Nostos 45
Title: Nóstos 45
Summary: This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with Change. After the bombs fall, Critic must lead his people on an epic journey in search of a place to call home.
Characters/Pairings: Linkara/Spoony, Linkara/Marzgurl, Critic/Chick, Tom/Mickey
Rating: R- descriptions of death, violence, sexual abuse, and angst.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This work is based on characters played by the great guys at Channel Awesome.
Author's Note: This is a full blown post apocalyptic rewrite of Kickassia (with added superpowers!). Somewhere between an homage and a parody of post-apocalyptic movies, it makes deliberate use of tropes common to the genre. For those interested, a list of tropes and references will be provided at the end.
Warning and Triggers: For a homage/parody, this is a serious fic. It includes references to mental illness, child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, sexual assault, rape, torture, dub-con situations, good people doing bad things, bad people doing worse things, and issues dealing with gray morality. Please do not read if any of this may trigger you. Warnings include character death, violence, descriptions of gore, and some surprisingly mild sexual content.
Personal Disclaimer: The thoughts and actions of the characters do not reflect the personal feelings or opinions of the author
She might have been beautiful once but the desert had taken that from her, leeching the red from her hair and turning it a brittle dun. Open ulcers marked her cheeks, white strands of flesh drooled from forehead and nose.
She wound her fingers through the links of the fence to tug and rattle, but the man at her feet lacked the energy even for that. He watched with the dull apathy of true exhaustion, head leaning in against her leg.
Once Critic would have turned the pair away. Once he would have killed them where they stood and said nothing to the others of what he'd done.
Now he reached out to turn on the monitor above Molossia's door. They waited together, crowded in close to see what these strangers might say.
And the woman gestured to the man, and said the only thing she could.
"Please."
And one by one, they looked to Critic.
Because even now, even after everything, old habits die hard.
The woman, Lupa, carried a wolf beneath her skin, amber eyed and dark furred.
The man, Todd, was a mimic, the very creature Critic had used as a boogeyman to frighten them into compliance. His face any face but his own, stolen features to hide the scars, the ruin created by a raider with acid touch.
They were a challenge, and Spoony reveled in it.
The pair was escorted down to the dorms, given food and care, then locked away. For a week and a day Spoony rarely left the lab, would have slept there if Linkara hadn't sought him out and given him good reason to return to their bed.
The long hours in front of computers and beakers settled in his back as a heavy, dull ache. Migraines blossomed, shattering his thoughts again and again at the cusp of epiphany.
Spoony had never had so much fun.
He'd loved making reviews, had managed an anxious happiness while in the company of friends, but this was a simpler joy. One he'd denied himself, the excitement of discovery, the thrill of curiosity satisfied.
He'd learned as much as he could of Change already. Four innocent little vials with baby blue stoppers, the liquid inside tepid beige. It would be years yet before he might come close to undoing what had been done, but what could not yet be mastered could be leashed.
The data was safely stored away, but still Spoony had hesitated before he asked Linkara to burn the vials to ash.
There were some temptations no man should be expected to resist.
Linkara had been the first test subject, his energy blasts reduced to a harmless green fizzle by rude bracers of steel. Insano had preened at his own success, but Spoony had only wanted to know if he could. Linkara wore them still, and proudly, markers of a choice he'd chosen not to make.
For Joe it had taken surgery, an implant to boost the signals of a deadened nervous system. His first taste of chicken loaf had been a revelation, but his grin had never faltered even as he complained it tasted twice as bad coming up as going down.
Not everyone was so eager to be rid of their abilities. Critic found thin comfort in emptiness beneath his feet. Lord Kat and Tom could not remember how it felt, to be ordinary and weak. Larios' control over radio waves did him no harm, Jew Wario was most comfortable than when he was unseen, and Film Brain had no desire to be vulnerable.
As for Spoony...
Once he would have given much to trim away his excess, those pieces of himself he called by another's name. But that had been before he understood that lust had its perks, fear its uses. He owned them now, as Critic owned his guilt, and becoming SWS or The Bum didn't make him any less Noah.
But there were also those who longed to be once again normal, but whose powers were more complex. For them, it was only a matter of time. Someday Paw would speak, Phelous would have a less lethal handshake, and Benzaie would walk on two legs instead of four paws.
There was no pride in Spoony's certainty that he could accomplish such miracles of science. For the first time in his life, he knew what he was capable of.
Now he held Lupa and Todd's freedom in his hands.
Lupa lifted her chin so Spoony could fasten the collar at her throat. Todd was less sure, ducking his head to hide his true face and trembling when Spoony pulled the silver band tight around his forehead.
"If you change you'll get a hell of a jolt," he warned them both, "It won't kill you, but you won't get up for awhile."
He stepped back so Critic could step forward. This was the first time they'd welcomed newcomers since Liz came knocking at their door, but already it had the feel of a ceremony.
Critic recited the rules. No guns, no powers, an escort at all times. Not forever, for if they proved themselves the day would come when the rest would vote, and they would take their place as citizens of Molossia.
The pair nodded along, staring up with both fear and gratitude shining in their eyes. But when Critic was done with the speech he floated down, smiling at them so shyly they smiled back on reflex.
"Hello," he said, "We're awfully glad you came."
Even after a week Lupa and Todd ate with their arms curled round their plates, still wide-eyed at abundance. Between spoonfuls of stew they smiled at each, at Critic and the rest, stupid grins that stretched their cheeks.
Todd was still shy, his face a flesh waxwork of crags and shadowed hollows. He kept his head bowed when he could, but they could have told him they'd seen worse, had witnessed a friend burned to red meat and ash.
"You came from the city?" Critic asked when their bowls had been scraped clean.
He already knew the answer, to this question at least, but the time had come for the pair to share their story with the others. To their credit they pretended no confusion, only began at the beginning. Taking it in turns to share a familiar and tiresome tale of life and death among the ruins.
"I still feel like I'm dreaming," Lupa said, "You don't know what it means, to find out Molossia is real..."
But she laughed at her own words, because of course they knew. They'd walked the same path, crossed over each other's footprints through time to arrive at this place of shining white.
"There were others," Todd told them, "There was a raid, and we got separated. If they make it here..."
"They'll be welcome." Critic spoke gently, imagining too easily the gunfire, the screams, the horror of leaving friends behind.
He'd known already that these two would be the first of many. They were ready now, to follow through on the promise Critic had made to himself and his friends so very long ago. Ready to be better.
And Critic laughed, full throated and sudden, because it never would have been possible without Chick. Her manipulations had set Spoony on the path to healing, had given them an Insano willing to create as well as destroy.
Now there lasers embedded in the canyon walls, thumbprint locks on their guns, bands at Lupa's throat and Todd's forehead to neuter their gifts and render them safe.
How his twin would have hated it if she'd known!
"Eat," Film Brain said at Critic's shoulder, and his voice was firm.
Critic sighed but focused on his stew, grinding his teeth against rehydrated beef. Across the table Lupa eyed him as if she worried for his sanity, but Critic made no attempt to hide the tears tickling the corners of his eyes.
After laugher came tears, for Critic missed his sister.
There were still days when he was sick with want, when he lay shaking, stricken by a chill that would not fade, longing for her warmth at his back.
"Eat," Film Brain said again, and Critic was quick to lift his spoon when the other man glared.
A little piece of silence, awkward and strained, before Lupa cleared her throat. "We really can't thank you enough. I was so sure...everyone else thought I'd lost it, but I knew you would let us in. It's silly, but I felt like I knew you already."
"We really are happy to have you," Critic said. Strangers at that table, filling in the empty chairs, and that was as it should be. "Trust me, it gets boring hanging out with these fuckers all day. You'll see."
That earned him a swat from Joe. He sat to Critic's left, Film Brain to his right.
The chair at the head of the table stood empty, and that too was as it should be.
"Hold up..." Phelous said, "What do you mean, you knew us already?"
It had passed Critic by, the strangeness of those words. Not a hunch that the mythical Molossia existed, but a belief that those who ruled her would be kind.
"Your show," Lupa answered, "We would sit and listen, and I guess...I thought...you made us laugh, and I thought you couldn't be dangerous if you made us laugh."
She scowled at them then, trying to look accusing while still grateful for her fully belly. "The nights got a lot longer when you stopped."
Had they mentioned Molossia in the broadcasts? Critic supposed they must have, probably when they were new to the place and giddy for it.
She turned then to rummage through her pack, and though Chick knew it had been searched and scanned he felt a shiver of unease. Still, he caught on reflex the bundle she tossed to him.
"A present," she said.
"Just don't blame me," Todd added, "It was all her idea."
Critic stared dumbly down. No weapon, just a flat box with no weight to it. Bright with primary colors, so garish and unfamiliar now, and for a moment Critic could make no sense of it.
"Oh," he said, when he understood, "Oh, you bitch."
A cartoon bat, a fairy girl, and for the first since his sister's departure Critic laughed without also weeping. He held up DVD case up high so the others might admire his prize
"That's one upside to the end of times," Spoony said with a smirk "No more shitty direct-to-video sequels."
"We thought maybe you just ran out of things to review," Lupa said.
But her smile faltered when she saw their faces, the way they each looked to Critic and then away.
They'd talked about many things over the past weeks, but never this. The way Critic had so callously stripped them of their past, and that he had been proven justified by Lupa and Todd's arrival did not lessen the hurt.
"It wasn't safe," Linkara explained, "If Larios here can mess with radio waves, it makes sense to assume someone else could track them."
The tension eased, and one by one the others nodded. Even now, with all their security measures, they saw the risk to it. It was one thing to take in those who stumbled across Molossia on their own, quite another to invite discovery.
Oh, yeah...I guess it does make sense. I'm sorry."
'The nights got a lot longer when you stopped.'
"You know what?" Critic said, "Fuck it. I'm tired of making sense. I say we start broadcasting again. I was wrong. People were listening, and it mattered."
But he gestured them back into silence when they roared their approval, and saw their joy turn to worry at what he might say next.
"There's just one thing we need to do first."
The voices were different, but the message was always the same.
It crackled out from radios across the wastes, and those who listened built up a legend from the words.
They whispered of him, the man in black who wandered the desert. They said that he was old, that he was young, that he took what he wanted, that he shared his water with strangers. The voices that called to him were the ghosts of the innocents he had murdered, or the family he had left behind to help those in greater need.
'Snob'
'We miss you.'
'Come home.'
Next
Summary: This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with Change. After the bombs fall, Critic must lead his people on an epic journey in search of a place to call home.
Characters/Pairings: Linkara/Spoony, Linkara/Marzgurl, Critic/Chick, Tom/Mickey
Rating: R- descriptions of death, violence, sexual abuse, and angst.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This work is based on characters played by the great guys at Channel Awesome.
Author's Note: This is a full blown post apocalyptic rewrite of Kickassia (with added superpowers!). Somewhere between an homage and a parody of post-apocalyptic movies, it makes deliberate use of tropes common to the genre. For those interested, a list of tropes and references will be provided at the end.
Warning and Triggers: For a homage/parody, this is a serious fic. It includes references to mental illness, child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, sexual assault, rape, torture, dub-con situations, good people doing bad things, bad people doing worse things, and issues dealing with gray morality. Please do not read if any of this may trigger you. Warnings include character death, violence, descriptions of gore, and some surprisingly mild sexual content.
Personal Disclaimer: The thoughts and actions of the characters do not reflect the personal feelings or opinions of the author
She might have been beautiful once but the desert had taken that from her, leeching the red from her hair and turning it a brittle dun. Open ulcers marked her cheeks, white strands of flesh drooled from forehead and nose.
She wound her fingers through the links of the fence to tug and rattle, but the man at her feet lacked the energy even for that. He watched with the dull apathy of true exhaustion, head leaning in against her leg.
Once Critic would have turned the pair away. Once he would have killed them where they stood and said nothing to the others of what he'd done.
Now he reached out to turn on the monitor above Molossia's door. They waited together, crowded in close to see what these strangers might say.
And the woman gestured to the man, and said the only thing she could.
"Please."
And one by one, they looked to Critic.
Because even now, even after everything, old habits die hard.
The woman, Lupa, carried a wolf beneath her skin, amber eyed and dark furred.
The man, Todd, was a mimic, the very creature Critic had used as a boogeyman to frighten them into compliance. His face any face but his own, stolen features to hide the scars, the ruin created by a raider with acid touch.
They were a challenge, and Spoony reveled in it.
The pair was escorted down to the dorms, given food and care, then locked away. For a week and a day Spoony rarely left the lab, would have slept there if Linkara hadn't sought him out and given him good reason to return to their bed.
The long hours in front of computers and beakers settled in his back as a heavy, dull ache. Migraines blossomed, shattering his thoughts again and again at the cusp of epiphany.
Spoony had never had so much fun.
He'd loved making reviews, had managed an anxious happiness while in the company of friends, but this was a simpler joy. One he'd denied himself, the excitement of discovery, the thrill of curiosity satisfied.
He'd learned as much as he could of Change already. Four innocent little vials with baby blue stoppers, the liquid inside tepid beige. It would be years yet before he might come close to undoing what had been done, but what could not yet be mastered could be leashed.
The data was safely stored away, but still Spoony had hesitated before he asked Linkara to burn the vials to ash.
There were some temptations no man should be expected to resist.
Linkara had been the first test subject, his energy blasts reduced to a harmless green fizzle by rude bracers of steel. Insano had preened at his own success, but Spoony had only wanted to know if he could. Linkara wore them still, and proudly, markers of a choice he'd chosen not to make.
For Joe it had taken surgery, an implant to boost the signals of a deadened nervous system. His first taste of chicken loaf had been a revelation, but his grin had never faltered even as he complained it tasted twice as bad coming up as going down.
Not everyone was so eager to be rid of their abilities. Critic found thin comfort in emptiness beneath his feet. Lord Kat and Tom could not remember how it felt, to be ordinary and weak. Larios' control over radio waves did him no harm, Jew Wario was most comfortable than when he was unseen, and Film Brain had no desire to be vulnerable.
As for Spoony...
Once he would have given much to trim away his excess, those pieces of himself he called by another's name. But that had been before he understood that lust had its perks, fear its uses. He owned them now, as Critic owned his guilt, and becoming SWS or The Bum didn't make him any less Noah.
But there were also those who longed to be once again normal, but whose powers were more complex. For them, it was only a matter of time. Someday Paw would speak, Phelous would have a less lethal handshake, and Benzaie would walk on two legs instead of four paws.
There was no pride in Spoony's certainty that he could accomplish such miracles of science. For the first time in his life, he knew what he was capable of.
Now he held Lupa and Todd's freedom in his hands.
Lupa lifted her chin so Spoony could fasten the collar at her throat. Todd was less sure, ducking his head to hide his true face and trembling when Spoony pulled the silver band tight around his forehead.
"If you change you'll get a hell of a jolt," he warned them both, "It won't kill you, but you won't get up for awhile."
He stepped back so Critic could step forward. This was the first time they'd welcomed newcomers since Liz came knocking at their door, but already it had the feel of a ceremony.
Critic recited the rules. No guns, no powers, an escort at all times. Not forever, for if they proved themselves the day would come when the rest would vote, and they would take their place as citizens of Molossia.
The pair nodded along, staring up with both fear and gratitude shining in their eyes. But when Critic was done with the speech he floated down, smiling at them so shyly they smiled back on reflex.
"Hello," he said, "We're awfully glad you came."
Even after a week Lupa and Todd ate with their arms curled round their plates, still wide-eyed at abundance. Between spoonfuls of stew they smiled at each, at Critic and the rest, stupid grins that stretched their cheeks.
Todd was still shy, his face a flesh waxwork of crags and shadowed hollows. He kept his head bowed when he could, but they could have told him they'd seen worse, had witnessed a friend burned to red meat and ash.
"You came from the city?" Critic asked when their bowls had been scraped clean.
He already knew the answer, to this question at least, but the time had come for the pair to share their story with the others. To their credit they pretended no confusion, only began at the beginning. Taking it in turns to share a familiar and tiresome tale of life and death among the ruins.
"I still feel like I'm dreaming," Lupa said, "You don't know what it means, to find out Molossia is real..."
But she laughed at her own words, because of course they knew. They'd walked the same path, crossed over each other's footprints through time to arrive at this place of shining white.
"There were others," Todd told them, "There was a raid, and we got separated. If they make it here..."
"They'll be welcome." Critic spoke gently, imagining too easily the gunfire, the screams, the horror of leaving friends behind.
He'd known already that these two would be the first of many. They were ready now, to follow through on the promise Critic had made to himself and his friends so very long ago. Ready to be better.
And Critic laughed, full throated and sudden, because it never would have been possible without Chick. Her manipulations had set Spoony on the path to healing, had given them an Insano willing to create as well as destroy.
Now there lasers embedded in the canyon walls, thumbprint locks on their guns, bands at Lupa's throat and Todd's forehead to neuter their gifts and render them safe.
How his twin would have hated it if she'd known!
"Eat," Film Brain said at Critic's shoulder, and his voice was firm.
Critic sighed but focused on his stew, grinding his teeth against rehydrated beef. Across the table Lupa eyed him as if she worried for his sanity, but Critic made no attempt to hide the tears tickling the corners of his eyes.
After laugher came tears, for Critic missed his sister.
There were still days when he was sick with want, when he lay shaking, stricken by a chill that would not fade, longing for her warmth at his back.
"Eat," Film Brain said again, and Critic was quick to lift his spoon when the other man glared.
A little piece of silence, awkward and strained, before Lupa cleared her throat. "We really can't thank you enough. I was so sure...everyone else thought I'd lost it, but I knew you would let us in. It's silly, but I felt like I knew you already."
"We really are happy to have you," Critic said. Strangers at that table, filling in the empty chairs, and that was as it should be. "Trust me, it gets boring hanging out with these fuckers all day. You'll see."
That earned him a swat from Joe. He sat to Critic's left, Film Brain to his right.
The chair at the head of the table stood empty, and that too was as it should be.
"Hold up..." Phelous said, "What do you mean, you knew us already?"
It had passed Critic by, the strangeness of those words. Not a hunch that the mythical Molossia existed, but a belief that those who ruled her would be kind.
"Your show," Lupa answered, "We would sit and listen, and I guess...I thought...you made us laugh, and I thought you couldn't be dangerous if you made us laugh."
She scowled at them then, trying to look accusing while still grateful for her fully belly. "The nights got a lot longer when you stopped."
Had they mentioned Molossia in the broadcasts? Critic supposed they must have, probably when they were new to the place and giddy for it.
She turned then to rummage through her pack, and though Chick knew it had been searched and scanned he felt a shiver of unease. Still, he caught on reflex the bundle she tossed to him.
"A present," she said.
"Just don't blame me," Todd added, "It was all her idea."
Critic stared dumbly down. No weapon, just a flat box with no weight to it. Bright with primary colors, so garish and unfamiliar now, and for a moment Critic could make no sense of it.
"Oh," he said, when he understood, "Oh, you bitch."
A cartoon bat, a fairy girl, and for the first since his sister's departure Critic laughed without also weeping. He held up DVD case up high so the others might admire his prize
"That's one upside to the end of times," Spoony said with a smirk "No more shitty direct-to-video sequels."
"We thought maybe you just ran out of things to review," Lupa said.
But her smile faltered when she saw their faces, the way they each looked to Critic and then away.
They'd talked about many things over the past weeks, but never this. The way Critic had so callously stripped them of their past, and that he had been proven justified by Lupa and Todd's arrival did not lessen the hurt.
"It wasn't safe," Linkara explained, "If Larios here can mess with radio waves, it makes sense to assume someone else could track them."
The tension eased, and one by one the others nodded. Even now, with all their security measures, they saw the risk to it. It was one thing to take in those who stumbled across Molossia on their own, quite another to invite discovery.
Oh, yeah...I guess it does make sense. I'm sorry."
'The nights got a lot longer when you stopped.'
"You know what?" Critic said, "Fuck it. I'm tired of making sense. I say we start broadcasting again. I was wrong. People were listening, and it mattered."
But he gestured them back into silence when they roared their approval, and saw their joy turn to worry at what he might say next.
"There's just one thing we need to do first."
The voices were different, but the message was always the same.
It crackled out from radios across the wastes, and those who listened built up a legend from the words.
They whispered of him, the man in black who wandered the desert. They said that he was old, that he was young, that he took what he wanted, that he shared his water with strangers. The voices that called to him were the ghosts of the innocents he had murdered, or the family he had left behind to help those in greater need.
'Snob'
'We miss you.'
'Come home.'
Next