Rusty's Boys

[oxfordtweed]

Rusty's Boys (4375 words) by OxfordTweed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Venture Bros
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dean Venture, Hank Venture, Rusty Venture, Brock Samson, Monarch, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, Myra

Summary: Rusty realises what it really means to be a father. - Spoilers for S3 finale.



He sat hunched over a long table, papers and Petri dishes and slides strewn about the cool metal surface. He could hear Myra moving around somewhere nearby; a signal that everything was all clear at the Venture compound. More comforting, however, were the beeps and whistles of HELPeR as he rolled back and forth across the lab. It must have been quarter after two already, because that's when HELPeR would turn on for fifteen minutes for his early morning fit of unwarranted robot panic. Rusty made a mental note to dismantle the machine and figure out which wires had been crossed.

There were slightly more pressing matters at hand, however. He picked up a rubber band from the work bench and pulled his hair back into a frazzled pony tail before sliding another petri dish under the microscope. Sighing the way a man does when he's done the same thing a thousand times before with no new results, he took off his glasses and leaned over the microscope.

"Oh, my god," he said slowly, backing away for just long enough to blink. "No fucking way."

He started laughing, desperately trying to stifle his noises, but he knew as soon as he'd tried that it was no use.

"Rusty?" Myra said accusingly as she threw the lab door open. "Why aren't you in bed?"

Rusty jumped up as quickly as he could without spilling everything to the floor and shoved Myra out of the lab. "You'll contaminate everything!" he shrieked as he locked the door. "I told you to stay out!"

"Rusty!" Myra shrieked right back. "It's past your bed time!"

"You're not my mother," he said loud enough for her to hear as he made his way back to his work station.


"Screw this," Brock said, looking over the grounds of the Venture compound. "I'd rather...quit."

"Good for you!" Rusty said over his son's clamoring. "OSI. Who needs 'em?" He watched as Brock slowly walked away. "Where you going?" he asked as Brock kept walking. "Aren't you gonna help clean up this mess?"

"I said I quit!" Brock snapped back. He walked straight up to Monarch-mobile and finally turned round. "Hey, Monarch!" he called. "I'm taking your fucking car."

He waited long enough to let Monarch mumble something that sounded possibly affirmative, reaching for the door moments before the car inexplicably exploded, sending debris and parts of robot and henchman flying across the grounds. Panic stricken, anybody able to remain on both feet began running in every conceivable direction. In the chaos, Rusty was knocked to the ground, his glasses being stamped into the ground.

"Great," he muttered as he picked up the bent frames from the mud. Broken as they were, he slid what was left of them onto his face, looking up to see General Treister's outstretched hand.

"Doctor Venture," General Treister said firmly, helping Rusty from the ground. "Would you mind coming with me, please?"

Rusty tried to brush himself off as he surveyed the scene around them. "Gladly," he said flatly. He followed Treister to the parked jet, surprised to find himself immediately shoved against a wall with a full-auto machine gun aimed at the side of his head. "Hey, what gives?" he demanded. He tried to twist away, but gave up soon as he felt yet another pair of handcuffs being tightened round his wrists. "I had nothing to do with any of this!"

"You mean to tell me that's someone else's clone army out there on your lawn?" Treister demanded.

"I think you have me confused with my brother," Rusty said, his face still pressed against the wall. "He's also a scientist, you know."

Outside, Hank had begun running in sprints, stopping every few yards to look around. "Pop!" he called across the din. "Hey, Pop!"

"Dad!" Dean joined in, tears running down his freckled cheeks.

Hank began running across the grounds with Dean in pursuit, the both of them barreling into Brock.

"Boys," Brock said, looking over the chaos around them. "Where's your father?"

"We don't know," Hank said relatively calmly.

"I don't wanna be an orphan!" Dean wailed, clinging onto Brock's arm.

"You're not gonna be an orphan," Brock insisted, not entirely convinced, himself, if the scene around them was anything to go by. "Come on," he said, grabbing both boys by their arms. "Panic room. Now!" He led them quickly inside the walls of the compound and through corridors to the panic room. For a few moments, he considered leaving them there by themselves, but then remembered exactly who it was he was dealing with, and knowing their father, it could be days before he'd return. He shut the door behind them and sat down on the floor, letting Dean cuddle up next to him.


"Help me out of this!" Monarch demanded as two henchmen propped him back onto his feet. "Watch the wings," he warned, in an afterthought. Unable to free himself from his overly-elaborate and horribly useless new suit, he searched the grounds frantically with his eyes. "Where'd he go?"

"Who?" Dr. Mrs the Monarch asked, reaching up to clean the last bits of vomit from her husband's face.

"Doctor Venture!" Monarch screeched.

"I think he just got arrested," the henchman struggling with the task of removing Monarch's boots said. "They said something about an illegal clone farm."

"What?" Monarch demanded, flailing his free arm enough to lose his balance and fall back to the ground. "That's not fair! I wanted to be Venture's undoing! Get me out of this fucking thing!"

The henchmen worked quickly to free Monarch from his suit, taking more to just tearing bits off of it than dismantling it properly. He was eventually able to squirm out of the contraption, stumbling awkwardly to his feet. "21! 24! Come with me!" he said, already running before he realized that neither henchman were following him. Looking around, he spotted 21 sitting on the ground, crying to himself. Naturally, 24 was nowhere to be found. "Want something done right, do it yourself," he muttered as he made his way clumsily toward the waiting jet. Once close enough, he shot tranquilizer darts at the soldiers guarding the cargo bay of the jet. They fell to the ground as he ran into the jet, firing more darts at anyone wearing a OSI uniform.

"What are you doing here?" Rusty demanded as Monarch grabbed him by his lapel and dragged him out of the jet.

"I never thanked you for being my best man!" Monarch said, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. "Now come on!"

Having no other choice, Rusty followed. Once out on the main lawn, he stopped briefly to get his hands in front of himself before following after Monarch once more. "Wait, the boys," he said, pausing in his step. "Dean! Hank!" he called over the ruckus. "Boys, you come when your father calls you!"

"No time!" Monarch said, grabbing Rusty's sleeve and pulling him along again. "They've probably been taken in that other jet that just left."

"What?" Rusty demanded. He tried to pull himself away from Monarch, but was instead tackled by a henchman, surprised to find himself slung over the man's shoulder.

"They're gone!" the Henchman said simply. "The OSI's got them!"

Rusty kicked and thrashed as he was carried into Monarch's flying cocoon, and deposited onto the floor of the control room. As the last of Monarch's remaining henchmen rushed in, the whole cocoon lurched as it lifted off the ground. Rusty rushed over to the door, pounding on the thin metal with his fists.

"Face it, man!" the nearest henchman said. "They're gone. The OSI's got them."

Rusty rounded on the henchman. "That's all the more reason to go after them!" he pleaded, pointing at the door with both hands.

Monarch sighed as he sat on his throne. "What do you care?" he asked. "They're not even yours, from what I hear."

Rusty clenched his jaw and walked up to Monarch. "'Not mine' in the traditional sense, you may be right," he said through clenched teeth, "but genetically speaking, they're my kids!"

Monarch spent several seconds trying to decipher Rusty's meaning. "What?" he asked. "I thought they were clones, or something." He stood up, pointing wildly round the control room. "Which one of you assholes lied to me this time?"

Rusty sighed. "They are," he admitted. "Getting test subjects is kinda difficult,what with congress and all, so I tried to clone myself."

"They don't look anything like you!" Monarch pointed out.

Rusty laughed awkwardly. "Imagine my surprise. I expected Rusty Venture, boy adventurer! Instead, I got Hank and Dean, human magnets for calamity." He tried to cross his arms over his chest, but found the action rather difficult when handcuffed. "Er, a little help here?" he asked.

"Yeah, fine," Monarch said. He pointed at Rusty, and a henchman walked up with bolt cutters. Rusty nervously held out his hands, not sure if he should trust a henchman around his wrists with such a dangerously sharp object. After a bit of fuss and moaning, the henchman managed to break through the chains that held Rusty's wrists together, leaving now a second set of severed cuffs on his wrists.

"Why don't you just make new ones?" Monarch asked simply. "Make them less annoying next time."

"I can't!" Rusty insisted. "All my progress was destroyed out there, and they've probably confiscated the rest. Why do you think they tried to arrest me?"

"So," Monarch started awkwardly. "How many times..."

"I don't know. Fourteen. Fifteen? I lost track."

"Explains a few things."

Rusty looked down at his shoes, trying to ignore the voice in the back of his head telling him that the only family he had left was his mutant brother.

"I was to be exclusive," Monarch said finally.

Rusty looked up. "What?" he asked.

"I want exclusive arching rights," he said. "Sergent Hatred's got to go. Oh, and put a muzzle on that walking Swedish murder machine of yours. I'm spending a fortune on training for new henchmen."

"Anything you want," Rusty agreed, unable to believe the words he was saying. "Just, please. Help me get my boys back."


He'd always known Myra was a bit on the crazy side, but she confirmed shortly after the boys were born. All babies look the same really, but when their hair started to come in, and one of them was blond, Rusty knew at that moment that something had gone horribly amiss. The second one had dark hair, like it should have been, but it was completely meaningless by this point. The boys weren't identical, which meant that their DNA was unique. The first ever successful cloning attempt, and they weren't even legitimate clones. Though the ones still in the incubators would be exactly like the boys Rusty had come to call Henry and Dean, so that had to count for something.

Of course, when Myra found out about the project, by way of just letting herself back into the lab, Rusty began to fear for not only his life, but also for his entire project, which he'd already poured three years of his life into.

She hadn't even been put into the back of the squad car before Rusty was on the phone to the OSI, demanding a more competent, less psychotic agent. Three days later, Brock Samson arrived at the gate of the Venture compound. He seemed to take to the boys well. Of course, the facade could only last so long, because this was the Venture compound, after all, and it was only a matter of time before guys in gay capes and tights launched an assault on the compound itself. The boys had been out on the lawn when Monarch first showed up, and had been accidentally shot with lethal darts from some under-qualified henchman. At first, Rusty had been terrified of what Brock might do, suspecting that he'd try to do something stupid like call the police. It wasn't like there were several dozen exact duplicates in the east wing of the lab. Of course, it wasn't until after Rusty had began the process of resurrecting the boys, as it were, that he realized that Brock may report him anyway.

"Clones?" Brock asked cautiously.

"Yeah," Rusty said timidly. "I started this project before the ban," he lied. "I can't just abandon it!"

Brock sighed lightly, peering into the kitchen, where Hank and Dean had found a bag of sugar and two spoons. "Those boys are gonna be bouncing off the walls," he said flatly.

"They don't know," Rusty insisted. "They can't. It would destroy their minds."

"That's not what I mean, Doc," Brock said, pointing with his thumb toward the kitchen. Rusty stepped closer to Brock to see what was being pointed at. "Christ damnit!" he shouted, running into the kitchen after the boys.


By dawn, the noise on the compound had died away completely, and Brock left the panic room to survey the grounds. Finding only charred remains of car and robot, he figured it was safe to let the boys out. He sent them up to get cleaned up while he found something to act as a semi-decent breakfast. They boys took longer than usual to return to the kitchen, and when they did, they took their seats silently.

"Hey, listen," Brock said as he served them Rice Crispies and orange juice. "Your dad'll be back. I'm sure he's just out taking care of business from yesterday."

"How do you know?" Dean asked sullenly, poking at his cereal with his spoon. "I heard what that man said. Why would he even want to come back?"

Brock turned round to face the boys. "Said about what?" he asked cautiously.

"When I was looking for Pop," Dean said. "Some guy in a uniform said Dad's got an illegal clone farm."

Brock sighed. "Dean, listen to me--"

"Is it true that we can't die?" Hank asked flatly.

"What?" Brock began to wonder if maybe he should have just left the boys alone.

"One of Monarch's butterfly guys said that he's seen me die twice!" Hank said. "Like, shotgun blast to the face. And then he shot me with a poison dart!"

"I knew that wasn't a Christmas present!" Dean wailed. "Dad doesn't even remember Christmas half the time!"

"Jesus Christ," Brock muttered. He took away the cereals and picked the boys both up, setting them on their feet. "Upstairs," he said. "You boys are in shock. Let's go."


"Sir," an out of breath henchman said, panting in front of Monarch. "We've completed our sweep of OSI HQ. No sign of Doctor Venture's... er... kids."

Monarch considered this. "You're certain?" he asked.

"Pretty sure," the henchman responded.

Rusty groaned from the back of the control room, where he'd been pacing for the last two hours. "We have to go back to the compound!" he insisted. "The boys have got tracking devices in their teeth. The receiver's in my lab."

"That place is still probably swarming with OSI operatives," the henchman pointed out.

"Well, it's too bad one of you idiots blew up my robot. We'd be able to check, then," Rusty muttered as he went back to pacing.

"For crying out loud, just stand still! You're driving me insane!" Monarch yelled. "We'll take you back to your compound. Just stop doing that!"

Rusty stopped and awkwardly leaned against a wall, only to fall over when the cocoon suddenly lurched forward from its hover. He tried to find something to grab hold of, but found nothing but the smooth walls of the control room. Once a steady pace was obtained, Rusty managed to get back to his feet and stumbled over to the throne next to the one Monarch was on. Letting himself drop into the seat, Rusty landed on something hard. He pulled what appeared to be a small remote control from under his thigh, taking only a moment to glance it over before tossing it to the side of the room.

"What do you think you're doing?" Monarch demanded, pushing Rusty out of his seat. "You can't sit there!"

"Why not?" Rusty asked.

"Because it's not yours!"

Rusty grumbled under his breath and began pacing back and forth again.

"Goddamnit! I told you to stop that!" Monarch shouted.

The cocoon landed in front of the Venture compound, barely hovering low enough to let the man out. Rusty fell to the ground, and before he could get back to his feet, the cocoon had taken off again. "Don't bother waiting up for me!" he called bitterly. Sighing to himself, Rusty began to make his way inside. Ignoring the mess that had somehow migrated inside, he made his way slowly up the steps to the master bedroom to change from the orange jumpsuit he'd been wearing since he was first arrested two days before. Taking a few minutes to clean himself up, he considered shaving, but gave up on the idea in favour of clean clothes.

He made his way down to the lab, noticing that the panic room door had been left open. "Last person out's supposed to close the door," Rusty muttered as he closed the door on his way to the massive boxes full of old gadgets stacked against the wall. He dug through four boxes, throwing random devices onto the floor before finding what he'd gone in to look for. He flipped the switch, not at all surprised to find the batteries dead. "Great," he said to himself as he made his way to the parlour. After spending five minutes to hunt down the remote control for the cable box, he swapped out the batteries, and once more, flipped the device on.

"That's not right," he mused, looking at the small blinking screen. He turned off the device and switched round the batteries, trying again. "That can't be right." No other alternatives, Rusty followed the pulsing dots on the screen back upstairs, cautiously pushing open the boys' bedroom door. "What the--" he started, finding Brock trying to convince Dean and Hank to take a nap.

"Pop!" both boys shouted in unison as they jumped out of bed, latching immediately onto Rusty.

Rusty placed a hand on each of the boy's shoulders. "Daddy's here," he said off-handedly.

"See, I told you he'd be back," Brock said confidently. "Doc, where the hell have you been?"

Rusty took a step back away from everybody. "Selling my soul to Satan to find you guys," he said. "The OSI's still looking for me, so we can't stay here."

"What do they want with you?" Brock asked as he followed Rusty out to the hangar.

"What's Satan look like, Dad?" Hank asked eagerly. "Is he all red with big horns growing out of his head?"

"No," Rusty said flatly. "He's pasty and wears a stupid crown."

Hank and Dean stopped and looked at one another.

"So, what's the big plan, Doc?" Brock asked. "The X-1 ain't here, remember?"

"Erm..." Rusty started, looking around the empty space.

"You don't have a plan, do you, Doc?" Brock said flatly.

"No," Rusty admitted. "Though, I was expecting to find the house empty. I thought you quit, anyway. What happened to that?"

"The boys were alone, and you were off playing house with Monarch."

"I'm choosing to ignore that," Rusty said as he walked to the back of the hangar, as though some magical form of transport would suddenly materialize. His thinking, however, was interrupted by a jet landing on the runway outside, and General Treister's voice over a loudspeaker.

"Doctor Thaddeus Venture: we know you're in there. Give yourself up quietly, and your family won't be harmed."

"Shit," Rusty muttered.

He instinctively moved closer to Brock, making sure that the boys were well out of the way. The hangar door opened slowly, letting in over a dozen OSI troops, with Treister leading the group. Pushing his way past Brock and the boys, he grabbed Rusty by the shoulder and produced a pair of handcuffs, pausing at the two broken pairs Rusty was already wearing. "Doc, how many times we gone through this?"

"Technically, I've only been booked once," Rusty pointed out. "But I think we were cleared of those charges, anyway."

"Pop, what's going on?" Hank asked timidly.

Rusty sighed and looked down at the floor as Treister took a firm hold of Rusty's wrist. Suddenly, the boys pushed past Brock, latching tightly onto Rusty. "Dad, don't leave us again!" Dean wailed.

"Great," Rusty said flatly. "You've got him crying again. Hope you're happy."

"Dad didn't do nothing wrong!" Hank shouted angrily.

Brock sighed as he lit a cigarette. "He may be a prick, but he's the only thing these boys got," he pointed out.

"Thank you, Brock," Rusty said sarcastically. "Why don't you try actually siding with me for a change?"

Brock let out a light chuckle, but was interrupted by tyres squealing outside. "Rusty!" a woman's voice shrieked from outside. Looking up quickly, Rusty and Brock let out identical groans upon seeing Myra Brandis stumble into the hangar.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on, now?" Rusty demanded, trying to back away from Treister.

"Hey, look!" Hank said, pointing wildly. "It's that lady that wants to be our mom!"

"Rusty, what have you done to my children!" she demanded, awkwardly running up to the boys and grabbing hold of both their heads.

"You're not our mom!" Hank said, his face pressed firmly into Myra's chest. "Dad says so!"

"You've brainwashed them against me, haven't you?" she demanded, screaming in Rusty's face. "All that... all that cloning you've been doing to them, you've got them all confused."

"That hasn't been proven, yet," Rusty pointed out, jerking his hand out of Treister's grip. "And you're not the boys' mother!"

Myra wailed loudly, backhanding Rusty in the face.


Rusty had fallen asleep in the lab again, and didn't hear the door open behind him. Myra quietly walked up behind him, placing her hand on his shoulder. Startled out of a shallow sleep, Rusty jumped completely out of his chair and fell on the ground. "Holy damnit! What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, refusing Myra's hand. He got himself to his feet and looked around to make sure nothing was dropped or spilled.

"I was trying to see what you're doing still up," Myra said simply.

"Yeah, well, I'm a super scientist," Rusty replied. "That's what we do."

"I just want--" Myra froze suddenly.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Rusty asked. He was answered almost immediately when Myra sneezed right in his face. "Oh, Jesus Christ!" Rusty shouted as he began shoving Myra toward the door. "Get the hell out of here before you kill us all!" He locked the door behind her and went back to work, checking his watch. Quarter til two. HELPeR would be going off soon. Rusty settled back down at his work bench, arranging petri dishes as he pushed his hair off of his neck.


Dr. Orpheus was in his study when the jet flew overhead, rocking the entire building.

"Dad, what was that? Are you raising more people from the dead, again?"

Dr. Orpheus turned round, spotting Triana standing in the door way. "No, Pumpkin," he insisted. "But something is amiss. The forces of the cosmos are out of line! Something must be done!"

Triana watched as raised his hand into the air and turned to stone. Sighing, she turned round and went back to her room.

Dr. Orpheus projected himself into a hidden corner of the Venture hangar, watching in abject horror as Myra backhanded Rusty, sending him to the ground.

"Ow!" Rusty said indignantly, rubbing his face where she struck him. Suddenly, two armed soldiers jumped forward and took her by both arms, struggling to wrestle her to the ground. Watching for a moment as the soldiers restrained Myra, Treister bent over and picked Rusty up from the floor, the boys still clinging to him. Treister readied his handcuffs as he turned Rusty round.

"I must stop this!" Dr. Orpheus said quietly. Closing his eyes, he moved his presence from the corner, directly into General Treister, struggling for a brief moment to gain hold over the man.

"I'll...let...you go, this one time, Mr. Venture," Treister said awkwardly.

"Okay..." Rusty said timidly, taking a small step back.

"These children need you," Treister continued, pointing at Dean and Hank. "You must be there for them. These are your children, Mr. Venture, and you must act like their father!"

"Right..." Rusty said slowly. "So, you gonna go then, or what?"

"Of course!" Treister said dramatically, and with the wave of a hand, he turned round and led the troops out to the waiting jet. Rusty watched as they left, fiddling with the two pair of cuffs still attached to his wrists.

"That was Orpheus, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Probably," Brock said simply. He took a drag of his cigarette and looked at the family in front of him. "Can I quit, now?"

Rusty sighed. "Yeah, fine."


Rusty slowly cleaned up the lab, putting everything back into the boxes he'd emptied. He could hear GUARDO patrolling the outer perimeter, causing fuss over low-flying birds.

"Hey, Pop," Hank said suddenly, causing Rusty to drop the box he'd just filled. Rusty inhaled deeply before bending to pick up the mess. Again.

"Yes, Hank?" he asked.

"Is it true what they were saying?" Hank asked, getting down to help his father pick up the mess.

"Is what true?"

"Well," Hank started. He put a broken something or other into the box. "People keep saying that Dean and I...are clones. Is that true?"

Rusty sighed. "Hank," he said. "Who would you possibly be a clone of?"

Hank thought about that. "I dunno," he said. "You?"

"That's not possible, Hank," Rusty said. "You have blond hair."

"Oh." Hank considered this. "What about Dean. He has the same colour hair as you?"

"Dean's also your twin brother," Rusty pointed out. "That wouldn't be possible."

"Oh." Hank put some more broken electronic components into the box. "Well, what about--"

"Hank, this is why you boys never went to public school!" Rusty snapped. "You'll believe anything anybody tells you."