Author's Notes: Yeah, I really couldn't focus on my classwork only. I'm sure I'll regret that in the future. In the meantime, more. Also, in case you're new to my work, let's go over something. Indigo does not, in my opinion, refer to Gamzee's blood color. Gamzee is a purple blood. It's the level of blood below him, Equius's caste, that is indigo. I base this on a few things, including my personal interpretation of the color indigo, information on the MSPA wiki, and the fact that in the coloUrs and mayhem Universe A album, both Equius and Darkleer's songs have indigo titles.

So keep in mind for the story, that when I say 'indigo' I mean blue on Equius's level.


Behind Blue Lies - Part 2

So here she was now, two sweeps later, if not wiser, waiting for the sound that would tell her she was drawing close to her goal.

"Who goes there?" a rattling voice called out in the pre-dawn haze. The sound of it didn't phase Vriska, it was what she'd been waiting for and she just continued striding forward, all too aware of how her purposeful stride was upsetting the watchman. If she didn't have to wear her solar protection garments, the watch wouldn't have even hesitated. She was just too distinctive in appearance with her mismatched horns and eyes; but covered as she was, no one was going to be able to tell her apart from any other formless mass of solar protection garments. Still Vriska could sense the rising tension in the other troll, feel his fingers itching on the baton at his side, and at last she couldn't hold back anymore.

"The Spider Queen," Vriska responded at last, still moving forward but risking a chance to lift her head and pull her hood enough away from her face to show off her eye. The unique trait, mixed with her personal key phrase, a display of blood color, and examination of her horns, would be her ticket into the meeting she'd risked the sun to attend. Not that she wanted to be here, it had her skin itch to be around these people, but she had to be here.

"'Bout time you showed up, blueblood," the ratting voice growled as Vriska slipped under the rocky overhang and into a rich, soothing shade. The second she was safely under, the hood of her garment was all but ripped off of her head, catching on her forked horn briefly and making her head jerk back painfully. Ultimately, though, the material gave way before the sharpness of horn and rough handling, and Vriska almost winced at the tearing sound. She'd have to replace another garment hood. Kanaya would never understand.

"Like I'd ever miss the chance to surrender myself to your damn attention, Keeper," Vriska countered, unable to resist adding some extra snark to her voice.

"Fucking impertinent..." the purple blooded troll known only as Keeper grumbled as he rapped his knuckles against her horns, making sure they weren't hollows slipped on over her real ones to fool him.

This was Vriska's least favorite part, physical contact with her horns only amplified her gift, and the Keeper's mind was one of many that she didn't like to touch. His thoughts were more violent than Gamzee got when someone threatened his mutant blooded matesprit, and they were half caught up in delusions of gaining a caliginous relationship with her. Far more worthy trolls than him had tried and failed to tie her down in that quadrant, Terezi topping the list.

With the horn inspection out of the way, Vriska thrust her palm at the scowling violet blooded watch troll, and kept a perfectly nonplussed expression in place as he drew a short knife out and pulled it across her palm, leaving a trail of cerulean in the blade's wake.

"Satisfied?" Vriska asked, pulling her hand back and reaching into her garment for a cloth to wrap her hand in.

"Never," Keeper growled, bearing uneven and yellowed teeth.

"Good," Vriska laughed as she bound her hand. With a flip of her hair and a winning smirk, she pushed past the other troll, heading for a hidden crack in the stone that led into the large meeting cave where others undoubtedly waited to be graced by her presence.

And by graced with her presence, Vriska mostly meant she wasn't going to plop down into an out of the way seat, avoid any quadrant solicitations, and try not to piss off any of the higher—and consequently less stable—troll present. Too many of the purples and indigos that came here had unstable tempers, and she'd seen one nasty piece of crazy tear the arms off a teal hierarchist who accidentally stood in his way for too long. What good would it do her to get killed?

"Well, well, well. If it isn't my favorite power glubbing blueblood," an all too familiar voice purred the second Vriska stepped into the large cave.

Instantly Vriska was whirling on her heels, a long dagger in her hand and her teeth borne in a savage snarl. There was little point to it—she knew that from experience—but it amused the fuchsia blood to no end, made her like Vriska's 'fighting spirit.' All that the display earned Vriska, though, was the fuchsia blooded bitch chuckling faintly behind a deceptively frail upraised hand.

"Veruna," Vriska hissed, wishing she had the nerve and skill to just lash out and slice the delicate throat of the high and mighty bitch. Problem was she wouldn't make it out alive, and while the Empress-to-be was undoubtedly the true (and bitter) force behind the group, another would undoubtedly take her place.

"What an absolute pleasure. I wasn't expecting to see you here today."

A lie, and they both knew it, but it was its own kind of pleasantry between them. And the smaller lies, Vriska found, went pretty far on the path of hiding the larger ones. Still, Veruna seemed amused. She was, after all, the only true regular fixture at the meetings other than the Keeper, or at least they had been during the two sweeps Vriska had been attending these meetings. Veruna was an empress who expected to be attended to by her court.

Vriska hated it (platonically).

"Nor I you, little one. Imagine my surprise. Ah, but come, my dear, don't sit in that stuffy corner tonight with all of those blueblooded brutes. Join me in the front today."

"It's not my place," Vriska answered, feigning a sweet, subservient voice that they both knew as meant to mock more than anything.

"Your place is what I make it, my dear."

"My place is what I take," Vriska countered, brushing her hair back over her shoulder and striding towards the front of the cave. It was easy, too easy, to feign confidence as she plopped down into a seat, when she had the approving gaze of Veruna upon her. While many would jump at the chance to beat her for such an assumption, none would do it with how their queen looked upon her. Even if she hadn't, Vriska knew it wouldn't be any of the hierarchists who would handle her, but the fuchsia herself. Vriska's blood would join the splashes of red, green, and blue that already decorated the long, tightly spiraled horns that looked like they belonged on some savage seabeast's head.

There was little time to consider the danger she was in claiming such a prime seat, not that she would retrieve an iron from the fire before it was ready, because within a few beats of her blood pusher, there's a rough, grating sound in the room. The Keeper had entered and pushed a hunk of rock into place to block the entrance. No one would come or go without trouble now, and Vriska's own strength was no where near enough to break free even if she wanted to. Once again she was trapped in a room of crazies, and there was nothing she could do.

"Good morning, my children," Veruna purred, gliding easily to the front of the cave as the other trolls present rushed to claim seats. "It seems so long since I could last look upon you, gathered here before me."

As if they had much of a choice. Those who betrayed the would-be-Empress met worse fates than the lowblooded victims. It wasn't hard to guess where the colors that dyed the fuchsia's horns or extravagant (and otherwise white) gown came from. She even wore—with no shame—a belt made of bits of broken horns held together by chains tarnished by blood. Veruna was not kind, to friend or foe. For now being the fuchsia's favorite spared Vriska's life, but it could get her killed soon enough.

"The time approaches, children," Veruna said, like she had these last two sweeps, "when we will claim our proper place. But for now we must continue to teach the lowbloods their place. For when we do they will glubbing well know us for their betters. And when we rise up to rule they will know their time has come, and they will show themselves for cowards. They will stand by when we rise, or their blood shall paint the world!"

Unlikely, Vriska couldn't help but think. Lowbloods always outnumbered high, and for all that highbloods were physically stronger, that meant nothing in the face of some of the lowblood powers. She'd seen trolls who could walk unharmed through the worst of the sun's rays, seen some who could lift rocks the size of a full grown purple over their heads, and even one with psionics so strong Vriska wouldn't be surprised to find he could destroy a whole hivestem if he tried. Veruna was tromping through a venomous hissbeast nest, and was taking their lack of striking yet to mean they were tame. Someday they would stop tolerating the intruder, and that would be the end of the hierarchists. For now, though, Vriska put her hands together, joining the others in a rousing cheer for the words of their Empress.

"Already blood falls upon the sands! Speak, Calgor, and tell our brothers and sisters what has been accomplished."

With a gesture from Veruna, a violet blooded troll with his arm in a sling, a torn facial fin, and a variety of bruises up his bare arms, rose and turned to face the assembled trolls. Just looking at him made Vriska sure that whatever else they heard, it wasn't going to include his own blood's spilling. Shame, she was sure that was absolutely the best part of the story.

"A week ago while my men and I walked the shores near our home we found a damn mudblood walking the shore like he belonged there. We taught him the error of his ways, and left the body behind as a lesson."

"Some lesson," Vriska mumbled, pitching the words in just the right range to be heard and still sound like she was trying to not be heard.

When Calgor whirled on her, Vriska had to hold back a viscous grin at how easy it was to provoke the trolls here.

"Have something to say?" Calgor hissed, his facial fins flaring wide for a moment before a pained look came over his face as he stretched the injured fin too far. "Or are you going to snark like you always do to hide the fact that you don't have the shame globes to take these lowbloods to task with force?"

"I don't need to prove my superiority with my fists," Vriska countered in as condescending a tone as she could manage, which was all kinds of condescending. All kinds. "Turns out a thinkpan works wonders. Not that you'd have any reason to notice."

"Bitch..." the violet grits out, advancing on Vriska as his hand reaches for a blade at his side.

Vriska's own dagger is in hand before he's advanced a pace, and the sight of it gives the troll pause. At her first one of these meetings an indigo had tried to get a little too red with her, and she'd taken two fingers for his trouble. Sometimes her former guardian's obsession with teaching the lowbloods their place paid off, as it had with the tutor in an ancient and rarely practiced form of artistic knife fighting. Turned out the lessons were just as suited to real combat. Still, most of the trolls here, for all that they would happily attack her, knew Vriska well enough not to risk getting into a fight that no one would support them in.

"Please, give me an excuse to take the rest of that fin off your face," Vriska crooned, twirling the blade between her fingers.

"Stand down, Calgor," Veruna called, grin in place. "I would hear Vriska."

"Of course, my Empress," Calgor said immediately, reflexively. Below the surface, though, he seethed with barely controlled fury.

"Vriska, dear, if you would."

"It's simple. How are we supposed to strike fear into lowbloods, where it belongs, if we kill them?"

"I told you..." Calgor started and stopped abruptly when Vriska forced her smile wider.

"If we kill all our victims, we become a threat they laugh off. Leave them alive and barely blooded and they think us weak. But beat them, leave them bloody and broken, and let them know who did the deed. Let the knowledge sweep through them, whispers from one to another. Some will believe and fear, and others will not, think it merely whispers of fools."

"You would have us be monsters out of wriggler's tails?" Calgor demanded.

"Yes," she responded, forcing amusement into her voice. "I would. Is there any greater fear than what a troll creates in their own thinkpan? We will be the terror they don't want to believe, but when they hear of fellows beaten, they will know. They will wonder if they're next, and the ones that don't believe will when we come for them or their friends or quadrants. And those we break, they'll stay broken, and break the spirits of others. A dead troll invokes bravery. A maimed one, fear."

"You expect me to glubbing believe that?"

Again Vriska smiled, twirling her dagger between her fingers. "If I'd killed that stupid indigo two sweeps ago, someone would have challenged me next night, and the next, and the next until I was dead. Instead he's down a few digits and I haven't been forced to use the blade since. But, if I need to renew the lesson..."

"Why you..."

"I've changed my mind. I'll pin that fin to your face, make it heal in place. Make sure you're all pretty for the next time you get your ass handed to you by a brown. And you're supposed to be a high and mighty violet. What did the brown do, hit you with a bucket?"

"How dare you..."

"How dare you question me you blueblooded bitch? Yeah, heard that before. Come up with something new so I can give any of the fucks."

"I'd like to see you do better than I did handling the beasts."

"Oh, so now there was more than one troll..."

"No, actual beasts! Damn mudblood did something and we were being attacked by seagoats and scuttlebeasts and even a hoofbeast that was there for some reason. They fought like their own young were on the line."

"You picked a fight with a beasttalker and got away alive?" Vriska asked.

"Of course, what do you think we are?"

Vriska was quite ready to tell him, only to have Veruna make a disgusted sound and glare at Calgor.

"You glubbing idiot. Have none of you studied up on the freak powers the lowbloods are prone to? Creatures bound to the mind of a beasttalker don't just stop fighting when the troll they're bound to at the moment dies. Part of that troll stays in their mind, and drives them until they slay their murderer. If you idiots got away alive the lowblood isn't dead."

"But we..."

"Whatever you did, it wasn't fatal," Veruna spat, anger writhing around her like the tentacles of a horrorterror of the deep.

"Like I said, thinkpan, not fists," Vriska mumbled, again just right to be caught.

"Get out of my sight, Calgor," Veruna was now snarling at the injured violet. "Do it before I have your horns!"

Calgor stood there for a moment, looking like a stuck oinkbeast, his eyes wide and his fear so strong Vriska could literally taste its coppery tinged moldy flavor on her tongue. Then he was fleeing for the stone that blocked the crack, heaving against it with all his might as Veruna started to stride, purposefully, towards him, the trolls before her parting like the sea before the fuchsia. Still, Calgor labored, the rock slowly moving aside. The truly pathetic thing was that he easily could have pushed it aside had he been calm. But the frantic nature... His death would be slow and terrible.

There was no real thought that went into what happened next, only instinct to protect herself. While she didn't quite run, Vriska pushed her way through the gathered trolls, dagger clenched tightly in her hand. The crowds weren't moving, though, not like they did for Veruna. Vriska flipped the dagger between her fingers, pinching the blade near the tip, and took a deep breath. On the exhalation she threw the blade, her vision eightfold showing her every single flip of the dagger and promising her that her target would be reached. And the dagger, thrown with all the strength the cerulean could put behind it, flew sure and straight until at last it cut through the cloth and flesh of Calgor, piercing right to the blood pusher.

Vriska forced herself to move back into a calm stance, commanded her hands not to shake, pressed her face into a vision of perfect, disgusted composure as the eyes of troll after troll turned to look at her in shock. By the time Veruna turned toward her, eyes flashing with death in them, Vriska's composed. Before Veruna could even open her mouth, Vriska's rolling a shoulder and then tossing her hair back, a total lack of concern on her face.

"Would someone mind pulling that out for me? Thought I heard it biting into bone and you know how that is."