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When she comes out of the Plot Point- the rush of bright white light, the feeling of her younger self's arms wrapped around her resolving into warmth, into a cloak of assurance- the feeling is transcendant. She could search through her own memories to try and find something similar, to try and find something that measures up to the intensity of it, but it would be useless. There's only one thing that might come close, but she won't do the disservice of comparison.
Plucking the bullet from between Rose's eyes before it breaks bone is nothing. Aspect magic is thick on the battlefield; if she concentrates she can taste the over-sweet burst of Life on her tongue, smell the ozone of Space mixing with the incense scent of Hope. Vriska takes to the sky and it's nothing but her, nothing but the fire that lights her up from the deepest of pits, that propels her forward. She's more her than she's ever been; cut loose from Mindfang, from Spidermom. She feels so much lighter.
She doesn't bother with the foot soldiers, as they die and come back and rise to the size of giants all over the field. Some of them swing at her, and she knocks them away, doesn't wait around to see whether they survive the experience. Her eye fixes on Jane Crocker, standing in the ship hovering over the battlefield, visible only through a window. She must think she's safe in there, even as she bleeds from her face with the effort of keeping her army going, screaming as she stains the papers beneath her.
Vriska's sword cleaves through the ship like butter, and then through Jane's neck, to prove her wrong. The blood gets in her mouth; she licks her lips absentmindedly. The space laser coughs out the remnants of its red sparks. Below her, the army has stopped in its tracks as the ship falls in pieces to the ground below. The fighting falters; some of the foot soldiers keep going, but she can see her friends regrouping, their weapons lowering. Vriska folds her wings in, picks up the pieces of Jane's body, and dives down to join them.
John's unconscious, but he wakes quickly. Vriska bounces on the balls of her feet- she wants to move, wants to run. Eight years without them, these strange and grown up versions of her friends; she can see the stubble on Karkat's jawline, the laugh lines on Kanaya's forehead, around her mouth, the cellulite where Rose's tank top rides up on her waist. The pang in her heart repeats itself, as familiar as it's been for more than eight years. She is older too.
Rose is screaming- in frustration or something else, Vriska can't tell. Instead she swoops down and puts her foot on top of Jane's head, rolling it over with the ball of her heel and then- oh, well, that's the sound of Jane trying to scream. She's still... alive. Even though she's just a head, and there's metal in her mouth. Across the clearing, the rest of her body is twitching, wreathed in blue Life fire, scrabbling to its feet. It's... seriously freaky.
This woman could have been Nanna, once. Or someone better than who she is now; blood and flesh, screaming beneath Vriska's boot. It's pathetic, the distance between the woman who offered Vriska nothing but understanding and the woman who wails beneath her. The sound comes out muffled, without lungs to draw upon. Which is both incredibly weird to think about, and also not Vriska's problem right now. She kicks the head away, clapping her hands together, and smiles.
God, it's been so long. No offense to Davepeta, or to Cat-Tav, who never stopped sneezing her nose off, or Nanna- god, she's going to miss Nanna- but she missed these people. Karkat, Kanaya, Rose, John, even Sollux- people she loves, old friends, people she cares about. She was never as close to Jade or to Jake or to Roxy- never connected with them in the same way- and she only met Callie once, but she's glad to see they all made it out too.
She doesn't make eye contact with Meenah.
Her outfit falls away, now, and she's just in something normal- black pants and jacket, a white shirt. The armor eats light, sucks it in and leaves an expanse as dark as pitch in its wake, the only color the red of hellfire and the blue of her lips and eyes and wings. Like this she's just normal- just a woman staring at her old friends, smiling. The kids are clustered together- two on one side of the group, two on the other. They whisper to each other as her friends bicker.
Vriska would be content to let them ride it out, but this is not the time. Time, in fact, is in limited supply now. Exposure to the Plot Point has changed her. She can feel it- the healed over edges of a slow, systematic surgery, the place where she had to sew herself together. Where some awareness of a thing larger than her bloomed, slow and unfurling, in her chest.
She tries to rally them. "That was fun!" she jokes, smiling as wide as she can. It strains when Meenah answers, interjects about how buff Karkat has gotten- falters when they return to bickering. Nearly breaks when Karkat says she looks like Sandra Bullock. Someone makes a few comments about how she got a couple of the kids thrown in jail with her- not even really her fault, that's more on Jane's head than hers (which is rolling around on the ground now), there are a couple jabs made about the fact that Jake English is standing wrapped in Karkat's cape, completely naked underneath. None of it matters.
She tries again. She had to do this a lot on the meteor- cut through Dave's incessant mumbling, Rose's comments full of purple prose, Kanaya's dry wit. None of them wanted to talk about strategy as much as she'd wanted to, but that was the whole purpose of her- or at least that's how it had felt, back then. She'd owed it. John had brought her back for a reason, and she'd known that, even as Terezi twined their legs together in an inch deep layer of sopor, squeezed two to a cocoon. She'd known the same feeling even younger, scrabbling in her bedroom, trying to get her robot arm limber enough that she could message Equius and ask him for a commission. For a favor. She'd known it for a long, long time.
"Ahem!" Vriska says, pitching her voice up high enough that the tone cuts through the noise of argument. They quiet long enough that she thinks that it might be safe now- they might be listening. She can get through this debrief.
But she only gets as far as saying "Here's the plan," before Karkat is interrupting. Talking about logistics- talking about military conflict- talking about economics. And then they're off to the races again, and the conversation moves so fast and she hasn't lived on this planet with these people, knows nothing of what they've done in the last twenty years. Vriska wants to shake them all, wants to grab them by the collar and say STOP, can't you see there's so much more that's important here? She can taste the death coming for this timeline like ash in the back of her throat. Is this how Aradia felt back in the Game, cleaning up loose ends, closing every loop?
Sollux walks away while Vriska's still trying to butt in and she has to say it again, cuts in between the chaff of the noise with an edge of bitterness in her voice. "In case anyone feels like listening!"
(The kid named after Tavros. Tavvy- he's standing next to her, looking up. He says, "I've been trying," in a whisper so soft she can barely hear it.)
"I've been away for... a while," she says, the eyes of the congregated remnants of Sburb and its descendants fixed on her. She tries to explain, even as Calliope interrupts her; a timeline doomed to collapse. Her ascension into a singularity full of sprites and bad memories. Eight years. Eight years to grow up.
When Calliope asks how it was in there, she has to cough out a little laugh, because how could she possibly explain? How could she explain the cluster of people who had surrounded her, who had led her through the layers of her own mind without flinching? She thinks of Nanna's voice, the warmth of it, of Tavros's incessant but cheerful sneezing. Davepeta's feathers, their wing around her back. And more than that- the girl that Tavros might have been unafraid to become, if Vriska hadn't seen it and, jealous, tried to hurt her out of it. Aradia's voice, cool and unforgiving and unwilling to be her friend, holding her hand and watching her die in a way that she never could have guessed would be comforting. Her mother, the way she'd tasted blood inside her mouth as she killed or was eaten, over and over again. The man who could still make her feel thirteen, years later; the crawling, sinking feeling in her stomach as his words slimed over her and forced her into being a little girl, sick and desperate and scared.
And the girl who had been thirteen, who'd opened her arms out in silence as if she'd just wanted- just wanted -
"Most of it sucked," she settles on. "But I had a few good people in there with me," which is truer than they could know.
When Callie asks about saving this universe, though, she wiggles her head a bit, side to side. "Mmmmm," a hum to delay the bad news before she hits them with it. "Not this universe." She doesn't look at their faces. If she does, she'll lose her nerve. "But I can bust everyone who matters to me out of here before it collapses," she adds.
And really, it's good news, isn't it? This place sucks. Someone tried to assassinate her as soon as she got here, and Gamzee tried to fuck her in the bushes while she was still high off adrenaline and then blackmail her about it, and why was he even alive, anyways? She's not sure.
It's horrible here. She doesn't know how the rest of them can stand it. There's something in the air, a thinness in her lungs. Even looking at these people she can see it on their faces- John's unshaved jawline, the worn set of his mouth, the way Kanaya's shoulders come up around her ears defensively. Rose stumbles around, wild eyed and nearly hyperventilating; the air between Jade and Karkat is ripe with hostility. Sollux is already gone. They are not the people she last met, standing on a meteor, her promise to come home to Terezi thick on her tongue. They feel smaller, even though Kanaya is taller than she is now; worn out, beaten down.
"We can move on from this bummer, aaaaaaltogether," Vriska says, and it's half begging, clamping down on her desire to plead with them outright. She catches Kanaya's eye, tilts her chin up, tries to convey it with her eyes- I am trying to help you. I am trying to free you from this place where the air tastes like smoke. Come with me.
"Including the children?" Kanaya asks, and her head tilts in a mirror of Vriska's. There goes the rush of relief, warm and starting in the low of her stomach, travelling up each tiny and pumping vein- she almost melts with it, at the feeling of someone who understands. Someone who will come with her.
"Of course! That's actually where shit gets real interesting," she exclaims, and the grin on her face is loud and bright, audible in her voice as she starts to try to explain. "It turns out they're all needed on the other side, for a very, very special game."
Maybe she should have expected that to hit badly. But she didn't expect it to hit as hard as it did- the shock that spreads in ripples among them. The intake of breath from John, low and whistling- Roxy's hands twitch, reaching for her son. He's across the clearing, huddled up with Vriska's own descendant- she's looking back and forth between her parents, her mouth set in a line that Vriska recognizes from experience.
Kanaya is not looking back at Vrissy. She's frozen, eyes locked on Vriska's. Vriska wants to reach for her- she's done it all wrong. The urge comes up again, to say it right; make Kanaya stop looking at her like that, like she's disappointed her again. Thirteen again, standing in the middle of a room of other people, and the way that Kanaya's shoulder came up like a shield, leaving Vriska confused and defensive and sorry, her eyes stinging with what she'd called anger at the time.
She wants to take it back. But instead Jade- Jade, incensed, her shoulders and hackles high, barks out, "NO WAY!"
Any appeal to Kanaya, nascent and half-formed, dissolves for now. Vriska swivels instead, facing Jade head on- her white barkbeast ears are swiveling back and forth, her fists clenched tight enough to break something. "I'm not going anywhere with her," she spits, and wow, that shouldn't hurt as much as it does. "And I'm certainly not letting my daughter anywhere near the Game!"
Off to the side, the kid with Jade's barkbeast ears- Yiffy?- sneers, her lips brought back into a half-snarl. When Vriska looks, she can see the burns on her throat, the rubbed red skin. She's seen enough from home that she recognizes the rawness of where a collar must have pinched; the bruising of repeated electric shocks is blooming. By tomorrow morning it will be ugly- peeling in the places where it hasn't turned purple.
And hey, Vriska hasn't been here for very long. Two days, she thinks, maybe a little less or more than that, separated by eight years in between. But she can still remember the feeling of blood in her throat when the bullet hit. The choking, spat out cerulean on the artificially green grass. She can remember the way her eyes had shut and opened again, her skin throbbing with the oversensitivity of regeneration. This place is not like Alternia- she doesn't think- but it is no paradise. Just some saccharine imitation of one, gone rotten years past expiration. Bait kept on ice, she thinks, and the thought echoes off the inside of her skull, traveling so long to reach her.
Gamzee bent over her in the night, his grin wide and so white. The bullet in her throat. All her friends, who wear the proof of their own unhappiness written all over their bodies. The electric burns on the girl's neck, the empty space where teal text should be. And Jade saying, "I'm certainly not letting my daughter anywhere near the Game!" as if it is some panacea.
She'd laugh, if it weren't so fucking sad.
An attempt at persuasion stumbles on its way out of her mouth- you could see what it's like somewhere else, she tries to say. Don't you want to get out of here, too? Doesn't it hurt? None of them are looking at the girl's burns. She can take them there- take them to a world where the smoldering wreckage of a Jack Noir robot doesn't marr the plains. A place where at least the suffering might mean something- might make something better than this. It doesn't come out right- she's not on her A game and it shows.
"You could all see what an actual game looks like instead of the crapshoot you got stuck with," she tells them, eyes fixed on John. John, who looks at her with a dawning sense of hope- the way he did sometimes, on her monitor, when she sent him her clothes to alchemize. When she led him through trial and tribulation. If she can just get him. If she can just get him to understand, then perhaps the rest will follow-
"And then what," Kanaya asks. Her voice is not biting. Just sad. Vriska's stomach sinks, deeper and deeper and deeper until it might as well have dropped out the soles of her red shoes. Whatever consideration Kanaya gave her, at the start of this- the look Vriska caught that made her think maybe she wasn't completely alone in this- it's gone. "Watch you play hero again?"
Only the tilt of her head and the low lilt of her voice, delayed to the last syllable, render her sentence a question. Vriska takes a half step forward, a thousand words on her lips- apology- snark- explanation- but Kanaya just keeps going. "You've only just returned, and you're already right back to dragging everyone into some self-aggrandizing and probably highly dangerous redemptive bullshit." When she says bullshit it comes out crisp, the syllables polished and sharp. She shakes her head. "It's just not productive. It's not even funny, Vriska. At best it's boring, and at worst it's- incredibly sad."
She sighs, low and whistling on the wind that keeps blowing over the wreckage, still burning even as they peter out by minute degrees. The fires will not go out till next morning. "Either way, I am not particularly interested in participating in that kind of mess all over again. Once is enough."
When Vriska's voice comes out, it's hoarse. If there is naked hurt in it, it's not for lack of trying to hide it. "But it won't be the same," she says- plaintive, pleading. Her chest aches. She is halfway to anger and yet so far from it. "Because I'm not the same. I'm done trying to play hero."
Done trying to atone by throwing her body on the pyre. Done with the push and pull of her equal and opposite reactions, just to end up clean, balanced on the scales of the person she always wanted to prove herself best to. Done trying to live up to the ideal of a woman she never should have admired. Done blowing everything just to be able to prove she was capable of fixing it, desperate for forgiveness, desperate for someone to tell her she was worth something.
And Kanaya doesn't buy it.
It's plain on her face, in the weary condescension. In their old days, holding onto something fractured and milk-pale, Vriska would swear she'd changed then, too. Kanaya had had no part in the cycle of revenge that had killed Aradia, taken Terezi's sight and Tavros's spine and Vriska's arm and eye, but she'd been six sweeps and stupid. Easily riled up; she'd say things she didn't mean and then apologize off handedly, any sincerity scrubbed from her voice.
At some point she'd gone too far. It was during the Game, she thought. She didn't know what it was she'd done, only that Kanaya wouldn't talk to her anymore; that she'd ruined it somehow. She can see a mirror of the same expression on Kanaya's face now; just more worn, more disappointed than anything else. "Then what is your game," she says, and it's not even a question.
"That's it! I don't have one!" she insists, her hands spread out before her. "I'm... normal now."
An echo from the other side of a dead world rings against her brain and she has to brace herself against it. Against the way she'd steeled herself before a fight she should never have been preparing herself for, typing, "But maybe it's okay to be weak. If that's what's normal," and feeling the ghost on the back of her neck, her claws digging into Vriska's shoulder. Not even two hours later she'd risen from the ground and tried to be a hero again. Even now her jaw ached where John had punched her, a memory that she could feel.
Her sternum throbbed, and she put one hand to her chest. Not all Vriskas had been so lucky.
She thinks maybe she's convinced them, for a moment. Maybe they understand- maybe they'll believe her. The hours they have left in this timeline are not so long. She can feel it, that yawning doom that infects more of this place by the second. It will be eaten eventually, she knows it; all swallowed up by empty space. Maybe not all of them will go, either; if she can calm Rose down, if she can convince Kanaya or Karkat, or both.
She doesn't know Calliope or Roxy or Jake to know what way the winds will blow for them. And Jade- well. Anyone with eyes would be able to tell that Jade is a lost cause. Or, well, eye, in her case. John will go- she knows he will. John is staring up at her like she offered up the key to some lost civilization, like there were years he spent in the desert and she has arrived with the promise of water. She thinks John has been waiting for her for a very long time.
The silence stretches out for a long while. She looks at them, one by one, trying to impress necessity on them with the force of her own gaze. And whatever hope she has for any of them coming with her shivers in her chest, which aches with all the things she doesn't know how to voice. Come on. Trust me, I know what I'm doing this time! I've missed you so badly. Come with me!
Meenah's snort breaks it, and that's- that's it. All hope in her turns to ash, hot smoke. Fuck this.
"Dude, whatever, I'm not doing this anymore," she scoffs, turning her back. Whatever. Whatever! As if it matters. She can't make them forgive her. She can't make them come with. She can't make them do anything unless she used her own mind to do it, and even if she had the juice for something like that she wouldn't go through with it. Tavros standing across from her, her hair beginning to drift long enough to touch the nape of her neck, saying, I think maybe that doing "actions" is one of the things you feel like you did wrong.
They don't trust her. She's done everything right- eight years in the hole, eight years in Hell, eight years that she will never say was time poorly spent, but they still don't trust her. Eight years ago they were all sitting on a platform in the middle of space, and she'd thought that they were friends. Even if Kanaya got tense and snappy sometimes, even if Karkat got snide and mean, even if Rose resented her for smashing every alchemized bottle of liquor, wine splashed out on the ground. Even if she'd known that there were still rough patches between the lot of them- bad nights, bad mornings, apologies and acts of extravagant contrition wilting at every pair of feet.
But here they are now, and the woman who used and abandoned the child still nestled inside of her brain is snorting at her vulnerability like she has a right to laugh. Vriska doesn't want to think about what Meenah has or hasn't said about the other version of her that was left behind. What would hurt more, the idea that Meenah said something and they didn't care, or that the six sweep ghost was so irrelevant to Meenah that she just never mentioned her?
The hand that (Vriska) kissed is light and possessive on Karkat's waist, and he's not protesting. Rose is hyperventilating, and Kanaya isn't saying anything at all, and Sollux is already gone. She misses Dave so powerfully it feels like mourning, even though she knows he's still alive out there. Maybe she was wrong, and they weren't her friends at all- or time has frayed it all away, whatever they built together. The inequal division of hours rends them apart.
Or it's been a long two days. She doesn't know what the reason is- only that they're sitting here, and there is nothing but pity and skepticism writ all over their faces. Vriska can't do anything about it. All she can do is keep moving forward.
So she does. She turns on her back heel and walks away, and maybe that's at least partially because she doesn't want them to see what's written across her face as plain as day, but that's alright. That's fine. "I have places to be and seers to see!" she calls over her shoulder, and even saying that makes her heart beat faster, thinking about the woman on the other side of a black hole. Whether she's been waiting or not, a question Vriska can't answer and won't even try.
(Does she look different now? Does she miss her too?)
"It's been awesome to see you guys again, even if you all keep FUCKING INTERRUPTING ME," words that she bites out with a fervor that she can't shake. The frustration that lingers in her arteries, singing, all that time and they still don't want anything to do with you. You're still not worth listening to. "But I'm even more done with this place than I was eight years ago. The Hell Train is leaving the fucking station, people! Love to fill these seats up before we depart!"
She spins back around on them, the ribbon of her sash flapping in the wind. Her face is under control now, and who cares if her smile is bitter when she whistles the chime of an Alternian railway vehicular device in parody. It doesn't matter. They don't care.
"How are we s'posed to even believe you," Roxy says- and hey, at least one of them was listening for that. Her hands are balled into fists; the hem of her dress is shredded, but the ire in her face is entirely directed at Vriska. Why'd you even take me to that Plot Point if you weren't gonna listen to anything I say afterwards, Vriska wonders, distant and bitter. "Maybe none of this shit is true and you just wanna bounce bee-cee you hate this place! Why even bother taking us? Just leave!"
All Vriska can do is shrug, spread her hands, and tell the truth.
"Because... I like you guys! More or less," she adds, because, fuck, it's true but she can still feel the souring in her throat. "I want you to be okay. But honestly... if that's not what you want... then fine! I know my limitations. You do you, I guess. You could all stay here, putting all your energy into trying to salvage... all this. Who knows! It might even work."
"Or!" she says, and pulls out her last trump card- the last... the last thing she has. The only thing that might by some stroke of luck persuade them. "You can all get out of your own way, and help yourselves to the second chance your good buddy Dirk set up for you."
She tilts her head, locks eyes with each of them in turn, and relishes in the reaction. Just saying it wipes any animosity off Roxy's face, leaves her face hungry and upturned to Vriska's own like she might nourish herself on the sound of Dirk's name alone. Jake freezes next to her, his hands slack on the fabric wrapped around his body as if he might let it fall away with the shock of it. His mouth forms into a question- he takes a step forward, eyes so wide she can see the whites of them. Vriska turns to Jade, flicks her eyes between her and the stuffed corpse a few yards behind her. "Dave did."
The confusion on their faces- the hope- the hoarseness of Rose's voice saying her brother's name as Jade and John inhale at the same time, breath shaky. It's the only thing that she has left. Vriska takes another step back, away from them. She doesn't bother saying anything else, just-
"It's your choice. Are you coming?"
Murmurs break out among the group. Vriska turns away from them, playing with the ribbon of her sash. It's bright red- her favorite color. Like this, standing in the wind and under the sun of an unfamiliar sky, she can finally take a look at the whole of her outfit. No blue at all, nothing but the red of her sash and the black of her jacket and the white expanse of her shirt where she might put something, someday, if she finds something that speaks to her enough; but she likes the emptiness of it.
Red was always her favorite color. Terezi's, too. She squeezes the ribbon tightly in the palm of her fist, threads it between her knuckles until it's taut. Behind her, she can hear them arguing; voices raising slowly. Vriska doesn't look back at them- her heart is racing too fast. Her own words echo inside the confines of her skull- what good would I be to anyone? What would even be the point of keeping me around? Of being alive?
Behind her is the sound of footsteps, fast and light on the ground- many sets of them, hurried and scuffling in the grass. The arguing muffles in her ears, far away and unimportant- a faint thrum in the background of the world. She turns to look at whoever it is that listened, who understood what she was trying to say- who cares more about escaping the jaws of the black hole than they do about fighting over a world that's not worth saving, and this time the smile that stretches across her face is not strained.
Vriska expects to see John. Maybe Jake. Rose, having scrounged herself out of her hyperventilating catatonia. Calliope, perhaps, given her obvious and annoying enthusiasm for everything that had to do with the Plot Point. The others might be write-offs, but if she can take even just the four of them with her, it might be worth it. She opens her eyes, and the smile freezes on her face.
She was right about four people choosing to come, at least.
It takes her breath away how young they are. Oh, they're older than Vriska was the first time she died, but that isn't saying much. It never was. They're a little taller than she was back then, inches gained on her younger self in increments. But they still look so young; a little babyfaced, rounded edges, still growing into their own facial features. Puberty has hit them in different stages- Harry Anderson is a full head taller than Tavvy Crocker, and Yiffy's face is speckled with bumps of acne. But for all that Vrissy dresses different, wears her hair different, she looks just like the girl extending her hands out, asking for Vriska to step into the circle of her arms. Dead for years on years and still big eyed and uncertain, the rough edges of her sanded off by time and inertia.
You aren't happy. You're a hilarious trainwreck combined with a sad punchline, and I'm ashamed to share an identity with you.
Are the three of you always this pathetic?
Across the field she can see the others, fighting bitterly. Words rise from them in bursts of raised voices, biting and sour with resentment. They are fixed on each other with only the exception of Jane, who scrambles for her own head on the ground as her body sways, unsteady without the directive weight of her own skull, unmonitored and unmoored. None of them are looking at her. For all of Jade and Roxy and Kanaya's talk about the world they have to stay here for, they haven't even noticed that their own children are over here, looking up at Vriska Serket like she's a fluorescent exit sign. Hell, at this point she might as well be exactly that.
The sun is going down, slow but inexorable. In this light they look like they might as well be covered in blood- rust and orange, pink and carmine. How long has it been for them? Ten sweeps? Fifteen? How long will it keep going?
Even as she stares, Jade lays John out on the ground with a right hook to the jaw, sending him skidding through the dirt. In front of her, none of the kids flinch except Harry Anderson, who squeezes Vrissy's hand harder.
"Take us with you," Vrissy demands. There's no hesitation in her voice, no doubt, just an awful surety. She holds Harry's hand tighter, and reaches belatedly to take Tavvy's too. Across from her, Yiffy slouches, rubs absentmindedly at the burns; Vriska doesn't even think she knows she's doing it. How is she supposed to do this right? How is she supposed to do this all alone?
She's only ever known how to keep herself alive. But what is she supposed to do, leave them here?
I think that even at your most useless self there is a place in the world for you.
"Okay, mini-me!" Vriska says. There's a roaring in her ears, and everything sounds like it's coming from very far away. But at the same time, this feels right; like the pitch of Aradia's own quartz music boxes finally coming into tune, a thrumming that keeps beating, keeps her going. She makes herself look each of them in the eye, before she says it. "So long as you know there's no going back."
Yiffy makes a scoffing noise as if to say, well, duh. Vriska can't stop herself from cracking a smile right back. The others just nod, and that's enough for her.
The light burns as easy as breathing. The fire comes like the flicker of a stovetop to a match, crackling above her head and around her wings and searing her pitch, an outline of empty space and sucked away light. Vriska Serket reaches out and punches a hole through the fabric of the world.
Sky opens up above her, a tunnel yawning bizarre and fluorescent light, glitching colors so fast it hurts to see. Her sash lashes out, winds through the air, and wraps around the kids; it cradles them, loose, but it doesn't let go as she raises herself into the air, wings flapping, and they follow. They don't fall.
The hole in the world opens wider and wider, a mouth stretching until the joint breaks. Below, the adults have realized what's going on. They're pointing, screaming; Yiffy yells back, the one and only thing she's said. Vriska doesn't hear it and she doesn't care, she has a job to do.
She's never been anyone's guardian before. She's not going to fuck it up.
One hand reaches out. There's a whole world on the other side of this punched-out ticket, and there's no use waiting around for it. She touches the place where the sky goes technicolor and breaches it with one single finger.
Sayonara, suckers!!!!!!!!
And then the whole world is technicolor; flashing, dazzling, almost too much. There's the same swooshing sensation she got going in and out of the Plot Point, ascendant and so so bright; every neuron firing, every nerve cell screaming without pain or even really pleasure. She can't see, can't hear, can't smell or taste or even reach out with her hands.
But she can feel them, hanging onto her; hanging on, and coming with her somewhere new.