Chapter Text
Ten.
Ten sweeps. You’ve officially been off alternia for a full sweep now, and it’s fucking insane to think about.
You’re…
Hold on, who are you? Only a beta troll would make sense, but your options are so narrow there. So many were culled for physical deformity or treason. Or for being friends with Vriska.
Aradia, Tavros, Karkat, Nepeta… Terezi was just on the line where her blood was rare enough to excuse her blindness, but one cocky misstep landed her in His Honorable Tyranny’s gullet.
Sollux is alive, if you can call helmsmanship living. Kanaya is stuck miserable on a broodship. Vriska has had some very close shaves, but she’s still kicking (with a prosthetic leg.) You don’t think you’re any of them, though.
Feferi took on the condesce. She didn’t win. Eridan attempted to revenge her. He didn’t win. Gamzee would’ve followed suit (who would’ve guessed he and Feferi’d end up matesprits) but by then the Empress was long gone, wrapped the depths of space. It’s said that the grief and rage of his Vast Honk rivaled that of the Sufferer’s. It’s also said that that’s bullshit.
Speaking of bullshit, such flippant uses of e%pletives mean you couldn’t possibly be Equius- not with an author who uses internal monologue as narration. So who could you be?
Well… that mention of an author is mighty suspicious.
[I tried that, though, and it didn’t pan out.]
So who ARE you? And, considering that I’m your internal monologue, who am I?
Maybe whoever you are, you don’t know either.
But it’s about time to start finding out.
> Reader: enter name.
Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Notes:
Were you expecting a part 2? I know I wasn't.
Chapter Text
Your name is EILLOO TWEINE and you could never thank your clubleaves enough.
Bennan and Akamai are insufferable, especially together, and the administration found it easier to let you live than to move either of them. Auspisticizing has never been easy for you, but you'll do anything to live your whole life.
When you're not chastizing one or both of them, you're a janitor. It isn't much, but it's honest work, and you do a damn good job of it if you do say so yourself. You haven't recieved a complaint yet. Or, really, much acknowledgement at all. But you've always been proud of your ability to judge your own work.
Selfishly, you hope that if/when Akamai loses his head on the battlefield, the rest of the crew will forget he's the only reason you're left standing.
Your name is AKAMAI POLOTO. You're a two-bit warrior for the empire, and you don't know what to think.
Yeah, your clubleaf is hooked up to a spaceship in the goriest, body-horror-iest way possible. Yeah, your flushcrush is being entirely kept alive by auspistizing between you and him. Yeah, you're under constant threat of death as (probably) innocent creatures fight back against the senseless genocide you're actively contributing to. But it's also the best your life's ever been, so...
Your relationship with Bennan and Eilloo has always been shitty, but now you can see them each on a near-daily basis to wring every ounce of happiness you can from having them in any quadrant at all. You can always count on there being enough food, with a cafeteria and no lusus to bring you extra mouths to feed. You even get downtime once in a while to mess with computers. Things aren't perfect, duh, but they're close enough to perfect that you'd never complain.
And who needs perfect when decent is so much cheaper?
Your name is not BENNAN FEXASS, no matter how much your crew might think of you that way.
No, your name is EXTERNIAN WAR UNIT 218, and you are a spaceship.
A good spaceship. A fucking amazing spaceship, actually, shooting between the stars with practiced power and barely ever opening the airlock prematurely to piss off a certain bronzeblood.
JANITOR TWEINE seems to think that clubswatting your ORGANIC MATERIAL will stop you. Sometimes you humour her. It makes your ORGANIC MATERIAL release unprofessional hormones to see her release her own. Not those of arousal, get your mind off the concupiscent platform. Those of SADNESS. JANITOR TWEINE's cortisol levels increase when you upset WARRIOR POLOTO. Oxytocin and dopamine levels increase when your ORGANIC MATERIAL reacts receptively to her scolding. Her serotonin levels, though, are nearly impossible to raise lately. It makes your ORGANIC MATERIAL's serotonin lower as well. You will do your best to help her. Once you have no sidequest to worry about, your MECHANICS will be 120% as efficient.
Your name is ACHTEN KNOLER.
You DIED.
Your death was a simple matter of being found out as a limeblood. Nothing special. You spilled some blood in the wrong place at the wrong time and were killed for it.
You always told your lover not to avenge your death for fear she'd be hurt too. Honestly, if you meet her in the afterlife, you'll probably just be pissed. There's a first time for everything, right?
Maybe if you were better at being angry, you wouldn't be dead right now.
Your name is BOELOU PRESSY.
You DIED.
You always hated the empire, but when they culled your moirail for his heart you couldn't take it. You tried to imagine how he'd calm you, but that only made you madder. You waited until you were called in for testing and attacked. You successfully killed at least a few people. Not enough. You haven't even found Seteri yet.
You died in his name and he won't even show up for you.
Your name is YELOPE ERRUTT, and you're VERY NORMAL.
You've been sent to OTHERNIA to work in the brooding caverns along with six other jadebloods you're cloistered with now. Nothing much has changed other than your coworkers, although the grubs you raise are...
Different planets require different adaptations, and you suppose it makes sense to be a tadpole on a planet of water, water, and more water. The Othernian jades you work with aren't fazed by it at all.
You just... you thought the empire had higher standards than this! Than seadwelling rustbloods or tealbloods with gills. Tactically, of course they'd want as many naval units as they could get, but it's just... just gross!
It's disgusting, and it makes you mad that on Alternia, you had to cull even just purples with earfins. Standards are standards, and they should be uniform. Cull more Othernians or less Alternians, you don't care, just make it make sense.
And hey, since requests are being made, PLEASE deliver stronger sopor. Your nightmares are lowering your sleep quality, and it's impacting your work quality.
Your name is TARADA REWQAE.
You DIED.
Your lover told you so many times not to try and avenge him, and you should've listened, but you were just so full of RAGE that you couldn't hold back. You got the news of his death from whoever stole his phone and bullied Akamai into tracking their location.
You never thought it'd be a fucking clown.
Your name is SETERI LERROI.
You DIED.
You were culled for not meeting the Imperial standard. Your heart was too weak to keep up with the others and your psionics couldn't excuse it, rare as they were. You miss your friends. You miss your moirail. You hope he didn't look for revenge like Tarada did.
You don't think you could live (die?) with yourself if you got Boelou killed.
Your name is VEVVEY GERRET. You don't have much to say.
You got transferred and transferred and you don't know where your living matesprit is even if you had the time to contact her, it's work work work work work for you. At the moment, you're on Externia, an enormous factory passing as a planet. The Empire hollowed it out for resources and a place to use those resources, which is a begrudgingly impressive amount of efficiency on their part, but you still hate them and everything they stand for.
You're not a grunt worker, and you kind of miss the satisfying ache in your muscles. You're a pencil-pushing, bean-counting manager who only knows the tender ache of fingers as you type up your projected export rate for the sweep.
You wish you could've been born anything, anything lower than indigo. Even if you ended up in the same job you have now, the life of suffering through it would be shorter.
Your name is TREDER FRIELL, and you couldn't be happier.
You miss your matesprits, of course you do, but Sereph lived her life as big and bright as possible and Vevvey doesn't answer nothin', so s/he must be just as over you as you are over her/him. Nothin' here to bring a motherfucker down.
You get to take out your artfully bred instincts on inferiors like never before, with no blueblooded bitches to try and tame you. Your new crew has plenty of friendly painted faces who are down for a casual thing every once in a while. Nothin' there sad.
You don't have Achten anymore.
You can't dwell on that when there's wine and song and japes and violence and molts to have, there's no time for feelin' blue about bluebloods or gettin' green in the face over lime guts spattered on a friend's coat, no bein' sad when there's fun to be had.
It's the chaotic freedom you always, always wanted, and the song never ends and the buzz never fades and there's always someone around to beat bloody numb.
You'd be one stupid motherfucker to want anything more.
Your name is WELZIO DRERIT, and you're dead.
So let's switch to AFFENI DOCKET, who faked his own death and is hiding out on Alternia.
You don't know who that Welzio guy is, but he sounds like a pretentious seadweller, which you're not. You're anonymous, see? No sign here.
You wear this scarf and earmuffs because you live near the pole cutting ice for your living, and not to hide anything at all. There's nothing objectively odd about you and there won't be until you molt.
Thank G-d you're a late bloomer.
Your name is SEREPH REEDOX.
You DIED.
You would've left well enough alone, comfy with your life on Alternia, but as your friends slowly died or left planet you realized you couldn't stay. You kissed Treder and Vevvey goodbye, properly froze the pumpbiscuits of all the friendcorpses you could find, and made some goddamn noise.
Nobody could ignore you, you were pissing your power on everyone and breaking into caverns to steal wigglers. You wreaked as much glorious havoc as you could, sopor-high and blood-stained for most of it. The empire couldn't just ignore it.
Well like, they did until they were scheduled to show up anyway, but you know it was worth it. Fun's always worth it.
So Empress Condescension personally arrived, and she totally knew what hit her. It was your fist!
You were loopy and tired and didn't stand a chance, haha, but you were gonna die anyway and at least you made it fun while it lasted.
Fuck yeah.