BONUS ROUND 5

[hso_mods]

Bonus Round 5

Tales from the Road

Hey, shippers! HSO is winding down, so we thought we'd take a look back at the journey, so to speak. With that in mind, this next bonus round is going to be roadtrip-themed! Give us a little taste of your characters' life on the road, whatever form that takes.

Rules

1. Submit prompts! Prompts should consist of one ship (friendship/gen is fine too!) and a location. This cannot be your team's ship! This round we will not be giving points for prompts.


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 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 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!

Bonus Round 5 is now closed!

16/08/12 Comments are unscreened again, for the sake of comments on fills. No new fills are being counted for points.

Comments

PROMPT: TEAM BRO<3GRANDPA

[apollosglare]

Eridan<3Aradia

The Beach

I don't know if I'm doing this right, I just know I'm desperate for this ship.

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3ERIDAN

[zeecatfish]

When Sollux had asked Aradia if she’d be willing to go along with a double date with one of his coworkers she’d immediately known. The changes in his mood, the strange perfume clinging to his clothes when he got home late, the distant look he got sometimes when he’d refuse to tell her what he was thinking about, all of them were exactly what she’d feared for months.

Feferi Peixes was a beautiful woman with a cheerful face and an infectious, bubbly laugh. Aradia had expected she’d hate her the moment she laid eyes on her. Instead she simply felt herself growing numb, every smoldering look between her boyfriend and the woman across the table from him making the gap between her and Sollux feel bigger. The food in the three star establishment tasted bitter, and if she’d have to give the taste a name she’d call it finality.

Across the table from her sat Eridan Ampora, Feferi’s fiancé. When Aradia and Sollux had walked in she’d almost audibly heard his heart breaking, and since then he hadn’t said a word, hardly looking up from his plate. The few times she’d caught his eyes. they’d been misty with tears.

And truthfully, she knew how he felt. This dinner was for Feferi and Sollux. They weren’t wanted here. It wasn’t how she wanted things to end, and she was sure it wasn’t how Sollux had meant to tell her, if he meant to tell her at all.
They’d just finished the main course when she couldn’t take it anymore. Reaching up to her neck, she unclasped the shimmering red necklace Sollux had given her on their first anniversary and placed the precious jewelry on the table before him. Then she straightened out her maroon dress and rose from her seat, turning to Eridan. “I believe we should go,” she told him firmly.

A stunned silence had fallen over the table, and for a moment he just gaped at her. Then she could see something flicker in his eyes and with shaking hands he began fidgeting with his fingers. Then he pulled one of his many rings from his fingers and, like her, gingerly put it on the table. His engagement ring glistered in the light and he shook his head, putting his hands up when Feferi regained her composure and began protesting. “There aint really anythin’ to say here, Fef.”
And just like that it was over. Even as she walked away from the table Aradia could feel the weight of months of suspicion and distrust lifting from her shoulders. “I think,” she told Eridan when they stepped out of the fine restaurant, “That you should take me somewhere.”

To her surprise he agreed.

---

“Come on, put your shoulders in it!” she laughed, legs wrapped firmly around his legs. “Weren’t you the one bragging about what a strong man you are?”

He’d driven her out to a small beach, empty at the late hour of a cold day. There they’d sat down and tried to start a conversation. But the wounds they carried were fresh and soon the elation of having made the final decision wore off. She’d cried and he’d complained and then together they’d screamed out over the surf, shouting obscenities and complaints until they were both laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

She’d taken of her shoes and ran into the water only to scream again, this time because of how cold the water was and he’d rushed in after her, lifting her up out of the water with strength he obviously didn’t possess and they were laughing again.
With the setting sun painting a vivid backdrop it was almost magical. The manic adrenalin coursing through the both of them, the relief and happiness and sadness and pain, the uncertainty of the future with how much and how fast things were changing, all of it fit together in a strange hymn of autumn colours and laughter, only slightly off key.



She’d never really broken up with Sollux. There was more to breaking off an engagement, especially one with as many political ties as his, than returning the engagement ring. Still, not all the reason in the world felt like reason at all.

Their lips met in a sweet, gentle kiss and while nothing was alright and the future was uncertain, the kiss tasted like beginnings.

PROMPT: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY

[veira]

ship: aradiabot/jadebot
location: MARS!!!!

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3JADE

[ohdeerling]

Somewhere in the distance, the Mars rover shakes his head, and mutters under his breath, "frickin' tourists."

PROMPT: TEAM JOHN<3KARKAT

[crowry]

Rose<3Kanaya; firefly class transport ship, outer space.

FILL: TEAM ARADIA<>SOLLUX

[possibly_thrice]

Their latest client was elegant, Alliancebred, and-- as Dave had pointed out no fewer than five times, twice in the context of space athletics-- glowing.

"She assures me that it's all the rage on Ariel," said Rose, having wearied of comparisons between Kanaya Maryam's complexion and a football diamond when Dave began sculpting his protein chunks into a demonstrative pile. Dinner that night was a small affair; John and Jade had elected to take their meal in their own quarters, presumably to put it through its depravity paces before consuming the quivering remains, and Kanaya never joined them to eat. She claimed to have brought her own rations. Rose, who had personally snooped through case after case full of cosmetics and silk before agreeing to rent the shuttle to her, was fairly sure she hadn't. But it was hard to argue with a person whose thumb-twiddling strobed.

"Which?" said Dave. "The vajazzle or the thirst for human blood?"

"All Alliance members are of necessity bloodsuckers. But we don't know that the carpet matches the luminous window decor," said Rose, in the spirit of gentle reproof. "One should acquire evidence before one generalizes."

Dave looked at her. "You offering?"

Rose, determinedly, dug into her protein.



"Are you offering?" asked Kanaya.

It was later. Rose had left Dave to polish Tera-- his favorite sword or his subtlest stowaway thusfar, she wasn't sure-- and gone to suggest to their on-board Companion that she might like some companionship herself. She wasn't sure what she'd been thinking; she was, perhaps, a little drunk. Kanaya stood in the doorway with her hair piled dark over the curve of her skull, the white light of her scalp turning her fine roots red.

"Absolutely," said Rose. "We can play Yahtzee."

Kanaya regarded her levelly. "Have you ever thought it strange," she said, "that historical records indicate that none of our standing set of social pastimes have undergone serious change in a thousand years?"

A silence.

"I think we also have Monopoly," said Rose.

Kanaya's eyes were dark. Her eyelids turned the flatter rim of each green iris gold.

"Yes, okay," she said. "Lead the way, captain."



In the end they played Scrabble.

Kanaya, it turned out, was the sort of person who said her words aloud when she played them. Assuming she was a sort of person at all. Watching her push a single tile to fit the contours of its square, Rose thought, she must be. She has to be. No monster could bump the board with their knee so often and then insist on taking a break from play to readjust the placement of the vowels.

She wasn't as good of a player as Rose had thought she would be. She was slow, easily frustrated, inclined to lapse into serious thought and not lapse out again until Rose had begun to contemplate swapping their letters just to see if she would notice. She was clearly more concerned with showing off her vocabulary than scoring highly, which was a sentiment Rose could sympathize with; but the resultant picture of her vocabulary was strange and peppered with archaic portmanteaus, adjectives that had been unfashionable for longer than Scrabble. Words for pain and death and blood and light. Rose wanted to take her hands and hold them closed, empty, until Kanaya said something that made sense. Like, "You lost the war because you were only flesh," and, "How could you win when we were ancient, hungry, an army of suns?"

Not that she was a soldier. A Companion who had no business, who never opened her chests full of gowns. Once she had gone to meet a man she called Karkat, but Rose had no way of knowing whether he was real, or rich, or long dead.

The first thing Kanaya had said to her when she came aboard was, "You're a rebel." When Rose had made no immediate reply, she added, "And a smuggler." Rose had thought she was looking for a free ride, but Kanaya paid her way twice over. Perhaps, instead, it was a matter of free power. The sure knowledge that there was nothing Rose could ever have done.

They didn't finish the game. "I'm tired," said Kanaya, looking perfect and unchanged. She swept the board clean with the hanging sleeve of her cheongsam, and gathered the tiles into the velvet bag.

"Is this one of the skills they teach you at Companion school?" asked Rose. "Chickening out?"

Kanaya looked annoyed. "The only skill they teach at 'Companion School'"-- she did real air quotes, flicking brilliance like water across the metal floor-- "is pity." She got up and walked away. Rose picked up the black bag of letters, weighing it in her hand.



When she saw Kanaya again it was weeks after, and they were in deep space, carrying casks of bullets in the ship's deep metal bowels. Kanaya stood by a viewport, wearing gold.

"I talked to Jade," she said, without looking at Rose.

Rose waited. When it became clear there would be no details forthcoming without pressure, she said, "About?"

"We are approaching the edge of of the system," she said.

"That's true," said Rose. "Dave plotted a somewhat circuitous route. He's never been a linear thinker, except where knifeplay is concerned."

"He breaks them," said Kanaya.

"Yes."

"I understand," said Kanaya. The shape of her shoulder shone through the weave of her dress. To Rose, she looked monumental, like a lighthouse in the days before ships took to skies.

She tried to imagine what could make someone run after a thousand years. She couldn't think of anything, but then Kanaya turned toward her, and Rose wondered whether the question wasn't what could make someone stay.

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[thecreepyone]

calliope♥roxy♥rose♠eridan

hogwarts

FILL: TEAM JOHN<3KARKAT

[crowry]

PROMPT: TEAM DIRK<3ROXY

[shinigamishi]

Rose/Terezi (Any quadrant, or friendship).

Random location given to me by a friend: Mongolia.

FILL: TEAM AUTORESPONDER<3ROXY

[teakei]

In which Rose and Terezi go on an epic adventure to Mongolia on a pink-bowed pony and a giant dragon, Terezi has rapturous seizures over deliciously colored traditional clothes, and Rose wonders why no one has called the police on them yet.

PROMPT: Team English

[cest_what]

Aranea/Meenah (flushed or pale): The pink moon

FILL: TEAM Karkat♥Sollux

[turntecharmageddon2]

PROMPT: TEAM DIRK<3ROXY

[shinigamishi]

Jake<>Roxy

Narnia.

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3JOHN

[spectrumfizz]

Snowball fiiiiight!!

I had way too much fun with the background I'm sorry.

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

Aradia<>Sollux
Louisiana

FILL: TEAM JOHN<3ROSE

[para_normally]

"What the shit is this?"

"Sollux, don't be a baby. It's just fried catfish." Aradia shoves the newly-delivered plate back toward him with a clatter. Its smell fills his nose all over again and nearly overwhelms him, a cacophony of cayenne pepper and butter and cream and fish. Potatoes, too. His nose wrinkles. He's still refining the skills Terezi has painstakingly taught him, and the black void he'd become used to is now painted in faint, blurry watercolour, pale salty yellow clouds. The stark white glass beneath the meal creates a sort of completely fucking inappropriate halo around the slop. All around them, the metallic clink and scrape of forks and spoons mingle with a flood of human voices ringing in his ears.

He knows he's cringing, and thinks she makes a face at him in return. "You know, you've always kind of lacked a sense of adventure, so here is as good a place to start as any," she informs him.

"A sense of adventure." He puts his hands to his temples. "AA, I can't eat this. Can we please just fucking pack it up, pay, and leave?"

He thinks he smells her frown and roll her eyes. But all he wants right now is the droning hum of machines and a keyboard he knows by touch alone. Maybe an energy drink and some cereal, too. He is hungry.

Her chair squeaks on the hardwood floor, then warmth tinges the space around him and the scent of cranberry pricks his nasal passages. She's close. "Sollux," she says quietly, but with a laugh in her voice. The fried catfish is on her breath now, that and a smorgasbord of other things she's somehow shovelled down in an hour, but it's more tolerable that way. "If you're serious, then sure. But it's not like you to just clam up and not even give this human food a try." She pauses. "Well, maybe it was before... everything... but it hasn't been lately! You're falling back into old habits." Now he's sure he smells a furrow in her brow, despite her light tone.

He stays silent, and she sits back in her seat. Guilt rises in him somewhere, even though every other part of him wants to fight it. She's right, he guesses. He should be fucking better by now, now that the voices in his ears are only of the living, not the dead, and it's not like he hasn't known forever that he wouldn't go blind. Or like he minds being blind. They've only been here for an hour, and at the very least, he'd have to be a colossal dickwad to disappoint her.

He'd been quiet too long. Behind him, an accented voice (the accent sounds sort of similar to that insufferable prick's, but the voice is female) gradually becomes louder, approaching the table where they sit. He hears Aradia shift in her seat, and knows what she's going to do before he smells it.

She starts to raise her hand to get the waitress's attention.

He reaches out and catches it mid-journey.

It startles him almost as much as it does her, but he's sure he wants to stay here for a while after all. He tries to smile reassuringly. In a moment, Aradia's own smile returns, cranberry mingled with coconut. She lowers her arm, and with a flourish presents the dish once more, her grin widening.

This time, he takes a breath and picks up the flash of metal he smells at his left side, feels its end to confirm its status as a fork. He spears a chunk of fish and tastes it. It's much richer than anything he's used to, spicy as all hell, in no way anything like the sweet and processed foods he's used to... but, he notes, not bad.

"How is it?" Aradia asks excitedly.

He swallows, manages a genuine smile this time, and means it when he says, "It's okay."

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3JOHN<3KARKAT

[zoamh]

Calliope<>Roxy
Las Vegas

FILL: TEAM DAVE <3< GAMZEE

[rradioactiveppanda]

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

Kanaya<3Rose
Quebec

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3ROSE

[psonu]

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

John<3Karkat
Rural Mexico

FILL: TEAM KARKAT<>SOLLUX

[grausam]

I love your fills btw.

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3JOHN<3KARKAT

[zoamh]

Aradia/Tavros gen (GO TEAM CHARGE)
stormchasing (yes that's totally a location)

FILL: TEAM NEPETA<3TEREZI

[vulturer]

"How's it looking?"

"Umm, battery is full, and... look, they're swirling! Oh my god. This is really good, Aradia, this is gonna be great."

She's grinning all flat-teeth and viciously starving, leaning out the window with her foot on her pedal and one hand lazily gripping the wheel. Tavros is keeping the truck from careening off of the dirt road with his left hand and holding the giant video camera rig with his other, peering at the settings. Aradia howls at the sky, her whiptail braid thrashing in the wind of a thunderstorm that looks as if it were going to open its jaws and swallow the patch of land it roiled over, and he hears himself cackling. They are cutting through the country at sixty and heading straight into an enraged sky that creeps closer and closer to the fields.

She slips back into the driver's seat and floors it, sending dirt from the road flying up in clouds behind them, and she leans forward with her teeth bared at the storm. Tavros's hands are trembling with excitement as he readies the still camera and takes a couple of test shots through the windshield, muttering exaltations under his breath. He peers at the tiny viewscreen and shakes his head in disbelief; their first real find of the year and it looks hellish. The laptop bolted to the center console shows a spot of deep redness at the center of bright yellow and lime green halos, crawling along the map, threatening to burst.

When hailstones finally pummel the truck, Aradia screams in rapture and Tavros looks over at her. His face aches from grinning and he lets his own howl rip from his throat, pounding his hands on the dashboard. They are so close, so close to destruction and it ignites their very blood with the orgasmic thrill of such danger. The sound of hail against the roof is like a spray of bullets.

When the road ends, Aradia comes to a fast stop in the grass, the wheels skidding. Tavros hands her the still camera and they scramble out, pulling the hoods of their windbreakers over their heads, buttoning the holes around their massive horns. The clouds ooze ever lower, swirling, the color of grey like smoke from a great demon's cigar. For a moment, they just stare in awe.

"Tavros."

"Yes, Aradia?"

"Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a supercell?"

"I think that, fortunately, your eyes are in working order. Unless we are both hallucinating, of course."

"Unlikely."

"Very."

They watch, chests heaving. The funnel curls ever downward a bolt of lightning hits the ground, a crack of thunder following just seconds later. Aradia is bouncing on her toes, muttering a mantra of come on, come on under her breath. Tavros braces the camera's rig against his shoulder, only glancing down through the finder to set the crosshairs. He hits record and then looks back up. He curses joyously as the tunnel touches down.

Aradia leaps into the air, pumping her fist and screaming beautiful vulgarities. This is it. They shriek and howl and gasp as the storm rips a massive scar into the empty fields, far enough from civilization to be a pure act of glorious nature. Aradia turns and her dorky grin makes Tavros's every cell ignite with bliss. And then he remembers.

"Aradia, pictures!"

"Oh, shit, right!"

They turn and steal the moment.

PROMPT: TEAM BRO<3GRANDPA

[apollosglare]

Jade<3Jake

Egypt

PROMPT: Team English

[cest_what]

John/Karkat: Durmstrang Institute

FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY

[nextian]

The air was thin up here, which didn't stop it from whining against John's face as he banked over Bergen. The trunks swept wide behind him, colliding with Karkat's tail, and the low-grade muttering in his ear picked up force. John rolled his eyes. "Karkat," he said, "I can hear you. That is the whole point of this spell, buddy."

"Good!" said Karkat. He'd righted himself, more or less. "I would hate to think you were missing any of that! In fact, let me go over it again: there is no part of you or Scandinavia or high-altitude weather patterns or unexpected geese that I will not injure some major internal organ working up the energy to loathe for the rest of my life, sincerely, Karkat Fucking Vantas. Oh my God," he added, as one of his trunks, miserable and confused, swerved in front of him to rejoin the herd. "I'm wasting my life."

"I love flying," John admitted. He let his broom dip a little, and the trunk came more or less willingly to his wand. He ushered the poor thing back. "Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think, 'I can actually go flying today, because I'm a wizard,' and I spend like half an hour being smug about it. Do you ever do that?"

"I thought this spell was so that you could hear me!"

"Dude, no one ever said I had to listen." John winked back at him, and, when Karkat's expression didn't soften, tried an encouraging smile. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just you promised to curse Scandinavia with frog boils like an hour ago and I didn't want to point out you were getting repetitive."

"What a nightmare," Karkat groused. After a moment he pulled up alongside John. He was darkening in the sun the way he always did, and the freckles on his nose were coming out, cautiously. He looked good. John had tried kissing Karkat midair before. The scars from that were coming out, too, on both of them.

"John," Karkat said, and then lapsed into silence again, which it belatedly occurred to John to be worried by.

"You're going to be great," John said. "You are a Potions Prodigy. You probably won't even kill any students."

Karkat scowled at him. "Thanks."

"I hear the record at Durmstrang is three," John added helpfully. "Like, low, I mean. Three only. I bet you can beat it. You'll be the first ever professor at Durmstrang to be afraid of frog dissection."

"Frog dissection is a disgusting smear on the art of potions," Karkat grumbled. "Would you shut up for one miniscule second? I'm not worried about ruining the lives of the students, although, thank you! I certainly am now. I'm worried about--" and then choked it off. "Never mind," he said. "I'll be fine, right? I'm a fucking powerhouse. Mothers and fathers get up at half six to start crying over how much their children will be perfected by my teaching. Any of them give me lip I'll reinstitute capital punishment for the unruly. You think I'm kidding but I have the blueprints for a guillotine right here."

"Ohhh," said John, unhappily. "The Muggleborn thing."

"No. Shut up. It's fine. I can handle it," Karkat said, overlappingly. "I don't-- Fuck. It doesn't matter."

"It kind of matters."

"It's none of your fucking business."

"It's kind of my fucking business," John said, kindly. "Since we have been man kissers since I moved to Leeds."

"I don't want to talk about it," Karkat said. He didn't sound mad. He just sounded tired.

A flock of geese outpaced them, chattering about the Arctic Circle, and John whispered Ventus to shoo them. They were hitting their first serious snowcover now, the kind that slowly became a glacier in a little bit, and the clouds were starting to loom. John thought it was probably twenty minutes before the storm caught them. He really should, he thought, start making the wind tunnel now, but the tunnel was so loud, and Karkat was so much quieter than he ought to be.

"You probably couldn't build a guillotine on Durmstrang campus," John said finally. "After the Second War they enchanted the whole place so a deadly weapon won't hold an edge. Even if you charm your way around it there's all kinds of ghosts up there getting in your business about weapons. I think probably you'd better stick to sarcasm."

"Yeah, my rapier wit," Karkat muttered. "You're going to call every night, you understand."

"I'm going to move into my fireplace," John said. It was his turn to feel flat. "I'm going to run out of Floo Powder so fast."

"You're not going to run out of Floo Powder, I gave you the recipe," Karkat said with a sigh. "Jesus, you date one Charms expert."

"Sacred Charms God of Charms," John corrected him. "Hey, uh, how do you feel about snow? Like, um, at really high speeds?"

Karkat veered to stare properly at him, then turned to look full on at the thunderhead. "John," he said, in tones of pure horror.

"It's fine!" John said hurriedly. "I'm on it! Just a second," and started murmuring Deprimos, picking up in volume as he changed their angle. The cloud flashed. He laughed, interrupting a vector, and spun upside down to get at the right angle to adjust it.

"Next time I'm walking to Svalbard," Karkat yelled, as the thunder rolled around him. "Next time I'm locking you in the trunk and then walking to Svalbard!"

"Drama drama bo bama," John scolded. He put a hand on Karkat's broom, and then, recklessly, leaned over to kiss his cheek. They rocked dangerously. "C'mon," he said. "Let's get you to the office."

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3JOHN<3KARKAT

[zoamh]

Aradia/Eridan/Feferi/Sollux (any quadrant/s)
Paris

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

Dirk<3Jake
America's great plains region

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3JADE

[asherdashery]

"Settle down, cowboy."

Leathered hands grip your hips and you buck and howl obscenities at the offender. There's not much you can do, though, because most of you is pinned under what must be thirty thousand pounds of mail bags. Your failure is rather fortunate for you, because it seems those hands are trying to get you out from those thirty thousand pounds of correspondence, despite your flailing.

"Fmurfmannh! Ahmmnhamnanm!"

"Yeah, I completely understand. How about next time you book a train to Kansas City, you try not to get in the way of a mail heist."

He shoves his foot against the mail bag and gives one almighty tug and you both go sprawling free.

"Oof," he says and doesn't release you fast enough.

You are on him like a rat terrier.

"Ruffian! Scoundrel! Unhand me and pay for your crimes against the free post and the spirit of the frontier!"

You knock him back into the floorboards and get one leg up over his hip--and it's good you do because he can't get to the gun pressing into your thigh--and get ready to show him the wild courage of a budding frontiersman!

You will show him with your fists because you are a real pioneer realizing your Manifest Destiny and not an overeager doctor's son from Pennsylvania on your first trip West.

"Have at, you--bandit!"

You attempt to let him have it, but he curses and catches your fist, grabs the hand that you're pinning him down with. You may not have thought this through.

You realize you knocked his hat off. He's young, and fixes you with an exasperated expression.

"First time, huh."

"...Perhaps. I don't see that I have to answer the likes of you."

"'The likes of you.' Who even says that? That ain't a thing to say, even for you."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

He lifts an eyebrow. You realize that he is both devilishly handsome and still holding your hand.



"Well, I don't know, Sheriff. What are you? A quack?"

You flush. "I'll have you know I'm going to be a completely respectable ranch hand, and explore the untamed lands of the plains, and fight Injuns and run tabs in saloons!"

"You're going to run tabs in saloons."

You deflate a little under his regard. "Well. Yes. That's part of the experience, isn't it?"

He stares at you a good, long, uninterrupted time, and you catch yourself staring at the wry quirk of his lips. His features are rather fine--too angular to be feminine, and a little long besides, but he's clearly the kind of attractive rogue you'd like to kiss.



To be! Not to kiss. Jacob Harley, where did that thought even come from?

He flicks you in the forehead and you realize you've let him go. As you sputter, he gets up and rests his arms on his knees.

"You know, a good-looking gentleman who runs into a mail car, unarmed, yelling his head off about the American way and the spirit of the West may not be best suited to a life of cleaning up horse shit. You don't get as much travel done as you'd think."

You have no idea what to say to that. He holds out his hand.

"Dirk Strider. You ever consider robbery?"

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3JOHN<3KARKAT

[zoamh]

Alpha OT4 (gen or any quadrant/s)
Middle Earth

PROMPT: TEAM ENGLISH

[cerulean_neuf]

Ship: Vriska <3< Nepeta

Location: Pet Shop

FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY

[ferrrox]

(john no)

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

John/Vriska (any quadrant)
Scottish Highlands

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3JOHN<3KARKAT

[zoamh]

John/Tavros (gen or any quadrant)
Never Neverland

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3ERIDAN

[zeecatfish]

“Come on slowpoke!” Highflyer laughed, whirling around in the air only barely avoiding collision with the tree branches. “You haven’t forgotten how to fly, have you?"

Tinkerbull at his side, Pupa chased after his friend with a devious grin, twirling his daggerlance around in his hand in a boyish gesture of one-upmanship. Everyone knew the only one who flew better than Highflyer was Peter, but Pupa was nothing if not determined to keep up.

Whooping and laughing they raced through the forest, occasionally stopping their wild chase to throw some unskilled play-attacks at each other or investigate something particularly interesting until they finally settled on one of the thick branches of a particularly high tree, looking out over the Neverwood forest, Tinkerbull curling up on Pupa’s lap.

It was too early to return to home underground, they both decided. The sun wasn’t even beginning to set, so they made themselves comfortable. Sitting with his back against the tree trunk, Pupa scratched Tinkerbull behind the ears and looked up at the passing clouds.

“That one, uh, looks like a hat!” he pointed, making Highflyer look. Then highflyer pointed out another cloud that looked like a cake until they were both pointing at random, comparing the rough shapes of the clouds to anything even vaguely resembling the silhouette, occasionally getting into small arguments when one would say something looked like a rabbit and the other would claim it was a pair of scissors, though shortly after they mutually agreed that rather than a rabbit or scissors it was a tree instead after which they moved on to the next one.

“That one looks like a pipe!”

“What? I, uh, disagree. The mouth thingie, by which I mean, that is, the stem, doesn’t look anything like uh, that of a peace-pipe at all.”

“Not a peace-pipe dummy. A-a-a, what’s the word, a tobacco pipe.”

“Uh. A what?”

“A tobacco pipe! You know like-“ Highflyer cut off, suddenly frowning. “You know, I’m sure it’s something really important.”

He looked troubled for a moment, fidgeting with his shirt. “I think it is, I mean. More important than a peace-pipe.”

“Are you, uh, really sure about that? What kind of thing, or rather, what manner of pipe could possibly be more important than a peace-pipe?” Pupa shifted uncomfortably, laughing half-heartedly. Then, impulsively he shot out a question that had been nagging in his own mind for a while now. “Hey uh, Highflyer? Have you ever, you know, kissed a girl?”

Highflyer scrunched up his face as if he smelled something nasty. “Ewww, no of course not! Don’t you know girls have,” he paused for dramatic effect, waving his arms around to empathies his words “-cooties?”

“How would you know? Have you ever, uh, met one?” Pupa responded, genuinely curious.
“Of course I’ve met a girl! We see mermaids all the time!”

“Well yeah, but those are, well, mermaids. They don’t count.”

“Then no, I guess? But does it matter? Everyone knows girls have cooties! Are you saying you’ve ever met one?”

“I, well, uh, no. By which I mean yes, actually, I think I have. And I think she kissed me, and I also think she did something to my legs, possibly?”

“She gave your legs cooties?” Highflyer asked, scooting away from Pupa while giving his legs a dubious look making him laugh out loud.

“No, uh, I don’t think that’s quite how it works. I think it was, uh, something a bit more uncomfortable than that, but the memory is kind of fuzzy.”

Highflyer gave him a long, thoughtful look and with a more serious face then Pupa was used to from him, opened his mouth to say something. Then he seemingly changed his mind and shrugged, jumping off the branch and turning to him in midair. “Come on, Pupa! The trees are getting boring, and I’m hungry. Let’s go home.”

Prompt: Team English

[cest_what]

Jade/Karkat/John: Jade's island

FILL: TEAM ARADIA<>SOLLUX

[possibly_thrice]

They take him there after. Dave says, "Sure, take him to hellmurder island, it'll help with the bumpy transition to the Land of Not Killing Most Of The Babies and Eating The Rest." Rose says, "I'm fairly sure they ate the ones they did kill, actually." Rose says, "I'm wasn't his friend."

Karkat doesn't say anything.

So Jade's place it is! John has been to her house before, obviously, while they were playing the game, and then again during the great three year interdimensional space trip, when Jade used to take him to floor after floor, shrinking heirlooms all the while. "I sure hated this stuff!" she would say, gleefully downsizing a suit of armor and not realizing until afterwards that Davesprite had been inside. He didn't shrink with the armor, for some reason: he just got ecto-compressed into a tiny, enraged lump of orange jello. Good times.

But he's never seen the island. It's bigger than he expected; greener, too, though not for the soaking value of green that you got in Washington. Jade's island made vegetation an act of violence. Dave had maybe been more on point with hellmurder than he'd even realized.

Jade, though, steps off the transportalizer and into sunlight with a smile, her ears set wide and her hair shining hazily, her edges diffuse for warmth. She holds her hands out in front of her, and sniffs, snub nose crinkling.

"If you need to mark your territory, I promise I will look away," says John.

"Ewwww," says Jade, the intent focus falling from her face.

They both look at Karkat. Karkat's hand is locked in John's, small and sweaty and overhot, the clawed end of his thumb hooked into the back of John's hand like a nail. Or maybe it's just that everything feels like a nail when you're the god of hammers? John touches his chest and it doesn't hurt; it doesn't feel like anything.

"Time for the grand tour!" says Jade, recovering. She's better at disappointment than John. They both get angry a lot these days, but with Jade it's brief and fervent, effervescent, like the first moments of waking in which you try frantically to remember your dreams. When he gets angry it's just sour. It is cakes gone wrong and cakes gone way too right.

"Isn't that going to take a while?" he asks, shading his eyes. "What with you kind of owning a mini-continent?"

"Yes," said Jade. "But we have a while. And there are enough machetes for everyone."

She smiles with human teeth, and disappears into the kitchen to collect the sharp metal things in question. John elbows Karkat gently. "What do you think?" he asks, feeling a little guilty for asking it while Jade can't hear. Hoping that Karkat is a little guilty too.

"Gamzee would have hated it," says Karkat.

John laughs. It comes out of him without him meaning for it to, or calling it up. "Yeah, well, he was a big gross clown who wanted to kill us all," he says.

Karkat glances at him, sideways, and doesn't move his mouth up or down. But his eyes are clear.

Jade comes back out. "Everyone, take a killing implement!" she says. "We're going to go damage the heck out of the natural habitat."

John picks randomly. It feels nice to hold new weapons, he thinks. It will feel nice to not use them on a person. He cuts a wide, stupid arc through the air, and when he turns back around Jade is touching the side of Karkat's neck, and neither of them looks angry at all.

PROMPT: TEAM ENGLISH

[cerulean_neuf]

Ship: Karkat/Dave (general; any quadrant)

Location: Hair Salon//Spa

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

Dave<3Terezi
Awful Wisconsin tourist attractions (hint hint, gaiman fans)

PROMPT: TEAM KARKAT<3NEPETA

[slippy]

Ship: Karkat <> Gamzee

Location: school hive

FILL: TEAM DAVE<3KARKAT

[razzda]

GAMZEEIFYOUDONTSTOPTHISDEATHTRAPIAMGOINGTOSHOOSHPAPYOUSOFUCKINGHARDJUSTYOUWAITI'LL-

GOIN 2 MATHCLASS the journey, the saga, the hallways,

PROMPT: TEAM JADE<3KARKAT

[oxfordroulette]

Beta Kids OT4 (any quadrant combo)
Tuscany

FILL: TEAM ROSE<3ROXY

[adaorardor]

You hate

are okay with time travel!