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catwif3rating: T for violence/gore
word count: 2000
fandom: homestuck post-game feferi-is-empress alternia (entirely original character focused)
originally posted sometime mid 2017
=========================
your name is aaeren sindra, and you and yours have a job to do and fast to do it. you've been given your pick of ships on the rapprochement (the fuck kind of name is that, anyway. the empire's going so strange outside the ranks of the subjugglators and the history they continue to teach untouched by propaganda from her complacency's gentler reign). it's not what you would prefer, but your ship's disabled for the minute and this is what you have until the rapprochement gets you back with your own. and there's things to do as don't wait for what you'd like.
"that one," you say, pointing lazily at one of the warships in the upper deck with the iron bar held loosely in your fingers. you can't say what drew your eye to that one, in particular, except that there's something familiar about it among the rest of these sterile spacefighting vessels. "tell whoever you need to, i need it crewed and ready to take us down to that planet sharpish," you say, and the big tealblood sort of squeaks in dismay in a way that cheers you right up.
"right on," you say, and clap him on the shoulder with the hand not idly stroking your pipe. he stifles another squeak that has you snickering as you leave him to type orders and requisitions in on his little tablet and go to track down the rest of your cohort.
it's not even an hour later you're pinged that the ship is ready for you, and when you wander on down there, there's a little indigo brother glaring up at you. you're one of the shortest sisters of the blood you know and he's barely topping your collarbones. no paint. you think he probably has never seen the inside of a church vessel, from the feel of him, but his untrained power pulses and crackles at your horns and you see immediately why this ship felt familiar. you bare your teeth at him in a welcoming grin.
he frowns back at all of you in unveiled distaste.
"all right," he says, icy-sharp. "you have me, you have my ship, do i get to know why?"
"of course, brother," you say, and he bares fangs at you and hisses a little. you can feel someone guffawing quietly behind you and you don't particular blame them, but you are vaguely getting your convince on that he might try to flay you if you showed it outright.
as good a show as that might be, you don't have time for it right now.
"found some people what we've been looking for, and here's the closest team to that planet right down there. pretty handy, hmmm?"
there's a beat where his power screeches against yours, obviously unused to being brought to bear against another indigo. then he relaxes the tiniest fraction.
"since you didn't say anything about 'motherfucking,' or 'miracles,' i'll accept it this once," he grumbles, not quite a growl. "let's go."
he leads you onto the ship, where the inundation with his power is even more obvious. irxiye and adniah make little noises of approval to each other. he shoots them a suspicious look.
"give your coordinates to xealle at the bridge if you've got them," is all he says, though. eshagu nods and heads off to do so.
"he's not gonna get lost, is he? because i'm not digging him out of the ductwork in a perigree."
"nah," irxiye says, "could follow the path to the bridge in here with eyes closed, brother."
"the fuck with that 'brother' shit, i'm not one of you. it's maligner labrynth to all of you," he snaps.
"messiahs bless," irxiye and adniah chorus at him. his 'voodoos shriek into the air again and you are hard-pressed to keep from cackling out loud at him and the look on their faces. they're young and more vulnerable even to his untrained leaking. he'd be a motherfucking holy terror if he'd been taught proper.
the ship buzzes to life around you and labrynth turns and stalks off towards the bridge. you shrug at irxiye and adniah and follow him. they immediately go to join up with eshagu, looming over a deeply unimpressed cerulean who must be the navigator.
labrynth doesn't say anything else to any of you until the planet is looming into the entirety of the viewport.
"are you going to want ground troops?" he asks abruptly, showing up at your elbow fast enough to startle you.
"wouldn't say no," you say, drawling it out like a purr that makes him glare up at you in some kind of annoyance. messiahs help you but this guy is way too fun to tease.
you weren't quite aware that this ship was ground-troop trained. most of the rapprochement doesn't seem to be. but it does make your job a near sight easier.
"here," you add, and pull out your palmhusk from your sylladex to pull up the fugitives you're after. "we need these four alive. everyone else you find is fair game."
he grins at that, just the tiniest quirk of fangs, and you despair of this poor dumb little brother so far away from where he belongs.
"right. send me that," he says, taking your palmhusk and typing a string into the first open field.
"hey," you say perfunctorily. most trolls as try that move on you end up with their pan some kind of stoved in. he just clicks angrily at you, apparently unconcerned with possible retaliation, and shoves the palmhusk back into your hands. you send the information to the encoded address and something chimes in his sylladex.
"we'll be ready to deploy by the time we've broken atmo," labrynth says, and stalks off.
"aaeren," cingen, your quiet shadow for your first stint leading a squad, says. "you bein' mighty sweet on that unbeliever."
"i'm an unbeliever, by most standards," you say, mildly.
"yeah, but you're different, sister. you got your knowing and your care on, anyway. he's as heretic as a blood brother can go."
"girl can't help herself," you say (admit). "shit's downright hilarious."
cingen grins at that, his paint leering cheerfully.
"can't argue with that, i guess," he says.
===============================================
labrynth's troops are disciplined and silent, lined up behind you and your cohort. they deploy at speed, eager and restless despite (or because of) the suddenness of their mission. they get the garrison locked down and you lead your cohort in smashing through the doors in a storm of enthusiastic whooping and cackling. trolls and the aliens they'd been sheltering here scatter like sand before the storm.
it's not until you've carved your way halfway to the inner sanctum that you realize your cohort is numbered six instead of five: labrynth has followed you into the thick of it, bloodlust running so high and feral you'd tuned yourself right along with it (cingen is the only one holding apart, you think. fuck that is not gonna look too good on a report). he's got a knife that's not quite a machete or a short sword, and a motherfucking sweet-ass cleaver, both greasy and dripping with multicolored gore just as your heavy pipes are. there's a splash of blue across his face like a parody of paint.
then it ceases to matter, because you've flushed two of your prey, and your hunting call is echoed by your cohort and underlined by your tagalong's vicious, rattling growl.
it's a good mission, all things told.
===============================================
you're still stuck on the rapprochement until you can rendezvous with your brethren's ships, though, and other than trading off guard duty on the prisoners, there's not a lot that admiral artiev will let you do. he's pained and annoyed about the prisoners, but he's got no legal jurisdiction over them or you beyond his "absolutely no culling on my ship" demands.
out of boredom, you spend an after-midnight tracking the sending address labrynth gave you on your palmhusk until you find his contact number.
-- deliriousExposition [DE] began trolling abstractedDiscord [AD] --
DE: hey little brother whAt’s up
AD: ...
AD: Which th3 fuck on3 of you clown fucks is this.
DE: it’s AAustere
AD: Okay that actually m3ans nothing to m3 sinc3 non3 of you actually introduc3d yours3lv3s.
DE: the short one with the long hAir!
AD: Of cours3.
AD: Fuck I thought I 3ncrypt3d that addr3ss.
DE: you did! i just retrAced it bAck to you <:D
AD: I hav3n’t s33n an 3moticon that inan3 sinc3 asc3nsion. How th3 fuck old ar3 you.
DE: 53 sweeps <:O
AD: Just my fucking luck.
DE: whAAAAAt how old Are you?
AD: I don’t hav3 to t3ll you that.
DE: stingy!!! i just wAnt to know!
AD: What th3 h3ll kind of r3asoning is that.
AD: Why ar3 you trolling m3 anyway.
DE: i’m bored! we’re not Allowed to do Anything fun on this ship D,:>
AD: … All right. If th3r3’s nothing important th3n.
-- abstractedDiscord [AD] has blocked deliriousExposition [DE] --
we-e-elllll fuck! this guy is a downright difficult bastard and no mistake!
you trip like three different security protocols trying to look up major maligner labrynth's information (you are not the empire's best hacker, to understate the issue tastefully), but eventually you uncover his block location.
a couple of warmbloods give you funny looks as you cross the ship, but none of them seem willing to start anything with your paint and the arrogant banner of your hair. the respiteblock halls are marked with symbols in a variety of green-through-blue colors in yet another baffling display of progressiveness. labrynth's stands out in a brazen near-purple shade of indigo, a complicated sun-and-upside-down-anvil looking sigil you don't know the name of.
you knock on the door with your iron pipe, a gentle drumstick tat-a-tap-tap-tat, which you are three hundred percent capable of keeping up and racheting into an incessantly faster clanging crescendo, but the door swishes open long before that becomes necessary. labrynth looks up at you with grudging confusion that dawns into grudging outrage.
"the fuck," he says. it's weird seeing eyes that shade in an unpainted face. makes him look all vulnerable and naked. luckily, you delight in the vulnerability of others.
"you gonna let me in, little brother?" you ask with a wide, leering grin you learned straight from cingen, who maintains that he copied it off the old grand highblood himself.
the portal slams shut in your face, and you can't help yourself: you break down cackling in the hallway. a couple doors open and then just as quickly shut when the occupants see you.
"all right, all right, maligner," you conceed, touching the heel of your gloved hands carefully to your eyes to dry the tears of mirth without fucking up your paint.
"the fuck do you want?" he demands through the door. he's not leaking 'voodoos tonight, so either he really needed that little jaunt of most riotous bloodshed a couple nights back, or he's not really that annoyed with you. maybe both?
"how old are you?" you try.
"fucking a hundred and sixty five, alright, what the fuck?"
"i'm booooorrredd," you whine, as sad and wrigglerish as you know how, fingers scratching at the crack in the portal. it nearly catches your claws when it swooshes back open.
"what the everloving hell is your problem?" labrynth asks, glaring up at you again.
you shrug, scraping your pipe against the floor. "I'm bored. tell me about yourself."
"the fuck." he says.
then he pulls his cleaver and goes for your thorax.
luckily, you happen to have your specibus already out, and an unholy screeching clang echoes down the hallway, followed by a little chorus of beeps and clicks as a lot of doors lock down.
well. this works, too, you decide as he strifes you down a deck and over half an entertainment hall.
==================
word count: 2000
fandom: homestuck post-game feferi-is-empress alternia (entirely original character focused)
originally posted sometime mid 2017
=========================
your name is aaeren sindra, and you and yours have a job to do and fast to do it. you've been given your pick of ships on the rapprochement (the fuck kind of name is that, anyway. the empire's going so strange outside the ranks of the subjugglators and the history they continue to teach untouched by propaganda from her complacency's gentler reign). it's not what you would prefer, but your ship's disabled for the minute and this is what you have until the rapprochement gets you back with your own. and there's things to do as don't wait for what you'd like.
"that one," you say, pointing lazily at one of the warships in the upper deck with the iron bar held loosely in your fingers. you can't say what drew your eye to that one, in particular, except that there's something familiar about it among the rest of these sterile spacefighting vessels. "tell whoever you need to, i need it crewed and ready to take us down to that planet sharpish," you say, and the big tealblood sort of squeaks in dismay in a way that cheers you right up.
"right on," you say, and clap him on the shoulder with the hand not idly stroking your pipe. he stifles another squeak that has you snickering as you leave him to type orders and requisitions in on his little tablet and go to track down the rest of your cohort.
it's not even an hour later you're pinged that the ship is ready for you, and when you wander on down there, there's a little indigo brother glaring up at you. you're one of the shortest sisters of the blood you know and he's barely topping your collarbones. no paint. you think he probably has never seen the inside of a church vessel, from the feel of him, but his untrained power pulses and crackles at your horns and you see immediately why this ship felt familiar. you bare your teeth at him in a welcoming grin.
he frowns back at all of you in unveiled distaste.
"all right," he says, icy-sharp. "you have me, you have my ship, do i get to know why?"
"of course, brother," you say, and he bares fangs at you and hisses a little. you can feel someone guffawing quietly behind you and you don't particular blame them, but you are vaguely getting your convince on that he might try to flay you if you showed it outright.
as good a show as that might be, you don't have time for it right now.
"found some people what we've been looking for, and here's the closest team to that planet right down there. pretty handy, hmmm?"
there's a beat where his power screeches against yours, obviously unused to being brought to bear against another indigo. then he relaxes the tiniest fraction.
"since you didn't say anything about 'motherfucking,' or 'miracles,' i'll accept it this once," he grumbles, not quite a growl. "let's go."
he leads you onto the ship, where the inundation with his power is even more obvious. irxiye and adniah make little noises of approval to each other. he shoots them a suspicious look.
"give your coordinates to xealle at the bridge if you've got them," is all he says, though. eshagu nods and heads off to do so.
"he's not gonna get lost, is he? because i'm not digging him out of the ductwork in a perigree."
"nah," irxiye says, "could follow the path to the bridge in here with eyes closed, brother."
"the fuck with that 'brother' shit, i'm not one of you. it's maligner labrynth to all of you," he snaps.
"messiahs bless," irxiye and adniah chorus at him. his 'voodoos shriek into the air again and you are hard-pressed to keep from cackling out loud at him and the look on their faces. they're young and more vulnerable even to his untrained leaking. he'd be a motherfucking holy terror if he'd been taught proper.
the ship buzzes to life around you and labrynth turns and stalks off towards the bridge. you shrug at irxiye and adniah and follow him. they immediately go to join up with eshagu, looming over a deeply unimpressed cerulean who must be the navigator.
labrynth doesn't say anything else to any of you until the planet is looming into the entirety of the viewport.
"are you going to want ground troops?" he asks abruptly, showing up at your elbow fast enough to startle you.
"wouldn't say no," you say, drawling it out like a purr that makes him glare up at you in some kind of annoyance. messiahs help you but this guy is way too fun to tease.
you weren't quite aware that this ship was ground-troop trained. most of the rapprochement doesn't seem to be. but it does make your job a near sight easier.
"here," you add, and pull out your palmhusk from your sylladex to pull up the fugitives you're after. "we need these four alive. everyone else you find is fair game."
he grins at that, just the tiniest quirk of fangs, and you despair of this poor dumb little brother so far away from where he belongs.
"right. send me that," he says, taking your palmhusk and typing a string into the first open field.
"hey," you say perfunctorily. most trolls as try that move on you end up with their pan some kind of stoved in. he just clicks angrily at you, apparently unconcerned with possible retaliation, and shoves the palmhusk back into your hands. you send the information to the encoded address and something chimes in his sylladex.
"we'll be ready to deploy by the time we've broken atmo," labrynth says, and stalks off.
"aaeren," cingen, your quiet shadow for your first stint leading a squad, says. "you bein' mighty sweet on that unbeliever."
"i'm an unbeliever, by most standards," you say, mildly.
"yeah, but you're different, sister. you got your knowing and your care on, anyway. he's as heretic as a blood brother can go."
"girl can't help herself," you say (admit). "shit's downright hilarious."
cingen grins at that, his paint leering cheerfully.
"can't argue with that, i guess," he says.
===============================================
labrynth's troops are disciplined and silent, lined up behind you and your cohort. they deploy at speed, eager and restless despite (or because of) the suddenness of their mission. they get the garrison locked down and you lead your cohort in smashing through the doors in a storm of enthusiastic whooping and cackling. trolls and the aliens they'd been sheltering here scatter like sand before the storm.
it's not until you've carved your way halfway to the inner sanctum that you realize your cohort is numbered six instead of five: labrynth has followed you into the thick of it, bloodlust running so high and feral you'd tuned yourself right along with it (cingen is the only one holding apart, you think. fuck that is not gonna look too good on a report). he's got a knife that's not quite a machete or a short sword, and a motherfucking sweet-ass cleaver, both greasy and dripping with multicolored gore just as your heavy pipes are. there's a splash of blue across his face like a parody of paint.
then it ceases to matter, because you've flushed two of your prey, and your hunting call is echoed by your cohort and underlined by your tagalong's vicious, rattling growl.
it's a good mission, all things told.
===============================================
you're still stuck on the rapprochement until you can rendezvous with your brethren's ships, though, and other than trading off guard duty on the prisoners, there's not a lot that admiral artiev will let you do. he's pained and annoyed about the prisoners, but he's got no legal jurisdiction over them or you beyond his "absolutely no culling on my ship" demands.
out of boredom, you spend an after-midnight tracking the sending address labrynth gave you on your palmhusk until you find his contact number.
-- deliriousExposition [DE] began trolling abstractedDiscord [AD] --
DE: hey little brother whAt’s up
AD: ...
AD: Which th3 fuck on3 of you clown fucks is this.
DE: it’s AAustere
AD: Okay that actually m3ans nothing to m3 sinc3 non3 of you actually introduc3d yours3lv3s.
DE: the short one with the long hAir!
AD: Of cours3.
AD: Fuck I thought I 3ncrypt3d that addr3ss.
DE: you did! i just retrAced it bAck to you <:D
AD: I hav3n’t s33n an 3moticon that inan3 sinc3 asc3nsion. How th3 fuck old ar3 you.
DE: 53 sweeps <:O
AD: Just my fucking luck.
DE: whAAAAAt how old Are you?
AD: I don’t hav3 to t3ll you that.
DE: stingy!!! i just wAnt to know!
AD: What th3 h3ll kind of r3asoning is that.
AD: Why ar3 you trolling m3 anyway.
DE: i’m bored! we’re not Allowed to do Anything fun on this ship D,:>
AD: … All right. If th3r3’s nothing important th3n.
-- abstractedDiscord [AD] has blocked deliriousExposition [DE] --
we-e-elllll fuck! this guy is a downright difficult bastard and no mistake!
you trip like three different security protocols trying to look up major maligner labrynth's information (you are not the empire's best hacker, to understate the issue tastefully), but eventually you uncover his block location.
a couple of warmbloods give you funny looks as you cross the ship, but none of them seem willing to start anything with your paint and the arrogant banner of your hair. the respiteblock halls are marked with symbols in a variety of green-through-blue colors in yet another baffling display of progressiveness. labrynth's stands out in a brazen near-purple shade of indigo, a complicated sun-and-upside-down-anvil looking sigil you don't know the name of.
you knock on the door with your iron pipe, a gentle drumstick tat-a-tap-tap-tat, which you are three hundred percent capable of keeping up and racheting into an incessantly faster clanging crescendo, but the door swishes open long before that becomes necessary. labrynth looks up at you with grudging confusion that dawns into grudging outrage.
"the fuck," he says. it's weird seeing eyes that shade in an unpainted face. makes him look all vulnerable and naked. luckily, you delight in the vulnerability of others.
"you gonna let me in, little brother?" you ask with a wide, leering grin you learned straight from cingen, who maintains that he copied it off the old grand highblood himself.
the portal slams shut in your face, and you can't help yourself: you break down cackling in the hallway. a couple doors open and then just as quickly shut when the occupants see you.
"all right, all right, maligner," you conceed, touching the heel of your gloved hands carefully to your eyes to dry the tears of mirth without fucking up your paint.
"the fuck do you want?" he demands through the door. he's not leaking 'voodoos tonight, so either he really needed that little jaunt of most riotous bloodshed a couple nights back, or he's not really that annoyed with you. maybe both?
"how old are you?" you try.
"fucking a hundred and sixty five, alright, what the fuck?"
"i'm booooorrredd," you whine, as sad and wrigglerish as you know how, fingers scratching at the crack in the portal. it nearly catches your claws when it swooshes back open.
"what the everloving hell is your problem?" labrynth asks, glaring up at you again.
you shrug, scraping your pipe against the floor. "I'm bored. tell me about yourself."
"the fuck." he says.
then he pulls his cleaver and goes for your thorax.
luckily, you happen to have your specibus already out, and an unholy screeching clang echoes down the hallway, followed by a little chorus of beeps and clicks as a lot of doors lock down.
well. this works, too, you decide as he strifes you down a deck and over half an entertainment hall.
==================
