BONUS ROUND 1

[hso_mods]

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.
PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP]
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.
FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP]
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!

Comments

FILL: TEAM KARKAT <3 NEPETA

[slippy]

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.