exsilium | Second Blood

Second Blood

[Today you have something different: Rather than a face peering into the camera, you have a full body view of a young woman standing to the left of the shot, with her right hand on her hip. Said hand glows bright white, like the rest of her body. If you haven't seen her before, she's probably a pretty surprising sort of freak to see when you turn on the communicator.

The center and right part of the shot are occupied by the wall, to which she's attached an off-white poster, landscape orientation, with the following written on it in large letters of bright green marker.

* As Your Potential Leader A Complete Stranger In All Senses
* Proposal To Further Factionalize Already Fractured Population
* Plans Will Only Be Revealed When Or Rather If Any Group Is Gathered
* Initiative Is Our First Enemy Rather Than The United Earth
* Conflict With Other Armies Also A Welcome Possibility

It's attached to the wall with a piece of clear tape on each corners and one in the middle of each long side as well. Close examination will note that it appears there is a second identically-sized piece of paper hidden under it.]

Hello, Transports. I'm Kanaya Maryam. Apart from those who saw my arbitrary self-introduction, you probably don't recognize me as anything but an alien interloper of an age you judge as inappropriate. Even though you have absolutely no reason to trust me, I'm going to ask you to do exactly that, because Exsilium has a terrible leadership problem.

[She's pointing to the second bullet now.] Lots of Transports have been trying to create an army out of members of Exsilium's already perfectly fine existing army. This hasn't worked up until now, but I am somehow absolutely certain that when I do this it's going to be totally different.

[Third bullet:] My plans are so fantastic that they have to be kept confidential and will only be revealed to members of the army once it forms - whom, by the way, I will accept and reject at my discretion even though my goal is to unite Exsilium.

Oh, and did I mention - [fourth bullet] - that I want to overthrow the Initiative first, even though we're fighting the United Earth. Because that's my intention, to fight the people who brought us together and control whether we even stay or leave, let alone go back in time.

And by the way, all the other armies that have already been forming - they're getting in the way of my plan, so we're also going to fight you if you go against us.

[Both her hands return to her hips as she stares at with her head cocked and her lips stretched thin.] Tell me, Exsilium, do you think that sounds like a good plan for anyone to execute? Especially if she's an alien, an undead, a "teenager" [finger quotes], or the like? Or would you advise me to stick with the perfectly good hundreds-strong army that we already have, and take it up with the administrators of the Initiative if I really insisted upon doing something. Perhaps would you go so far as to say that I sound... stupid? If so, that's good, because I have some appalling news for you, which I've just delivered wrapped in your planet's particularly loathsome form of verbal irony.

[In a sudden, too-quick motion, she reaches up with both hands to rip off the poster and reveal the paper underneath it, filled up entirely with these four words:

This Is Stupid
Stop

She neatly folds the old poster three times and throws it away in a waste receptacle off screen, and then stands up straight to address the camera again.]

It does sound stupid, because it is, and so do you. Stop.

[The video ends.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Well shit.

Gamzee just holds his position, halfway to clawing at her face and with his neck open and bleeding. He has no idea what to do now.]

[Okay Kanaya. You're a rainbow drinker. You can do this. You are a real life/undeath alien lesbian vampire.

You can make this not awkward.

She slightly adjusts her position to be more firmly sitting down, though her torso is still definitely tilted towards Gamzee, and turns her head to Karkat with only an only moderate resemblance to an antlerbeast in the frontal illuminators.]

Borrow my what?

Nevermind. What are you doing?

All what it's telling at your lookstubs we're doing?

[Was that the right answer? Pretty obvious she had her fangs up in him... He's still got his breathing going fast and hard, even.]

I was drinking his blood?

[Yeah, Maryam. STICK TO YOUR GUNS.]

All supernatural and so on.

[Now IN FOR THE KILL.] What were you going to borrow?

It was a rhetorical question, I can tell what is happening here.

[Marching over he is a tiny ball of purposeful anger.]

Okay. No. I am putting my hoof down on this fucked up codependent bullshit. Kanaya, you should know better, he is practically malnourished here, how is he supposed to be your breakfast buffet when he can't even feed himself?

I've been better about being down with the remembering.

[He has, but he says it defensively, glancing at Kanaya like he's afraid she might disappear.

[Kanaya crosses her arms resentfully. Like Karkat's one to talk about knowing better... okay, actually he's right, she should know better, but fuck the alpha timeline is quietly written in her sharpening glow. It all comes back to that.]

I have done the codependent-ascertaining-whether-Gamzee-Makara-has-eaten routine before. I thought I was supposed to stop concerning myself excessively with that now.

Also, I think you're drastically underestimating the amount of blood this troll possesses. For a change of pace, try overestimating. Which I can pretty much guarantee you will not be able to do. [She would know. She's had so, so much of this stuff and the motherfucker never runs out of it. It is in her stomach basically all the time - still a small store remaining from even more voluminous past asylum incidents.]

Thanks for the disgusting mental image.

I'm sure there are other assholes with a lot of blood? Try Feferi or something.

[He makes a distressed noise, looking rapidly back and forth between them.]

Motherfuck!

Sollux can barely tolerate much more than once a week, Nepeta is Equius' moirail and he refuses strongly for both of them, and Feferi replied to my post just to tell me she wears socks with sandals. She is not in a generous mood.

[You know what she's just gonna skip Eridan]

Edited 2013-01-11 21:13 (UTC)

Oh, so Equius' refusal is good enough, but who cares about what Karkat wants, no one, that's who.

[Turning towards him and snapping.]

Gamzee, calm down.

Would hold that motherfucker down for you, bitchsis.

[The glint in his eyes is more than a little dangerous.

But then he looks at Karkat, uncertain.]

Not for wanting to make you kick upset feelings down in you...

[The "but" might as well be shouted at the top of his lungs.]

No, don't, that would be stupid.

[The body language is like a bad romcom screenplay. She turns her head just barely to Gamzee as she talks, her hand lifts up - but the logical conclusion of putting it on his wrist does not occur as she instead forcefully folds her hands in her lap and looks straight at Karkat again.]

You really feel... that strongly about this. I didn't know before...

[But why tho.]

Yes, I care, surprise. I mean, is this even sanitary? Wait, you're leaving open wounds on someone who basically lives in grime, I just answered my own question. If you having to eat is the issue then we can figure something out that doesn't involve you treating him like an all-you-can-eat buffet all the time, but it seems like the real issue here is the two of you.

You know, I can't even tell if this is better or worse than you chasing after him with a chainsaw, sorry but not sorry for mentioning the alpha timeline. I mean, I'm glad you're not trying to kill each other, but this really fucks me up! What the hell is going on with the two of you, what is this shit. Are you two getting off on this? Is this a pitch thing, because if so, you could have told me and additionally my professional opinion on the matter is hell no. Is this some kind of bizarre vacillation, I don't even get it.

[He shakes his head and is quiet for a while, brow furrowed and looking focused.]

Not being pitch. Motherfucking went at that, but there's no... no... Not being the right feels in my pumpbiscuit at all that. Vacillation is being down only with quadrants and I can't be thinking all what quadrants would be motherfucking right for us.

She tried it. Tried to be up and pale and-- [He makes a completely disgusted face.] Fakey fake dollhive motherfucking wrong shit from an ice cold chainsaw bitch who's down hard on this motherfucker what for everything I'm being.

[He snarls a moment at Kanaya, but there's little heat in it. More like a slow boiling resentment. Then he turns the most beatific smile on Karkat.]

And I'm knowing now what a real pale-brother is supposed to be kicking in me. No feels better than what runs all soft through me at you, brother. Best friend.

We're all-- uh... uhhhh--

[And at this he just gives up, shrugs, and looks expectantly at Kanaya.]

I was never pale for him.

[She says it almost looking to Gamzee at first anyway? Addressing both of them - Karkat the focus of her conversation, Gamzee the natural focal point for her. After this faltering she reanchors herself, straight to Karkat and increasingly angry. So this is what other people feel like when she meddles with them.]

What I was with him was alone. I'm sorry that you do not know what being that alone is like, but also not sorry because you do not want to know what being that alone is like. You have watched half your friends disappear. We watched literally all of them. Until we were the only ones left. We had nothing but each other which led to courses of action that never would have been taken were we any less agonizingly alone. [Her references to being so close to Gamzee at that point are spoken contemptuously.]

And if he wants you can find out what that's like. He can tell you all about it. That is literally the one good thing that the alpha timeline did for any of us: Sending you into his open arms. He doesn't have to be so alone he needs to come crawling to a sandy, pumpbiscuit-challenged monstrosity like me anymore. That's just great. It's pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to anybody I've ever known. I am so happy for you two. I'm glad to step gracefully aside now that he says you to be what I never could and never even wanted to be. If I've received no such substitute, that's just how troll serendipity has chosen to play for the moment, I don't really mind. Again, I have never felt pale for him. [Emotional fidelity more than physical is what matters to her, right.]

Just when you threaten the one thing that keeps me from eventually tearing out the throats of any troll I should happen to come across - that is where I draw the line, okay.

[WOW JESUS that went on way too long she feels a little bad now already and kind of folds her hands in her lap.]

That's just where I have to draw the line. I'm sorry.

[He trusts Gamzee; more than trust, there's no part of him that really thinks Gamzee and Kanaya could work pale. Gamzee has
been obviously after his diamond for ages, anyway. But the thought still bothers him, a lot, even if only out of guilt that he wasn't there. For Kanaya to be mad at him over this just isn't fair at all, and he can't help but be upset.]

Fuck you! Seriously, this is not me being charmingly irascible, this is me pissed off, Kanaya. If you can really say that shit about me and mean it, then you don't fucking know me at all, you don't.

I'm sorry to show up and inconvenience you by existing and having opinions related to my own moirail's physical well-being! Do you actually think I'd blame you for anything you did approximating any quadrant when I wasn't there and we weren't even together? Do you actually think I'd mind anything either of you did for the sake of either of your continued sanity?

You must think I'm a huge petty piece of shit, and I'm not, not in this respect, I'm just glad both of you are okay because presumably you are my friends!

But what the fuck am I supposed to do here, you can't say this is good for him, and you can't say what's good for him isn't my business. Just because I wasn't there doesn't mean I have to sit back and be second stringed instrument to you when it comes to my own moirail. You can't say that it's unreasonable for me to care whether there's anything between you or whether you still want him or whether you're trying to substitute for him what should be with me or use him for what he isn't available for anymore!

And fuck, I don't want anything to happen to you either! I'd give you my own blood if you wanted it before it would come to that, and you should know that. But instead you're going to tell me to shut the fuck up and mind my own business about this? How the hell is that fair?

SHUT! MOTHERFUCKING! UP!

[He's up on his feet, roaring out the words. He quickly yanks at Kanaya's horn, hard, but his gesture to Karkat is an awkward pat on the mouth. Maybe it was a shushing motion in his head, but it didn't translate to action.

For a moment he trembles, glancing between them, but when he straightens, there's strength in his gaze, and a purpose he's never had. He knows what to do. He rounds on Kanaya first, not even angry, but cold and almost admonishing.]

You weren't motherfucking alone, my bitchiest of sisters. You had him. So he up and was made gone. So he up and left you all like he was gone out to sea and you not having the fins and gills to get your follow on. Had that motherfucker all to your motherfucking self for a while.

[He doesn't know what he reveals with that; can't-won't go deep enough to realize. His voice goes soft-sweet, but full of poison.]

Gamzee's a stupid motherfucker. Can't even see shit what's in front of his lame ass clown face. Right? That's what you were full with thinking. Won't get no understanding even if he does.

Guess what, bitchsis? I've always motherfucking seen. Out of my pan on sopor didn't do nothing to my lookstubs. And now I got all what's left of me to remember.

So now he won't give at you the time of motherfucking night. And now you motherfucking got beat into your pan what it's being like.

[The satisfaction when he turns to Karkat, awkwardly close and with gentle touches, is palpable.]

You're here now. You're being here and I won't let no motherfucker tear at us away. But the chainsaw bitch don't got no troll to care, like you're being full up for me. Not one to give her what for; what she motherfucking needs.

We need to keep our sister bitch. Not going to be letting her leave. You can be getting your pan with making that shit go down. You can be picking out that way.

[The trust and confidence that Karkat will find some way shines through brightly.]

[The moment he is mentioned Kanaya's mood sinks into the basement, clearly legible on her much less brightly glowing face. It instantly subdues her, and the slap she gives to Gamzee's hand on her horn only has enough life in it to disqualify any suspicion of its being a pap. There is no time to put on the elaborate show for her conciliatory constant-but-second-best. She couldn't do a trapeze act right now if she tried.]

You know it wasn't exactly like that for me. Pumpbiscuits, though all equally mysterious, are far from interchangable. You learned that first, didn't you? That's Gamzee for you. Flashstepping leaps and bounds ahead of his hemoinferiors. Who cannot even metaphorically or literally swim.

[As which she of course qualifies. Gutterblood. Not a word she can use around Karkat of course - she's not about to bring up that his blood is an unacceptable alternative. She has tasted such (human) blood before, rich with rust and iron. It brings back memories. Mostly not good ones. All ones she wouldn't want to associate with Karkat. And he is such a little ball of anger and love. Just looking at him she thinks that the slightest prick could actually make him deflate. Or just cry. He passed out when she was giving Tavros a perfectly routine double amputation, for Christ's sake.

She reaches for her tablet, abandoned on the empty part of the couch beside her, like a lifeline, though not looking at it yet, only tapping the power button that turns the monitor back on.]

I guess I have gotten a little irrationally emotional. What else is new. It might be for the best should I leave the both of you alone. I'm getting the impression I haven't been doing that as much as I ought.

[...and her tablet buzzes and flashes for several seconds like a phone announcing a windfall of new notifications. She gives it a withering, pessimistic look.]

Maybe deal with more comments on that stupid post I made. I do have to lie in my metaphorical cocoon, if not a literal one anymore.

[And he does deflate, or at least release his anger. Partially due to Gamzee's intervention, as the touch calms him down and reminds him he's an idiot to act jealous when his moirail is here telling him he doesn't want anyone else. Partially because he can't disagree with Gamzee telling him they have to take care of Kanaya. He cares about her, honestly considers her one of his best friends, and shouldn't need Gamzee to tell him he can't push her aside. Besides, Gamzee's accusations are just clear enough to get something of a picture of the state of affairs.

And then there is her unspoken rejection of his own offer of blood. He can't say he wasn't expecting it. The fear his blood wouldn't be good enough is why he waited so long to suggest it. But it is sort of a gut punch, it hurts, and it is enough to knock all the fight out of him. If he doesn't have anything worth offering, how the hell can he offer anyone else? And how the hell can he deny her the non disgusting mutant blood, the enviable highblood blood, that is being freely offered?]

Kanaya, wait.

I didn't mean it, I know you aren't up to anything nefarious here. Maybe I'm just being selfish.

[Gamzee drapes himself around Karkat, but uses one long arm to reach out and keep Kanaya from leaving. He's probably putting a little too much weight on the shorter troll, but he never was good at those things.]

Naw, Karkat, you're being all looking out for the care of me. Makes my pumpbuscuit get all gooshy.

But maybe you're being all a little too motherfucking strict down at us. Bitch got to be getting her fangs down in a troll sometimes.

[He pauses for a few moments, looking at Kanaya.]

Got to thinking, you'd be all up leadering out for her a new mealcolumn. So's she's not always sucking at this motherfucker so often. Better for every troll about in here.

[Not icon keywords. Not icon keywords. Not keywords not keywords not keywords not keywords--! (The very touch of her glowing hands #triggers him which is the #punch in the gut #he #forgets he gave #HER)

With both hands she tugs her tablet into her lap and sets about to writing the text thread with Painwheel.]

I can cut down in the interim. [If she doesn't want to operate on entirely full cylinders.] It's not as if... as if we're being sent on a mission properly any time soon anyway, given the way our schedules have been working out. [And considering she has no idea how to broach this topic with Equius - because if she doesn't want trouble she breaches this matter with him before Nepeta. Even though if she wants amenability that order is reversed.]

[He doesn't really mind Gamzee's weight, even though it unbalances him a little. But he does curl his lip a little bitterly at the suggestion.]

Right, I'll ask over the network, and they'll all ask why I don't volunteer myself. Oh wait.

I don't want Kanaya starving herself, all I ask is that we not open up new scabs all over you.

But you motherfucking did, and the stone cold bitch got up and picky in here. They won't be getting no snapping on at you for what bitchsis did.

And we can be down with not opening no new places up for me to bleed at.

[And he considers it mostly settled now, but the position feels nice, so he rests his cheek on Karkat's head contentedly.]

Second Blood

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)