MSPA fan fiction 2

[Wigmund]

Okay, so, a while back in the "open paint close your eyes draw Nepeta" thread I drew a pretty morbid picture of Nepeta. Drawing this picture had two effects:

1- I was struck with an insatiable hunger for guacamole.
2- I had a fanfic idea.

So, I kind of wrote a 12 page fanfic about Nepeta slowly bleeding to death. While it's not exactly violent, and I feel that it falls within the acceptable rules for the forum, I do think it deserves a CONTENT WARNING. Because... yeah. It's a fanfic about Nepeta slowly bleeding to death. What is wrong with me.

But seriously, I'm not a writer and I haven't actually written anything "long form" in years, so I'm curious how it reads. Feedback on it would be extremely appreciated!


Kazerad Tries to Write Fanfiction

show spoiler

hide spoiler

The music slowly worked its way into her conscious mind. It was quiet and distant; the type of soft sound that demands attention despite one's best attempts to ignore it and slip back into the embrace of slumber. It evoked bittersweet memories: a lusus tugging at her collar early in the morning, trying to rouse her from her recuperacoon; her computer's digital alarm going off at the break of dawn, reminding her of an important appointment at one of the larger hive colonies. The kind of memories that made her - or anyone - simply want to curl up deeper in the engulfing warmth of their sopor slime and return to peaceful sleep for a few more fleeting hours, delaying the inevitable, cold morning.

It wasn't clear to her if the music was still playing. Perhaps her idle, sleepy mind was simply recalling something heard moments prior; playfully examining a recent memory in a state of semi-wakefulness. What she could at first only make out as a soft ringing gradually revealed itself to be a melody. Its notes were sharp and metallic; rigid metal plates tensed, crying their assigned pitch as they snapped back to to a quivering rest. Its exotic song was backed by soft, rapid clicks. Something was familiar here, she had heard this melody before, yet at the same time it felt new. Her curiosity sufficiently piqued, she listened as attentively as her tired ears would allow. She heard nothing.

In this new silence - or perhaps, a silence that was already there - her mind wandered back to the song. She knew this song but couldn't place where it was from. The memory of it was there, but felt incomplete. Hmm hmm HMM hmm hmm hmm hm. She ran through the string of notes as best as she could recall, carefully attempting to calculate what might follow them. hmm HMM hmm hmm. It sounded right. It felt familiar. It evoked exciting thoughts. Dangerous situations, terrifying odds, only to be rescued at the last possible moment by that elegant silver form emerging from a blue flash of...

Her heart began to beat harder. Realization slowly donned upon her. Memories flooded in: two brass music boxes encased in jagged crystal, playing their exotic, palindromic melody in perfect, indistinguishable harmony. She had heard this song before, many times, but only its ending. To hear its beginning meant...

The thought was thankfully interrupted. She couldn't breathe. New problem to concentrate on.

She inhaled as hard as she could. She could feel the crackle of liquid in her throat, yet her expanding lungs did nothing to breach it. They contracted, more liquid movement, no success. Her heart was racing. She breathed in and out, gasping for air as frantically as her lungs would allow. On what felt like her hundredth exhale, a salty flavor emerged from her mouth. She spit out the thick, syrupy blood. Herwindpipe was cleared; her lungs greedily gobbled up the dry, burning air that found its way down to them.

She forced her crusted eyes open and found herself lying on her back beneath a shining blue sky. The world was blurry; her vision badly impaired. The large blotches of pea green color around her was all she had to see to know her fear - her greatest fear - was indeed correct: something horrible had happened and, once again, Aradia had gone back in time to keep it from occuring. And this was the timeline that had been left behind.

With the realization of her situation came the realization of her pain. At first it was general: searing, aching agony everywhere, greater than she had ever felt before. She clenched her teeth, catching a cry of misery and transforming it into a low hiss. She didn't know what had happened to her, but the onslaught of pain had sufficiently awakened her and she struggled to investigate. Her right arm wouldn't move; any attempt to bend it was met with only a sharp, lingering discomfort. She lifted her other arm, peeling its blood-soaked sleeve off the ground, and flopped it across her body, feeling the length of her right arm from shoulder to wrist. The manipulation from her hand seemed able to bend her arm at any point along it; the bone was badly broken, probably beyond repair. She dragged her hand across her stomach to her lower body, assessing damages. No response from her legs. Loose, thick flaps of torn skin denoted major lacerations across her midsection. Her hand dropped down off her body, landing in a soft bed of organs that were formerly internal. She could feel the gushing current of fresh blood running across her wrist; she uncomfortably pushed her hand deeper through the warmth, gaging how deep the injury ran. She recoiled slightly in terror as her fingers wrapped around the severed end of her own spine.

Heart was racing faster. Had to act fast; had to do something; even as quickly as troll blood clotted, she was losing a lot. She reached her arm down, groping for the long tail of her oversized coat. It was soaked and tattered, but she found it easily enough. Straining her shoulder muscles, she pried the cloth out from under her limp body, slopping the saturated fabric over her stomach, then proceeded to push against the ground and roll herself over. She winced in pain as her broken arm, caught between her breast and the hard ground, took the full weight of her torso. Shaking the pain off quickly, she reached her arm behind her back to continue pulling the coat into a full circle around her. Still lying on her stomach, she gripped the end of her coat and tugged as hard as she could. The loose spiral of fabric tightened around painfully around her waist, but she was able to hold it long enough to tie it off. Her makeshift tourniquet wasn't going to impress any medical professionals, but it would sufficiently slow her blood loss. She had bought herself a reprieve.

Behind the partial cover of a wild fern, her prey was visible. The mighty lusus carefully and silently put forth a white-furred paw. The flesh of her footpads met the soft, rotting foliage below, but not a sound was made. She pushed her foot down deeper, shifting her weight onto it. Snap. Buried deep beneath the leaves a twig had broken, so subtle that its muffled sound would have gone unnoticed if not for the lusus' powerful ears.

The prey, intent on its own survival, was no less well-equipped. The sound caught the bell-shaped ears, and its small pointed head shot to attention. Its chest pumped in and out at a rapid pace; eyes flicked from left to right, looking for the origin of the sound. The predatory lusus didn't move; she didn't breathe. She was as silent as empty space itself. Uneasily, the prey glanced back down at the root on which it had been gnawing. It slowly turned its head around one more time, giving the perimiter a final sweep. Determining no danger, the creature directed its attention back to its meal.

It was her time to strike, while her prey was distracted. She crouched her body down near the ground, ready to pounce. Her muscles tensed, preparing to propel her strong and agile form toward her unsuspecting meal. Even if it evaded her initial pounce, it was too plump to run very far. It would be a good kill; one she could bring back to her cubs, throwing its remains onto the cave floor and watching the youngsters fight over it, tiny mouths tearing at the delicious flesh. But first she had to catch it. Her forelegs flexed, she took a deep breath...

The troll pushed downward with all her might, thrusting her torso off of her mangled right arm and coming down hard on her left side. She felt weak from blood loss, but her remaining lower half slid easily through the thick green liquid that streaked the ground. Tears ran sideways down her face as she panted heavily, wishing the pain would subside. As her body slowly calmed down, excruciation fading into a more tolerable agony, she rested her weary head in the fold of her elbow and looked out before her. Checkerboard hills stretched into the distance, but no inhabitants were visible. The landscape was devoid of soldiers, black or white. Blurry eyes scanned the surroundings and the young troll noted that none of her friends were there either.

None of them.

What did it mean? They had to be alive and she wouldn't allow herself to consider thoughts to the contrary. But where were they? They wouldn't have just left her here to die, even as injured as she was. Injury wouldn't be a big deal to them. Tavros couldn't walk, but his cool flying machines more than made up for it. When Vriska lost her arm, it was no problem getting a robotic substitute. Heck, when Aradia lost her whole body, Equius....

A cascade of painful thoughts began to flow into her mind again. Her moirail was strong; when he brought Aradia her new body, he had no problem captchaloguing something the size of a troll. Nepeta had never been captchalogued before, but she was pretty sure it was possible for someone of his strength. Why would he have left her here? Unless he was dead. Her eyes clouded with fresh tears. Equius was dead; something must've killed him before he even had a chance to try to rescue Nepeta, otherwise she would be in a sylladex right now. He was dead and wasn't coming back and nobody could help her and she was hurt and all alone in a timeline that had no meaning.

She clenched her eyes tight. Had to consider other options. Maybe he didn't love her, or even care about her. Aradia had left and wasn't coming back. Perhaps, in lament, the roboticist had simply fled and left his moirail to die. He was always so mean, she thought to herself, it made sense that he would just leave her here. Right now, that smug blue-blooded bastard was probably off building a new, autonomous Aradiabot or something. The thought was stragely comforing to her: maybe instead of being dead, he simply didn't care about her. At the same time, it made her feel cold, empty, and alone. No moirail, no matesprite, no kismesis, no auspistice.

Warmth. She needed something warm. How did she spell it? "Compurrtor"? The feline puns seemed silly to her right now, an unneccesary complication to her already inconvenient fetch modus. Compurrtor, two plus one plus two plus two... seventeen? With twelve cards, remainder was five? She had evidently counted right for once, and the drawing tablet appeared in her hand as she willed herself to get it. For many days its screen had been cracked beyond repair, but it still turned on, ran fairly warm.

The mighty lusus had returned to her cave, carrying the fresh, plump kill in her powerful jaws. To most creatures, the cavern would seem a pitch black sea of darkness, but her sharp, enchanting, feline eyes had no problem seeing the hungry cubs eagerly eyeing their imminent meal. Tiny paws scampered over as she dropped the carcass on the cavern floor. Jagged little teeth peeled back the lightly-furred skin, preparing to gorge themselves on the moist red meat within.

She caringly watched them eat, corners of her lips turning up in warm smiles. A cub rose its head from the depleting carcass, meeting its caretaker's stare as it licked blotches of red from its small face. A small foot inadvertently stepped into the pool of blood as the cub sauntered towards her, causing it to leave behind a trail of crimson pawprints. It nuzzled its head against her powerful foreleg, softly purring. She lowered her body into a resting position and purred back in affectionate response as the warm cub nestled itself into her side.

It was safe here. The lusus was resting calmly in a remote cave with three adorable cubs who loved her and needed her. She brought her head down to rest on the ground, eyes still open contemplatively, watching the two remaining cubs finish their meal. Nothing out there mattered; no prophecies about the world ending or having to save her species or fight in some dumb war between kingdoms. Life was simple and enjoyable and nothing could take that away from her. Her eyes closed, preparing for a long catnap. What would tomorrow bring? She'd find out tomorrow.

But it was too cold. The troll's teeth were chattering as reality slowly reconverged on her. She was alone, bisected, lying in a pool of her own blood while clinging to a broken computer for warmth that didn't seem to make her any warmer. Skaia was cloaked in perpetual daylight, she thought to herself, why was she cold to begin with? Was she dying?

Her mind was blank for a moment, as if awaiting a response that never came. Was she dying?

She had never given much thought to what it felt like to die. She had come close many times, sure - her life was dangerous!- but every time she narrowly evaded her actual death. In the past, it simply never mattered. She tried as hard as she could to preservere, figuring that if her demise ever came it would be sudden and unexpected. This was different. There was no fight: she was alone and helpless, and perhaps dying slowly. What was she supposed to think, she wondered? What was she supposed to do?

The tears had dried up; she sniffed and did her best to reject her negative emotions. She could be rational about this. Still holding the warm computer close to her chest, she momentarily cleared the questions from her busy mind and presenting herself a small, relaxing moment of empty meditation.

What would it be like? It had been over a week since she learned about Aradia's death, but she had never inquired about the actual experience of dying. How did it feel to be a ghost? Did everyone become ghosts upon death, or was that merely a side effect of Aradia's innate psychic abilities? Nepeta didn't have any abilities at all; what would her fate be? Did souls trapped in a derelict timeline even share the same fate as normal death? It was all a confusing mess of religion, philosphy, and science: three things she had never been any good at, and it was probably too late to start learning now.

Maybe she wasn't dying. She didn't want to die, and in the past that had always been enough to keep her alive. In the past, fighting for her life had always been enough to keep her from being afraid as well. This, she thought, was no exception. It was time to fight.

Invoking her fetch modus, she put the tablet "compurrtor" away in its designated card. Her arm was tired and heavy, but it remained her only option for locomotion. She worked it out from underneath her head and carefully lowered herself back onto her stomach. Straining to raise her head, she stared out at the black and white plains before her. No landmarks, and not even stars by which to navigate. Her straining eyes made out a small hill in the distance. If she could make it there, maybe someone would see her? Friend or foe, it didn't matter. It was a chance she was willing to take, and it was better than awaiting a slow, lonely death.

The brave and powerful lusus prepared for the long journey back to her clifftop cavern. She had travelled further than usual in search of today's meal, and her gamble had paid off: she had taken down an armored bull cholerbear, a beast that would feed her and her cubs for days to come. It sustained significant injuries before it fell; it was split open and entails hung loosely from its midsection. Dragging it through the forest brambles would be difficult, and a trail of spilled guts might lead a scavenging predator back to the lusus' cave - to her cubs! Accounting for this, she gripped the loose innards of the cholerbear in her lower mouth and backed up behind the carcass, reeling them in and stuffing them as best she could back into its sizable girth. Her packaging was sloppy, but it would hold if she was careful. Straining her mighty neck, she lifted the entire cholerbear from the ground and began her long trek home.

Powerful crystal-white legs tromped through the thick web of underbrush. Travel was tiring with the added weight of the slain cholerbear, but the wild lusus wouldn't let that stop her! She set the beast down at her forepaws and raised her head to confirm she was traveling in the right direction. Rising before her was the jagged mountain range she called her home. It was close! Only a bit more travel was necessary; she would be there in no time.

Cholerbear hanging from her mouth, one paw after another, the lusus concentrated on the journey. The going was tough - brambles tugged at her fur and slowed her tired, aching legs, but the mountains loomed closer. It was once she reached their base that the most difficult part of the journey began. She eyed a ledge just above her and flexed her powerful haunches, leaping a great distance upward. Her ascent of the mountainous cliffs had begun, and though difficult with the added weight, it meant her journey was almost over. Her cute cubs were waiting for her hungrily! Powerful body springing from ledge to ledge up the mountainside, she hauled herself and the fresh kill up toward her concealed cavern, keeping all her attention on the distant goal.

And soon, she succeeded. Her paw met the plateu her cave rested on, and with all her mighty strength she pulled her weight up to it, dropping the heavy carcass in front of her. She panted, exhausted from the journey. A whistling mountain wind rustled her fur; she craned her neck and, from the vantage point of her mountain, gazed out at the enveloping forests below her.

She was unstoppable; feral queen of this territory! Cubs watching from the cave, she faced the open expanse before her and let the cold mountain air into her sturdy feline lungs. The injured troll girl propped her body up and unleashed a mighty, lion-like roar. It was silly and exhausting and hurt her throat, but it felt good, imparting an emotional rush as her fantasy briefly crossed into reality. Her knuckles flexed to prop her up a bit higher and she roared again, this time trailing off into an uncomfortable mix of laughter and a sob of pain. A little goal, a little success.

She flopped back down onto her stomach. She was tired. Even the small movements made her dizzy, the world spinning around her. Her arm was sore. Though she couldn't feel her other arm anymore, a quick check revealed it had swollen badly. Her nonexistant legs ached as though twisted in the most straining position, and from a quick glance over her shoulder it looked as though the sloppy packing job she had done on her remaining lower half had began to come undone for the last few feet of her journey.

The tired lusus flopped onto her back, fully fed and ready for a well-deserved rest. Her cubs, likewise satisfied, skittered across the cavern floor and clammered onto her belly, acknowledging it as the most comfortable place for an afternoon nap. She was okay with this; although not ready to submit to sleep herself, she was content to watch her young slowly rise and fall in time with her breathing, safe and slumbering on top of her. In time, she herself began to feel the pull of sleep. Her eyes closed, and her other senses embraced her surroundings. The thick smell of the blood from today's kill met her nostrils, and the stoney ground below her was cold but, in its own way, comfortable. The only sound was the subtle, warm hum of the broken tablet computer that lay on her belly.






Her rest was not as peaceful as she had hoped it would be. Her back ached, her breathing had become more difficult, and phantom pains from her legs left her with the inescapable feeling of being trapped in a cocoon too small. Eyes shut tight, vivid escapist imaginings of her fictional lusus-self stretching its muscular feline legs did little to abate the torturous sensations. Not knowing any other response, she imagined it harder: white-furred limbs stretching, extending to perfectly straight lines; fur standing on end as her muscles were refreshingly pulled taught; clawed toes wiggled as her sizable footpaw rolled itself in a circular motion, testing its range, joints cracking. She imagined it in as much detail as her mind would allow.

It was no use. No matter how hard she tried, the tight, crushing pain seemed inescapable. She held back tears and bit her lip. Lusus, lying in a cave, uninjured, safe with her kittens. She would keep her mind there. It was the only place she was willing to keep it right now. Bleeding alone on a Skaian hill, tucked away in a mountain cavern with her cubs, pushed away the onslought of feelings and thoughts and merely waited.

She didn't know how much time passed; the constant daylight of Skaia glowing green through her eyelids left her with no indication of how long she had been travelling down this meaningless timeline. In the empty solitude of her surroundings, the troll had no trouble making out the distinct patter of approaching footsteps. She prepared for the worst, her arm clinging tighter to the warm tablet as she slowly forced her weary eyes open. A blurry black form loomed over her, silhouetted against the vibrant blue sky.

A quick succession of blinks helped her vision adjust to the stark contrast. What she now recognized as an Agent of Derse stood above her, his blank white eyes gazing back down and meeting hers. Her attention moved to the chipped and worn shortsword he tightly held out in front of him. Thoughts and fears were racing into her head faster than she could hold them back. Blinking away impending tears and swallowing to clear her throat, she stumbled over her words as she choked out an incoherent request to not be killed. Every word choice felt like a mistake; like it would be the slip-up that ended her life. She had to brace herself for whatever would follow; had to be brave.

Her paw hung limply over the ledge and she cocked her head to the side, whiskers twitched with curiosity. The tiny Agent below her looked up in fear, clinging to his rusty weapon should it become the one thing standing between him and his death. Her mouths opened in a threatening growl, revealing four rows of sharp, pointed teeth - any of which would be sufficient to puncture the Agent's brittle carapace as though it were nothing more than a dry leaf. It was his move now.

The Agent's grip on his blade loosened as his his eyes glanced down the length of the terrified troll's body, assessing her condition. He asked her name. Nepeta Lejion. What happened? Her friends abandoned her to die. Who did she serve? She hesitated on this last question, weighing her options. To declare her alliegence to the Black King would perhaps mark her as an ally. Yet, the question brought an uncomfortable realization to her mind, one that begged for release. She complied. "I don't know anymore."

The Agent seemed satisfied by her answer, nodding in acknowledgement. He glanced around, confirming nobody had approached, then knelt beside her. A bony, carapaced arm slid under her shoulders, her muscles tensing as the pressure caused an aching pain shoot down her back. She did her best to conceal her reaction: on some level, the very feeling of contact with another living creature cast a wave of reassurance over her. She felt a second hand work its way beneath her waist before the agent scooped her off the ground. A cold, stimulating rush of air crossed her back as it was separated from the pool of thick green blood on the ground for the first time in hours. In her intense discomfort, the smallest feelings could provide little sparks of hope.

She let her eyes droop shut. Her life was in someone else's hands for the time being, both figuratively and literally. She felt helpless in this state, yet, at the same time it carried an air of relaxation. She didn't know where she was going, nor did she have any control over it; for now, the only option available was to enjoy the ride and grasp for whatever bit of relaxation she could achieve. Whatever this would bring, she would deal with it when the time came. Her mind dropped into a lull and she once again allowed her other senses take over: the soft bounce of the agent's gait echoing through his body and hers, calm winds playing their low drone across the hills, warm light from the luminescent sky striking her exposed face.






She wasn't aware whether she had finally slipped into a short bought of sleep or if the Agent's journey had simply been brief. Whatever the case, her eyes opened at the sound of a carapaced hand fumbling clumbsily with a latch; her hair brushed against the doorframe as he carried her into the relative darkness of the abode. He carefully lowered her onto upright the foot of his charred and tattered cot, trying to help her out of the blood-soaked coat that plastered her body. Her arm peeled out of the left sleeve fairly easily, but a cry of pain escaped her lips as he tried to lift her broken right arm. He responded immediately; unwrapping the coat from her shoulders and very cautiously working it down the swollen limb. Leaving the tattered garment bound around her waist in her makeshift tourniquet, he lowered her back down into the enveloping folds of cloth and patchwork padding that covered the cot.

The Agent commented that he would return in a moment, leaving Nepeta staring up at the curved metal ceiling. Clicks and clanks of metal boxes being opened and shut met her ears, occasionally accompanied by soft rustling of material. Her eyes followed the black scortch marks across the ceiling and down the walls, turning her head to the side so that she could get a better look at her new surroundings. The Agent's dwelling was sparsely stocked and undecorated. Gray supply boxes marked with spirographs were piled up against the wall along with a number of farming implements, many of them burned and damaged almost beyond recognition. A row of charred clay pots in the window displayed small, young sprouts, likely planted only days prior.

When the Agent returned, he was holding a half-empty bottle in his hand while his arm supported a heap of torn gauze scraps. He dropped his limited first-aid supplies on the cot next to her and set to work tending to her wounds, starting with the largest as he pulled the bottom of her shirt up and began to untie her tourniquet. He warned this would hurt, she responded that was okay. She closed her eyes and let her mind take over.

Winter. The exposed flesh at the base of her paws stung as it sunk into the crusty snow. She shook her head and shoulders, a dusty cloud of snow departing from her thick fur. With each inhale the dry, cold air scratched into her lungs, and with each exhale the warm cloud tumbled from her lips and disappated. The dry, creaking forest was getting thicker; even for the mighty hunter, traversing it proved trecherous.

Lifting each of her four legs as high as she could with every step, the thorny underbrush still managed to wrap itself around her: strong, dry vines crackling as they were pulled taught around her ankles, barbs digging through her thick winter coat, through her skin, only to be scraped down her paws and spring back to the ground with the occasional fresh drop of blood left on the thorntips. Teeth gritted at the stinging discomfort as her white paws grew streaked with narrow lines of green. She shrugged the pain off; it would take more than foliage to bring down a mighty hunter such as herself. Queen of the mountains. Unstoppable.

Trekking through the snow and thistles, her right forepaw stomped down hard, inadvertently landing on a sharp upturned rock. Like a ripple through water, the stabbing sensation shot its way up her leg. She stumbled foward off it, doing her best to catch her balance from the brambles that tore at her flesh. She recomposed herself and turned her attention upward. Through clouds of visible breath, the alternian sun hung in slow descent toward the horizon. With nightfall, the bitter could would grow stronger. Despite temptation to curl up in a ball and wait for the pain to subside, her only option was to keep going; to push the pain from her being and focus on the destination: a warm cave, with her warm cubs.

The lusus preserved.




Once again Nepeta had lost track of time. She wasn't sure how long she had been lost in that cold fantasy, dragging tired paws through the stinging cold. The agony she was in earlier had slowly began to subside, making way for the more disconcerting feeling of numbness that crept in, replacing the pain. She struggled to elevate her head, looking down at her body. The sloppy tourniquet she had made hours prior had been replaced with a more proper wound dressing constructed from a patchwork of gauze and cables. Her shattered arm had been straightened out to the best of her rescuer's ability and bound to a makeshift splint constructed from what looked like the head and handle of a hoe. It was the handiwork of someone who had experience with treating injuries from limited supplies.

Looking away from her arm, she noticed the Agent standing beside her. A bowl was gripped in his hand, a subtle vapor of steam rising from within it. He made food, he explained, pulling his only table over to the bedside and placing the bowl on it. He offered his outstretched arm, which she accepted silently, pulling herself upright as he propped a pillow and empty supply box behind her to heep her from falling back down.

Her attention constantly on bigger issues of survival, she had overlooked just how hungry and thirsty she was, a feeling she instantly realized as soon as the first shaky spoonful of soup found its way to her mouth. The meal was pitiful by any standard: five or six underdeveloped vegetables floated soggily in what appeared to be plain, heated water given the slightest salty flavor by a small spirograph-marked can of unidentifiable meat that had been emptied into the broth. The mixture was odorless and almost flavorless, but she noted that the seedling vegetables that had been growing on his windowsill were absent; this was really the best he could provide. Her stomach was indifferent; the very presence of food made her mouth water, and the warm liquid soothed her dry throat as it made its way down.

The Agent made his best attempts at table conversation as the troll fished the spoon around after a chunk of meat, half-listening as she gobbled down the sustinence. He spoke of kings and politics; failed uprisings and narrow escapes; how things could be better if the world worked just a little differently. It was confusing to her, but she could tell he was wary of the endless war. She did her best to nod politely and occasionally pull her attention from her food to make eye contact. Karkat or Terezi probably would've had a better time understanding the Agent's complicated ideas, were either of them here. Had they not abandoned Nepeta and left her to die.

She paused. The inevitable at houghts banged against the door to her mind, begging entry, but she brushed them away, furrowing her brow and continuing her meal more intently. The Agent noted her change in demeanor and gradually trailed off from his line of thought, matching her silence. She greedily drank the final few lukewarm drops from the bottom of the bowl, smacking her lips contentedly. The Agent was no longer speaking, his blank white eyes merely looking back into her own as though trying to read her.

After a moment, he spoke: "Are your friends dead?"

Nepeta suddenly felt cold. A feeling of queasy sickness washed over her. She knew she was thinking it, pushing it to the back of her mind behind a veil of fantasy and lies, but it still hurt to hear it vocalized; it forced confrontation with the idea she feared so much. She wanted them to be alive , to have just left her there, fled away without concern. They didn't even care about her; she knew this had to be true. She could be that brave lusus who wasn't afraid of anything and didn't need friends. Tears welled up in her eyes despite her best efforts to hold them back as fact after fact pounded against the inside of her skull. Karkat, Equius, Terezi, Gamzee, Tavros... any one of her friends would've come back to save her even if it meant risking their own life. Aradia wouldn't have gone back in time unless all hope was lost for this timeline. She knew what it meant, and that despite what she told herself there was no other answer. Lying on a cave floor, stretching paws. Cubs or something playing, eating, cute. She tried as hard as she could to lose herself in the fantasy, but it wouldn't take.

"Yes," she answered straightforwardly, followed by a choked sob as her will failed and tears cascaded down her face. Something had killed all of her friends and almost killed her and Aradia went back in time to stop it, leaving Nepeta all alone in a dead timeline forever. She wanted to tell the Agent all this, but any attempt at intelligible speech was cut off by her weeping. She gave up, slumped foward onto the table, and cried uncontrollably.

She felt a hard, carapaced hand close around her palm in a gentle grip. She bent her neck back, struggling to raise her head from the table. Stark white eyes were looking back at her again.

"Mine too," the Agent responded.

She drooped back into a sulk, tears still running down her face. She tightened her grip around his hand, unsure how else to respond. Time passed, and her crying slowly subsided, transforming into nothign more than heavy breathing. The Agent helped her lay back down into the bed, then told her he'd be right back.

Once again alone, the troll closed her eyes and sighed. Her mind felt empty. All her friends were dead; she was accepting that now, allowing the ramifications to slowly sink in. She couldn't win this game. She was the last of her species in this timeline, and could never leave it. Her body was broken, and robotic prosthetics seemed much less likely without Equius alive. She didn't know what to do. Completely out of tears, she couldn't even bring herself to cry. She didn't even want to play make-believe with herself. She felt lightheaded and exhausted. Her vision was growing fuzzier.

The Agent returned. His demeanor seemed positive, and he carried a thick book under his arm. He asked if she was feeling alright; she mumbled an untrue "yes". He held the book up where she could see it. The cover was gray and singed, emblazoned with a spirograph logo and a large, simple title that read "FICTION". It was a book of stories, he explained. She had never thought about it, but it made sense to her. The Agents were engineered in the Veil, grown in tubes. Whatever culture they had must have been given to them artificially as well, including their lore.

He flipped to a page near the middle and pulled a chair up to the cot. This was his favorite story, he explained, delving into it excitedly. Her mind still relaxed and her emotions worn out, she listened to the Agent read to her. The story was an unusual experience: the themes were common and universal, but its characters were kept vague and species-independent; lore truly built for a game that would be played by many alien races. It weaved a spiraling tale about a cruel dictator and an underprivelaged hero who tried to stop him; a hero who countered the antagonist not with subterfuge, but by finding friendship and alliances wherever possible. Themes of companionship tugged at her heartstrings uneasily, bringing back that lingering feeling of loneliness.

Her gaze wandered up to the agent. His eyes were lost in the book, eagerly dictating every word with the excitement of a child on Twelth Perigees Eve. She admired how he could speak of friendship so easily, despite having lost friends just as she had. In a way, she guessed, he had come to reflect the hero of the story he loved so much. No matter how bad things got, he would always keep seeking new alliances - new friendships. Even if it meant carrying them a mile to his home and giving them the last of his food.

She let her eyelids sink closed. Aradia went back in time, she thought to herself. Somewhere out there, in a timeline she would never see, all her friends were together. It was just another time they would be saved by a quick rewind; they'd think nothing of it, save for a spattering of memories carried back by their dream selves. Somewhere out there, she thought, there was even another version of herself, just as happy and carefree as she had been a day prior. And, while she would never experience it for herself, the thought brought her some of her first real feelings of comfort.

The Agent's words slowly faded into gibberish, and grew quieter. Numbness continued to spread over her body, pain and sickness fading into a dark absence of feeling. Maybe this was what death was like: a slow pull away from her body, into an abyss of emptyness. Maybe she was just tired; her journey today had been exhausting and she had lost a lot of blood, but fear and determination had kept her going, building a considerable debt of rest. Whatever the future would bring, she was okay with it. Even if these were her last moments alive, somewhere, in another timeline, she'd live on happily with all her friends at her side. And if she lived, and woke up tomorrow still lying legless and shattered in a tiny cottage in a null session, then that was fine too. A new adventure with new challenges. She hoped she lived; death was still scary, and she didn't want the Agent to lose another friend so soon. She hadn't even asked his name yet.

The numbing shadow of peaceful slumber worked its way over the feline lusus. She was curled up in the safety of her cave, shielded from the bitter, nighttime cold that complemented the blizzard outside. The warm bodies of her three cubs were leaning against her soft fur, exchanging their warmth. She could feel their tiny hearts beating, slowly, peacefully at rest.

You made me sob.

[geeP]

Kazerad Tries to Write Fanfiction

show spoiler

hide spoiler

bluh bluh huge fic

You made me sob.

My blackened, shriveled husk of a soul is incapable of exhibiting sobbing. But for one brief moment this story did make me sigh in a somewhat wistful manner. (Also it is awesome because it has my favorite character, and I am not talking about Nepeta.)

show spoiler

hide spoiler

The only less-than-positive feedback I'd have is that the tone gets slightly dry in spots. Clinical language like denoted major lacerations gives the reader a feeling of detachment when you're presumably trying to draw them in. It's especially jarring in a story focusing on Nepeta's viewpoint; you've painted a picture of Nepeta being brighter and more rational than her childlike demeanor implies, but occasionally the word choice still just doesn't seem to fit considering how much of the narration consists of her thoughts.

Don't worry too much about it, though--most of it reads just fine even with your fancy pants book words, there's really just a couple spots where it could be an issue.

[-Benedict]

uHHHHH so I wrote this big pesterlog between alive!Aradia, ghost!Aradia, and soulbot!Aradia. I guess I was trying to copy Andrew's style but I don't know how well I did. Here it be.

show spoiler

hide spoiler

apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]

AA: aradia
AA: what is it?
AA: me, i guess?
AA: i am y0u fr0m the future
AA: we have begun t0 play the game that the spirits f0ret0ld we w0uld play
AA: and i have been instructed
AA: by my 0wn future self
AA: t0 tell y0u a number 0f imp0rtant things
AA: that i kn0w 0f because i t0ld myself
AA: namely y0u
AA: at the behest 0f myself
AA: fr0m the future
AA: w0w that s0unds pretty confusing and unbelievable!
AA: we predicted that we w0uld say that
AA: s0 what is it y0u need?
AA: i mean i need.
AA: first
AA: we sh0uld m0ve t0 a transtimeline bulletin b0ard
AA: that i will have set up in the past in the future
AA: in 0rder f0r us t0 talk t0 0urselves
AA: with a minimum 0f temp0ral c0nfusi0n
AA: 0h.
AA: s0 h0w d0 i use it?
AA: it is a feature 0f tr0llian
AA: that future me will have had s0llux fr0m the future unl0ck 0n y0ur c0mputer fr0m the past
AA: it's in the wind0w dr0pd0wn
AA: 0kay i see it!
AA: is it v0ices 0f the dead?
AA: yes
AA: 0k


CURRENT apocalypseArisen [CAA] RIGHT NOW opened public transtimeline bulletin board V0ICES 0F THE DEAD

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CAA RIGHT NOW opened memo on board V0ICES 0F THE DEAD

CAA: as y0u can see 0ur respective timeframes are indicated in 0ur tr0lltags
CAA: as well as 0ur c0l0rs
CAA: this sh0uld make 0ur c0mmunicati0ns less c0nfusing

PAST apocalypseArisen [PAA] 60:12 HOURS AGO responded to memo.
PAA: s0 y0u are me 60 h0urs in the future?
CAA: yes
CAA: als0
CAA: i am dead
PAA: yes
PAA: the spirits were saying s0mething t0 that effect
PAA: i kind 0f always figured they were stating the 0bvi0us
PAA: that i w0uld die s0meday i mean.
CAA: yes
CAA: that is the imp0rtant thing
CAA: y0u are g0ing to die s00n
PAA: 3: (
PAA: s0 h0w are we alive then?
CAA: we are a gh0st
PAA: 0h
PAA: h0w are we a gh0st
CAA: see this is the imp0rtant part
CAA: when y0u die y0u must relinquish y0urself t0 the spirits 0f the dead
PAA: what!
CAA: it is necessary t0 fulfilling 0ur ultimate purp0se
PAA: but they are creepy!
PAA: i d0n't kn0w if i'd be 0k with it
CAA: i'm 0k with it
CAA: we are 0k with a l0t 0f things
PAA: it still d0esn't s0und like a g00d idea!
PAA: what d0es that even mean?
CAA: 0ur being must be subjugated to the v0ices 0f eternity
PAA: 0h jegus
PAA: it is like
PAA: in the future
PAA: when i am dead
PAA: i am just s0 sp00ky
PAA: and vague
CAA: and unhelpful
PAA: and unhelpful
PAA: yes
PAA: that is what i am like when i am y0u
CAA: this is n0thing
CAA: 0ur future future self is even less straightf0rward
CAA: we are lucky t0 even get instructi0ns fr0m her
CAA: much less instructi0ns that have an effect bey0nd m0ving us cl0ser t0 what we were already fated t0 d0

FUTURE apocalypseArisen [FAA] 609 HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.
FAA: i believe that n0w is a g00d time t0 interrupt in my 0wn defense
FAA: and als0 the 0nly time that i c0uld d0 s0
FAA: as i have been fated t0 0nly resp0nd at this particular p0int
FAA: which I recently read myself d0ing
CAA: 0h jegus
PAA: y0u are the me fr0m even m0re the future?
CAA: i understand that i must d0 0nly what we are all fated t0 d0
CAA: but we d0n't have t0 rub it in
CAA: constantly
FAA: ign0ring my 0wn petty c0mments
FAA: which in retr0spect i regret making
FAA: ribbit
FAA: i sh0uld p0int 0ut that my dispr0pensity t0 dispense inf0rmati0n is n0thing m0re than a direct result 0f the f0rm i have taken
PAA: ribbit?
CAA: why w0uld being a r0b0t make me s0 insufferably cagey
FAA: n0
FAA: s00n y0u will hear fr0m the dead again
FAA: they will tell y0u t0 pr0t0type y0urself with a fr0gsprite
FAA: which y0u will have created due t0 the agency 0f further machinati0ns 0f 0ur destiny
FAA: and will gain insight int0 the nature 0f the game
FAA: ribbit
FAA: at the c0st 0f a c0mpulsi0n t0 withh0ld the inf0rmati0n
PAA: ribbit again?
CAA: i c0nsider this an adequate explanti0n f0r 0ur 0dd behavi0r
PAA: this is ridicul0us
PAA: i am g0ing t0 be dead and then a gh0st and then a fr0g and then a pr0t0type thing 0r whatever weird r0leplaying thing we are g0ing t0 play and then be a r0b0t
PAA: what happens t0 aradia in all 0f this
FAA: it appears the 0nly thing we are n0t 0k with is c0nversing with 0urselves
CAA: h0w did we get these time p0wers anyway
FAA: the dead will tell y0u
FAA: it's actually n0t c0mplicated
FAA: but if y0u d0 it wr0ng y0u will either die 0r eradicate the universe
PAA: y0u mean die m0re?
CAA: 0r eradicate the universe m0re
FAA: yes
FAA: ribbit
PAA: wait what d0 y0u mean eradicate the universe m0re
FAA: shit
CAA: g00d g0ing, me
PAA: what is wr0ng with y0u! 0r us!
PAA: h0w are we eradicating the universe???
CAA: well n0t really the universe
CAA: just
FAA: shh
CAA: wh00ps
PAA: y0u kn0w karkat keeps telling every0ne that they hate themselves
PAA: but i think i'm the 0nly 0ne wh0 really kn0ws what that means.
FAA: l00k i'm g0ing t0 g0
FAA: just remember t0 be in cah00ts with ag or ct if they ask y0u t0
FAA: ribbit
FAA: (that was directed at me 609 hours ago, not me 669:12 hours ago)
FAA: (alth0ugh it is still g00d advice)
FAA: (meaning the cah00ts not the ribbit)

FAA banned herself from responding to memo.

PAA: ummmm
CAA: i am g0ing t0 wrap this up t00
CAA: g00dbye
PAA: wait
PAA: h0w d0 we die?
CAA: ...
PAA: seri0usly
CAA: don't blame him
CAA: or her
CAA: they don't know what they are doing
CAA: and they will ultimately set things right
PAA: what are y0u talking ab0ut!!!
PAA: and where are y0ur l0vely zer000000es
CAA: s0rry
CAA: very s00n s0mething will happen to tavr0s
CAA: and y0u will get a message fr0m vriska
CAA: and then we will die
CAA: i will cl0se this mem0 n0w
PAA: wait
PAA: st0p
PAA: can we change all 0f this?
CAA: ...

CAA banned PAA from responding to memo

CAA: i miss y0u
CAA: me


CAA closed memo.

[Ember]

Kazerad. Oh, Kazerad. Jesus that was sad.

For a while I was worried it was going to be all visceral horror. Effective visceral horror, mind you — at the word "spine" I started screaming, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" and had to pull out of the story for a moment to calm down — but that's not really something I have much interest in reading. It was the LARPing that grabbed me, because it drove home that, yes, this is Nepeta that this is happening to. I'm kind of infamous with a couple people here for having stated that "I like breaking pretty things," which really just means that I have a weakness for putting characters I love in horrible situations and seeing what it brings out in them. What you have written is believable both as a depiction of suffering and as something that Nepeta would do, and therefore I love it.

And then you had to go and bring my favorite character into it. When I figured out who the Agent was, I braced myself for EXTREME SADNESS, and you delivered. "Mine too," choked me up bad.

In terms of prose, your most pervasive problems that I noticed are forgotten antecedents and dangling or misplaced modifiers. "No matter how bad things got, he would always keep seeking new alliances - new friendships. Even if it meant carrying them a mile to his home and giving them the last of his food." He carried a friend, not a friendship. "Her eyes followed the black scortch marks across the ceiling and down the walls, turning her head to the side so that she could get a better look at her new surroundings." What, exactly, is turning her head?

I'm also a bit ambivalent about your choice to Paint The Fourth Wall so heavily. On the one hand, the different-colored text is very effective at getting across what you want it to. On the other hand, it's a bit of a cheat, because ideally you should be able to do that using nothing but words.

[Kazerad]

Gleeeee, thanks guys ! I'm totally carving two more notches into my Tear Totem for this piece!!

Clinical language like denoted major lacerations gives the reader a feeling of detachment when you're presumably trying to draw them in.

I'll try to keep that in mind if I ever do this again. In a few places, I kind of struggled with finding a "normal people" word for some of the terms. "Medical professional" was another one of them; though in retrospect I kind of regret that I didn't write "medical purrfessional".

In terms of prose, your most pervasive problems that I noticed are forgotten antecedents and misplaced modifiers.

I see what you mean there - your highlighting really helps illustrate it. I thought I had worked out most of the referencing errors, but evidently missed (quite) a few.

I'm also a bit ambivalent about your choice to Paint The Fourth Wall so heavily. On the one hand, the different-colored text is very effective at getting across what you want it to. On the other hand, it's a bit of a cheat, because ideally you should be able to do that using nothing but words.

Hm, I actually weighed the pros and cons of this before doing it. What I ended up concluding was that, as far as I could tell, there was no real "con" to using the colored text. I'm not sure if this view is commonly shared, but I personally have always thought the idea of "cheating" in art was a little silly. Since, in the end, "effective" is effective, and "should" is usually arbitrary.

@spacetimeCounselor: I think you did pretty good at capturing her style for the most part, though in a few places she seems a little more excitable than normal (e.g. telling less-future-Aradia to shut up). Overall it is like a very strange kind of introspective self-conversation, which is pretty neat.

[KarneWarrior]

the ending of the aradialog was very sad for me. I dunno why. I'm not all that attached to Aradia or Sollux, so I could really care less. But it was still very sad.

[raequiem]

Kazerad, this is my face right now. In fact, I fear that this will be my face forever because of that fic. That was so tragically, painfully beautiful.

But I disagree with your crit of sC's Aradiafic (which by the way sC I think is fantastic and rather heart-wrenching at the end there). It makes sense for alive!Aradia to be a bit more, well, lively. As seen in pre-death chatlogs which I am too lazy to look up, and her intro page, where she had "a variety of interests which, in time, [she] lost interest in." Pre-death Aradia strikes me as an intelligent, rather animated individual - calmer than Feferi, less verbose than Kanaya, more on-task than Nepeta. But still prone to getting aggravated at cagey futureselves who never explain anything they're talking about.

But that's my headcanon. Feel free to disregard if necessary.

[conceptofzero]

hello everyone! I wrote another thing. It's called Letterbomb, and it was a fill for the captchalogue request meme on LJ. Unlike the last time I brought you fic, this is not hideously depressing with a twist ending. Instead, there are simply shenanigans. The request was "The Black Queen finds something that indicates that Jack Noir may have feelings for her" and that's exactly what this is. It's PG-13, and you can read it either on livejournal or over on AOOO. Sample below!

show spoiler

hide spoiler

It never occurs to her that she shouldn't snoop when Jack Noir isn't at his desk. After all, she is the Queen. This is her kingdom. Nothing is off limits, especially not her underlings desks. So she takes a seat in his chair and opens the drawers one by one, looking inside to see what Jack keeps there.

The drawers are even messier than Jack's desk. At least the tickets on there are in stacks. Dozens of broken ink quills lie in one drawer, along with a stack of fresh ones. And in other drawers, she comes up with tickets and sheets of paper, and a few licorice treats that she's certain falls under contraband. The Queen leaves the licorice alone, choosing instead to pull out one of the stacks of paper.

It takes her a moment to understand what she's seeing. She's heard music, of course, but this is the first time she's ever seen it written down. The words seem quite obvious, but for the life of her, she can't figure out how the dots tell the musicians anything. She flips through the stack, skimming over the words. It is drivel by far and large; popular love songs, a few songs about how enjoyable it is to party with your friends, and another set that seems to be nothing but bragging. The songs do not say Jack Noir at the top, but she feels fairly confident in assuming he wrote them. The love songs strike her as strange, since he seems to be angry all the time, but the rest are so perfectly Jack that they aren't worth commenting on.

The Queen leaves them on the desk beside the tickets and goes looking for more items of interest. She takes hold of some of the crumpled tickets and carefully unfolds them. The reason they were discarded becomes obvious. There's a rather unflattering caricature of what the Queen can only assume is herself. She is unimpressed, but certainly not surprised. Jack is as subtle as a knife in the face.

However, there are limits to how much someone can dislike their monarch. Jack's drawing easily crosses the line between inadvisable and treasonous. She sighs. The last thing she wants to do is have Jack executed. Oh sure, he's a troublesome nasty mean-spirited little monster who can barely keep his desk clean. But he keeps the bureaucracy running, even if only because everyone is too afraid to disobey him, and if he died, then she would have to take over his position while a replacement was trained. His entire purpose is prevent her from having to deal with tedious paperwork, which gives him a certain sort of job security that no one else on the planet could ever come close to having.

She opens the drawer to put the ticket back into, with a mental note to herself to have someone else 'discover' the tickets and scare Noir into behaving properly. But as she puts the paper away, she notices something sticking to the bottom of the drawer above. It's easy for her to slip her fingers along the edges of it, finding tape and scraping at it, and finally coming away with an envelope. She wonders what would Jack would tape to the bottom of a drawer to keep hidden when he can't even manage to hide the drawings calling his Queen a huge bitch properly.

The envelope is not sealed, and she reaches inside, fishing out a number of sheets of paper. It's a letter. The Queen settles into Jack's chair and begins to read. But as she makes it through the first paragraph, she finds herself drawn into it, no longer paying attention to anything happening around her.

It's a love letter. And it may be the most beautiful thing she's ever read. She finds it hard to reconcile the writer of the letter with the man who sits at this desk and sneers at her anytime she reminds him that his reports are late, again. But the writing is the same, and here and there, she can see him in the way he turns a phrase. The letter is like a poem, and Jack lovingly describes the beauty of someone. The Queen can almost see this mystery woman: long graceful limbs, sleek as a lioness, eyes that pin you down and tear you apart.

Halfway through, it suddenly hits her: the letter is about her. A quick flip to the last page reveals no recipient, and nowhere through it does Jack call her by name. But... the descriptions are quite clear. And there are other things. The way he describes the unexpected visits ("my world tilts when you appear and I am left standing on the knife's edge") strikes her deeply, and she goes over it again and again. It's vulgar and charming and painfully honest, and all of it is focused on her.

This is… she can't even put the rest of that thought into words. She can't dare let herself think anything. Because there is no way that a Queen can end that sentence, even to herself, that won't result in someone's death or exile. It simply is.

The Queen reads it again, savoring each word the way you would savor the pain when you press your fingers into a bruise. Her heart aches a little when she reaches the end, and she has to set the letter aside, swallowing until the lump in her throat dissolves. She rests a hand on the paper, tracing the lines of Jack's writing. No one has ever written anything for her before, and it is more than she can stand.

She has no idea how long she's been sitting there when she hears the ever-so-familiar click of Jack's feet. The Queen jolts up. There's no time to replace Jack's letter, and she needs a place to hide it. She folds it up, and slips it into her shirt, carefully tucking it between her breasts. For the first time since she left the cloning chambers, she wishes she had pockets on her outfit. And then, just before Jack rounds the corner of the screens, she grabs hold of the stack of music, and flips it open to the middle, forcing her eyes to set down on a line, any line.

Jack comes into the corner of her vision and stops dead when he sees her reading his music. She flips a page, and looks over at him. When she speaks, her voice is a bit husky, but she doubts Jack can notice. His eyes are too busy fixing themselves on the music in her hands, and she can see him getting noticeably angrier just standing there. "I hope you simply brought this to work with you Jack. You know you aren't allowed to work on personal projects when you have duties to perform."

"Yes, your majesty," He grinds out between his teeth, and in her mind, she hears my world tilts when you appear run through her mind.

She sets the stack of papers on the desk and gets to her feet. The paper between her breasts shifts a little, and she hopes that Jack can't see any of it. She has a moment when she can't remember why she came to his office in the first place, and she feels a bit of panic, a strange and otherwise new sensation for her. But then the words come to her, just as she opens her mouth, "You failed to turn in your weekly report."

"It's done. I've been busy," Jack steps around her, grabbing the folder off the desk and all but shoving it in her hands. She would normally address him, but right now, she can't get away from him fast enough. "Anything else, your majesty?"

Any other time, she would stop and marvel a little at how Jack's voice could warp a term of respect into one of disgust, but not this time. "Nothing," She says, and simply heads out, hoping that Jack assumes her reaction is rude instead of furtive. The Queen keeps marching smoothly onwards, trying not to think about the letter.

Livejournal | Archive Of Our Own

[BPrinny]

Kazerad


Kazerad why

[kmsumrall]

Kazerad


Kazerad why

Kazerad is the guy that crippled tavros. We can only hope Andrew doesn't pick up on this one too.
Naw, you're a good writer, kazerad. The real question is kazerad why don't you write more?

[kmsumrall]

Sorry for the double post but I has a story.

Jade in Wonderland, or something close to it.
Part 1, down the crab hole

show spoiler

hide spoiler

It was a very boring day in which Jade was laying down on the soft grass watching clouds equally as boring as the day pass by. These clouds were white and fluffy and some tinted with grey but beyond trying to figure out Rorschachian shapes they were boring and no fun. The clouds on Prospit were much more entertaining but Jade was not asleep and did not feel tired (but that didn’t really mean anything when one could be asleep at the drop of a bed).

While thinking it might be fun to do a series of cartwheel in the poppies Jade saw a small grey creature with candy corn on his head. While this should have been an odd sight the girl took it entirely in stride. She didn’t even blink (although she did squint because of the brightness of the sun) when it started shouting.

“Gog fucking shit toast and taint bacon! Why did I even agree to any of this? Fuck! Now I’m late!” It ran to a nearby unusually placed hedge and dove down a crabhole.

Jade dearly wish for an escape from the boredom and went into the crabhole herself.

The girl started falling but falling slowly as she was able to take little objects from appearifers that were spazzing out on shelfs. After about 15 minutes, (of which she could tell from a digital watch she grabbed from a unrelated cabinet while falling) Jade took out here grapple rifle and shot it upwards. The hook flew up into the air, straight as an arrow. The line grew taut and the girl pulled, but there was no catch like there should have been. After another minute the hook came back down, dropping harmlessly into the darkness below. Jade allowed the gun to drop as well, as it was only a single shot (or was it? Jade had so many guns that it didn't really matter).

It was about ten minutes in the past (as the watch from earlier ran backwards) that Jade started worrying that one one would be able to feed Bec if this adventure took a long time. As if by magic or cosmic space powers Bec appeared in front of her.

“Bec! Go ahead and send me back home, ok?”

The dog stared at her.

“Will you do it for a Bec Snack(tm)?

No answer.

“Two Bec Snacks(tm)?” Jade took out her Hoop Trundling Fetch Modus and rolled out two chunks of uranium. She cradled them in special gloves (of which she was already wearing for some reason) and offered them to the omniterrier. Bec barked once and disappeared in a green flash.”

“Oh poo.” As Jade contemplated taking an appearifer off the wall and rewiring it into a sendificator (or was it sendanator?) when suddenly Thump! Thump! down she came onto a pile of old beanbags.

Dusting herself off the girl looked around and spied the crabby troll (it had to be a troll, was else was that size?) running down a musical quartz hallway, not slowing down in its profanities. Jade quickly ran after the sound of “Fuck me for even offering to help!” and was greeted by a new hallway filled with doors and windows of all shapes and sizes and evidence of use. Fireflies lazily flew from lamp to lamp, illuminated the place in a dull yellow.

Jade tried to open a few of the door but they were either locked or simply painted to the wall. One door did open but all Jade saw through it was a blacked haired girl looking through a door. Jade started to reach out but decided against it at the last moment.

At the end of the doorway hall was a table balanced on one leg with a spiralgraph pattern on top. Jade clapped her hands when she saw a Tangle Buddy on it. The girl picked it up and held it tight, feeling a little comforted with something familiar. A pulling from strong magnets drew her to a small curtain she had not seen previously, and behind it was a small door with a Squiddle handle. Understanding right away Jade allowed the Tangle Buddies to tangle as they should and the door opened.

Through this tiny door a garden with brain shaped flowers and blue grass and other types of music could be seen. Try as she might the girl could not fit though the tiny aperture.

“Fizzle! I could fit if I didn’t have this head or shoulder or knees or toes! I can put one hand in put I have to take it out!” Jade did this and shook her hand all about, trying to get the brain juice off without wiping it on her dress, which was still rather clean.

A giggle made her look around and the adventurous girl saw a fruit stand was was sure was not there mere minutes ago. The fruit were dancing around and having a grand old time shouting “Eat me!” and “Peel me!” and “Juice me!”. Jade reached for an apple but remembered her bedtime story books about poisoned apples and stopped.

“In stories like these apples tend to be poisoned. Are you apples poisoned? ” Jade asked as politely as she could.

The fruit looked rather offended. “Certainly not! I should say Gerry is boysen and I am slightly indignant but we are not poison. Who would give a poison to a pretty girl? How would they even know which poison to use?”

Jade nodded and placed the Squiddle back on the table. She picked up the articulate apple and took a bite. It had the most tart flavor she had ever tasted and a hint of getting smaller.

“What a weird taste!” said Jade. “Why do I know what getting smaller tastes like? It’s like a microscope is seeing me!”

And then it was very much like she was on a slide as now the girl was getting smaller indeed. “Is this what food feel like in the stomach?” Jade tried to imagine what food feels like as it gets smalled through being digested but felt there were better uses of her time, like going through that tiny door and visiting the garden on the other side. But alas, poor Jade was denied entry as she left the key Squiddle far up on top of the single legged table.

A tentacle drooped lazily off of one side, far out of the girl’s reach. She attempted to fire her grappling hook to snag it and bring it down on top of her but remembered she already wasted it earlier. She could already hear her dead grandfather chide her for being so careless. Grandpas could be so mean sometimes.

As thought of hurphfing grandpas went through her head the girl noticed a small lunchbox under the table that she must have overlooked earlier. In it was a unopened bottle of apple juice with said “I am unrelated to the apple in the fruit stand. Go, ahead, drink me!” on the label. Jade made a mental note in the way of a colorful string on her finger to have a chat with the bottle on proper comma use later and took a drink.

Jade closed her eyes and waited, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that nothing strange at all was happening, which was very strange indeed for her island. Relishing the normality of the applely exilar Jade finished the whole bottle.

Now time to see if I can drum up any art for this. Alice in Wonderland is a pretty visual piece of work too.

[-Benedict]

Oh man conceptofzero I am laughing so hard right now you have no idea. Not only is this hilarious but it explains why DD would be off on LOHAC and the Veil instead of staying on Derse- he's on the run from Jack. And since this is slayer!Jack, he's got a damn goord reason to be afraid. That was an awesome portrait of a kismesis pairing.

Also I read Kazerad's Nepeta fic and I'm too shell-shocked to say anything about it right now thanks

[Isoraqathedh]

Is it sad to say that I have absolutely no feelings out of this?

Maybe it's because I've seen to much in my life and my heart is a stone.

Igneous.

[beesmygod]

Letterbomb

Concept of Zero, I don't think there was a single part of this I didn't enjoy. I wish I had some legit crit, but it was wonderful all around!

[SkaianRedeemer]

I really wish I had time to colour tag this but I'm running out of time before me and my kin run off to celebrate some sort of made up holiday about turkeys or something, and I'm trying to put out a theory in the Romart thread I will not have time or connectivity to pursue! Thank goodness I wrote most of this earlier.

(Fifty Points, Actually)

show spoiler

hide spoiler

arachnidsGrip [AG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board SCOURGE SISTERS LIVE AGAIN.

AG: Okay people
AG: I think we've had far too much time shenanigans for me to just leave this like this.
AG: I want a points upd8.
AG: I'm calling it.
AG: Right now.
GC: 1TS H3R
GC: SH3S TH3 ST4R
AG: What.
GC: 4R3NT YOU L34RN1NG 4NYTH1NG
GC: 1TS HOW HUM4NS SHOW R3SP3CT TO SOM3ON3 TH4TS TOT4LLY DOM1N4T1NG
AG: What. No. That is the ex8t opposite of what we're trying to do here.
GC: H3H3H3H3H3
AG: Okay, look. I know you've 8een messing around 8ut I have the clear advantage.
GC: YOU C4N TH1NK TH4T, SURE
GC: M1N3'S W34R1NG MY GL4SS3S AND 1S P1CK1NG UP SP33CH P4TT3RNS.
AG: Tough shit, mine's just as far. And has a level advantage.
GC: 4RE YOU JOKING?
GC: YOUR HUMAN IS THE WORST TROLL 3V3R
GC: HE'S ALL GR33N.
AG: That doesn't count! I have the rules right in front of me!
GC: 1T T4ST3S L1K3 W33DS WH4T W3R3 YOU TH1NK1NG.
arsenicCatnip [AC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
AC: :33 > guys i think my human is already me.
AG: No, w8, hold on, I'm checking the points list.
GC: SH3 GO3S OUT IN THE N1GHT TO HUNT S4V4G3 B34STS?
AC: :33 > um, no
AC: :33 > she's been asleep this whole time
AC: :33 > but
AC: :33 > she surrounded by a huge pile of stuffed ones
AG: W8, really?
AC: :33 > uh huh
AC: :33 > she hugs them in her sleep :||
GC: WOW 1 TH1NK W3 M1GHT H4V3 4 W1NN3R
AC: :33 > :DD
AG: Whatever, I'm still going to play for second.
AG: As soon as I find the damn points list! ::::@
adiosToreador [AT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
AT: gUYS I STILL DONT GET HOW THIS WORKS.
AG: Tavros, your human su8verted YOU and I gave him to Terezi
GC: Y34H 1 TH1NK YOU OWE US PO1NTS
AT: Oh.
grimAuxiliatrix [GA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo.
GA: I Believe My Human Is Subverting Herself, Does This Qualify?
GA: I Do Not Wish It To Qualify.
AG: Dammit why does everyone have it easier than me?

"OKAY, ALL FIVE OF YOU GIRLS HUNCHED OVER IN A SECRET MEETING IS DEFINITELY NOT SUSPICIOUS AT ALL."

Vriska instinctively slammed her hand to the power button on her monitor and the screen snapped off. The perfect crime.

"Don't know what you're talking about," she said as innocently as she could muster.

Karkat shook his head and walked down the line, toward Tavros, obviously hoping he had been a little less protective as he was simply sitting there counting the number of girls in the conversation on his fingers as it slowly dawned on him.

GC: WOW WH4T 1S YOUR PROBL3M
AG: Shut up, you and I both know that he can't see.
AT: sEE,, I DON'T GET THIS EITHER
AG: Tavros, log off!
AG: He can't see because it would be cheating!
AG: I'm not going to lose my bonus points. D::::
GC: WH4T BONUS PO1NTS
AG: Don't play stupid.
AG: The ones you get for subverting another player's guy's matesprit, kismet or moirail.
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT
AG: Don't play dumb.
AC: :33 < !!!!
AC: :33 < the john human and the dave human are matesprits?
AG: What? No!
AC: :33 < :(( oh no!! i don't want them to be kismets they're so cute together
AC: :33 < *ac sighs* i guess i had better go adjust my wall. just when you think you understand them!
arsenicCatnip ceased responding to memo
GC: H3H3H3H3H3H3H3H3
AG: Oh you laugh now miss secret 8ackla8 rendezvous
AG: 8ut you're too legal to just ignore the points
AG: I'll figure out how much this is worth.
AG: As soon as I find the list...

"I dunno, Vriska," Karkat called from behind Tavros' shoulder. "Maybe it's in the BACK OF THE LAB."

Shit.

Author's Notes

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Oh man I hate not being able to edit things it makes a nervous wreck why am I doing this.

This is yet another fic that should have been drawings (I honestly miss the visual I had in mind of Nepeta approaching the conversation on all fours, so you can only see her from eyes up over the edge of Vriska's desk) but hopefully the memo format compensates to some degree. I really don't have time to be sure as I must be off!

[KarneWarrior]

Heh. What game are they playing?

[Sushi Database]

It seems they are playing a game where you manipulate a human into adopting your mannerisms, but the details are left unrevealed.

[VagabondRaiser]

Hey, look, it's that wordy bastard again. What's he rambling about this time?

Oh, it's just

The Vodka Mutiny, Part Three:
The Calm
"I trust I will see you again soon?"

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Dave ran a quick mental checklist in his head as he and Jade ducked behind a pile of crates on the dock, the TimeTable hovering lazily before him. Jade played lookout, poking her head up over the boxes and ducking back under again; her sash had been repurposed as a sky-blue head scarf. He had no idea what happened to her hat.

If he was already applying gaming abstractions to his situation, it wouldn't hurt to keep everything in the same form. The Noir world would be level one; basic conflict, learn the ropes, easy fights. As things moved on, it'd get harder from there.

If the Noir world could be considered a 'control', then three things could be expected: they located the key, conflict would occur unrelated to the key, and the Darkness would make its' attempt to stop him during or as a result of that conflict.

Similarly, the key would likely be an important part of solving the conflict matter. He knew they could likely expect to have the Darkness exhibiting traits that would require the use of whatever object the key was. In this case, it was a TimeTable, which meant he'd probably get the other one some other time, the next world perhaps.

From what he remembered of the TimeTables, one controlled his personal time, the other the world around him. The one he had, then, was the personal time controller, judging by its' position relative himself when he would activate it, hanging just underneath his left hand.

Glancing up at Jade, he tilted his head slightly. I wonder... A deft flick of his wrist, and the world around him seemed to come to a dead stop.

He smirked, and reached up to untie her sash from her head, hanging it about his shoulders lazily. He then dropped a finger to the vinyl of the TimeTable, halting the forward spin and returning time to normal.

Jade uttered a squeak of surprise and both of her hands shot to her head as she whipped about to face him.

"Figured out which one it is," Dave stated with a matter-of-fact air, and she stuck her tongue out at him, reaching out and tying the sash in a bow around his neck with surprising speed. He frowned flatly at her, and she pantomimed snapping a picture.

"Gift-wrapping your beloved for the Coooooooonstable?" A voice sneered, and Dave had the sash off and back around Jade's head in the blink of an eye. Already he was getting used to the power of the TimeTable again. It was like riding a horse, really.

A huge-ass, perpetually touchy horse that could leave you stuck in a frozen world or frozen in time if you pissed it off.

"Just a little playful ribbing between old friends, Captain Serket," he said coolly, standing and dusting himself off before leveling a flat look at the troll standing on the other side of one of the boxes. "I'm assuming you're out here among the rabble for a reason?"

Vriska cocked her tricorn with the back of the hook that took the place of the hand she'd lost some time ago, bumping it up off of the eyepatch that covered her right eye and adjusting her monocle with her good hand. Clad in ruffled blues and tassled blacks, she was both beautiful and frightening to those who didn't know her that well.

The select few that did, however, understood why she was the way she was. Of those, only a few truly feared her; most feared the consequences of disobeying her order more than the empty threats she'd bandy about. Most except for Tavros, anyway, but he was nigh frightened of anything that moved.

There was a pounding of footsteps on wood nearby, and dread sank into the pit of Dave's stomach as raised voices could be heard. Rose's voice in his mind did little to soothe his nerves.

Seems you figured it out. To maintain my innocence I had to tell John of the window. It seems he's a little more intelligent than we supposed. He found the contraband, your 'TimeTable', missing immediately.

"They don't know who they're looking for, but I'm guessing that pretty amber trinket you're holding there is raaaaaaaather suspicious," Vriska said, a shark-like grin on her face. Examining the nails of her good hand, she gave a sultry chuckle and crossed her arms.

"I would've never figured the respectable Dockmaster Strider for a thief," she purred, leaning forward, "But I suppose it's always the ones you least expect, aye? In any case, either you can pay me ooooooooff, or I'll collect the reward that's certain to come shortly following on yooooooour little head."

Jade glanced back to Dave, who seemed perfectly unbothered by the implication. Calmly, he flicked his left wrist, and Vriska started to move, freezing before she could do much more than open her mouth and lift her hand.

Reaching out, Dave tugged the hat from her head, and calmly rolling it up, carefully wedged it so that she had one end in her hand and the other in her mouth before stepping back and stopping the spinning vinyl.

Time moved forward, and Vriska made a perplexed noise, followed by a muffled yelp of surprise, yanking the hat out of her mouth. It unfurled as it hit the box before her, and she stared at it, then him, then the hat, then him again. "H-How did you--"

She didn't have time to finish before he and Jade abruptly vanished, and she was left standing there, gaping at thin air. For a moment, she was oblivious to someone attempting to say something to her left.

"Uh... er, C-captain?" She jumped at the voice, uttering a shriek of surprise, and Tavros fell over backwards with a yelp of fear and a thump.

Straightening her jacket and roughly re-folding her tricorn, Vriska plopped it on her head backwards and realigned her monocle with her good hand, flushed blue from embarassment and anger. "S-Shut up! Go away! You didn't startle me!" She snarled.

Paralyzed with fear, Tavros simply lay there staring deer-eyed at her. After a moment, she uttered a sigh of disgust and hauled him up roughly by the front of his plain green tunic, setting him on his feet. "What was it? And make it quick," she snapped.

"Er, the, uh, the Spider's Web is all loaded up, c-cap'n," Tavros said after a moment, and extracted the cargo manifest from the pouch at his hip, holding it out to her. "Cap'n Strider signed off on the final inspection just now."

Frowning, she turned to look at the spot Dave had vacated moments prior, taking the manifest from Tavros and unfurling it. Both the preliminary seal and the final notorization were there, signed in Captain Strider's recognizably unrecognizable scrawl.

"I see," She muttered, and rolled up the manifest, thrusting it back into his grasp. "Gather the crew, we're setting out now." She strode calmly up the dock toward her ship, leaving Tavros to handle gathering the others.

He had to've recognized what was on the docket, she mused. He had to've recognized the Midnight Sail's manifest among the orders.

Musing, she lost herself in thought. Strider had often been a little lax with inspections of her cargo, but she often attributed it to either him trusting that she'd only take reputable work or some weird little attempt at endearing himself to her.

He wasn't the type to blackmail, and according to most other captains, he rarely 'looked the other way', even going out of his way to personally take stock of everything out of place if they tried to buy his silence and deliver the results directly to the Constable's desk.

She briefly considered it being a holdout of his brother's apparent affection for her, but the elder Strider had always been viewed as the 'big brother' of the fleet. He always helped out others, even if he did so in the strangest ways.

Drawn from her musings by someone speaking her name in an officious tone, she turned to raise an eyebrow at the Constable. "Wha'dyou want?" She asked flatly.

"We're searching for a thief, Captain Serket, and I'd appreciate it if you'd pay attention," John replied tersely. "Have you seen anyone acting suspicious of late?"

Vriska cocked her head, and after a moment's thought, shrugged. "Nothing out of the ordinary heeeeeeeere, Constable. Just waiting for my crew."

---

"Do we really have to hide in here?" Jade whispered, squirming somewhat. Dave bit his lip when her elbow jabbed him in the ribs.

"Oh, yeah, I'm totally enjoying the idea of my ass going numb," he grumbled, and peered through one of the slats in the long, low crate they'd gotten in. It was a cheap, weathered thing, light and easy to carry, which made it perfect for them to use as a hiding place among the Spider's Web's cargo.

All he'd had to do was speed himself up enough that he'd be able to get the crate onto Vriska's ship before anyone would know, and get Jade to the crate. Since the ship was clear except for Vantas and that Sollux fellow, both down in the galley, they had enough time for him to explain the plan.

Since Becquerel was still hiding on the Pearl and seemed to have a sort of innate connection to Jade, he would know to get the ship out of port and follow them. Add the fact that they'd had the devil-dog stealing bits and pieces of cargo from orders ever since they got back to port, they had enough equipment and cash to fund their own armada.

He'd managed to get a last-moment message off to Rose, requesting that she hide aboard the Pearl when she had the chance, so that she'd be able to help them using her magics. She'd agreed, although she demanded recompense for her assistance, which he was glad to offer.

The Pearl would leave port later than the Web, catch up, and they'd reveal themselves to Vriska and pay her off to help them take down the Midnight Sail. If Captain Strider's memories were to be trusted, it was likely that the Devilish Deacon would be the source of this world's infestation by the Darkness.

Between the Pearl's armaments, the Web's cooperation, and his recent acquisition of the TimeTable that sat idle in his lap, taking down the Midnight Sail and dismissing the Darkness in this world would be all too easy.

"Ow! Careful!" Jade hissed as he adjusted his position and accidentally stepped on her foot.

"Sorry," he winced, and carefully shifted so that he was facing her a little, trying to get into a position that wasn't going to leave his backside numb. After a few moments' jockeying, she finally uttered a sigh and tugged him over so that he was sitting in the middle, climbing across him and settling down in his lap with her head on his shoulder.

"You had to pick a little crate, didn't you?" she mumbled after noticing the faint blush forming on his face in the darkness. He swallowed hard, but said nothing, deciding that the gnarled wood of the crate was suddenly very interesting.

---

A headache was beginning to form in the frontal reaches of John's head as he received report after report from his soldiers. Nobody had seen anyone leaving the offices after Jade and David had left, and they had been seen heading down the docks towards the Jade Pearl, where they would likely be found if he bothered to look.

Beyond that, nobody, including Vriska the Eight-Eyed (a wry snort came unbidden at the irony of the one-eyed pirate's name) had seen anything out of the ordinary. Either it meant that the entire damn port was conspiring to keep this theft of the strange amber gear-disk object secret, or he was losing his mind and he'd simply misplaced the contraband.

Sitting on a short box, he closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with a hand after waving off another salamander soldier. Three quarters of the unmanned ships in the port had already been scoured for signs of any stowaways, and while a few pieces of contraband had been found, none of them matched the description of the amber gear-disk.

"Again, I am terribly sorry," Rose said softly at his side, and he opened one eye, adjusted his glasses, then opened the other to give her a tired smile.

"It's not your fault, Rose, don't apologize. Whoever it was that took the contraband, we will find, and bring to justice, plain and simple." He paused for a moment, and glanced about with a confused look on his face. "Uh... where's your companion?"

Rose tilted her head, and seemed only then to realize Kanaya's absence. Looking about, she frowned and closed her eyes, mentally berating herself for having let the incident with the other-worldly David and the bunny distract her.

Kanaya, can you hear me? Her thoughts stretched out, seeking that familiar, rational mind.

What she found wasn't Kanaya, but a strange force emanating from David's ship. Remembering the 'deal' they had made, she decided to take a different tack.

I would assume you are the 'devil-dog' David informed me of. The force appeared amicable enough-- it felt as if it was in agreement with her assessment. You are not capable of speech, then?

The devil-dog responded to the negative, and she nodded slightly. I see. Have you seen my companion? She pushed a mental image of Kanaya toward the presence, and was rewarded with a response in the form of a second image, distorted by the eyes of a non-human but recognizable as Kanaya seated primly on an ornate wooden chair in a cabin of some sort.

I see. Thank you. If you would be so kind, I would like you to pass on the knowledge that I will be with her shortly, as soon as I can get away from John. The presence receded, and she opened her eyes to the sight of a perplexed and slightly worried John.

"...ook a little pale. Are you alright?" She sighed, making a show of dabbing at her brow with a kerchief.

"I'm... fine, just a bit tired," She admitted. "Fashion is a wonderful thing, but sometimes keeping up with fashion means suffering a little." At his perplexed tilt of the head, she smiled coyly.

"To greater emphasize the assets a woman possesses sometimes requires the use of clothing that hampers breathing," she explained, folding her arms together and affecting an air of indifference as she hunched her shoulders slightly, looking away and knowing full well where the action had drawn John's attention. Oh, but she was enjoying torturing the poor Constable.

"I, uh, I understand," he said dimly, before clearing his throat and diverting his attention from her assets to a nearby crate. "If, er, if you need somewhere to rest, I can escort you to--"

"Oh, no, no, don't bother yourself over my condition," she cut in, leaning forward to smile at him, drawing his attention back to her (and deepening the flush on his face). "My brother has offered myself and Kanaya the use of one of the spare rooms on his galleon, so I will be adjourning forthwith."

She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. "I trust I will see you again soon?" With that, she bobbed an elegant curtsy and, head held high, headed for the Jade Pearl with a self-assured smile, leaving a furiously blushing John behind.

It wasn't until she'd already boarded the ship that he remembered her leaving the bunny back in his office. With a curse, he waved off one of his soldiers reporting yet again that nobody had been found and headed for the offices.

---

Kanaya was a bit unnerved. She'd come out of a stupor standing in the waiting room outside of the foyer of the offices, and berated herself for daydreaming only long enough to have some sort of glowing white-green wolfhound appear beside her. Before she had the chance to scream, she was standing in an ornate cabin stocked full with ornate furniture and beautiful cloth.

Glancing down at the beast which came almost up to her chest, she tentatively reached out a hand, and it allowed itself to be pet, pushing its' head into her touch. After a few moments of the strangely calming act, she felt a sort of 'suggestive' feeling coming from the wolfhound. She had felt such suggestions from Rose on rare occasions when she didn't have the time to concentrate for a direct message.

Stay here, it seemed to be suggesting. Knowing that she understood, the wolfhound padded across the cabin to nudge a chair out from under a table and turn it to face her, and placed a paw on the chair, watching her silently.

Kanaya walked over to the chair, at which point the wolfhound removed its' paw, and when she sat, it rested its' head in her lap for a moment, giving her a chance to pet it once more before abruptly fitzing out of existence in a manner reminiscent of imps being un-summoned.

This wolf must be the 'devil-dog' mentioned in Captain Strider's letter, she mused. I can only assume Mistress will be here shortly. She busied herself with examining her surroundings, taking stock of the strangely elated fruit in the bowl on the table, the myriad maps strewn about on a desk nearby, and the amazingly bright bedspread.

She didn't know how long she'd been in there, beginning to worry about her predicament, before she felt Mistress' message passed on by the wolfhound. Elation welled up in her heart at the idea that Mistress was actively pursuing a chance to get away from the Constable. Mistress wasn't 'under his spell' after all!

Perhaps he only wishes us to think that.

She frowned, squeezing her eyes shut as a headache began to build in the front of her mind. No, that was a lie. The Constable was a respectable man, but he was also about as sharp as a belaying pin. He wouldn't have the sensibility to control Mistress.

It's easy to pretend. We pretend to only be loyal to Mistress for her kindness in taking us in, after all.

A flush spread on her face. Well, certainly she enjoyed Mistress' company far more than a humble servant would, but they were companions, partners in business. It didn't matter, anyway. That sort of thing wasn't a big deal among trolls, but humans had strange preconceptions about that sort of thing.

Mistress has said before that she cares little for distinguishment between human and troll.

The headache began to grow. That was an unrelated matter anyway.

And lest we forget the occasional moments we have shared with Mistress in the twilight hours?

An image of silken sheets caressing Mistress' bare legs flashed in her mind, and she felt her face grow hot from embarassment. Regardless of those moments, it didn't change the fact that the Constable was a twit.

Yes, an absolute fool.

An image of Mistress in the Constable's arms, her own wrapped tenderly about his shoulders, Mistress' lips locked to his, burned itself into her mind's eye. The heat drained from her face and she went visibly pale.

A fool, and the first person to ever receive a real kiss from Mistress.

No, that was a fabrication, a lie. Her imagination was playing tricks on her.

Another image, of Mistress posing to intentionally accentuate the effect of her corset for the Constable's benefit.

The Constable may not be the one lying.

No! She shook her head quickly, pressing her hands to her face. Mistress was manipulating him! Him! Not the other way around!

Do we really believe that?

She began to breathe in heavy, short gasps, gripping her head. The headache was pounding, it felt as if something was trying to break free in her mind.

Another image, of the Constable as a child throwing out the Mistress' favorite plush rabbit. The rabbit that she had gone to such lengths to procure, personalize, and repair for Mistress.

Even then, he was conniving. Even then, we were loyal.

Another image, of the Constable receiving the rabbit from a face-painted troll with tall, elegant horns. Money exchanged hands, and the Constable gave the troll a friendly handshake. The troll interrupted the handshake by pulling the Constable into a hug, which he was neither expecting or too happy with.

Her head was throbbing. Black played at the edges of her vision, writhing like smoke and shadow.

The Constable has been manipulating Mistress for years. A subtle, long-played game of chess, and we have been losing the whole time.

Another image, of the Constable giving Mistress the rabbit. The Constable turned away, and Mistress turned him back and kissed him.

And Mistress has been playing into his hands the whole time.

Another image, of the Mistress giving the Constable a kiss on the cheek. "I trust I will see you again soon?"

If we do not save Mistress from this menace, she will be drawn in permanently. We must not fail.

Abruptly, the headache faded. The black tendrils receeded from her vision, and she could've sworn she heard a sound like the snapping of carapaced fingers, a single, solid pop.

The door opened.

I'm actually kinda enjoying releasing this section as an arc of chapters instead of trying to cram it all into one BLUH BLUH HUGE CHAPTER setting. Allows me a little more lenience with the format, gives me wiggle-room so I can expand the little side-bits a bit without making it all seem like forced introspection.

Also, raequiem, I'm pretty much definitely going to do a fic on that idea I came up with in the Romart thread based on your picture. The ideas, they keep spinning about in my head. It'll probably be written up fairly soon (or at least started) as a 'focus on something that isn't school crap or Flavors/Impermanence' work.

[Sushi Database]

The Esoteric Adventures of Zazzerpan the Learned, part fourteen

show spoiler

hide spoiler

TG: rose
TG: i'm guessing you're freaking out right now
TG: so please listen
TG: your mother is not gone
TG: she will be back, unharmed, as soon as we fix the timeline
TG: we even know where she's going to be
TG: rose?

Her computer was making "new message" sounds. Rose lifted her head up from the kitchen floor and stared at her laptop. The screen was black and she couldn't see who was trying to talk to her. Her entire body felt weak and sore from lack of use, but she managed to drag herself over to the computer. She tapped the touchpad and read what Dave had said.

TT: And that's supposed to make it better?
TG: ...
TG: doesn't it?
TT: She wont remember any of it after the reverse.
TG: that's probably a good thing, considering how traumatic we now know death is
TT: Yes. It is.
TT: But she saved my life, Dave.
TT: She wont remember that. She should remember that.
TG: well, you're pretty reckless
TG: with any luck she'll probably save it again
TT: You're just going to be glib about this? This is my mother, Dave. In the hands of horrible, eldritch abominations.
TG: let me just get this straight for the record
TG: you are referring to the same mother that is also an alcoholic, that you have bitched about for being negligent nonstop for as long as i've known you
TG: and these are the same horrible eldritch abominations who feed you prophecy on a regular basis and you have been working with for the past two weeks or however long this has been in real-time
TG: right
TT: That's exactly why this is important!
TT: Because she's not just a negligent alcoholic! She had hopes and dreams, she was a little girl who thought Scarlaven was cooler than Frigglish! She was a precocious brat with an entire life I never knew about!
TG: she will still have been all of those things once we fix the timeline
TT: I don't need your help to do this, Dave.
TG: great, fine
TG: your magic almost got us all killed, but that's fine, let's just dig ourselves into a deeper hole now
TG: stop being selfish rose
TG: you think i'm not flipping my shit over jade still being down there
TG: of course i want to storm the gates of hell but that doesn't make sense and it'll only get us killed
TG: we can't fix things and help the people we care about by acting like that
TG: we have to fix things in the right timeline
TG: rose
TG: why the fuck aren't you answering

Rose had pushed away the keyboard after sending her last message. She hadn't seen Dave's last few messages... not that it would've mattered if she had. She already knew what she was doing was pointless. She didn't care. She'd finally connected with her mother, after all that time, and she was going to lose it. It was unthinkable. It was intolerable. She stretched her legs, trying to restore the feeling in them, and got to work setting up a summoning circle.

Her voice was strained, and her words did not carry the authority she had spoken them with when she had summoned John. Still. Still, she was Lalonde the-

"Dark gods of the deep reaches of space, by the Arcane Contracts of Ara'Ghola the Unmanned and the ancient sacrifices of Felnar the Unreachable, I summon and bind you to my service. I am... Rose Lalonde. Mystic Pupil of Zazzerpan, Seer of Light, Tentacle Therapist and Princess of Derse. E... escodace... fenmistogora... kali katara... exo... fenora."

Nothing happened. Rose punched the floor, shouting with all the energy she had left.

"Come! Obey my will, spirits! COME!"

Something stirred within the summoning circle now, a faint distorted light playing across the floor. Slowly, a shade shimmered into sight. "Ms Lalonde. You have summoned us?"

"Y-yes. I want to see Rosalyn Lalonde. Show her to me."

"Mm, ahh. I'm sorry, Mystic Pupil of Zazzerpan, but Rosalyn Lalonde is outside our control. She is not available for summoning.

Rose's eyes darkened with a quiet rage. "I could destroy you, summoning spirit. Without even owing a cost to your masters, I could destroy you. Do you believe me?"

"Well, yes. Probably. But. You still cannot contact Rosalyn Lalonde. Apologies, Seer. Orders from the top."

"The top." Rose's hand shook and she reached for her wands. "Fine, then. Show me Dr Moon."

"Dr Moon? That's expressly forbidden. He cannot be summoned, ever. Again, sorry. Not my decision."

Rose stared at the summoning circle and the spirit bound within. Her legs were shaking and she was feeling the strain of having spent practically a week in the afterlife. She realized that tears were streaming down her face, and probably had been for quite some time. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

The summoning spirit actually looked sorry for Rose, or perhaps that look was because he thought he would die any second. "From what I've been told, most mortals have personal ways to cope with the death of a loved one. If you wish, I could suggest a few-"

The spirit disappeared abruptly, unsummoned. Rose dropped her wands to the ground as the summoning circle burned off the ground. She felt defeated. Her gaze wandered back to her computer, where she had last left her mother's bottle of Ashen Albatross.

a material focus...

It was a long shot, but Rose had drank heavily of that special cocktail of grief and desperation, and that was the kind of mood that called for the non-metaphorical kind of the same drink. She half-limped, half-crawled back to her desk and grabbed the bottle. Rose unscrewed the cap and let it fall to the ground, raising the bottle to her lips and tilting it back. The light, chemical burn of vodka overpowered her senses and thoughts. In a martini, it had been unpalatable. With cranberry juice, it had been effectively masked. Drank straight, it was truly vile to her sensitive taste buds. She slammed the bottle down to the table and grabbed the edge of it to keep her balance. The lingering aftertaste was almost as much of a shock as the sense of intoxication slowly bubbling up through her. Rose let her balance fail her and slumped to the floor, moving like a caterpillar towards where she'd dropped her wands. Everything around her felt dulled and overwhelming, somehow... she felt helpless but the problems that had seemed so serious before now felt manageable. With a growing feeling of horror and revulsion she realized she could do this for the rest of her life.

Her hands closed on her wands, where she had left them barely a minute ago.

Lying on the floor, bathed in the dim light that was LOLAR at night, she called out to the gods with pure will. No circles of black candles. No bullshit incantations in forgotten languages. They were only props. Had she ever truly needed them? Magic was about will. Magic was about self, and the universe, and what the latter could do for the former. Magic was about bending the rules because dammit, rules and laws- even those of physics- were made to be broken.

"MOTHER!" she screamed, and the air buzzed with energy as the world boiled away around her, once more.

~


She was in her own room, for once, on Derse. There was a mild dissociative dizziness that came from passing out and waking up somewhere else immediately (or maybe it was the vodka), but Rose was getting used to it. She was in bed, and it suddenly struck her as amusing that this was the first time she'd woken up in her bed in about a week.

"Miss Lalonde," a familiar voice said with a British accent. "I confess, I didn't expect to be seeing you again this soon."

She turned over. Dr Moon stood with her mother, here, in her room. They were both staring at her as if waiting for an explanation- either she had summoned them here or they had been waiting here, but neither explanation really seemed to make sense to her. Rose closed her eyes and opened them. "Mom. I had to- you can't go."

"Your debt has been settled," the wizard said. He was clearly losing his patience, but Rose didn't care. "Your mother has agreed to go quietly, and it's really none of your business at this point."

"Rose," Rosalyn said, stepping forward and setting her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "You can't do this. You need to get back to your quest, and your brother. I'll be fine."

Rose shook her head. "No!"

Her mother sighed. She looked over at Dr Moon. "Alan, would you give us five minutes?"

"I don't see any reason why I should. She brought all this on herself. It's the emotional strain from attempting to break the geas with that Felt idiot. If I hadn't released her from it she would've died. As far as I'm concerned you Lalondes have used up your allotment of 'Mr Nice Guy' passes."

Rosalyn stared at the old man, then turned abruptly and grabbed a book off Rose's dresser. She held it up so the wizard could see it. "This is why."

"What's this? Another weapon?"

"It's a book." She tossed it to him. "Read it."

He stared at the cover. "What is this?"

"Read it."

He opened the book and silently read the first two pages. Then the wizard closed the book and looked up, puzzled. "You wrote this?"

"Rose wrote it."

He looked from the cover of the book, up to Rose, then back down at the book. "Really."

"What?" Rose demanded. "What about my book?"

The wizard ignored her. He read another few pages, shut it, and stared at the girl with disbelief. The man bit his lip and slipped the book into his jacket. He drew a rift in the air with his pointer finger, and stepped through it, looking back to say one last thing to them:

"Two minutes, Rosalyn."

"Two minutes," she echoed.

"Mom," Rose said.

"Listen, honey. You've always been a little stubborn and I don't expect you to obey me but I need you to listen, okay?"

Rose stared at her silently. She nodded.

"You're going to see me again, Rose. I know there are things you want to tell me, but hold them inside, just a little longer. Because I'm just your mother's ghost, Rose. I died there in the flaming wreckage of Dr Harley's battleship. I remember being your mother and I wish to Shib I could be your mother again but some things end with death. But you have a living mother out there, waiting for you, waiting to be unlocked from the right timeline. She's real and she's out there, and Rose, she loves you. Maybe she- maybe I wasn't the best mother I could be. I've made mistakes, I've been weak. I wasn't ready to be a mother when you came. There was a man..." she covered her face with her hands, wiping back the tears. "A good man. But he went away, and I let myself be weak when I should have been strong, for you. But Rose... I never stopped loving you. Your mother always loved you. Tell her these things, when you find her. Tell her, so she'll be the one who remembers.

"I need to go with Moon, now. There are still things that need to be done before I can rest. Old Harley planned for every eventuality, including this one. I have a job to do, to protect your future and preserve our past. Listen, Rose. You need to protect Jade's kernelsprite. At any cost."

"I don't understand."

"I know. I cant put this into context for you right now. But you're a bright girl, Rose. I know you'll figure it out. Look after your brother. It should've been me looking after him, but... I need you to be a big girl now."

"I'll find you," Rose said, tears in her eyes as her mother stepped towards Dr Moon's rift.

Her mother smiled at her sadly, one last time, and then she was gone.

show spoiler

hide spoiler

hurp derp, epilogue will be posted later

[raequiem]

Also, raequiem, I'm pretty much definitely going to do a fic on that idea I came up with in the Romart thread based on your picture. The ideas, they keep spinning about in my head. It'll probably be written up fairly soon (or at least started) as a 'focus on something that isn't school crap or Flavors/Impermanence' work.

YES YES YES YES YES. I'm gonna go squee in a corner until it gets posted

Also Vodka Mutiny is fantabulous as always.

[arcaneCalligramancer]

Man

Man I am so bad with the writing

I was all 'hey i will write a fic about Skepsis' fanart 'Further' and it will be awesome', only it took me a week and it is terrible in every way. But I finally finished it and hell I need a reason to make a first post anyway, so why not this?

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Kanaya studied her screen, and the flashing of a message from Rose, and smiled. It was unusually pleasant to talk to the other girl, even with her reckless use of Dark Magic. She had a firm grasp of snark and fashion both, something all too rare in Troll culture, and the pink and lavender motif was rather a relief from the constant advertisement of ranking on the Haemospectrum -

She shook her head. You're rambling again, Kanaya drifted through her thoughts, a whisper of the human-girl Rose's influence, and of their burgeoning friendship. One hand clenched and unclenched in the fabric of her shirt, trying to calm the sudden flock of colourbugs fluttering around within her peristaltic digestive tract.

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at ??:?? --

TT: Kanaya.
[chum grimAuxiliatrix is idle.]
TT: I know you're not there. That is rather the point of my messaging you.
TT: And not Jade, or Strider, or - gods forbid - John.
TT: I didn't want to actually speak to anyone
TT: Nevertheless, I could not go without leaving some message of farewell to those whom I care for.
TT: Yourself included.
TT: It's easier this way, I suppose. One might say that this is the coward's way out of confrontation, but I think I might have earned a little weakness.
TT: After what we have been through - the prices we're paying - I think it's warranted.
TT: ...
TT: I'm rambling again, Kanaya.
[chum grimAuxiliatrix is idle.]
TT: Goodbye.
TT: And...I'm sorry.

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at ??:?? --

The fluttering colourbugs vanished, replaced by concern. Kanaya looked at the top of the pesterlog. Damn, no timestamp, no clue when Rose had begun messaging her.

This could be bad, very bad. She needed to think. Her hands tangled in her hair as she screwed her eyes shut in sudden, worried concentration.

The timeline-trolling function of Trollian was useless due to some spell or another of Rose's. She knew that the girl had been fine less than an hour ago, having returned from the last of the missions Karkat and John had been assigning willy-nilly. It didn't make sense, though – they had just finished preparing the battlefield for Lord English's inevitable arrival, so why would she disappear?

Well, there was always the simplest method to find out.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling tentacleTherapist [TT] at ??:?? --

GA: Rose
[troll tentacleTherapist is idle.]
GA: Rose Are You There
GA: Rose If You Can Read This Please Respond
TT: Kanaya?
GA: I Received Your Message
GA: What Is Going On
TT: It's complicated, Kanaya.
GA: We Had A Plan
GA: Your Disappearance Is Not Part Of It
GA: I Know This Because Amongst Other Things Karkat Cant Stop Talking About His Plans And Leadership
GA: And Everyones Part In It
GA: It Is Getting A Little Irritating To Be Honest
GA: Urgh But I Digress
[troll tentacleTherapist is idle.]
GA: Rose
TT: Sorry. This isn't easy.
GA: What Isnt
TT: I have been calling on the gods of the furthest ring for their help, for quite some time
TT: .
TT: They offered support and power and encouraged my opposition of the game and its machinations
TT: I never thought to ask why
TT: I didnt think it through Kanaya
GA: Rose
[troll tentacleTherapist is idle.]
GA: Rose
GA: Where Are You
TT: i owed the gods payment
TT: for services rendered
TT: and they called it due

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at ??:?? --

Worry had long since been replaced by icy terror. She lurched to her feet, sending her chair crashing to the floor behind her.

“What the fuck, Kanaya? Do we not have enough shit to deal with, so you somehow feel the need to add to our gogdamn burdens by flinging furniture around like that sweaty creep - “ Karkat was trying to work himself into a good rant, but he stopped as soon as he saw her face. “Oh, Jegus, what now,” he muttered, pushing her aside and glaring at the top conversation.

Kanaya didn't care, though. She had bigger aquatic musclebeasts to fry. Rose was in trouble. A great deal of trouble. Her path was simple enough – Vriska and Eridan took great pleasure in calling her a meddler, so why not go for broke? Wasn't she the Sylph of Space?

“Fucking...fuck,” she heard Karkat say, as if from a great distance. He looked up from the log and stared at her, confusion shifting to shocked comprehension and then anger. She would have found his expression amusing, in other circumstances.

“GOGDAMN FLIGHTY BROADS - “ she heard him begin to roar, his face red with rage, before she took a single step and landed lightly somewhere else.

Rose was staggering, beginning to fall, Salamancer trying and failing to hold her up. The Thorns of Oglogoth lay before her, sparks of twisted energy crackling between the twin wands and casting the girl and her familiar in violet light.

Kanaya appeared without a sound, catching the collapsing Rose against her chest. Salamancer made a burbling squeak of surprise, before pressing close to his mistress. The Sylph of Space focused once more, calling on the powers of her station to take Rose and leave this place - and slammed into a metaphysical wall. She stumbled and almost collapsed.

“What - “

THERE MUST BE PAYMENT

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, not so much a sound as a vast, dominating presence bypassing her ears and jamming the knowledge directly into her mind. Eyes began to appear in the inky blackness around the three, hideous maws full of grinding teeth opening and closing. Some of the eyes were brought closer, attached to writhing, inky tendrils.

THE ROSE-HUMAN MADE A BARGAIN

Kanaya's head whipped from side to side as she stared wide-eyed at the massing beings. Eyes and fangs and tentacles pressed close to the circle of light. Her mouth was dry as she whispered, “A bargain?”

SHE SOUGHT POWER

A second voice echoed through their minds, and Rose cried out as crimson blood began to leak from her nose. Kanaya couldn't see the assembled creatures clearly any longer. Everything outside the circle of light was rippling somehow, warping space in such a way that made her senses ache.

POWER WAS GIVEN AND ACCEPTED, BUT NOT FREELY

NEVER FREELY

SHE WILL PAY HER PRICE

Rose gave another sobbing cry, and then began to speak in a high, strange sing-song voice. “Ia, ia! Rhysitan n'mrchos adui czmalum Oglogoth pjo'wuq! Ia, ia Oglogoth fhtagn!” Her voice trailed into a reedy wail and then to nothing. Her eyes were wide open, pure purple, and tears of bubbling blood poured down her cheeks. The flesh of her arms rippled once, disconcertingly, in the silence, and then the Thorns shattered.

Kanaya let go of Rose, who collapsed to her knees and was only held up by her amphibian familiar. “She will not pay your price,” announced Kanaya. She stood straight and tall, and the Matrioshka Saw was in her hands, its deep rumble a comfort.

One of the tentacles snaked towards the trio, and the rumbling saw snarled to life. Ichor sprayed and the beings surrounding Kanaya and Rose roared in rage and pain.

YOU HAVE HURT US

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE

The light from the broken wands was fading, but Kanaya could still see the things pressing in from the darkness, fangs gnashing and tentacles writhing as they telepathically howled their rage. Desperately, she pulled Rose to her feet and wrapped space itself around them as the servants of Oglogoth unleashed their first, terrible attack.

It very nearly broke her, despite the power of the Zeno's Best Defense fraymotif. The denizens of the furthest rings drew back, readying for a second blow, and Kanaya threw everything she had into one last attempt at absconding - and smashed into and through the wall separating the Furthest Ring from the rest of the universe. The psychic cries of shock and outrage were music to her ears as she felt another presence link to her own, their spatial manipulation synchronizing as Kanaya vanished from the Furthest Ring, bringing Rose and her familiar with her.

They dropped to the white sand of Rose's Land of Light and Rain, and Rose herself was lying sprawled on her back. Even as Kanaya was pulling herself to her feet, Salamancer was pulling Rose upright, and extruding a bubble down her throat.

Kanaya shuddered. Odd behavior for a consort, but in her experience they were benevolent, if sometimes confusing. And, apparently, disgusting.

Rose's eyes opened wide, and Kanaya was relieved to see they were normal again, if unpleasantly bloodshot. The human girl thrashed and gagged, but Salamancer was undeterred, only pulling back after a full minute, balancing a surprisingly large bubble encasing...

Both girls stared at the gently pulsing mass of mottled grey flesh. Even as they watched, it extended a tendril and prodded at the edges of the bubble curiously, reaching towards Rose. Salamancer burbled something angry-sounding and waved his stubby arms and fingers. The bubble and its unpleasant occupant froze solid and dropped to the sand with a thump, and the little salamander promptly began stomping it to pieces. Both girls boggled at Salamancer's display of arcane might.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Rose's voice was hoarse, her eyes red-rimmed, but when Kanaya looked at her she offered a faint smile.

“I am not sure you can use 'supposed to happen' with anything you humans are involved with,” Kanaya responded, taking Rose's hand and pulling her to her feet. She was surprised, when they stood face to face, how much shorter the other girl was. She had always loomed so large in Kanaya's imagination.

“So now it's back to 'you humans'?” asked Rose, her smile now a wry smirk. She wiped her eyes and looked up at Kanaya, her expression faltering and becoming something more hesitant. Finally, Rose took a step forward and wrapped Kanaya in a hug. “I was as foolish as you and your friends had accused us of being, Kanaya, and you saved me anyway. Thank you.” The words were muffled, spoken into the troll's chest, but she understood anyway.

After a moment, they separated. Rose's Hubtop Band flickered into being, and she began murmuring into it. Finally, she looked up and at Kanaya. “Jade says thank you for saving me, and wants to know if you can try synchronizing again sometime.”

“Jade – ah, the Witch of Space.”

Rose looked down at her outfit, spotted with her blood and the ichor of strange and eldritch nightmares from beyond the borders of reality. “I think I should go back to my house,” she said, looking back up at Kanaya. “I need to alchemize a new set of needlewands, and...find some new clothing.” She stood there, though, looking into the other girl's face as if searching for something.

Kanaya smiled. “Perhaps I can come with you? I have had some more ideas about outfits I think are nice. We could try to make them?”

Rose smiled back, more broadly than Kanaya was used to seeing. “I think it would be fun. It's this way.” She gestured down the beach.

They walked shoulder to shoulder, and after the third time their fingers brushed together, Kanaya carefully took the other girl's hand in her own.

[raequiem]

Nice first pwnst, aC! Love your Kanaya, and Salamancer was SO ADORABLE~

[VagabondRaiser]

Argh. I had a post typed and when I clicked 'Post Quick Reply' it imploded the fora. To wit:

Man

Man I am so awesome with the writing

I was all 'hey i will write a fic about Skepsis' fanart 'Further' and it will be awesome', only it took me a week and it is awesome in every way. But I finally finished it and hell I need a reason to make a first pwnst anyway, so why not this?

Fixed that for you.

Can someone crane in a First Pwnst.gif? I can't find my keys.

[arcaneCalligramancer]

Nice first pwnst, aC! Love your Kanaya, and Salamancer was SO ADORABLE~

Argh. I had a post typed and when I clicked 'Post Quick Reply' it imploded the fora. To wit:

Man

Man I am so awesome with the writing

I was all 'hey i will write a fic about Skepsis' fanart 'Further' and it will be awesome', only it took me a week and it is awesome in every way. But I finally finished it and hell I need a reason to make a first pwnst anyway, so why not this?

Fixed that for you.

Can someone crane in a First Pwnst.gif? I can't find my keys.

Imagine my shock and confusion!

But thank you! This is basically the first time I've rolled up in a fandom in like forever so it is all so new to me. Like writing the fanfictions and stuff. Or shipping. I have never shipped anything before, and now I am like the goddamn UPS over here it is ridiculous, I have mutually exclusive ships sailing around in my goddamn Mixed Metaphor Ocean.

(Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer, you are the star

it's you)

[Metaflare]

aC. aC I think I'm in love with your writing.