Have You Smiled Today? (A Party Poison AU)

Reminisce & Rediscover: Love

A/N: This is gonna be sort of a flashback chapter to Toxic Oxygen's past. It's gonna have German in it. I'll put the translations in brackets ok thanks.

"Danke, danke für alles..." [Thank you, thank you for everything] I wanted to hug him and never let him go. I couldn't, though. Celeste, my sister, told me that things were awful and that I couldn't come back to California, that there was a horrible war going on, that it was dangerous; but I had to go. I had to be there for my family.
The airport is very busy. People are escaping right and left. The war is spreading, quickly, to Germany; like a virus.
"Auf Wiedersehen, Raven, ich liebe dich mehr als Worte ausdrücken können..." [Goodbye, Raven, I love you more than words can express] Max says as he holds my hands as he says goodbye for the last time.
"Ich werde dich vermissen." [I will miss you], I say before looking him in the eyes. This was the man that taught himself the whole English language to communicate with me when I first came to Munich for college, before he knew that I was already fluent in German. During my first month here, after learning that I was into metal, he took me to a Rammstein concert.
But, we were starcrossed in all sense. The end is here, now, and I need to board my flight. I wave a wordless farewell to Max and grabbed the handle of my carry-on luggage. I look up at the electronic sign that reads, 'Los Angeles, California', and look back at Max. But he isn't there. "Max?" I say, looking around. However, I don't think to look down until it's too late.
He's on the ground, bleeding. I let go of my bag and scream, dropping to the floor in front of him. I look up from where the body of the love of my life lay, disgraceful, and am greeted by a man with a white suit and a mask completely blank; except for a strange symbol resembling a black smiley face with a bar underneath it. He has a gun, and it's pointed at my head. I scream more. I don't know what to do. I don't recognize the gun, I don't recognize the symbol, I don't recognize the strange commands he's shouting at me- something about "Better Living Industries", and "All in the name of perfection".
Suddenly, among the shrieks of other people in the airport, a hand grabs the collar of my Rammstein shirt and drags me hurriedly and clumsily towards the breezeway. I struggle, cry, and scream even more violently, but to no avail. Beams of red light blast at the floor surrounding me, creating smoking holes in the tile.
I suddenly find myself seated in a chair on an airplane, next to the stranger that dragged me there. "Wer bist du? Who are you?" I ask, glaring at him as he reads the newspaper as if nothing had happened.
"Woah," he says, looking up from his reading, "You can speak English?"
"I was born and raised in California, wise guy," I respond, "Why did you think I was on this plane in the first place? I can speak more than one language."
"What's your name?" he asks, pulling his eyebrows together.
"Raven. My boyfriend just got shot in the back of the head, and you want to make small talk? Whatever."
"Hey," he says, showing me the article he was reading, "I need to go home, too."
Boldface text that read, Woman shot dead by Better Living Industries S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W in Hamburg vacation cottage, significant other escaping unharmed, flashed at me from the paper in German. I gasp.
"I'm so sorry..." I whisper.
The stranger says not another word to me.
********
I shook myself awake. I was in my closet again, in Valleyton, California; staring at a shirt from a 2010 Rammstein Concert, in Berlin, Germany at the Waldbuhne concert venue. The back collar of the shirt was creased permanently from when the man had dragged me away from death. The memory had never occurred to me since I got back to Valleyton, but it suddenly did.
The stranger on the plane had looked so familiar. He had a familiar face, a familiar accent, but unfamiliar hair and clothing. He looked almost identical to...
Party Poison.
"Oh my god," I yelled to nobody in particular. I panicked, dropped the shirt, and ran out of my closet and into my room. The clock on the wall read that it was only 3:00 in the afternoon. The party that Party (what a catch) invited me to wasn't until 9:00. I needed to speak to him right then and there, though, no exceptions.
My eyes mindlessly wandered over to a shelf in a corner of my room, where my communicator radio was located. I jumped where I was standing and rushed over to it, and immediately started twisting the tuning knobs. I knew from rumor going around that you could tell the Fab Four's communicating station from the others because of the tone of the static.
After a few minutes, I found the station and pressed the 'talk' button on my radio. "Um... Come in Party Poison? Toxic Oxygen here, I need to have a word... Um... Shit..."
The static on the other side fizzed and popped, this time with muffled voices in the background. "Come in Toxic Oxygen. Party Poison here, responding to your request for a conversation." People were snickering in the background.
"Thank you for saving my life."
"You said that yesterday, Toxic."
"Thank you for saving my life at the airport six years ago."
"Wait," he paused. Murmurs of 'what?' floated around the other side. "What's your name? Your real name?"
"Raven," I said, voice cracking in between the syllables, "My boyfriend got shot so long ago and you pulled me away from the gun of the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W."
Audible silence was all I could hear.
"Oh my god." Party said, "I knew I saw you before somewhere... This is so freaky, I'm flipping shit. Oh my god. I-I'm thankful that you remembered me. I'm thankful that you survived."
"I-" I paused. What was I going to say? I was at a lack of words. "Thank you." I let go of the 'talk' button and put the radio back on its shelf.
I fell backwards onto my bed. I sighed and stared at my ceiling, plastered with so many posters it was like a second wallpaper. Little specks of dust pirouetted across the single beam of sunlight flowing in through between my two curtains. I smiled, my pigtails sprawled beside my head on one of my pillows. I'd never been so happy to attend an event before; not since the Rammstein concert with Max.
Suddenly, my smile snapped away. I got up from my bed, fixed my hair, and swished the curtains closed with velocity that made me surprised the rod didn't come off the wall. I'm losing myself, I thought, I'm supposed to be stealing food and bomb stuff from Battery City, but instead I'm acting all lovey-dovey and happy about going to a party with four egotistical assholes... I grunted and turned my radio on to Dr. D's station.
The diner belonging to the Fabulous Four; who are Party Poison, Jet Star, Fun Ghoul, and Kobra Kid; has been surrounded by Dracs. They're thirsty for the blood of Killjoys, and they've dusted out a couple 'a fighters out on Route Guano. May I say their names so that they can be remembered: Electric Dagger, Endorphin Rush, Arsenic Candy, and Razor Sand. In the meantime, don't forget to keep your boots tight, your gun close, and die with your mask on if you have to. This is Dr. Death-Defying, signing off.
I sighed. The Dracs were killing too many people. They might have been egomaniacs, but they were still people who were trying to get freedom for other people. They probably had family that died at the hands of the corporation that had claimed to be able to save them. Like me.
I ran out of my room in a rage. I needed to find a way to put a stop to some of the madness.
I ended up across the hall in my study. I looked around blankly at everything. The closet overflowing with drums of biohazardous waste. The various semi-precious gems on the wall. The annotated Periodic Tables. The blank blueprint just sitting on my fancy mahogany desk, waiting to be written on, teasing me. It wasn't even a breathing thing, but it was still a douche.
As I shut the door behind me, a little bit harder than I should have closed it, a single book fell off one of my shelves: Bioengineering: Pathology Edition by Liza von Dieter. I walked to the other side of the room and picked it up. I opened to a random page. The Science of Strains: Engineering Bacterium Your Way. I grinned as I took the book back to my desk and began reading it.
********
I worked into the night designing the most awful, putrid, painful, fatal pathogen strain that I possibly could on paper. After tedious hours of research, I found a way to create an antibiotic-resistant, flesh-dissolving, neurotoxic bacteria from your simple strain of salmonella. I was pretty sure I could find a nice sample or two out in some abandoned grocery store in the Zones. Hell, I was sure I could find a nice sample in a grocery store out in the Zones that was still open. Never trust Zone sushi, kids. It's bad for you. I wondered how well the bacteria would work, with the unnaturally powerful antibiotics in the pills that Dracs and 'Crows received, and if they would be able to track it to me. I shrugged and put the blueprint in my filing cabinet, since biowarfare was not a bad concept to be used in the overthrowing of BLI.
However, I decided to infect the Drac food stores of Battery City another day. It was about 8:30 at night when I finished my research, and I had to leave like, at that moment.
I looked down at myself and realized I still wasn't dressed. Seriously, Toxic, seriously? Seriously. You've got to be kidding me.
I walked across the hall and into my room again, and was about to pick up my normal gear- until I remembered that I was going to a party. I needed to let loose, just for a night.
But then I remembered that the clothes I wore every day were the only clothes I had. Spare from a couple different pairs of pants and another T-shirt or two, but what difference would it make?
"Fuck it," I said aloud, yanking the pieces of my outfit off their individual hangers. If they don't like my clothes, they can suck my nonexistent dick, I thought.
It was starting to get dark outside. I almost literally jumped into my clothes, and then scooted out of the house while still buttoning my fly. I got the keys to my car from the mailbox outside, when I realized that I didn't have a car at the moment.
After cursing at the very essence of the world for a moment, I ran back inside the house.
********
After calling the Fab Four on the radio again, explaining to them that I didn't exactly have a means of transportation to Hobo's Bar and Grill, they arrived at my street.
"Don't worry, we forgot too," Party said as I climbed, exasperated, into the backseat. I practically had to sit on Jet Star, which was really awkward, because there was another person in the car. As I was about to start yelling at them to scoot the fuck over, I immediately recognized a neon green, spiky, foot-tall mohawk poking from the head of a young and rebellious girl.
Krazy Lazer.
"Oh, hey," I said, speaking in her general direction. Jet Star looked at me and then looked away, sullen, when he realized I wasn't talking to him. It seemed to me like he didn't get the most attention out of his group of four friends.
Krazy looked at me for a moment, confused, before her eyebrows popped up and she grinned. "Oh, right, I remember you from the bar a couple days ago! Or was it yesterday? Like I can remember. The clocks don't work anywhere anymore, except in Battery City; and the day I step foot in that town is the day when I get a boob job, like somebody in this car highly suggests I consider." She shot a dirty look at Fun Ghoul in the front seat through the cracked rear-view window. He snickered a bit.
I rolled my eyes with a smirk at the couple and looked out the window. The sun was starting to set over the desert horizon, saguaro cacti setting black silhouettes in the glowing orb.
The glowing orb that'll burst you into flames if you stay in one place too long.
I huffed a little bit on the window, and it created a little foggy spot on the glass. I drew a smiley face like the immature dork I was (and still am).
Kobra groaned from his spot, perched precariously on the console with no backrest, and slammed his finger on a button somewhere on the dash. A radio began playing some weird music. All of the Killjoys in the car howled along, except for me.
"Come on, Toxic, where's your spirit?" Party asked, jokingly, "Sing along! This song's catchy."
And so I did. It was a long time since I'd loosened up, and it felt good to do it again for once. This party'll be okay, I thought, Why have you been so stressed out all these years?
********
The entrance to Hobo's Bar and Grill was different from the norm of any other entrance in the entire town of Kripske, In a speakeasy under a dilapidated building. This time, it was simply a cellar door buried beneath a pile of rubble, surrounded by electric fence and faded "caution" tape.
Fun Ghoul and Krazy Lazer jumped out of the car simultaneously, grabbed each other's hands, and sprinted towards the door while giggling like rabid second-graders.
Kobra Kid and Jet Star both opened their mouths, pointed their index fingers at the back of their throats, and made gagging sounds. I swear, those two were connected in everything they did, like those weird twins in "The Shining".
Party Poison looked up at me (I was 6' and he was 5'9"), and a kind yet small smile revealed itself on his face. His hazel eyes sparkled with glee and wonder, no matter the situation he was currently facing on the horizon. He slowly offered his hand, calloused and partly covered by fingerless riding gloves, and gazed from his hands back up to my eyes.
My hand left my side momentarily and hovered above his for a split second, and we were both staring at the hands that were just barely refusing to touch each other like magnets of the same pole.
I snapped my hand away and let out a little laugh, beginning to walk my way to where Kobra, Ghoul, Jet, and Krazy were waiting. "Not today, Kürbis,[pumpkin]" I said, "Not today."
Party stared at his hand momentarily, as if it was diseased with leprosy or the bubonic plague or something, before jogging over to the cellar with us.
********
"Oh, honey, please tell me you're gonna be changing out of your clothes for this..." Krazy's voice wavered in and out of frequencies due to the pulsating bass beat of the rave before us. She eyed me up and down in confusion. Or disgust, like a pageant mom analyzing her daughter's hideous outfit just before the show, it all depends on which way you look at it.
"I'll change when you do," I said, pointing out her Black Flag T-shirt and jeans.
"Well-" she sighed. "Just come on, Toxic, follow me, I'll have you set up in no time."
She grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd to a small door behind the bar. "Staff changing room," she declared as she opened the door, "The workers here have to wear costumes or skimpy bikinis most of the time here, so they have a room where we can switch into normal clothes."
"But I thought you worked at the Watering Hole or wherever, down the street," I implied, while eyeing the pair of steampunk goggles perched on her Mohawk, that was flattened to one side.
"Listen up, honey, almost every bar or restaurant in Kripske has my name in their employee records. Having more jobs lets me afford things like this-"
She opened her locker and handed me a handful of bright and colorful clothes. "Have fun." She declared, while walking into a toilet stall in a corner.
I looked at the bundle of shit she gave me. A rainbow tutu, pink fuzzy boot slips, a torn-up neon blue athletic shirt, and a furry monster hat with those weird hand-holder things on flaps that go down to my waist. What is it, 2008? I thought.
"Hey, Krazy, when did you buy these?" I asked.
"Um... Hmm... 2016, I think. Old antique store over in Grover. Real vintage, from 2008. Unfortunately, the shop burned down with the rest of Grover. A real shame."
I laughed under my breath and got dressed. After a bit, Krazy stepped out of the stall in a tube top and ripped leggings that matched her Mohawk, along with belts and bracelets and necklaces made of glow sticks.
"You're gonna need some of these," she stated, pointing at her wrists that dangled with glow-bracelets. Good thing a brought a whole bag..." She pulled a duffel bag from her locker, full of unbroken glow-whatevers. A little smile creeped onto my face, and I dove in.
********
Three hours of dancing and laughing; and eight beers later, I was completely and totally wasted. I managed to step outside into the crisp night air, which kept me from throwing up. Just as I closed the cellar doors behind me, I could hear some weird siren sound effect go off twelve times, signaling that it was midnight. The grandfather clock at my grandma's house used to do that, I thought as I stumbled into the sand.
I staggered and breathed deeply for a bit, before collapsing into the sand at the base of a Joshua tree. Krazy Lazer came running out of the stairs after me, sweaty and with half-glowing glow sticks. "You're soooo drunk," she giggled, walking up to where I sat, "But I can tell from experience you're about to throw up. Here, let me hold your hair..." I hardly caught half of the things she said when she gathered my ugly hat and pigtails behind me. Like she said, I moaned deeply and puked.
"Poor little Toxic Oxygen," Krazy crooned, "Too bad I gotta go back inside so I can get my paycheck. Cleanup crew."
And so I was left alone, drunk, and almost crying because I was alone and drunk. There are three types of drunks: the angry drunks, the funny drunks, and the emotional drunks. Unfortunately, I was the latter.
Somebody must have heard me sobbing my guts out under that lonesome tree, because I heard footsteps in the sand; followed by the strong scent of cigarette smoke.
"Toxic?... Are you... Are you okay?" The gentle and concerned voice of none other than Party Poison encouraged me to pull my face from my hands.
"My... My whole life is a mo-motherfucking train wreck right now and I... I don't even know what to do anymore and-" Another sob forced itself from the back of my throat.
"Shhhh," Party whispered, "I know the feeling, I really do. No need to explain. It's okay." He ran the back of his hand over my tear-soaked cheek.
I looked up from my dirty and aesthetically unappealing boot covers and into Party's face. He was crouched on the ground, with his hand outstretched to gently stroke my cheek, his eyebrows pulled together in empathy.
And I just looked into his sparkling hazel eyes, shining with sympathy and care and... I don't know if it was just the emotional drunk side of me speaking, but... Love.
And I kept looking until I stopped crying and I started realizing that I was actually here for a reason, there was a reason that I survived and the others didn't, that I made it this far. I didn't know what that reason was, but I knew that Party was inching his way closer and closer to me, and I started getting insecure because he could probably smell my puke breath and my nose was probably all bubbly with snot and my eyes were probably so puffy they looked infected; and I just kept wondering about that reason why I was alive until-
He kissed me. Party motherfucking Poison was leaning into my face with his face. My eyes opened wide from shock and I noticed that his were closed. His chapped lips pressed against mine, as if two chapped lips could combine and grant you one wish or become smooth and soft again or something. I noticed that he was on his knees now, and his hands were moving to cup my cheeks.
And I kissed back.
And he pulled away.
"Oh my fucking god," he said, standing up and looking at me and then the ground, "I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking, I didn't realize-"
"It-it's okay," I said, trying to haul myself off the ground, "I'm not mad- ow..." I was trying to speak and get up at the same time, and apparently that was too complicated for my drunken sense of coordination, so I kept falling down.
Party nervously offered me his hand from where he stood above me for the second time that day, and I took it without hesitation. When he was walking me back to the car, arm around my shoulders to keep me stable, he smiled. "'Not today, Kürbis, not today,'" he mocked, "Well, it's after midnight, so I guess you weren't lying... Here." He opened the car door of the Trans Am for me, and I got in.
And when he sat beside me, and allowed Kobra to take the wheel, I think I understood my reason...
To experience love again, and destroy the source of its first loss.
And that reason had me content, and thinking that I discovered another type of drunk: The philosophical drunk.

********
A/N:
Another chapter !! Yay!! It's long, too, so I hope you enjoyed that. Sorry it took so long to get the chapter out... But here it is! I already have sort of a plot for the rest of the story, but I'd enjoy some input from you guys.
Thanks for reading!