Chapter Text
It had been four months and three days since Party had gone missing. If he’d had a working watch, the Kobra Kid would have kept track of the hours and minutes too. He’d snatched a little memo pad from Dr. D’s place in the first few days, back when the station had been host to search teams still hoping, still looking. They’d given up after the first month, but Kobra would never. Even when Jet and Ghoul both started looking at him with those stupid pitying stares he kept marking tallies in his book. One hundred and twenty six tallies. Almost half a year.
“I’ve been looking for you for four months and three days you bastard!”
Kobra had been rehearsing the sentence in his head over and over again like a prayer, trying to ignore the rising number. When he found them, Kobra swore he was going to kill Party himself. He was going to hug them really really tight, and then he would yell at them until his lungs hurt.
“Fuck you!” He was going to shout as they would apologize with their dumb smiley shrug. “Fuck you for not being safe! Fuck you for leaving me!”
Yeah, Kobra would let them know exactly how pissed off he was, they would come home so he could rub it in Jet and Ghoul’s faces that he was right, and then everything would be okay again. It was an excellent plan, if Kobra said so himself.
He’d been staking out BLind transport vans for a long time now, even if the chances of them leading anywhere useful to him seemed low. The white vans typically carried weapons, ammos, too many dracs, and occasionally some miscellaneous supplies. In a lot of ways, the search attempts that Ghoul liked to call Kobra’s “expeditions” were funded primarily by the loot he rounded up. After two months and ten days, Jet had pulled Kobra aside and tried to explain to him that they didn’t have enough supplies to keep searching every day for someone who was probably gone to the Witch. Kobra, ever the diplomat, had punched Jet in the gut and road his bike till it ran out of gas.
The vans were an easy productive target that let him accomplish two things. They let him beat the crap out of something that wasn’t his crew mates, who been worrying over him to an exceedingly annoying amount, and they frequently provided him with inside knowledge as to what BLind was up to in their patrols. He was convinced that his sibling had been taken. They had to have been. It was the only reason why they wouldn’t have come back to their crew yet. Kobra just had to grind as many drac patrols into the ground until he found something. Anything.
And so that’s what he did. On that particular day, he’d been driving up and down Guano just begging for someone to mess with him. Jet had been talking about visiting their nearest mailbox that morning and Kobra needed to punch something in the face about it. He’d been at it for a few hours before he finally found what he wanted to see though not exactly in the form he wanted to see it in.
The drac patrol Kobra found was driving a larger van than usual, closer in size to a bus. That was never a good sign, meaning they were either carrying one big thing or a lot of something.
The Kid sped up to the side of the vehicle as fast as he could. He aimed for the vans tires, hoping to slow it down at least. He managed to pop a hole in both tires on the left side, enough to successfully force the vehicle to brake. As it did, Kobra caught sight of at least two dracs in the windshield, but he was more concerned when he saw the startled eyes of a brightly colored person, an unmistakable killjoy, restrained to the backseat behind them.
Kobra didn’t let the first drac get out of the driver’s seat. As soon as the van was parked, he drove up to the door and shot three blaster rounds straight into the things head. If he’d been luckier he could have gotten them both out at once, but the Witch seemed to want him to have a little more action.
The other drac rushed out of the passenger side and rushed straight at him. He dodged its attempted attack and managed to twist himself around to deal a solid kick to its back. It was luck draculoids weren’t known for their agility or Kobra imagined that could have gone a lot worse. Party always used to make fun of him for wanting to know karate.
The Kid shook the memory from his head. It wasn’t the time.
He dealt one more blow to the back of the last dracs head just to make sure they were down for good before going to open the back door to the van.
Just as he feared, there were a lot more joys in the back than usual for a drac transport. Eight young looking joys were huddled together when he opened the door. Their hands were all zip tied behind their backs and duct tape had been slapped over their mouths.
Kobra grabbed his pocket knife from his pocket and moved closer to the nearest joy. The poor kid flinched at the sight of his blade. The fear in their eyes made Kobra pause for a moment. They couldn’t have been more than thirteen at most.
“It’s alright,” he tried to sound soothing, but worried the adrenaline in his system would make him fall short. “I’m just going to cut your hands loose.”
Though the fright didn’t go away entirely, they did eventually raise their tied wrists for him. He made quick work of the zip ties and carefully helped them to remove the tape that had been over their mouth.
“T-Thank you…” the kid gasped. Their face was red from the adhesive rubbing at their skin. It reminded the Kid of the scars on their siblings' chest, of them laughing off his concerns while Jet insisted on cleaning the rash. He turned away.
“Take this,” Kobra handed the kid his knife. “Let your friends loose. I need to search the dracs.”
The younger joy nodded dumbly, pausing only a second before doing as told. He jumped out the back and made his way to the bodies of the dracs. The one that had tried to charge him had nothing but their blaster and a half empty battery, but upon opening the driver’s door, the other drac tumbled out onto the pavement and the contents of their pockets spilled out for the taking.
He crouched down and picked up a small pile of mixed up papers. They were mostly undamaged, only crumpled a bit and sprinkled with drac blood. Kobra shuffled through them a second, trying to put them in some logical order, before a line of text caught his attention.
In large text at the bottom of one paper, it read: “Deliver all rebels that meet the aforementioned requirements to the testing site in Zone 1.”
A testing site. It wasn’t unheard of for BLind to experiment on captured killjoys outside of the city. They liked to poke and prod at them in dangerous ways that they didn’t want associated with their “perfect city”. Those kids were going to be shipped off as test rats. Kobra felt his blood boil as he looked further up on the paper.
“Subject requirements,” it said. “Teen to young adult preferred (approx 13 to 25), reasonably good health, no unnatural permanent enhancements or modifications (ie prosthetics, cybernetics, etc.), and must have a noted history of severe aversion to Better Living Industry procedures. Ideal candidates should be characterized as stubborn, fiercely anti-establishment, and fiercely loyal to the rebel cause.”
Most of that described half the joys wandering the Zones, but the nagging voice that had been keeping Kobra running stuck in the back of his head as he read. ‘Stubborn’, ‘loyal’, there was a desperate chance of hope there and Kobra knew he needed to chase it. Even if his sibling wasn’t on the other end, there could be other joys just like them. The document said that the drop-off location was in a less travelled portion of Zone 1. It was only a twenty something minute ride.
With his mind settled, Kobra put the papers in his jacket and checked back on the now freed killjoys. Seven kids of different ages were gathered together, rubbing at their wrists and faces. Two of the older looking ones nervously comforted the rest, but never let their eyes off of him. Kobra couldn’t blame them.
“There’s a radio in the front,” he told them quickly. “Call in for help and Dr. Death Defying will send someone running. Dracs both had blasters you can take and there should be extra ammo in the back.”
As he turned back to hop back on his bike, one of the kids spoke up.
“You’re the Kobra Kid, right?” she called out. Another girl who looked a little older than her hushed her. They were carbon copies of each other, both with sandy blond hair and sharp noses. Siblings.
“Yeah, I am.” He told the girl as he put his helmet back on, face hidden behind his visor. “Stick with your friends, look out for your sister. You’ll be fine.”
The Kid hopped onto his bike and rode off a good few miles before slowing down to a stop again, right at the border between Zones 1 and 2. If he didn’t radio in back to the diner he’d have hell to pay when he got back. Jet in particular had nearly ripped his head off last time he got back late from a solo run.
He didn’t bother getting off his bike, just pulled over to the side and retrieved his radio from his side bag. After fiddling with the knobs for a few minutes, he got himself on the right channel and called in.
“K to J and G,” he said into the receiver. It only took a few seconds for someone to respond back.
“What’s up, Kid?” Ghoul’s voice came out fuzzy over the radio. “All shiny out there? Thought you’d be running back by now.”
Kobra sighed and leaned back a bit on his seat. “I ghosted two dracs headed out to Zone 1. They were taking prisoners to some kind of drug testing compound there.”
“Fuck… that’s messed up. Everyone good there? Need back up?”
“No. The joys I let loose are fine. Sent them Dr. D’s way,” he paused a second, listening to the quiet sound of a Mad Gear song playing in the background of the call. “Listen, I’m going to check out the place they were taking them to. Wanted to let you know I’ll be back later than I said.”
Ghoul’s response was immediate and angry. “Damnit, Kobra! Do not fuckin’ do that! You have no clue what’s there.”
“Since when are you qualified to be anyone’s voice of reason?” A few months ago, Fun Ghoul was the one everyone was telling not to be stupid. Nowadays all he ever did was try to make the Kid play things safe, not stick their neck out for anything.
“That’s how you know it’s a really shitty idea if I think it’s bad,” Ghoul shot back, but he had to know by then that he wasn’t going to talk Kobra out of it. They’d had this fight too many times.
“Listen, man…” Kobra could here the defeat in Ghoul’s voice. “I miss them, too. We all miss them. But we need to… we need to face facts. I’m not losing you to a ghost chase.”
“They aren’t dead.”
Ghoul sniffed on the other end. “Kid, I swore to Party I would look out for you. At least wait for me and Jet to come with you.”
It wasn’t an unreasonable plan, but Kobra was impatient.
“I’ll give you the location I got,” he conceded, “I’m not waiting to go, but you can meet me there.”
“I’ll take it,” responded Ghoul, sounding relieved. He relayed the location from the papers and signed off. Kobra put away the radio in his bag, then took back off down Route Guano towards the site.
As he rode, he kept thinking about how fucked things had gotten with the Four. Kobra hated how tense things were with his crew recently. He knew they were just worried about him and he loved them for it, but they’d started to lose hope, had slowed their running down to a mournful crawl.
Jet still kept the radio playing around the clock, just in case Dr. D had some good news, but he’d stopped sending out his own emergency broadcasts months ago. Early on Ghoul had been going from hang out to hang out, anywhere killjoys were gathering, pestering anyone who would listen to see if they’d seen a red haired joy in a blue jacket. That had stopped a little after the broadcasts did and now Kobra was the only one who refused to say that Party wasn’t alive.
They never said they were dead, but any time it was brought up, neither Jet or Ghoul would say that Party was alive.
But they had to be. Party Poison couldn’t just die.
The ride over was faster than he’d estimated, only fifteen or so minutes. Kobra had a habit of speeding when he was lost in thought.
The building was a shithole. No nicer way to say it. The place was a tiny, ragged looking old double ranch house. It had a rusted chain link fence surrounding it that had accumulated an impressive collection of uncontrolled tumbleweeds within the yard. Definitely not a place ever inhabited by any killjoy. The building was dull and sad looking, with its peeling sun-fading siding. The only sign of any life were the three meandering draculoids that guarded its exterior, but Kobra hardly counted them as any more than walking corpses either way.
Taking down the goons outside was easy. Couldn’t even really call it a clap with how fast Kobra had the first two down and the last drac only managed to fire one shot before he nailed the thing in square between the eyes. Better Living really weren’t making dracs like they used to.
Kobra popped his helmet off once he was sure the guards were down for good and set it by his bike.
Logically, he should probably have waited to hear word from Ghoul and Jet, but the diner was a whole Zone away and they probably wouldn’t be around for a while. If all went well, he could be in and out in under an hour. The place was too small to be too well secured inside, maybe a few more dracs at most. He couldn’t imagine they’d be hiding anything really important in a place so tiny and rundown.
With that in mind, Kobra made his way inside the building. He was right in assuming the inside would be small. Right inside the front doorway he came in through was a short hallway. There was an open door at the end that led to an empty bathroom and another that was shut to his left. The closed door would have to wait as he heard voices coming from a partially ajar room to his right. Silently, Kobra crouched closer to listen.
“-id you hear that?” A voice asked.. “I’m telling you I heard a banging sound.”
“You’re just not used to the Zones,” another bored sounding voice replied. “If it was anything important then our security detail will handle it. Focus on your report.”
He heard one of them sigh loudly before there was a sound of shuffling papers and pen hitting paper. After a few moments of waiting, Kobra decided to inch a little closer to peek past the door and into the room.
Compared to the rest of the base, the makeshift laboratory was spotless. Kobra could see the BLind logos on the scientists lab coats reflecting off the linoleum floor they stood on. From what he could see, they had outfitted what had once been a kitchen into a mini-drug lab, various stark white pieces of equipment were scattered about the place. Beakers of strange bubbling liquids boiled in glass beakers on a countertop in front of an older, stern looking woman. Her younger colleague stood further inside the room, a little out of Kobra’s view. He had a clipboard in his hand and was looking down at some kind of large metal cage, seemingly taking notes on whatever was contained within it.
“Did Exterminator Korse ever say whether he upped the subject’s dosage to 40 or 50?” The man asked his partner. Kobra’s blood ran cold at the sound of his name.
“He did not,” she answered without looking away from her own work. “But if you paid more careful attention to your surroundings, you would have noticed that we only have 240 mg left of our last batch.”
The male scientist turned to her with a look of concern. “He used 60 mg in one session? The subject is already past our goal levels of submission. That much at once could leave it brain dead…”
“It is not our place to question the Exterminator’s methods, doctor.” Her warning tone left the younger doctor looking well scolded. “Besides, I highly doubt Subject 12 is going to be with us much longer regardless. Our superiors sent word that a new round of potential subjects should be arriving either today or tomorrow.”
Hiding behind the door, Kobra couldn’t see very well into the furthest corners of the room, but based on what he was hearing there was probably a person stuck in that cage. The thought brought the taste of bile into the back of his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the inhumanity Better Living Industries was willing to show in their ‘scientific ventures’, especially since he’d started his efforts in looking for his sibling. Still though, it never got easier to stomach. He’d make sure the poor joy, whoever they were, got help once he was done razing their torture chamber back to sand.
With his weapon raised, Kobra charged into the room set to wreck the place. One of the scientists screamed loudly upon his entry, but was quickly struck in the head by his gun and knocked unconscious. Though Kid wasn’t a bad shot in any regard, close combat was much more satisfying in his opinion. Especially when he got to pistol whip assholes like these bastards square in the face.
Kobra was about to return his attention to the cage in the back of the room when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his shoulder.
“Shit!” He stumbled back, clutching at the blaster burn to his shoulder that he’d just received. The door he had come through was now occupied by a broad shouldered, tall looking man. He wore a dark suit, carried a white blaster, and had eyes like a sand viper.
It was a fucking S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.
Kobra immediately dove down to take cover behind a countertop. The burn hurt, but checking it quickly it seemed to have only just grazed him. Dracs he could handle in his sleep. Stupid things could barely hold a gun straight let alone pose a serious threat. But a scarecrow in a confined space where there was only one exit? Not ideal.
“You’ve stumbled into the wrong hole, little rat,” the crow growled, weapon raised. “BLind will not forgive this loss of resources easily.”
There was no easy way out of the situation that Kobra could see. The crow was blocking the only way out. There was too little space between them to have a fire fight he could feasibly win. He didn’t like to admit it, but Kobra knew he wasn’t the best shot in the zones. Plus, he still had to worry about the human being BLind had locked in a cage. The joy hadn’t made so much as a sound or moved from their huddled up position even with all the gun fire and noise, so Kobra could only assume they weren’t going to be any help.
“Perhaps if you come peacefully,” called the crow in a mocking voice. “You can be the next subject in our work here! You did kill two valuable Better Living employees, so really it is the least you could do.”
Kobra dared to fire off a few rounds over the countertop in response. It was largely ineffective, but at least made the crow grunt in annoyance. He had no intention of getting ghosted, but if he had to be cornered he was at least going to be annoying about it.
The crow began to shoot through the counter, sending glass and lab equipment flying through the air. Thankfully it seemed to be thick enough that nothing made it through the counter, but all the shrapnel sent at him admittedly made Kobra flinch. He had no idea what he was going to do.
But just as the Kid seriously wondered if he had a meeting with the Witch in his future, there was a noise. From somewhere else in the building, there was an explosion large enough that it shook the whole room. Both he and the scarecrow paused, turning towards where the noise came from. As they did, Kobra heard the noise of something metallic being thrown and then there was a sudden blast of smoke.
Jet Star and Fun Ghoul rushed into the room in a cloud of debris and ash, blasters charged and aimed dead on the crow attacking their friend. In the sheer suddenness of the attack, Ghoul shot a clean shot that stuck the scarecrow right in the neck. With how close they were, the crow made a single surprised grunt and then collapsed to the floor.
“Destroya, Kid!” Ghoul rushed in first, pulling Kobra up off the ground by the jacket. “You scared the crap out of us!
“Smoke bombs are still too bomb-y.” He stumbled a bit after being hauled up. “How did you guys get here so fast?”
“Traffic report told us there was a crow sighting near here a little after you called Ghoul,” Jet explained with a sigh. “We figured you wouldn’t hear the warning so we pounded gravel and rushed over. Where were you hit?”
“It’s just a scratch,” he tried to say, but Jet was already upon him and pulling at his jacket. As they both started to fuss over him, Kobra briefly turned his head back to the cage in the corner of the room.
The body inside the metal cage was breathing, that Kobra was sure of at least. They were so thin and gaunt looking that he couldn’t safely guess their gender, but they had pale skin in the places that weren’t caked in blood or bruises. The hospital gown they wore was soiled with countless unnamable stains the Kid didn’t want to imagine the source of. The state the pitiful killjoy had been left in by the BLind doctors was deplorable. It was hard to see the full extent of their condition as they had huddled themselves into the corner of their cage, hiding behind the dim light and their red hair-
“Woah! Where’s the fire?” Ghoul said as Kobra suddenly shot towards the cage.
“Would you stop squirming and hold still, Kid?” Jet scolded him as he tried to look at his wound. “I am trying to help-“
“It’s Party!” Kobra cried out. “Let me go. Look! It’s Party!”
The other two men froze immediately upon hearing their lost leader’s name and Kobra took advantage of it to break free. He stumbled towards the cage doors and struggled to open its latch. Though his hands shook as he tried to free them, the figure hunched over inside did not stir. Kobra reached for his gun, deciding in his mind to just blast the damn thing off and be done with it. Before he could, though, Ghoul approached from behind, staring past the bars in horror as he fully took in what he was seeing.
“By the fuckin’ Witch…” He moved closer to the lock. “Let me pick it, Kobes. Will only take a second, I swear.”
Kobra didn’t want to move an inch, but Jet appeared by his side and took his arm.
“Look at them. You’ll scare them if you blow the lock off,” he explained somewhat breathlessly. Kobra couldn’t blame him. The sight in front of them was a lot to take in. And Jet was right anyway. Despite Kobra’s instincts begging him to tear the door open with his bare hands, Party’s lack of reaction to their friends’ presence gave him pause. With some hesitance, Kobra let Jet pull him aside so Ghoul could work.
“We’re here, Pois,” Ghoul called into the cage. “I’ll have you out of there so fast. Faster than a crash queen down Getaway Drive. It’s gonna be all shiny now.”
There was no response to Fun Ghoul’s frantic rambling at all. Before, Party would have laughed off their concern by now, offering some kind of witty remark or wise words that would put them at ease and let them know that the Fab Four’s leader always bounced back. Kobra kept waiting for that familiar shit eating grin he’d been searching the desert so long for.
But there was nothing. No quips, no reaction whatsoever. Kobra couldn’t turn away from the limp form balled up tight in the dark back of the cage, only identifiable as his sibling by what remained of their fading red hair. The more he looked at them the more pissed at himself for not noticing immediately Kobra felt.
The lock fell off the cage door suddenly, clanking against the concrete floor loudly. That noise bought out the first sign of life from the cage since they had gotten there: the smallest flinch before they curled impossibly tighter into themself. It felt as though Kobra’s heart was being stabbed when he saw it and the rage it fueled let him pull away from Jet and through the door as soon as it was opened.
He heard the other two call out for him to wait, but there was nothing that would stop him from getting to his sibling now. The Kid grabbed hold of Party as soon as he was in reach, pulling them to their chest as tight as they dared. He’d known they weren’t dead, bet his life on it searching day after hot desert day. Yet, as they finally had them back, the moment Kobra touched Party he knew something was wrong.
Kobra hadn’t been able to see their face from outside the cage. They’d assumed that Party was either half conscious or just totally out of it, but when his hand gently cradled their face Kobra was met with blank, unseeing hazel eyes.
“Party?” He whispered eagerly, brushing their filthy hair out of their face, but Party didn’t show any signs of having heard them. They let him move them around like they were just a boneless doll in his arms. Kobra tried calling their name softly a few more times to no avail.
“Pois… What the hell happened to you, Gee?”
Suddenly, the Kid watched as the dead blink with the briefest hint of recognition. Party looked back at him slowly, ever so slowly, blinking up at their brother with flickers of confusion and exhaustion. It was like they didn’t even recognize him until he called them…
“Fuck!” Kobra couldn’t help but curse. The tone made Party flinch sharply, trying to curl back into the uncomfortable ball they’d been in before. “Shit, I’m so sorry. It’s okay… It’s okay now, Gee…”
Their face was bruised, swollen and bloody. It had to hurt like hell to the point that the more Kobra looked them over, he worried that just him touching them had to be agony. Before he could move to loosen his grip, Party all but collapsed into his shoulder. They buried their face against his neck, pressing in so close he could feel their heartbeat against his own skin. The Kid had to swallow back the urge to cry. The whole of Party’s weight was in his arms, but it felt like nothing. They were a limp wreck of skin, bones, and filthy fabric in his arms. When was the last time those Better Living bastards had fed them? Pressed so close to them, the stench of dried blood and vomit hit straight into Kobra’s nose, but he had no intention of moving away now.
With how low the metal roof was, Kobra had to half drag, half carry his sibling out of the cage. As he did, Party made a quiet keening noise of apparent discomfort, but their brother was not willing to let them be inside the cage for a second longer.
As soon as they were out, Ghoul and Jet both were upon them immediately. Before Kobra could warn them, Jet reached forward to where Party’s hand lay loose at their side. They didn’t fight him. Rather, the new touch seemed to draw them back into themselves, the glaze coming back over their face as they let themself go completely limp. They only made the smallest, pitiful noise into Kobra’s neck. It was nearly inaudible, muffled against his jacket, but Jet in all of his attentiveness pulled away as if he’d just shattered glass.
“It’s okay. It’s just Jet. He won’t hurt you.” Kobra’s reassurances didn’t seem to offer any comfort and the look on the other killjoy’s face told him it was breaking Jet’s heart. “Gee, look. It’s Ray. Remember, Ray is Jet Star?”
Both Jet and Ghoul looked at Kobra like he had grown an extra head, but didn’t interrupt him. Gently, he tried to coax their face out from where they’d hidden themself so that they could see their friends.
“Come on,” he hummed patiently. “Frank is here too. He’s Fun Ghoul. You gotta remember Ghoulie, yeah? Frankie?”
Though shunned by what they were seeing, Ghoul forced himself to shake off the immediate shock in favor of crouching down next to them.
“Gerard?” He called to them, hesitantly. Kobra could only describe the face he made when Party finally peeked out from his embrace when called by that name as enraged. Even if the other killjoy was a loose cannon on a good day, he hid his anger quickly, something Kobra personally knew wasn’t easy to do.
“Fuckin’ hell…” Ghoul cursed and ran a hand through his greasy hair. “What did those bastards do to you, Pois… Gee… shit…”
Party looked up at Ghoul as he spoke with a blank expression, but at least they looked like they were listening. It was better than the sheer nothing Kobra had seen from them in the cage before. They looked so lost. He had no clue what was going through his sibling’s head.
“It’s like they’re going in and out of catatonia,” Jet remarked as he too knelt down to see Party more closely. He didn’t try to touch them immediately, instead first raising his hands open for Party to see, like he was approaching an injured animal. “Gee, I just want to take your vitals, bud. Kobes will be right with you and it won’t hurt at all.” He paused one second before adding, “No needles, either. I promise.”
Looking back to their face, Party only looked confused. Confused and exhausted. Kobra had hoped to see some kind of positive reaction when they heard Jet talking more, but at least they didn’t fade away again. They just kept staring at Jet’s face as they spoke, like they couldn’t understand what they were seeing at all.
“These are our friends, Gee,” Kobra tried to tell them. “They’d never hurt you, ya? It’s okay. We gotta let Jet- Ray help.”
There wasn’t any difference, nor any sign that Party was hearing them. After a moment, Kobra decided to gently shift their sibling’s weight to his other shoulder so that one of his arms was free to move. Ever so carefully, he took their wrist into his hand and passed it to Jet Star. There was no struggle from Party, so Kobra had to only hope they were okay with the movement. It felt so strangely alien to puppet their once headstrong sibling around, but it needed to be done.
The group’s medic took Party’s hand slowly, waiting a few seconds before daring to press two fingers over their wrist.
“Their pulse is a little fast, but they seem to be breathing okay,” Jet sighed, though he didn’t sound particularly relieved. “They’re so cold. I can’t tell where they they’re bleeding from or if it’s stopped until we can get them cleaned up, but I can only assumed that they’re anemic.”
“That’s the ‘not enough blood’ one, right?” Ghoul said as he watched Jet working. Kobra noticed he was keeping his hands deep inside his pockets. “I have that blood type anyone can use. I forget what it’s called but Chow Mein paid me for it that one time, remember? I’ll give ‘em mine. Will that help?”
Jet shook his head, looking away from Party to give Ghoul a brief but fond smile. “Ghoulie, slow down,” he said. “That’s a worst case senario. Right now we just need to get them out of here and we can figure out the details later.”
While the other two start to discuss their next moves, Kobra tuned them out and turned back to his sibling. They hadn’t shifted from the position he’d moved them into so that Jet could look them over, their arm still hanging limp and their head lolling against their shoulder loosely. There was no way that it was comfortable, so Kobra gently eased them back to lean fully against him again.
When they were both much younger, still stuck in the clutches of Batt City’s grasp, Kobra remembered all the times Party had held him. It was the safest feeling he’d known for most of his childhood. Party kept away nightmares, scared off ghosts, and kept them both sane in the face of the drug induced haze that came with living in Battery City. Their parents were both entirely absent mentally, engrossed fully in Batt Acid. But even when the two of them had ran off to the Zones, Party had always been Kobra’s safe place. The past months without them had been some of the most nervewracking, awful days of his life, but he’d told himself over and over as he searched the Zones that if Party could hold him again then everything would be alright. Just like always.
But Party couldn’t. They were reunited but they couldn’t so much as raise their arms let alone make Kobra’s pathetic head stop spinning. He tried to hold his sibling twice and tight, to hold both of them together, but the longer Kobra sat there holding Party’s reactionless body in his arms, the more he could feel his eyes begin to sting.
“Kobes,” he heard Ghoul say distantly. “We’re gonna run out to the Am quick. Give you two a sec, Kay?”
He hummed in approval, not really trusting himself not to totally break down if he opened his mouth. A few seconds later Kobra heard footsteps and looked up long enough to see that both Jet and Ghoul had stepped out of the lab. Kobra trusted them to do whatever they thought was best. He had some things he’d been planning to say to Party since he started searching. Maybe getting them out should make the pit in his stomach fade some.
“I have been looking for you- I have… shit.” He tried to get the words out, but his mantra was dead on his tongue. Kobra stopped and took a deep breath. “I thought you were dead. I kept telling myself that… if I didn’t say it… it wouldn’t be true. But I did. I thought you were dead. I’m so sorry.”
The admission didn’t fully leave Kobra’s mouth without his voice hitching. He buried his face in his sibling’s neck, ignoring how the caked blood and filth stuck to his face in favor of trying to stifle his increasing sobs in their hair.
Holding his breath, Kobra watched as Party’s hand moved. At first, he thought he was only imagining it, maybe just a hopeful thought, but after a minute of seemingly blind fumbling, Party’s fingers found their brother’s hand. They didn’t have the strength or coordination to fully take it, only managing to wrap their hand around his thumb in a loose grip.
There was a noise from somewhere but Kobra wasn’t willing to look away from what was happening. Footsteps approached them as Jet reappeared. He carried with him the large, scruffy old blanket they kept stashed under the backseat of the Am.
“Ghoul is calling Dr. D,” he said to Kobra, kneeling back down beside the pair.
“Look, Jet,” Kobra motioned to his chest where their hands connected. “They did that themself.”
“That’s a good sign, Kid,” Jet smiled, a touch of sadness in his tone. “I thought we could cover them in this. Keep out the sand, if nothing else.”
Kobra agreed readily. Party really was cold to the touch and even if their crappy emergency blanket wasn’t the nicest in the world, it was better than nothing. He and Jet guided it around Party’s shoulders and bundled them tight. Through out, Kobra was careful not to dislodge their grip.
Once Party was covered, Jet Star hesitated a moment before raising his hand to their head and gently running his fingers through their hair. It was an action all of the Four were well familiar with. Head pats had always been Jet Star’s favorite form of affection over the years, a gesture as familiar to the Four as a hug. The sudden new touch made Party flinch at first, causing Jet to pause, but after a moment, they seemed to calm in Kobra’s arms and leaned ever so slightly into Jet’s touch.
“We got you, Gee,” Jet whispered to them softly. “Doc’s gonna fix you up real good.”
“What happened to them?” The question had been hanging over Kobra like a scarecrow in the room. “You know medicine stuff. I-I’ve never seen anyone act like this. What did they do to them?”
“I don’t know, Kobes… I don’t want to make guesses until we get more answers. I think Ghoul and I should look around here quick before we go. After we get Party in the car, of course. If we can find out whatever drug they were giving them, hopefully Doc can use it to help ‘em.” The older Killjoy paused in thought, working a tangle out of Party’s hair quietly. “We’ll figure it out. We got them back now. That’s what matters most.”
Kobra knew it wasn’t really going to be that easy, but Jet’s words comforted him regardless. They had Party back. Everything else would follow.
“We should get moving,” Kobra said, starting to stand with his sibling in his arms. They were so light and with Jet’s help he managed to get himself upright.
“Agreed,” he nodded. “Let’s get them settled in the Am. Then we can worry about the rest.” Jet stood up and turned back to Kobra. “You got ‘em by yourself?”
Kobra looked back to Party’s face. They’d finally closed their eyes. It was almost peaceful.
“Yeah. I got ‘em.”