Disclaimer: anything you recognize probably isn't mine. Also, I tend to loathe RPF, and these are very intentionally the characters as portrayed in the music video.
Notes: Okay, look, I have no idea where this stuff is coming from. I think this crack!verse is just somewhere for my muse to run around naked and high on gummi bears, so I make absolutely no promises about coherence.
WARNING, NO, SERIOUSLY: This is the third installment in the crack!verse series, but you really don't have to have read the other ones for this to make any kind of sense. WHAT YOU DO (almost certainly) HAVE TO HAVE SEEN is KE$HA'S "BLOW" MUSIC VID. I can't seem to stop watching it now that I've started, so you undertake this at your own mental health risk, except if that's a concern then maybe don't be reading this fic series o' mine, either.
Also: this series has turned into a pop-culture-appropriationalooza where anything can be, so fair warning, I'm not trying to make it make sense for anyone but me. If you haven't read the first two (guys' night and girls' night) probably all you need to know that Eliot is notreally!Wolverine and a notreally!Terminator and some other things, and Parker is kindasorta!Tinkerbell, and the rest of the team are similarly interesting but irrelevant to this fic. There. I've done all I can to help you out, and otherwise you're just going to have to ask me what the hell.
Additional WARNING: there are some things in this that are either hilarious or totally disturbing, and I don't know which. It's all really quite weird, however. This is a your-own-risk kind of deal.
Feedback: I do actually have a second part to this rattling around in my head, as if this weren't ridiculous enough. The question is whether I should write it up and post it.
Nate stuck his head around the corner to find Eliot finishing the last sweep-through to remove all traces of the team's tracks. "Eliot! Come on, you're going to miss the group-stand-around, smirking-at-the-mark's-comeuppance thing!"
Eliot opened his mouth, glanced at Nate, and thought better of it. "We have to find a better name for that," he muttered instead. "We have cool cryptic jargon for everything else..."
"Yeah yeah, later. You coming?"
Eliot was saved by an incoming text. He took one look at it and paled. He shoved the bag of loose ends at Nate and immediately dialed the sender back.
"Are you insane?" he yelled a second later. "Tell me this is just another of your idiot stunts, Va– So what if the back door cracked! Even if you don't need a key, you'll – she's what? Well ... okay, what's she wearing?... What? Are you kidding me? And you're still thinking of going in alone?... No you don't. There'll be another chance. At least wait until I can – Jay!" He lowered his now-silent cell phone and scowled furiously at it. "He is such an idiot."
Nate was still watching, poised in the way that said he was ready to ride gallantly once more into another's troubles, which was the last thing Eliot wanted. "You need us?"
"Just Parker. And I need her now," he said urgently. "We done here?"
Nate nodded his permission on both counts, and Parker appeared, tottering slightly in the long evening dress she was still wearing from the con. "What is it?"
Eliot pulled out his earbud before replying. "It's James. He says he's got a bead on Ke$ha and he's going in."
"Alone?" Parker's expression contrived to indicate that even she thought that was crazy.
"That's what I said!" He showed her the message. "Can you get us there?"
She read the location in the text, then scanned their surroundings in a way that suggested she wasn't looking at the hallways. She grimaced. "LA? Four minutes," she estimated.
Eliot almost groaned; this thing would be over in four minutes. But they couldn't just leave the idiot hung out to dry. "Let's go, then."
Parker took a step, then made a sound of frustration at the restriction of her skirt. "Give me that," she said, grabbing Eliot's wrist in one hand and his fingers in another, holding them at an impossibly precise angle and forcing them into a fist.
"Hey!" he yelped over the snikt as three long, silvery claws shot from between his knuckles. "Those aren't toys!"
She ignored him, digging fingers into his wrist in such a way that two claws retracted, then deftly applied the third to the material she held away from her thigh. It slit apart along the razor edge like petals falling away from an old rose, while Eliot glared at her but didn't fight it for fear of stabbing her. She kicked out of the excess material and her high heels, legs now bare to the little spandex undershorts she always wore and hardly decent, but at least with a free range of movement.
She allowed Eliot's last claw to retract, taking his hand instead, and closed her eyes, delicately feeling out the thin air around her with her free hand. Drawing down, she let her fingers slip in and fluttered them deftly along invisible pins, then eased her palm in, pressing down to the shear line. She took a deep breath, checked her alignment, and twisted. "Come on!" she snapped, diving through and jerking Eliot after her.
A little under four minutes later, they stumbled into a dark alleyway under the starless LA sky. A beer bottle skittered off, announcing their presence to no one but a huddled homeless man who was either asleep or ignoring them entirely.
Eliot doubled up, putting a hand out against the wall and dry-retching while Parker scanned the alley. "The club's over there," she said when he began to straighten, his mind still on the journey.
"Via Guadalajara?" he asked accusingly.
"When was the last time you picked a planet?" she shot back. "It picks back, you know!"
"I noticed," he said. Few could travel this way in the first place, and even they wouldn't if they could possibly avoid it. He unkinked himself and made a mental note to do the same, when a stray scent caught his nose. He sniffed the fetid air more deeply. "Faugh ... no, he went this way, around the back," he said, his turn to pull her after him.
They peered carefully around the corner at the back entrance, hearing the muted thud of deafening dance music inside. The muscle-mountain bouncer standing impassively in front of the door was human, but Parker frowned, taking in the little clues. "Eliot ... this is a monohorn joint."
Eliot agreed, glad the con they'd just come from had him in black tie, not just Nate. He ran his eye over Parker; her evening dress was still passable, despite the drastic shortening. The bare feet might be a problem, but then again, maybe not. Monohorns were weird like that. Either way, the dress code would make infiltration that much easier. He smoothed his hair out, pulled Parker's arm through his and strode boldly up to the door.
The bouncer assessed them with that slow arrogance of gatekeepers everywhere, when a sudden crash sounded from inside, only just distinguishable from the music. Eliot and the bouncer reacted simultaneously, the bouncer in alarm and Eliot in violence.
Pulling the door open against the bouncer's unconscious body, Eliot had to duck a blaze of rainbow that flashed out into the backway, and cursed loudly. Parker kept low and followed him in, where a hemorrhage of colors against gothic architecture made it hard to get their bearings.
"Where is he?" she shouted in Eliot's ear over the music.
"I can't ... oh, no..."
Parker followed his gaze in time to see a flounce of long, blonde hair as Ke$ha stood up, a human head in her hands. She struck a pose with it and giggled, a fake, soulless sound that shouldn't have carried through the noise all the way to where they were hiding behind a column.
With a single imperious gesture, Ke$ha made her way out of the club through the front, trailed by the few monohorns not lying dead or rainbowleeding out on the floor.
"Follow her!" Eliot ordered Parker. "And don't get made."
Parker nodded, drawing back and changing in a quick, implosive jingle. However, before she could flit after the group, Eliot suddenly held up his hand. She alighted on the heel of his palm with a chime of curiosity at him, and he shrugged awkwardly. "Just ... be careful," he said.
A little teasing trill at his concern answered him, and he shook her off his palm. "I'm serious," he said, and she tinkled out an I know before darting over the chandelier and out a high window, leaving only the dimmest trail of stealth shimmer behind. He sighed, and made his way through the black tie carnage toward the smell of real blood, where Ke$ha had stood. There were scorch marks everywhere on the walls, the red glow not even entirely faded from some. It had been one hell of a fight.
He went carefully, avoiding the occasional flickering prisms still bleeding from the humanoid bodies as well as the horns on their unicorn heads, which could retain a charge even hours after death. Along the way he found scraps of an evening jacket scattered on the floor, along with a black strapless bra, all of which told him a particular story. He scooped them up, knowing what he would find when he reached his destination.
"Agh, Jay," he said, pained, when he finally found the headless body sprawled out on the floor, untied bowtie pitifully haphazard and white dress shirt showing up a wound in his shoulder. This was going to be messy.
Eliot stripped off his own jacket and hung it off a nearby horn, careful not to touch it or let the jacket drape in any rainbow, then rolled up his sleeves and hefted his friend's body into the nearest bucket chair. Once he got it sitting up, he pulled the smartphone out of the trouser pocket and placed it in its hand, propping it on the lap so it didn't all fall to the floor.
"Okay, you want to explain yourself, here?" he asked, none too gently.
As the hand with the smartphone began to tap out a reply, Eliot folded the bra over and fit the cups into each other, using them as wadding for the ragged mess of the neck. Threading the bowtie through the loop where the bra doubled over and tying it off to keep the cups in place made for an oddly jaunty yet formal field dressing.
The hand twitched with the phone, and Eliot angled it to read. "STRTD WEL. MNSTR CHEEZ.
"– Dude. Muenster? All divas being lactose intolerant is a myth. They just say it to be petulant and whiny."
The thumb flickered over the buttons.
"NO FAVRTE.
"... It's her favorite brand?"
The thumb stood up happily.
"Oh." Eliot thought about this, and started working on bandaging the shoulder with one of the jacket sleeves he'd picked up. "Still not a lot of tactical advantage there, Jay. You know what would have been better? Waiting for me!
"... 2 LNG.
"Right. And how long is it going to take now, Junior?"
The hand holding the phone drooped a little, and was slower to tap out the next part.
"HD 2. F8.
"– No, man. This ain't fate. It's an addiction. A sick, sick obsession, and look what it's done to you! She's probably mounting your head on her wall as we speak.
"... I CN DO THS."
Eliot paused and his head dropped for a moment. "Look, man, I get it. I do. But you know what I'm gonna have to do –"
He stopped when the other hand managed to grab him urgently, while the other typed frantically. He read the message, and sighed. He wondered if he was going soft or getting old or both. "No promises."
Sagging, with little energy remaining, the hands made a placating gesture as if to say that was more than fair, before falling limply to the body's sides. The smartphone clattered to the wooden floor.
Eliot picked it up, mouth tight. He stared at the message, then looked at the lifeless body, and tucked the phone back into a pocket. "I'll try, buddy. I'll try."
