A/N As promised! The seventh chapter! Content warnings for: Eye gore, dismemberment, and excessive blood
Vriska laughed as she leaned against the transport signal pole, running a hand through her wild hair, "Did you see the look on her face!? That was priceless!" She let her head tip back as she laughed, glancing over at Terezi who just frowned at the pavement and nodded.
"Hey, what's wrong with you? You're acting all fucking weird."
Terezi glanced up at her and shook her head as she returned her attention to the ground, frowning as she scuffed her shoes in the dirt, "Nothing I just... I got a job." She paused a moment and let out a sigh, "I know we're not headed off planet for another few perigees but I thought I'd make sure I have a place on a ship somewhere ahead of time... I'm supposed to head in for training pretty soon."
Vriska furrowed her eyebrows, "What? When did this happen and why didn't I know about it?"
Terezi gave a shrug of her shoulders, "Well, I didn't know for sure yet. I just found out this evening. I'm leaving in a Perigee."
"What!?" Vriska gripped at Terezi's shoulder, eyes suddenly wild and enraged, "But what about us? Weren't we going to go try to work on the same ship?"
"Look, Vriska–" She reached up and pulled Vriska's hand from her shoulder and took a step away, raising her hands in defense– "I'm sorry, I just- It was a good offer, I didn't think I was gonna get it, but it's a good job. I'm gonna be a legislacerator. A real legislacerator, not your skewed view of justice."
"My skewed view!?" Vriska let out an incredulous laugh and began pacing back and forth, "You've never said anything about it before! What? Is it because you're suddenly some responsible adult now? You think you're better than me now?" She turned on Terezi, shoving a finger at her with a sneer on her face, "You've done everything I've done!"
"Yeah? I'm not the one who suggested skipping the trial period altogether!"
Vriska laughed and threw her arms into the air, returning to her agitated pacing, "But you sure didn't seem to have a problem with it at the time."
"You're just upset that I'm not going to be around anymore. It's time for you to grow the fuck up. We've been playing games with people's lives like wrigglers for sweeps. You knew we weren't going to be together forever."
Vriska blinked pausing again as if caught off guard and then narrowing her eyes at her apparent former partner, "I was actually under the impression that we were. We were going to start our own ship... Vigilante justice, remember?"
Terezi narrowed her eyes at her, "You really thought that was going to happen? The imperial fleet would have shot us down within a perigee."
"It would have been more fun than getting some boring job," She spat back, "You're just turning all boring. You're losing the fun."
"That's all anything's ever about with you, isn't it? How much fun it is. Newsflash, you're almost an adult. You need to get a job and pull your act together instead of acting like a wriggler. I'm ready to start making a life for myself, what about you? It's not going to be handed to you on a platter. If that's how you think it is, then it'll probably be your head on the platter instead."
Vriska bared her teeth at her, "Well maybe I would have prepared more if I knew you were going to stab me in the back like this! What happened to us! We were going to do things together and now you're blowing me off like you never met me!"
"That is not what is happening here. I'm just getting a job. I'm making sure I don't get culled the minute I head off-planet! I'm making a life for myself! What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to salvage a fucking friendship we've had going since we were like two! You're apparently dead set on destroying it though, so I guess you just don't give a shit do you?" She pulled out her dice, glaring pointedly at Terezi as she fingered them in agitation.
"You're not salvaging a friendship, you're trying to force me to do what you want, strong-frond me into your stupid wrigglerish fantasy world where we don't get culled for going rogue," She pulled out her swords and clenched her jaw, eyes scanning over Vriska's figure, looking for some sort of opening in the case that she should need to defend herself.
Vriska fingered her dice, seven held in her right hand and her left turning one over and over between her fingers, "You're just a filthy no-good back-stabbing asshole, aren't you? I pity whatever friends you might have made if you ever got off-planet."
"If I got off-planet? Are you threatening me, Serket?"
Vriska scoffed with a roll of all eight of her eyes, "As if I'd let you go off and ruin other people's lives. As if I'd really just let you walk away like this? You really think I'd let you go that easy?"
"Of course not, you always did have to be so fucking difficult, didn't you?" Terezi shifted her feet nervously, taking a defensive stance and narrowing her eyes at Vriska and glancing at her feet to check whether she'd taken a fighting stance as well or not, the breeze across the dark hot wasteland of the Alternian brush rustling through her hair, making her eyes water as the wind whipped past her. Terezi wasn't really one to run, but staring down the fury of Vriska Serket and knowing that she isn't one to spare her victims had Terezi's acid sac churning.
For a moment– just a fraction of a second there was no movement, no sound except the rapid thrumming of her pumpbiscuit hammering away in her thorax as she stared with uncertainty at her former partner. Then in the blink of an eye, Vriska had tossed her dice up into the air.
After knowing Vriska for sweeps, it was easy for Terezi to realize that this would be the only chance she'd get where Vriska would be one hundred percent vulnerable to attack. Unarmed. Her attention split. Terezi let out a slow breath and brought one of her swords up sharply, just under Vriska's outstretched left arm which had thrown the last of her dice up into the air. The blade caught just below her shoulder and lifted until striking something solid and lodging itself in the bone of her arm. The howl echoed across the sparse hills as the last of Vriska's dice tumbled to a halt.
3, 1, 7, 8, 8, 6, 2, 4.
In Vriska's hands materialized a pair of short gleaming daggers. With her left arm rendered essentially useless, she dropped one of the blades and growled, lashing out towards Terezi's face with her good arm. Pulling her sword from the bone it'd become lodged in, Terezi ducked, turning around Vriska's left side, attacking her weaker and less protected side in anger, dancing around her, forcing her to turn and turn around, trying to keep up with her own feet.
Terezi danced circles around her, taking shots at her left arm, attempting to take advantage of the opening it provided her. With one dagger, Vriska managed to avoid the majority of Terezi's blows, but managed to land none of her own, forced to spin to keep her from taking the rest of her arm.
In the process of turning further, Vriska's face suddenly seemed to darken. Her feet stopped their turning motion, letting Terezi take the opening to swing down over her shoulder with one of her swords as the other aimed to stab right through her stomach. Vriska's dagger landed with a "Clang!" against Terezi's sword and it slid past her, leaving Terezi's thorax completely open. It was with a scream of pain, muffled by gritted fangs that Vriska Clenched her arm down around Terzi's sword. The blade slid up and through the bone in her arm, but it kept her opponent within reach and open to attack. She moved with her right hand to stab Terezi in the stomach who made to shuffle backwards, only to stumble and fall at the way her sword had been caught in Vriska's arm. Terezi's pusher caught up in her windchute as her fronds fell out from under her and she tumbled to the ground. The word dislodged from Vriska's arm which now dangled freely from a flap of raw bloodied skin and muscle on her shoulder.
Terezi scrambled backwards as Vriska dropped to her knees atop her thorax, brandishing her lone dagger, too close for swords to easily reach her. Terezi dropped on and reached for the second dagger her opponent had dropped in the dirt, yanking it up with a sharp metallic sound from the ground and thrusting it up into Vriska's face.
The scream was unholy, sent shivers up Terezi's spine at the sound as Vriska threw her head back.
Her pusher had never beat so fast in her life as she stared up at Vriska, bleeding profusely from both her eye and arm, cerulean blue staining the ground and leaking into her clothes. In her distraction Terezi's grip on her remaining sword loosened before Vriska's weight shifted up, her knees now resting on Terezi's shoulders.
She kicked out with her legs, shaking her head and shoulders in an attempt to throw Vriska off as her single good hand picked up a sizeable mound of dirt and threw it into Terezi's face.
Her pulmonary sacs burned at the dust in them and her optical bulbs watered. She clenched them shut and shook her head furiously as Vriska's hand climbed her face, claws pressing not-quite hard enough to make her bleed up into her eyes before they dug into the sockets.
Terezi arched up, kicking and fighting as she sang her pain to the moons, rocking her upper body back and forth to force Vriska off.
It wasn't her struggles that provided her relief, but the way Vriska swayed with blood loss that toppled her over.
Terezi shot up from the ground, breathing heavily and hiccupping her pain as she felt around the ground, shaking with sobs, in search of her swords. Blindly she wrapped her hand around one of the blades. Her breath hitched in her throat at the sharp pain and then more slowly traced along the flat side of the sword until she found the handle and then felt around again for the other one, feeling for its handle as well and then sitting up shaking and fumbling to fit them together into a cane which she now genuinely required.
Breath quivering, hands shaking uncontrollably as she climbed to her feet, Terezi leaned against her cane just slightly, blood dripping down her cheeks as she swept it back and forth, loosing dirt and knocking Vriska's dice around and then accidentally prodding at Vriska's unconscious body as she tried to figure out what direction to go.
For a moment she was completely and Entirely lost, the only things in her world were the wind, Vriska's shallow breathing, and her cane. Even if she couldn't see it, the sky and the vast unknown seemed to crush down on her as she dropped to her knees. How would she return to her hive? How would she survive legislacerator training? How would she make it through drone season? She felt along the ground again with one hand for Vriska, finding her leg and feeling her way up along her body to her thorax.
"Vriska," She breathed, voice shaking, "Vriska we have to get out of here."
She reached down and tore away a part of her jacket, trying with blind fumbling to tie the fabric over the hole where Vriska's arm dangled detached from the shoulder. Part of her– just a very small, though insistent part– urged her to leave Vriska behind. The rational part of her reminded her that Vriska was her only way out of here. Uncertain of which direction to head in order to return home.
Terezi braced an arm under Vriska's good shoulder and hoisted her up, earning her a groan from Vriska.
Terezi let out a sigh of relief at the sound of the transport coming up the road.
"Come on, Serket. Let's go home."
Vriska only groaned again and drooped as Terezi carried her up onto the seats and sighed as she sat down beside her as well.
When she spoke, it came out as little more than a quiet mumble.
"Good Job, Serket. You kept me from getting the damn job."
