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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 ARADIA<>SOLLUX
"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.
Re: FILL: TEAM ARADIA<>SOLLUX
Re: FILL: TEAM ARADIA<>SOLLUX
A silence.
"I think we also have Monopoly," said Rose.
Oh, hooray for everything this fic is.