.
"So what do we do about this?" she asked, flipping over backwards and watching her sister upside-down.
Angelique frowned in thought.
"Well, we could go ask Mother," she suggested.
Damiana's face turned white and she flailed for a moment before toppling out of sight.
"How about no!?" she yelled, clambering up to sit on the gargoyle's wing. "Mom's still mad at me for the whole 'blowing up Vesuvius and coating Pompeii in deadly ash' thing... You'd think that would have been easier to hide from her, with her bein' blind an' all..."
Graverobber decided he did not want to ask who these two were referring to as "Mother".
"Are you afraid that might tip the scales out of your favor?" teased Angelique, revelling in being able to watch her twin squirm. Then she admonished gently "This isn't a contest, Damiana - Justice is blind for this very reason."
Damiana frowned and floated up, off the gargoyle's wing with her brow furrowed in thought as well.
"Well, Mom wouldn't be able to do any more than us," she reasoned. "If it's dead even - pun intended - then the best thing to do would be to stuff him!"
The Graverobber backed away - he did not like the sudden brightness in her voice when she suggested to "stuff him" - to his horror, Angelique seemed to agree with her twin.
"Now wait just a minute!" he yelled, gesturing wildly and backing towards his body, still motionless on the snowy marble. "I don't know what you mean by 'stuff' but I'm telling you ladies right now---"
Angelique lit on the snowy ground and approached him, the snowflakes in the air parting for her.
"Oh do shut up," she groused, giving him a good hard shove in the chest.
As he fell, he heard Damiana calling "See you next time!"
*****
"Graverobber... hey! Get up!" begged Shilo, taking the fallen man's hand in hers. With the other, she reached out to brush his hair back off his face - his skin felt frightfully cold against her own and her stomach sank. "Oh no... Graverobber... please... please get up..."
This couldn't be! Her heart raced and she fought the urge to be violently ill - not him, not him! she prayed to any god who might be listening.
"Ugh..." the pale man groaned, shifting a bit. "Holy shit..."
Shilo's eyes widened to twice their normal size and gripped his hand tighter, now with both of hers, and begged whatever god had just answered her prayer not to be messing with her.
"Are you okay?" she asked, worry straining her voice as she held his hand to her chest.
He didn't answer right away, just sat up with more strength than he reasonably should have, and bent forward, breathing hard as though he had to remember how to breathe at all. For some ungodly reason, his head hurt like hell and he felt sore all over, like he had been sleeping on that cold marble all night. Watching the snow falling confused him slightly and he looked around as if he no longer remembered where he was. The night had cooled down significantly from what he thought he remembered - when had it started snowing? He turned to gaze at the white marble he had been laying on - there was no blood, just clean, white stone, minus its snow covering where he had fallen. Shilo stared up at him when he turned to her and he watched her wrinkle her nose as she sniffled, her dark eyes moist and her face blotched red as if she had been crying. Taking her completely by surprise, he wrapped one arm around her and pulled her close, kissing her square on the lips just like that old picture of the sailor and the nurse.
"What was that for!?" she squeaked when he pulled back, blushing to the roots of her hair. "What happened to you!?"
The Graverobber looked up at the sky - the gleaming white crescent moon reminded him of a Cheshire cat grin - then looked back at Shilo with one eyebrow raised.
"Kid, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," he quipped, putting a hand to his head, wondering why his hair felt strange. "Let's just say I found out why head injuries are bad for you."
"Oh," said Shilo, confused by this, but not about to press the subject right now. "Just so long as you're okay."
Grinning, the Graverobber drew himself up to sit up straight.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he reassured her, bringing his hand down from his head as though it had only been there for dramatic effect.
Shilo frowned and tilted her head.
"Look at your hand..." she told him softly, her voice shaking.
He gulped as he got a good look at his hand and realized why his hair felt the way it did - his glove had been soaked through and his hair matted to his head with his own blood. Trying to brush it off, he wiped his hand on his pants, and when that didn't work, took the glove off and tossed it somewhere since there would probably be no salvaging it. Shilo looked sick - that much blood, this soon was almost too much for her. The Graverobber couldn't say he blamed her, but he had his reputation to keep up. He couldn't react to a little scrape like this - it just wasn't like him and he couldn't let anyone, even Shilo, see him get worked up over it even a little bit. However, he couldn't help the slight widening of his eyes as the thought passed through his head - that hit could have killed him!