Title: The Sun King 1/??
Author:
evil_authoress/
dropkick_graceFandom: My Chemical Romance
Words: 1,701
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, death, swearing, war, insidious liberal agenda alternate universe, potential slash in future chapters
Summary: Mikey Way works the graveyard shift. Literally. (MCR/Gundam Wing/Bubblegum Crisis crossover - you have been notified.)
Mikey fired the beam gun left, right, left again. The steel targets fell like torn paper; a piece of shrapnel was on a collision course for his left leg, and he muttered something sour under his breath. The boost rockets kicked in, jettisoning him straight up, where he nearly crashed into the ceiling of the bunker.
"01, mind your space, please."
"Sorry." Mikey didn't sound terribly sorry, but a token gesture was better than none at all.
"Yes, I'm very sure. 02, take point. 03, 04, left and right. Your targets: Cerberus and Basilisk dolls."
"Sir!" came the echo over the party comm linkup.
It was 0130 hours. By all rights, Mikey Way should have been asleep.
But Mikey Way worked the graveyard shift.
Literally.
"Mikey, for fuck's sake, this is the part where you do something!" Frank shouted over the pary comm, and Mikey couldn't help but laugh. Cadmus had its right foot trapped in the grip of the 'Cerberus' doll; its arms were flailing about, trying to catch the doll on its sensor plate, just like that time Gerard had taken the schoolyard bully by the shoes and shaken all the lunch money out of his pockets--
//"Mikey, don't let them take you..."//
Before Frank even knew what had happened, he'd ended up on the bunker floor, red glass alloy showering on him like a bloody snowfall. His visor screen couldn't even register that a Cerberus, or anything like it, had been in the room at all.
Mikey held the remains of the Cerberus' internal circuitry in his hands, rasping so loudly over the party comm that Bob was forced to turn the volume down inside Theseus' comm panel. The entire bunker was stunned to silence.
Ray was the first one brave(foolish) enough to speak up.
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
"Ghandi wasn't trying to save the fucking world," Mikey hissed, and blasted the circuitry to the floor with his beam gun. What hit the floor was no more than a few pieces of osmium wiring and a puff of black dust.
"Pilots, it is now 0200. Return your suits to the hangar. You will depart at 0600 for Siberia."
//"Mikey, you're...their only chance..."//
The graveyard shift was over.
It was time for rush hour.
-----------
"Are we ever going to get a mission in the Bahamas? St. Bart's? San Diego?"
"You wouldn't want what's left of San Diego, Frank," Ray pointed out over a mouthful of ration bar. He waved it at the Cadmus pilot as if it was a baton, trying to conduct logic out of his brain. Fat chance. "Olympus made pretty damn sure of that."
"All I'm saying is--"
Bob looked up over the top of his nose and his copy of the American Confederation Times. "Frank - shut up. Or I hog tie you in the supply closet."
"I'd like to see you try!"
"I wouldn't!" Ray protested.
"Peace and quiet on a shuttle ride, that's all I ask--"
"We're going to be there in less than an hour, and how do you explain to the Doctors why 02 is piloting with his legs behind his back Frankdon'tyousayaword."
Mikey watched the scene from the periphery of the sparsely furnished cabin - four seats, four seatbelts, one manual pilot's dash, and a million automatic buttons and lights and computer screens that did all the work for them in that white-on-white-on-white. Once upon a time, he'd have been teasing Frank, trying to distract him with some story, trying to diffuse the situation, but that story wasn't a fairytale and no prince was there to save Gerard and //if they aren't going to save the world, we'll have to do it ourselves//fuckfuckmakeitstop--
"Mikey, your alert sensors are going off! Fucking breathe already!"
When he let oxygen back into his lungs, they sent a shockwave all the way to his toes, and he felt his heart thrash in his ribcage in time to the WARNING: UNSTABLE VITALS, DEFENSE MODE Y/N? messages shrilling in his ear. It took him very little time to push back the adrenaline - the doctors had seen to that many moons ago - but the images that buzzed beyond Ray's concerned pout made his mouth taste bright, metallic, bitter, and then he realized he'd bitten on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
"TARGET LOCATION: FIVE METERS" declared the shuttle's monotone, and the four pilots all reached for their helmets and discarded distraction materials.
"Mikey. You have to stop. That's going to get you killed, and that's not what he wanted. Not why he said those things." Ray's concern was hard edged, serious, earnest down to every last ringlet that poked out from his visor every now and then. "Okay?"
"I'll stop when it stops. This job. This goddamn war. He wouldn't want me to forget him either." The whole stream came out monotone, except for 'forget,' which hit a hollow in the back of his throat.
"Remembering him and punishing yourself are not the same thing, Mikey Way, and you know it," Bob interjected from across the aisle. "Get that straight because I'm not going to save you when you have a motherfucking panic attack at five miles up."
"Yeah, you would," Frank muttered, and was rewarded with the business end of a buster cannon in his gut. "Ow!
I hate to admit it," he said, over a killing glare, "but Bob's kind of right. You're driving yourself to despair for no other reason than you think you deserve to be miserable for not being able to save him. The only person who could have saved Gerard was God and God's done fuckall for me lately. We're a team without him just as much as we were a team with him. That means we're here for you, but you have to be here for us, too. All of you. Like, the sane parts especially."
"TARGET LOCATION: VOLTOV BASE, SIBERA, RANK 03 SECURITY. PILOTS PREPARE FOR DEPLOYMENT."
"Remember, if you die because of self-pity, I will bring you back from the dead and beat you until you wish I hadn't," Bob declared over the ear-shattering whir of the shuttle hatch opening and the click-whir of plasma ammunition being loaded into a buster cannon. "Are we clear?"
"As crystal, 04!" Mikey shouted over the party comm. "Remember: Intelligence Czar Georgii Kobel dead or alive! Everyone else preferrably dead! Any unmanned puppets are priority one!"
When the guards at the command post of Voltov Intelligence Agency, Middle of Nowhere, Sibera saw four brightly colored suits descend from the sky, they were sure it was a dream.
They were in for the longest sleep they'd ever know.
-----------
The truth of it was, Mikey had been dead long before Gerard, because Mikey died when the hope died.
The peace had been fake. No one had wanted to believe it, but when the United States marched into Israel and 'restructured the Knesset to restore the banner of democracy,' it was a pretty sure bet that the founding fathers were not really on their minds. America had never meant it to last.
That was fifty years ago. An entire generation had grown up under the thumb of the United Confederation, to the point where America wasn't even the master of puppets anymore. It was a epoch of oppressors and oppressed, where boundaries were meaningless and your government was everything.
When rebels in Africa destroyed a fleet of Confederate Peacemarchers on their way to the Congo, one whole generation saw hope for the first time.
Mikey begged Gerard not to enlist in the resistance. The truth of it was, America had become the Confederaton's most minimal concern, and as such its 'army' was a ragtag group of veterans from 2060 who could barely remember breakfast, let alone the Gulf Rift. But Gerard wanted to fight. When their friends had all stormed the capital to make their voices heard, they had been met by a weapon the likes of which were unknown to even the craziest of the 'two shooters'[1].
They were called mobile dolls. Warriors with weapons greater than the best sci-fi films had ever offered, and no risk of human life. They could fire and fire for hours without exhausting, leaving the barest remnants of even the largest metropolis. The American Army had absolutely no chance. It was a "regrettable tragedy" that illustrated "the folly of selfish, individualistic fallacies" according to the Confederation.
For Mikey, it was game over. Gerard, however, was incensed. The big brother that would stare at the clouds for hours, so still that he was mistaken for comatose on more than one occasion, could not sit still. He shouted until his throat was raw. He was furious. And he wasn't going to give up.
They had a band. It was popular enough in the beginning, but when Gerard started writing songs about love and hope and freedom and fuck yous and CONfederates, they were the counterculture celebrities the likes of which only their great-great-great grandparents knew. When they enlisted, so did all their fans.
And then the Confederates came to New Jersey.
The last thing he remembered about that day, before Ray dragged him behind what was left of a 7-11 with his GI tract on a filament line barely attached, was the Confederates kicking his lifeless body into a mass grave along the shore, leaving it shadowed with blood. He had been their ring leader, their dreamer, their tether that held them to the rational and right and good.
Hope was dead in Mikey long before the dirt was on them, but anger could fill that hole.
There was not a day when Mikey looked down at the remains of a Confederate base and didn't feel the urge to throw up.
//They want you to be hateful, Mikey. They want you to be like them. They want you to seek revenge.//
Once upon a time, they'd seen a black parade. It was summer, it was hot
and they were in the lead.
---
[1] two shooters - of the "on the grassy knoll" variety; slang for someone who believes in conspiracies