Batteries not included.

“I never went to one of these places as a kid. The mall, sure, yeah, but never..”

Out came that annoyed tone, trailing off as they stood in the parking lot of the mall, a set of gnarled up fingers pulling a single cowboy killer from his wrinkled up pack of marlboro reds before stripping out the filter on it just like he’d been taught to. Couldn’t exactly risk leaving behind a trail that he’d been there, it was stupid now but it’d been important when he’d been taught it. He carelessly flung the bit of rubbish into a nearby, beat up, trash can.

“I don’t even know why you wanna hit this place up, it’s practically dead. I think we’re the only ones here older than twenty and younger than fifty.”

True enough, the mall was still “recovering” from Quarantine judging by the sparsely populated parking lot, but truth be told? It probably should have been still empty if you listened to all the experts and historians talking about a second wave. Personally, Jason had no clue what was bullshit and what wasn’t, he wasn’t a virologist or a scholar, and that much was something everyone and their damned mother knew about the man, he was all gas and no brake when it came to most everything in his life. Those blue eyes shifted over though, moving to regard his partner, waiting on her to respond to his bitching.

Maxx was only half listening to him as he bitched and complained about today’s activity. Last time, they had to deal with Star Wars and she knew good and damn well that Leela would be wet for Disney this time since the parks were reopening, so she had decided they were going to her happy place.

As they made their way through the near abandoned mall, she scoffed behind her mask at the people waiting in serpentine lines for the basics. Vo? He just ashed out his cigarette, thunked it in the trash can, and slid on his own mask with those last few gasps of nicotine placating him. That’s not why they were here today! “Vo, listen… listen VO. We’re here for a reason and since when don’t you trust me? You ain’t wanna wear them super suits and what happened? We beat the Jedi NerdAlerts didn’t we? And then you went off and did your thing with the guns and the BANGBANG!” She finger guns at him with a laugh. “And we sucked. Soooo today, we’re going to the haven of every little girl, every princess, everyone who ever wanted to feel like GOD!” VO legitimately cringed at hearing that, but behind his mask, who knew what was he was actually doing?

Well, anyone who could see how he screamed ‘please kill me’ behind those baby blue eyes.

Jumping in front of the store and nearly giving herself two black eyes in the process as she had skipped the bra today; arms out stretched she all but screamed ‘TADAAAAAA’ presenting him with their destination for the day…

Build-A-Bear.

“Maxx..” He trailed off as he saw what she was grand gesturing at, you know, after he shook the vision of the goddamn weapons of mass destruction she had flopping around out of his head. “Seriously? Build a bear?” He sounded somewhat reluctant but he lifted those broad shoulders of his and dropped them all the same with a sigh. Goddamn it. He knew he should have dragged her out to the gun range instead of this, but he didn’t say a word beyond what he’d already said.

A hand shoved itself into his left pocket, using his right to draw the strap of his backpack just a little tighter to his frame as he followed after the hyperactive blonde.

“Look, I get it. I do. Seriously, I just.. No, wait, fuck, I don’t get it. Why Build A Bear!?”

Her eyes rolling was all the more dramatic with the rest of her face covered. As they stepped through the doors to… not even one employee she wriggled the mask down and grinned.

“Okay, hear me out HEAR ME OUT.

When I was a kid I thought this was the fucking dream factory, like you ain’t never met a kid who didn’t think that coming here wasn’t the damn epitome of Happiness… When we first rolled up on Union, that’s what I saw. I saw this beacon of talent and somewhere to show the fuck up and test what we could do.

But just like this place is limited to the options someone else gives you? So is Union, I mean fuck. You got the Build-A-Wrestler brand team in Danny and Leela, the cute perky chick the little girls can wear matching shirts with and dream about taking trips to Disney with… and the cocky mildly attractive bad boy type that all the dudes wanna get tips from cause he’s nailing half the sport, only he ain’t cause he’s like the Walmart brand version… the same basics but without the charm.

And then you got the big brand. The hell cats, they’re like the tv shows that sell out and have a one off line here. Build your own Pikachu or my little pony! Only it ain’t your own, cause it gotta slip into the lines already available. The Hellcats be like that… they were this super alternative group of nutjobs who were running all over inspiring anarchy! Now? Well, now they just a sell out brand to the bigger name.

They champions yet they don’t do fuck all for it. They ain’t breaking a mould, they ain’t stepping out. They empty husks of what they once was, waiting for a suit to shove the Union Brand inside em and getting em going again. For the right price of course.”

When Maxx is finished with her explanation she let’s out a huge exhale that switches into a grin as she nods. Far too proud of herself and her analogy. Jason just blinked owlishly at her analogy, actually impressed with what his best friend just blurted out without even so much as taking in a proper breath. Flabbergasted? Not quite, but definitely impressed as he took a step closer into the store, taking it all in as he felt her near childlike exuberance.

“Yeah. I see it. Danny’s tough, he’s hard, but in the end he’s another carbon copy of every other bad boy out there, Leela’s his blonde counterpart. Both are good, both are solid, nothing’s wrong with what they are because they work, but it’s formulaic to a point of being almost Stepford, but without the nuclear family post the defeat of fascism ideals. I get it.”

Rubbing at his face through his mask, he cut his eyes from the happy, smiling, stuffed animals to the licensed merch as Maxx was all too happy to point out in all of her ‘look at all the red strings connecting my wild theories!’ glory. He couldn’t help the smile that spread on his face from beneath the mask as he walked closer towards the scene, almost like he could see where her thought process went.

“You know my little sister, Cat, her ex got her one of those when they were together?”

Holding up a random Eevee he’d plucked from the nearby bin of stuffed animals ready to process.

“Cept he got the voice box to say ‘I wanna spit in your mouth’ instead of something cute. Remind me to stomp him the fuck out the next time we go by Boston.”

Tossing the stuffed animal back with an exhale, he cut his eyes over to the blonde.

“So, I get it. One’s generic, trying to follow a tried and true formula that works. One’s practically a walking brand that are selling the images of themselves and what they used to be, right? That’s the general gist? If that’s them though, what’s that make us, Maxx? What’s our team in all of this?”

Maxx skipped past him with a quick hop of a movement. She thought about telling him the secret she had regarding his sister… but now wasn’t the time so instead she nodded and then reached the machine. Here was where they took the bear skin and filled them with fluff. The kind of fluff Leela was definitely made out of. She picked up two things.

In one hand she held a red gingham heart, it was crinkled at the edges but soft to the touch. In her other hand was a voice box, the kind Vo was talking about moments ago.

“You and me? We the heart and the voice of this whole damn thing. Cause while we can have fun and poke it too, while we out here never taking twitter or shit talkin too serious? We got all the heart in the damn place, ain’t nobody putting more of themselves into every second they out there than we is! The others? They gotta have one of these shoved inside em, provided by the corporate big wigs, so they can pretend to be as determined as we are.

Ain’t a single person who can’t argue we ain’t all heart in this. And then there’s the voice. We ain’t the tried and true sounds, ain’t nobody putting us out there with a catchphrase. We ain’t mass produced and available for anyone to emulate. We our own damn voice, we here and we loud and god damn, if people don’t like it.”

She presses the little heart into the palm of his hand as she slips back over to where he is, a firm nod of her head as she keeps pinning more red strings to her mental theory board, something that Van Owen could appreciate, especially as he held the red heart in his hand. It was blank, at least for now. Still, he picked up a ninetails, the nine tailed fox pokemon and.. started stuffing it. Fuck it, he was here, he might as well get one, right? What was he up to? Who knew, but he was content to let her ramble as he started on making the stuffie.

“Leela, Danny, the Satanpussy girls? They those prerecorded I love you sounds. Sure they saying the right things and they make sure you see that heart going in, but it ain’t special. It ain’t meant. It’s just a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of when they really meant it.”

“Still, like I said, it works. They beat us one on one, and that isn’t easy. Yeah, they’re more experienced, but we’ve both outright stomped former champions before.”

Of course, he smirked to himself as he worked over the ninetails in his hands.

“Then again, I’m not entirely sure Danny won after Drell got done with him after our match. Just.. real funny I had a set of cuffs on me to do that, almost like I saw the end of that bullshit coming.”

With that, he glanced at the camera and winked, as if it was a secret. Still, he went back to the Pokemon he was creating!

“As for Satanpussy, which by the way, they should definitely fucking copyright that. You’re not wrong. The fuckery seems a lot like an act, but they didn’t get to the point where they could sell the fuck out by not being some of the baddest bitches in the industry. Even if, y’know, A.J ‘I can’t shut the fuck up’ Morales is in that shit, and the goddamn Time Lord bitch who loses her mind every six weeks are up in that mother fucker. They’re some real shitkickers, Maxx. I’ll fight any fuckin’ body, but we’d be kinda remiss not to.. Ah, fuck. I broke a stitch in the seam.”

Well, it didn’t help that he’d be fisting the goddamn thing like it owed him drug money.

“Was makin’ that for Aria.”

Maxx gently bumps him away and starts to stuff and stitch the stuffed animal for him as she nods.

“Nah, I get it. They’re talented as fuck, all four of em could grind us up and blow us out into the wind buuuuuttttttt they also ain’t all in this, know what I mean? Fuck, for sure we beat them all?
And we pull off the upset of the night, the year… maybe even the decade! Only it ain’t an upset to us cause you and me know what we actually capable of. We know we work harder than they give us credit for, we know we go all in every time without fail.

That’s WHY we the heart in all this. See, here’s the thing. You can have all the talent in the world and all the support behind you of a whole damn company, but if you ain’t want it this? If you ain’t fighting for it with all you got? Then why the fuck you here?! Cause the kitties ain’t fighting for it, most the damn time they can’t even be bothered to show up for the night.

VO, me and you, we the mother fucking interim champs and whether everybody else wanna act like it means nothing or not, it’s something. It means we got a claim on those titles cause we wanted it more, we went at it more. Danny Gotta keep one eye on Drell and Leela too damn nice to smack him like a bitch and demand he focus.

We make waves and we make a difference everywhere we go, people then the fuck out cause we bring the fun and the work. So we deserve to be in this match and we DESERVE to be walking outta there not as interim champions but as THE champions. Point blank. That’s it.

And they can throw all the words and moves they got. They can argue til all their faces are as blue as your balls when Aria sees what you did to this pokething. It don’t matter. Their opinions don’t matter.

Winning this will be setting the standard for us, winning this will cement us a team to be reckoned with, cause they been doing this longer, they done it better and they think we aint shit! They’re shit kickers and champions. But we the heart and fucking soul of this competition.

And they can’t touch that.”

As she finished up the Ninetails for Van Owen, he took it as she offered it out to him, casually gripping it in his calloused hands with a grin, appraising it, weighing it in his hands. Yeah, this would do just fine, he felt. Squeezing it around the middle, he let the heart speak its message.

”Sit on my face!”

Oh, it was absolutely his voice, and he was all too pleased with himself, one could read it in his damned eyes as he sat the stuffed animal down, lifting his hands up to unhook that mask just so he could breathe actual air for a moment, turning to face his partner.

“You’re my best friend, Maxx. I mean that shit in my soul, Girl. Since the day at the trial, when you kept me from shoving a pistol in that fuck’s mouth while putting yourself between me and them? I knew we were in this for life, from then to our dying day. I know all these teams got bonds, that they’re close, but I’ll still put a bet on us when it’s us against the world. You’re right. We got the heart and soul that they can’t buy or manufacture. The best Leela and Danny can do is crow that they caught up to us, and the Hellcats? They’re professional soldiers about to get their first run in with the mother fuckers in black pajamas, and they’re gonna find out that amatuer assholes who’re fighting for something other than fame and money hit a little different.”

Those calloused hands lifted up, grasping the blonde by her head as he lowered his forehead to hers, just for a moment, just enough for that touch to settle in before releasing her.

“All we got going into this match is an interim title that no one wants to recognize and eachother. That’s all we had when we faced Danny and the Leela the first time, when they thought that they were gonna walk right through us, and we shocked all of Union with the beating that we fed them. All we got is eachother, cause that’s all we need. They thought we were a joke when we first showed up on the Battlegrounds, but no one’s laughing at us now.”

There. His grin was resurfacing as he looked up at the camera.

“We’re what can’t be replicated, following the formula of us requires more blood than what people are willing to give up, and that’s why we’re coming for everything that the best have, because we’re on that too unique to live, too weird to die shit.”

With that, Van Owen just aimed a finger gun at the camera.

“We’ll see you in the ring so we can properly take what’s ours.”

Pantomiming cocking his ‘gun’ the man just mouthed ‘bang’ while Maxx rolled her eyes at him as the screen faded to a red sheen.