hso_mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hso_mods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hs_olympics2012-06-10 01:02 am
hso_mods) wrote in hs_olympics2012-06-10 01:02 am
Entry tags:
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
- 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.
- Look through the prompts and fill whichever you like!
- You may not fill prompts for your ship, nor may you fill your own team's prompts.
- 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!
PROMPT: TEAM GAM<>KAR
FILL: TEAM Rose <3 Sollux
December 1st, 2409
There were still some things you couldn't trust to machines.
Every house in New Saffron City had an alchemiter, but the sprawling metropolis was caught in the throes of its third grist shortage this sweep. And some packages were just too important to trust to the sendificator--one wrong button press and you could delay your shipment by a whole perigee.
That was why the runners still had jobs. Every night they took to the streets and alleys, cutting through slums and construction sites, navigating easily even when the smog was at its thickest. Whether they were transporting sensitive data, delicate tech, or drugs, the couriers did the job no questions asked--as long as you had the cred to pay. Runners were the darling of every crime syndicate and biotech corporation in New Saffron, and Jade Harley was among the best.
The cold sharp wind tickled her ears as she sprinted full-tilt through Twelve West. Jade hadn’t even broken a sweat when she finally arrived at Sollux Captor’s door six kilometers later. She had been engineered for speed and stamina; her muscular, tall frame was packed with the best biotech her grandfather’s money had been able to buy. Respirocytes in her bloodstream ensured a steady flow of oxygen to every cell no matter how hard she pushed herself, and her personal best for holding her breath was a full fifteen minutes. She could zoom in on a man fourteen meters away with her bionic eyes and count his freckles.
The benefit of being ruled by an alien race was getting access to their technology.
“About time you got here,” Sollux grumbled through the intercom before she’d even rung. “I’ll buzz you in.”
The door hummed, clicked, slid quietly open. Jade adjusted her floppy, oversized newsboy cap between her ears and stepped into the quiet of Sollux’s workshop.
She found the genius at his workbench, strewn with various tools and fragments of honeycomb. A cloud of bees hovered humming nearby in front of the security display. Sollux kept motion-activated cameras trained on every possible entrance to his lab. He loathed surprise visits.
“KK’s already sent me three messages asking if you’ve been here yet,” he called over his shoulder.
She rolled her eyes. “That jerk! He has no patience at all, does he?” Frowning, Jade checked her watch. It wasn’t even midnight. “--I’m six minutes ahead of schedule!”
Sollux turned to face her, rolling his eyes under his colored glasses. “You know KK. He’s not happy unless he’s micromanaging something or yelling at it. Douche.”
“The crabbiest crab who ever crabbed,” she agreed, smoothing out a wrinkle in her black shirt. “Is the package ready?”
Technically, Karkat Vantas, distribution manager for the Midnight Corporation, was her best customer. This did not stop Jade from thinking of him as grumpy, high-strung, and kind of adorable.
“Yeah, hang on.” He unlocked the workbench’s top drawer and pulled out a box no more than two inches square, wrapped in golden paper printed with a honeycomb pattern. In his long, slender fingers it looked impossibly small.
“Is that it?” Jade demanded. “I wasn’t even supposed to be working tonight, I’m doing this as a favor to Karkat!”
Sollux shrugged, his ill-fitting button-down bunching at the shoulders. It looked like it was yesterday’s shirt, judging from the wrinkles. “KK told me it was important.”
“You are too nice to him, Sollux,” she said firmly, tucking the box into her utility belt (black canvas with green stitching, three pouches, all with hidden compartments--a nine-sweeps wriggling day present from Kanaya). “I hope you weren’t up late working on this!”
“I’m always up late,” he said. “Least this is something I got paid for.” A bee darted from the cloud and hovered at his nose. “They’re starting to fuss, I’ve got to finish this repair and get them back into the frames. See you later.”
Jade let herself out. The quickest way to the Midnight Corporation would be a straight run from the west quarter through the low slums of North and out into the glittering business district of Four East. She’d run two blocks before she realized she was growling, a low rumble in the back of her throat.
Sometimes being part dog was completely embarrassing.
She took a deep breath and tried to dismiss her irritation. So what if she was working on her wriggling day? Karkat always made it worth her while--in addition to being her most frequent customer, he was also the highest-paying. The Midnight Corporation had deep pockets.
She cut into the construction zone at the bottom of Fifteen North, scrambling up the chain-link fence and dropping in a ready squat on the other side. Construction sites were as good as playgrounds to her. The smog was thinner than usual tonight, and the waxing moon above provided her light. Though trolls suffered no ill effects from the weak Earth sun, they were still by and large a nocturnal race, and humans had been forced to adapt to that in the generations after the Alternian invasion.
She ducked under a ladder, step-vaulted over a low wall, and kept moving forward. She knew the site well. Felt Enterprises was building a hivestem here, but construction had halted at the beginning of the last grist shortage and hadn’t picked up since. The company was probably rationing its supplies for projects in the upper-spectrum wards of the city.
There was a wall up ahead, she remembered, and that would divert her path to the right. She could tic-tac off it to clear the stack of cruxite dowels a meter away, come down running, and take a vault over the row of barrels. From there it was a clear shot to the single complete wall of the development, through the space cut for its door, then up the fence and out.
Jade kicked easily off the wall, soaring over the cruxite and picking up speed. Two meters to the barrels--she’d done this at least four times this week; it was her favorite path through the site. Sometimes she came here to blow off steam when she had nothing better to do. Of the city’s sixteen administrative wards, North was the least patrolled. It was mostly humans and lowbloods up here--no need for surveillance. The facilities available weren’t nice enough to bother preserving.
She took the barrels with a low chest vault today, swinging her feet over. Her right foot caught on something long on the other side, and she pitched forward as a howl of pain echoed through the construction site.
She twisted in midair, tucked her head in, came down on her shoulder and rolled, spreading the impact diagonally across her back and coming up in a sit.
“Oww! That’s new...”
Someone laughed behind her. “That would have been a bitchtits jump if you’d cleared it, girlie.”
Jade scrambled to her feet and whipped around. A pair of trolls leaned against the barrels--one painted and chuckling, the other holding one of his long, wide horns and keening.
“Oh noooo!” Thoughts of her own safety far from her mind, Jade darted to his side and knelt down. “I tripped on you, didn’t I? I’m so sorry!”
“Uhh, it’s okay, at this point I am well used to, various types of horn-related injury.”
Jade unclipped her flashlight from the D-ring of her utility belt and turned it on the two trolls. “No, seriously, let me have a look and make sure you’re okay.” The injured one leaned back, trying to shrink from the light, and she frowned. “Come on!”
He was shirtless, his chest crusted with muddy brown stripes, and Jade realized it was his blood.
“He ain’t liking the light, wicked sister,” the painted troll drawled. He was dressed in tattered blacks. If he had a caste symbol on Jade couldn’t see it. “Best put that motherfucker away.”
Reluctantly, she did so. “At least let me check you out,” she pleaded. “You got pretty roughed up somewhere, didn’t you?”
As her eyes readjusted to the dark, she saw the injured troll nod. She offered him her knuckles, and he gingerly tapped his fist against them, gray to brown.
“I’m Jade,” she said.
“I’m Tavros, and this is Gamzee.”
“What happened?” Her first guess was that a highblood had caused his injuries. It happened pretty frequently, despite the planet’s progressive politics.
Earth was on the very outskirts of the Alternian empire, and the Condesce’s grip here wasn’t quite as tight as on other planets. A hundred and fifty sweeps of trolls and humans coexisting side-by-side post-war had relaxed hemospectrum hierarchy enforcement in most of the major cities. A lowblood could rise far higher on a frontier planet like Earth than on any of the core Alternian settlements. Karkat had told her once that he and Sollux had both done unreasonably well for themselves--a management position in a large corporation, a technician with a workshop of his own.
Most others weren’t so lucky.
“The Wild Hunt up and motherfucking happened, pretty puppy-eared sister.”
Jade bit her lip. “That’s ridiculous! Everyone knows Faeries aren’t real.”
“Real enough, to almost kill me.” Even a sharp tone sounded hesitant coming from Tavros.
She’d heard the stories when she was little--Faeries had been part of Earth before trolls, before humans even, and they’d been driven underground by modern civilization. But they weren’t happy about it--oh, definitely not!--and they were as likely to kidnap a grub as a human child to exact their little revenges on.
“Well, if you were hurt by the Faeries,” Jade asked patiently, “how did you escape?” She snuck a glance at her watch. Karkat would be wondering where she was, no doubt... Well, he would just have to be understanding and patient for a change!
“Well that’s thanks, to Gamzee.” Tavros turned grateful eyes to the other troll for just a second before returning his gaze to Jade. Her infodevice buzzed in her pocket, and she ignored the message. Her watch beeped a second behind it, its screen lighting up. A Pesterchum Mobile message, then--she’d installed it on both devices. Runners needed to be accessible to their clients, after all.
Except... not now. This seemed important somehow.
“Brother was the center of attention when motherfuckers got their frolic on in the wilds,” Gamzee said. “I was camped there with some friends of mine, having us some smokes and a little relax, and I decided to take myself on a walk. And what do I see out in those wasted woods but some pale-ass winged assholes taking the knife to Tavbro here.”
“How many?”
“Fuck if I remember.”
“You fought them off alone?” Jade couldn’t quite believe that this rangy, loose-limbed troll might be able to take on a band of Faeries. The stories had said they were shining and strong!
“Gamzee’s... a highblood,” Tavros muttered very quietly, so that Jade had to strain to hear him.
Well, that would explain it, wouldn’t it.
“When?”
“Yesterday, uhh, around dawn. Gamzee brought me here, he said it was, safe. He had to carry me.” Tavros reached down and tapped his legs. “These... don’t work anymore.”
Jade felt in the center pouch of her belt and pulled out two grub bars. They were bland, but at least the protein would help. “Here. One each. You’d better eat.” The infodevice in her right pocket rang. A single press of the top button sent Karkat straight to voicemail. She sat back on her heels, watching the pair, trying to figure out her next move.
She had to deliver this package to Karkat. But she had to help these two guys, right? Tavros was in bad shape--she wasn’t sure of the extent of his injuries. Broken legs, maybe? And even if Gamzee had rescued him, she didn’t trust his ability to continue providing for the other troll.
The infodevice rang again, and her ears flattened against the top of her head. Not now, Karkat! Once more, she silenced it.
“If I call someone to pick you up,” she finally asked, “will you go with him? Tavros, you need medical attention, and I bet you can both use a real meal.”
She watched, frowning, as the two trolls exchange glances.
“I’m going to need you to trust me! I know that’s really scary since we just met, but I promise I won’t hurt you, and neither will he.”
Jade pulled out her infodevice, silenced her third call from Karkat, and tapped on her contacts list.
“Hi John! Did you get me a birthday present yet? Good, because I chose one myself!”
[oh no the whole thing exceeds max comment length! hang on five minutes, I will post the whole thing on AO3 and link the rest over!]
FILL: TEAM Rose <3 Sollux - part deux
Re: FILL: TEAM Rose <3 Sollux - part deux