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Imperial Starships are massive things, vibrating with the shudders of their engines and their purpose. They pass over Terezi’s hive, silently, with a message emanating concisely from their stainless steel sides. They remind her constantly of her comparative lack of knowledge! She gazes at the fuschia insignia on their sides with a strange mix of longing and inferiority.
She snaps her hand crisply to a salute each time they fly over, as the floor rumbles and the walls shake- they have no need for stealth, only a large neon sign proclaiming indestructibility.
The sun slants at odd angles through her windows and she is going to be Captain and Judiciator of one of those empire-serving behemoths, someday. Once she decides that, all she has left is to do it, which will be very simple in comparison.
---
“You’re fucking stupid,” says Vriska Serket. “No one can take down a lusus of that size unarmed, especially not one of your caste.”
“Stop talking like you’re smart, Vriska,” Terezi says. “And anyway, Redglare could.”
Vriska is tall for four sweeps, and bony, jawline sharp and emaciated. She rolls one of the ever-present blue dice between her fingers and spits words out like they’re distasteful. “I don’t know what was so fucking great about Redglare, anyway. My ancestor-”
“We need to plan tomorrow’s FLARP campaign!” Terezi interrupts, having heard enough of Vriska’s ancestor in the last sweep. “Unless you’ve developed a penchant for losing. I would be highly disappointed!”
“Is ‘penchant’ your fucking word of the week?” Vriska asks, the side of her mouth twitching into a smile despite herself.
“Is ‘fucking’ yours?” Terezi retorts, and throws the map at her head.
---
They take down three greenbloods and a gold the next night, and Vriska rolls them up in tarps and ties two to her shitty jet scooter. It’s made for a full-grown adult and is too big for her, but the additional weight of those two painfully small bodies makes it shudder and groan nevertheless. It hovers half a foot above the ground, straining to take off; Vriska sighs and kicks the engine block a few times. It spurts greenish oil onto her shoes, but the rockets kick in and she rises higher.
“I’ll be back in a few for the other ones,” she calls, and disappears in a cloud of exhaust.
Terezi never does find out where she takes them. “No questions asked” was the rule at the beginning, and has stayed that way ever since.
---
Vriska studies FLARP like she studies nothing else, intently and lovingly. She’s fiercer than usual tonight, cheeks flushed blue and hair wild as she scribbles on a map of the cliffs.
After nearly a sweep, they work well together. Terezi takes charge of tactics, plans the abstract theories of attack and defense, and hands over carefully typed reports. Vriska writes on them and draws arrows and turns it into something real and tangible, attacks ideas on paper with a sort of vicious joy. She does it with such eagerness! Terezi suspects motives of rivalry.
Vriska and Aradia have gone slightly black, Terezi realizes, as her fellow member of Team Scourge relates the plan to “destroy those suckers!!!!!!!!” She hopes it will not cause any difficulties in the campaign tonight.
(Later as she contemplates Tavros’ prone body, she remembers Vriska’s camaraderie with him and feels uneasy, remembers her own fist bumps and high fives and “god DAMN terezi you are hot stuff to have as a partner, i want you on my team”. She contemplates the goldblood girl from last perigee, small horns poking through the tarp. She still does not know where Vriska takes them.)
“Hey, Terezi,” Vriska says the next week, grins, breezes into Terezi’s hive like a hurricane. “Hey, Pyrope, no more competition in the area now, you ready for our next campaign or what?”
---
TA: have ii mentiioned how youre a fuckiing iidiiot
GC: Y3S
TA: and how you 2hould have checked tho2e diigiital 2hade2 2he gave you for malware before you put them on?
GC: 1 TH1NK YOU M4Y H4V3 BROUGHT TH3 SUBJ3CT UP ON 4 F3W OCC4S1ONS
TA: two be faiir, 2he ii2 al2o a fuckiing iidiiot for beiing entiirely un2u2piiciiou2 of a tiickiing clock.
GC: T1M3P13C3S 4R3 N3V3R TO B3 TRUST3D!
GC: TH3 TROLLTHOPOLOG1C4L CONNOT4T1ONS 4SSOC14T3D W1TH TH3M 4R3 3NT1R3LY N3G4T1V3.
TA: iit wa2 a pretty 2weet move on your part iill giive you that.
TA: iif flarp teache2 you two make bombs ii probably 2hould have gotten iinto iit year2 ago.
TA: but tz
GC: Y3S?
TA: next tiime you get 2oftware that2 2uppo2edly from me
TA: remember ii would never 2end you an outdated model
GC: PFFFFF
GC: H4H4H4H4H4
GC: H4H4H4H4
GC: H4 >:]
TA: creepy laughter and 2coldiing2 for iidiiocy a2iide, tz
TA: ii am really fuckiing glad youre okay.
TA: a2 iin not dead, ii gue22.
GC: <>
TA: oh god damn iit you know ii hate the 2appy cultural tradiitiion of piixelated romance
TA: <>
GC: 1 4DM1R3 YOUR S4CR1F1C3!
GC: MR 4PPL3B3RRY BL4ST, ON3 MOR3 TH1NG
GC: DO YOU TH1NK YOU COULD D1S4BL3 TH3 M4LW4R3 ON THOS3 GL4SS3S
TA: 2ure, but why?
GC: 1 1NT3ND TO W34R TH3M FOR TH3 R3ST OF MY L1F3! QU1T3 POSS1BLY TH3 R3ST OF FOR3V3R.
GC: 4 SYMBOL OF MY D3F14NC3!
GC: VR1SK4 S3RK3T W1LL NOT G3T TO M3.
TA: whoa.
TA: that ii2. fuckiing bada22.
TA: 2end them over. iill add a few mod2 whiile iim at iit.
GC: 1 3XP3CT TH3M TO B3 D3L1V3R3D 1N P3RSON, TH1S T1M3!
TA: youre learniing. congratulatiion2.
GC: >:]
---
Terezi Pyrope is nine solar sweeps old and cannot see the sun. She pins her new metal plaque to her shirt; it smells sharp and bitter, with the purple-green light of the moons bouncing off in acute angles. The uniform of a cadet is stiff and unyielding. It fits her very well.
She is due to transport at 0800 hours. According to the information packet she has been given, it is normal to feel unease, or a disinclination to change! The information packet is a dull, monochrome, Xeroxed thing. She does not peruse its information, developed over centuries to fit hundreds of trainees, any further.
Her earpiece communicator buzzes. whenever you’re ready, ensign pyrope.
“Good evening, Commander. Transport me at your earliest convenience,” she says aloud, and slings her bag over one shoulder. The lights and colors blink out.
---
The sun is much further away. This is what unsettles her at first.
Her new assigned ship, the JUDICIATOR II, is a massive thing, with tall, echoing walls that taste of antiseptic. They tell her not to lick the walls. Terezi laughs. The sound bounces off the ceiling.
Her cane makes a satisfyingly harsh tapping sound among the chatter of her fellow trainees. They are so silly! It is almost unbearable. Terezi wonders when she became so concerned with ambition and success; they are talking of where their sleeping quarters will be and do you think we get shore leave very often, and she is trying to determine how best to move up the ranks.
Legislacerators are, as a general rule, mostly teal, with some jade and cerulean mixed in. Lower castes are but rarely accepted into the corps. In any case, there is so much blueberry in the vicinity that her nose does not pick up on the familiar scent of deceit and Total Bitch until said person is right in front of said nose!
The others are still chattering, but to her, it is quite silent.
“Hey, Pyrope,” Vriska Serket says, finally. “Nice glasses!”
Terezi grins.
---
Terezi’s face has grown longer and thinner, her jaw sharper and collarbones more protruding, in the time since she first saw Vriska. The starship has not been kind to her. Oh, yes, her horns have grown taller and there is a ring of teal around her eyes, but when she looks at the scrawny unwashed mess of a girl that is Vriska Serket, she feels that familiar childish resentment all the same.
Vriska lounges carelessly, leans the side of her face on the cool tiles of the bathroom wall. She looks at Terezi with her chin propped on one hand, that mass of wildly tangled hair cascading onto the floor- grins sharply, all her mannerisms so painfully similar to what they have always been.
“I am going to just ask the obvious question, here,” says Terezi, “but why are you in the ablution trap?”
“I’m dressed,” Vriska points out, and gestures vaguely towards her crotch.
“Well,” Terezi says, and grins widely, “I can’t see that, can I?”
Vriska laughs, then, a short sharp thing, and looks up at the ceiling as if it has meaning. She is trying to look dramatic. Terezi knows her too well.
“You can fling one arm over the side, if you like,” Terezi says. “You will never be a martyr to me.”
It’s silent for a moment.
“I saved the clock,” Vriska says abruptly. “Well, it’s shattered, anyway. In any case, it gave me an opportunity to get this eye fitted with bionics. They are great!” She emphasizes the second half of the word. “I can see you shivering!”
“That may be because it is cold. You should offer me a jacket. What are you doing in the Legislacerator corps?”
“I’m not a Legislacerator,” Vriska sighs, sounding long-suffering. “I’m a spy! A really, really amazing spy! You’re making it really hard to keep undercover!”
“You are putting in very little effort to dissuade me from discovering your secrets! I really don’t think you can blame me.”
Terezi has made her way to the rim of the trap at some point. Vriska’s neck and the point of her chin make a line that has been observed too often. It is more familiar than it should be, by now.
“It is too dark in space, Vriska.” Her voice is sad. “We do not even get real meals half of the time! Hooked up to intravenous solutions for nutrition and there are no colors. I do not see the point of anything, you know, and so that creates some problems.”
“You’re too fucking idealistic,” Vriska says, without pity. “You thought you’d be saving the world on a starship.”
“Everything is very illogical,” Terezi says quietly and doubtfully.
Vriska slaps her across the face.
“Terezi!” she says, and the loudness and the shock are a welcome distraction in this world of metal and no sky. “Don’t be a fucking idiot!”
“I object,” Terezi protests weakly. She clears her throat, and her voice comes out stronger. “Much too pale of a sentence. There is only one person who is allowed to call me that.”
“I don’t want to be your moirail,” Vriska says, as if the word is going to make her retch. “But I don’t want you to get dumb. We were really great partners once! I can’t train everyone from childhood, you know.”
“Partnerships are based on trust,” Terezi says, climbing over the rim of the ablution trap and curling up against Vriska’s torso. The water sloshes and threatens to overflow. She has too much protruding rib and absolutely no chest at all, a realization which comes to light once Terezi notices the position of her hand. “I did not know it was possible for this to be concave.”
“Trust is overrated, and fuck you! I have great boobs!”
“This conversation has deteriorated rapidly,” Terezi sighs, and closes her eyes. “I call for a recess. Please don’t make that into something suggestive.”
Glimpses of absolute surety have been rare lately, but she has a brief return to the confidence of her childhood, now. She has done far harder things than overcoming apathy! Alternia needs her, even if it does not know that yet. Wrongdoers must be persecuted and the righteous defended, and she might make it to Commander in a few months if she tries.
“Your elbows are too fucking pointy,” Vriska complains. Terezi laughs breathily into her chest, and pulls the plug on the water.