IT'S SLASH WEEK!

I've been looking forwards to this for a long, long time. I was so proud of seeing that the ship weeks finally had a slash week. And it just so happens that I have a friend who was also very happy about this and who has enough bad influence on me to talk me into writing one story for every day of Slash Week.

Yeah. This is so happening. I have four out of six stories already written and I have various concepts laying around although I am missing a couple for August 15- so feel free to suggest things in the reviews. I decided that we should start off with Hylla and Kinzie because as far as femslash goes, they pawn. Enjoy!

Dedication: Maddi, that little bugger

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below and I am unashamed of using Avril Lavigne as an epigraph.

Complicated

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else
Gets me frustrated
Life's like this
You, you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honesty
You promised me I'm never gonna find you fake it
No, no, no

-Avril Lavigne

Kinzie swept Hylla's hair over her shoulder.

"What?" she said. "It bugs you when your hair's all over the place under your helmet. You just won't say it. You like being macho."

Hylla smiled and put her helmet on.

"You look so strong," Kinzie said. "So powerful… and so stupid."

"I had to do it," Hylla said. She took Kinzie's hand and rubbed her thumb over her palm and looked down at her manicured nails before meeting Kinzie's eyes.

"You had to challenge Queen Elena's authority over the Amazon Kingdom?" Kinzie said. "You had to- to get yourself wrapped up in this duel to the death for the crown? You just got the cast off your leg last week Hylla you…"

"Nobody should talk to you like that, even if you're her secretary. Nobody should get to hit you either," Hylla said recalling the boiling rage that had overtaken her when she'd seen Elena smack her assistant, who just so happened to be Kinzie, across the cheek when she'd fumbled a coffee order.

Kinzie looked like she was going to call Hylla stupid again, but instead she got up on her toes and kissed Hylla. She didn't step back after their lips parted, she lay her head down on Hylla's chest. Hylla loved this. She loved how they never fully pulled back from kisses, unless they were stolen ones in a factory hallway or on a training course. Kinzie's soft hair was just under Hylla's nose, she smelled like the exotic fruits that had dotted Circe's island, except a thousand times sweeter.

"I'll make sure nobody ever gets to mistreat you again, make a slave out of you," Hylla said. "Whether I become the new queen or not."

"Don't talk like that," said an Amazon named Shanyka who had been one of their best friends since Hylla had gotten to the Kingdom. "You totally gonna be queen. Now get that butt out there and slay the bitch."

Hylla picked up her sword and ran her thumb against the blade. As suspected, Kinzie had sharpened it for her.

Hylla kissed her on the cheek once more and then went to fight for her life.

And won.

If this didn't make Hylla feel incompetent, she didn't know what would.

The fact that on her first day on the throne, she'd survived her battle and a brief on proper attire for an Amazonian queen, but she couldn't figure out the clasp on Hippolyta's belt.

She'd been a dresser on Circe's Island for a while, she'd helped Reyna with stuck zippers for as long as the kid had lived, she'd figured out and improvised complicated sailor knots on Blackbeard's ship but she couldn't get the stupid belt to clasp.

She wasn't going to lie; this was panicky. Some Amazons would see it as an omen; others would just scoff at her stupidity if she couldn't get the stupid belt tied on… Whatever it was, she had to get it under control.

She hissed. She should've asked Kinzie to stay close when she'd come by this morning, wearing her work clothes (including the pencil skirt that Hylla loved) and speaking in the polite business tone that she would address any queen by. Kinzie had to know how to do this, right? Oh goddesses, what Hylla wouldn't give to have her swoop in right now...

Hylla fumbled with the buckle some more and finally it snapped together.

She had no idea how, though. So she'd be in the exact same boat tomorrow morning…

She sighed. At least she'd avoided that struggle for a little while. It was a bad sign that getting dressed was so complicated, wasn't it?

When Hylla showed up in the office framed by her two new personal body guards (which were starting to really get on her nerves with their constant proximity), Kinzie was already there.

Hylla had expected this; she knew what Kinzie's job was, though she'd always been stationed in customer service and marketing. Kinzie was always in the Queen's quarters, ready to plan schedules like a secretary or arm herself with patience and vigilance like a guard.

"You can wait outside," Hylla told the guards. "Let me know if someone needs to see me."

"Yes Milady," the guards said kneeling before closing the office doors behind Hylla.

The office made Hylla dizzy. One wall was entirely glass, beautifully offering a view of Seattle. The rest of the walls were crisp white; one had a few black bookshelves propped against it and a digital map of the world showing the span of the Amazon Kingdom as well as some other mythologically relevant places, and the wall over the door had televisions on it, all displaying security feed from elsewhere on the property. A black rug was carefully straightened on the floor. Hylla's desk was placed so that she had her back to the windows and could face the screens. Chairs were placed in front of it for greeting guests. Live plants hung from the ceiling and Hylla really hoped that it wouldn't be her job to take care of those, because she killed every plant she touched (supposedly most children of war did once they got claimed).

Just looking at the office made Hylla think of herself as a corporate tycoon, which was probably the point.

"Good morning, Milady," Kinzie said bowing her head softly. "I've cancelled most of the meetings for today as to give you time to get settled in, but you do have an appointment at 4:30 with a representative from the Distribution Center about some fraud that had to do with the new machinery orders. Here's the file on the current inquiry on that, though you are free to start from scratch."

"Okay," Hylla said. "Thank you."

Kinzie checked that off her clipboard.

"Also it is customary for a queen's first meal in the office to be spent with her cabinet -that is, four members of the last queen's court and eight members that you selected. I've made reservations at a restaurant downtown called Paisley's, and have printed a copy of their menu. If it seems unsatisfactory I can make other arrangements."

"That won't be necessary," Hylla said, not even taking the menu from Kinzie.

"Very well, Milady," Kinzie said. "Also at 9:00-"

"Kinzie," Hylla said. "Enough with the 'milady'. I'm Hylla to you. Hills, even. I don't care if you call me that when we're at work."

Gods know they'd called each other kinkier things.

Kinzie bowed her head.

"Very well m-," she caught herself. "Hylla."

Never had her name sounded so foreign in Kinzie's lips- which was slightly chilling.

Kinzie and the body guards at her side, Hylla got a tour of the property.

Of course, she'd given these tours before. This was purely symbolic.

People were checking her out. Checking for wrinkles on her crisp black pantsuit, a hair escaping from her sleek ponytail, a wobble in her step, a drop in her posture… They were looking for the damage that had been inflicted during her duel- notably a black eye that Hylla had made no attempt to hide since, well; the entire kingdom had seen her receive it. In general, nobody looked grossly disappointed with her. Then again, the people working in the distribution center were considered to be 'low' on the Amazonian Food Chain. Her precedent, Elena, had probably hit and slaved them just as she had done to Kinzie.

Only a few people looked at Hylla completely miserably, and those were the men in their jumpsuits and collars.

"Are they making you uncomfortable, Milady?" one of the guards asked, following Hylla's gaze.

"Of course not," she said. "I'm just looking at that one. He has a cut on his face. It looks infected. Is it a work accident? Why hasn't he been tended to? Healed?"

Just as her party started examining the wound she pointed out, one of the conveyor belts stopped working altogether, its fuse blowing with a pop and a small plume of smoke.

One of the men was holding handfuls of wires- the culprit. Seeing that he was caught, he grabbed a baton from a nearby guard's belt and swung it around as he started kicking boxes around. He yelled something that Hylla couldn't make out because one of her guards tackled her to the ground just as one of the men tried to steal a sword from a worker and basically got knocked out by a steel-toed kick to the jaw.

"Are you alright, Milady?" the guard said helping her up once everyone had been handcuffed and the guards had ordered the rest of the prisoners into silence.

"Yes, thank you," Hylla said. "What was that?"

"Best we get out, Milady," the guard said again.

"Kinzie," Hylla said. "Can you go tell the Chief Guard here to treat the prisoners gently and justly? I'll want to talk to them later- particularily to the one who started the action, and to the man with the cut."

"Your Highness, that's impossible," the guard said. "They'd have to pass through five levels of clearance and-"

"It doesn't matter," Hylla said. "Skip the clearance. I'm talking to these males tonight, whenever Kinzie can find time. Workers don't just burst into violence for no reason unless there's been some kind of wrongdoing, and I'd love to know what went wrong."

The guards nodded and escorted Hylla out.

"The men were treated badly under the last queen's reign," one of them said. "There have been rumours of a possible rebellion-"

"A rebellion?" Hylla asked.

The men who came to the Amazon kingdom did so (mostly) willingly. Some of them were the spouses of Amazons. Some of them were cultish enthusiasts. Kinky suckers who couldn't get their kicks any other way. Indebted demigods who gave years of service as opposed to money. Only a few were prisoners of war. They came in to the kingdom knowing that they'd be treated with inferiority, but so disdainfully and brutishly to cause a rebellion…

She didn't need this right now. Things were hard enough.

"The papers you requested," Kinzie said handing Hylla a file. She was starring at the ground- a bad habit of Kinzie's, given her shy nature.

"Hey," Hylla said. Kinzie didn't look up, she just stopped moving towards the door.

"Kinzie, look at me," Hylla said. Kinzie looked up at Hylla, and that was the first time she'd seen her girlfriend's almond eyes in a while.

"Are you okay?" Hylla asked.

"Yes," Kinzie said quietly before scurrying from the room.

Hylla wasn't convinced but she couldn't put her finger down on why Kinzie was upset and what kind of gloom surrounded her.

Hylla put a form down. It all cleared up in her mind, her course of action had become clear like a lighted path. She had to fill in 22A before this one because those were adjacent. Got it.

Now where on her desk had she put form 22A?

There were at least three layers of paperwork spread on the surface- all of which was to be done for yesterday.

Once she got form 22A she realised that she really didn't need to fill it out since she wasn't looking for a new body guard so… what was wrong with the one she'd been holding ten seconds ago?

Shoot her.

Shoot her now before the paperwork got to her.

3:00 PM: Video-conference call with the New York bureau.

She'd remembered that from her brief that morning.

See? She wasn't totally useless without Kinzie.

After doing her rounds in the morning, interviewing the male workers mostly, she powered up the computer which then demanded that she select an account ("Her Majesty Hylla Lucia Alejandra Ramirez Arellano" being the only option...) and then enter the password, which she did. Then it asked for another password. And another… by the third password, Hylla was stumped and she couldn't remember what was next.

Was the next password hj1lj65? Or r21a31r1997a? Maybe 65sf57fs? Wait, no, that was the lock for the archives. 4756? Nope- that was the filing cabinet. Or her briefcase?

Mierda, mierda, mierda, mierda… All these stupid passwords… Mierda, how was she supposed to remember it all?

Hylla had worked in magic restaurants. Hylla had been the pupil and then assistant of Circe the Sorceress. Hylla had single-handedly raised a two-year old orphan. Hylla had done all of these things at the same time at one point.

But today she was too exhausted to move off of the throne now that she'd finally sat down, and that was the first time that she had refused to budge a single muscle in her body so intently.

She reclined her head and closed her eyes.

Meetings with a male worker, a heavy debate in court, tons of reading, tons of signing, everybody had briefed her about every issue in the kingdom on the same day, audiences with the Amazons to hear their complaints and comments about the kingdom… all of this without moving and rarely speaking. She was mentally exhausted.

The throne door closed and Hylla opened an eye. It was Kinzie, probably coming to check on her.

"Do I have to be anywhere?" Hylla groaned.

"Not at the moment, no," Kinzie said much more professionally than Hylla had.

"Thank the goddesses. I don't want to ever move again." Hylla confessed.

"That can be arranged," Kinzie said. And then, most unprofessionally, she sat on Hylla's lap, straddling her.

That made Hylla open her eyes and straighten up.

"Really?" Hylla asked. "That would be fantastic."

"I aim to please," Kinzie said. Hylla grinned but not for long before Kinzie's lips smashed her face out of her smile and to more important business.

Kissing Kinzie was easy. Second nature. She knew exactly where her hands could find the small of Kinzie's back and the back of her neck, she knew how Kinzie loved her hair being played with, she knew how her lips and tongue ought to move and everything in that aisle.

Deciding whether or not it was okay for Hylla to be getting comfy with her girlfriend on a historically valuable throne? That was a bit more complicated.

However it didn't take long for Hylla to make the easiest executive decisions yet.

a) She didn't care

b) They would be doing this again because, like Hylla had always maintained, Kinzie was hot in her work clothes.

After an entire day of reading and responding to various correspondence, Hylla was starting to fall asleep. She was doing well, but the ADHD could only be forced down for a few hours. Unless she got coffee.

Coffee. There was a good idea…

She got up and walked towards the door. The second that she was out, the guards startled and saluted.

"At ease," Hylla said. "You two can stay here; I just have to go down for a minute."

"Why?" the guards said.

"I just need to grab a cup of coffee," Hylla said.

"What's your order, milady?" One of the guards asked.

"No, really, it's okay," Hylla said.

"Ma'am, we can't allow you to go to such a public place," one argued. "We must insist. For security reasons."

"What?" Hylla asked. "No, no, no. Don't worry about it. It's good for me to stretch my legs and get some fresh air."

"Ma'am, we must insist."

"No, I insist," Hylla said.

"She takes it black," Kinzie said, walking out of the elevator, hugging her clipboard like always. She was holding a steaming paper cup from Hylla's favourite shop that smelled deliciously like caffeine.

"Thank you, Kinzie," Hylla said.

Kinzie nodded and went to put it on her desk. Hylla resigned herself and walked back into the office.

"What's going on?" Hylla asked. "They won't let me go out for coffee?"

"It's a security hazard," Kinzie said. "We've had incidents. If you ring at the cafeteria downstairs and ask for Harriet she'll gladly bring you a cup, no delivery fee. They carry regular fair-trade coffee from Ecuador, decaf, espresso, caffe latte, café au lait, cappuccino, café mocha, Americano, cafe con lecce…"

"Is it really that complicated?" Hylla asked, baffled. Getting coffee was simple. When she'd worked customer services and seen to the comfort and ease of customers worldwide as well as diplomats, Hylla had gone on coffee runs a million times. It was a simple freedom, walking out to a café and looking at a menu and their specials and ordering a cup of coffee… It felt restraining for a second. "Just because I'm queen doesn't mean I'm useless."

"Nobody thinks you're useless, Milady," Kinzie said. "It's a security measure, as I've explained."

Don't call me Milady, Hylla wanted to say as Kinzie, today dressed in a neat black dress and a blazer, launched into security protocols.

Hylla was more than happy to smash on her couch on Friday after her first week of reign and mold herself to the cushions.

Kinzie was milling about the kitchen –which she knew better than Hylla did since she'd assisted in the apartment for Elena, before Hylla moved in.

"It's Friday Night Date Night," Hylla said when Kinzie reappeared with a beer in one hand and a glass of wine in another. "What kind of Asian food are we ordering tonight?"

Kinzie put Hylla's beer down on the glass coffee table and sat down next to her. She didn't take Hylla's hand, lean against Hylla, lay down on Hylla's lap... nothing. She shrugged.

"I don't know," Kinzie said.

Hylla frowned. Usually they argued endlessly about Friday Night Date Night take-out. Hylla was always clamouring for curry from the Indian store place, or Korean cuisine or whatever else was new and unusual. After a week of running around and fulfilling her exhausting duties as assistant, Kinzie just wanted her pad sew and a sappy movie and a ton of cuddling and attention (Friday Kinzie was a needy Kinzie, which had never been a problem before).

"How does Thai sound?" Hylla suggested.

"I don't mind," Kinzie said glumly.

Hylla bit on her lip.

"I'll go get a menu," she said before getting up and going to rummage through the boxes that she hadn't unpacked after moving into the Queen's Quarters.

She was probably just tired. They'd both had long weeks, after all... yes, that must be it. Just tired.

Oh this was an adventure. Hylla had a feeling that she'd be telling this story laughing and smiling in a few years, but today was not that day. Right now she was on the phone, arguing with Dana Westerfield from Customer Services about how she really didn't care where Pat Osito was right now, she needed her here in her office right now; and this while trying to tell the woman from the foreign bureau that she didn't speak Japanese.

How great was it that the Spain and Japan bureaus had decided to switch their video conference time slots so that Hylla didn't have time to arrange for the proper interpreter?

"I'm sorry ma'am, it will only take a minute," Hylla said. She hissed back into the phone. "Dana, get me Osito right here right now. That's an order."

And hung up just like that. It was super rude, but Hylla had been ignoring the first foreign director to contact her in her career as Queen.

Hylla had very little experience with how Japanese should sound, but she was pretty sure that the woman on her screen was getting increasingly mad.

"I'm very sorry for the confusion," Hylla said. "The interpretor's not here."

Something very quick was fired back at her.

"I'm sorry, I don't speak... I... Do not... Speak... Japanese..." Hylla said holding her hands up in dismay. That was the international signal for 'I don't understand', right? Apparently not because Hylla's guest was getting angrier.

"Hablas espanol?" Hylla tried desperately. Of course not, Hylla was empty-handed. The demigod on the other side was Greek, so they didn't even have Latin to go on at this point.

She had her phone's Google Translate app open but she couldn't spell out what she heard quickly enough to translate, and after the app told her that the Japanese Bureau's Director had asked Hylla if the squirrels were chocolatey at this time of the year, she decided that it wasn't a valuable tool anyways.

Never had Hylla been more stressed.

Hylla picked up her phone again and sighed.

She knew that Kinzie had her phone on her. She carried it around for business, and could be reached with her personal number on the same device thanks to Shanyka's daughter-of-Hephaestus hacking.

So why wasn't Kinzie replying to her texts?

What was going on with her?

The letters were starting to blur together and Hylla was reading the same words over and over again without registering them.

It was nearly midnight. She was surrounded by a pool of paper and highlighters. She'd snuck back to her office without her guards in the middle of the night once they'd gone home to their families to finish this, but all that Hylla was getting was a headache from the lamplight. Even Seattle, behind her, had quieted down for the night.

But Hylla wasn't anywhere near finishing the monstrous pile of paperwork that had only been growing on her desk.

She was seriously considering having everything shredded and hoping that the important forms would be re-sent if it was really that necessary to fill out.

Hylla stood in front of her throne and tried to gesture as she talked and meet people's eyes and look engaging and friendly. It probably wasn't working, but whatever. She wasn't presenting a friendly subject; that of worker abuse.

"The male workers have gone through it, they suffered through it, and now they're understandably angry about it," Hylla said. "There have been several outbursts of violence since I took the throne and according to some sources, the males have been showing signs of restlessness and rebellion before that. We need to act. They are a valuable labour resource and, above all, human. They need to be placated and treated right."

Nobody in the throne room opposed just yet. The members of Hylla's court looked totally cool, and the last third of the court, members of the old queen's court who had stayed to 'watch the new monarch's behaviour' according to tradition, were quiet for now.

"After consulting with various ambassadors of the male workers, I suggest that we grant them higher salaries and more sick leave," Hylla said.

She may as well have set off a bomb based on the reaction of the court.

She knew right away that she was going to be in the stupid throne room arguing about this with them all day.

Freaking politics.

Kinzie handed Hylla a document and she noticed the stamp on Kinzie's hand.

"Did you go to Shannon's last night?" Hylla asked.

Shannon's was something between a club and a café on the Amazon grounds. It was hard to explain well, but it was an awesome place. One of Hylla's favourite places in the world, actually. The entire place was painted creamy white so the lights and projections and hilarious posters on it stood out, and there were fairy lights and disco lights everywhere. There was a board game café upstairs where anything from dirty games of Apples to Apples to nostalgic matches of Candy Land could be played with friends or strangers, the best frozen yogurt in town was served there and came in 18 different flavours, there was consistently good music on the dance floor, a constant energy to the place whether you were dancing or relaxing or eating… It was also where she and Kinzie had met, playing darts. It was their place. They never went without each other.

"Yes. Forgive my uncleanliness, Milady," Kinzie said. "I'll wash it off as soon as possible."

Hylla, she thought. Not Milady. Hylla.

It was nearly crushing how Kinzie had gone without her.

What did it mean?

And now that she paid attention, she saw that Kinzie's nymph eyes were shot with chlorophyll. Kinzie wasn't that bad of a light weight, and she held her liquor rather well- but it was hard for nymphs to process alcohol (which was the bane of Kinzie's life). Kinzie had drank last night, which probably meant that she'd been on the dance floor, dancing with other people. Hylla tried not to let that make her jealous, but she couldn't. And she couldn't help but be hurt even more.

Her advisors –a small, specially selected portion of the court- were gathered around her. They were bouncing the political implications of kicking off this one member of the Queen's old court who was making the new bill on Male worker benefits impossible to pass.

Earlier in the day a male worker had jumped an Amazon, smashed her head against the concrete floor and stolen her keys to start a forklift and had caused massive destruction in a warehouse, as well as running over another Amazon. Fifteenof Hylla's subjects had been hurt by the initial event and the following little riot, and that was fifteen too many. She was furious.

To top it off, all of this was causing extremely high breakup rates in the kingdom between Amazons and their working boyfriends, which had about half of the staff completely bummed out or meaner than usual and just plunged the entire place into a bad atmosphere.

Things were getting bad.

And to piss Hylla off personally even more, everybody present was deeply involved in the negotiations and debates except for the one person whose advice she wanted; Kinzie.

Kinzie was being quiet and not even meeting Hylla's eyes or doing anything more than picking at her jacket. She wasn't even taking notes or putting up some kind of pretense. That pissed Hylla off.

"Look, I need this bill passed in the next 48 hours," Hylla said. She knew slavery. She knew rebellion. This wasn't going to stay contained long. "So thank you for your counsel, but I'm going to have to do it. Shanyka, go find me Vincent McLeod and bring him here in about fifteen minutes. He acts as spokesperson of the male workers. The rest of you may be dismissed. Except you Kinzie, would you mind staying a few minutes?"

Kinzie shook her head with a "No ma'am" that put Hylla's teeth on edge.

Everyone left the throne room and Hylla crossed her arms. Kinzie didn't move.

"What are you doing?" Hylla asked.

"Pardon me?" Kinzie asked.

"You're ignoring me, you're being so distant, you won't look me in the eye, won't use my name… that's not like you. Even when you're sad or upset that's not like you. Why are you doing that?" Hylla asked.

Kinzie didn't reply for a while. Hell, she didn't even stir.

"Look Kinzie," Hylla said. "I'm already struggling with the paperwork and my limited language skills and the ethics involved with making out on the throne. Don't make me wonder how you feel too."

"I love you, of course!" Kinzie said. "I love you to the moon and back. You should know that!"

"Then what's going on?" Hylla asked. "Because something sure as hell is and sometimes I get this horrifying feeling that after three years of smooth sailing of clicking like each other like puzzle pieces and understanding each other and not pulling crap on one another, something went wrong with us. Talk to me."

Kinzie's eyes were fixed on Hylla with the most profound and deep sadness in them. Then Hylla realised that Kinzie wasn't looking at Hylla, but at the throne.

"I've served three different queens in the same position," Kinzie said. "The first one died of an injury a month after her duel. The second hit me when I didn't bring her lattes fast enough. And the third is you, my girlfriend of three years. What do you think that that pattern looks like to me?"

Hylla frowned and then she processed it.

"You're scared that I'll either die painfully in a duel or a coup or an attack," Hylla said. "Or you're worried that I may become bitter and power hungry and ruthless and heartless. Or maybe both."

Kinzie didn't say a word, but Hylla knew she was right. She walked towards Kinzie and took her hands.

"You became queen by protecting me," Kinzie said quietly. "I didn't want anything to change because of that. I didn't want... I didn't want us to change."

"Hey," Hylla said. "It's not complicated. You and I are no-bullshit kinds of people. I love you. Do you love me?"

"Yes," Kinzie said.

"Perfect. Then let's not complicate it. We're okay, and we're going to stay okay. Got it?"

"Yes ma'am," Kinzie smiled. "I mean, yes Hylla."

Hylla's laughter was interrupted by a kiss that tasted like strawberry lipstick, and like every other single kiss that she and Kinzie had ever shared.

Kinzie didn't even back away from it fully. She rested her freshly shampooed head against Hylla's chest.

Upcoming ship weeks

August

10 - 16 - Free slash week (author's pick of a same-sex story)

17 - 23 - Free friendship week

24 - 30 - Chris and Clarisse

31 - 06 - Jason and Reyna

September

07- 13 - Jason and Piper

14 -20 - Frank and Hazel

21 - 27 - Calypso and Leo

28 - October 4 - Percy and Annabeth