The Change
Summary: the world is wicked, the world is cruel. No one knows this better than humanity's emotional sewer system, Johnny C. But floods are a thing of the past, and the world is spiraling out of control. It seems like maybe, this time, the lights have gone out for good.
Story: a crossover of Johnny the Homicidal maniac, Dies the Fire, Invader Zim, and misc. names and places. In which the old world ends, and a new world begins.
Leading characters: Johnny C., Devi D, Todd 'Squee' Castil, and the Zim and Dib duo.
Warnings: Murder, language, references to cannabalism, of course Johnny C. himself, and religious stuff.
Author's Note:I want to make it clear that I have no agenda. Of any kind. Ever. Just wanted to make that clear.
19th
"They aren't perfect," Derek sighed, "but without the skills and experience to draw on, this is as good as we'll get."
He and Pam stood in front of the eight foot wall, regarding it with critical eyes. The half logs that made its basic unit were cut so that the flat end faced inwards, robbing potential invaders of hand—or foot—holds. Mortar filled every crevasse and gap, pebbles mixed into the gray in particularly thick spots. They had stopped short of plaster, deciding that it would be a waste of valuable material and an all-around layer of concrete would do better anyways—which it did.
Five plus labor-intensive days of cutting, loading, hauling, unloading and setting up produced a thick perimeter around Johnny's house and two on either side, enclosing the houses on the streets in front and behind as well. They very nearly gave up when they realized how many trees were needed to encircle the area.
"It's not bad," Pam replied, patting the rough stone coat. "And we're still working on it."
Derek frowned. "Still? Why haven't I heard anything about this? You know, since I'm the closest thing we have to an engineer and all."
The idea of not being in the loop irritated him. It also brought up flashes of some dark thoughts about being no-longer-of-use, maybe getting turned out on his ear for lack of helpfulness. Of course, he squashed those thoughts with well-practiced ease—logically, he knew that these people would never do that. They were too nice… and they did still need him, anyways.
"Relax, Derek," the woman smiled, knowing well what passed through his head at moments like these. "We'll be digging a moat of sorts, gathering up briars, you know… menial labor type stuff. There was no reason to bring you in on this."
He returned her grin. Goddess, but he was glad Devi brought her along. Derek wasn't sure how he would have coped, knowing that she was out there fending off red-teeth by herself, without him.
"Pam," he started, "Do you remember when I joined the coven?"
She laughed. "Now there's something that's hard to forget. You showed up in a kimono, wearing lipstick."
"It was face paint," he insisted, "and my boyfriend said it brought out my eyes."
"It brought out your something," she smirked, rotating a finger at her temple in the international gesture for a few screws loose.
"Ah, well, I broke up with him anyways."
"And good riddance too. Now, why you wouldn't try dating my sister…"
"Somehow, she just wasn't my type…"
The two of them laughed at the running joke. Everyone knew what Derek's type was.
Had it really only been five years since they met? Some days it felt like a lifetime. He often caught himself remembering her in his school years fondly, only to realize that Pam had never been there, and wonder... But, it was only to be expected: you couldn't be that close to someone and still keep them filed in one set of memories.
"I'm glad you made it into the house," he said lowly, suddenly very serious. "I don't know what I would have done if you'd stayed out there."
She smiled at him, taking his hand. "Like I'd really let you go off alone? C'mon, you know I hate that city."
He chuckled, but something about her response made his chest hurt.
-Z?-
Oddly enough, it was easier for Johnny to tolerate human contact when he was away from the house. Maybe it really was a kind of claustrophobia that made him so murderous. Emotional pressure instead of physical spaces, perhaps? And he just... needed to get away from her... and him.
He shouldered his pack and reentered the trudging line, quickly finding himself at the front somehow. It was strange how he always ended up leading—it could be that people tended to look for guidance in unstable characters, or that his skill and strength had garnered the trust of the troupe despite their better sense… or maybe he just walked faster than everyone else.
He turned to observe the column behind him, more or less discretely. Seven of the now thirty people in the house walked behind him, about half from the original group and half newbs. Devi had decided that having specific people thoroughly learn a task would be more efficient than everyone sort of knowing how to do everything. So here he was leading an expedition into the Humboldt forest, showing the way and generally how to get things done.
'Really hunting,' he thought, eyes closed, 'will be an interesting experience.'
Johnny's policy on killing animals had always been complicated and unsteady. On the one hand, he detested the way mankind used and abused everything they got their hands on, be it nature or other people's emotions. And animals had never really done anything to him, except that one chihuahua that had stalked him during one of his paranoid-schizophrenic episodes… but aside from that, they'd never done anything to him that deserved retribution, and were often as much victims of humanity as he was.
On the other hand, he'd done some really cruel things to a few animals during his particularly insane periods, and he still couldn't find a way to justify it besides 'they're just animals'. Which made him uncomfortable, because it sounded very human.
The trek continued while he attempted to unravel his thoughts, and he led the group almost on automatic, passing country neighborhoods and avoiding the more densely populated areas. He'd traveled this way before, and learned from experience that big roads were to be steered clear of—the Change had affected this area too, making the populations just as dangerous as back home, if not necessarily cannibalistic.
As they passed a rather large bolder that Johnny dimly identified as a landmark, he felt a light tapping on his unoccupied shoulder. Startled, he rounded on the source with a dagger in each hand, ready to kill.
Tenna grinned back at him.
Satisfied that he was in no danger—and a bit put out that she hadn't been intimidated at all—Johnny turned back to the road and walked on, the black woman falling into place next to him.
"So… Nny…" she practically hummed. How anyone could be that completely contented all the time was infinitely beyond Johnny.
"Yess?" he answered, hissing slightly. As Devi's best friend, he supposed that she was entitled to call him that, but it brought home the fact that even his name was beyond his control.
"What exactly is going on with you and Devi?" she asked lightly.
"Hm." He put away his knife. "She's leading a ragtag assortment of survivors into the post-apocalyptic-world-of-tomorrow with only her wits and what she can steal while living at my run down shack of a house and fending off roving cannibal bands, as I teach her and everyone she's saved how to fight to kill."
Blink. Blinkblink. "I meant romantically."
"Oh," Johnny replied, scowling, "well then, nothing. And it's none of your business anyways."
The woman turned suddenly serious, regarding Johnny with appraising eyes. "There are two things you don't realize. One, I'm not stupid. And two, if you and Devi did get into something, it has the potential to put everyone in the house at risk."
Johnny said nothing, unsure of what was happening. A somber Tenna was... just freaky.
"Oh, and I know all about your disastrous date," she added, "and while I am a naturally forgiving person, I still have to wonder about Devi's safety."
Even though he deserved it, the murderer was getting very tired of everyone assuming he had no self control. "Well you can stop, please. She doesn't..." love me "...I would never hurt her" Now "and she knows it." Now.
"Oh, and last time was just a fluke, I suppose. But! If Devi trusts you, then so do I." The smile returned full force, "So, that means you're off the hook for killing all those people, at least in my book."
What the fuck? "How many of you know about that?"
Back to her bubbly self, Tenna answered, "Oh, just me and Tess. I don't know how Tess knows, but I just put two and two together. Not that the others are stupid, but Devi never told anyone else about… you."
They walked in silence for a bit, not thinking about anything in particular but still together. Johnny could see why Devi liked the woman, even if the eternal happiness chafed at him. The madman was a pretty unhappy man in general, although less so lately, and he'd spent so long seeking out contentment…
The Change had brought him that, in a strange way.
Johnny halted the line suddenly, realizing that he had already ventured into the forest on autopilot. Well, here is here, wherever it is. Whatever that meant. He really confused himself at times.
Show time.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, turning to the students, "Today, you learn the basic staple of surviving while trapped in a needy flesh casing: food. Or, more specifically, getting a hold of food. Half of you come with me; I'm going to show you how to kill things that aren't human. The other half goes with her; you're doing the vegetarian side of things."
Once the six learners split between Pam and Johnny, their teachers took off in opposite directions with necessary tools in hand.
"The first rule of hunting," Johnny began, not quite sure what he was saying, "is not to let them sense you. This means that you can't go crashing around like the pathetically civilized humans you are."
He led them to a spot between to oak trees at the top of a hill, where a thinner bit of forest lay out ahead. This was where he'd discovered his talent for hunting, a bit over a week ago. Yet another thing he knew that he really shouldn't have. He'd come out here to get away from the house and learn something useful, only to find himself up and stalking deer in the middle of the night.
"They can't smell you, either. That means you stay downwind or you take a fucking bath. Now, the best way to do this is with an arrow, but you can do it with a trap if you have the equipment and talent…"
-Z?-
Pam looked the group of tents over, listing their occupants' names in her head—she'd always been bad with those, but repetition helped. Tenna and Vatusia she knew, of course, but then there was Joseph and Caitlin and Ted and… uh, Bill… damn. The fact that they had such white-bread names was not helping her memory in the slightest.
She sat at the fire, admiring the crude shelters they had managed to get up in the clearing. She wished they could have found a ranger's cabin, but she wasn't even certain that they had any around here… so everyone settled for a cloth roof and a fire.
Pam herself was up quite late into the night, unable to sleep. Insomnia hadn't troubled her since she came to the house, but out here, away from strenuous chores and surrounded by peaceful nature, sleep became elusive once more.
A shadow joined her at the fireside, stick thin and awkwardly graceful. Johnny. She raised her head to greet him, but caught a glimpse of his face and stopped short. The look was emotionless, his eyes far, far away from here. For all that he sat beside her, she was as alone as she ever had been.
She went back to staring into the fire, trying to make out shapes in its flickering form. Her coven was one that favored Native American ideology, and she was a firm believer in signs. The same way she'd seen eagles in smoke clouds and knots of trees since she was small, there were messages worked into the universe if you just let your mind take them in. Fire was perfect for that, such a primal, seemingly random force of nature…
"Do dreams really have any meaning?"
Pam snapped up, eyes landing on Johnny who—though still far away—seemed to be speaking to her.
"Of course, they could be nothing but the idle threads of the subconscious, randomly winding together memories and wishes and fears, slick-tongued liars that twist secrets and untruths into vile riddles, labyrinths of confusion and illusion… but somehow, I've begun to wonder if there isn't something more to it than cheesy-doodle commercials and childhood trauma, something darker and more pervasive… something disturbingly honest…"
He looked at her for the first time, grave and stiff, sunken eyes and gaunt cheekbones gathering shadow in an almost inhuman way. Pam was… afraid. Not for her physical self, but for her soul… or something like it.
"Maybe there is," she answered quietly, carefully. "I think things are connected to other things by invisible lines, like tapestry threads. And in dreams, we sink under the conscious mind—you know, to the subconscious—and we can see the threads that connect us to everything else."
Johnny looked vacantly at her, thoughtful and still somehow cut off from the world.
"Is there something bothering you?" she ventured, hoping he wouldn't be offended. "A reoccurring dream? A confusing motif? Something about your amnesia?"
"Yes, no, maybe. I can't put it into words."
Pam sighed, turning to face him fully. There was something about Johnny that she could just sense, something lost and old. Very old. It made her curious, and oddly enough, sympathetic. Even if he had introduced himself by bodily assaulting her.
"Why don't you try?" she pushed, "Look, you're an insomniac, right? What else do you have to do tonight?"
Of course she knew the signs… she had them herself. And he was an amnesiac on top of that, what an unfortunate combination.
She just wanted him to talk to her. Whatever he had been through, she was sure she could relate, and whatever he was seeing, she'd take it as it came. After he'd offered them all so much security, the least she could do was listen.
Johnny dreamed.
In his dream, he wandered between mountains and deserts, through primeval forests and over shorelines, sometimes alone, sometimes in company. Always, the destination called to him, leading him from one ocean to another as the seasons passed and many suns set. The pulsing in the earth grew stronger as he neared his destination, the sun shone brighter as he entered the city; all mud bricks and cattle pens. One man caught his eye, and he felt that the pulsing spread from there. Johnny bent and retrieved a stick from the dirt, noting its sharp end. He approached the man.
The world shifted, and once again Johnny made his trek across the earth, stopping for the night at the site of a town he had passed once before, only to find a lake in its stead, the inhabitants long dead and buildings many years ago crumbled to dust.
He dreamed that he lay in a hayloft in a barn that was not his own, while a family that was not his came and went below. He dreamed that he sat in a stranger's house, drinking wine that was mostly vinegar, attempting to explain that he had no name. He dreamed that he looked up at the stars and saw worlds behind them, living worlds that pulled the strings of the universe and moved the sun across the sky. He dreamed of death and killing, and of a soft longing to know other things.
He dreamed of a woman's eyes.
And throughout the visions, there was a voice that chanted, winding words that were not words between objects and people and thoughts, showing him the connection of all things and the purpose of his existence, if he cared to listen. It called him by a name that had no words, but sounded like justice and wrath and duty and hope all together in a single sound, impossibly combined.
Johnny dreamed.
ToBeContinued