But Maybe We'll Live Forever

“Well, shit,” said Party Poison as we walked into a high-class lounge-like area in the Bellagio.

I sighed. “Watch your language. This place is for the classy criminals. Like mobsters. So be… not yourself.” I didn’t look at him; just scanned for the signs that pointed to the casino.

“Is it me, or does this place take out the fancy-schmancy bitch in you?” Jet Star raised an eyebrow.

“If it did, I definitely wouldn’t be dressed like this,” I said, gesturing to the outfit they’d provided.

“It definitely unleashes it from her,” Party said.

I ignored them and kept scanning for the sign. Finally, I spotted it. I smiled and began walking, rereading Rory’s message in my head. “This way.”

We walked along, feeling very uncomfortable – everything here was very… classy. Fancy. We felt as though we were going to be kicked out for not looking as good as everyone else – we were dirty, grimy, sweaty, wearing worn clothing, et cetera, et cetera.

I stopped short. “Alright, guys. This obviously isn’t working. We need to… look different. Look at all these people… and look at us. Obviously, we need to step up the game, otherwise we’re gonna look pretty damn suspicious.”

“I hate to admit it, but I agree,” Kobra Kid mumbled. “The people are looking at us like we’re vermin.”

“Yeah, so, Party, I think we should—” I began, but stopped short when I saw him talking to one of the well-dressed, high-class people. They both looked serious, but there was a pleasant smile across the other man’s face, as if he were lost in nostalgia.

“Dude,” Fun Ghoul barked over to Party Poison.

He, along with the other man, looked up. Smiling, they walked up to us. The man smiled at me and bowed low, kissing my hand. “Hello, my lady.”

I was biting my lip and blushing like hell, looking at the man in a state of shock. “Uhhhhh, h-hi.”

Party Poison grinned. “This is Rampant Disease. He’s one of us. Apparently, he’s one of the uppity-ups. An insider that Billet Deceiver knew. And of course, Bullet knew that we’d stick out like a sore thumb here, so… he’s gonna fix us up. That what you wanted, Atomic?”

I almost laughed. “Wow, you’re… wow. Ror—Bullet Deceiver sure was good. Knew us inside and out, he did.”

Rampant Disease smiled. “Gentleman, lady. Follow me, I have just the thing for you. I’ve been expecting you, after all.”

[x]

Three hours later, Rampant Disease was smiling at the five of us as we stood in front of him. He was clearly admiring his work; which you could tell he thought was a success. There was a triumphant smile on his face that not even a ray gun pointed at his head could take away.

“You look absolutely ravishing; all of you.” Rampant’s smile was growing, if that was even possible. He looked at all of us up and down and nodded.

I looked in the mirror at all of us, and couldn’t help but agree. We were barely recognizable. In a good way, of course. We did look, as Rampant had put it, “ravishing.”

It did take a lot of work, though.

After he’d taken our clothes from us and threw them in a wash to get them cleaned up, he let us borrow some fancy silk robes. He let us use his shower and we all took a turn showering and cleaning up. While we were doing that, he’d gone out and gotten our clothes. He thought of everything; and by the time he was done, we looked like we belonged in the Bellagio with the best of criminals and Killjoys.

I admired us in the mirror more, not being able to take my eyes off of us.

All the boys were wearing tuxes. Their hair was trimmed, brushed straightened, and perfect looking. Their faces were clean and shaved, and they were standing up straight with their heads held high like “certified gentlemen, such as myself” as Rampant had put it.

I had my hair brushed up into a classy hairstyle. I was wearing a simple, sexy black dress. I wore one simple necklace and long, black silk gloves that covered my arms, but slipped over my middle finger like a ring, which left my hand mostly bare. To top it off, I had classy, sexy high heel boots.

I turned around and smiled at our stylist. He kissed my hand again and then shook hands with all the guys. “I’ll see you around,” he said, smiling. He gave us a suitcase which contained all of our normal [ and now, thankfully, clean ] clothes and gently ushered us out the door.

Now, we walked down the halls with confidence. Fun Ghoul and Kobra Kid linked their arms through mine as we entered the casino.

“Here’s the plan,” Party Poison said, ushering us close together. “We play it cool; try to blend in. Act like we’re the shit and are super important like everyone else seems to be doing. If any of us find her, we go near the entrance and stay there until you’re spotted by the rest of us.”

“Why are we ‘blending in’ exactly?” I asked dully.

“Because,” Party said, flashing me a look, “there are plenty of people—even Killjoys—who don’t exactly like our particular group. We got all the fame and wanted posters; we’re more well known than the rest of them – and to criminals, even some Killjoys, that’s competition, and competition means death. Alright? Alright. Fun Ghoul, Jet Star, you’re with me. Kobra, you’re with Atomic. Let’s… pretend to gamble.”

We split up then, leaving me in the company of Kobra Kid, who looked over at me. “What the hell do we do now?” he whispered at me.

“I don’t know,” I replied hopelessly.

Kobra Kid bit his lip, then put on a confident look. He linked arms with me again and walked over to some sort of gambling table that had something to do with dice. Unlinking his arm, he motioned politely for me to take a seat and I graciously did so. He stood behind me and put his hand on my shoulders.

“Aw,” a woman cooed at the both of us. “How sweet. How long have you been together?”

I was about to correct her to say no, Kobra and I certainly weren’t dating, but he spoke first. “Two years. We just got married a few days ago.” He beamed down at me, his face completely changing. I could’ve sworn he looked like he actually loved me.

The woman smiled. “Ahh, newlyweds. Enjoy this time of your life. Nothing like this’ll ever happen to you again. Enjoy it, embrace it.” She turned to me and winked. “So how good is he?”

My mouth dropped open and I looked up at Kobra Kid. I had to think fast. “Ah… good. Really good.” I looked back to the woman and smiled.

I could feel him holding back a laugh behind me as his hands gripped my shoulders a bit more tightly. The woman smiled at us and continued on her way.

“The fuck was that?” I asked him quietly. “Two years? Just married? When did you think this up?”

“Darling, you should watch your language,” Kobra Kid was bent over, whispering in my ear. “And I should be asking you on a scale of 1 to 10 how good am I?”

“I’m going to kill you and feed your body to a Drac,” I said, smiling lovingly at him.

He smiled lovingly back. “Say that again and die.”

“Why, hello, lovebirds.” A young, handsome blackjack dealer winked at us as he caught sight of us sitting there, not playing anything. “Show us a kiss, yeah? And play a round or two.”

Kobra Kid and I looked at each other awkwardly. Even he seemed a bit surprised; like he hadn’t been expecting such a blunt question like this. I smiled at the dealer, and all the people around the table who were now staring at us, and shook my head, acting embarrassed. “Nah, no…”

“Ah, come on. You’re married now, you can do stuff in public.” The guy winked again, and all the rich sleaze bags around the table chuckled one of those high-class “I’m better than you” chuckles, and Kobra Kid and I were looking at each other like, ‘What the fuck do we do now?’ and things were just plain awkward.

“Well, uh…” I stumbled along.

“Ah, come on. Kiss her!” one of the gentlemen at the table was kind enough to call to us, smiling brightly.

I looked at Kobra Kid, and he looked at me. I gave him a helpless look that just kind of said ‘let’s just do it’ and he kind of returned the look and the next thing I knew, he was placing a hand gently on the nape of my neck and slightly cupping my face with his other hand and leaning in to kiss me.

Our lips touched, and I guess we had the mutual thought to just sell it; I mean we were supposed to be married, right? So we started kissing really deeply, like we were really in love, and it was safe to say that we must’ve sold it because we heard whistles, and I opened my eyes a little bit and actually saw the rest of the crew across the casino with their mouths open staring at us.

We pulled away from each other and I drew in a deep breath, looking over at Kobra, who was smiling at me lovingly, and I knew it was an act, but God, I felt weird.

The blackjack dealer grinned at us, then started dealing cards to us. I tried to tell him we didn’t have any chips or whatever the hell they were called, but he wouldn’t hear it, so we were playing along and had no idea what the hell was going on, but thankfully, everyone else was doing most of the stuff, so we just kinda sat there and acted in love and high-and-mighty.

As we were doing this, I caught sight of a commotion nearby. I turned and stared, then nudged Kobra, who also looked. I pointed and asked, “What’s that?”

Everyone at the table turned and looked, shocked, at the scene.

Over at another blackjack table, we caught sight of a girl who looked about 24 years of age. She was decked out in her own style that still followed the basic unwritten rules of the casino; classy. But she was pretty punk at the same time. She was wearing a short silvery-blue dress, fishnets, and red high-heel sandals. On her arms, she had black, lacy fingerless gloves with a white corset-style ribbon going up on each of them. A sexy, classy pinstripe fedora covered her long dark hair that had blue wisps all through it, with the tips and bangs dyed blue. She had a lot of piercings, which normally, I hated; but on this girl, she pulled it off. She had snakebites, a vertical labret, and a bridge piercing. Her right eyebrow was pierced, and her left ear held an industrial piercing that went along with the two normal piercings on her ears that most girls get.

But it wasn’t just her looks that were striking.

She was pinning a blackjack dealer to the floor, her red heel resting lightly on his neck as she stood over him, her hands on her hips. She looked like she didn’t care what she was doing. She looked about at the terrified casino people, and hissed, “Anyone else wanna be my boyfriend?!”

I knew then that it had to be her. I nodded at Kobra, looked across at the rest of the Killjoys, and gave them a nod too. They returned the nod, and we all slowly began casually making our way over to her.

Taking her foot off the man’s neck, the girl brushed out the creases in her dress and strutted away from the table. I was surprised no one had pulled a gun on her; this place was full of criminals. It must’ve been her ‘don’t fuck with me’ manner.

I ran ahead of Kobra, reaching the girl. “Hey,” I said, touching one of her gloved arms.

She spun around on me. She looked angry, but then her face softened when she saw that I wasn’t a sleazy blackjack dealer trying to hit on her. She still looked guarded. “What? What do you want?”

“I…” I looked over at the guys, who were all casually standing together as if talking, but looking over at me occasionally to make sure I was alright. I looked back to the girl. “My name is Atomic Battery. I am a Killjoy. I’m with some of my friends here. My brother left me a note telling us to find you. If you’re… who we think you are. His name was Bullet Deceiver. And you’re Bulletproof Liberation.”

The girl stared at me, her eyes wide, her whole guard looking like it had fallen. She even looked as if she were about to cry. “You’re… you’re Shelby,” she whispered. “Rory’s sister.”

“I… yes, how do you know his—”

“I loved him,” she whispered. “And he loved me.”

I stared at her in shock, not sure what to say. Then, something really weird happened. The girl grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek, hugging me close to her as if I were her own sister. She began crying lightly into my neck, and all I could do was hug back, confused.

I heard the boys’ footsteps approaching behind me. They stopped right behind me and Bulletproof Liberation pulled away, looking at all of them. “And you were Rory’s old group, weren’t you? The Fabulous Killjoys, the ones who started it all.” She was still crying.

All the boys nodded solemnly. Party Poison pulled the envelope out of his coat and turned it over to where the note was and showed it to her. Bulletproof Liberation covered her mouth, tears still streaming from her eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity, she pulled herself together and looked at all of us. “We can’t discuss this here. Do you guys have a room?”

“Well, no, not really; we gave the keycard back to the guy at the Luxor…” I mumbled quietly.

My brother’s old lover smiled, her demeanor changing yet again. You could tell she was a fighter. “Come on, then. I have a room here. Follow me, it’s the presidential suite. We can talk more privately there.”