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hs_olympics2012-08-06 09:24 pm
hso_mods) wrote in hs_olympics2012-08-06 09:24 pm
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.
FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY
---------------------------------------------
This wasn't how the wedding was supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to try and high-tail it across the country on a stolen fragment of his sister's latent space powers before landing himself square ass broke in the middle of po-dunk nowhere with no way out. He wasn't supposed to call you spitting every curse in the book and a handful he invented on the spot to tell you that if you didn't come pick him up in the next hour he'd gut the entire staff of the roadside diner he was squatting behind. You shouldn't have had to haggle him up to two hours, clutching your cell phone to your ear with your hands shaking, hissing into the mouthpiece as you tried to keep your voice calm, tried to find your fucking shoes and car keys in the dead dark of night. This was not how it was supposed to go, and he was almost gleeful to have messed up your flawless plans.
You hate him. You really wish you could run him through on your sword and be done with his damn mind games. But you can't do that. Because Jane is marrying his sister tomorrow morning and it just so happens that they still share a body.
It's an hour and a half drive on Washington's shitty roads, the rain choosing tonight to come pouring down for some reason you can't fathom. You can barely see out the windshield at points. You're still not used to seeing land. You sit in the dark on the interstate with your headlights biting twin circles out of the pavement, radio tuned to the horrendous local rave music channel if only to give your mind something to distract it from the paranoid fear that you won't make it in time.
The average roadside diner has a staff of seven, although at two in the morning it's likely closer to two people still on the clock. Two people's lives on your head. And even if you are late and he butchers them, if you find him grinning ear to fucking lack of ear in the parking lot out front covered in blood and viscera, you still need to get him back in time. You still need to haul him two hours back and then beat him over the head enough times until Calliope comes out on the other side of unconsciousness. And then you have to get her into her dress.
God, your life is coming unglued. You knew it couldn't be this easy to be Co-Best Man at your best friend's wedding.
You pull up with two minutes to spare—two nerve-wracking minutes—and you step out into the downpour with the headlights still carving a line of light out of the darkness and the distant flickering lightning. "Caliborn!" you yell into the black, hair already soaked, your shirt soaked, water splattering against your shades and leaving you all but blind.
You hear his feet crunching in the gravel before you see him, and he's more soaked than you are but he manages to wear it without looking like a drowned rat. He's grinning and for a second your heart stops, the flick of the staff in his hand catching the sheen off your headlights, but you glance at the big bright windows of the diner and you can still see the waitress doing crosswords in a booth near the door. "Took you long enough, Dirk," he says, and you've never heard someone who could make casual conversation so menacing before. "Two minutes. You're lucky I didn't decide to stick with my original game of one hour. I could have painted the walls with blood. You humans have my blood color. I should be able to do with it as I please."
He's six feet of unholy evil alien, his sister's dark green nightgown soaked and plastered to his skin. In this light he looks naked and that's awkward for everyone. Especially you. "Thanks for your restraint," you say.
And then he lunges, claws flashing, the black marble of his cane whipping through the rain as he swings it for the sweet spot that will crack open your head. You'd expected it, and that's the only reason you get away with life still in you. You flash-step, spin and jump as the globe of his staff puts a crater in the roof of your car. Your heartbeat races. He's a Time player. He's faster than you could ever imagine, and you'd known from the instant he called you that he intended to murder you out here in the middle of nowhere, steal your wallet and your car and disappear into the countryside.
Like hell he's going through with Calliope's marriage if he can get around it. It's the kind of tenderness of his wet dreams, and he'd do anything to prevent her from having an ounce of happiness.
He gives you no pause. He's after you in a split second, teeth bared, whipping his club at you. You barely duck. You rip off your shades so you can see, running and dodging backward. His eyes are blood red and full of your death, and you're fast but you're not fast enough as he rakes his claws down the flesh of your arm.
You're so fucked. In the dark, in the rain, the thunder getting closer and throwing you off your game even more. An alien trying to kill you with potential spectators less than twenty feet away. And sometimes when he moves you see the outline of his body fade into waves, bending time that tiny bit he still can to launch into bullet time.
He gets in closer than you'd intended, hulking and huge, the rain cutting out as he looms over you. The wind goes out of you as he knees you full in the chest, concussion throwing you back three yards. You land in a heap next to the car, gasping, shaky on your hands and knees in the pounding rain. And you can't rest even though you can't breathe and your head is spinning and there's an inch-long gash on your forehead from where you hit the gravel, hot blood on your skin. You push yourself up, hands trembling. Fuck, he's close, jamming the heel of his hand against his staff to get it to shift forms. That complete and utter scrub's choice of a firearm. Why beat you to death when he could shoot you and get everyone's attention? He's a flash motherfucker and you know that for fact.
He steps over, presses the cold barrel of his gun to your head. "Any last words?"
"Calliope," you say, voice shaky and desperate. "Calliope, Calliope, Calliope." But calling her name has never worked since the universe reset, and he backhands you hard, furious to hear you say that. Your face smacks against the wet of the door.
As much as you see stars, that was exactly the stall for time you needed. You get your breath back—a miracle. You get your arm up and inside the car, fishing the forty feet of rope off the seat. And when you flash-step this time you're at his back, reeling the rope out and around his huge arms and legs. He's stronger than you, faster than you, but you trip him up, distract him as you loop the rope around him, tying knots at flash-speed until his stupid gun is pinned to his chest.
He's swearing, the kinds of things that turn even your stomach to hear. Your heart races, breath coming in gulps. But he's hog-tied in the puddles and gravel next to your car. You don't dare take your eyes off him to check if the people in the diner are watching the scrawny twenty-something tie up an alien demon in their parking lot. You just pop the rear door and take the tire iron off the seat.
You crack him over the head seven times before he slumps unconscious—finally. You're trembling with the exertion and the fear and the fucking lack of sleep, but you wrestle him slowly into the back of your beat up piece of shit car and slam the door behind him.
The people in the diner have their faces pressed to the glass. You scoop your shades up off the gravel and salute them before stepping back inside your car and firing up the engine.
It'll be a two hour drive back to Jane's. You hope like hell he doesn't decide to wake up again before you get back.
Re: FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY
I love this so much. What an excellent action scene, and jeezy creezy, that is one fucking scary Caliborn (even in a wet nightgown, haha). The use of time/space powers is so good.
I guess every marriage has its problems, but good lord, Jane and Calliope are in for a few extra ones.
Re: FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY
Re: FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY
(And no, you didn't write too much--the story definitely warrants the length! Also, I love how each fill is different and has its own voice and perspective on them at the same location!)