A/N: That chapter literally took months to write. I suck.

Anyways, enjoy shizz and wonderful stuff. I dunno. I'm drinking tea and writing and avoiding a huge project for my Geography class.

And shoutout to the amazing Inu-Chan the music friend because SHE'S AWESOME for staying up this late on Twitter trying to figure out what I'm ratting on out. THIS IS IT, GURL.

And, of course, the usual dedication to not only Inu, but also Kira, Melon, and Moonray. Love you beautiful chicas!

~Sunshine

"Um... Relience?"

The dark haired man looks up. "Gogo, what's up?"

She bites her lip. "I was wondering... How's your wound?"

He shrugs. "The bandages hurt like hell, but I think they've stopped bleeding." He holds his hands up to her. "Help me. I wanna walk."

She shifts on her feet nervously. "Relience, I don't think that's a good idea, you can hardly sit-"

"Gogo?"

His dark eyes convey too much desperation.

"Gogo, please."

She huffs. "Alright, but if I drop you, you can't blame me, big piece of dead weight."

She sits next to him on the bed, and slides one arm around his waist, the other hooked around his shoulder. She tries to lift, huffs, and loosens. "Shit, you are way heavier than when I first found you, can you really gain that much weight from having wounds heal?"

"I dunno."

Newsagogo sighs. "Alright. On the count of three, but you're gonna have to help. Or try."

"I... Okay."

"You ready?" He nods. "Okay. One... Two... Three!"

She stands up off the bed, dragging him with her, and suddenly, Relience is rising from the bed with the character of a spring, snapping into a locked-knee position. He winces as he lets his knees unbuckle, but turns to Newsagogo and saying, "I'm fine, just continue carrying me."

She nods, and steps. He slides his right foot forward with hers, and staggers to lift his left foot, but it swings beyond his right foot, planting itself into the dirty linoleum floor. He exhales.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine."

One. Foot. In. Front. Of. The. Other.

"You're... Walking."

He nods. "I am."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees an open door, the bent over form of Arms Dealer as he fiddles with a few controls on a board. He mumbles some nonsense into a microphone, and leans back in his chair. Relience feels that he's staring up at he ceiling, imagining things splashed on the long-since-white surface.

He falls against the wall. "It's tiring."

"Do you want to rest?"

He nods. "Just for a bit, though." He breathes for a long minute, in through the nose, out through the mouth. "Alright. To the door. I wanna see outside."

He continues walking, walking. She places herself a little more under his arm, forcing him to lean against her.

He sees light.

"We... We made it." She sees the dirt on his face getting cut by gentle, gentle tears. He leans his head against her shoulder, and lets himself get pulled into a hug.

"Justin," he whispers.

Newsagogo pulls her head back to look at him. "What?"

"Justin. Justin York. My name."

She smiles shakily. "Sage Anderson."

When they're pulled apart from a small kiss, it's not because of them.

Roar. Grumble. Scream.

They look through the window, to see three men frantically shooting at a pod of Dracs. One of them gets shot in his arm. He stumbles back, and as his dark hair swishes away, he sees the mass of a tattoo on his neck. The other two, one with cherry red hair, the other in a similarly colored jacket, turn to him, screaming.

Arms Dealer runs out from down the hall, yelling, "Newsagogo! What the hell's happening? I heard an explosion-"

"People. Outside. Getting attacked. I can't help because..."

"Let me go," Relience says. "I'll stay against the door, you fight."

"Are you sure? I can't-"

"Gogo."

She sighs. "What?"

"You can."

He pushes himself off her, and falls back against the wall. His knees fold, and he slides into a sitting position on the floor. "Go."

Siren.

Go away, Mad Gear.

Siren, where did you go?

Don't find me. Please.

No can do. Where are you?

Find me.

I could if you told me where you were.

No thank you.

You realize I can hear you?

Doesn't mean you can find me.

I don't hear a response.

I start crying.

Why, why, why, Elliot? What the fuck. Of all things.

I hate Mad Gear for asking. I hate Leopard, Neon, and Sensei telling me to get over it. I hate Crimson for saying nothing about it. I hate Angel for getting over it. I hate the stupid excuse for rebels for causing that Drac sweep. I hate those Dracs for killing Elliot. I hate Elliot for dying.

I hate myself for leaving him behind. For letting him die.

I can only hate.

I continue crying, my sobs getting louder and louder.

I feel someone hugging me. "Siren, it's alright."

"Go away, Gunshot."

"No. Not until you come back with us."

"Please, Gunshot. Leave me here. I wanna die."

"No, you don't."

"He's gone, you don't understand. I'm never getting my brother back."

"But he never left."

"Bullshit."

"No, he's with you. He'll always be with you. No one just dies, Siren. He's here."

"Thanks a fucking lot, hon."

"Siren, think about him. Would your brother want to see you like this? Would he let you just run away and cry? Would he let you just die? You're a Killjoy, Siren. None of us just die, not for anything."

Not for anything.

"Elliot," I whisper through the dark.

"Yeah, Nay?"

"What would happen if we just... Died?"

"What are you saying, like, Dracs got us?"

"Well, yeah, but no. What if just anyone killed us?"

I hear his determine in the dark, in his quivering voice. "I won't let them."

"Yeah, but-"

"Naomi."

"What?"

"I won't let them, we won't let them. Would you let yourself die?"

"What do you mean?"

"Would you let them kill you? Or would you fight, would you make sure they didn't?"

"I'd fight, but what if I can't fight anymore-"

"There's no such thing as not being able to fight anymore. You can always fight more. For your life. We're Killjoys now, Nay, we don't die."

I nod, knowing he can't see my head moving. "I guess."

"Goodnight. Cyanide Siren."

"Cyanide Siren!"

I see Gunshot's woodsy, dark eyes boring into mine. Her blonde locks fly everywhere.

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright? you just spaced for a minute."

"...I'm fine."

"You ready?"

"Maybe."

"Just maybe?" She asks.

I nod. "Just maybe."

We start walking back towards the car.

"You were Poisonous As Hell, weren't you? You and your brother." I nod. "So there's nothing left of it, right? It's gone." Another silent nod. "I'm sorry-"

"Melody, there's nothing to be sorry about."

She nods. "Right, but..." Almost like she's erasing her actions, she shakes her head. "Nevermind."

"What?"

"Nothing. I was going to say I'm sorry your twin died, but if there's nothing to be sorry about-"

"Hey, he died, didn't he? What's done is done. God is almighty, he giveth with one hand and he taketh with the fucking other. There's nothing I could have done." Gunshot's lips purse into a thin line. "Hey, I'm sorry if that offended you-"

"No, there's nothing to be sorry for."

We walk in deafening silence. The car's shining, multi-colored form glints upon the horizon.

"Hey," I say, "I'm sorry, I'm being a complete bitch right now." I stop, outstretch my arms. "Hug?"

She accepts. "I'm sorry."

We peel away and start again at a quicker pace towards the car.

"So," Gunshot Melody says, "Zone 6, yes?"

'Yeah, we should be there this afternoon."

Angel, Leopard, Crimson, Missile, and Jet Star look up.

The tiny, wing-donning girl stands, and storms towards me. "You dumb bitch, you could have died! We couldn't find you, you didn't say anything-"

"So this is you're sister," Gunshot comments.

Angel turns, giving the fourteen year old her classic dirty look. "Who the hell are you?"

"Wow, you two are actually very similar."

"No, seriously, who are you?"

Gunshot smiles. "Gunshot Melody of Zone 12, at your service."

"Wonderful," Angel spits, and turns back to me. "What the actual fuck, Siren? You disappear without a trace, for two weeks, and then come back with some blonde chick?"

"Okay, yeah, your sister is a little shit, sorry."

"Oh, I am?"

Gunshot crosses her arms. "Yeah, you are. Your sister saved my life, the least you could do is be polite."

It shuts her up pretty damn fast.

I lean over and whisper to Gunshot. "Someone needed to tell her."

"You're welcome."

Missile stands up, crosses the room, and tugs Angel's hand. "Angel, that was really obnoxious."

"Well- I- Um- Uh-"

Missile looks up at me, smiling. "Siren, how was your trip?"

To mimick her, I wear a shit-eating grin. "It was wonderful! Have you met Gunshot Melody yet?"

Gunshot catches on, smiling all-too-wide and reaching out a hand to shake. "Hello!"

The two shake hands, exaggerated, swinging their arms up and down in a wave of sorts. "It's a pleasure to meet you!"

"Same!"

I see Leopard stand, a tangled mass of growing baby bouncing in his arms. "Nice to know that you're making friends, but seriously. Siren, what were you doing? You scared us shitless." Paradise yowls. "Oh, hush, kid."

The door creaks open, and a dark haired girl slides in with her no-longer-white clothes and slightly feral eyes. "So this is the Diner."

Missile squeals, letting go of Angel.

Suddenly, the two, bouncing ten-year-olds are the only people in the room, the rest of us dumbstruck as they launch into a flurry of rapid-fire recounting of the last two years, complete with hugs, exclamations, and a few tears.

I suddenly realize that no one's here.

"Hey, Leopard?" I call, "Where is everyone?"

He sighs. "Come with me."

I hear Gunshot make a hesitant sound next to me. Leopard sighs, points to her, and says, "you too."

He walks us through the diner, past squeaking, sand-stained linoleum and cracking pleather booths, in through the swinging doors of the kitchen.

"Everyone's been searching for you, Siren."

"...What?"

Leopard rolls his eyes. "Jeez, you're dense." He sighs again, this time much heavier. "Party, Ghoul, and Kobra went towards Zones 10 and 11, looking. Neon and Sensei were right behind them, but they buzzed in this morning, they're coming straight back. Refugees. They say their safe house got set on fire."

"...Shit."

"Yeah, right?"

"Wait." Gunshot Melody makes a sound that's somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle, looking at me and shaking her head. "Why would everyone go after you? Why would all the people in this place just drop everything to find one person? I mean, they'll turn up, right?"

"Well..." Leopard shrugs. "I might have exaggerated a bit. I mean, we were running real low on supplies. Specifically, meds and gauze. You were just an extra worry that gave us the kick in the ass to move."

"Oh, thank you."

"We love you too, dear." His brief smile fades off. "But seriously, You vanish into thin air for two weeks. Missile Kid tells us after the first nine days, chris'sakes, that you've gone to find someone, and then you show up with a fourteen year old with a limp-"

"-It's healing! I got grazed in the leg!"

"-and a ten year old that Missile hasn't stopped jumping on as of yet, so would you please tell me what the hell happened?"

I sigh, looking down at my feet. I watch my toes twitch inside my shoes for a few seconds.

I feel Gunshot's hand on my shoulder, her hair grazing my cheek, her lips close to my ear. "You should probably tell him. Just saying."

I huff. "Um. Okay. Okay. Sure. You know what?" I slump my shoulders. "Yeah."

"...So?"

I shrug. "Okay, so maybe a week after we got here, sometime either before or after that, someone started talking to me in my head."

"...In your head."

"Yes. She said that she was Missile Kid's sister. And she said that she was leaving BL/ind's headquarters. And she needed someone to pick her up. And she said she knew she could trust me to get her."

"So you didn't question it and you left. That's so stupid, Siren, we thought you were dead!"

"Of course you thought I was dead, look at how we live! And I saved someone's life, thank you! Why are even arguing? I saved someones life, Leopard. Two people's lives, actually. You're welcome."

"...She actually did." Gunshot grimaces tiredly. "Siren found me in the middle of Route Guano, bleeding and unconscious. If she didn't find me..." She shrugs, though the movement seems a little bit aggressive. "I dunno where I'd be right now. Just a corpse. A ghost."

His lips are about to form something, but he swallows the words instead.

"You got that right," Gunshot spits. She turns around, shouldering my arm. "C'mon, Siren, let's go."

I bite my lip, feeling a little guilty about leaving Leopard alone, but Gunshot looks angered. I hand the blonde a fleeting look, and follow the fourteen-year-old outside.

She's no where in the main part of the Diner. I scan the group of people. Mad Gear and Missile Kid still look like they're catching up, but somehow, Angel's managed to make her way into the group. Crimson is in a corner, playing with Paradise. I catch Jet Star's eyes; he nods, understanding, from the corner of the room, and nudges his chin to the door.

I find her in front of the diner, walking out into the asphalt, crossing her arms as she storms away.

"Gunshot!" I start to run after her. "Gunshot... Melody!"

She turns. "...Hey, Siren."

I brake myself to a halt, my heels kicking up dust. "What happened back there? Are you okay?"

She shrugs. "I'm alright, Siren." She huffs. "He just had no right to go ripping on you like that. That wasn't fair. Seriously. You saved my life, you fucking drove out to go find Mad Gear and bring her back, and hell, you can protect yourself! It's not like he had to worry about you."

"...Actually, he did."

The confident smile that Gunshot's feeding me starts to fall off her face. "...What?"

I sigh, touch her back, and point with my shoulder. "Walk with me. There's something I need to tell you."

She nods, furrowing her eyebrows, confused, but she still follows me.

"My brother died about a year ago. Give or take. He was my absolute best friend, my ally. He and I could practically read each other's thoughts. So, when he died... I just felt like I had no meaning. My own twin, my other half, died in my arms. I still have the shirt that was soaked in his blood."

"...Oh."

I nod. "So, after that, I just went into a downward spiral. I wasn't fighting as well, I couldn't remember things, I wouldn't even wake up. I had even lost some of the extent of my powers. I mean, for god's sake, I was severely depressed, and I wasn't getting any help. You can imagine how well that could have possibly ended."

I sigh, and look up into the too-bright, too-blue sky.

"One night, a month before my seventeenth birthday, I ran outside, and just walked around. Waiting for someone, anyone, anything, to kill me. Maybe a coyote. Maybe a Drugged. Maybe a Drac. I just found a space in the middle of a field, lied down, and waited for death to come."

"...What happened?"

I shrug. "What happened? Death never came. I fell asleep in the middle of a field. Angel found me, and I went back to the warehouse."

"...That's why no one trusts you." She looks at me, as if her woody brown eyes are trying to drill into my soul. "You tried committing suicide."

I nod. "No other reason for it."
"...That's really heartbreaking, Siren, Goddamn."

I shrug. "I suppose. To me, it still makes a great deal of sense."

Christa leans a little closer to the threshold of the door, bending herself over the tray of coffee.

"...I want immediate response, Korse. Even a low-life like you knows the importance of that stupid kid. She's Better Living Property! We're already getting reports from implanted cameras that the kid's made it past Zone 4."

"And how do you know where she is?"

"We saw her get picked up there. A couple of stupid girls picked her up. They had a car, covered in their stupid Killjoy pictograms."

Christa rolls her eyes. Graffiti, idiot.

"And you weren't able to track the car?"

"The car hasn't been cataloged yet. Otherwise, we could have activated other cameras to track it to see where it was going."

"...Did you get pictures from the car, or..."

The CEO hands something over to the Exterminator. A manila file. He opens it, sweeps his eyes over the contents. His eyes dart to the door, and Christa ducks back behind it, heart kicking against her chest. Jeez.

"The driver is a girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen," Korse introduces, and when Christa leans over the door again, he's pointing to someone on the picture. "We're guessing that her height is between five foot five and seven. we know that, naturally, she has dark hair. We know that she's not originally from here, and we have footage that would track this girl back to traveling in a bright green van from Droughthaven. We're trying to communicate with the three Exterminators based out of there to see if we can track her."

"And the others?"

"This girl, next to her, is a Freak that we identified as being called Gunshot Melody. She's about fourteen, and she stands at five two. Very dangerous. We found her in Zone 12. We decided not to detain her, but we did take a blood sample from her to see if we can match her with anyone in the city."

"And, tell me, Korse."

"...Yes, sir?"

"Why, if you know that the girl is a Freak, why you didn't detain her immediately."

"-Sir-"

"Don't sir me, Korse." Christa can sense the dirty, sadistic smirk on the CEO's face. "You're starting to become too lax with your job. And just so you know, I can Demote you. Would you like that? Having a chip put in you? Becoming the very things you once controlled? Maybe be one of Daed's servants?"

"...No, sir-"

"Good." The CEO sits back, relaxed, in his seat. "Now, Korse, when this was taken, was our subject in the car?"

"Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. But we are theorizing that she went in the general direction of the one mile range of Missile Kid."

"Missile Kid?"

"She's a ten year old rebel that is treated like a daughter of sorts by the gang known as the Fabulous Killjoys. If you don't know who they-"

"I know who the Fabulous Killjoys are, Korse. Now go do your job."

"Oh. Uh..." The papers are shuffled, gathered. "Yes, sir. Goodbye, sir."

"Goodbye, Korse."

Christa leans back against the wall once more, with the tray of coffee balanced in her hands. As the tall Exterminator passes her, she averts her eyes.

"Your afternoon coffee, sir."

The CEO doesn't move his eyes from the paper he's reading. "Yes, Christa, set it over here, please."

She lets the tray settle on the large table, and backs out of the room, straightening her black pencil skirt, the ruffles on the front of her white shirt-

"What do you know?"

She jumps.

Exterminator Korse relieves his back from leaning against the wall. "I saw you leaning from the door. You can hide from the CEO very well, though, I'll hand that to you."

"...Thank you?"

He nods. "Walk with me."

She bites her lip timidly, but strides next to the Exterminator.

"Did you ever know a man named Ray Toro?"

Oh, shit.

Her throat closes up. She clears it, and forces the fear down, as she lies, "I met him a few times. He was a friend of a friend."

She looks up, to find Korse smiling at her. "Okay. But if you were curious-"

He leans his lips next to her ear.

"He is alive."

"...So, where are you kids from?"

The Paintball Sensei looks up from reloading her ray gun with a new battery. "What?"

The woman - Heavenly Hemlock? Something like that - sits next to her. "You don't act like you're from around here."

"We're from..." Sensei shrugs. "We're from Droughthaven."

"Denver?"

She nods. "Yeah. Good ol' weed town. Once upon a time."

The woman chuckles. "I remember that. Colorado was the laughingstock of the entire nation when they fucking legalized pot." She turns to look at the girl better. "What do you miss the most about it? Denver, I mean. Or what's left of it."

She shrugs. "I dunno. The mountains? The air. There was something about the air. And the altitude. The air just felt... Lighter." She looks at her fingernails. "The peace of it. A friend of mine... She lost her brother. And then I had a kid, and shit got dangerous, y'know?"

"You had a kid?" Hemlock makes an intrigued sound. "You're only, like, eighteen."

"Didn't stop me." She chuckles. "I was a dumbass. But I was stupid, and seventeen, and in love."

"And the father is?"

Sensei points her chin to Neon, who's currently trying to entertain the four kids that are sitting next to their makeshift campfire.

"...Well, at least he isn't a jackass. He seems great."

"He is." Sensei smiles. "Great guy, great boyfriend, great dad. Even if he is half a week older than me, only."

There's a tense pause.

"...I lost my daughter six years ago."

"I'm so sorry."

"No, it's fine." Hemlock's sigh is heavy. "She was taken by BL/ind, the bastards. I mean, I hope for the best, y'know? That she's still alive. But... You never know."

"...I'm sure she's alive."

Hemlock turns to her, and her dark eyes are glittering with tears, her face is tainted with a wet smile.

"...Thank you, Sensei."

The campfire flickers white and hopeful.