(no subject)
Title: How To Raise A Resistance Fighter
Characters: Grace and the Killjoys. DDD, Show Pony, Brendon Urie (and Panic), Pete, Gabe, Bob, Korse. Mentions of DDD/Show Pony, and slight Kobra/Pete.
Rating: pg
Wordcount: 2723
Summary: Grace learns a lot from the adults around her.
Prompt used: ostracized from society for h/c bingo
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.
Author’s notes: Inspired by many of the things seen in the NANANA video. A white-out Battery City came from dancinbutterfly, and I think the Kobra/Gabe thing was Turps33, but if I'm wrong tell me and I'll change it.
Blind Eye
Colour is important. It’s one of those things that you always sort of know, but don’t really know know until someone else points it out. Like that the sky has stars, if you squint through the haze. Grace has always had colour, and she’s heard her dads talk about colour as rebellion, but she never really got it. It just seemed normal to have red hair or a yellow jacket.
Then Blind Eye comes for the first time. Grace is pretty used to seeing people meet up with the Killjoys, they need to barter for electronics and water and food. In other zones, there are other flavours of kibble, and there are groups with books or more music for Didi. But Blind Eye is the first one Grace has ever met that looks so odd. He’s got longish black hair, dangling over one eye, sort of a little bit like Ghoul. But everything he is wearing is shades of gray. His entire body, there’s not a speck of colour, even his tattoos are all black.
As fascinated as she is, he seems just as fascinated by how they look. The entire time he’s talking she can’t stop staring at him. He doesn’t stare, his gaze moves between all of them, but she knows curiosity when she sees it.
Jet Star explains after he leaves that he’s an undercover man. He actually works for BLI but he’s going to give them plans, when he can, to help take them down. In Battery City no one wears colours, he has to dress colourlessly to fit in. Then Ghoul says ‘that’s not the only place he wants to fit in’ and Party and Show snicker and Kobra tells them they’re both assholes and Grace doesn’t exactly know what they’re talking about, but she knows if it was important they’d tell her, so she doesn’t really care.
Dr Death Defying
Music can change people, change lives, change the world. Didi tells her stories of way before she was born, where tons of people, more than she’s ever seen times a hundred all gather in one big room and listen to people playing music to them, and everyone loves it and everyone dances. He tells her stories of even before he was born, when there were festivals that got so big the police had to be called to set up roadblocks -before the police were really bad, but she still thinks they were sort of bad for stopping people from going to their festival- but everyone there wanted to change the world.
Now music is much smaller. They all sing, to her and to each other, there’s nothing much else to do when the sun goes down, and sometimes they can steal instruments and play them for a bit before they have to be abandoned because they need to run and there’s really only so much room in the Trans Am. But mostly music is just what Didi broadcasts on his radio station, the one that Show Pony helped him build.
Grace doesn’t care that it’s just on the radio now. Her radio is the most important thing she owns, and even when they have to leave Didi and Show for awhile, she feels like she’s still with him when she listens to him talk. She loves everything he plays. And she’s seen a few new people escaping to the desert because they’ve been moved by something they’ve heard. A good riff can rip through your brain like one of BLI’s pills, changing everything in it. The only difference is music makes you think, and the pills don’t want you to. Maybe it’s better to say that a good riff rips through the fuzz that the pills put on your brain. But that’s what Fun Ghoul calls semantics when he and Party argue, and Grace usually agrees with Ghoul; getting caught in details is silly.
The Voice
Alliances will shift. That’s not to say that people will turn their back on the outlaw life. Once you get deep enough in, the only way out is to die. But there are a few different types of zone runners, and sometimes people who stand with their feet in two different places end up picking one.
When Grace was younger, Piggyback used to run with them. He was a big guy, who always lived up to his name, for her and for Ghoul and sometimes for Show. But he didn’t care about rebelling for the making people angry part, he just wanted to make music. Before he joined the Killjoys, he was with a different group. Grace doesn’t remember their name, but she remembers the stories of all the BLI workers they killed. They were a very angry group. And then one of Didi’s friends, she doesn’t remember his name either, but he was short and tattooed, recommended Piggyback hook up with them instead.
He was with the Killjoys for a long time, a few solid years. It was when she was younger, and didn’t usually get to ride in the Trans Am when they went out. But then The Voice came to hide out with Didi for a while. The Voice was in an actual band, except they’d had to split up when Korse came after them. The two with the guitars had shown up eventually, but the drummer never did. And when The Voice left, Piggyback left with them. He cared, he said, but he needed something different. Grace just hopes he’s okay.
Paparazzi
If you think you can take them, you can. He came when she was younger. Kobra kept getting hurt, and Grace was little then, but she remembers everyone being really upset, and especially Party. Party kept trying to teach him, but Kobra would get mad and yell at him, and then everyone would start yelling. It was really bad. When they’d yell, she’d go hide with Didi, trying to hear his broadcasts over the sounds of her dads being mad at each other.
But then Paparazzi came. And he taught Kobra how to fight, mostly how to kick; high, and hard enough to knock signs off posts. Grace liked watching, and Paparazzi saw her watching and asked if she wanted to learn too. She’s not tall enough to kick someone in the jaw like Kobra, but she knows exactly where to grind her heel into someone’s foot, and where to punch to make their entire leg go numb.
Paparazzi left, after Kobra learned. It was weird, he didn’t even ask any of them for food or water or ammo. Instead he just asked Kobra to use the name Kobra Kid, and spread the word of the Kobra. He does, because it’s not okay to go back on a deal, not with another outlaw. Grace can’t even remember what he was called before Kobra Kid. She figures she owes it to Papparazzi. He didn’t ask anything of her, but he taught her, and so she’ll try to remember things how he wants.
Show Pony
If you wait for the perfect opportunity, you will be waiting forever. Nothing is ever perfect.
She doesn’t understand a lot about love, but she knows Show and Didi love each other. But he says that he had to make the first move to make Didi see they were meant to be together. Didi thought dumb things, like his chair mattered, in a bad way. Grace likes Didi’s chair, and she knows she always has. Kobra says when she had colic as a baby the only thing that would make her stop screaming was to be held on Didi’s lap as he whirred back and forth. Show says every time he tried to talk to him about it he’d change the subject, so finally he just had to shut him up with a big smooch. He also says that if she ever finds someone she likes, she should just be happy with them in the moment. Which is silly, because she’s never met anyone her age, and it’s not like she could like her dads.
But it’s not just love. It works for fighting too. They will always be outnumbered. They’re zone runners, which means that it’ll always only be the five of them in the car. The entire world is against them, and while they have allies, bottom line is it’s five bodies in the car. If they tried to wait to fight until they had the advantage they’d never fight. So you just fight anyway.
Fun Ghoul
Go big or go home. He says it’s a quote about sports, which Grace doesn’t really know much about, but she always listens when he talks. Ghoul reads the most of any of them, he always knows interesting things. Even though they don’t play sports, it’s still relevant, because it means do something crazy and wild, or don’t bother to do anything at all.
Ghoul knows how to make things. Kobra’s good at breaking into vending machines and getting them new blasters, but Ghoul can make weapons without stealing anything at all. The things he makes are always fun. Nine times out of ten they explode. Grace likes when things explode, it makes her heart beat way faster and it makes her laugh. Ghoul likes it too, when something works right he smiles for the longest time, not even covering his mouth with his bandanna so sand doesn’t get in his teeth.
Ever since Blind Eye has started working with them, Ghoul makes a lot more things that can explode, but he tries to make them tiny and look like things that don’t explode. He etches KJ into them, into a part that won’t be obliterated, and then gives them to Blind Eye to take back into Battery City the next time he comes. Grace doesn’t know what he does with them, but imagines he blows up the jails, or the rehab places. She wants everything to blow up, so everyone has no choice but to come out and live in colour and sound in the desert with them.
Party Poison
A real hero picks their own origin. Grace doesn’t know who her mom is. She doesn’t know who her dad is either. Well, she knows her dads; Party, and Kobra and Jet Star and Ghoul. But Jet Star has explained that to have a baby you need one man and one woman. A man and a man can love each other, like Show Pony and Didi, but they can’t have a baby, and neither can a woman and a woman. So somewhere she has to have a mom, and maybe one of the Killjoys is the dad that’s part of her.
But she doesn’t know. She’s never seen her mom. That could mean her mom is dead, or her mom is in a BLI rehab, or her mom used to be a rebel but turned her back and is taking all the pills they want her to. Or maybe she’s even working for BLI, and she’s a complete traitor. She’s asked the Killjoys a few times if one of them is her dad, and they all say they are, and when she says that she means the dad-that’s-a-part-of-her, they say it doesn’t matter because they all love her the same. And Show and Didi won’t tell her either.
Party tells her the truth doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is if she can think of a new story, a story she likes. He says imagination is the most important thing, besides loving and fighting, and loving comes from imagining all the best parts of someone, and fighting comes from wanting to make sure you always have the right to imagine, so imagining really isthe most important thing. He says that they all have their own stories for who they are, that’s why they have their special names, and when she thinks of a story she likes the very best, she can make up a better name. And if she ever changes her mind, she can change her name too.
Jet Star
Family takes care of each other. It’s not something she knows from just Jet Star, she knows it when Party sings to her, or Ghoul has her help build something, or Kobra wakes her up from a nightmare and tells her a story. Or when any of them hug her, or hug each other.
But it’s different when it happens. Because Grace is used to the blasters, and things exploding, and you either die or you don’t die, and they never ever die so it’s okay. But then she’s running and Jet Star is trying to take out the Draculoid following her, and all she has to do it make it to the spray painted rock because there’s a blaster stashed there, and when she turns around with it in her hand, the Drac is hitting Jet Star in the face with a bottle.
She screams, not even words, just all the anger coming out loud and hot, and blasts the Drac. When she runs over to Jet Star he gets up, holding his face, and it seems okay. But later that night his eye is swollen shut, and the entire side of his face is purple. He didn’t just die-or-not-die, he got himself really badly hurt for her. Once he falls asleep she takes off her vest and crumples it into a ball and sticks it under his head. If he rolls over and his face touches the ground it’ll hurt and it’ll wake him up, and that’s not okay.
Kobra Kid
It’s okay to be scared. It never seems like any of the adults around her are scared, ever. But she has dreams she can’t remember when she wakes up, and even though she can’t remember them she knows they’re bad.
Kobra’s always there to help her get back to sleep. No matter what time of the day or night she bolts awake from a dream, he’s there. And he never makes her feel like a baby for waking up shaking and needing a hug. He says he has dreams too, and that he knows Party does, and probably Jet Star and Ghoul too. He says it doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t let them stop you from fighting.
Korse
People who think they’re in charge are really dumb. Dumb in both ways; dumb as in they have no brain, as smart as sand, and dumb as in they suck, but Jet Star gets mad when she uses they words they use, like asshole. Grace hates making her dads mad even more than she hates it when they get mad at each other. When they’re mad at each other she knows they’ll get over it, because they get mad all the time and they never leave each other. But when they get mad at her, it always makes her stomach hurt.
Still, Korse sucks. He kidnapped her, him and his stupid Dracs, and that’s not milkshake. And he blasted her family, which is even more lame. But it’s the dumbest thing ever that he’s trying to be nice to her now. He’s offered her flavoured kibble, an actual bed with an actual pillow. He offered her a shower. But he’s dumb, she’s not dumb. The food is laced, if she falls asleep maybe she won’t wake up, or maybe she’ll wake up somewhere that she doesn’t know where she is. And the shower is most tempting, but she knows if she takes it when she comes out her coloured clothes will be gone.
He’s really dumb if he thinks they don’t know what’s going on. He could have killed them, but he didn’t. He wants them to come into the city and try to rescue her, so he can turn it into a spectacle where SCARECROW takes them down. Grace knows she’ll get out of this somehow, but it probably won’t be all her dads rushing BLI. Maybe Blind Eye will do it, or maybe... well, she doesn’t know. But her family isn’t dumb, and she knows she’ll be okay.
Characters: Grace and the Killjoys. DDD, Show Pony, Brendon Urie (and Panic), Pete, Gabe, Bob, Korse. Mentions of DDD/Show Pony, and slight Kobra/Pete.
Rating: pg
Wordcount: 2723
Summary: Grace learns a lot from the adults around her.
Prompt used: ostracized from society for h/c bingo
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.
Author’s notes: Inspired by many of the things seen in the NANANA video. A white-out Battery City came from dancinbutterfly, and I think the Kobra/Gabe thing was Turps33, but if I'm wrong tell me and I'll change it.
Blind Eye
Colour is important. It’s one of those things that you always sort of know, but don’t really know know until someone else points it out. Like that the sky has stars, if you squint through the haze. Grace has always had colour, and she’s heard her dads talk about colour as rebellion, but she never really got it. It just seemed normal to have red hair or a yellow jacket.
Then Blind Eye comes for the first time. Grace is pretty used to seeing people meet up with the Killjoys, they need to barter for electronics and water and food. In other zones, there are other flavours of kibble, and there are groups with books or more music for Didi. But Blind Eye is the first one Grace has ever met that looks so odd. He’s got longish black hair, dangling over one eye, sort of a little bit like Ghoul. But everything he is wearing is shades of gray. His entire body, there’s not a speck of colour, even his tattoos are all black.
As fascinated as she is, he seems just as fascinated by how they look. The entire time he’s talking she can’t stop staring at him. He doesn’t stare, his gaze moves between all of them, but she knows curiosity when she sees it.
Jet Star explains after he leaves that he’s an undercover man. He actually works for BLI but he’s going to give them plans, when he can, to help take them down. In Battery City no one wears colours, he has to dress colourlessly to fit in. Then Ghoul says ‘that’s not the only place he wants to fit in’ and Party and Show snicker and Kobra tells them they’re both assholes and Grace doesn’t exactly know what they’re talking about, but she knows if it was important they’d tell her, so she doesn’t really care.
Dr Death Defying
Music can change people, change lives, change the world. Didi tells her stories of way before she was born, where tons of people, more than she’s ever seen times a hundred all gather in one big room and listen to people playing music to them, and everyone loves it and everyone dances. He tells her stories of even before he was born, when there were festivals that got so big the police had to be called to set up roadblocks -before the police were really bad, but she still thinks they were sort of bad for stopping people from going to their festival- but everyone there wanted to change the world.
Now music is much smaller. They all sing, to her and to each other, there’s nothing much else to do when the sun goes down, and sometimes they can steal instruments and play them for a bit before they have to be abandoned because they need to run and there’s really only so much room in the Trans Am. But mostly music is just what Didi broadcasts on his radio station, the one that Show Pony helped him build.
Grace doesn’t care that it’s just on the radio now. Her radio is the most important thing she owns, and even when they have to leave Didi and Show for awhile, she feels like she’s still with him when she listens to him talk. She loves everything he plays. And she’s seen a few new people escaping to the desert because they’ve been moved by something they’ve heard. A good riff can rip through your brain like one of BLI’s pills, changing everything in it. The only difference is music makes you think, and the pills don’t want you to. Maybe it’s better to say that a good riff rips through the fuzz that the pills put on your brain. But that’s what Fun Ghoul calls semantics when he and Party argue, and Grace usually agrees with Ghoul; getting caught in details is silly.
The Voice
Alliances will shift. That’s not to say that people will turn their back on the outlaw life. Once you get deep enough in, the only way out is to die. But there are a few different types of zone runners, and sometimes people who stand with their feet in two different places end up picking one.
When Grace was younger, Piggyback used to run with them. He was a big guy, who always lived up to his name, for her and for Ghoul and sometimes for Show. But he didn’t care about rebelling for the making people angry part, he just wanted to make music. Before he joined the Killjoys, he was with a different group. Grace doesn’t remember their name, but she remembers the stories of all the BLI workers they killed. They were a very angry group. And then one of Didi’s friends, she doesn’t remember his name either, but he was short and tattooed, recommended Piggyback hook up with them instead.
He was with the Killjoys for a long time, a few solid years. It was when she was younger, and didn’t usually get to ride in the Trans Am when they went out. But then The Voice came to hide out with Didi for a while. The Voice was in an actual band, except they’d had to split up when Korse came after them. The two with the guitars had shown up eventually, but the drummer never did. And when The Voice left, Piggyback left with them. He cared, he said, but he needed something different. Grace just hopes he’s okay.
Paparazzi
If you think you can take them, you can. He came when she was younger. Kobra kept getting hurt, and Grace was little then, but she remembers everyone being really upset, and especially Party. Party kept trying to teach him, but Kobra would get mad and yell at him, and then everyone would start yelling. It was really bad. When they’d yell, she’d go hide with Didi, trying to hear his broadcasts over the sounds of her dads being mad at each other.
But then Paparazzi came. And he taught Kobra how to fight, mostly how to kick; high, and hard enough to knock signs off posts. Grace liked watching, and Paparazzi saw her watching and asked if she wanted to learn too. She’s not tall enough to kick someone in the jaw like Kobra, but she knows exactly where to grind her heel into someone’s foot, and where to punch to make their entire leg go numb.
Paparazzi left, after Kobra learned. It was weird, he didn’t even ask any of them for food or water or ammo. Instead he just asked Kobra to use the name Kobra Kid, and spread the word of the Kobra. He does, because it’s not okay to go back on a deal, not with another outlaw. Grace can’t even remember what he was called before Kobra Kid. She figures she owes it to Papparazzi. He didn’t ask anything of her, but he taught her, and so she’ll try to remember things how he wants.
Show Pony
If you wait for the perfect opportunity, you will be waiting forever. Nothing is ever perfect.
She doesn’t understand a lot about love, but she knows Show and Didi love each other. But he says that he had to make the first move to make Didi see they were meant to be together. Didi thought dumb things, like his chair mattered, in a bad way. Grace likes Didi’s chair, and she knows she always has. Kobra says when she had colic as a baby the only thing that would make her stop screaming was to be held on Didi’s lap as he whirred back and forth. Show says every time he tried to talk to him about it he’d change the subject, so finally he just had to shut him up with a big smooch. He also says that if she ever finds someone she likes, she should just be happy with them in the moment. Which is silly, because she’s never met anyone her age, and it’s not like she could like her dads.
But it’s not just love. It works for fighting too. They will always be outnumbered. They’re zone runners, which means that it’ll always only be the five of them in the car. The entire world is against them, and while they have allies, bottom line is it’s five bodies in the car. If they tried to wait to fight until they had the advantage they’d never fight. So you just fight anyway.
Fun Ghoul
Go big or go home. He says it’s a quote about sports, which Grace doesn’t really know much about, but she always listens when he talks. Ghoul reads the most of any of them, he always knows interesting things. Even though they don’t play sports, it’s still relevant, because it means do something crazy and wild, or don’t bother to do anything at all.
Ghoul knows how to make things. Kobra’s good at breaking into vending machines and getting them new blasters, but Ghoul can make weapons without stealing anything at all. The things he makes are always fun. Nine times out of ten they explode. Grace likes when things explode, it makes her heart beat way faster and it makes her laugh. Ghoul likes it too, when something works right he smiles for the longest time, not even covering his mouth with his bandanna so sand doesn’t get in his teeth.
Ever since Blind Eye has started working with them, Ghoul makes a lot more things that can explode, but he tries to make them tiny and look like things that don’t explode. He etches KJ into them, into a part that won’t be obliterated, and then gives them to Blind Eye to take back into Battery City the next time he comes. Grace doesn’t know what he does with them, but imagines he blows up the jails, or the rehab places. She wants everything to blow up, so everyone has no choice but to come out and live in colour and sound in the desert with them.
Party Poison
A real hero picks their own origin. Grace doesn’t know who her mom is. She doesn’t know who her dad is either. Well, she knows her dads; Party, and Kobra and Jet Star and Ghoul. But Jet Star has explained that to have a baby you need one man and one woman. A man and a man can love each other, like Show Pony and Didi, but they can’t have a baby, and neither can a woman and a woman. So somewhere she has to have a mom, and maybe one of the Killjoys is the dad that’s part of her.
But she doesn’t know. She’s never seen her mom. That could mean her mom is dead, or her mom is in a BLI rehab, or her mom used to be a rebel but turned her back and is taking all the pills they want her to. Or maybe she’s even working for BLI, and she’s a complete traitor. She’s asked the Killjoys a few times if one of them is her dad, and they all say they are, and when she says that she means the dad-that’s-a-part-of-her, they say it doesn’t matter because they all love her the same. And Show and Didi won’t tell her either.
Party tells her the truth doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is if she can think of a new story, a story she likes. He says imagination is the most important thing, besides loving and fighting, and loving comes from imagining all the best parts of someone, and fighting comes from wanting to make sure you always have the right to imagine, so imagining really isthe most important thing. He says that they all have their own stories for who they are, that’s why they have their special names, and when she thinks of a story she likes the very best, she can make up a better name. And if she ever changes her mind, she can change her name too.
Jet Star
Family takes care of each other. It’s not something she knows from just Jet Star, she knows it when Party sings to her, or Ghoul has her help build something, or Kobra wakes her up from a nightmare and tells her a story. Or when any of them hug her, or hug each other.
But it’s different when it happens. Because Grace is used to the blasters, and things exploding, and you either die or you don’t die, and they never ever die so it’s okay. But then she’s running and Jet Star is trying to take out the Draculoid following her, and all she has to do it make it to the spray painted rock because there’s a blaster stashed there, and when she turns around with it in her hand, the Drac is hitting Jet Star in the face with a bottle.
She screams, not even words, just all the anger coming out loud and hot, and blasts the Drac. When she runs over to Jet Star he gets up, holding his face, and it seems okay. But later that night his eye is swollen shut, and the entire side of his face is purple. He didn’t just die-or-not-die, he got himself really badly hurt for her. Once he falls asleep she takes off her vest and crumples it into a ball and sticks it under his head. If he rolls over and his face touches the ground it’ll hurt and it’ll wake him up, and that’s not okay.
Kobra Kid
It’s okay to be scared. It never seems like any of the adults around her are scared, ever. But she has dreams she can’t remember when she wakes up, and even though she can’t remember them she knows they’re bad.
Kobra’s always there to help her get back to sleep. No matter what time of the day or night she bolts awake from a dream, he’s there. And he never makes her feel like a baby for waking up shaking and needing a hug. He says he has dreams too, and that he knows Party does, and probably Jet Star and Ghoul too. He says it doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t let them stop you from fighting.
Korse
People who think they’re in charge are really dumb. Dumb in both ways; dumb as in they have no brain, as smart as sand, and dumb as in they suck, but Jet Star gets mad when she uses they words they use, like asshole. Grace hates making her dads mad even more than she hates it when they get mad at each other. When they’re mad at each other she knows they’ll get over it, because they get mad all the time and they never leave each other. But when they get mad at her, it always makes her stomach hurt.
Still, Korse sucks. He kidnapped her, him and his stupid Dracs, and that’s not milkshake. And he blasted her family, which is even more lame. But it’s the dumbest thing ever that he’s trying to be nice to her now. He’s offered her flavoured kibble, an actual bed with an actual pillow. He offered her a shower. But he’s dumb, she’s not dumb. The food is laced, if she falls asleep maybe she won’t wake up, or maybe she’ll wake up somewhere that she doesn’t know where she is. And the shower is most tempting, but she knows if she takes it when she comes out her coloured clothes will be gone.
He’s really dumb if he thinks they don’t know what’s going on. He could have killed them, but he didn’t. He wants them to come into the city and try to rescue her, so he can turn it into a spectacle where SCARECROW takes them down. Grace knows she’ll get out of this somehow, but it probably won’t be all her dads rushing BLI. Maybe Blind Eye will do it, or maybe... well, she doesn’t know. But her family isn’t dumb, and she knows she’ll be okay.