#i renamed them frank and rebecca hope you don't mind haha

[rebellionandallies]

Epilogue: A Nuclear Throne Tale

In the cold dead of the desert evening, two humanoid shapes sat on warped logs around a campfire. As the flames flickered like a buoy in the darkness, the two figures stared at each other in a moment of hesitant examination. One had the posture of a tired man, nearly beaten down by the broken world around him. He wore the faded uniform of an American police officer, and tuned a battered guitar in his scaled hands. His brow was furrowed as he looked up from the taut strings, the fins lining his arms folding in as he met eyes with his companion. His weary face met the burning gaze of his companion, a young woman covered head to toe in dirty gauze, what flesh could be seen from the glow of the fire was burned and twisted. The two post-apocalyptic wanderers maintained eye contact, one worn out and the other bright and furious, before the man returned to the maintenance of his guitar.

His companion however, maintained her stare at his scaly head. “I cannot believe you’re going to get yourself killed, Frank. After everything we’ve been through, you still want to die for the sake of some fairy tale.” The aquatic man raised his head and put his guitar to the side, leaning it against his log to rest it safely, bottom nestled in the wasteland’s desert sand. As he spoke, leaning back with his face receding into the shadow of the night, his voice rumbled like some terror from the black lagoon might in films long gone. “If anything is going to kill me Rebecca, it’ll be you nagging me to while away my retirement on this wacko dust ball. You know I can’t wake up proper without a cup of coffee. And that just doesn’t exist anymore, does it?”

           The bandaged gave a hard glare and some choice words, arms folded as she leaned forward, her voice raised as she criticized her companion. “And nobody is certain that damned Nuclear Throne exists either. But we’ve lost good friends on this fool errand, and it seems you’re determined to die like a fool too.” The slimy fish took up a stick from the log as his companion glared at him, hands on her hips, shaking his head with a certain sadness. “Reb, this is a sad world. Do you want to keep living in it? I think I might’ve taken the way out if not for that legend.” He kept his eyes on the stick, jabbing it into the sand to pierce a struggling beetle, which he then held over the fire on his sharpened stick. “You really think of it as suicide? Well at least its suicide with a bit of hope mixed in. There’s a chance it could work, you know. And I’m willing to take that risk.”

           Rebecca took up her own stick, quickly stabbing into the sand and piercing a toothed worm, holding it over the fire, silent as the creature squealed. A minute of silent roasting, interrupted only by the popping of the internal bits of the two bugs, and the two took their small meals out of the fire. Rebecca slid the large worm off the stick, biting right into the motionless creature, speaking only after her mouth was filled with faux desert sausage. “Frank… it’s not your risk to take. The Nuclear Throne is just some story made up to give dying kids hope their fatal mutation will disappear, maybe. We’ve wasted too much time on chasing some phantom gizmo, when we need you here. To help us rebuild.” Frank meanwhile, simply stared at his roasted beetle, legs still slowly moving. He did not bite into it, or even peel away the shell. Instead, he lowered his stick and looked over to his companion. “Do you know the last thing I ate before those bombs dropped?” As Rebecca groaned and leaned back, the ex-cop smiled and put his beetle-on-a-stick down. “A burger with all the fixings, double patty, melted cheese and a side of fries. That’s just not something we can rebuild, you know?” Frank smirked, as his beetle continued to burn away in the fire he allowed it to fall into. “I was a week away from retirement, you know. Real cliche, isn’t it? Just about to retire to the mountains, and they dropped some mutagen whatsits all over the world.” He frowned, interlacing his webbed fingers as best he could. “I want my past back. I think we all do. One more dead man won’t doom this world further, but if we can hold out hope a little longer, maybe we can get it back.”

His voice grew wistful, and Rebecca regained her unsettled expression as she swallowed her meal, tossing her stick into the night and pointing a finger at Frank. “Don’t you feel like we’ve lost enough? Four years and billions of people dead, dozens of close friends passed on, do you really want to make their deaths mean nothing?” The ex-officer sighed, hands on his knees. “Reb, if I don’t take up the torch they held, then their deaths really would mean nothing. They had… hope, you know? Don’t you miss that, hope?” An uneasy quiet holds them both, while the bandaged mutant took her time to formulate a response. Eventually, she had a reply, lifting her head back up to continue the tense discussion. “Frank, that’s just a dream. That’s giving up. Making something new, building for the future, isn’t that what the real hope is?” Her hands moved as she talked, arm swinging as she emphasized her points. “If you die out there, you’ll be killing most of the hope I have left in this world. We made it this far, isn’t that good enough? Isn’t it good enough to know we can make something better for others?”

The fire started to dim, as Frank withdrew the tip of his stick from the fire, broke it into kindling, and tossed it back into the shallow hole in the sand. “I don’t think it is. This future, it doesn’t feel right. You can go ahead with it if you want, but I’m going to do what I feel is right.” Rebecca shook her head, scowl apparent on her face. “You’re being a fool Frank. And you’re making the rest of us weaker as a result. And you can’t pin that on the bombs, that’s on you.” Her scowl lessened as she realized the strength of her words, but Frank did not show any signs of offense. Instead he smiled and stood up, brushing dust off the front of his faded clothes. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get some sleep. There’s a big day ahead of us, and I’m hoping you’ll join me.” Rebecca stretched her limbs and closed her eyes, breathing out slowly before kicking loose sand over the fire. As she lay on the compact desert floor, she grumbled into the inky blackness, “If you don’t die out there… come back. Please.” A chuckle came from the night, both irritating and welcome. “Well, I try my best to not die. Have some faith, Reb.”

           As the morning sun rose to greet the mutants of the new world, the two figures rose from their positions by the campfire, lazy smoke from the ashes trickling up to greet the sky. Rebecca and Frank looked at each other in unease, as they made a halfhearted attempt to separate on good terms. The ex-cop put a hand forward to shake, only to slowly lower it as he saw the ex-bandit had raised her arms for a hug. Neither could find a way to properly say goodbye, and so they parted in silence. The fish man strode into the baking desert sun, guitar in his hands, strumming the instrument like a character straight out of a heroic western film. And the bandaged mutant limped in the opposite direction, toward a crumbling city block a short distance away from the dead fire. A handful of other mutants milled about the road cluttered with rusting automobiles, and she soon took her place among them, placing her shoulder against the wrecks and heaving at the obstacles with all she had. The day faded to night as they moved the rubble into the shifting dunes, and a new fire was lit when darkness fell.