~~completelyAvantgarde began trolling geneticallyCompetent~~
CA: you ready
GC: H3LL Y3S.
~~completelyAvantgarde ceased trolling geneticallyCompetent~~
Eridan stepped out of the woods into the early evening air, wincing slightly as the sting of the setting sun singed his skin. He double-checked the rifle strapped across his back and adjusted his scarf impatiently, waiting for Terezi.
It was still very hot outside, and underneath his scarf and cape Eridan was sweating heavily. The stupid FLARP campaign mandated that they begin in the light of the sun, though, so that was what he'd done. The gaming FLARPstractions remained floating around his head until a familiar voice rang through the clearing.
"So Dualscar rides again," Eridan's FLARP partner declared as she saw his garb. He grinned wickedly and turned to face Terezi as she stepped out from the trees, her dragon hood raised.
"As do you, Justsoul," he replied, and Terezi grinned. Beneath her hood, there was colorful blood painted like a mask in place of her usual glasses, and her olive-tinged eyes were narrowed viciously.
"Let's go cull some highbloods." Eridan nodded and the duo moved stealthily off in search of their first objective.
They were to duel a team of seadwellers tonight, and Eridan couldn't wait for the bloodshed. Stupid fucking seadwellers—one day, they'd see. One day, he'd avenge his ancestor, as was written in fate. One day, he would kill every seadweller on the face of Alternia. Nothing less could quench his thirst for blood—nothing whatsoever.
The tang of salt was strong on the air as they entered the grassy plains, keeping a sharp lookout for other FLARP teams that might be out tonight. Eridan had heard rumors of a rogue group who disregarded the rules and simply killed whoever they found. He didn't want to be on the receiving end of that kind of fate.
"So where are we meeting these glubbers again?" Terezi hissed.
"The cliffs; it's the same place wwhere wwe fought that one cerulean and his friend, remember?"
"Oh, yeah. That asshole. Right."
Ahead, there was a rustle in the bushes and a creaking of metal. Eridan and Terezi tensed simultaneously, Eridan drawing Ahab's Crosshairs from his strife specibus. The gun had been one of his best FLARP discoveries yet—he'd nicked it off of some stupid-looking fish boy with no respect for weaponry. There had been a fight on land that ended when Eridan fired the Crosshairs, blasting the loser dead on and knocking what was left of him over a cliff. Eridan felt no shame whatsoever.
creak…creak…creak…
Something metallic was moving up ahead, slowly and methodically crushing the bushes and grass. Terezi's eyes were darting back and forth as she drew her dual rapiers. Bladekind was the best specibus.
Then, as suddenly as the sound began, it stopped. Frozen, Eridan and Terezi shared a long, slow look. Terezi crept slowly forward, her weapons being better suited for close combat. For an agonizing moment, everything was silent.
click…click…click…
The sound was similar to gears turning, a quiet and smooth brush of polished metal against metal. It was a quiet scraping, barely audible over the wind in the grass, but it was there. Terezi clenched her fists around her dual blades. She was sweating in the early heat of the evening, and the dried blood around her eyes was dripping down her face like subjugglator paint.
The sound stopped. No one moved. For what felt like an eternity, Eridan and Terezi remained agonizingly still as they waited for the noise to come again.
Finally, Terezi stood.
"Just our imaginations?" she suggested, her voice shaking a little. Eridan nodded, and they stretched before continuing on their way.
As they walked, they conversed casually. They had to come up with an alibi for being so late to see their opponents; if it seemed that the duo had been afraid they would start off on the wrong foot. It was very important to Eridan that they did it all in a certain way. Once or twice, other FLARP teams approached, but Eridan fired a few shots from the Crosshairs, successfully deterring any potential unwanted rivals.
They arrived at the seashore as the pink moon came over the horizon. They stood in the loose sand at the peak of a dune, Terezi keeping watch while Eridan stared intently at the ocean.
A pair of trolls rose up from the strangely calm sea gracefully, water dripping from their horns and hair. The leader was a short, slender female with horns that curved upwards before jutting sharply down. Her horns were covered in beads and jewelry to an absurd extent, and she herself was draped in violet spiderwebs. Her partner wasn't nearly as enthusiastic in his clothing—he was actually wearing something practical.
"Team Thunder?" Eridan asked, his eyes never leaving those of the lead seadweller.
"Naturally," she hissed in response. "The name is Wanderer—remember it if you survive. This is Undreade. And you two filthbloods are Team Oblivion?" Eridan tensed up, clutching Ahab's Crosshairs and curling his lip.
"Naturally," he mocked, imitating the violet's intonation. She sneered at him before flicking at a bead on her left horn.
"You have a lot of nerve for a lowblood. Wanna bet you can't back it up?"
"Sorry, princess, but I hawe a kismesis," Eridan fired back. He was making shit up, of course—he didn't have a single quadrant filled. But he had zero interest in hating someone with fins.
"Let's get this show on the road, Dualscar," Terezi snapped from the top of the dune. She had reapplied her mask using the blood of an animal they'd caught on the way, and she looked thoroughly menacing.
Without any warning, the Wanderer leapt at them. Eridan drew the Crosshairs, but Wanderer was too close and he couldn't fire the gun without taking flack himself. Instead, he smashed her over the head with it. She darted out of the way, but the barrel of the Crosshairs smacked firmly into one of her horns. A few sparkling beads sprayed across the ground.
Wanderer dove back, rubbing the base of her horn. She drew a long S-shaped blade from her strife specibus and tossed it from hand to hand before diving at Eridan's legs in an attempt to take out his feet.
He dodged and swung at her with the Crosshairs again, but missed. She cackled.
"You're not very good at this, are you?"
"I told you, fishface. Quit flirting, you're not wworth my time," Eridan grunted, pulling out of her reach and placing her in the sights of his weapon. The blood drained from her face, just as Eridan pulled the trigger.
A blast of white energy blew through Wanderer, leaving her incinerated remains behind with a gaping hole in her gut that quickly filled with purple blood. Her FLARP partner deserted Terezi to charge at Eridan, enraged.
"THAT WAS MY MOIRAIL, YOU DOUCHEBAG!" Eridan jumped away from the reach of the other troll, Undreade, who carried a long, sharp spear.
He kept chasing after Eridan, not allowing the teal-blood one second of rest. Eridan couldn't keep the Crosshairs steady enough to get a shot off, and he took a painful cut to the right shoulder. His grip on the Crosshairs slipped, but Terezi was there and she jumped Undreade from behind.
The second seadweller fell, Terezi's twin rapiers through his heart.
"Thanks," Eridan panted, clutching his wounded shoulder tightly to stop the bleeding. It would definitely heal, but the spear had hit muscle and possibly some bone. It was bleeding pretty badly.
Eridan pulled his scarf from around his neck and tied it around the injury before retrieving one of his many auxiliary scarves from his sylladex.
"Really?" Terezi raised an eyebrow.
"I must remain at the peak of fashion," Eridan insisted.
"Nobody gives a fuck about fashion, you idiot."
"I do," he protested, but Terezi ignored him.
"So we killed these assholes a little bit early…what next? I say we go look for treasure." The blood was crumbling down Terezi's face again in flakes, and for a moment Eridan imagined her as a subjugglator. The image was terrifying.
"Sounds good to me," Eridan agreed. The duo left the bodies of the seadwellers to bleed out on the ocean shore. Their deaths seemed to fill something in Eridan, some kind of primal need for slaughter that he couldn't resist.
Two down. Several thousands more to go. He wouldn't stop until not a single one was left.
Name: ERIDAN PYROPE
Age: 8 SWEEPS
Blood Color: TEAL
Name: TEREZI LEIJON
Age: 8 SWEEPS
Blood Color: OLIVE
Terezi led her FLARP partner towards their next objective, a cave that rested against the seashore. Eridan loved the missions by the ocean, especially the ones that allowed him to cull seadwellers. She generally indulged him, providing that said missions allowed her to amass more treasure.
Terezi knew she lived in a cave, but she still couldn't help filling it with as many shining things as possible. Her lusus needed a proper dragon's hoard, and although she liked to deny it, Terezi was in love with all that shone—especially if it was colorful as well.
"Stop," intoned a voice from behind them. Eridan and Terezi turned together to see a slender purple-blood watching them impassively from the top of another dune. Her silhouette was finless, but in the moonlight Terezi could clearly see the indigo sign on her chest, like a V with curving ends.
Eridan pointed Ahab's Crosshairs at the purple, and her lips turned up in a faint smile. Her face, as the moonlight revealed it, was painted like a skull.
"Eridan Pyrope. Terezi Leijon." The indigo pulled a whip from her strife specibus, snapping it idly in the air. Her curved horns shone in the light.
"Howw do you knoww our names?" Eridan demanded, brandishing the Crosshairs.
"I know things," the subjugglator replied simply as she brushed a strand of curly hair out of her bloodshot eyes. "I have been sent to collect you, by the Empress's orders."
"What does Her Royal Raspberry want from us?" Terezi asked, staring down the subjugglator.
"Yeah, wwe don't wwant nothin to do wwith any fishface." The subjugglator smirked, the skeletal smile of her paint widening.
"I am afraid you do not have a choice. Her Condescension is quite insistent."
"And wwhat'll you do if wwe don't wwanna?" Eridan rested his finger on the trigger of the Crosshairs, pointing it threateningly at the subjugglator.
The subjugglator flicked her whip emotionally, pulling the weapon out of Eridan's grip. He sputtered useless protests, and began to leap at the indigo, but he suddenly felt himself chilled to the bones with a shocking, irrational fear.
The highblood's sclera seemed to change from a natural yellow to bloodshot purple-and-scarlet. She grinned outright, showing off her serrated teeth.
Eridan curled into a ball as horrorterrors filled his mind and subconscious, connecting to the dark thoughts in the back of every troll's awareness. Black, oily tentacles and blood of every color filled his vision. He saw images of what this troll had done to countless others who had opposed her. He saw images of trolls mutilated, trolls choked to death upon their own blood, trolls left hanging by their fingertips from a cliff in the midst of the day.
Then, as suddenly as the fear had come, it vanished.
"Do you continue to doubt me?" the subjugglator asked simply.
"Fuck you," Eridan declared feebly, pulling himself to his feet and adjusting his scarf. "Go drowwn in a bucket." The subjugglator lifted her chin slightly, her grin as wide as ever.
"You have nerve for a lowblood. Please, surrender. You would be quite an asset to the Empire."
"Three words: Hell. Fuckin. No."
"As you wish. Since these are the last words you are likely to hear, though, I wish to introduce myself. My name is Aradia Makara."
"So I'we been honored wwith the epithet of my neww wictim," Eridan hissed. "Wwell, Lady Makara, get ready to face your demise."
Aradia's whip flew towards Eridan's neck and he was only saved by Terezi's rapier snicking off its end. Eridan had been left weaponless when Aradia stole the Crosshairs, his only specibus weapon. He would have to get creative, it seemed.
"Hey Ter, gimme one of your swwords," he murmured in her ear as she lunged towards Aradia. Terezi missed, tumbling down onto the other side of the dune, but Aradia also lost her footing to slide down the hill.
Terezi dashed over the dune, her feet searching for purchase in the loose sand. She tossed Eridan a small dagger and he managed to temporarily change his specialization before Aradia was suddenly there once again.
She was truly terrifying, her eyes blazing red and purple and her horns silhouetted on the pink moon. She looked like an angel. Eridan hoped that he was similarly threatening.
But before he could move, the terror struck once again. Aradia's face was a skull, her eyes were lasers, she was an angel sent down to destroy him. She seemed to spark with purple energy as the chucklevoodoos grew stronger, and Eridan shuddered involuntarily.
Just then, Terezi launched herself over the dune and tackled Aradia from behind. Aradia lost hold of the chucklevoodoo and Eridan snapped out of her spell, brandishing his borrowed dagger.
Aradia gave up on the whip and wrapped strong fingers around Terezi's throat, leaving olive bruises. Terezi choked, gasping for air, and she managed to push herself down the side of the dune towards Eridan, Aradia still holding tight.
Eridan sank his dagger into the nearest part of Aradia he could find, which happened to be her upper thigh. She yelled and released Terezi, who jumped back and tried to draw her rapier only to find that Aradia had wrestled it out of her hand.
Eridan took advantage of Aradia's distraction to snatch Ahab's Crosshairs back out of her sylladex, and he returned it to his own.
Dripping dark purple blood from the open wound, Aradia advanced upon Eridan and Terezi. Her brilliant white makeup was smeared, making it almost more terrifying. Terezi's fingernails had scraped her bare upper shoulders and face, leaving beads of blood that slipped down Aradia's waxy paint.
Aradia looked up.
"Oh, good. Ampora, you're here." Eridan whirled around, but saw nothing. There was a strange sound in the air, almost like the brush of metal parts together, like coins clinking as they dropped into a jar or a dagger leaving its sheath.
"What's taken you so long? You're normally much faster when killing," someone new declared nonchalantly from Eridan's left. He turned again, but no one was there.
Aradia smirked.
"I could never compete with you."
Clink…clink…clink…
Eridan tried to trace the sound, but no matter how he turned he couldn't find the source anywhere.
"Wwho's there?" he demanded, eyes flashing. Aradia laughed, but she still sounded emotionless, her mirth robotic and dictated.
"Hello, Dualscar. Long time, no see." Eridan finished his turn to see the face of someone he had thought he killed sweeps ago.
"Tavros Ampora. I return the sentiment." Tavros twirled his lance. His metal legs clinked as he shifted his position to stare directly at Eridan. He had a single robotic eye that glowed the same violet as his blood color, and his left facial fin was twisted and mutilated. The rest of his face shone with white burn scars that spiderwebbed across his forehead and cheeks.
"I'll make this simple," Tavros continued, still playing with the deadly-sharp lance. It was stained with some hapless troll's jade-green blood. "You have something that belongs to me. I want it back."
"You wwish." Eridan pointed the Crosshairs at the troll he thought he killed with that same gun sweeps previously. Tavros raised his lance in response.
"Bring it on, then, Pyrope. You'll find that I'm not the same fighter I was four sweeps ago." So it had been that long. Eridan had nearly forgotten.
Without warning, Eridan ducked out of Tavros's stabbing range to fire off a blast from the Crosshairs. He slipped in the sand and tripped, though, so his shot went off in a random direction.
"You're screwwed," Eridan hollered.
"You couldn't kill me four sweeps ago and you can't kill me now!" Tavros hollered back. "You're a weakling, a lowblooded weakling! I know about your ancestor, I know who he was, and it was my ancestor that culled him like he was nothing but a wriggler! Descendants finish their ancestors' work, you know," Tavros taunted.
"I'm finishing his wwork! I'm finishing his wwork by destroying the ones who betrayed and destroyed him and don't you forget it!" Tavros only laughed mockingly, and something in Eridan seemed to disengage.
He would later say that he lost control, or that he was so overwhelmed by platonic hate that he merely forgot what happened, but the truth was that his mind was destroyed that night. It would never truly return to normal.
He let out an introllian screech and rushed Tavros blindly, forgetting all inhibitions. He plowed right through Aradia, throwing her across the dune, and wrapped his hands around the violet-blood's throat. Tavros's right fin, the whole one, was crushed in Eridan's unrelenting grip, and a tear of pain involuntarily escaped his eye.
Laughing maniacally, Eridan punched Tavros over and over again, beating the fish freak's face to a bloody pulp. Tavros stood up, shoving Eridan away, and stabbed Eridan through the shoulder with his lance. Eridan didn't even flinch, he just continued to laugh insanely, tottering back and forth dizzily from blood loss.
"Eridan, stop, you'll kill yourself!" Terezi shouted, but he didn't hear her. "ERIDAN!"
"Well, well, weeeeeeeell, what do we have here?" interjected a new voice. Aradia appeared over the dune, smiling.
"My Empress," Aradia intoned. Terezi held her second rapier tightly in her right hand, Aradia having stolen the first. She was bleeding olive from a cut on her cheek, and her eyes were murderous.
"Ooooooooh, more descendants. Good job, Makara. And if it isn't the invincible descendant of the Justsoul herself. Leijon, isn't it?"
Terezi curled her lip at the figure who approached over the dune. The Empress's signature mismatched horns shone, and her glasses reflected sharp moonlight.
"It's interesting, meeting you in real life. Somehow I expected it to happen under far more auspicious circumstances," Terezi hissed.
"Remember my face later, won't you?" the Empress smirked.
She flipped a switch on the device she'd hauled over the dune, and it filled the space with brilliant, blinding light.
All Terezi saw was red, red expanding and filling her vision until there was nothing else, and suddenly the world was dark.
Eridan was facing the other way when the light turned on, and it shook him from his trance-like state. He clutched his shoulder, wincing in pain when it moved. The light was brilliant and searing, and for a moment he wondered if the sun had come back up. But it turned off as soon as it had turned on, and he tottered back around to face the Empress.
"You have a choice, Pyrope. You can join us, or you can be destroyed like your friend here," declared the Empress, gesturing towards Terezi, who was writhing in pain on the sand, her face brutally burned and her eyes welling with olive tears.
"I…I…"
"Weeeeeeeell? I don't have all day." Eridan's eyes flicked around, from the Empress and her light machine, to Aradia calmly standing and bleeding on the dune, to Tavros, who was watching Eridan with a distinctly hateful face, to Terezi crying and lying defeated on the ground, and he made his decision.
"I surrend—"
Just as Eridan began saying the hateful words, a swarm of animals charged out of the sea and across the land to stampede the three highbloods into the ground.
"HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!" someone shouted by way of a battle cry, and a brownblooded troll came out of nowhere to land in front of Eridan.
"Who—what—"
"Nepsis said there were royals roamin, and I wasn't gonna motherfuckin leave a brother to fight 'em all alone." The strange troll smiled proudly at Eridan, as though he was a wriggler expecting a prize. His messy hair was full of wingbeast poop, probably from his summoned creatures, and he smelled horrible.
"Wwho the fuck are you?"
"Gamzee motherfuckin Nitram, motherfucka. You?"
"Eridan Pyrope," he replied, too stunned to do anything else. "Oh—and that's Terezi. She needs help." The brownblood stared blankly at Eridan's FLARP partner before summoning an antlerbeast to carry her away. The highbloods had vanished, presumably back to wherever they came from.
"Honk," the brownblood declared by way of a response. Eridan's head was spinning from blood loss, and he staggered. Gamzee caught him and placed him onto the back of a wingbeast lusus. It carried the two into the forest where Eridan had started out the night.
"Um…wwhere are wwe going?"
"You can't go back to your hive. That's where they'll motherfuckin look for a brother, you know? We're gonna motherfuckin get your stuff then you're comin with me. Honk," Gamzee answered.
"Oh."
Elsewhere, on the back of a hijacked antlerbeast lusus, Terezi Leijon was accessing her husktop.
~~geneticallyCompetent began trolling arachnidsGoddess~~
GC: VR1S4K4 1 4M GP1NG TO K414LL YOU...
GC: YOU W3NY B4CK ON OU3 4GR33MWNT. YOU KWNO WJ4T TH4BV M34NS...
AG: Ooooooooh, I'm soooooooo scared. You are clearly the most incredi8ly intimid8ing person I know. Cleeeeeeeearly.
GC: C4R3 TO 3XPL41N WHY TH3 FUCK YOU BL1ND3D M3?
AG: Well, you sure recovered quickly. I can't w8 to hear your indignant pleas for help.
AG: 'Help me, Vriska, I'm too stupid and low8looded to t8ke care of myself!'
AG: 'Help me, Vriska, I can't see shit!'
GC: SHUT UP.
AG: Oh noooooooo, the low8lood is playing the threat g8me!
AG: I'm soooooooo intimid8ed.
GC: YOU R34LLY SHOULD S4V3 TH3 K1LL1NG FOR TH3 G4M3.
AG: Ooooooooh, the mysterious gaaaaaaaame.
AG: Does this g8me of yours even exist?
GC: SP1D3RB1TCH YOU DON'T 3V3N KNOW WH4T YOUR3 T4LK1NG 4BOUT.
~~geneticallyCompetent ceased trolling arachnidsGuardian~~
Perfect, Terezi thought. A touch of fake anger and deliberately misspelled words, and Vriska would fall right into the trap. Terezi wrapped her hands over her burning eyes, still brimming with painful tears, but knew that she was lucky. After all, her lusus had taught her to smell and taste despite the lack of need, and all she had to do was get used to it. Good thing she hadn't refused.
Terezi really hadn't expected to lose her eyesight, but a TOT4L B4D4SS like her wouldn't be stopped by something that small.
Now, then. On to bigger, better plans…
~~geneticallyCompetent began trolling caringClarity~~
GC: H3Y F3F3R1.
GC: ST4G3 ON3 1S COMPL3T3.
~~geneticallyCompetent ceased trolling caringClarity~~
A/N: Hey everybody! Sorry for the longer-than-expected wait. As I said last chapter, I was at camp sans computer, and then after that my internet started doing stupid things. Hopefully this nice long chapter makes up for it. Seems I've been keeping up nicely with the trend of getting longer...and longer...and longer.
In other notes, Tavros! WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME SHIP YOU BLACK WITH ERIDAN. THIS IS WRONG. I just love writing Tavros as a fearless badass, though, because it's so backwards and also awesome. I firmly believe that his canonical personification could make him incredibly epically more-so-than-Vriska badass, if he just got some backbone.
This chapter was so much fun to write. I know I'm probably terrible at battle scenes (and dialogue, and characterization, and virtually everything else but spelling/grammar) but I still love it. And we start to get a vision of the bigger picture here. Next chapter we may or may not get an explanation for why the heck Vriska is targeting the lowbloods (besides pure sadism). It depends on where the story takes me; my outline is very loosely designed. I'm trying to create suspense but I'm a terrible secret-keeper :I
I have no clue when the next chapter will be up. It might be tomorrow or it might not be for another three weeks. I have a family vacation coming up where I will be able to type but I won't have internet access, and then after that I'm going to Europe (XD). Beware of crack ships in the future; bloodswaps that I write tend to be full of them.
As always, reviews are extremely welcome! I don't even care if your review is three words long and consists of "this is okay." Seriously, the reviews make me very very happy and I know some of my writing needs improvement.
OH! durrrr this never ends but. I would really like to set up some kind of blog via Tumblr to post pictures I've drawn of various characters and stuff, or answer questions from people, but I have NO FREAKING CLUE how to use Tumblr. If anyone could help me out here, I would be very very grateful. Finally, I think that's all!