04| the devil is a child

Pester is a liar, and believes the truth gets you nowhere and frankly wouldn't put herself through having to tell it. Stories she would, lies even but just not the truth. That was one thing she couldn't afford because somehow she understood the pain of telling it. Impossible for a machine, but here she was.

Facts were different and if she were behind a typewriter in Greenwood, she'd blatantly describe herself in naked light, motherboards and wires exposed and call herself Sebrion's vigilante.

The machine gun underneath her hood and the knife in her holster isn't a decor or an additional point for aesthetics, she's used it once— maybe a heap of bodies times but calling herself a murderer refutes the whole point of the journey. People weren't to be counted when the yearly Sebrion census commenced. They shouldn't exist but they do and she helps the city sweep up the dirt like a true citizen.

The ammunition had long exhausted, the empty clicking had gone on about a minute or two before she realized the music had stopped. She couldn't see passed the smoke, she shot something and the fire had spread significantly but the purpose was met.

She discarded the empty gun, hopping down from window to fire escape until her feet touched the ashen sidewalk. The streets were stained with so much blood and it pleased her. She could hear the faint groaning and crying of survivors as she walked through the carnage. Her algorithm only recognizes destruction and her reasoning for her victims being that they were different from her.

She picks up a shattered lollipop covered in dirt and inspects it, footsteps startling her and she reaches for the knife in her holster. Finn stands there overheating with the same blasted song stuck in one ear and the rhythmic ticking of her gear box in the other. Pester croons like a rusty door and opens her mouth to resemble an awkward smile.

"Father." She taunts, swaying to the music. "Were you looking for me father?"

Steam erupts from his joints and he brings up his gun swiftly. "You are under arrest!" He yells through the thick layer of smoke.

"You're under arrest!" She hops from one leg to another and Finn fumbles trying to follow the reaper's silhouette in the opaque smoke.

"Stop talking." He orders moving closer and she swipes at his neck in a swift motion. A thin layer of oil stains his silicon skin and he fires blindly into the smoke. He hears fast footsteps running away and he knows not one bullet had hit her. He runs after her blindly, the heat in his system overworking his gears. "Get back here!" He roars.

Her giggling is off putting and distorted and as he runs after her, the farther away she gets like a bad dream. The carnage gets worse the more he runs, he slows down coming to a jog and his insides overwork to understand the scene before him. Disfigured people lay on the streets, blood and soot stain the roads and remnants of the festival look like something out of a haunted house.

He exhales in a poor attempt to cool his system, where should he start? Where's Johnny? Did turban girl attend the march— a hand grips his shoulder and his gun comes up to point at the strangers face. Though unrecognizable, Johnny stands there frazzled and covered in ash. "I've been calling you! What the hell was that?"

Finn looks at him, lowering the gun significantly. "John."

The blonde pants and coughs, swatting away as much smoke as he can from his vision. "You can't shut down on me now. Get back to the car and call for back up." He wheezes.

Finn tucks away his gun, easily overpowering his partner as he carries the blonde back to where they've parked the car. A crowd had formed a little too close to the smoke, taking pictures and whispering. "Get back! Everyone get back!"

The fire had affected two buildings and the smoke seemed to go on and spread but the people wouldn't listen. Women held the fabric over their hearts and men pulled out any survivors closest them. All Finn could hear were the echoes of sirens, collapsing alongside a weakened Johnny as his overheated system drained his battery considerably.

Johnny smoked sometimes in his younger years as a cop when he found himself stuck on cases. Barbra hated it but that was the only way he could relieve stress at the time. But he never wheezed like he did today, like his lungs would give out any second. He struggled despite the oxygen mask they'd placed on his face in the ambulance, his vision was blurry but he was coming to.

He groaned, turning his head to the side to notice that other cops had noticed he was awake. The scene was swarmed with Law enforcement but Rein's honey brown eyes were the only familiar ones there. She forgets whoever she was previously talking to, marching up to his van to sit beside him. "What the fuck Welsh?"

His eyes were bloodshot and he looked pale. She worriedly sweeps away the hair on his forehead and she looks down at him. "Terrorists." He wheezes.

"Greenies?" She presses and he coughs violently into the mask. "I'm gonna get a medic to get you checked."

He grabs her hand with all his strength before she can move away. She leans closer and he struggles to come up a bit. "Finn?"

She looks at him with scrunched eyebrows. "Recharging his batteries at headquarters. Tommy's gonna drive him to NA corp to get him thoroughly checked after he comes back on. Some bystanders thought it be a good idea to give him CPR when they saw his eyes wide open and unresponsive."

Johnny collapses on the gurney after hearing this and she pats the back of his hand tenderly. "We're gonna find the people that did this." And she was gone, barking orders at rookie cops and shooing away reporters at every turn. It didn't take long for someone to come get him checked, something about too many people being injured so the medical staff were spread thin at the moment.

He flitted in and out of consciousness as he thought of Barbra and the chicken pot pie she'd be eating alone if word didn't get to her sooner. But knowing his curvy demanding short princess she'd navigate every hospital till she found him through all the chaos in the police department. And if he wasn't doped up on pain medication she'd feed him his dinner and distract him from himself.

One minute he's talking into his communicator and the next, the drummer beside him's falling head first into the mascot. And if he trains his ears carefully, he can hear the gun shots above the marching band and the gradual symphony of screams that followed. He can't remember where they came from, struggling to save as many people as he could as he ran to safety himself.

Sometime he feels a hand come up to feel his face and temperature. The van was moving now and he found solace in the fact that the tiny hands on his face felt familiar. He closes his eyes and allows himself slip into the darkness.

His unconscious state lasted for half a day and when he opened his eyes, his left hand was numb from Barbra's body weight. He sighed groggily into her hair and his IV hand strokes away the stray hairs tickling her ears. She stairs on the hospital bed and her blue eyes covered in a sheen of tears dilate at the sight of him.

"Johnny." Her voice comes out like a rush of wind. "I'm so glad that you're awake and you're okay— let me get the doctor." She was scrambling to get off the bed but John stops her.

"Stay. I just want to hold you for a bit." His mouth felt dry and his throat constricted. She hands him a glass of water and helps him drink. "How'd you know I was going to be here?"

"Rein called me." She sets the glass down and sits beside him on the bed. "Said you couldn't breathe and you were in the middle of the terrorist shooting— you're almost near retirement." Her hand comes up to touch his face tenderly.

He squeezes her hand and adjusts himself so he sits upright to look at her. "I know." He kisses her palm. "I'll be careful next time."

"Careful." She scoffs.

"You'll be seeing me often at home now if that's any consolation." Her silence makes him more uneasy than the drugs in his system. "Barb…"

"You have no idea how it feels looking at you limp like a dead man on a gurney. You were covered in ash and you weren't talking or breathing and I—" Her lower lip wobbled and stubborn tears fall freely on her freckled face. "I had to lie to Benny that it wasn't that bad— look at you! And he kept calling because he wanted to talk to you and hear your voice and I didn't have the heart to tell him that daddy might not come ho—"

Johnny shushes her as she's full on sobbing, he rubs her shaking shoulders slowly in hopes she'd calm down. He swipes away her tears with the pad of his thumbs and holds her face firmly. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere…"

She scoffs, trying to break free but he won't let her. He holds her face in place and she can't look anywhere else but his brown eyes. "I'm not going anywhere." He says more firmly, assertive.

She watches him, trying to decipher the lie in his words and come up empty. She nods slowly, letting everything sink in. She's shaking, barely holding back tears and Johnny pulls her in closer. He rests his chin on the top of her hair and revels in the fact that she still smells the same, like the mango mist perfume he'd gotten her for their anniversary.

He just hated the way the debris and smoke to clung to her skin and haunted him like a bad dream on repeat.