Heartbeats - Part 5

[badcop]

Title: Heartbeats
Rating: M??
Summary: A strange trio of villains has an equally strange journey across the United States.
Notes: Possibly the worst crosscanon OT3 in the history of panfandom RP paradox space, starring Barricade (Transformers 2007), Demona (Gargoyles) and Qilby (Wakfu). Set in the Soul Eater universe. Enjoy.

5 Blah Blah Blah
Think you’ll be getting this nah nah nah, not in the back of my ca-ah-ar, if you keep talking that blah blah blah

 

They spent the day in Denver, which would have been counter to their game plan if they’d even had one. There was no deadline to meet, and if they were being pursued, they’d stopped worrying about it after hitting the city. Back in Nevada, there’d been timetables and goals, with research carefully planned and executed, but all that was in ruins now. Their lab had likely been raided after they’d left, and Shibusen wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave it abandoned a second time. Demona held all the information they needed, and she wasn’t pressuring them to get anywhere fast. When they’d hit Denver, they’d found a great deal of the downtown area blocked off for some entertainment event, hosted by a woman with money for a name and a band that was an area code. Stupid humans. Even stupider was their insistence to hold this event despite the Madness levels in the mountains, and the police presence was thinner than usual.

If it hadn’t been such a veritable parade of freaks and glitter downtown, they might have kept driving. Instead, Barricade found a nice parking garage overlooking the concert, while Demona and Qilby took full advantage of being able to go out into the crowd. More fun for them than him, though he couldn’t imagine why Demona would tolerate being in the middle of that many humans. The music was loud, and while technically still illegal, he knew the smoke wasn’t from regular cigarettes. Made him wonder how susceptible gargoyles and Eliatropes were to secondhand smoke. He’d find out if they went looking for him on the wrong level, well past their agreed upon rendezvous time.

As luck would have it, they showed up early, stumbling a bit as they walked but coherent enough. They were both covered in glitter, and for some reason there was chalk drawn all over Qilby’s face, which he was earnestly trying to rub off. First vomit, now glitter and chalk? He had the worst passengers ever.

“I think we’ve finally lost them,” Qilby said, peering suspiciously over one shoulder.

“I told you to ignore those delinquents,” Demona was plucking circular glow sticks off of the horns of Qilby’s hat, chucking them aside as they walked. In her other hand she carried a canvas bag with a cannabis leaf emblazoned on it, and he could see the neck of a wine bottle sticking out the top. Yeah, that was a surefire way to keep a low profile right there.

“Oh, like it’s my fault one of them thought we were related? The man thought he was a goat.”

“I can see the resemblance,” Demona smiled, reaching up and tapping her hand on the top of Qilby’s head. A cloud of dusty chalk billowed up, and he glared at her.

“Have fun?” They drew up short, glancing at Barricade as if surprised their car had just spoken to them.

“Oh, we did,” she said, interrupting whatever Qilby had been about to say. She eyed the state trooper logo plastered on Barricade’s side. “You couldn’t have found us a better ride while we were out?”

Starting his engine with a snarl, Barricade responded by reversing out of his spot and turning harshly enough to make his tires squeal. Demona laughed, but Qilby looked defeated as he drove away from them.

“We’ve been walking all day and the first thing you do is insult our ride – “

Whatever Demona’s response, Barricade was already on the next level up, doing a little car shopping. He had to go up a few more levels before he found something more suited to his frame type, gunning his engine around each turn to make certain they could hear him down there. A nice little convertible was his choice, hot rod red to match Demona’s bold statements today. He came up behind them on the way down, headlights flashing as they turned to face him. Qilby looked unimpressed as usual, but Demona was approving.

With the top down, he drove them out of the city and back out onto the open roads, heading northeast towards Nebraska. Their real destination tonight, however, was somewhere remote and out of the way. After walking the streets, Demona decided they’d go back to ‘roughing it’ and forgo a hotel, even over Barricade’s vehement protests. He threatened to drive off a cliff if they didn’t do something about the chalk and glitter, but in the end Demona had won, and they parked in the middle of a field to stay the night. Despite being the youngest of the three of them, the gargoyle had a particular way of bossing them around. He had yet to figure out how that worked, exactly.

Demona and Qilby sat in Barricade’s backseat, sharing the bottle of wine and dining on cheap crackers and dried meat under the night sky. Not exactly the most romantic thing in the universe, but after a while Barricade decided he’d rather be doing this than sitting in some pothole-ridden hotel parking lot. For most of the night he paid more attention to the radio than them, until the empty bottle of wine was unceremoniously thrown out onto the gravel. His suspension squeaked as Demona swung her leg over Qilby, pushing the Eliatrope back into the seat as she straddled his waist. Barricade considered joining in, then settled for watching like he did more often than not. At the start of this bizarre ‘relationship’, they’d considered him a voyeur at best, and a potential danger at worst. He’d thoroughly enjoyed proving them wrong, proving repeatedly a cold machine was just as capable of giving and receiving pleasure as them.

At the moment, though, he was a spectator again. Demona’s wings were extended to their full length, and the best Qilby could really do was hold on for dear life, palm pressed flat against the small of the gargoyle’s back. Barricade was going to enjoy the looks on their faces tomorrow when they realized they had glitter in all the worst places.