Author's Note: Final book! Thanks for sticking with me for so long.

Book 3: Hell

The buzzard jolted as the landing gears touched down on the tarmac, bouncing Brick in his seat. He squeezed the throttle and, after easing the craft to a halt, killed the engines. He climbed out of the cockpit with the rotors still winding down behind him.

He saw that he'd put the buzzard down askew, halfway off the marks he'd been aiming for, but it wasn't bad considering he'd only been flying solo for a couple months.

"Hey, boss," a slab called, standing up from where he'd been relaxing in the shade. "How'd it go?"

"You tell me," Brick grunted as hauled a chest out of the buzzard's cockpit. It was heavy, even for him, and it banged loudly when he set it on the asphalt.

"All that?"

"Yep. An' more. Left some guys to mop up."

The raider whistled appreciatively. Brick unclamped the chest's latches and kicked it open, revealing the cache of weapons inside. He lifted out his favorite, a Hyperion shotgun with a beetle black shell. He'd already tested it out against its makers. It was a strange weapon, firing a spray of flechettes instead of standard shotgun shells, but it had shredded the Hyperion architects into pulp.

"Take what you want and pass out the rest," Brick said to the raider, who already bent over the stash with barely contained greed glittering in his eyes.

Another Slab slouched against a shipping container, nearly concealed by the shadows. Brick almost called him over, the words died in his throat when the man's head lolled toward him.

It was one of the empties. It looked past Brick, its vacant eyes fixed on some invisible point.

Brick squashed a shudder of revulsion. He crossed the roof toward the stairs, hurrying away from the mutant and the Slab picking through the weapon case. When he stood in the throne room, he stopped to look around. His throne sat before him, and the arena (so named because it was where his guards slaughtered any intruders who got this far) sprawled below. The air was full of the metallic smells of blood and buzzards.

He spotted Rocko leaning in the stairwell between the two floors, wearing a hoody, mask and helmet despite the blistering heat of afternoon. Brick bounded down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and pulled the shorter man into an embrace.

"Hey, babe," he murmured. "I missed you. I was thinkin' we could..."

A voice from the base of the stairs interrupted him. "Welcome home!—Oh."

Brick turned to the voice and saw Rocko, also wearing hoody and mask, but no helmet, and the mask pushed up over his brow to reveal the bemused twitch of his lips. "Am I interrupting something?"

Brick looked back at the bandit he held in his arms. "What the..." he said, and yanked the mask up over his head.

A Slab whose name Brick didn't know - some albino, crooked toothed nobody - grinned up at him, and said, "Sorry, sir."

Brick shoved the stranger away. "Who the hell are you? An' why're you impersonating a lieutenant?"

"Not impersonating, no, sir. Just liked his outfit, so I emulated him. Rocko is a very snazzy dresser."

"Snazzy," Brick said flatly.

"Yessir."

"Well..." he frowned. "Get the hell outta here, Slab. An next time I see ya, you better be wearing somethin else."

The bandit wagged his index finger, grinning wider than ever. "I see what you're saying, sir. You're trying to tell me that I'll never develop my own sense of style if I copy Rocko. That's a good point, sir, very keen."

Rocko met Brick on the stairs and tucked an arm around his waist, a familiar puzzle completed. "Okay, Spaz, get going. Everyone knows you've got a crush on the king."

The toe-head sputtered as he pushed past Brick, hurried down the stairs, and darted out of sight.

"What the fuck is goin on around here?" Brick asked, folding his other arm around Rocko and pushing him against the wall. Even as he asked, he kissed the younger man- a peck on the lips, a nip on the jaw.

Between kisses, Rocko answered. "You'd know, if you were ever home."

Brick chuckled and nuzzled behind Rocko's ear. "You need me around here to service you?"

"Nah. I've been fucking the mailman," Rocko replied, grinning against Brick's lips.

"You're full of shit."

"Am I? You haven't been around much. Maybe I've got a boyfriend on the side. Maybe two, three boyfriends," Rocko said, letting Brick tug him along down the stairs, ducking underneath with him. It was dark under there. Light fell between the risers, casting bands of gold across the two men. Brick paused outside their secret hideaway to study Rocko.

"What?" Rocko asked. "What're you looking at?"

"Nothin. Just, I like lookin at your face. How come you always wear that mask?"

Rocko shrugged. "Donno."

"Yeah, you do. But it's been years! Most of those guys are dead now."

"Not all of them."

"Then I'll kill em! Just tell me who they are. You shouldn't have to hide your face just because of those assholes."

"Drop it. Nobody's going to kill them."

"Why not? After what they did to you, they deserve it. You gotta stop being such a pushover. You're a Slab lieutenant!"

Rocko blew out a humorless snort. "Lieutenant. Come on, babe. You and I both know I'm just a queen."

"That ain't true. You're the one who tells me where to go, what to do...all the shit we've pulled off against Hyperion, that was all you. You point, I go. If you didn't point, I'd just be..." Brick paused, weighing his words. "Chasin my tail."

Rocko laughed—a real laugh, this time, a bright burst of music—and slouched back against the wall, staring up at the slatted stairs above. "I'm a queen, and you're a dog," he conceded.

Brick cupped Rocko's face in both hands and pulled him into a long, languorous kiss. When they parted, Rocko had a strange expression.

This time, it was Brick's turn to ask. "What?"

"I don't know how to say this. What I said earlier, about the boyfriends...I wasn't exactly joking."

"Huh? You got a..." Brick said, and paused, because suddenly the earth seemed to gape open, threatening to swallow him. "You got a boyfriend?"

"No, not that. Just someone I'm interested in. And we haven't done anything. We flirt a little, that's all."

"Why're you tellin me this?" Brick asked.

"I don't know." Rocko blinked, shook his head. "Actually, I do. I'm just afraid to say."

"Spit it out," Brick said. His chest burned- indigestion, bile displaced by the sudden slide of his animal. It sensed his pain, and it promised reprieve. No. Not Rocko.

Not Rocko, not Mordecai, it seemed to hiss, slinking back into the depths of Brick's unconscious. You never let me have any fun...

"We've been together for a long time, but what are we? King and queen? Commander and Lieutenant?" Rocko asked. "What am I to you?"

"You're...you're my..." Brick's hand reached automatically for his necklace, curling into a fist around the key and twin paws.

"You said you love me, once."

"I still do."

"Then say it again," Rocko demanded.

"I..." Brick tried to continue, but he couldn't. The word caught in his throat, much larger, somehow, than one slim syllable should have been.

Rocko sniffed. "That's what I thought. And I do love you, but I'm tired of waiting around.

"I'm sorry I'm never here. But Hyperion is always up to some shit, and I've gotta be out there, leading these idiots. I gotta-"

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh."

"If you can't, if you don't think you'll ever fall in love with me, I just want to know. I've been wanting to tell you for a long time, and after I met this guy..."

"This guy," Brick repeated bitterly. "Is he bigger'n me? Better looking?"

"No, and no. I don't think so, anyway."

Something boomed outside, like a thunderclap inside a metal drum. There came a whine of damaged rotors, a sound that Brick recognized as the cry of a wounded buzzard, followed by a crunch, then silence. Brick hadn't even heard the buzzard take off. In the ongoing battle against the Hyperion base, Buzzards alighted from the tarmac so often that Brick had begun to tune them out.

Out of the silence rose an unmistakably girlish laugh. She said something, but was too far away for Brick to make it out, and a male voice replied. His tone, gravelly and roguish, lit a smile across Rocko's face. He forced it away, but not before Brick saw.

"Speak of the devil," Rocko said.

"That's him?" Brick asked. Rocko nodded, he slipped out of the hollow behind the stairs. They'd never made it as far as their secret room. Brick wondered if he and Rocko would ever again sneak off down there for an afternoon fuck, or if his hesitation had costed him his last chance. Fuck it, he thought as he mounted the stairs, crossing the space to his throne. Who needs it?

He sunk into the leather seat, propped an elbow on the salvaged loader arm that served as an armrest, and set his chin in one palm with a careful look of bored indifference. The arena was empty. The royal guards lurked in the shadows, waiting. A few bruisers, some marauders and raiders, and a pack of barely contained psychos. Not the regular Pandora lunatics which had greeted Brick when he'd arrived on the planet five years ago, the sanity bleached out of them by the ruthless desert sun, but the other kind- the soulless vessels that sometimes staggered out of the east.

At first, Brick had turned those mutants away, but as the war with Hyperion claimed more Slabs, they needed anyone they could get. The empties served as canon fodder, expendable meat to be sent first onto the battlefield. Brick could hear them gibbering in their pen below, not talking, exactly, but chortling with something like delight. They sensed the commotion outside, and it stirred them.

One of the Slab officers met Brick's eyes, his hand resting over the throttle that would release the mutants. Brick shook his head.

The girl, barely more than a child, arrived first. She burst through the small entrance (someone had thought to seal the larger hangar) and landed on the ground with the grace of a cat. She sprung up, firing on the castle guards without missing a beat. She strafed along the wall and ducked behind a pylon to spare her rapidly depleting shield.

The man jumped down next. He retrieved some kind of block from his bandoleer and threw it out. A turret clattered and clanked outward, at least twice as large as Roland's had been, and it turned an unfeeling eye on the nearest Slabs. A volley of machine gunfire burst from its barrel, making short work of shields and flesh alike.

"Axton!" Rocko yelled and leaped back through the doorway he'd emerged from. The turret spackled the wall around the door with bullet holes. "Put that thing away!"

"Sorry," Axton said, laughing. He slipped a hand underneath the turret to press something that sent it slithering back into itself, but not before it ripped apart the helpless caged mutants.

"Thank you," Rocko snipped, emerging from cover. "Hey, guess what? The king's in today."

"No shit? Where's he at?"

Brick stood up from his throne. Axton didn't see him rising in the shadows, but the girl did, and, meeting Brick's gaze, tapped her companion on the shoulder. Axton looked up just as Brick leaped down, crouched, then stood up to his full height. He towered over the pair of fighters.

"Whatchu want?"