"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end." ~Author Unknown
They were reborn in a flash of fire and agony, falling through their lives onto the ever-present, scorching sand.
Jet Star took a deep, stabilizing breath and attempted to turn the world the right way up, but once he'd gotten the ground beneath his feet properly, he looked around at the vast blue sky with a bank of clouds gathering like ghosts in the east and the heat-rippled sand, only to find that he didn't recognize a grain of it. The highway was nowhere in sight, nor could he see the hills they'd always used as compass markers for the way south.
Beside him, Kobra Kid stood up and surveyed the surroundings; when he likewise realized that this was territory he'd never trekked, he turned to Jet with a resigned sigh and said, "So I take it we're dead?"
"Yeah," Jet replied shortly.
Seeing nothing better to do, they decided to walk in the direction of the cloud bank in hopes of escaping the worst of the midday heat. After about half an hour of this, they noticed that, while logically they'd be tired and thirsty and have sweat sticking to their backs, they felt just fine, as though they hadn't been walking at all. Kobra chuckled darkly at this observation and chalked it up to "one of the many perks of being shot in the face."
Jet Star simply smiled crookedly at his friend's razor-sharp joke, and when the inevitable repressed thoughts leached into his mind like bile, he swallowed them once more and said that they should test this discovery by running the rest of the way.
"Why?" Kobra stalled, with every impression of his usual lack of concern, though Jet could feel Kobra's eyes scratching vainly at the walls of reflective glass Jet wore under the pretense of keeping out the sun.
He recalled that he was hanging on the end of a question. "So we can get there faster, of course." He kept his face just as unmarked and opaque as his sunglasses, and after a few seconds, Kobra realized he would get no explanation for the vague unease drifting downwind from Jet Star, and fell into step next to him as they dashed across the dazzling sand.
True to form, when they neared the cloud bank enough to see the shadow it cast on the sand, they were as well-rested as though they'd just woken up, but both slowed to a stop feet from the shade. The contrast between the piercing light of the dunes and the darkness was so sharp it was like looking off the edge of a cliff, but that disturbing mental image wasn't what kept them from taking another step.
Soon after the shadow began, it darkened more than was natural for cloud-cast shapes to do, and a little ways in from that was the fog. It hovered relentlessly, oppressively, and Jet hoped he and Kobra were thinking the same thing: it would've been better to come face-to-face with some great monstrous beast than this too-innocent mist, its depths shrouding unknown but surely terrible things…
"Well, let's go." Kobra Kid, it seemed, was on a different wavelength, not receiving the same needle-sharp pricklings of fear.
(He was actually worried for Jet, but that didn't stop him from being a little irritated when his friend started singing a stupid oldies tune to comfort himself in his first steps into the darkness- irritated because he couldn't remember the words.)
Wrapped up in a warm Tom Petty song, Jet walked cautiously into the fog. There was nothing visible, dangerous or not, and he reached for Kobra's hand so they wouldn't get separated. As he wandered onward, the phrase "let not the blind lead the blind," sprang into his head, and he almost laughed, but choked it back as a huge wall of blackness loomed out of the fog in front of them. The song ended right then, the cold and fright he had been fending off with it seeping through his jacket, so it wasn't until Kobra approached the ominous silhouette that he dared step forward and stretch out a shaking hand to touch the apparition-
It turned out to be…a wall.
Further investigation revealed that it was part of a building, and not until they had located the doorway- there probably had been a door there once, but it seemed to have been blown out from the inside, if the burn marks on the frame were any indication- and looked into the dimly fluorescent-lit room that somehow was empty of fog did it dawn on them: they had seen this building before. Or, more precisely, the last time they'd seen it had been more than a month and another life ago, on Jet's birthday.
"What's the old storage shed doing here?"
When he took into account that not only was Kobra equally as clueless about the shed's existence, but also that neither of them had any idea where "here" was, Jet figured he had no cause for surprise when Kobra answered his rhetorical question with a puzzled shake of his head.
They stepped into the room, gazing around at the bits of glass scattered on the floor, the shattered windows with the fog still lurking outside, the barren concrete walls.
Suddenly the feelings Jet Star had been struggling to restrain broke free and set upon him. He was hit with fresh terror and sadness at the idea that they were dead, and what were they going to do, what was there to do, except wander forever in the same wasteland they had long since tired of living in? Worse still, he could almost hear the dying breaths of those Dracs they had killed today (or whatever day it had been; it seemed like eons ago, but the pain was new). Had he condemned them to the same fate, this endless, joyless purgatory? How could he have done something so terrible?
And floating up in his mind, as clear and searing as though it was branded into his brain, came the memory that used to wake him up at night and fill him with terror. He saw blinding, deathly light shoot through the bus; heard the sizzling and crackling of the electrical components as they fried; gagged as his nostrils were assaulted with the stench of the burning bodies of innocent people…
Jet Star's mind finished vomiting up images, and he collapsed to his knees among the dust and broken glass before literally vomiting, after which he fell over, shaking. Kobra Kid, naturally, ran to his side to see what was wrong. Jet could not find words to describe the anguish, and merely stared up into Kobra's shades, even as Kobra again tried to catch a glimpse of Jet's eyes to determine the depth of his pain, only to be met with his own miniscule reflection, glaring futilely back at his own pitch-black sunglas-
Okay, this was getting stupid.
Jet mustered the muscle strength to pull off his shades and reveal his tear-streaked face, and allowed Kobra to help him sit up. His eyes fell on the broken bits of glass around him, lingered on the razor edges; he picked one up, thinking that the pain he'd put so many people through could hardly be matched with such methods, but repentance had to start somewhere.
Kobra grabbed the shard from his hand and threw it across the room. "Don't," he chided, suspecting Jet's plans.
Jet shook his head, trying to clear out the sorrow; he managed to rid himself of his growing mental list of things to do with tiny pieces of glass, but the dull ache of his depression remained. To his disgust but not surprise, he could see dried blood soaked into his jacket. Whether it had always been there was unimportant; it was not his own, and he could not decide if he wished it was or not.
As a distraction, he looked back at Kobra, and noticed that his friend was still wearing his sunglasses, but they were lighter than he thought they could be, clear enough that the outline of Kobra's eyes showed through. He watched as Kobra blinked and took a deep breath as though steeling his nerves, before rolling his eyes at what Jet would later realize was the corny thing he was about to do.
Kobra, who had to be the least empathetic person Jet knew, said brusquely, "C'mere," and welcomed him into a hug.
Exhausted to the point where moving a finger would've taken incredible willpower, he leaned over and felt Kobra holding him up. Out of the cold, static-shade of grey clouding his mind, a small point of light seemed to form where his neck rested on Kobra's. It spread warmth through him, washing all the sleepiness and sorrow away like sunshine on sheets. Strength returned to him, came back as if it had never left, and he drew back from Kobra (whose sunglasses had darkened to match the gloom outside) feeling happier than he had in weeks.
Jet Star wasn't sure what had caused this abrupt change in his mood, but he was grateful for it; when the two of them stood up and left the dank storage shed, it took mere moments of walking before they saw light through the mist, which hadn't been so bad after all, and not even the bloodstains on his jacket could dampen the contentment he'd found.
They would not stand for this, the injustice of being slaughtered in some rebel's vengeance jag. It was brutal and humiliating, what he'd done to them, and more than that, it wasn't fair.
But nothing was fair in war, and since there was, as far as Stan was concerned, still one of those on, it made sense to exact retribution for the crimes done to them in any way they could.
He was proud to be the leader of the Outpost 9 Militia, as they called themselves, and he was also very proud to have been chosen as such for having killed one of their most famous enemies before he was taken down in that sneak attack along with the rest.
Stan had killed Jet Star and seen Kobra Kid die, and he wasn't going to let them forget that in a hurry. If he couldn't get back at the one who had actually felled him, well, this was the next best thing.
The squadron of ex-Dracs picked up their metaphorical pitchforks and torches and set out on a hunt for Jet Star and Kobra Kid, and a little vengeance of their own.
He was not entirely sure what had happened, but it seemed to have involved siphoning feelings like stale gasoline. Yet another perk of being shot in the face, then, was this new interconnectedness, clearly just the thing for an introvert-bordering-on-recluse like Kobra.
He did not regret taking his friend's depression- everyone needed a little help sometimes, after all- but he had to admit, it made things a lot harder. For instance, he hadn't told Jet what he'd done, so his friend's well-intentioned questions about whether he was feeling okay were difficult to answer. He was also finding it a bit of a challenge to hide his random moments of crying-inconsolably-behind-a-shed, especially when there weren't any sheds around.
That, and Jet Star had had a hell of a lot of issues that Kobra hadn't realized existed until he'd absorbed them into himself. Great.
Eventually, Kobra suggested they go find somebody to talk to. There had to be other dead people out here someplace. Jet agreed, saying that they could seek out some Dracs and talk things over. Kobra could tell he wanted to apologize for anything and everything bad that had ever happened in those Dracs' lives, whether they could possibly be his fault or not. Part of him had a detached respect for the slightly crazy nobility of that idea, and part of him was simply bored and felt that walking around and finding people to say sorry for how much dying sucked was at least a little bit more interesting than sitting around and brooding about how much dying sucked, in that it was a change of scenery.
Oh, and part of him had an uncontrollable hunger for revenge.
It took a ton of work and even more walking, but they finally found the first Drac who didn't flee in terror at the sight of them- like Kobra was really a threat with Jet Star to keep him under control.
They met her in an office building, and after a bit of empty small talk during which Kobra wondered if he wouldn't rather sit outside and stare vacantly at sand dunes, she asked why they were here. Jet explained about his wanting to talk, and seeing how she was dealing with being dead, and if there was anything he could do to help…
"Maybe we could each have a talk- alone?" Kobra suggested. It was the first thing he'd said since the beginning of the conversation.
Jet looked at him a little strangely, but shrugged, said "Sure," and walked out to go wait in the lobby, closing the door behind him.
The Drac raised an eyebrow at him too, so he figured he'd better get to the point. "I'm not here for what my friend's here for. I don't want to hear how you're doing or whatever."
"I guessed as much," she replied. "You don't strike me as the touchy-feely type."
"I'm not. I want answers."
She sighed, as though he was making some routine request she'd heard far too many times to take seriously. "Haven't got any."
He stared her down in growing irritation, and clarified coldly, "You work for BLI. You must've had some idea what was going on when they took over. Why were a bunch of rock bands arrested randomly and tortured?"
The Drac dropped her casual attitude in favor of defensiveness and confusion.
"Okay, first off, I don't work for BLI. I worked for them, meaning that I don't anymore. We're all dead here, remember? There's no Better Living to work for. And anyway, I didn't get that job until long after they came to power, so I have no clue as to why or how that happened, if it did and isn't just a rumor. I've heard some pretty crazy ones, you know, like how- "
"It is not a rumor." Kobra cut her off, his voice dropping as he tried to control his anger. "I was in one of those bands!"
Her eyes widened. "Well, I-I'm sorry for you, but- "
"And you have no idea why this happened? You worked for them for years, and yet you don't know what they have against us?"
She glanced around as though searching for some explanation on her paperless desk. "I think they might've been afraid that you'd, like, rebel against them and they wanted to catch you before you got the chance."
He snorted. "And that worked real well, didn't it? We only rebelled because they attacked us! We were only fighting because they tried to take our freedom."
"Who are you, William fucking Wallace or something?" She was on her feet now, glaring back at him. "At what point did your 'freedom fighting' turn into 'mindlessly slaughtering people because you could'?"
"The same time your 'catching rebels' turned into 'killing artists and everybody who wears a color that isn't grey'!"
"So clearly both our sides were successful in murdering each other," she snarled bitterly. "And good riddance!"
He hit her in the face, the blow coming not from righteous anger as he'd intended, but resentful confusion. He'd realize later that he was trying to figure out who she was saying "good riddance" to, and which side she was on now.
But at the moment, he was more concerned with her response as she staggered back, grabbed the edge of a filing cabinet for support, dabbed the blood from her nose, and lunged forward. She seized a stapler from her desk and had it poised to throw by the time Kobra slipped out and shut the door.
Jet Star was sitting, legs crossed, in the lobby, flipping idly through a magazine. He looked up, and as Kobra was too confused, frustrated, and plain tired by then to figure out how to explain what was waiting for Jet, he simply said, "Your turn."
He sat down in a chair as far from the door as possible- he didn't want to hear what would happen- and as he waited, he thought about two things.
The first was that this visit had been entirely pointless, as he hadn't learned anything he didn't know already, and probably never would, since he had apparently understood the situation long ago and had been foolishly hoping for some great, demystifying explanation other than BLI just being stupid.
The second was that Gerard had been right when he'd said that Kobra was the weakest link. It didn't matter whether he'd meant it or not, because it was still true. There were obviously more ways to be weak than Kobra Kid had realized.
This was not how it was supposed to work.
Dying was supposed to have been a way out, the ultimate way out when life got too hard and it was all too much to deal with. He had thought of it as an escape, always told himself as he hid in the corner of his room after a fight with his father, "It'll be okay. You can always get out if you need to. You haven't used your last resort."
Well, now Sweet Revenge had used it, and what a resort it was!
Being stuck out here in the middle of the stinking desert, again, was hardly worth getting shot in the chest. He hoped that Korse had died too, or the whole thing was a waste of time.
At least everybody knew what side he was on now: the side of the disappointed suicide.
This whole dying thing was not all it was cracked up to be. Sure, one could argue that this was eternal peace, wandering aimlessly through his curtained mind, alone, now and forever. He hadn't thought that maybe eternal peace was a bit too long of a time frame to have to live in. Forever was more than he'd bargained for.
He picked his way across the sand, in no particular direction. He might've been wandering in circles for days; what did that matter? He didn't need to drink, to seek an oasis, or to eat; he slept out of habit, and to have something to do at night other than walking.
And all the while the curtains were there at the edges of his mind, the tattered fragments of years past, of lives past, of sorrow come but not quite gone. Why they were there, or what they meant, he could never quite figure out, but their mysterious, omnipresent fluttering soon became frustratingly, eerily incomprehensible.
There were no other people, or so he thought, which was why he was so shocked one day when he crested a dune and saw a child sitting, as though waiting. The kid was young, about six or seven, skinny, with black hair and rings around his eyes from crying.
Or is it from all the sleepless nights?
He had no idea where the impulse came from, that the kid hadn't been sleeping and probably should, but it was there, and he saw no reason to doubt it now.
"Hey," Sweet Revenge said, walking up to the kid, making an effort to be nice.
The kid stared at him forlornly. "H-hi."
"Are you okay?"
"No," the kid whimpered. He had an oddly familiar voice, like he was saying lines from a movie Sweet Revenge had seen ages ago and never cared about enough to remember fully. "I lost my mom."
"Aww," he replied empathetically, no longer even feeling the stab of pain that accompanied his own loss. Revenge offered the kid a hug, which he accepted. "That's awful."
"Yeah," the kid sniffled into his dusty old jacket.
Déjà vu was a creepy feeling, in Sweet Revenge's opinion, and he was not pleased when it snuck up on him like this.
He stood up and the kid took his hand. They walked for a little ways in silence, until he decided to find out more about his new companion. "What's your name, kid?"
The response was a glance from those unsettling eyes, eyes that he was sure he'd seen somewhere before, and that voice, a little calmer now that its owner wasn't quite so stranded in the desert, answered the one thing Sweet Revenge didn't need to hear.
"Cameron."
Whatever Jet Star had been expecting, it wasn't this.
They'd gone in and met with Mara, who was kinder than she had reason to be, and apparently an office worker to the last. He still wasn't sure what they were doing there, but plans began cementing themselves in his mind as Mara talked about how she was bored and didn't really have a job or anything to do, but still came here because maybe something interesting would happen or she'd find someone to hang out with.
She was lonely and bored, and Jet could totally relate.
He went out in the lobby to let Kobra talk to her about God-knows-what, and as he waited, he puzzled over what to do. He glanced through some cooking magazines sitting on the table, marveled at how realistic they were- because they'd long since learned that everything here was a construct of somebody's mind, and that they could create expansive office buildings of their own had they so desired. So why had they seen practically no buildings?
Then again, Mara had said she preferred someplace out-of-the-way because it wasn't as busy or crowded, so he supposed that they had just wandered away from any cities. The fact that they had grown accustomed to desert wastelands in life didn't make them inclined to leave them in death.
Still, maybe they should try to find a city and get more people to talk to, rather than frequenting these empty stretches of land where the occasional skyscraper jutted out like the skeleton of a wild animal, clawing vainly at the heavens.
Jet Star hated being in the place where San Francisco came to die.
Kobra walked out, and there was something suspicious in the too-innocent way he waved Jet through the door that left him unsurprised to be greeted by Mara, looking furious and brandishing a stapler.
"Get out," she commanded through a bruised nose.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he tried explaining, walking over with his hands up in a gesture of peace.
"Maybe you're not, but your buddy, the one who thinks he's a fucking freedom fighter? Yeah, he's fighting for his freedom to damn well punch people in the face."
Jet was confused. "He's not usually that idealistic…" He was trying to distract her enough that she'd put the stapler down. He edged into the chair in front of her desk.
It worked; she replaced it and sat down facing him, shaking her head. "Man, I just wanted to talk to somebody. I mean, you're a Killjoy. You know how it is to be persecuted."
He nodded. "It's bad." Wishing he had some great wisdom to impart on the subject, he added, "But it gets better. You don't have a reputation as an Exterminator, which helps. You could always go to a city and find something to do there."
Mara sighed. "Sure, why not? More stuff happens in cities anyway. And you don't have to sit around and wait for people to come find you and say they wanna talk but really they want to interrogate you and hit you in the face."
"You're still mad."
"No, Sherlock, I'm suffering from tennis elbow."
This was such a random comment that he burst out laughing. She, too, had to crack a smile; it shone briefly through the clouds of her irritation. Then it vanished again.
He took a deep breath. This was probably a bad idea, but Kobra sure as hell wasn't going to apologize. And atonement had to start somewhere, after all. "Hit me."
She raised her eyebrows. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." Maybe it'd make her feel better.
It certainly seemed to; as he rubbed his aching jaw, which hurt from the aftereffects of Kobra's anger as well as Mara's, he could see that she was grinning in bemusement.
He said "Bye," she said "Thanks," he met Kobra in the lobby, and they left.
It was a start.