Archive of Our Own

There's that scent in the air again, like jelly made from sour grapes. It's coming from the vents. You wrinkle your nose and turn around in your seat to get a better sniff. Yes, that is undoubtedly the same smell that has been following you around in the halls on and off for the last few days. It is repellent and you are tired of it distracting you from all of the cool things you are trying to do, like read your copy of the Alternian Criminal Code for the fourth time this week. You keep smelling intrusive sour purple and losing track of what line you were reading.

It wouldn't be half as bad if he would only stuff himself in an ablution trap once in awhile, but no, apparently going shithive maggots caused him to lose his ability to maintain personal hygiene in addition to his conscience. The result is incredibly rank, especially compared to the sweet grape smell you remember he had before. You opt to ignore it for now and hope he will lose interest and go away. Despite being in the kind of terrible mood that always seems like a great reason to pick a fight, you feel it would be more trouble than it is worth.

Instead, you hunker back down and lick your page, tasting the familiar black and white of the printed text and the sweet scribbled cotton candy teal of your many annotations. You have just gotten focused again, finding your place at Clause 12h(s) of Section Six: inappropriate misuse of K-class apocalypse, felony level (one of your favorite offenses), when you smell him again, and stronger now like he's getting closer. Ugh! You have had enough of that disgusting clown hiding in vents and sneaking all over the place (as a trainee legislacerator you nominally disapprove of sneaking, except when you are the one doing it). You throw your book down on your desk and head out to find Karkat. It's his job to keep his dumb moirail in line, after all.

You are frustrated and moody, which afterwards you decide is your excuse for executing the conversation with a degree of smoothness similar to that of a stucco ablution trap. If you can call a two-sentence exchange a conversation. Probably also you should not have started with "Keep your dumb sour jelly-smelling moirail away from my vents, Karkat!" and a cane poke in the head, considering how strained things have been between you two lately. But, as noted, you are frustrated and moody and also (importantly), very bored. It is making you less than diplomatic.

Karkat's response stung a little. "Yeah, shut your fucking squawk gaper already, I'll talk to him," he growled. Swatting your cane away, he stalked off without a second glance. You're still not used to Karkat being so closed off from you and you don't like it. As frustrating as it was, you find yourself missing the way he used to argue with you about everything. It was midway between friendship and something else, and it drove both of you crazy because neither of you knew what it was. But even with the craziness it was better than this ugly not-quite-silence.

It doesn't matter either way. You needed Karkat to deal with Gamzee and he dealt with Gamzee. Back to your book. Problem solved for ever, you think to yourself.

The fakeness attribute of that thought is regrettably high and you know it.

To be fair to Karkat's talents as a moirail, the highblood stays away from your respiteblock for a solid day and a half, which is more peace than you expected to get from him. You have time to finish poring through the now-pointless Alternian legal code one more time, and enough left over to stage a mock hanging of Pyralspite. In fact, you are so elated to be rid of Gamzee for the time being, you even break out your official souvenir legislacerator's noose for the occasion. Usually you keep it hidden away in a box under your bed. Not that anyone would steal it. To anyone else it is only a piece of plain rope, after all, but it makes you feel better knowing it's there and it's safe.

It's just past dinner time two days later when he returns. You can smell him in the vents again, even ranker than before. You wonder if he has alchemized something really gross and rolled in it, just to irritate you. That would be just like him.

But even if his scent didn't precede him like the fanfare before the mirthtent show, you'd know he was there this time by the faint wet sound of his breath. This is new; he wasn't doing that before. The fact that he's so obviously letting you hear him is a deliberate provocation. He can move like a hissbeast when he wants to, soft and noiseless and fluid as spilt blood. If he's letting you know that he's watching you, it means that he wants you, personally, to do something about it. So it isn't about watching you, you decide, or at least that isn't the end goal. It's about trying to provoke you.

Looks like someone else is bored and moody enough to want to pick a fight, and it looks like it's going to be a fight with you. Whether you like it or not. At this point, you still think it isn't worth the trouble, but you're beginning to change your mind about that. 

You sit tight and pretend to keep reading your book while you catalogue your options. No point broadcasting that you're aware of him, even though he surely knows it. Information flows into a case, not out of it. That was one of your first lessons in the fine art of investigation, and it has always served you well.

Doing nothing is right out. You have had quite enough of this horseshit. Sitting around hoping for things to work out is for people like Tavros, and that hardly worked out for him. (You hate yourself a little for having the thought, but it's not as though it isn’t true.)

With an abrupt sting of loss, you realize that he's been dead long enough that the kindness that comes with mourning is gone. You still miss him, but not so much that you can pretend he wasn't tragically weak. Even his one attempt not to be pathetic was pathetic. You remember his body, discarded on the ground, warped and cold in death. Pull yourself together, you think, there's a crime to be punished here. No time to get sentimental. You push the feeling away and concentrate on options.

Just asking Gamzee to go away isn't going to help. It's only going to confirm that he's getting to you, and the strong claw of the law cannot be seen to be gotten to by the rabble. Highblood or not, Gamzee is most definitely rabble.

Asking for Kanaya's advice is off the table, because she's only going to want to kill him. As much as you dislike him, you're sick of people dying around you. There are few enough of you left on the meteor as it is. On top of that, you're almost certain that Karkat would go full-on shithive maggots if he lost Gamzee, and no one wants that.

Speaking of which, you've already decided that talking to Karkat about it again is not an option either. It didn't stick the first time and you doubt a second go will be any better. Dave and Rose land firmly in the no column as well, because you'd rather not drag them into any more pointless interspecies shenanigans. You're pretty sure Dave's had quite enough of those for one lifetime.

As you predicted, you're going to have to take care of things on your own.

It is a simple fact that, pound-for-pound, your would-be stalker is leagues stronger than you. Direct physical confrontation is out of the question except as a last resort. Even if it wasn't, that was never your style anyhow. Swordsmanship is a useful skill, without a doubt, but the greatest legislacerators preferred to wreak justice with their cunning. You have every intention of living up to the high bar set by your ancestor's legendary guile.

You decide on something simple to start, enough to teach him a lesson about invading your privacy without showing undue personal interest in escalating the hostilities. Satisfied with your plan, you turn off the light and pretend to sleep. A long while later, a few hours maybe, you hear him slip off quietly into the distance. You wait for a spell to see if he returns, and when he doesn't, you let yourself drift off with a smirk.

Without telling the others where you are going, you sneak off after breakfast the next morning and make your way into the deep labs, where pretty much no one ever goes. One advantage of being stuck in this enormous and labyrinthine structure is that it is actually pretty hard to find a person who does not want to be found, which is why Kanaya has still never managed to find Gamzee and chainsaw him in half. By this point you think she may actually, thankfully, have given up on the endeavour.

The vent passages in the labs are extremely convoluted and basically all identical, which means that someone (say, a certain purple-blooded creep) skulking in them will have a hard time trying to search through them all with any speed. You are satisfied that Gamzee won't find you before you are done, and spend a productive morning alchemizing a large quantity of razor wire and extremely sticky glue.

That night, you tuck yourself into your human nap slab with Pyralspite as usual. But you don't sleep. Instead you lie there listening, eyes closed in a pretense of rest. Eventually the sound of Gamzee's wet breath dies away and his scent recedes, just like last night. It confirms your theory that he still sleeps sometimes, and since he's not just nodding off in your vent, he must have claimed a space somewhere for his own. You file that conclusion away for future investigative possibilities. Either way, now that he's gone, you can get started with the fun (and you have to say, it is going to be fun).

Working with care, you remove the grates on the vents leading to your respiteblock and set them aside. In theory you could just cover them over with something to block the view. But you'd hate to accidentally ruin the ventilation system somehow by doing that. That would be terrible and might endanger the lives of everyone here.

Yes, that is a plausible excuse for prosecution brutality. It is the type of bare-faced hoofbeast shit that would stand up well in Alternian court if you could sell it to His Honorable Tyranny with a straight face. And if you couldn't, you were hardly fit for a place on the Cruelest Bar in the first place! In any case, this solution sends a much more definitive message with respect to your views on this intrusive behavior. It is difficult to suppress your smirk as you get down to business.

"Gamzee Makara," you mutter to yourself, "I find you guilty of one count of complete and utter failure to remain unnoticed when stalking." A much more serious charge than just simple failure to remain unnoticed; another excellent reason for you to engage in some prosecution brutality.

It takes longer than you expected and you wind up lightly coated in glue and your own cotton candy blood, but in the end, you are pleased with the results. You have glued razor wire horizontally across the vent passages, lined up with the grate so that they should be very difficult to see in the liquorice darkness of the ventilation shafts. They are perfectly placed so that Gamzee will stick his whole face into them next time he tries to spy on you. You rinse yourself quickly under the ablution spout, hissing at the hot water on your fresh cuts, and then retire.

Morning arrives early, ushered in with a dulcet (to your ears) cry of "mother-FUCK!" and the soft pitter-patter sound of sour jelly blood spattering onto your floor, followed by a shuffling noise that indicates retreat. You take a deep breath, inhaling the richly sour smell with satisfaction. You hope he stuck his stupid face right into the razors. Maybe he'll wind up with a checkerboard pattern of scars, then he will look extra ridiculous. If you're really lucky, he lost an eye. Drawing the blanket closer around you, you happily snuggle in with your dear sweet dragon plush. Another sentence carried out, another miscreant punished.

You smell neither hide nor hair of him all the next day and it is wonderful. You spend most of it with the Mayor in Can Town, losing yourself in the politics of lobbying for an enormous new judicial centre right in the middle of town. The Mayor would prefer the new city hall to be built first, and bigger. It is a reasonably diplomatic dispute, as you have the greatest of respect for each other as two of Can Town's most important civic leaders. You bicker amicably for a little while.

Dave even stops by, which he hasn't done in some time. It is still slightly uncomfortable between the two of you, but you do your best to make the conversation feel normal. Maybe you even ironically lay the charm on a bit thick, for the sake of old times. It works well enough that he sticks around for a while, mediating your little political bun fight. Talking to him starts being fun and easy again, and just for a while you forget your foul mood and everything that's putting you in it. Your awful purple stalker. Your failed attempt at redrom. The lack of anything to do on this meteor but wait. How much you miss your murdered friends. How much you even miss Vriska, of all people, and how badly you can't admit it.

Just for a minute, you're having a good time and things don't feel so terrible.

And then you make the mistake of accidentally touching Dave's hand while handing him a can and it's weird and everything you were trying not to think about comes crashing back all at once.

You and Dave flirted with matespritship during the first few human months you were on the meteor, but it didn't take. What had been new and thrilling over Trollian was awkward and forced in real life. It became obvious that you both were trying (and failing) to be romantically interested in each other while wishing to be with other people you couldn't face confessing to. Neither of you knew what to do except end it. It was hard to just go back to being friends after. What were you going to talk about? Most of your conversations on Trollian consisted of obnoxious flirting. There wasn't a lot of substance there to fall back on afterwards. There's just been a lot of silence.

On the whole, it was a clumsy attempt at interspecies romance and an even more awkward interspecies breakup. Today is the first time you two have had a real conversation in ages. It was definitely better, but still not what anyone might call normal (as if normal means anything around here). After a few more uncomfortable minutes, you head back to your respiteblock. You've had enough for now. You'll feel better once you get some rest, awful as it may be without a proper recuperacoon. Jegus, you really wish Rose could figure out how to alchemize one.

For once, your sleep isn't terrible and you wake up feeling pretty well-rested. There is still no sign of Gamzee. You decide he's gotten the message and force yourself to relax. Even if he hasn't, it doesn't matter. You're Terezi Pyrope, better half of the legendary Scourge Sisters and last bastion of the Cruelest Bar. You can handle whatever comes your way, be it stalkers or stagnancy. You put on your biggest, fangiest grin, grab your cane, and head out to make trouble.

It's been a long enough time since you really messed with anyone's head good and proper, and you're itching to get back to it. Mock scalemate trials are one thing, but you need living, breathing suspects to keep the skills properly sharp. Aside from Gamzee though, there isn't anyone authentically wicked here to punish. You'll have to settle for bog-standard interpersonal manipulation instead. Not your usual avenue, but you're still more than capable.

You've noticed Kanaya mooning over snooty Ms. Cantaloupe Robe lately (who is actually not all that snooty, but you like the way the word smells when you write it down; all those o's). You suspect that your fellow seer may be on the verge of mooning right back. Kanaya is far too polite to make any forward advances, however, so their awkward interspecies romance has stalled before even getting off the ground. It is high time someone gave her a little push, since Nepeta isn't here to do it for her. You resolve to help in her memory.

You spend the morning hanging out with Kanaya under the guise of needing assistance making a new legislacerator's cape. She's happy enough to help, though you could never tell if you didn't know her, being that she almost never changes her tone from ‘politely listening'. Blistering enthusiasm on Kanaya shows as a slight upturn of the corners of her mouth. You suspect this is part of the problem with Rose. You wind up doing a lot of listening while she bustles around, sewing this and cutting that. All the while, you subtly guide the conversation towards her quadrants.

It turns out that a lot of the issue, once you crack the shell, is how things went with Vriska. You had a feeling Kanaya may have wanted more than a moirallegiance with her, but you never really heard a lot of the details. It's all you can do not to cringe when she tells you. Seeing your flushed crush engaged in forceful sloppy makeouts with someone else while wearing a dress you sewed for her just as you were gathering the courage to confess - well, you can see why she's gun shy about making a move on Rose.

A little strategic complaining from you about Vriska serves to reinforce the notion that it was her at fault there, not Kanaya. You follow up with a very subtle dropped hint that Miss Cantaloupe Robe may be interested in return. Your grim little auxiliatrix perks up just the tiniest bit, and you know she's starting to get it. You leave satisfied that you've done some good, and indeed, at dinnertime that evening, you notice Kanaya looking at Rose with a new kind of determination in her eyes. This time, when Rose catches her eye, Kanaya smiles back instead of looking away. Pouncellor Leijon would be proud.

You fill the rest of the day hanging out with Dave and the Mayor in Can Town. Now that you're rested and feeling better, it really isn't as awkward as you had been making it out to be. It's definitely still a little weird, but you don't get that same awful feeling you got yesterday, so you chalk that up as a decadent cherry success.

On the whole, it was a much better day than you've had in weeks - more than that, even. At dinnertime, you even saw Karkat smile for the first time in practically a human month, although it was Kanaya's doing, not yours. Still, you're glad to see that he remembers how to, miserable little wiggler that he is.

All you need to make it perfect is to read yourself to sleep.

As usual these days, you curl up on your nap slab with Pyralspite and crack open the Alternian Criminal Code. Your sensitive nose is immediately assaulted by a rank smell of sweaty eggplant that completely blocks out the odor of the words. You don't even need to lick the page (not that you want to, now!) to know that it is Equius' blood, and Gamzee's doing.

Page after page has key points smeared over, accompanied by little indigo clown faces and of course the inevitable "honk HONK" that is Gamzee's ridiculous signature. Halfway through, you drop the book to the floor in disgust. You had such a completely perfect day going. Of course Gamzee had to come along and ruin it. You should have known he wouldn't understand how to take a hint, even if that hint is a string of razors to the face.

Well, if he's too dense to take a hint, then he's too dense to know when he's outmatched, too. He's going to come to regret that. There's a very distant part of you that starts asking why he's retaliating like this instead of just murdering you outright, but you ignore it, because you've already decided you don't want to know. There's an even quieter part that already does know and doesn't want to admit it to the rest of you, in case the rest of you is interested.

To distract yourself, you begin ticking off charges in your head. Unlawful breaking and entering. Defacement of official legislacerator property. Attempted unlicensed subjugglation without express permission of Her Imperious Condescension (since you do not consider yourself to have been subjugglated, you will settle for the lesser charge of "attempted"). After a moment's pause, you add squandering indigo blood with malice aforethought to the list of charges. You feel that Equius would appreciate the gesture. The Alternian legal code is wonderfully specific in an extremely broad way. This ensures that there are always charges that apply. Always.

Idly, you lean over and grab the book. You pick through it slowly, mourning the loss of your notes and doodles. You can alchemize another copy, but it won't have the years of accumulated extra secrets that were in yours. He hasn't even done any interesting graffiti, really, just honks and smears and clown faces. You are grudgingly impressed at his thoroughness, however. He's gone through and wrecked every page, you realize. Every normal one, anyway. He couldn't have taken the time to find the secret hidden last page, could he?

You turn to it and discover that he did, and has marked his territory with a huge clown face and three honks for good measure. You slide your nail under the formerly-secret hidden last page and find the catch for the extra-secret document-hiding compartment in the back cover, hoping against hope to find one single thing he didn't get his filthy paws into. Not that you had any secret documents hidden in it yet, but still. The thin little compartment slides out to reveal a smeared spade in sour purple blood with a question mark next to it.

Section H, Clause 8(d.viii): implausible advances towards a member of the Cruelest Bar; blackrom, caliginous quadrant specified.

You pitch the book at the wall, grimacing at it angrily. The idea is repulsive. Gamzee is repulsive! He's nothing more than a double-murdering brute with slime for brains and you hate everything about him. You'd have been right behind Kanaya trying to hunt him down for great justice if you didn't think his death would destroy Karkat. Especially if you were involved. But you have to admit you're still itching to sentence him for his misdeeds. Professionally! Platonically. Strictly from a perspective of maintaining a semblance of law and order.

You steadfastly refuse to consider the possibility of that thought possessing any attribute of fakeness whatsoever.

That makes a lot of things you're thinking about not thinking about, so you think about your next move instead. You decide it is time to learn more about human rap music.

Life on the meteor is static. There's no influx of culture, and not enough creativity among the inhabitants to make your own. In the sweep and a bit you've all been here, those of you who talk to each other have discussed pretty much anything and everything you can think of, just to pass the time. That's not to say no one has kept secrets - all of you have, yourself included - but anything that isn't top secret has probably been strip mined for conversation's sake.

Which is how you know that coolkid Strider's ironically bad taste in music is at least partially responsible for Gamzee's little "crisis of faith". You're pretty sure the last thing Gamzee wants is to be reminded of that blasphemous heresy, loudly and thoroughly. Unfortunately, you're not sure Dave ever told you exactly what song caused the clown to take his acrobatic pirouette off the deep end. Convincing him you have a sudden interest in human rap music is the next thing on your to-do list.

You find your wayward Knight of Time in the library, working on some tunes. Which lately seems to mean staring blankly at an empty sheet of paper and occasionally smacking his head into his hands in despair. You sneak up behind him and yank off his enormous headphones. "Dave," you say, pouring on the charm like Kraft grubsauce, "You weren't busy, were you?" You plaster an enormous friendly smile on your face.

"Nope, I definitely wasn't chilling and writing any sick beats here, none what-so-fuckin-ever, Terezi." He snatches his headphones back and gives you what smells like a dirty look. But it's a friendly dirty look, entirely lacking any real malice. You guess that he was looking for a reason to be distracted, and immediately make yourself that reason.

"Really? Because it looks like you were." You pull out a chair and sit down across from him, allowing a primly attentive look to settle on your face. Well, you think it's a primly attentive look. Frankly it's been a long time since you saw your own mug in a mirror, and sometimes you're not sure if your put-on facial expressions are entirely expressing what you want them to express.

"Shit you got me, you sure don't miss a fuckin' thing with your eagle eyesight. Sharp as a knife on whetstone island getting sharpened by a dozen butlers shipped straight over from butler island just to sharpen the hell outta that one goddamn knife." He has run that butler island joke so far into the ground you're certain it should have slapped into the molten core of the planet and come through the other side by now. On reflection, you think that maybe that is the point.

"The prosecution is all-smelling, Mr. Strider. You should know that by now."

"Yeah well, the defense pleads not guilty. Can I get back to my rhymes?"

"Objection!" you shout with a gleeful grin, slapping the table. You point accusingly at Dave. "The defense reeks of deceit! The prosecution submits that there are, in fact, no rhymes on that page to get back to!"

There is a lengthy silence.

"If you took off those stupid shades I bet I could smell that glare better," you say, sweet as a boatload of sugar straight from sugarstick island. Great, now he's got you doing it.

"If you left me alone I bet I could get some work done," he counters, but there's no fight left in him.

"Or maybe you need help." You waggle your eyebrows up and down.

"Help? Like you know anything about" - ah, yes, the contractually-obligated ironic interspecies air quotes get whipped out just like clockwork - "human rap music."

"I would know more if you taught me. And then I could help," you suggest. Helpfully.

"You wanna learn about rap music."

"Yes." There is another long pause. "I'm really bored, Dave. I'm actually really that bored." You are not actually as bored as that, but you are that interested in pissing Gamzee off to the best of your ability. "You used to rap with Tavros, right? Show me some stuff that he liked."

"Tavros?" He frowns, thinking. "Oh yeah, he was the little stammering bro." An apt summary of Mr. Chocolate Fudge if there ever was one. "Didn't talk to him all that much. I rapped with that spooky Juggalo motherfucker a lot more."

"What in gog's name is a Juggalo?" It's not a term you've ever heard before, although it sounds oddly similar to 'subjugglator'.

As it happens, the terms are sort of related, and that one question basically turns out to be the golden key that unlocks a big fat caegarblock glittering with everything you were here to ask about and more.

You are half-fascinated, half-repulsed by what Dave shows you, but you absorb all of it regardless. Clown paint. Faygo. Miracles. Hatchet-wielding ninjas running dark carnivals for fun and prophet. All of it screaming kitschy, ironic self-awareness, like it's a big joke they're all agreeing to take extremely seriously. You see why Dave assumed Gamzee was one, and you see why the comparison to his beloved mirthful messiahs made him so angry. Much to Dave's chagrin, none of your newfound enthusiasm for the Insane Clown Posse is fake, although it is definitely founded in something other than sincere appreciation for the 'Juggalo family'.

It doesn't take long for Mr. Strider to get sick to hell of listening to 'shitty fuckin clown rap' with you. You leave him to his rhymes. You've got what you needed in any case, so you descend to the alchemy room for stage two of your scheme: creating a truly staggering plethora of shitty clown merchandise. The Juggalos were incredibly prolific with their cult image, plastering it all over everything they could think of. And they thought of a lot: posters, imbibement tubes, musical discs in vast and improbable numbers, fuzzy warmth tarps, all kinds of clothing (they made Juggalo hoof sheathes!), and even (ridiculously, gloriously) a six hundred and twenty-five page account of the history and formation of the Juggalo family. You could kill a meowbeast with this thing!

With amusement, you note that paradox space rates the Insane Clown Posse about as highly as Dave does, because alchemizing these items is so cheap on grist it might as well be free. You make an imperial fuck-ton of all of it. Except the book; you only make one of the book.

He is going to flip the fuck out and it's going to be wonderful.

There's only one thing left to do: find Gamzee's secret respiteblock. Considering how clumsy he is about leaving evidence behind, it shouldn't be that difficult.

You head back to your own respiteblock to get started. When you get there, you give a big cautious sniff for your Juggalo stalker (suitor, you think, making a face). The coast seems clear, which feels about right. He's been lying low lately, messing with you from a distance instead of just watching you all the damn time. It's less irritating, but you're almost certain sure this new, more studied approach is a sign of greater crimes to come.

You can't help your pump biscuit beating a little faster at the idea. The worse the crime, the heavier the sentence, and you live to punish the wicked. It is difficult to admit, but you really are enjoying this. He's a far more interesting opponent than you anticipated. And besides, it's not as though you have anyone else to spend time with. Everyone else here, you think darkly, is busy with someone who isn't you. And if they're not busy, they're dead. You ask yourself why you're really playing this game - are you interested, or are you just lost? You find that you can't answer.

Even if you wanted to, there's no backing down now. After all, as Dave would say, you got up at five am and made all this shitty clown merchandise. Time to put it to use. You pull open the vent and poke your cane in cautiously, wondering if the razor wire is still there. You find that it isn't. Idly, you wonder why he took it down if he isn't going to hang out watching you anymore. It doesn't matter one way or another, so you wiggle your way inside and take another deep breath. There it is, the rotten stink of deceit - and days-old sour jelly blood, of course. He didn't bother to cover his trail when he sliced his face open on your devious trap. You bet he forgot the trail would still be there, maybe didn't even remember you'd be able to sniff your way back to his little hidey-hole. What a rookie mistake. He is very much going regret making it.

Despite your scent-related tracking advantage, it still takes you a couple of hours to track down Gamzee's den. There are places where the blood trail stops entirely, forcing you to hunt around in nearby branching tunnels to find where it picks up again. A couple of times, you are certain you've just gone in circles.

You know you've reached his lair when - overconfident and undercautious - you stick your hand into a line of razor wire strung up across the passage in front of you. So that's why he took yours down. Flinching, you yank your hand back, cursing yourself for not checking the way ahead properly. You've been in here so long you're getting tired, and it's making you sloppy. You can't have that.

What tricks you teach, you lose, goes the adage of the Cruelest Bar, and you neglected to keep that in mind. As painful these cuts are, however, your respect for the highblood ticks up a notch. You are pleased that he's smart enough to turn your own traps against you. He wouldn't be worth your time if he couldn't do that. You'll just have to be smarter next time - and you know you will be.

It's a pity you never alchemized wire cutters, since you just had the machine create the wire in the length you needed. You will have to be inventive now. You pull your cane out of your strife deck and carefully hook the dragon head around the wire. It's harder than you think to get it out of the way. You're on your stomach, not braced properly, the first time you pull, and almost manage to yank yourself face-first into the razors. With a snarl, you wriggle into a better position. Very carefully this time, you brace your feet and haul down on your cane. This time, the razor wire gives, breaking off at the glued ends with a snapping sound. There's a matching rush of pain and fresh teal blood as the cuts on your palms rip wider open.

Hissing in pain, you take a minute to recuperate before you press on. With a wince, you pick up your cane and shove the rest of the wire out of the way. Certainly it hurts, but it's nothing compared to staring straight into the brutal Alternian sun, and that didn't stop you. Sweaty and tired and lightly spattered with cotton candy blood, you finally swing yourself down from the vents into the clown's filthy lair, coming to regret the decision almost immediately.

The stench would be brutal even in a large space; in this tiny and ill-ventilated room, it is enough to make you want to throw up. Stale and sticky Faygo bottles litter the floor, adding a sugary layer to the sour fug of subjugglator sweat and moldering food that fills the air. You really hope it is only food that is moldering. The air is so thick that it is difficult for you to smell-see your way around through the putrid odor. You feel a headache coming on, and being tired isn't helping.

Fortunately, the block is empty. You wonder idly where Gamzee is. You're not sure what he gets up to when he isn't antagonizing you, come to think of it. Maybe he's with Karkat doing palebro things. He could be off antagonizing someone else. The thought engenders a little flicker of jealousy in you. You dismiss the notion immediately; who else in this forsaken place would he be blackflirting with? Kanaya? Not a chance, not over you. It's revolting how satisfied you are to consider that.

In any case, the wicked don't hang on theories but on rope; it's time to get down to real business. You pull off all the vent covers you can find, increasing the ventilation. The heavy fug lifts just enough that you can smell-see again. You pull out your scratch and sniff modus. Everything in it smells so much like victory that you can hardly decide where to start.

After some indecision, you begin with posters.

You bury yourself in the task of plastering hated blasphemy all over Gamzee's block. The work proceeds at a feverish pace - there's no way to know how much time you have, and it would spoil everything if he walked in before you were through.

By the time you are done, you have turned his private den into a shrine to the Insane Clown Posse. The walls are invisible behind layers - actual layers - of posters. If he tears one down, he will simply encounter more. Wherever possible, you have replaced his clothes with shitty Juggalo merchandise equivalents. You have pasted hatchetman stickers all over his husktop. You swipe the warmth tarp that constitutes his bedding and replace it with one that bears the enormous grinning clown faces of the Juggalo cult. You pour flat, warm Faygo (a delightfully heretical waste of the wicked elixir) into imbibement tubes and leave groups of them anywhere that has a flat surface. As a finishing touch, you place the book reverentially on a little space you cleared in the middle of the floor.

Stepping back, you survey the results with a critical sniff. It is indeed an excellent piece of sabotage, but you feel as though it lacks a certain something. A true knife to the gut, as it were. You are considering the matter when you hear a rustling noise coming from the vents. Whirling, you draw your cane and take up an attack stance. You've been made; no good trying to hide. You'll have to face him head on, and you are far too exhausted to have a hope of success.

There's a long awful moment of anticipation.

Then there comes another, and another; the waiting stretches and you realize there is only silence. You relax, the tip of your cane clattering on the floor. You're hearing things. There was nothing there.

Suddenly you realize you are actually disappointed that he wasn't hiding there. You are curious about what he would do if he caught you here, in his den. Would he aggrieve, all clubs and rage? Or would he abscond, like the sneaking coward he is? You are filled with a desire to test his mettle, to push him to the breaking point and see what he would try to do to you.

He'd murder you outright, you think, remembering Equius and poor sweet Nepeta. But come to consider it, you're not so sure. This isn't a rampage, it's a blackrom courtship.

And oh. Oh, it's such an ugly thing to know, but what you're doing here isn't a warning, it's an escalation in kind.

Accepting that you want this - that you want Gamzee howling with rage under your cane - is a sick sweet rush. It's nothing you didn't know already at the heart of you, but you were straining every nerve pretending it wasn't true. There's a heady freedom in admitting it. You know just what your finishing touch has to be.

Hidden somewhere in this filthy, dark, respiteblock, is something that means as much to Gamzee as your Alternian Criminal Code did to you. You're certain of it. Everyone has something they're attached to. You just need to find it.

Feeling around, you're not sure where it could be stashed. You went through most of the block already during your "redecoration" spree. There's not much else to check in this den. And then it hits you - the vents. He spends all his time in them. No one else goes into them. Why wouldn't he use them as storage space?

Excitement rising, you carefully search the walls for vent openings you have missed. Eventually, you discover a small one behind his desk. You wedge it open, and sure enough, there's a little box inside. You shiver with anticipation. Whatever precious thing is inside here, you're going to enjoy ruining it. It's not even locked, so you waste no time cracking it open to find the contents.

The only thing inside is a picture. You take it out and give it a big sniff. You really want to savor the details before you destroy it for good.

It smells like Gamzee, yes; that was expected. Sour purple shirt symbol, big unwieldy candy-corn-smelling streaks for horns. There's more than just him though. The soft comforting smell of strawberry cream. And there's a little whiff of the cool slate smell you associate with Karkat's lame gray anonymity. Oh, no. Your pump biscuit sinks.

The most valuable thing Gamzee owns, the thing he loves most in the world, is a photograph of himself and Karkat with a huge pale diamond drawn on it. Palebros for life. You can't wreck this. There are some lines you don't cross, even in a kismesitude. The lines are different in every caliginous pairing. Often they need to be negotiated between partners. But even without having it spelled out, you know instinctively that Karkat and Gamzee's moirallegiance is off the table. He'd never forgive you. Forget cute blackrom games, he would simply end you. Even if he didn't, you'd never forgive yourself. Karkat needs Gamzee much too badly (even if he won't admit it), and you care too much for Karkat (even if you can't admit it) to show contempt for their relationship.

You put the photograph back, and hide the box in the vent again.

Instead, you pull a piece of teal chalk out of your sylladex. After a moment's hesitation, you scribble a message on the cover of the Juggalo book. It's a simple enough message - a huge cotton candy spade and a TZ. He'll get it.

Exhausted, you crawl back to your respiteblock. You are all kinds of done.

Sleep hits you like a ton of bricks as you snuggle in with Pyralspite. Your nap slab and warmth tarp have never felt so welcoming, even if it is a bizarre alien device devoid of soothing sopor slime.

You startle awake in the middle of the night. Something smells wrong, and it takes you a sleep-fogged second to realize that your room reeks of the sour purple scent of Gamzee. And then you smell what he's done.

You can smell Pyralspite's milk-white fuzz, hung and gutted above your bed, spilling his woolbeast-fluff insides everywhere. With your souvenir legislacerator's noose! That's yours and yours alone. How dare he lay a hand on it. And how dare he disembowel Pyralspite!

With an involuntary snarl, you realize that the sour jelly scent is fresh. He was just - no, he is still here. Not for long though, the coward. You hear something clatter to the ground near the door as he absconds. Must have heard you wake up. You're up out of bed in a blink, pausing to throw on your dramatic new legislacerator's cape and grab your cane.

As you scramble out the door after him, you catch a whiff of the vast clown face he was painting on your wall, complete with the mandatory HONK scrawled all over it. And a half-finished addition underneath. You only got a quick sniff, but you're pretty sure it said something like mother FUCKING juggalo blasphemer BITCH.

You did manage to piss him off. Good. You break out in a grin and run faster, considering all the charges you could lay for this incident.

Liquidation of prisoner without due process of tyranny. Felonious misappropriation of legislacerator strangulation apparatus. Failure to incite requisite levels of terror when committing homicide. You're fond of the last one. It's a relic from a time the Cruelest Bar worked more closely with the subjugglators, a partnership that was eventually abandoned when the legislacerators found themselves unable to stomach the indigobloods' increasing tendency towards indiscriminate slaughter. (The clown cult tells its own version of the story, claiming that they broke with the Bar because none of the legislacerators could tell a good joke. You have always considered this unlikely.)

You could also charge him with disgusting overuse of nasty-ass clown graffiti, an old and rarely-used (but still wonderfully valid) offence. Even Her Imperious Condescension gets sick of nasty clowns once in a while, and by ancient tradition, no law is ever repealed on Alternia. Older laws just get ignored until they become convenient or useful again.

You wish you had a real courtroom so you could stand proudly before His Honorable Tyranny and formally charge Gamzee with his appalling crimes. You will have to settle for a field sentencing instead.

But if you want to do that, you're going to have to catch him first. You've been chasing hard, keeping him within smell range even as you've been picking out charges in your head. He's made a mistake now though, fled down a long straight corridor with no apparent side exits to duck into. "Gamzee!" you shout, voice echoing with theatrical menace.

You hear him say "aw, hells of motherfucking no," as he glances behind himself, only to see you hot in pursuit. He works his lanky frame harder, picking up speed.

"If I didn't know you so well," you shout, breathing hard, "I'd ask why you were running! But we both know you're the worst kind of coward."

"I'm not up and being any kind of fuckin' coward." He keeps running, giving the lie to his words.

"Sneaking around in the vents? Hiding from everyone? Leaving me secret hate notes instead of saying something in person?"

He stops short and whirls around, whipping his clubs out of his strife deck in the same graceful motion. Still hissbeast fast when he wants to be, you note, with a flutter of caliginous appreciation. "Yeah?" he hisses, grinning obscenely at you, rage flickering in his eyes, "Could say the motherfuckin' same at you!" He talks like he writes, alternating between low, drawling whispers and full volume shouts that echo down the corridor.

You skid to a stop a short distance from him and carefully draw your cane. He's got a point, even if you'll never concede it. "You started this game, Gamzee. You can hardly hold it against me if I decided to play by your rules. And win."

The highblood chuckles, and it's an ugly sound, rough and wet at the same time like he's choking down a throat full of clotted blood and gravel. "Shit, girl, you're all hells of playing by a coward's rules even when you're not doing the hate date game to me."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Aw, Terezi, don't get all acting like the kind of girl what I know you ain't like. I seen you, remember? I always seen you." He's just playing for time, trying to distract you, trying to make you so mad you forget to pay attention. But you're determined not to let it work. You can't see him, but you're dead sure he's inching away from you, slowly and surely. He's hoping for a head start for when he runs again and you're not going to let him have it.

"Yes, we've established that you're a gross, creepy vent-dweller. So what?"

"Heh, heh. Honk." That sick wet chuckle again. "I seen you all talking at that heinous chainsaw bitch, tryin'a fix them holes what she's got all in her busted self." He must see the confusion on your face, because he clarifies, "Jadeblood girl does all her stitchin' and sewing in a tall fuckin' block, what's having vents up real high. Motherfucker miracle for hiding from you. Guess your nose doesn't always know, huh?"

"The prosecution fails to see your point." You stride closer to him, maintaining a dismissive sneer. Ancient legislacerator wisdom: keep calm on the surface, paddle like a quackbeast underneath.

"All telling at her how to be fixing her flushed quadrant when you're just hells of alone, ain't even able to keep your motherfucking own quadrants in order."

"Leave Strider out of this. That was different."

"Girl." You can hear him moving but you can't tell where to. "Girl," he drawls, turning it into a growl, "little blind lawmaker girl, you and I both motherfucking know I was not meaning fuckin' Strider."

What stings most is knowing that he's actually right. You are a coward and a failure and you have no business telling Kanaya what to do about Rose. If you had half the fortitude of a real legislacerator, you'd have told Karkat how you felt sweeps ago. But you didn't. You hid behind coy games and pride and waited for him to make the first move, knowing he wouldn't without a sign from you. And you refused to give him one.

You waited too long and you wavered too much and you know in your guts that you've lost him. Nothing remains between the pair of you but regret. There is no one else left. Almost everyone you've ever known is dead. You murdered Vriska yourself. Even Strider's nothing more than the ghost of a friend these days, no matter how much human rap music he can stomach teaching you about. You really are all alone.

Except, of course, for Gamzee.

The hell with it then. You're frustrated and moody and alone, so damn alone. But at least you're not going to be bored. "The prosecution wishes to proceed with charges," you declare, and lunge towards the highblood with your cane.

"Fuckin' have to be catchin' at me first." He swats your weapon aside with a club, bringing his right-hand one up in a low arc aimed at your wide-open ribcage.

"Watch me," you growl, diving to the side. You're not fast enough, and the strike clips you hard. It's going to leave a hell of a bruise. You land heavily on your side and kick out at Gamzee's kneecap, connecting solidly.

He stumbles with a shout, giving you just enough time to scramble backwards and get to your feet. He takes another swing, but it's awkwardly balanced since he's still recovering. You shift to the side, avoiding it completely this time, and slam your cane down on his left elbow. Suddenly nerveless, his fingers loosen and he drops the club. Not his dominant hand, but it's still a victory.

"You're a vile piece of trash," you hiss, "and you'll pay for your crimes."

"Fucking get on and make me then, girl."

All at once, he rushes you, slamming you up against the wall painfully with his whole lanky frame. His arms press down on yours, pinning you where you stand. He feels warm against you and you like it more than you can bear. You want to hurt him back, want him to feel the same ugly hate-lust you're feeling. Before he can do anything else, you pull your empty left hand free and grab a fistful of his greasy mane, yanking his head roughly to the side. He growls softly as you bite down hard into his exposed neck.

His skin tastes warm and sour, and you can smell his blood pulsing underneath. You bite harder, breaking the skin. Gamzee moans as the blood seeps into your mouth. Tastes just like it smells, nasty sour grape jelly; you find you've grown to like it despite yourself. You suck harder, drawing more. This - all of this, this brutal lust, this beautiful hate - is new to you and you drown yourself in it, reveling in the feeling of his bulge growing, pressing up against you.

You shouldn't have lost your focus. He takes advantage of the lapse and grabs you by the throat with his free hand, tearing you away from his neck. "Enough of motherfuckin' that," he snarls, shoving you back into the wall. You spit out a chunk of highblood skin and grin nastily up at him, indigo dripping down your chin. He tightens his hold, digging his jagged nails into your throat. The skin breaks, and you can feel blood oozing down your neck, staining your cape. Tit for tat.

"What," you mutter hoarsely, coughing a little, "you're not going to have a taste, Makara? I bet you I taste better than Faygo." You don't actually know if there is a teal flavor of Faygo, but you bet it tastes like crap if there is.

He's not choking you, just restraining you by the neck, so you can still breathe and talk - for now. Despite the deluge of Juggalo heresy you subjected him to, you don't think he actually wants to kill you. You're pretty sure. It's hard to carry on a blackrom if you kill your kismesis, after all. You're banking on that, but there's a little shiver of fear under your excitement all the same.

"I'll have a taste when I'm good and motherfucking ready, lowblood." You can feel his breath hot on your face as he leans down, getting right up close to you.

You snort derisively (as best you can, with his hand on your windpipe). "Like you give a damn about the hemospectrum, Gamzee. Your moirail's a mutant, did you forget that?" If he can take shots at you about Karkat, you're going to do the same to him.

You've never used that word for Karkat before. Mutant. An uglier pair of syllables you don't think you've ever seen. But you're so beyond caring who or what you throw into the line of fire now. You just want to get at Gamzee like he's getting to you. Distantly you realize that's exactly what he wants, but you can't - won't - stop yourself now.

He just laughs, raising his other hand like he's going to belt you with his club. Right arm now freed, you take the opportunity to slam the dragon head on your cane into his stomach. You don't have a lot of leverage, but the cane's head is heavy enough to hurt. He drops his grip on you and you wriggle free, coughing breath back into your lungs.

Bent double, the two of you lock eyes - well, he stares at you and you smell him looking - and start to grin. You're practically mirror images: sweaty, bruised, bleeding from the neck. How appropriate.

You lean forward, grabbing his neck to bring him closer, and kiss him, and it's just as ugly as a caliginous kiss should be, all teeth and force and bruised lips. You hiss your displeasure when he finally pulls back, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him back towards you for more.

"Where do you think you are going, exactly?"

"Not motherfuckin' anywhere is what I'm guessing," he replies, in between more hate bites and bruise-kisses, his hands starting to wander.

"Very good, mister sour jelly. You're not so stupid as you look, all evidence to the contrary." The pair of you are shining with sweat and slick with blood. Beautiful. Awful. You want more. You want so much more.

"You rank and heinous bitch," the highblood purrs, "I was all hells of smart enough to know how to get inside your bony head." He raps his knuckles against your temple.

"But you were not smart enough to stop me getting into your pants," you smirk, reaching down past his waistband for his swollen bulge. You will treasure the look on his face, bare-faced lust blended with surprise, for the rest of your life. "That was a mistake." He's frozen with it, stock still, nothing moving but his chest rising and falling as he breathes, faster and faster as you let your fingers wander. You laugh quietly; you have the feeling he is actually afraid you might stop if he moves. "Now you're all mine."

"Ain't fucking think so," he says, but he doesn't sound so sure. Good. If he thought he was in charge here, he can go ahead and think again.

"Well, I do." You squeeze down, hard, aiming to hurt. He honks at top volume, jumping back involuntarily, forgetting that you're still gripping him tightly. Whoops.

The highblood howls with rage and pain, practically breaking your wrist as he pulls you off of him. "That is it! That motherfucking is it, heretic lawmaker bitch." He spins you around and slams you face-first into the wall. You barely get your hands up in time to prevent a broken cartilage nub. He yanks your new cape off with a tearing sound, discarding it on the floor. Planting a hand on the back of your neck to keep you from moving, he rakes his wicked claws down your back again and again, shredding your shirt, and your skin beneath it. The feeling is electric, a heady mix of pleasure and pain.

Suddenly he stops clawing at you. There's a rustling noise, and Gamzee presses himself against you again, clamping his teeth down on your neck. You feel the warmth of skin on skin and groan with pleasure; he's tossed his shirt and it feels good to have him pressed half-naked against you. You feel the smallest pang of regret that you'll never actually lay eyes on his shirtless body. You suspect you would appreciate the sight. He's lanky and far too tall, with whipcord muscles that pin and hold you like steel traps. Nothing at all like Karkat, you think, unexpectedly, short like you and not nearly so spare as his moirail.

Forget Karkat, you tell yourself, he's forgotten you. You're here with Gamzee now. Thinking of Karkat makes you feel bitter and vindictive and alone.

You elbow Gamze in the ribs as hard as you can, then shoulder him down to the ground while he's still unsteady on his feet. It is far past time for him to have a taste of his own medicine. Moving fast, you sit heavily on his chest, knocking the remaining wind out of him. Then you slam your cane flat into his throat and press down hard, cutting off his breath. To your surprise, he grins up obscenely at you, so you slap him as hard as you can. Satisfying, but it doesn't stop him smirking.

"None of that," you declare, and slap him again. You're falling into it more, enjoying the role of the legislacerator bringing the wicked subjugglator to heel. "You are all kinds of being under arrest, mister sour jelly blood. Does the defense have anything he'd like to say for himself?"

He can only hiss in response. You push down a little harder, grinning right back.

With your other hand, you rake your nails softly down his chest, teasing without breaking the skin. You can smell his frustration and it is sweet like a dusting of sugar on sour candy. Again with the nails, softly. He reaches up but you slap his hand away, so much easier now that he's starving for air.

For a minute, it feels like there's nothing left in you but cruelty and the thought startles you. You're empty and alone, but there's still more than that. You think.

Snarling - angry at him as much as at yourself, for making you feel that way - you ease up on the cane so he can breathe, and drag your nails down his chest, ripping the skin. He takes a deep gasping breath and howls in rage. You silence him with a brutal kiss, digging your hands into his unruly mane. He grabs your hair with one hand, and slaps your ass with the other. You let out a muffled "mmf!" of surprise against his lips.

He lets go of your hair and takes hold of your waist, pushing you backwards towards his straining bulge, gasping as the curve of your ass slides along it. You grin and wriggle atop him, teasing. With a growl, he reaches up and yanks your shredded shirt right off your back, leering obscenely at your exposed body.

You should be sickened by his searching eyes. You should be appalled by everything you're doing, everything you have done to one another in this brutal black courtship. You would have been, before everything that has happened this sweep. But you are not who you were, and you never will be again. As troll Macbeth would say, you are in blood stepped so far that turning back would be just as impossible as going forward.

So what the hell. You are not a hero of time; you cannot change what brought you here. And if you have to be honest with yourself, you really don't want to. You undo your pants, then reach down to undo his.

"What does the defense plead?"

"More."

So that's what you do.