hs_olympics | BONUS ROUND 5

BONUS ROUND 5

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

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.

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 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 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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

She manages to look stunning even in the low unflattering light of this sub-par (yet mind-bogglingly successful) establishment. When she first sees you, she greets you with her routine haymaker, and after you pick up your stray tooth and beg the waitstaff not to call the authorities, the two of you are seated at a booth with a lovely view of the plastic grapevines.

The first order of business of course is to order salad and breadsticks. You do so, and tell your waiter to keep them coming. You want to make sure that your love's ravenous appetite is completely sated, and what's lacking in quality can certainly be made up for in quantity, thanks to your stupidly generous fans. She leaves the salad untouched. A single breadstick is picked up cautiously, sniffed, and bitten into after what looks like a brief internal debate. You watch as her face morphs from its blank state into one of pure disgust as she chews slower and slower until she forces herself to choke down the morsel. She crumples the rest of the breadstick in her hand and throws it across the restaurant. You are not even close to being deterred.

When the waiter returns to see if you've made a decision for your main courses, you take your menu and point to the things with the biggest pictures. The bigger pictures clearly mean it's most popular, right? Your wife-to-be surely cannot resist the finest Italian-American cuisine has to offer. Your attempts to make small talk in the meantime are met with hostile threats to lock you up in the attic again. You decide not to toy with fate and leave her alone for now.

Twenty minutes later, you're thinking you've sorely underestimated her iron will. She's idly stabbing her seafood and noodles drowned in hearty mysterious sauce, and she appears to be using the grease from the breadsticks to spell out words in Alternian. This can't be; you've given her the best a $150 gift card could offer. How is she not impressed?! Your curiosity is burning hot...it is demanding answers.

"Is none of this to your liking, dearest?"

She scowls up at you from her hunched over position in front of a growing breadstick tower. "First off, don't fucking call me that. And secondly, this is the grossest shit that's ever been served to me on a plate."

You gasp quietly, feeling your heart pound. "You mean to say that you are unhappy with everything Olive Garden has to offer?"

She straightens up and knocks over the breadstick tower with a flick of her finger. "I wouldn't feed this slop to my worst enemy."

You know you are blushing now. Your smile threatens to split your face apart. Just when you thought she couldn't be any more perfect, she has to go on and prove you wrong yet again. You silently vow to make her yours no matter what the cost. The seventeenth marriage proposal has got to be the charm. Your new life mission is clear: make Hussie/Vriska canon.

klasdjfldksjfh PERFECT. I groaned out loud at the pun. Thank you!

Oh, that's up to you. I thought it could be something in the dream bubbles, maybe an actual place, a threatening presence... or it's just a figure of speak. If you have an another idea, please go ahead :)

oh god this is so cute<3

this is great. I love this pairing<3

Jade and Feferi (any quadrant or gen)
Oz

Updates in the future, but not many . . . .

A young artist draws the soul of his love.

A date is set.

A table, chosen.

A menu, disdained.

The Vituperative Sailor refuses the proffered dish. The artist will have to try a more palatable tactic, if he wishes to woo her.

CHUM.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE, IT MEANS THAT I HAVE MANAGED TO REPLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE THIS TIME AND HAVE NOT DELETED MY COMMENT OUT OF SHAME.

YOU ARE NOW ART ENOUGH TO PORTRAY THE TRUE DEPTHS OF ONE OF THE MOST MOVING, MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS IN HOMESTUCK.

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU.

Normally you wouldn't exactly consider Montreal to be a must visit site that you simply had to go out of your way for, especially when your goal is Los Angeles, but Kanaya taps you on the shoulder asks you with bright eyes how there could ever be such a thing as a hotel made of ice, pointing to a small television set on the dresser of the bread and breakfast you stayed the night at, and you remember that it should be right about time for the Fête des Neiges.

"How could you even have something like that?" There is awe in her voice as she stares at the hotel. You don't know how she got to this channel, which has a mild mannered French commentary talking about the changes to the new Snow Village. "It must be so cold there to keep ice even in the bright seasons."

"Not that much colder here actually." You've noticed that trolls, especially Kanaya who lived in a desert, tended to have skewed ideas about weather. "They don't keep it for the summer, it's built new every year." You fold up your pajama pants as you speak, lamenting how there never seems to be as much room in your suitcase when you have to put things back into it. "It's very popular during their winter festival. The big one is in Quebec City but that one is Montreal."

"Built new every year." Kanaya sounds breathless with wonder as she repeats the words and a quick glance shows she is shaking her head slowly at the television. "And to have more than one. We could never have something like that on Alternia. Cold regions are barren, much too dangerous for something that frivolous."

As you bend down to zip up your suitcase you think about the possibility and about why you suddenly suggested this road trip. You needed something different, a taste of the world outside cold statues and even colder walls.

You've just stopped in Vermont, Montreal is scant hours away.

"Would you like to see it?"

Kanaya turns to you in surprise. "The ice hotel?"

"That would be the one." You don't know much about Montreal but judging by the snowman dancing on the television screen it should be just around the right time. "It's actually not that far and it looks like the festival will be in full swing."

"Oh I see." She looks back at the television stares at it for a few moments before nodding. "Yes, I would."

--

You get to your hotel and politely ask the man behind the front desk "Excuzes moi, parlez-vous anglais?" with such a bad accent you are a little surprised he doesn't cringe. Then again he has probably been inundated with it day in and day out.

Kanaya's eyes widen like saucers as they respond that they do, not that it really matters when you pull out your credit card. That, you know, is an international language. You get a nice room for a decent price. As much as you could have loved to rent a room in the Snow Village, a quick peek online showed that all but their most impractically priced rooms had been booked. The Holiday Inn will still serve your purposes nicely.

As you walk away Kanaya leans in excitedly to ask if you can really speak the language. Although it seems all trolls innately know English, you suspect the game had a heavy hand in that, other languages tended to baffle them. Karkat in particular seemed to think that a planet with multiple languages was nothing short of a personal attack on his sensibilities.

You respond that you were lucky that man did not just laugh in your face, but if she wants you can teach her a few words of French.

You're surprised when she grins like a child, it's rare for her to let herself so loose. Looking at her you can't help but think she holds herself back too much sometimes. But then you are the pot and have no right to be telling her just how black she is.

--

Kanaya is an absolutely abysmal skater.

You aren't much better. Your Mom had you go for lessons as a child but like all of your lessons, except for violin, you took them for a year and then stopped. The ice rink was too far and you had been too disinterested. The lessons are at least enough to keep you upright on the ice if not much more, which makes you look like a graceful swan next to Kanaya's fumbling.

You can't help but be glad for the much more blasé tone you have found here. The crowd of couples and families around you sometimes stop to laugh at your more spectacular failures but otherwise don't pay much attention. No one has raised an eyebrow at either the fact that you are two women awkwardly trying hold holds and stay upright or that you are a troll and a human doing the same. You think this little detour in your road trip is turning out to be a good one.

Or at least you do until Kanaya flounders and drags you down with her, sending both of you skidding across the ice on your asses.

--

You have to admit it, the ice hotel is very impressive. Although you didn't have the thousands of dollars to drop on a room, your much more modest thirty dollars gets you into a scheduled English tour. Kanaya gives the French tour an odd look and you think she really must be fascinated by the language. You wonder if she would be able to handle Parisian French.

The hotel is also much warmer than you thought, though you can still see your breath. It's hard to notice while you stare at the sculpted furniture and the impressive walls.

Still you are willing to pretend that it is much colder than it is when Kanaya presses boldly up against you as though she were trying to steal some of your warmth. She hooks an arm into yours, missing the first time for not looking at you.

The two of you ooh and ahh at the appropriate places and if one of your hands finds its way into the pockets of Kanaya's tasteful, double breasted coat, well, you are pretending it's freezing after all.

--

Before you leave you make sure to go for a walk at night, when all of the lights are out. The light show is nothing snort of impressive, with lights hanging from every conceivable surface. You even see a few other trolls along the way as you walk around the city. After admiring the beauty of the lights for a while you take a detour into an empty park.

Away from the prying eyes of others, and without any cleared roads to keep the snow from her, you see Kanaya bend down immediately to gather up some of the snow in her hands. It isn't the first time she has seen it but every time she does she never seems to be any less fascinated. You aren't all that surprised, she did grow up in a desert after all.

While she rolls it around in her hands, commenting on how this snow is thicker, you discretely scoop up a little bit of snow from where it clings to a nearby pine. You innocently walk over when she beacons you, looking over her shoulder at the snowball she has clumsily crafted. Then, with all of your dignity and grace, you shove the snow in your hand down the back of her shirt and run.

--

You can't stay in Montreal for long, for one thing the Holiday Inn is not actually the cheapest place for you be spending your nights, if still cheaper than a hotel carved from ice, for another your friends will get antsy if they don't hear from you in too long. You're hoping to keep a fairly tight schedule and be back on track before anyone else knows it.

On the way out of the hotel Kanaya turns to the doorman, the green on her cheeks betraying her nervousness, and mumbles an embarrassed "Merci."

He smiles at her and says "De rien." back.

She bubbles about it on the way to the car and you think you may have created a monster with this little side trip, but when you see that childish smile on her face again you can't bring yourself to mind.