Author's Note: I was supposed to be taking a break to do classwork. We can see how well that went. Oh well, here's the start of another story, Vriska's. It's going to be a long story, possibly longer than Gamzee's. Who knows. I do know exactly where it's going, unlike the last. The whole thing is outlined, scenes are planned, ALL OF THE PLOTS ARE IN THE MAKING. All of them. So here it is and I hope you enjoy it.
Behind Blue Lies: Part 1
One thing Vriska had learned in her life was that stories were rarely ever told from their true beginnings. For instance, her friend Gamzee began telling the story about how he and his matesprit had gotten together with his first day as a guidance adjustor trainee. Karkat started it a bit earlier, with a quick overview of his wrigglerhood (though Gamzee did always bring that part in later, it was too important to pass up). And Vriska? Well, she could start with why she was out here, slogging through the rapidly warming sand in the pre-dawn haze, her solar protecting garments wrapped tightly around her to protect her from the too powerful rays of the rising sun, but that wasn't where the story started. Not even close. The story started a few hundred sweeps earlier, hundreds of miles away in the Imperial throne room with a young fuchsia blooded troll named Veruna Mateas.
Veruna was the youngest of the last pupation of the fuchsia blooded, and like all others of her blood line, a lifetime of service to the shorter lived bloods was expected of her. Yet being so young also meant she was far outside of the potential to become Heiress, and envied the older Gyliea her position greatly. Not because, though, she wished to dedicate her life to helping and guiding other trolls. No, Veruna thought such service was below her, below anyone of her blood. Shouldn't people who lived longer see to the service of themselves? It was her belief that as a long lived, cold-blooded troll, she should be served, not serve. She suggested that the longer lived bloods were superior and should be served. Their bloods were a range, a spectrum of superior to inferior, and she was perched at the top.
Her ideas were far from popular among her fellows, but the more she searched the more trolls she found to be like-minded among the violet, purple, and blue blooded trolls. There was a proper, natural order of things, and most trolls didn't seem to care. The hardest on her ideas were the other fuchsias, especially the then Empress and the Heiress Gyliea, who looked upon Veruna and her followers with disgust and disdain. So, when Veruna disappeared one day at sea with a few of her favored 'highbloods,' she was searched for, but not as vigorously as another troll might have been. And when she wasn't found, the mourning period was brief and attended to by but a few. Thus ended the story of Veruna Mateas. Two perigees later began a far larger tale, that of the hemohierarchist movement, purported started by some of her surviving ideological equals.
Vriska knew the truth behind that poorly crafted facade. How could she not, when she'd stood in the presence of the 'late' fuchsia blooded hemohierarchist? But that, again, is getting ahead in the story, isn't it?
Jump forward a few hundred sweeps or so, and you'll find that an idea either dies, lingers, or flourishes. Hemohierarchy, contrary to the popular wishful thinking, thrived in the blood pushers of the cooler-blooded trolls who wanted to get more out of their lives—and sooner—than they would ever want to put into it. Sooner or later the hierarchists found the dissatisfied. They did it through guardians, through wards, friends or bosses, or just quiet messages slipped into the unthinking, uncaring claws of mail drones. One and all they joined together, forged to become the blade which Veruna wielded against 'lowbloods' and those 'highbloods' who disagreed with her. They were her army and court, and she their Empress.
And after the end of an inquiry into the matter of the care of one Karkat Vantas, they came for Vriska Sekret.
She knew them the moment they came into the main office of the production center that had fallen into Vriska's claws to perigees before. When her guardian, Spided Ryicos, was condemned to a life of physical labor by Empress Gyliea for his treatment of two of his wards (the crimson blooded Karkat Vantas and the olive Remium Olisar), she had turned the management of the production center over to Vriska. Since the young cerulean blood had been training in management at the center, it had been an easy enough transition for her, but it had taken time to set straight and work out all the kinks that her former guardian had caused. There were papers left unfiled, trolls with back compensation coming, and poor work conditions for some of the 'lowbloods' such as Remium (who Vriska had sworn to take on as her assistant manager after speaking with his new guardian, Primate Indigo). After two perigees she'd finally made progress, finally sorted out the illegal back books her guardian had been working-no one noticed the corrections, or if they did they wisely kept silent about it-and she had begun to settle into this new life she was living. She had a wonderful, pitiful matesprit who had prompted Vriska to change hives to live with her (now that Gamzee and Karkat had gotten their act together Kanaya didn't need to worry about her moirail's status), a supportive auspitice in Karkat to deal with the conflicts that always arose between her and Terezi, and she finally had a free and clear path to set some black courtship in motion that she'd been thinking about for almost half a sweep now.
She had been doubled over a husktop when the pair entered the room, but for all that they had obviously tried to sneak into the office, Vriska knew that the two trolls had come in behind her. She could sense them in a way they could never anticipate, never expect. After all, 'highbloods'—she could tell they were hierarchists without even looking—didn't really stop to consider the rare psychic gifts that sometimes developed in colder bloods, except for the oddly frequent quirk the purples had at times. They wouldn't have learned from Spided about her talent, because she'd never even told her guardian. There was too much to dislike, distrust, about the feel of the other troll for Vriska to ever confess to the rarer of her two gifts. After all, while she wore her vision eightfold plainly, there was no looking at a cerulean and knowing they were one of the rare and 'terrible' empaths born to the blood type.
"What do you want?" she snapped, not even bothering to look up. Looking up would show weakness, she knew it from years of living with her guardian, and these weren't the kind of trolls you did that around. Bravado went a long way when dealing with the hierarchists.
"We're friends of your guardian. Live on the other side of the planet, and when we heard what was going on..." one, a male with a wet, rasping voice that was rather characteristic of a violet getting used to the water quality in an area they weren't native to.
"And I should give any damn why?" Vriska asked, at last raising her eyes to glare at the pair.
She knew it created the desired effect when the fins on either side of the violet's face flattened back in shock. Karkat used to tell her than when she glared like that, just through the top part of her glasses, it forced a troll to look at her despite themselves. It was a useful trick when coupled with the fact that her vision eightfold allowed her to see things others couldn't. Unfortunately she didn't like what that vision told her. Sure, the violet was unhappy with her mutation, but he wasn't afraid of it like some others were. And the indigo female that stood at his side seemed completely unfazed. Just what she needed, a pair of hierarchists that were not only carrying weapons, but who seemed to think she had worked against their best interests.
"Listen, I'm sure you're here to give me a rousing speech on superiority and high versus low and all that usual stuff, but as you pointed out, he was my guardian. I know the routine, Spided was pretty thorough with me. But, as you can see, I've got plenty of irons here, all of them in fires, and they need turning. So spit it out of your gaping maws, and make it fast. I've got real work to do."
There was a long minute of silence as the indigo female looked in askance at her superior, and the wave of fury that rolled off of her was shocking—though not as strong as some Vriska'd felt from Gamzee before. This indigo was ready to discipline her inferior, but refused to do it without her superior's permission.
"You've got a nasty tongue on you, cerulean," the violet rasped, bearing his teeth. Vriska returned the snarl.
"Just because you're my better doesn't mean I have to be polite."
"If should have your disciplined, girl."
"If you were going to, you would've already. So get to it."
The violet contemplated her for a moment, and Vriska could feel a flicker of amusement flash through him, could see the decision form on his face with her vision, and so she wasn't surprised when the violet sat down across her desk. The indigo shut the door of the block at the movement, looking like she had just swallowed something sour. Now the real meeting was going to begin, and Vriska wasn't sure how she was going to like it. Spided wasn't the only hierarchist she'd met before, and her few other encounters had been less than pleasant.
"You do realize that we've got a problem here, right?" the violet asked.
"No, I wasn't aware," Vriska hissed, rolling her eyes. "Which problem do you want? How sloppy my guardian was at altering his books? Or how a simple inspection of work conditions would have had him in chains sweeps ago with how transparent he was? The only thing he did right was beat fear into the heads of my fellow wards."
"So why did you encourage one to speak against him?"
Here was the heart of the matter, and pleasantly easily gotten around to. Vriska even cracked as smile at the other troll.
"Why not?" Vriska asked, pitching her voice just low enough to create a sense of intrigue in her listeners. As much as she hated it, she had learned the art of manipulation from her guardian, and had refined it through the careful observation of others with her paired gifts. Sure enough, the tone, the vague answer, got the violet to lean in with interest. The fishface was on the hook. Now to reel him in.
"The simple truth is that Spided had outlived his usefulness. To me, to others, even to himself. The purple, Gamzee Makara, was flushed for my co-ward Karkat, and he wouldn't' have let Spided continue once he caught on. Spided didn't have the skill, or composure, to handle a flushed troll on a warpath. Giving him away meant not being seen as supportive of him. That enabled this place to fall into my claws, and keep a crazy purple from lashing out at me in the future. All win for me, all loss for Spided. He wasn't useful enough to risk myself over."
Again silence, and this time a kind that was harder to read. Whatever decisions the violet was making, they were logic driven, not emotion. Vriska wished it was less logical. While she had no intention of direct manipulation of his emotions, even the slightest hint of them could tell her what would happen next...
At last the violet moved, and when he did it was to draw out a piece of paper from his pocket. Soon it was lying there on the desk between them.
"You'll do," he declared with approval, standing before Vriska could react, and out of the block before she could even unfold the paper. She only had time to read the trollian handle on the paper before even the smells of salt and sweat that had swept in with the pair seemed to dissipate like a bad dream.