Hurricane // Danger Days (Book 2)

03.

Storm and Alien we're having one of their usual jam sessions. It was the anniversary of a lot of bad things happening, and music really helped them cope with everything. The song they'd chosen today was Revolution Radio by Green Day.

"Scream, like a rebel's lullaby,
under the stars and stripes,
for the lost souls that were cheated," Alien sang while strumming out chords on her guitar. Storm played along with the steady beat.

"We will be seen but not be heard..." she whispered into the mic, then winked at Storm.

"We are revolution radio,
operation no control,
and the headline,
my love's bulletproof,"

Storm's heart ached at that last line, but he ignored it.

"Gimme cherry bombs and gasoline,
debutantes in surgery,
and the headline,
legalize the truth!"

She yelled that last line. This song never ceased to motivate her. It was made right before the Analog War ended, and it never ceased to be a call to arms for the rebels.

They played through the rest of the song diligently. Music was their passion, and they always worked really well together. Alien couldn't help but add an insane guitar solo to the middle, and Storm, out of obligation, took a solo at the end.

It was only after they stopped playing that they noticed the three recruits, the Ultra Vs, standing in the doorway with their jaws agape.

"That," Volt gasped, "was amazing."

"Dude, what was that?" Volume grinned from ear to ear.

"That, my friends, is music." Alien smirked. "Cool, huh? There's more where that came from."

Suddenly, a head poked into the doorframe from the outside. It was Cherri Cola. "General," he addressed Alien (he refused to call her by her name), "sorry to interrupt, but you're gonna want to see this. Storm, you too."

"Really, Cola?" Alien complained. She sighed and made a dramatic show of pulling off her guitar strap and placing the instrument back onto its stand. Storm casually placed his drumsticks onto the snare and stood up, following the other two out of the room.

As he was exiting the room, however, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Val Velocity was looking at him. "She's supposed to be the leader, right?" he grimaced.

"Well yeah," Storm said after a pause. What's this kid getting at?

"She really doesn't seem to do much, does she?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "You'd think she'd be running around all the time, dealing with all kinds of work, right?"

Storm resisted the urge to sigh. "The army has a more democratic government, sort of," he tried to explain. "The individual groups can handle themselves; she really only gets involved-"

"-when shit hits the fan?" Val cut him off. "She really needs to keep a better eye, not just on the rest of the Killjoys, but on BLI. We really need to focus more on big attacks, right? That's the only way to-"

"Storm!" Cola's voice called from Alien's office. "You comin'?"

"Be right there," he yelled back. "I gotta go," he said to Val, trying not to look smug.

"You should really encourage her," Val pressed. "She needs to support the cause more..."

Storm was already walking away.

He was getting really angry. He was always loyal to a fault. He didn't care when people insulted him, but if someone said anything about his friends or his sister, he went crazy.

He tried not to slam the office's door behind when he entered, but failed.

"Geez," Alien commented, "Is something wrong? What happened back there?"

"I," Storm hissed, "do not like that kid."

"Who, Val?" Alien was shocked. "He seemed like a cool guy! What'd he say?"

Storm took a deep breath. "He said that you weren't doing your job right and that you should control the army more."

Alien shrugged. "A lot of people say that. I can handle it."

"No, you're not getting it!" Storm's voice raised. "He openly insulted you! I-"

"Storm," Cola cut in, "we should really focus on the task at hand."

Storm put his hands up in surrender. I'll deal with this later.

"Righty then, what d'ya got for us?" Alien said, sitting on her desk.

"Well," Cola looked extremely worried. "We seem to have a new enemy."

"Oh really? What've BLI cooked up for us this time?"

"I hate to tell you this..." Cola took a breath. "It's not BLI. It's other Killjoys. Well, they wouldn't really be classified as Killjoys... Rebels."

The General's eyebrows furrowed. "Wait, what? What do you mean?"

"I'm getting reports of this group," Cola explained, "who supposedly have been killing people who they falsely accused of helping BLI. They think that the entire city should burn to the ground, even though most of the people there are innocent."

"So they're extremists?" Alien said, looking concerned. "Well who are they?"

Cola grabbed his tablet, which he had reprogrammed to not be in BLI's control. He pulled up a photo from a BLI file and showed it to the other two Killjoys. "This is their leader. She goes by the name Grenade Shock." The photo was taken by a security camera on the city wall. She had bright pink hair and wore a camouflage jacket. She seemed to be spray-painting something on the wall.

"She looks like a normal Killjoy," Storm observed.

"Trust me, she's not," Cola told him. "She's murdered about fifty innocent people with hand-to-hand combat only, and several more with her gun."

Storm was shocked into silence.

Cola pulled up another photo. "This is her brother. He's called Toxic Revenge." The photo showed a young-looking boy with black hair throwing a small grenade. "He's a mechanic, and he's made several new weapons. Watch this." He pulled up a security video. The same boy was shown in an alley, holding what looked like a missile cannon and aiming it into a crowded street. "This is one of his inventions. The cannon seeks out any trace of BLI's medication, and fires at it." The boy fired the cannon, and several small missiles came out of it, and shot down about ten people at once.

"Holy shit," Alien exclaimed.

"Those two are the main threats, but they've got a pretty good sized following. And they hate you," Cola added, looking at Alien.

"How old is he?" Storm asked.

"Oh, Revenge? About ten."

"Ten?" Alien yelled.

"It's unbelievable, I know," Cola tried to reassure. "We'll just have to keep you under better security."

"Well what are we gonna do about them?" Storm asked, panicked. "We can't just kill them, that's what they do!"

"We'll send them a message," Alien suggested. "Tell then that we don't mean any harm to them, and maybe we can make a truce?"

"We can try it," Cola said, "but don't be surprised if it doesn't work. They don't seem like the peacemaking type."

"Well, thank you for informing me," Alien said, and hopped off of her desk. "What d'ya say we all sleep on this and take care of it in the morning?"

Storm looked at his watch. 22:30, it read. It is getting late. "I like that idea," he agreed.