Vigorous, Bold, and Rash
by Cryptographic DeLurk
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AN: Written for the Every Woman exchange last year. I kept forgetting to crosspost it here from ao3. Oops.
Optional Reference Guide: In addition to familiarity with the Funpire arc, you might need a refresher on the Oglaf strips titled Panacea, Potion of Girlfriend, the Retribution trilogy, and Pillow Talk. That's just the important ones, though. I gave nods to a whole bunch of other strips.
This is probably the weirdest thing I've ever written, but I like to think it makes as much sense as any given Oglaf strip~
I hope you enjoy! Read & Relax!
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The rash had broken out on her left thigh at first, but it spread rapidly up the side of her body. Greir scratched at her stomach and hoped the skin wouldn't blister.
"So, you aren't allergic to cherries, hippopotami, or duct tape."
"No." Greir frowned, and scratched the rash harder.
"And you're sure you haven't eaten any strange mushrooms recently… or run into any poison ivy."
"I'm sure," Greir clipped out.
"Hmm…" the healer scratched his beard idly, and lifted an eyebrow.
"I'm not paying you if you can't figure out what it is," Greir hissed.
"I told you at the beginning: I'm just a dentist!" the man said, waving his staff in frustration. "If you want help, you should go see a doctor. I heard there's one in the next town over."
Greir's eyebrow to twitch in frustration. This was the fourth time somebody had suggested she see Navaan about the problem. It spoke poorly of the dolts that surrounded her, that they were so eager to recommend Navaan's services; Navaan knew absolutely nothing about medicine.
"You don't have any idea what it might be a reaction to?" Greir persisted, scratching harder at the rash and narrowing her eyes at the dentist.
The dentist shook his head, looking a little panicked, but the monk that was travelling with Greir was distressingly immune to her moods.
"I keep telling you. It's the curse of the Funpire. You must be allergic to fun," he declared guilelessly. "You were doing better, until you ran into those jugglers the other day."
Greir frowned. It was true that the rash had appeared only a day after her encounter with the funworm. But she had fought and burned the funworm herself, and it had been made of nothing more than flesh and blood and brightly-coloured cloth – nothing that would have inspired this rash.
The monk looked worried. "You better do something about it quickly," he prodded. "Your body doesn't seem able to metabolise the fun by itself."
Greir had thus far refused to deign this theory with a response, but her standards were apparently slipping because she scowled and answered.
"You can't be allergic to an abstract concept," she insisted.
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She did end up going to see Navaan, not because she trusted that Navaan would know anything in any medical capacity, but because she might tumble upon the answer herself by talking to Navaan.
That, and she was getting desperate. In the last week, the rash had spread all the way across her chest, and she had almost let herself get talked into buying a box of parasitic tits in the hope that they would numb her skin. And, while chasing a bounty, she had decided, very spur of the moment, to run into a cactus instead of pursuing the outlaw down the road.
The stabbing pain of the cactus thorns had provided greater relief from the itching than her fingernails, but the leader of the Pussy Gang had gotten away and there was nothing more intolerable to Greir than a strike against her capacity as a professional.
"Leech?" Navaan offered, in lieu of drinks or snacks or medicine. She reached across to the other side of her desk, holding out the jar.
When Greir seemed uninclined to take one, Navaan plucked one out of the bloody briny water, pressed it against her left fang, and screwed the jar shut.
"Formaldehyde?" she offered next, holding up jar containing a specimen of a frog. "It might seem kind of gross at first, but it's pretty great if you drink around the amphibians. Just like the worm in tequila!"
"There is a rash covering my entire torso," Greir said, trying to inject some sanity into the situation.
"I'd offer you ham, but I kind of need it for something…" Navaan pondered. She rested her head in her hand and drew her index finger under her bottom lip. "Oh! How about some love?!" she said brightly.
"What?" Greir replied, in a blank voice she hoped would discourage further attempts at… flirting.
"Yeah, love!" Navaan said, put off not at all. She rummaged through a drawer in her desk and pulled out a bottle of… something. "If you want true love, though, you're going to have to pay. I can't just give everything away for free!"
The bottle was filled with a runny substance, coloured bright green, with little pieces of star-shaped glitter suspended throughout.
Greir narrowed her eyes at it. "You're trying to get me to drink semen and pond scum, aren't you?"
Navaan scowled. And it looked almost ferocious with the way her fangs were barred.
Greir let her hand drift down towards the hilt of her sword, but before she could reach it, Navaan interrupted.
"Fine, fine!" Navaan said. "I think I know a story that can help you."
…
So before she got abducted by vampire assassins, Navaan had been apprenticing under a chemist in one town or another.
Most of it was just boiling up saline or sugar water, and marketing it as any number of improbable cures – something Navaan liked to think she was good at – but there was some actual chemistry-ing involved too.
Which was why, along with her youth and subsequent virginity, Navaan had been a perfect choice for initiation into the vampire assassins.
Getting bitten hadn't really been all that sexy, although Navaan liked to pretend it was afterwards. Soft, supple lips against her neck, and the sudden pain and flooding relief of the fangs piercing her skin. The way her sire had pressed closer to her than anyone ever had before. And she, herself, had bitten back a moan as her limbs fell weakly to her sides.
Yeah, it hadn't been anything like that.
So her first real doesn't-count experience had been with Felicia and Alex.
Probably… More or less… Whatever…
Long nights in the boiler room, with jars and beakers and pipettes, perfecting the Potion of Girlfriend that would make the inhabitants of the magical city of Vanorva susceptible to the attacks of the vampires outside the city limits.
Long nights… breathing in the… intoxicating pink fumes that swirled around the boiler room. Adding bits of blood and sweat and love, until Felicia and Alex took on forms that were almost real…
Navaan had spent entire lifetimes in their rosy pink world. They ran through the flowers, harvested fruit, went on romantic cartridge rides…
And fucked like rabbits.
It was all very vanilla.
Slight alterations to the potion's formula produced changes – to the settings of their dates, to their scripted dialogue, to their anatomy… Navaan experimented with moonlit walks on the beach, about a million ways for Alex to declare his love, and had once made Felicia's ass swell up as big as a troll's.
But the moral of the story was that anything got boring if you had too much of it. Even if it did take a while to play out. And, at the insistence of the other vampires, Navaan had to wrap everything up nice and neat. So Felicia wound up having twins and…
…
"And then I dressed up as a mermaid and stabbed Alex with a rusty trident." Navaan smiled. "About five times. When I was done, I sucked the blood out of his intestines."
Greir glowered.
Which Navaan misinterpreted as an invitation to elaborate.
"Well, we couldn't leave him there for the other virgins to find. Apparently another guy totally ruins the fantasy." Navaan shrugged. "And, besides, it was good practice for all the other assassinations I'd have to carry out. I mean, Felicia was pretty broken up about it, but I ground up a little potpourri and threw it in the potion and she was good as new… More or less…"
Greir ground her teeth and raked her nails against the swollen skin on her arm.
A perplexed look spread over Navaan's face.
"Do you think it counts as vore if you're a vampire to begin with?" she asked curiously. "I think it probably doesn't count."
"What did that story have to do with anything?!" Greir demanded.
Silence descended between them.
Navaan reached for the jar of leeches and fished out another one to snack on.
Greir was just about to leave when Navaan smiled brightly.
"I can't remember!" she declared. "But you know what we should do… go to the spa!"
"What?! No!" Greir said.
"Please! Pleeeaaase!" Navaan tried.
"I don't know why I came here," Greir said, standing up "I already knew you wouldn't have anything useful or the least bit logical to say."
"Hey, fuck you!" Navaan snapped back. "My suggestion is completely logical!"
Greir scowled and walked towards the door, scratching all the while.
"We wouldn't just go there to get covered in cucumbers and mud – I mean we should do that too – but a spa is a health retreat! Somebody there will probably have something for your skin!"
And Greir stopped, with her hand on the door know, because – goddammit – that did make sense.
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The Sauna of Enlightenment was very steamy, and there were these little pieces of rice lying everywhere that were supposed to mean something, but instead they just got stuck under your toenails and hurt like hell.
Navaan had ripped off all her clothes as soon as she arrived, from her crow's plague mask to her boots, and had promptly covered herself in cucumbers and honey. She had the spa-master eat it off her personally.
"This is sooo much fun!" Navaan giggled, as she did backflips standing on the massage table.
"No, it isn't!" Greir snapped. Although her rash burned more violently, to prove her wrong.
"You have absolutely no idea how to get rid of it?" Greir grit out, turning to Enlightenment for answers. "Not a single salve or lotion in your entire fucking spa?!"
"Anger is only a tiny crack in a cobbled road," Enlightenment hummed. "Your ailment – a mere reflection of your inner self."
Greir had thrown him to the ground and punched him twice in the face, before he admitted he had no solution for her problem, but recommended they visit the Graveyard of Inevitability, or else the Shop of Self-Reflection.
The rash had spread over the entirety of Greir's body, bulging ugly on her thighs and feet and next to her eye by the time they had gone through the entire conga-line of nutcases. She had refused point blank to suck the cock of Inevitability, only barely managed to beat Self-Pity in a game of cards, and almost fallen while climbing Hope's tower.
Navaan had, comparatively, met all these challenges with ease. She'd was on her knees before Inevitability could even open his mouth and start spouting his morbid bullshit and, by the end, Navaan had gotten him to sixty-nine. She had thrown down a royal flush in Self-Pity's parlour, even though they hadn't been playing poker. And while Greir had decided to climb down Hope's tower halfway, after her near-fall, Navaan had climbed all the way to meet Hope at the top. Their lips clashed against one another and, when the tower toppled under them, Navaan had shown a great display of acrobatic skill and twirled down, leveraging to push herself up against the wooden chairs even as they plummeted downwards.
And it bothered Greir, because she was meant to be more capable than this, but between her rash and Navaan's unending cheeriness, she was starting to feel hopelessly trapped.
Wasn't that why she was letting Navaan drag her around everywhere, because she had started to lose hope that she'd make it through alive?
Greir shifted in her sleeping bag, trying to build up enough friction to scratch her back against the ground.
They were staying in a cave, so that Navaan wouldn't wake up burnt by the sun.
"What're you thinking about?" Navaan asked, leaning over to her.
"Go to sleep," Greir commanded, in lieu of answering.
"C'mon, tell me!" Navaan said.
Greir wondered why she was here? But she wondered more why Navaan was here? She had refused flat-out to pay Navaan for this. She had derided and snapped and scowled at every available opportunity. And, sure, they'd worked together once to save a small town and the Temple of Luck… But there was also that time Greir had tied Navaan to a chair and almost roasted her.
But here Navaan was, annoying Greir, wasting Greir's time… caring for Greir when she was sick, even carrying Greir when her overtaxed immune system left her too exhausted to walk.
"C'mon," Navaan prompted. She leaned forward and kissed the side of Greir's face.
"What are you doing?" Greir frowned.
Navaan didn't answer, electing instead to kiss her cheek again.
"There's about an inch of me that isn't swollen," Greir grumbled. "I look like a bog monster."
"A sexy bog monster!" Navaan beamed.
"You're ridiculous." Greir snorted.
Navaan leaned forward, unzipping her body suit, and then Greir's sleeping bag. She pressed inside the sleeping bag, up against Greir's form. Navaan's skin was cool and the slightest bit coarse, and it felt wonderful against the burning rash.
"Aren't you afraid of catching it?" Greir said.
"Nah, only humans get sick," Navaan giggled. She leaned forward and bit down on Greir's lower lip, piercing the skin with her fangs.
Greir bit back, shuffling her arms down Navaan's body, and slapping the flesh on her thigh.
"Blegh!" Navaan said when she surfaced, turning away and spitting out of her mouth. "You taste like pus!"
Greir snorted again. "I don't know what you were expecting."
"More blood, less pus!" Navaan said, but she bent back down to kiss Greir's lip again and press a hand between her legs.
It wasn't nice. It was rough and disgusting and ugly and not fun at all. Which just happened to be how Greir liked it.
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They eventually made it to a temple in the desert.
"Are we sure this is the place?" Greir sighed, looking up at the burning sun rising in the distance. She wiped the sweat off her distorted brow.
Navaan adjusted her robe and her sunhat and veil. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't covered now.
A voice floated suddenly all around them.
"Can anybody be sure of anything? If sureness itself is an empty void, and the void itself dissipates to reveal only a drop of dew on the back of a bumblebee?"
Greir could think of no answer to this, except reach for her sword. Her eyes swung wildly back and forth, but she could see nothing. Until the desert air shimmered like a mirage and something appeared, coiled around her.
It was a giraffe… snake… centipede thing.
Immediately Greir swung her sword down at the monster, but it splattered and reformed around where her blade would have hit – unable to make contact. She saw, at the same time, Navaan fail to free herself from its coils.
"Now, now~" the giraffe-thing chastised. "Calm yourself. Violence is a metaphorical truth, as much as a literal one. And I have heard, through the rising choir of rattling drones, that you have defeated fun itself, and now you seek me, Allegory, to relieve you of your transgressions."
"No!" Greir bit out through gritted teeth, at the same time Navaan chirped, "Yup!" She nodded eagerly, the dark fringe of her veil bobbing up and down.
"Ah~ Truth at its finest reveals two faces," Allegory sighed.
"Hope said you might have a cure for my friend's rash," Navaan volunteered, extending a pointed arm under her robe towards Greir.
Allegory moved very close, and sniffed at Greir's skin. His nose was rubbery and warm, and Greir recoiled as he constricted around her.
"I see…" he said. "You have defeated the exterior manifestation of your foe, but you still struggle with the concept inside yourself."
"You can't be allergic to an abstract concept!" Greir shouted, fully aware that this meant less and less in the face of everything she had seen in this last week.
"I see…" Allegory said sadly. "You do not appreciate allegories?"
Greir bristled. "If an allegory is what has been crawling over my skin for the past month, then no! I do not like allegories."
"I like them!" Navaan cut in. "I mean, I don't really get them, but you guys seem to know how to have a good time!"
Allegory stiffened. "If I agreed to help you," he addressed Greir, "would you be willing to reconsider your stance on allegories?"
Greir frowned with all her might, but…
"Yes," she snarled.
Allegory nodded.
"And would you be willing to gut the love salmon with me?"
"Not a chance." Greir didn't hesitate.
Allegory paused for a minute, but then crawled away, pulling his coils away from Greir to rest in front of her.
"Very well…" Allegory agreed. "Have you tried applying the aloe of annoyance? The balm of boredom? The cream of contempt?"
"The ointment of oblivion?" Navaan tried.
"I said I'd reconsider my stance on allegories after you healed me!" she seethed.
"You misunderstand," Allegory replied. "The aloe of annoyance is a very literal plant. You can harvest it in Obsession's bog. You must travel to beyond the place of Mourning to where the quilled stars fight for ambivalence and the birds of Joy roost in…"
Greir had only been stopped from torching the desert temple, when Allegory finally admitted he had some spare aloe stored in the basement. For emergencies… and other purposes.
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The rash finally dissipated, a couple hours after the aloe of annoyance had been applied.
And they travelled back to Navaan's practice, not exactly in high spirits, but Greir hadn't scowled the entire time at least.
She collected a number of promising listings for bounties and quests from the tavern, leaving only a request to gather buffalo horns. On the last leg of the journey, she bought herself a small pouch of coffee beans. Just so that when she got back to Navaan's place, she wouldn't be offered any more leeches or formaldehyde.
Navaan sat at her desk, with her legs propped up and her chair tilted back, as was her way.
Greir was on the same side, sitting on the desk itself and facing Navaan.
"Do you think we'll ever be able to have fun again?" Navaan asked, unusually seriously.
Greir took a long sip of coffee.
"I can only hope not," she decided crisply.
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Fin~