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hso_mods ([personal profile] hso_mods) wrote in [community profile] hs_olympics2012-06-10 01:02 am
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BONUS ROUND 1

Bonus Round 1


Genre-Mixing


Hey, shippers! Welcome to your very first bonus round proper--we hope you have lots of fun with it! This time around we're going to be asking you to mix it up a little--each fanwork posted for this round will be a mish-mash of two different genres, blended together in a delightful incestuous slurry to create an UNSTOPPABLE CREATIVE CONCOCTION--er. Or. Something.

Yeah, we're genre-mixing. That's what we're doing this round.

Rules
  1. Submit prompts! Prompts should consist of two different genres and one ship. This cannot be your team's ship! These are worth 5 points each, for a maximum of 100 points per team.

  2. Look through the prompts and fill whichever you like!

  3. You may not fill prompts for your ship, nor may you fill your own team's prompts.

  4. Fills should be posted as replies to the prompts which they are for, following the format below. They may be any medium.


Title Format
If you are starting a new thread, please use this format in your title.

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team YOU belong to; please use the characters and quadrant, not whatever portmanteau or nickname you've come up with.
If your team name is not in this format and in the title we cannot guarantee that it will be counted.

If you are filling a prompt, use this format in your title.

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team YOU belong to; please use the characters and quadrant, not whatever portmanteau or nickname you've come up with.
If your team name is not in this format and in the title we cannot guarantee that it will be counted.

Posts not using this format in the title will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, no matter what they contain. They, like all comments on the comm, are subject to the Wank Policy.

Scoring
For prompt posts: 5 points each (maximum of 100 per team)

For fills (as stated here):
First 5 entries in each post: 30 (per entry)
Entries 6-10 in each post: 20 (per entry)
Entries 11-15 in each post: 10 (per entry)
Entries 16+ in each post: 5 (per entry)

All scored content must be created/assembled new for this round.

If you have any questions, please ask them at the FAQ post here, or email them to us (homestuck.shipping at gmail). Otherwise, we cannot guarantee that we will see them in a timely fashion!
cloudymew: (Default)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM ALPHA!DAVE<3ALPHA!ROSE

[personal profile] cloudymew 2012-06-23 02:49 pm (UTC)(link)
ahahahfsdf omg i really want to see this done
bandanna: (Default)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM BRO<3DAVE

[personal profile] bandanna 2012-06-23 02:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Hope you like! Terezi is a knight and has a Charizard (whom she rides) and Karkat is a... prince?! A prince with a nidoran cause its a 'royal' pokemon (you know cause it evolves in to a NidoKING haha get it?!)

icylily: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM ARADIA <3 SOLLUX

[personal profile] icylily 2012-06-23 03:06 pm (UTC)(link)
fortune telling + horror, dave<3rose
sigh cos it will never get filled
icylily: (Default)

FILL: TEAM ARADIA<3SOLLUX

[personal profile] icylily 2012-06-23 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
YES I FINISHED IN TIME
hereeeeeee you go hope you like it

it looked cooler in my head sigh
myrrh_darkwing: (Default)

FILL: TEAM Eridan <3< Vriska

[personal profile] myrrh_darkwing 2012-06-23 03:12 pm (UTC)(link)
((this is so far off from the prompt i'm so SORRY))

It’s hard at times, being the only friend of a serial killer.

She stands between him and the world, her hands curled into fists at her sides and his arms cold around her, and doesn’t let him break. He comes up to her from behind and wraps an arm possessively around her waist, pulls her to him; if it was anyone else, she’d smack him, but he needs her. If she lets him hold her, she knows where he is. She knows what he’s doing, practically knows what he’s thinking, and this way when he gets that certain glint to his eye and that Cheshire-crazed smile, she can simply turn around and pin him down and make sure he doesn’t paint the world with blood and send rainbows trickling down the streets.

No one’s been able to pin down just what they are to each other, and she’s fine with that. She hasn’t been able to figure it out herself, even after he patiently explained the quadrant system to her, thinking she didn’t know it already. Of course, she let him. It calms him down, sometimes, to hear his own voice and know he’s still alive, though when it gets too bad she finds it’s better to simply talk and let him know she’s still there.

She thinks maybe she’s his auspitice, keeping the peace between him and the world. It’s a hard, thankless job, but someone has to do it. And he, at least, recognises her and respects her for what she does and who she is-- to him, she’s not the drunken little sidekick, or the roguish waif who’s a pretty face and nothing else. They play at that, from time to time, taking on roles one after another of drunken sidekick rogues and broken princes, but they always go back to who they really are. He values her. Besides, even if it is a thankless job, someone’s got to do it. Someone who’s got nothing to lose.

She thinks that’ll be the title of the book she writes, when she finishes it. Nothing to Lose. It’s almost fitting.

She is his gift and he is her curse. They need each other, and for all her complaints, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
myrrh_darkwing: (Default)

FILL: TEAM Eridan <3< Vriska

[personal profile] myrrh_darkwing 2012-06-23 03:21 pm (UTC)(link)
((I couldn't resist. I'm monopolising the mirrors for princes genre I think...))


She’s only a tailor, but she’s also the only one he can actually talk to. Maybe it helps that he knows she won’t judge him, can’t judge him really. He spends quite a bit of his time in her little room, just talking and talking and letting her try clothes on him, because it’s their shared interest in fashion that drew them together in the first place. She designed all of his most official outfits, the ones that always get compliments from the rest of the court and draw him the attention he so desperately wants, and in return he lets her vent all the problems a fashion designer and tailor shouldn’t have but for some reason she does.

She’s possibly the person who knows him best at court, even when he’s crowned king at far too early of an age and turns to the book for advice instead of her. Into the Looking-Glass, she thinks it’s called, and he treats it like a god.

Only it doesn’t tell him what to do with his wife, the feisty redhead he loves so much, and that’s an area that she’s good at… only, he never asks her, and that girl dies. She knows how, and why, but he’s her best friend even if he never talks to her, so she doesn’t tell. Perhaps she can’t tell, for she watches him struggle with voices that no one else can hear (except her, sometimes, a faint little whisper in the air asking why did you let him do it why did you let him KRILL me), and she pities him more than ever.

He doesn’t ask her when it comes to his second wife either, that spidery girl who trashes her shop and kisses her in the back room and admits that she thinks she can hear ghosts sometimes. He doesn’t talk to her at all, too proud and too mad, now, to go seeking refuge with the tailor he abandoned long ago when he fell in obsessive love and hatred. A second whisper joins the first, he said it was my eyes, why didn’t you ever teeeeeeeell me, Fussyface, I never meant to leave you.

And she doesn’t ask him when she slips into his room in the middle of the night, knife glinting silver treason in her hand.

A third voice adds to the chaos around her, eventually. Kan, it whispers, wuh-why?

She does her best to ignore them all and scribbles in the book instead, adding her neat writing to his madly jagged scrawls. A Word To The Wise: Books Are Not Gods. Don’t Treat Them As Such.
Edited 2012-06-23 15:23 (UTC)
raakelh: (Default)

Re: FILL: TEAM DIRK<3ROXY

[personal profile] raakelh 2012-06-23 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Aaaah.......this is perfect..... X,3 Thank you very much!! <3<3<3
pie2dface: (Default)

Re: FILL: TEAM [Aradia<3<Vriska]

[personal profile] pie2dface 2012-06-23 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah! This is wonderful! Thank you very much. And their outfits are adorable~
blackestdaekfire: (Default)

Re: Prompt: Team [Dave<3Aradia]

[personal profile] blackestdaekfire 2012-06-23 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, yes, I was thinking the same, apart from I would think Nepeta would be a cuddle monster after being scared~ Also, this is just dead cute~
tavdos: (Default)

Re: FILL: TEAM [Dirk<>Roxy]

[personal profile] tavdos 2012-06-23 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)
aaaahhhh oh my gosh how cute!! i love it!
backdrifter: bruce wayne approves not (bruceface)

FILL: TEAM Dave<3<Gamzee

[personal profile] backdrifter 2012-06-23 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)
this was going to be a two parter and it still didn't turn out how i would have liked because i rushed it toward the end but here you go~

slippy: Photo of a wheat field and a stormy sky, surrounded by a border (khr] So money made you mean.)

FILL: TEAM KARKAT <3 NEPETA

[personal profile] slippy 2012-06-23 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)
content note: Brainwashing, in the manner of soap opera dramarama.


The first breath Aradia took was long and deep - and it felt like it had colour and texture, and the cool, free movement of it in her throat and against her wings was pure newness.

The park was - she didn't care, because it was supposed to be the same as when they'd left and she already knew it was not the place entirely where they'd been, it was not dimly lit and unchangingly, languidly ancient - so she whirled around to be sure the ring was empty.

A few mushrooms helped mark the edge of the fairy ring, white and orange caps in the lush green, and the grass was wet with dew even though the sun was hot and bright on her face. They should have known not to step there!

She remembered that they'd been running. Someone in their old group of friends had made a dare or wanted a race and just about everyone had joined in, and the two of them had laughed to each other, embarrassed about being so silly and happy - her and Equius.

The moment of memory brought her back to full awareness of his presence here and now, before her. He stood close - of course he did - and he was silent - he usually was. But he didn't reach for her.

"Well!" she said, and stepped back to take him in. "I don't think they could make us do anything we wouldn't really do!"

Equius was also like she remembered he used to be - a series of twists of sinew, hunched so it was easy to forget how tall he was - not that looming bulk of darkness and suits and sneers. He was sweaty in the face and had a stupid haircut, and he wore cracked, old sunglasses and that big school hoodie she'd borrowed once after choir practice.

"What...? I..." he said, looking between her and the park, his hands and the fairy circle. "We're ... we're free—Aradia, you—"

"Don't." She looked at him for only a second more before she couldn't take it, and turned sharply away to wrap her arms around herself. "I mean it - I don't think they could get anything out of us that wasn't already there. They trapped us in that stupid story, but we were also the ones who told it, and we couldn't really do anything that went against our inner natures. I know that I couldn't."

Her voice sounded harsh to her own ears, but now it quavered low and soft. "I could love Tavros, but I couldn't hurt him. I could hurt Sollux, but I couldn't stop loving him. I ... I killed Vriska..."

"You—!"

"But I still couldn't even dream of being rid of her." She laughed bitterly. "I don't have to be, either - she's still around. I knew the Fair Ones would never let someone like her out of the story. They could squeeze too much entertainment out of her."

She turned her face towards him - but she still couldn't turn to face him and the disparity of her memories full-on.

"What you did to me, Equius Zahhak ... I'm sure it appealed to their sense of humour to see someone with part of their mind taken away. It was still your decision! You made that damned music box, you hypnotised me, and it was you who thought even for a moment that it was all right!"

Equius had reached for her; his hand hovered near to her shoulder. She thought she could even feel its warmth and she stepped away again, dragging her gaze from him to stare unseeing into the distance.

Then a Frisbee curved into view in her line of sight, upwards of the quiet, sloped stretch of the park where they stood, and a brief flash of some kid running after it. Aradia blinked. "O-kay," she said, and shook her head.

"I did not hurt you," said Equius, voice dark and craggy the way it was when he was at his worst, and then he cleared his throat horribly. His voice had only just started breaking.

"That is not an apology!" Aradia said. "Jeez!" Would she have to work her way up to swearing properly again? Stupid fairy rules. "You used to be so polite and stuff, you know better, I remember that! Because they DID change us, too, even if they couldn't make us do things we never would!"

The old looming imperiousness leaked back out of Equius. "You got so quiet." He shook horribly, his whole body looking for a moment like it would tear. "You grew remote, distant; you were ... in some way I could hardly name, you were nearly gone, only sparks of your fire remained..."

"Stop saying their words. You're talking as if you're still back there." He stared and then shook again, and folded his fingers in the sleeves of the hoodie before rubbing his arms. "It was the way they kept splitting me to complicate the storyline. The stupid, really really stupid storyline! An evil twin is bad enough, but septuplets?"

"The part where..." Equius stopped looking so freaked out. Or looked freaked out in a whole different way. "The part where you turned out to be your own mother is a lot harder to believe."

"I can't believe they fell for that." Aradia marvelled again. Especially at the way it had seemed like a completely logical plan to her at the time. "I was stretched so thin I could see the strands of the story in all the different parts of me, and then I nudged into what I wanted." She looked over her shoulders at her wings, fluttering them slightly. Dark red flecks of brightness shook loose. "Somehow I could feel that if I was reborn in there, there would be some ... some power in it. Some magic. And even though it's their magic, I knew it would be possible to get out."

She'd shown up in front of him like this, wings out, smiling for the first time in years, and unable to explain it, and it hadn't made a difference. He'd followed.

"It is. Amazing of you," Equius said. "You saved me - thank you - I, I can't overstate, Aradia, oh gosh, oh gosh, thank you - but. Why did you bring me back with you?" He swallowed convulsively, fresh sweat all over his face.

"I knew you could go silently for the entire path. I already knew you'd follow my every footstep. And you wouldn't look away." Equius's face went sickly-greenish looking. He didn't deny it.

He'd been kind when she was brainwashed; she remembered it all. Her lingering memories were a secret that hadn't yet been revealed to the Fair Ones; she'd never have manipulated the storylines so easily if they'd got hold of that contentious thread - they'd have adored that wavering tension of love and hate. She remembered everything of those long, long days before Terezi and Serenity had saved her; Equius having platters of delicacies laid before her, walking alongside her through dressmakers and galleries and museums, and hardly touching her save to force his engagement ring on her finger.

"I don't trust you, Equius," she said, "but do I know you. You were the best bet for somebody who could follow the rules of the spell for escape, and it wasn't fair that anyone would have to stay in the story. And you'd come back to help the others."

He just fell. Aradia realised how long it had been for her, the way her plan had gone so right that she could only feel its correctness settling into place in the world, and the relief of realising she could cast off the thousands upon thousands of ways it might have gone wrong. Equius was a wreck from old imprisonment and new freedom. He panted with panic. "Go ... back..."

"Of course you can! You helped build the Plush Rump business empire to unimaginable heights! Oh ... jeez ... why did you do that? - never mind!" she said, seeing the same awed horror on his face growing so profound he looked like he might keel over and puke really spectacularly. "My point is, you're a big fancy ruthless businessman, and a great partner to Dirk, and you can totally do this!"

"AR, Dirk, Kanaya," he murmured. "Casey ... and Vriska's alive, and..." He nodded slowly, then rushed to stand, wobbling a little on his feet. "Should we go right now? No ... we need to get weapons or something..."

"Red," she said, flapping her wings again and smiling. She couldn't help it, even if she was smiling at him. He ducked his face away. "The colour red can be useful to break enchantments! And we need bells, and some good loud death metal, and absolutely everything else in all those pamphlets about fairies and fairy circles we used to get from school and then not read."

"Will you be all right? With those. The wings, I mean." He looked firmly down at his own clenched fists and the ground. Well, it had been a long time since the fists were so small and the grass was a real kind of green. "You'll have to hide them or people will realise something's wrong."

He plucked at a sleeve of his hoodie and glanced at her, a silent and terrified offer to give it to her, like he'd done long ago when it was all right. She silently tucked her wings away in her magic and he looked no better off.

"I don't know what I'm going to say to Vriska when she's back!" Aradia announced. The truth. Maybe. It would take a long time to work up to it. "Gosh, I don't know what Vriska is going to say to anyone ever."

She waited, and eventually he gave her a very quick glance. It was like he expected it to hurt. Then he nodded. "Let's go prepare, then."

Equius seemed to expect every movement of his to hurt her, it turned out. When they were on the subway home and he thought of his family and Nepeta, he even flinched away when it was her patting him on the shoulder. She ignored it as nicely as possible as he cried into his fists.

Why was she even being nice? Aradia asked herself, leaning back into the seat and the slight rocking of the train. Well, there was so much else to do - this wasn't even that important. She was going to get every last one of them back where they belonged, even PM and WV and everyone else whose names had faded away. Maybe she could even take them back to the time they came from, if they wanted... She was free, and that was too much for her too feel too much pain.

And she expected better of him. She'd learned years ago not to, every time he stepped into the light from one of his dark machinations - but gosh, like anybody was really going to have 'dark machinations' now! But she knew him and all the back-and-forth of his stupid mind, and she was waiting for him to start surprising her. Hoping, anyway.

"They can't make us do anything now," Aradia said, a little too loud so that other people in the cab looked at her. She smiled back brightly and then leaned over a little to talk to Equius. He'd stopped sniffling. "What we do from now on is only because we want to!"

"Yes," he said immediately. A little like when he used to get excited about history projects. "Yes. From now on, it will be better. I'll make - better decisions. You ... won't have to worry." He said I'm sorry so quietly that he almost mouthed it. Aradia nearly started in on very inappropriate laughter, and bit her lip hard against it. He'd been proud in a really guy-ish way that one time Nepeta called him 'an actions-speak-louder-than-words kind of person'. Now he'd managed to combine the two!

She managed to just give him a smile before sitting back again. Maybe there wasn't anything he could do to make her trust him. It had been so long ago when she had. But she was home, she was unafraid, and she had a little hope.
slippy: Photo of a wheat field and a stormy sky, surrounded by a border ((Los Campesinos!) sounds about right)

FILL: TEAM KARKAT <3 NEPETA

[personal profile] slippy 2012-06-23 04:31 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not like flowers die where she walks. No, that would be telling.

The world is always full of messages, and around the middle of the game, you hate everything for not giving a warning about her - crackling sparks and choking smoke in her mass of red hair, snakes set to rattling when she laughs. You never should have agreed to be dealt in; you should have known, somehow, to take this woman's measure more than the other players'. But the light shining through the saloon doors never dimmed when she walked in, and at the one end of the bar the morning's wildflower bouquet kept up its fight against the heat of the day.

The woman doesn't have tells - or truth be told, she has every tell in the book. The rest of the table started off playing complacent and indulgent about her presence, but every wildly expressive move she makes gets used with each hand, no matter what she was dealt or what she plays.

Their table is gathering a crowd though it's hardly past noon and most everybody's neck-deep in their labours or taking a break from the heat of it. There are even some kids, and Aradia's normally stern about keeping them out. This card-playing woman is a pure entertainment, wild where she's just sitting in her chair. She grins, she bounces in her chair, she adjusts her hat and theatrically shakes out her sleeves to show them empty, she spins her guns and nearly upends her glasses into her mouth when she drinks. Nothing gets her down. Oh, sometimes she curses and tenses, like she might just be stuck - but what if she's putting it on? What if she has yet another perfect hand? But what if it's real?

You start to play seriously. You also have a smile that can't be shifted, but there are enough folks watching who know enough to nudge a neighbour and point out how you played with more smoothness in your motions. That has cost you a couple of games at times. It hides your heart working like a piston, though, and you can't fault yourself overmuch.

The woman stays the same. It wouldn't be possible for her to act more overconfident, even if she probably is picking up that you're on the metaphorical ropes. Her mouth looks as viciously victorious as before, she still twirls her pearl-handled pistols every now and again. You glimpsed bigger guns lurking under her men's jacket. Every player started cheating long ago, but you can't get a handle on all her tricks. The way she eyes you, it's probably the same for her. You wish she'd shoot blue streaks of lightning from her eyes and have done with it.

Aradia makes encouraging gestures when she passes with orders, peering over shoulders to follow the state of the game ... which, soon enough, she's doing with a slightly different kind of interest as she takes silver coins and crumpled bills to stuff into her pockets. She hands people their drinks and food and takes two lots of money - one for payment, and...

People are starting to bet on who's going to win this game.

You're the fastest draw in the West. People laugh when they hear that, because you know you have a boy's face and hardly look like you've even seen a gun up close, but they only keep laughing when they don't have to play cards against you. You eye the woman.

"I didn't catch your name, ma'am," you say, and the noise all around hushes. The crowd knows who the real players are. They're watching the two of you, now. And they still don't see when you hide a card up her sleeve.

You knew she'd be able to follow it. You think she might even be nearly as fast as you.

"Serket! The name's Serket! What the hell game are you trying to pull? Focus, damn you!" she yells, and ups the bet she'd laid on the table.

"I still put my money on Tavros," Aradia says in an undertone as the people went back to full volume, and she wasn't close to the only one. Serket turns around to gape at her in particular, though - turns back to her cards - and then turns back to Aradia. "As if!" She huffs and fluffs, and after two turns shoots a couple of cards of her own up your sleeves. The cards nearly fly between them, and they remember their own hands and each other's, deducing what's left of the hand for the other players. Both of you close in on them. You eye the bets racking up all around - and you keep an eye on each other.

You're too cool to have much in the way of tells, which is something that really makes people laugh. Especially when they're called David Strider, but technically he is too cool to laugh, so there. You're a grounded soul in a way that most people have difficulty with understanding, and you'll smile no matter the hand you're dealt. What does she find when she turns her attention to you, fully or slyly? No new warmth in the atmosphere, nothing sharper about the taste of the drinks, the music no clearer or more rhythmic.

The two of you play out the final round and conclude with your cards spread in a fan on the table before you. It is probably a sound move to keep looking at each other instead of the cards - it distracts the watchers from thinking you two might have thrown the game - so it's just as well you're not looking away. You don't know which of you won, and she probably doesn't either.

Her sneer is, basically, terrifying. You tip your hat, she sneers worse and puts her boots up on the table - weathered and knocked about - and you stand up and gesture to Aradia. "A drink for Miss Serket, on me," you call out - oh Lord, she didn't have a ring, did she? Would she? You get whistles and backslaps as you make your way to the bar.

"Aradia," you whisper to your old friend. "Hey, those bets you collected..."

"Of course you're getting a cut," she says in an undertone, nodding you towards the back, and you turn and give Serket a nod too. It makes no difference as she's already coming after you. The light feeling in your feet and the dread tightening your stomach as all just you, and the world has nothing in particular to say about it. For all that red hair, scowling, and the men's clothes, Serket's not ugly.

Splitting the money in front of all these people would be asking for a fight. Aradia makes a show of talking to you and Serket, swirling about with the drinks twice as much as necessary, and underneath all that manages to give you a gander at what she's putting in his cashbox for the afternoon. She does most of the talking too, which you have to listen to carefully to realise it's a negotiation for how the money's getting split. She ends up with eighteen per cent of her own - Serket raises it from fifteen from the goodness of her heart, she insists, too loudly - and then Aradia gives an outrageous wink at finding out how you two had played everybody else.

"And our share, Serket - a fifty-fifty split, I think, sounds good," you say. Eighty-twenty, Serket doesn't say, and you're surprised. You smile a little shame-faced at her. The two of you shake - she smiles back and you wait, for some stupid reason, for a crack in her face - and then you both slug back your drinks.

Then you put down the glass, hop off your barstool - and hightail it out of the saloon like a jackrabbit come within an inch of a bear-trap snapping shut.

Serket screeches in outrage in the next instant, and where anyone else might be embarrassed, she comes after you.

You make it outside through the people, round the saloon and to the post where your horse is tied up. She'll probably have no compunction about yelling at you in the dusty noonday of the high street, but as long as you can get on your horse—

Serket strikes a shoulder like a rifle butt into the small of your back, and you splash and thump into the horses' water trough. With a nearly painful twist you scramble around so you can see her next move.

There are the sparks. Finally, like it felt all along, there's fire framing her sneer, licking at the air from the tips of her flyaway hair as you look up.

"Nobody cheats me!" she announces. "You really want to be nobody so bad?" She looks angry - and impressed - but like she's really determined to be angry, and her hand is on her gun.

The thing is, you're in water.

"At least, uh ... it's more like, I made you cheat you?" You hold up a placatory hand and she looks at it like she'll slap it away as soon as she finds a sledgehammer ... which means that she doesn't notice your leg coming around to hook on hers and yank her off balance. Right into the trough with you, and you dunk yourself so there's space to get her gun and her head in the water.

She pushes up spluttering, harmless and ridiculous and teeth bared - and the water around you both heats. Steam starts to rise like smoke.

The lady does not stop. She probably doesn't ever stop, you could well believe, and you gape at her in horror and admiration.

She shoves herself out of the trough. "What? It happens!" Her colour goes high under her freckled, brown-burnt skin. "Damnation!"

You hold up your hands in sincere appeasement. "I don't even have the money. You saw, it's all back there." You gesture back towards the bar. She doesn't look. "And, as for playing in the way I played ... I knew we'd get a better cut, doing it that way. You, uh. You clearly could match that kind of play, I could tell, so I thought..."

"Thought you'd make a fool of me?" The sneer doesn't work as well now, even with the steam. "Or..."

You wait - you get what maybe you're waiting for. Her smile feels like a new performance, for all that it has the same swagger to it.

"A partner?" Serket says.

"I, uh ... ride alone?"

"You sure about that, mister, or is it just a thought you maybe had when you woke up this morning?"

"I, uh. I ride alone. Although, you know, ma'am, you play a mighty good game, and... If we had to play again, fair and square...?" You grin enticingly.

"Then you'd go down faster than—!" One hand smacks into her other palm. She looks to be knocking herself off course, with the smallest grimace. Then Serket makes her smile brilliant again and says, "Faster than I can dance. I love to dance. Think you could match me on that?"

You look at her. You look around the horse yard and high street.

"Don't be smart with me," she snaps. "No, not now."

"This is, uh, one of probably very few places where they'll let a white lady dance with me..."

She hoots with laughter. "If we're looking for a place where I'll get called a lady, then no goddamned way do I know of one." She's lit up. She's hopeful. She hasn't killed you yet. "I have a friend who's got a place open to any kind of dancing, just about. He plays a mean piano. The food's not bad."

You make a helpless gesture. "I thought that, maybe, you wanted to get even for my trick."

"Maybe I really thought that too. But I guess today's your day for being persuasive, huh?" The compliment feels, somehow, like a challenge. People don't believe you when you say you like challenges. Maybe even when you don't know what on Earth the challenge is even for.

"Tell me your name. Let's introduce ourselves properly, lady and gentleman." She holds out a hand to help you up. You are soaked, on your back, the horses are starting to look you askance and the lady still wants to dance.

You put your hand in hers and say, "The Toreador."

Her grip firms slow and sure and too tightly, and her eyes narrow. "Yeah, well. Consider this your lucky day. You have just met Scorpion-Sting Serket." She hauls you up.

"Oh, that's a good one," you say, grabbing your hat from the water trough, and then you realise. "Oh! The Scorpion, oh, wow!"

She does like that you've heard of her - the grin's back for a second before she speaks. "Yeah, well, you think you're surprised? I thought, having done some asking around and investigating, that I was looking for a game with a real player, a man come over the border from way down south ... a guy named Tavros Nitram."

"That, ah. Well, I don't think it's as impressive. And, you know. You agree, with a great kind of name like yours."

The flattery tells as easily on her face as a hand of lucky cards, but she tries really hard and makes a sour expression. "People, I have been told and told, are not a game you can win at. I'm thinking it's best to make a deal here, where you and me, we go by the much less loaded names of Nitram and Miss Vriska Serket."

"Well, if there's playing involved ... maybe it's best to win alongside people, after all, right? Vriska," you add, in a way that's probably embarrassing.

"Oh, don't think you're going to get away with that all the time!" she says, smiling radiantly. "Convince me first."

You take a few steps away to make space to give a slight bow, taking her hand as politely as possible - she moves it into the gesture - to kiss the back. You've always wanted to do that. And you grab a flower as you straighten to offer to her, deeper blue than her eyes, just as pretty - might as well do this properly.

"Holy shit!" says Serket. Says Vriska, eyes wide. "Flowers grow where you walk?"

"It has been, at times, known to happen." You wipe the mud off the bottom of the stem while you're at it, and offer it again. "I think having a liking for gentle things, and nature, and ah, friendliness ... doesn't mean that, uh, I can't have what most people would call, ah. You know. Fun."

Which you didn't mean the way it sounded. Not exactly, or precisely, or at least not mostly. But this lady is no lady, after all, and takes only a moment to overcome her shock and then grabs you round the shoulders, hearty as a cowhand with the first fistful of money for the month. You should split up until you go dancing; leave them wanting more, is what you've been told by knowledgeable sources. Her hand's warm, though.

There's nothing here telling you to stay - flowers turn to the sun, not to a fire - but though you still almost think there should be, there's nothing to say you should go. The two of you will have to make something out of this match all of your own.
watchfob: cropped drawing of sorey from tales of zestiria dressed as a member of ryuseitai from ensemble stars. he is smiling and ready for action! (Default)

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3JADE

[personal profile] watchfob 2012-06-23 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)


Come on, Eridan, I )(ave to finis)( studying!

aww youvve been studyin all night can you blame a guy for tryina givve his girl a break

We )(ave a test tomorrow! And besides, your jokes are terrible.

thats a load abalone im a comedic genius
ext_1204239: (scarf love)

Re: FILL: TEAM Eridan <3< Vriska

[identity profile] lustfullyc.livejournal.com 2012-06-23 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
<3
draconicalgorithm: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM KANAYA (diamond) KARKAT

[personal profile] draconicalgorithm 2012-06-23 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Dirk (heart) Equius

My Little Pony AU + Zombie Apocalypse
Edited 2012-06-23 16:45 (UTC)
ext_1204239: (Crosed guns)

Re: FILL: TEAM KARKAT♥SOLLUX

[identity profile] lustfullyc.livejournal.com 2012-06-23 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you
ext_1204239: (Crosed guns)

Re: FILL: TEAM DAVE♥JAKE

[identity profile] lustfullyc.livejournal.com 2012-06-23 04:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Why are you sorry? This is lovely.
sassy_gay_autoresponder: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM KARKAT <3 VRISKA

[personal profile] sassy_gay_autoresponder 2012-06-23 04:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Feferi <3 Aradia

Prom + Robots
sassy_gay_autoresponder: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM KARKAT <3 VRISKA

[personal profile] sassy_gay_autoresponder 2012-06-23 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Jade <3 Vriska

Sports + Comedy
specialagentartemis: (Default)

Re: FILL: TEAM KANAYA<3VRISKA

[personal profile] specialagentartemis 2012-06-23 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
This is absolutely wonderful, wow.
draconicalgorithm: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM KANAYA (diamond) KARKAT

[personal profile] draconicalgorithm 2012-06-23 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Terezi (spade) Vriska

Half-Life AU + Romantic Comedy
sassy_gay_autoresponder: (Default)

PROMPT: TEAM KARKAT <3 VRISKA

[personal profile] sassy_gay_autoresponder 2012-06-23 04:51 pm (UTC)(link)
(Eep, sorry for spamming prompts!)

Dave <3< Karkat

Christmas + Drunkenness
cloudymew: (Default)

PROMPT: ALPHA!DAVE<3ALPHA!ROSE

[personal profile] cloudymew 2012-06-23 05:06 pm (UTC)(link)
rose<3sollux
scifi + horror
outcastermine: (Default)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM Roxy<3AR

[personal profile] outcastermine 2012-06-23 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
WHY CAN'T I FILL THIS
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH