Work Text:
The day the found me, I hadn't yet been played
Inside my workshop behind the old arcade
Your name is Aradia Megido. You are a young, chubby rust blood who carries the freedom of adventure in each of your footsteps. You carry a whip, and you wear a fedora on your head. Every night, you come home and tell your lusus about the wonderful escapes you went on that day- even if some were a little exaggerated. She doesn't mind too much, though. She just likes to see you so excited, with such an untamed lust for life.
One of the most exciting things to ever happen to you was when a meteor made impact not too far away from your hive. The meteor revealed the presence of a temple, ornately decorated with frogs, and ready for you to explore. This felt like hitting the jackpot- you even found a doll in the temple and sent it to your friend Kanaya! Archaeology is your main interest, but you like to play games, too.
You have a group of friends- their names are Tavros Nitram, Terezi Pyrope, and Vriska Serket- and you all like to play a game together called FLARP. A boy named Eridan Ampora used to play with you all, but Vriska made the decision to kick him out. You felt okay about that.
You talk to your friend, Sollux Captor, every day on Trollian. You know he likes games, and for a troll who isn't even 6 sweeps yet, he's an excellent hacker and coder. You wonder sometimes if you should invite him to play FLARP, but you aren't eager to expose him to Vriska. She can be a bit mean, sometimes. Especially to your teammate, Tavros. You're not sure if it's hemophobia, or her own insecurities, or both, but she picks on him relentlessly. The fact that she looks up to her morally questionable ancestor, Mindfang, definitely doesn't help the situation. You didn't grow up looking up to your ancestor, though. You didn't even know yours.
You love Tavros, though, despite Vriska's dedicated berating of him. You don't care that he's more timid than you, and everyone else you FLARP with, for that matter. It takes all kinds to make a game as fun as it can be.
And you, Aradia- you like to take things as they come, but sometimes, even the most happy-go-lucky troll can be pushed to extremes when their best friend gets pushed over a cliff. Actions have consequences, and when you sent the ghosts of Vriska's victims to haunt her after she left Tavros paralyzed, you didn't understand the full scope of what you caused. You didn't know what Vriska would do to get back at you.
Your life had barely begun when you found yourself dead. You feel nothing anymore. You're not particularly depressed, either. You just don't care. You're okay with most things, but there's an unignorably heavy void inside of you. You spend your days desecrating the Frog Temple you were previously so eager to explore, throwing the heads of the frog statues around with your telekinesis, crushing trees, begging to feel anything.
And then one day, in the midst of wreckage that you have left in your wake, you find technology destined to protect your friends from the apocalypse. And luckily, you have just the friend who can turn that code into a video game.
Electric desires had unraveled on my wires
Now I'm in a box for safe keeping
Thanks to you, your friends won't die during the apocalypse currently ravishing Alternia, your home planet. But all of this was predestined. Being dead, you get to learn things about the game your other 11 team mates wouldn't ever have the opportunity to. You don't care, though.
Equius Zahack is your client. It is your job to manipulate his surroundings so he can accomplish the tasks needed to win the game.
Little do you know, though, is that he's been orchestrating his magnum opus. As per Vriska's request, he's been hard at work, creating a fully realized robot with the capabilities to contain a soul- specifically, yours. It's been topped off with blue blood that he drained from his own body, and it's all for you.
His poker face doesn't take long at all to crumble. Almost immediately he reveals he placed a chip in your heart to make you love him back.
For the first time in ages, you feel something. It's absolute blinding rage. You rip into your metal chest and pull out your metal heart, pounding it over and over again on the table in front of you.
And then you grab him. And you kiss him.
The news reporters reported that I'd died
But all my organs were living on inside
Your death hung heavy arounds the heads of everyone you once loved. Tavros missed you, and carried guilt over what you did in his honor that resulted in your death. You heard Terezi was blinded after she and Sollux found a way to get back at her, and Vriska punished her teammate for insubordination. There were some gory details, and you didn't care about them.
And Sollux? You still check in on him. You want to care about him more than you do. You want to see him happy. You almost felt something close to guilt after he coded the game you asked him to with little complaint, even after you literally ghosted him and dropped out of his life.
But you're back. You're a robot, pulsing with blue blood, and you are pissed.
Circuit board to brain with two lungs collecting change
One big human heart gently beeping
Vriska sits in her proverbial throne, strings tied around her fingers that are tethered to your friends. Her mind control powers let her do whatever she wants- she has no foil, no laws ready to keep her in line. She has the power to send Tavros off of a cliff. She blinded Terezi without hesitation. And she had Sollux kill you, because killing you in any other way just wouldn't be enough.
But with each pulse of your metal heart, righteous blue blood coursed through your body. You were a vessel for revenge.
And if you were Vriska, you would be terrified.
You can't win me, I can't be beat
I won't hurt you unless you cheat
You can't see me behind the screen
I'm half human and half machine
When justice stops, you are there to tie up loose ends. You are the living personification of karma, and she comes with an impenetrable metal form and a grudge that can move the heavens and earth, and time itself.
You get to feel anger in your soulbot. And after so long of feeling absolutely nothing at all, you embrace your fury with righteous self-assuredness.
No one has the right to do what she did, not to Terezi, not to Tavros, not to Sollux, not to your lusus, or your hive, or yourself.
It might take some time, but you're going to make Vriska pay.
Thank god for business that let me take the floor
I stood so proudly like I was going to war
Players soon appeared, and I quickly was revered
But first, you have a role to serve. You're cleaning the timelines, you're protecting your friends, like a soldier posed above them in their sleep, ever vigilant. One by one, they would trickle into the game.
They have no idea how much they owe to you. Your time abilities are the only reason why they aren't doomed.
This must be what love would have felt like
On the meteor, you stand next to Equius. Neither of you say much, there's no need to. You rest your head on his shoulder, yet gaze in the direction of Sollux. He's with Feferi.
Is he happy? Your mind can't help but keep wandering back to that question. You definitely want him to be. For some reason, your rage stops where he picks up. Seeing him with Feferi, who is currently seated on his lap and watching him code, doesn't anger you. It doesn't particularly please you, either, but you're okay with it. You're not as okay with most things anymore, like you were when you were dead, but if this was something that made him happy, you would try and find a way to feel happy, too.
You grab Equius' hand. The strength as his hand squeezes back doesn't hurt you- you are, after all, a robot.
Such dedication, they came from miles away
With eyes so piercing, they'd wait their turn to play
Perfect, patient lines, because I was in their minds
I could do whatever I felt like (whatever I felt like!)
You learn to live in your anger. It's there for you when all other sense has left you, and for that, you make it into a home. Your body feels strange and alien to you- it isn't the tough troll skin you spent the first sweeps of your life knowing. Equius has to oil you from time from time. But you're okay with it. Because in this steel cage, you are invincible.
You can't win me, I can't be beat
I won't hurt you unless you cheat
You can't see me behind the screen
I'm half human and half machine
Vriska is alive. She's probably on LOMAT right now, climbing up her echeladder and getting grist. What she doesn't know, though, is that you just happen to be on your way there yourself.
I'm happy for years and years, and only eating the occasional maintenance man
Only driving a few kids to madness, maybe they were predisposed to madness?
Who knows, I only want to have fun
But now they're telling me my days here are done
'Cause there's a tiny little box that they make in Japan and pretty soon it's gonna fit in your hand
You didn't grow up looking up to your ancestor. You didn't know if you even had one. You didn't want one either, honestly, because you saw what it did to Vriska. Mindfang was a murderer at her best and a rapist at her worst, but Vriska idolized every last thing she ever did. When you were alive, you felt sorry for her. Sometimes, you would catch Vriska in moments where you could tell she was a sad, broken girl whose surroundings made her the villain she was. It wasn't her fault her lusus was so cruel to her. It wasn't her fault she had to look up to that asshole pirate for her to have found the ability to feign self-esteem.
But you're not alive anymore.
Vriska felt so lucky to have found Mindfang's journal, and thought of it as a gift from the heavens. A predestined act of fate.
The Handmaid didn't exist until after you were dead. You didn't grow up looking up to your ancestor.
The Handmaid did find Mindfang's journal, though.
You would never find out that she was the one who put the journal in the chest on the meteorite Vriska found it on.
You would never find out that your ancestor was the one who did everything in her powers to make sure she would find it.
It's getting lonely, it's getting hard to breathe
The air on LOMAT is hot and heavy, and the sun is beginning to go down. Its rays reflect off of your body, and all at once, the gravity of what you're about to do hits you.
The arcade's empty, I think it's Christmas eve
Vriska sees you almost immediately, but you're pretty hard to miss. For a brief second, you see terror pass across her face. She immediately counters this with a scowl, and she pushes up her sleeves, ready to fight.
Someone's broken in, now they're painting on my skin
Vriska doesn't stand a chance. This isn't about a fair fight. It's about revenge. It's about doing what no one else ever could.
Breaking me and taking my quarters
You give her one good kick to the gut, and your body gets splattered with her blood. Vriska falls back and hits the earth and the look of fear is back. This was her planet. She expected to be safe here. You do nothing as you watch her heave herself back up, only for you to gain some speed and then give her a flying kick to the face as hard as you can. You hear something crack.
This feels good. This feels like what you should be doing.
Bashing in my face with a crowbar
You stand above Vriska as she struggles to sit upright. With one hand, you grab at her jacket, and with the other, you punch her with all the strength in your powerful body. Her glasses go flying, and the light behind her eyes flickers for a second. Now that her glasses aren't obstructing the view, you catch a good glimpse of her left eye, which is scarred over and hollow. You wonder what happened since you last saw her.
Kicking me and pushing me over
Fighting troll-to-troll wasn't cutting it, and you make the decision to tap into your telekinesis. You lift her up with your mind, and throw her back down- hard- into the boardwalk of her planet. The smell of blood is strong and almost sickening, and before you lift her back up to throw her again, you can see a pool of hers collecting on the wood. In fact, everywhere you look seems to be painted in cerulean blood.
You can see her struggle to keep her eyes open as you pick her back up. You throw her back down, except harder this time. You hear cracking sounds again.
Now they see my blood on their sneakers
You weren't expecting to see Tavros, and likewise, he wasn't expecting to see you. He is in his rocket, probably because he heard a ruckus and had to hurry to find Vriska. But it was too late.
It was nice to see someone you once considered your best friend, and you almost feel something. He's the reason you're dead, but you forgive him, especially now that your murderer is in a crumpled heap in front of you, bleeding out from wounds you inflicted.
You catch yourself giving a small smile to Tavros- a smile that he doesn't return. The boy looks positively pale. Vriska is unconscious in front of your feet, with bones jutting out of her skin. Her ripped clothes are soaking wet with her own blood, which is currently flooding out of her in ways you didn't know blood could.
She didn't have much time left.
You give him a nod, and using your time machines, you're gone.
You can't win me, I can't be beat
I won't hurt you unless you cheat
You can't see me behind the screen
I'm half human and half machine
Your name is Aradia Megido and one of your best friends killed you. And, after ages of planning, you just cut her life short like she did to you. You go home and wipe the cerulean off of your robotic body. You have to use a handful of towels to get it all off. You're really covered in the stuff.
Equius finds you while you're cleaning up. He doesn't say anything, because he doesn't have to. He knows what you did, and you wonder if he knows that if it wasn't for his blue blood currently pulsing through you, you never could have done that to her. You plant a kiss on his cheek and start your walk towards the lab on the meteor. You're ready to put this all behind you.