Singles

The Fabulous Killjoys

"These pigs are after me, after you…" ~My Chemical Romance, "Bulletproof Heart"

You run.

The hot wind burns in your lungs, the sand bites your ankles, your mother's last words ring painfully in your ears: "Whatever happens, Grace, I will always love you. Now go!"

Fears flow through your mind and push you onward, until you can hardly breathe, can hardly stand. Gasping and sweating and crying and possibly bleeding, you stumble into the four men who will save your life. You're not supposed to talk to strangers, but you don't have to. They rescue you from what's after you, shooting down the terrors and stopping the chase.

You'll have to keep running soon, but for now you curl up in the sunshine in their car and sleep.

After a while, you wake up to your new home, new life, and these new people who will be your friends. They introduce themselves, and for a time the world isn't quite so bad.

You settle into their names and voices and beings, and soon are one of them. You talk and shoot and travel with them. You get to play hopscotch with rainbow-colored spray paint, eat breakfast on a highway, listen to loud music, and ask them anything that crosses your mind. They help you become yourself.

You add color to your mother's grave, and sit back, filled with their love and your joy. You know that with these friends of yours, you'd keep running forever.

Fun Ghoul

"Beautiful tats, all over my back…" ~Weird Al Yankovic, "Another Tattoo"

He teases you about it, but you like to look at his tattoos. How they unfold, one into the next, stars and barbed wire and faces of people you don't know. Every time you check, there seems to be an image you haven't seen, a new mystery, written in ink and skin, waiting to be uncovered.

"How'd you get so awesome?" you ask him one day while rereading the letters on his fingers. You're not just being nice, either; you have a running list of reasons why he's cool, none of which really help you figure out why you've always thought so. It includes his tattoos, of course, and his guitar skills, his sense of humor (Party said once that he acted like a kid, and you don't see why he said it like it was bad), and his battle skills, especially how he's passing those on to you, teaching you how to use lasers and knives and your favorite- his old pistol. But you want to hear the real answer from him.

"Well, I always eat my vegetables and look both ways before I cross the street…" he says, in a pretending-to-be-serious voice.

You giggle. "Seriously, though, how?" You look up at him in determination, letting him know that you won't stop bothering him until he tells you what is, right now, the best secret ever.

"Uh, I guess I just…do what I want?" he offers, before adding with more sureness, "Yeah. It's really a matter of being yourself and not letting other people tell you who to be or what to do." Little does he know that this statement will soon result in three days where you refuse to eat your eggs, because first, you don't like them, and second, you're being yourself, and yourself really doesn't like eggs, okay?

"Oh," you reply, committing this information to memory before getting distracted by a tiny, complex spider web on his hand. "Did those hurt?" You already know that the designs are imbedded in his skin, but you're still always surprised by how they never come off when he washes his hands.

"Kind of, yeah. I had to get jabbed by a needle a whole lot, but it's something you get used to. Now it almost tickles…like this!" He starts poking you in the armpit, and you try to squirm out of his reach, poking him back at the same time while both of you laugh.

You realize later, after he takes a laser blast in the neck to save you, that the reason he's cool is hard to put into words- written on his hands or not- and that his tattoos have nothing and everything to do with what makes him awesome.

Jet Star

"My parents were always telling me that practice makes perfect, but then I learned that nobody's perfect, so I stopped practicing." ~Anonymous

"I can't do it!" you sigh, frustration snapping through you as your fingers stumble yet again over the keys, hitting another sour note. You look at him, feeling bad that you're not as good at music as he is. "Sorry." The word comes out in the same tone as the messed-up chord, simple and sad and full of self-conscious failure.

He lifts his eyes from his guitar and surveys you gently, not a trace of irritation in his expression. "It's all right."

You sigh again, mad at yourself. Why can't you just play the stupid chord progression? "I-I just…This is really- " Several different words flash through your mind and clutter up your throat so that nothing comes out at all. Instead, you glare at the piano, expressing with narrowed, watering eyes more than can be said in words.

"Hey," he says from right next to you, shifting his guitar so that it's slung across his back and out of his way. Lowering himself onto the bench, he puts one arm around your shoulders while you wipe your eyes. "You're not that bad. Better than me at piano, actually."

He smiles, trying to get you to do the same, but you just shake your head. "That doesn't help."

"Okay," he replies evenly. "Then here's what you do, and I know you've heard this before and you'll have to hear it again, but: practice. That's all you can do. Heck, if everybody could do this easily, we'd all be rock stars."

"But you are a rock star," you point out; it's easy for him to tell you all that stuff when he can play super-fast without even looking!

He grins and says, "How do you think I became one? I had to practice for hours and hours every week, and I had to mess up a lot, too. Here, I'll help you."

He reaches out with one hand and starts to play part of the piece, so slowly you wonder if he has patience in his veins instead of blood. You can count what feels like a half hour between each note, but you pick up his lead anyway and play along, one-handed, trying to match his pace.

You find out quickly that it's really hard to play at this decreased speed. In the spaces between the chords, you can feel your mind wander ahead to the next bar, and you seem to make more mistakes at first. With a lot of focus, you manage to slow down your mind to the point where your thoughts are funneled in anticipation of the next finger position, and only the very next one. Pretty soon, you're playing right along with him.

Just when you think that you could try it by yourself, he lifts his hand from the keys and his other arm from your shoulder. You add in the left-hand notes, and carefully hit each one with perfect timing (okay, not perfect, but close enough) while he watches contentedly.

When you get to the one part you can't do, you have to work to silence the voice in the back of your head going, "Uh-oh, you're gonna mess it up again!" Telling it to shut up distracts you, and you almost lose the rhythm, but have enough time in the pauses between beats to remember what you're doing. You play that chord, and the next one, and the one after that, all the way to the end of the piece, with almost no slip-ups.

When you're done, and your mind returns to normal speed, he claps for you and tells you how good you did. You figure that you'll believe that when you can play the piece without nearly stopping time itself, but you still feel pretty great when he calls you his "'fro pal" and gives you a fist bump before settling down on his stool.

You feel even better and more excited when he slides his Gibson back around and cradles it on his leg, saying, "Okay, now let's try it with guitar."

Party Poison

"Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words." ~Bill Watterson

"Aw, shit!" he exclaims, watching the coffee spill from the cup and sink into the sand where he dropped it.

You stare at him curiously as you wonder what that word means. You've heard all the Killjoys utter it before at various times- Jet Star's cool, 'cause he says it with an accent, like "shiyt"- but you've never asked why they do, because you're pretty sure it's one of those bad words your mother told you not to say.

That doesn't stop you from listening to it, however. Your friends aren't shy about using such words, and Party Poison in particular says the s- and f-words quite often. You adjust to it, along with all the other aspects of your friends, and even find yourself almost liking it. It's kinda funny how Party delivers, with the occasional totally calm face, these sharp, four-letter messages of annoyance, or if he's feeling especially eloquent, remarks like "motherfucking son-of-a-bitch!" Sometimes they seem like just things he says for no real reason, when he has nothing else to say.

You snap out of your thoughts and keep walking after him, slinging your grocery bag higher up on your shoulder. Suddenly, so fast all you can do is freeze in shock, a Draculoid charges out from behind a small sand dune and tackles him to the ground. The two wrestle for a few seconds, Party trying to untangle his hand from the plastic bag he's holding so he can get to his gun, but it ends when the Drac punches him in the face and pins his free hand to the asphalt. The Drac pulls out his own gun and presses it to Party's chin and, when your friend's eyes widen in fear, sneers, "Bet you don't like emotions now, huh, stupid Killjoy? How's it feel knowing that you're about to get killed in front of your little girl?"

Before Party can reply, you decide to take matters into your own hands. You run forward and scream at the top of your lungs, "GET OFF HIM, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" At the same time as the Drac looks up in both surprise and offense (you're positive that no one from BLI uses language like that), you hit him over the head with your bag of groceries, most of which are cans.

Party quickly flips the Drac over and rolls on top of him, ripping his enemy's gun out of his hand and pressing it to the side of the Drac's creepy mask. Now it's your friend's turn to mock his opponent, and he spits, in response to the Drac's previous question, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

One flash of white light later, Party Poison is climbing off the dead Drac, picking up his bag and sticking the enemy's gun into it for safekeeping. He grins at you. "Nice save."

The two of you resume the walk home, where he'll tell the rest of your friends about this adventure and you'll find out that you actually managed to conjugate that swear word properly.

Kobra Kid

"While crying helplessly into my pillow for no good reason, I would often fantasize that maybe someday I could be one of those stoic badasses whose emotions are mostly comprised of rock music and not being afraid of things." ~Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half

You'd never thought that Kobra Kid, who always seems rather reserved, would be so talkative when it comes to an issue you barely know exists.

You are out on a raid with him, which makes you feel special because you know that he likes to go solo a lot of the time. But for this one, he needs you, being the smallest and hardest to notice, to crawl into the back of a Drac supply truck while they take a lunch break (those that stay behind to guard end up on a "permanent lunch break" according to your friend, who has the lasers) to steal a box of medication. You are able to squeeze through the hole he blasts in the back of the truck and, after a few minutes' digging around in the dim light and trying to remember how to spell "lithium," you reemerge with the goods. Kobra thanks you, even though you had practically begged him to let you go on this mission, and he takes you to the gas station on the way back, to get some lunch of your own.

As the two of you sit in the car, munching on sandwiches, you can't help but wonder why this mission was necessary in the first place. You've never been really great at guiding a conversation over to a certain topic, and neither is Kobra, so you're pretty sure he forgives you for asking abruptly through a mouthful of lettuce, "What's the medicine for?"

He glances at you, swallows his bite of sandwich, and says casually but a bit uncomfortably, "It's for me, of course."

"What's wrong with you? Are you okay?" you ask, concerned.

He takes a sip of juice and stares at you in disbelief before asking, "The other Killjoys didn't tell you?" He sighs when you shake your head and keep looking at him in worry, as if he could drop dead any second.

"Well, Grace, it's 'cause I'm sick."

"Oh," This doesn't do much to comfort you, but you figure that if he goes to such great lengths to get this medicine- that's what all these raids are for, you realize- it must be working.

"But it's not sick like a stomachache," Kobra continues, even though you've already accepted the whole idea and don't need to talk about it any more. "It's like…sick in the head."

"Like crazy?" You regret the words as soon as you say them, not just because it makes your friend cross his arms in irritation, but because you don't want to think that he could be like…that. Whatever that is; you've never really thought about insanity, but you do know that it scares you. You don't want your friend to go through it.

"No," He replies finally, and you can tell from his voice that he's trying to be calm. "I'm not crazy. It's more…" He finishes his juice and asks, "You know how you feel when you miss your mom a lot?"

You frown, as memories of sleepless nights spent curled up next to one of your friends while sobbing inconsolably rush into your mind. "Yeah."

"I get sad like that sometimes." You want to give him a hug or something to make him feel better, because he looks more alone and vulnerable than you've ever seen him, but he doesn't really like hugs, and then he continues, "Only I really have no reason to be sad. It's just how my brain works. But the meds make me feel better."

You have a sudden, horrible insight. From what you've been told, that's exactly why the Dracs have set up the world the way they did: so they could make and use things, mostly pills, that make them feel better.

He notices your agitation, and looks quickly into your widening eyes, saying, "Don't worry; I'm not a Drac." He tries to chuckle. "I do have other things to get me through the day, you know. That's kind of why I have friends: you guys can help me with my problems and give me, like, a place to belong. Without you, I might have become a Drac. But with your support…heck, I could survive without meds. They just make things a little easier."

"So you're okay?" You ask, to make totally sure.

He nods, gives you a rare smile, and reaches over to hug you. You snuggle into his shoulder, content that he seems alright. If you can trust him- and when haven't you been able to?- you know that, despite whatever complicated, scary thing is wrong with him, he is definitely okay.

You'd never thought that Kobra Kid, your quiet, often apathetic friend, would be so open, or that you and he would get involved in a discussion about mental illness over sandwiches.

The Girl

"I got a bulletproof heart; you got a hollow point smile." ~My Chemical Romance, "Bulletproof Heart"

They know they're being hopelessly idealistic, but she's just so darn cute.

When she came up to them on the road five years ago, looking more lost, pathetic, and terribly sad than they'd seen anyone look, they couldn't just ignore her. So they took her in.

She's been a liability more than once, of course: having a little kid tagging along with them when everyday things like going to the store are incredibly hazardous is bound to cause problems, and Korse is well aware of their affection for her, often going so far as to make her the main target of his attacks. But even he will never harm her.

She's the most important thing either side can have: a young, innocent person that they can raise and train however they wish, educating her by their values. She's one of the few free minds left in this world, filled with an obsession for rainbow-ponies rather than doctrines.

For all that value, though, there's another reason the Killjoys guard her with their lives- they love her.

She's the sometimes-obnoxious little sister that Fun Ghoul never had, the daughter Party Poison lost. She's Jet Star's muse and moral compass, and the most essential one-eighth of Kobra Kid's reasons to get up in the morning.

And that emotion is the most dangerous, worthwhile thing of all.