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interrogatormentors · 4 months ago

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BOOK 2: EVENT 6: Prosecutor's Gambit

One step out of the shower and Sollux already thought of two hundred different reasons why he should turn back from his intended course. Even after the water had scalded the blood and viscera from his flesh, his skin still felt tacky. Only when Aradia grabbed his wrist in a firm hold did he realize he’d buried his claws into the bandages covering his bad arm, trying to dig through the gauze to the healing flesh below. He could still feel stomach acid biting at his skin after digging around for any souvenirs left behind. “...The Surgeons have replaced blood with corrosives before,” he said lamely, but uncurled his fingers all the same. “I should go check.”

“Your skin looked the normal amount of messed up because you never get moonglow when we changed your dressings,” Aradia replied. She let Sollux’s wrist go as they continued walking down unfamiliar halls together. “Your beautiful bone structure will not get acid-washed unless under my supervision or permission! You’re making excuses.”

“Making excuses implies–”

“That you’re scared?” Aradia cocked her head, the slow blink of her lashes almost audible as Sollux pursed his lips. “The big bad interrogatormentor is trying to skedaddle, it seems like. The Sk’dadler, they’ll call you.”

“That’s a stretch.”

“Good thing you’ve got freakishly long arms, then, even if one’s in a sling!” Aradia’s expression fell back into one more serious, the smile dropping from her eyes before it left her lips. “You need to do this. Interrogatormentors found the base, looking for you, and you can’t afford to be on the defensive right now.”

“I’m not the only target. What if they decide the homicidal time bomb is more trouble than it’s worth?”

Aradia reached up, grabbing one of his ears in a sharp pinch that sent a shock down his spine. She grinned, tombstone teeth bared in even rows as she gave him a disciplinary shake like a naughty woofbeast and not a loaded gun. “Then I get a free show as not getting your intel blows up in their faces.”

“They’re your people too. You want them to fail?”

“Our people deserve to fail if they won’t listen to you, Sollux,” Aradia said. She let go of his ear, metal fingers lingering a moment on his jaw as if she couldn’t tell he was moments from biting after manhandling him so carelessly. “A rebellion is all about risks, and you’re one that Karkat and I will take over and over again.” She raised a finger up, and Sollux snapped his mouth shut after starting to protest. “I wish you weren’t so hard on yourself. I saw you. Some things never change. You’re not getting pity points by saying you don’t deserve attention! Karkat might hand those out for free, but I won’t.”

Sollux avoided Aradia’s accusatory scowl, focusing instead on trying to hunch his shoulders in and minimize himself as they passed a random rebellion member who stared openly as they passed. His bad shoulder no longer clicked in its socket, discomfort now localized to his reconstructed hand. “You’re both too good for me.”

“So many ears and you still can’t listen. Cliches won’t appease me–you have to come play in the dirt with me.” Aradia stopped outside a door, the only one in the hall that had a keypad. She entered in the code with her hand slightly cupped to shield it directly from Sollux’s eye before heading into a room that was thick with voices and agitated pheromones. Sollux himself hovered on the doorway, hesitating. Aradia and Karkat had ruined him; fear wrapped around his neck like a snare that he could not kick his way out of.

“...cannot afford to rush things. Insisting like you are–” Kanaya said from her seat partway down a long table, while Feferi massaged her temples with her eyes closed at the very head opposite the door.

An indigo interrupted her by raising his fist with full intent to slam it into the table, only for Nepeta to fling herself from the opposite side and worm her way under the approaching fist. The indigo’s hand faltered a millimeter above her skull, and Nepeta demurely batted at the quivering fist with the expression of a smug meowbeast knowing it had gotten away with pilfering the pantry. Equius, then, Sollux surmised. The hand came to rest on Nepeta’s face, and she gnawed at his steel-sculpted fingers as he spoke. “Waiting begets complacency. That pissant convinced us–Nepeta, please, some decorum would be appreciated.”

“Apurreciated but denied!” Nepeta chirped. “Quit being a shitsand dirtscraper first.”

“A shi… A–” Equius blustered.

Next to him at the table Vriska fucking Serket made an audible gagging noise, leaning as far as possible on her seat without falling backwards by some misbegotten miracle. A flicker of spite scurried up Sollux’s spine, itching at the wrist around which Aradia’s makeshift bracelet and urging him to remove it to psionically yank the chair completely out from under the smarmy cerulean. She opened her mouth to speak and every muscle in Sollux’s body tensed, a yellow film creeping across the edges of his vision like sickly clingfilm as his pusher began thundering panicked fury that he thought interrogatormentor training had long since locked away. A tunnel yawned open and stretched before him, and Vriska burned bright at the end of it as the walls threatened another cave-in like the one she’d coerced him to bury Aradia under so many sweeps ago.

A hand burst forth from the rubble and alighted upon his clenched jaw, and though it held none of her old warmth the prosthetic digits could not disguise Aradia’s touch. Sollux inhaled sharply through his nose, and the room’s occupants went silent just in time for him to reorient himself with Aradia’s hand at the center of his focus. He curled his uninjured hand into a fist to dig his nails into his palm to further ground himself and prevent this brazen display to fluster him, but to his dismay Aradia sussed out his usual tricks and quietly unfurled his spindly digits joint by joint. Sollux was forced to acknowledge the whole table without a lifeline of pain to shield his emotions, and even Karkat sitting opposite a startled-looking bronze with sweeping wings joined the mass of people pinning him down with their combined gaze.

Eight people filled the eleven seats arranged around the table, as Nepeta’s abdication of her throne to menace her moirail table-surfing style meant the ninth stood temporarily empty. A twelfth chair covered by a dusty sheet brooded in a neglected corner. No evidence of the dust being disturbed surrounded the shrouded chair–one of the two missing members from the foundational core of rebellion leaders was expected to return, and the fact bronzeblood Tavros Nitram sat between Feferi at the head and Gamzee on his right at a table otherwise following a hemospectrum adherent seating chart told Sollux all he needed about who that was.

A familiar click of the tongue against teeth echoed around the room, and Sollux couldn’t help the way his ears flicked back behind him to try and catch further evidence of Pozoia’s imminent approach before he registered Terezi as the source. The tealblood bared her teeth in a knife-sharp grin, blind eyes boring holes into Sollux’s exposed throat from behind her shades. “Well, well, well, the rabid attack woofbeast of the Empire rouses from his daymares just in time for his trial. Have you got a tight grip on Appleberry Blast’s leash there, little bell pepper?”

“I mean, this could just stay a discussion,” Tavros said, raising his hands in a placating gesture as Karkat started vibrating in his seat. “I don’t think antagonizing–”

“Tavros is right,” Feferi said, also holding out a hand to Karkat. Tavros grimaced, but otherwise allowed the interruption. “We weren’t getting anywhere. Should we take a brief reefcess so I can glub with Aradia here?”

“You keep speaking our language and then managing to say absolutely nothing,” Terezi said, rapping her cane arythmically against the surface in front of her. “Say what you want to say before the jury!”

“Oh my gooooooood, you really are a broken record,” Vriska groaned, craning her head back towards Terezi. “Little pipsqueak wouldn’t survive a second in your wigglerfeed courtroom, this is true, but you can’t just bulldoze your way into that kind of snoozefest. We all deserve to participate in ripping that loser a new one for barging in on us.”

“Every drama needs a peanut gallery,” Terezi snipped back, and Vriska scoffed. Feferi smiled tensely, but her eyelid twitched.

“Sollux can speak for himself,” Aradia said shortly before the fuschiablood could speak. “And he’ll do it at the seat we saved for him.” She slid her hand down Sollux’s face to lead him by the wrist around the table to the two empty seats, located between Nepeta’s vacated seat and Karkat. The mutant’s claws were currently digging into the table with a creaking of metal that had Equius automatically doing a glance over of his own place at the table with hooded eyes. Finding his section undented, he took a sip from the glass Nepeta handed to him before she slithered back across the table to her proper place. Everyone else had water, a few pitchers sitting in the middle of the table to refresh them, but cloudy white swirled within Equius’ glass. The liquid left a gritty film on Equius’ lip that he dabbed away with the back of his knuckles as he made direct, glowering eye contact with Sollux as the latter rounded the outskirts of the room with Aradia. Powdered milk, then.

Sollux didn’t blink, muscle memory snapping him up into an interrogatormentor’s posture while his shoulders and head dropped by a few degrees–a predator two steps removed from a wild howlbeast sizing up prey as it stalked through the flickering shadows of a dying campfire. Equius’ nostrils flared a bit and Sollux mimicked him instinctively, head cocking very slightly to the side and down. He adjusted his gait and shifted his weight forward so he stalked silently alongside Aradia upon the balls of his feet and towered above the seated trolls he passed behind. Kanaya watched him ghost along out of the corner of her eye, and even Vriska tensed across the way when an interrogatormentor’s shade passed before her.

Sollux remained steadfast as friends and conspirators now flinched with every purposeful twitch of his ears, his own eyes stinging as he needled his gaze into the bloodshot eyes squinting accusatorily at him behind cracked frames. He couldn’t back down now. Equius' chin dipped down by an increment, a refusal to relent and a hair’s breadth from a goring posture. Sollux stayed the course and copied him in an almost simultaneous motion. Equius wore his heart upon his sweaty bicep–he never could resist the predictable chorus set in the siren song of blueblooded posturing even through text. Here and now, Sollux had to win this highblood’s obvious challenge, the call to submit as he should by virtue of the swill in his veins. He couldn’t show weakness in this moment, not to anyone, not with what was at stake and nestled in his pocket. One of the many globules of sweat beading the indigo’s hairline rolled down his crooked nose, dropping into his cup.

The surface tension of the milk broke with a soft plip that echoed in the silent room, and Equius’ fist clenched around the glass. Slivers of silver traced their way up the cup in a delicate network of straining material. Nepeta ducked under the table, while Vriska and Gamzee on either side of Equius raised their hands protectively in practiced tandem. Sollux stopped in place and braced even as Aradia tugged insistently at him, his eyes watering and blinking wide as Equius rotated his shoulder in a clear bid to throw the rapidly splintering glass leaking milk through his meaty fingers directly at Sollux’s vulnerable ganderbulbs. Sollux stood firm. He couldn’t blink. Not now. Not yet.

Tch. Equius blinked and looked down the table, and the broken stalemate freeing Sollux to cringe away from the tongue click behind Aradia’s shoulder as if to shield himself in her unruly curls. Vriska tittered behind her hand, casting a smug expression to the repeat offender next to her. Terezi sniffed but did not so much as tip an ear the cerulean’s direction to acknowledge the attention, instead leaning forward in her seat towards Sollux’s approximate location. Her tongue flickered out from between her dagger teeth–a musing, reptilian probing of the cortisol-charged air as she tried to gauge his response to her stunt. Sollux held his breath to stifle the way his breath shuddered out from his lungs, falling back on Rapard’s training in suppressing his stress pheromones after repeated trips to the ice bath. The cold crept along his brainstem, freezing his panic into a knife he no longer knew how to wield against himself. It pressed up against the back of his eyes, a migraine slanting along its serrated blade with glacial inevitability.

Aradia managed to get Sollux moving again with a hand on the small of his back, and the instant he stepped into range Karkat clung to his good arm. The scarletblood ushered Sollux into the seat right next to him as he growled deep in his throat across the table to the cadre of coolbloods gathered together, ears pinned flat to his skull. He kept side-eying Sollux however, for all his bluster just as thrown off by Sollux’s presence as the other trolls around the table. Bewildered irritation flashed across Feferi’s face despite her best efforts to maintain a smile, but Aradia ignored this and the way Sollux leaned back very slightly in a toothless attempt to distance himself. Instead she simply brushed some clinging dust off of the seat to Sollux’s left before sitting there herself.

Nepeta wormed her way up from under the furniture to squiggle into Equius’ lap, plucking the cup away from him and chugging what milk remained before flurrying his sweat-sticky cheek with furious pitter-paps. His scowl softened, granite melting to ashy marble for a moment. Something twisted deep in Sollux, wrenching his intestines into knots that sent bile bubbling at the back of his throat, and he tugged his arm free of Karkat’s hold.

Finally, Aradia broke the awkward silence. “Right! Let me fill in the blanks here for you, Sollux. We’re still on the topic of if you can be trusted.”

Kanaya lifted her eyes to the ceiling as if praying for patience, while a few other trolls shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Feferi’s tense smile dropped. “Aradia–”

“Don’t ‘Aradia’ me, Feferi Peixes,” Aradia snapped back. She lifted her head, chin up just enough to maintain a level of respectful civility while not yet exposing her throat. “This isn’t about me! Let Sollux defend himself. He actually has something important–”

“Does he want to?” Feferi tilted her head very slightly back all the same, hollow of her throat exposed to Aradia in a genuine bid gesture of appeasement to soften her query’s bite. She waited, fins fanning her face. Terezi clicked her tongue again in the background, and Sollux’s pan reset once again as he scrambled to put the right words in place only for them to die in the cocoon.

Gamzee leaned forward. “Come on, then. No need to be all motherfucking shy, my spindly little blade-brother. Long as you keep your motherfucking sparks under control I don’t see why everyone’s gotta be so wound tight. I’d like to see if you’ve still got your chops when it comes to motherfucking chopping. We got a few tough nuts we need to motherfucking crack, so let’s see if you break first.”

Sollux forced his jaw to unclench. “If I got to work on your prisoners you wouldn’t have anything left of them.”

Feferi sighed as a good number of the others tensed, dry gills fluttering in the recycled air. Her chin lowered. “He’s been through a lot, Aradia. I didn’t even minnow he was awake yet. Don’t you think this is a bit cruel?”

“Cruelty is a bit subjective here, is it not?” Kanaya asked, addressing the ceiling. She lowered her eyes, lips pressed together in a thin line. “Sollux proved himself very capable when he managed to hack into our network in order to contact you.”

Sollux bristled, leaning forward and opening his mouth–it hadn’t been hard, really, considering that he’d coded the network to be his mirror back before the helm–only for Karkat to pipe up then. He hadn’t looked at Sollux since the latter had pulled out of his grip. “Do I need to fucking remind everyone that he got absolutely fucking wrecked for it? How much more do I need to rub the solid facts in your face like a mistrained woofbeast for you to remember? Do I need the fucking receipts? The literal scans of his nearly deboned nub? You were all on board for extracting him in the first place, and you were all made thoroughly aware of the many potential risks of rehabilitating him, and you committed with a merry fucking by your leave as you left me and Aradia to reassemble the expansive jigsaw that is our erstwhile companion now returned to us. What could have possibly changed now? We’re talking in such tight fucking circles that it’s going to catch my bulge in a vice and leave me fucking hurling up putrescent bloodclots by the trough-full before the night’s over.”

Gamzee’s head bobbed very slowly, and he yawned once before drawling out, “Sir Motherfucker was found elbow-deep in interrogatormentor gore, that’s what motherfuckin’ changed for those gathered here this light-lean night.” The purple swayed in place, tilting from one side to the next with the same inconsistent timing as his shifting opinions. He leaned his head in his hand while an index finger idly swirled the grease paint at the corner of his mouth into a tight smile-spiral. They’d all been arguing in this room for a while for his sealant to fade enough for him to do so. “Looks like he tried to motherfucking dance to the empirical drumbeat behind your back without knowing all the steps and panicked when it broke bad.”

Vriska splayed her fingers on the table as she leered at Karkat. “Was it behind his back though? Drama queen bee had to get his cuff off somehow.”

The knife twisted into Sollux’s eye socket, infuriated headache spiking further pain through his pan. Karkat sputtered, saying something that Sollux didn’t catch. Vriska had rolled her eyes in response to the mutant, one good eye and one cybernetic settling their disrespectful arc to lock Sollux in place. Cobalt threads of mindscourging tried to worm their way into his corneas like parasitic hookworms. Confess embroidered itself across the back of his eyelids, just in time for yet another trigger-click of Terezi’s tongue.

Sollux flung himself from his seat, catching his chair with his good hand as he vaulted onto the table and attempting to fling it over his head with his forward momentum. Vriska cursed under her breath and raised her metal arm to block the incoming projectile. Karkat let out a startled yelp, grabbing onto Sollux’s ankle, and while Sollux managed to kick him away the chair’s clumsy trajectory still wobbled wide. Nepeta hissed and rolled off to the side as Equius stood. One huff and a settling of his weight, and Equius threw a haymaker that rendered the chair to fragments of wood that rained down around him in a swirl of sawdust.

Equius pointed at Sollux, hair falling into his eyes as he snarled, “You see this? You see how the little brute shows his true colors after I pressed him with such strong–”

“You pressed him?” Vriska said, an indignant flush rising up her cheeks. “Leave it to the muscle pervert to talk a biiiiiiiig fucking talk about knowing his damn place beneath the ladies but taking credit whenever he can.”

Equius sputtered. “I wasn’t– No, you know I. Um. Underneath. Hgkkhg.” Nepeta emerged from the aether again, holding a towel that she proceeded to drape around her moirail’s shoulders. She stuck her tongue out at Vriska, who squinted with a sneer blademeowbeast-style as she wiggled her fingers at Equius.

“Hhhhng,” he continued helpfully as he attempted to stem the flow of sweat by dabbing at his face.

Karkat squeezed something akin to a scream from between his teeth. “Great, now he’s going to get his wiggly-sproutsmear all over the floor. We are going to drown in vile milk-scented blue slurry for perigees and it will never fucking escape the crevices of my very thinkpan without a generous amount of abrasive cleaning solution. Great! Always grateful for you, Vriska, you are a credit to the fucking team, are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Vriska purred.

Karkat let out a peal of frantic laughter. “Hooray! By the Helmsman’s necrotic left globe, we are not about to support women’s wrongs here–”

“Just did, little buddygrub.”

“—especially not after you clearly provoked, fuck, both of them. Let it be known by the present fucking peanut gallery that it was very, very pointedly masterminded by our resident spiderbitch! Fuck me sideways with the business end of a rust-infested leafscraper if you resent my heretical sludge so fucking much, Serket!”

“Ew, no.”

“Shut up. Sollux, get down from there. You’ve done enough.” His voice cracked a little bit, shaking the frost from Sollux’s rage and leaving him quivering. Sollux retreated, dropping to a knee to clamber down from the table with his tail between his legs, but Terezi rapped her cane on the table and hopped up onto it.

“We eat off of this,” Kanaya said, a long-suffering sigh drawing her mouth into a resigned frown.

“The memory of feet isn’t going to throw me off a delicious ration cube,” Terezi said. She advanced on Sollux, a familiar prowling that echoed the stance she’d never seen–the way Sollux had circled the table mere minutes before to menace Equius. “Besides, we’ve got a more important task! Permission to treat this as a formal court hearing, oh Heiress of the Planets Above and Below?”

Feferi looked between Terezi and Sollux, worrying her lip with her teeth as her attention lingered on Sollux. “Shore, why naut? Does everyone agree to the terms that would fintail?”

Murmured assent rose from the trolls assembled around the table, with Karkat and Aradia being the main oppostion, and Terezi clapped her hands together once the votes came in. “Then allow me to formally thank you so much, first witness Sollux Captor, for taking the stand. Welcome! To!” She spun in place, brandishing her arms wide before lowering her cane to point somewhere above Sollux’s right shoulder. “The trial of Karkat Vantas!”

The table erupted with protests, but all the bluster washed over Sollux’s head. His knee creaked as he continued half-kneeling, but Terezi’s words lay outside expected parameters–his synapses fired against nothing and locked his limbs in place. Vriska rolled her eyes with an audible clicking of the prosthetic in its socket and stretched out her leg as she let out a squeaky yawn. She kicked out her foot against Terezi’s elbow, tipping the cane down to point past Sollux to Karkat proper. Terezi hummed, a disharmonious grating against Sollux’s aural canals, waiting for a lull before lifting her voice to slice through the din.

“In this corner, shoulder to shoulder with the Heiress and a lemon-sour flight risk sits the defendant Karkat Vantas–” she said, rotating in place to address the entire table. “--who is formally charged by my client Vriska Serket–”

Vriska scoffed. “I’m not paying you.”

Sollux’s lip twitched up to flash a fang at her. “Get pro-boned then.”

Terezi cackled, ruined eyes squinted into ruby slits as Sollux withdrew at last to his seat. “Ah you forget, Appleberry, working pro bono implies I’m doing this for a public good.” Vriska let out an offended gasp in the background behind Terezi’s back as the latter continued on. “So we will see where the coin flip lands.” She waggled her head back from one shoulder to the other to accentuate her next few syllables. “A-ny-ways, client number eight–”

Tavros whispered behind his hand, and Sollux’s ears twitched to catch him as he said, “...a bit forced isn’t it?” to Gamzee who nodded to an imaginary beat with his eyes closed.

Terezi continued. “—accuses the defendant of aiding and abetting the Empire against which we all fight by facilitating former Interrogatormentor Sollux Captor’s escape from his psionic cuffs by providing him…” She trailed off, holding a hand out to prompt Vriska.

Vriska shrugged. “The key?”

“The key. Interesting.” Terezi’s needle-spiked sneer widened. “To do what? We have a means proposed, not a motive–and so the interrogation must continue!”

Sollux sucked in a harsh breath and held it. Karkat finally found his voice, a snarl deep in his throat warping his words into guttural grit. “Don’t think I’m not onto you, Pyrope,” he said, side-eying Sollux. “You seem to operate under the assumption that I am as dense as I was as the pathetic, malformed grublet of six sweeps. I am not! And I swear to the malformed baabeast you’ve coerced into gutting itself to try and tug its dripping pelt over my fucking ganderbulbs, back off before I shove that cane of yours through your nook so far up your throat you’ll be tasting ripped up genebladder and red cane for a whole perigee.”

“Thought you were over trying to be onto me, little shoutnub,” Terezi said. Karkat screamed into his hands, almost drowning out the tealblood’s boisterous peals of laughter. Vriska booed as Terezi pulled a scuffed coin from her pocket, flicking it head-over-tailways between her fingers. “I don’t need much longer anyways.”

The heels of Terezi’s eye-searingly red boots clicked on the table as she advanced on Karkat. She rustled around in a pocket, whatever objects she was retrieving gently clacking against each other. Behind Terezi, Gamzee cracked an eye open as a baggie of mismatched pills plopped onto the table. A few capsules escaped their plastic prison, spinning out haphazardly. One rolled to the edge and Sollux cupped his hand, catching it before it dropped out of sight.

Terezi’s ears, already at an automatic angle, flicked forward when no telltale click of pills hitting the ground reached them. She sniffed, turning her head. “I now call the witness Sollux Captor to the stand. Share with the court your findings.”

Sollux snorted, but took a cursory look at the nondescript pill in his hand. He lifted the pill to his lips, but Aradia’s hand shot out to stop him before he could bring it properly to his lips. He made direct eye contact with her as his forked tongue flickered out, closing the gap and making brief contact with the pills surface. His nose wrinkled up, and he flicked the pill back onto the table with its fellows after Aradia relinquished his wrist. “That one’s a mood stabilizer. I don’t know what the others are. They’re all illegal as fuck.”

Terezi let out a noise that mimicked a very loud incorrect buzzer. “Eeeeehrrrrrt! So close, buddy. You forgot those things are dual-purpose. Rookie mistake. Super right on the illegality front, though. You would not believe the red tape surrounding those things.”

“I’m not your buddy.”

“From buddy to buzzkill, okay! Well, little buzzy beeboy–”

“I had a bee-powered rig. Doesn’t make me like bees.”

“Those fuckers are annoying,” Karkat muttered under his breath.

Sollux blinked, looking over to him. “Are?”

“We! Are! Getting! Sidetracked!” said Terezi, punctuating each word with her cane slamming down into the table.

“You took us on the detour first, Terezi,” Feferi said. “Please get to the point.” Her attempt at a civil, apologetic smile audibly creaked against itself as she gritted her teeth.

“The point, Bubblegum Fishstick, is that Docterror Dzuvir informed me that even with my status as the once and future prosecutefence he wasn’t allowed to state who took this cocktail of antispasmodics, painkillers, and a mood stabilizer that has a secondary function as an anticonvulsant.” Terezi made a point to peer over her glasses, blind eyes almost making contact with Sollux’s. The lilt to her voice dropped, leaving behind a barren plane of judgement as she nudged the pill bag with her foot. “But I think that paints a pretty picture, doesn’t it?”

“Quit your convoluted as fuck pan-games, Pyrope,” Karkat hissed. “As riveting as it is to watch you verbally wiggle-wank yourself to fucking completion in front of whatever dead god that peers through the fucking veil in one last final act of voyeurism that it deigns to share with everyone gathered here, you’re just spewing loose information like a headless cluckbeast spasming for the masses. Why do you even fucking have–”

“A lot of bluster from the accused who happens to oversee the vast majority of our supply and personnel chains, including being the one to make judgement calls on the allocation of medical supplies. I found those pills in your block, Vantas. Very incriminating, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never seen those before in my fucking life,” Karkat said. The words caught in his throat, and if Sollux didn’t know better he’d think the scarletblood sounded afraid.

“Neither have I.” Terezi’s now-toneless drone echoed in the room, ringing in Sollux’s ears. She crouched atop the table in front of Karkat, for all intents and purposes focusing on him, but her tongue snaked out to moisten the corner of her mouth closest to Sollux with her ears pricked in his direction as well. “Blind jokes aside, I have been patient. In the eyes of a proper Imperial court, I’ve been positively kind! I gave you a lot of grace, but such attempts to defend one’s self and speak in court is categorically banned here as it would be in the Alternian Court Circuit. Social convention steals from the law with impunity and those assembled voted on treating this as a proper hearing. You think anyone here respects your opinion right now?”

“The responsibility falls to the witness,” Sollux said. Everyone turned to look at him except for Terezi, who rocked on her heels with returned giddiness.

“Wait, sorry, hold on,” Tavros said, brows furrowed. “I thought that uh… Well, he’s the one we’re worried about, right?”

“Yeah, why the hell does he get a fucking opinion?” Vriska added.

“Bunch of pish-posh applesauce over here,” Gamzee drawled. He lolled his head back, blowing a bubble of spit through a gap in his teeth before popping it with his tongue. “You motherfucking voted to let her play legislacerator. Let the motherfuckin’ flames climb your wretched frame upon the pyre you motherfucking built.”

“Aaaaaaagh! That doesn’t count!” Vriska screamed. She leaned over, basically climbing over Equius’ back to smack furiously at Gamzee’s shoulder. Tavros bared his teeth to the gums, canines in the light of Vriska’s cybernetic eye, and let out a wicked hiss to Gamzee’s left. The noise seemed to surprise all involved, culminating in Vriska settling back into her seat with a sullen glower. Tavros kneaded at his breastbone with a faint expression, as if favoring an old wound.

Terezi’s laugh rose an octave. “So true, worstie! This is my court, my witness, and my client-slash-victim! Can you be a good girl for me and keep your tongue behind your teeth until I need to put some holes in it, blueberry bramblemite?”

Vriska’s ears flicked, and she casually flipped her hair to the forefront to disguise the way they flushed blue at Terezi’s words. “Two-faced slitherbeast,” she muttered, pointedly avoiding looking up as Kanaya snorted.

“I’ll take it.” Terezi yawned wide, teeth snapping together like a cholerbeartrap on the start of her sentence. “So.” She advanced on Sollux again, flicking a pill towards him with the end of her cane. “Had enough time to identify the user?”

The pill pinged against Sollux’s nose. He didn’t flinch. “Former Interrogatormentor Vitzii Pozoia.”

“Former?”

“Imperial protocol when an interrogatormentor is compromised is title stripping and a culling order.”

“Hm.” Terezi clicked her tongue a few times, each time spiking Sollux’s blood pressure. Aradia’s lip curled a bit, mouth open enough to drink in the stress pheromones oozing from Sollux’s neck. She reached out to put her hand atop his, but he instead raised it to bat away another projectile. Said pill-pelter continued speaking. “So what do these little morsels do, anyway?”

“Address neurotoxin-induced brain damage of the motor and sensory cortices, is my guess,” Sollux replied, refusing to acknowledge Vriska mimicking his snaggle-toothed lisp under her breath. “Listen, I have–”

“You’ll answer all questions posed to you before proceeding, witness. Is there no way to mitigate an interrogatormentor’s death sentence in the eyes of the Empire?”

“Successful information extraction might do it, but it’s a stretch. At this point he’d need a life to exchange for his.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s been gone too long. His condition would be a risk in the field if he ran out of what he needed and they already had his replacement waiting in the wings when you all took him. The Empire needs proof of concept.”

Nepeta leaned forward, whispering something in Equius’ ear. He peered over the edge of his glasses to Feferi first and then to Sollux before letting out a soft rumble of approval to his moirail. Tavros smoothed out a crinkled wing filament, also shooting furtive glances to Feferi and Sollux both.

Terezi bobbed her head. “Fascinating. Would denying him his medication serve as an appropriate motivator to drive him back to the arms of the Empire?”

“No. We were told upon starting our training that all our quadrants were either culled or placed in protective custody to eliminate attachments. He’d know his matesprit was here at some point and the Empire wouldn’t be able to close that gap.”

A sick suspicion bubbled in him and he tried reaching into his hoodie pockets for the paper within so he could be done with this whole affair, only for Terezi to wipe his pan again with a disapproving click of her tongue. She sounded so much like Pozoia, infuriatingly so, and the noise eliminated all of Sollux’s rational thought as Terezi continued uninterrupted. “Moirail too,” she said dismissively. “Your point is noted, witness, but I’m not sure how firm those bonds he has are.”

“A lot of losers around here like to simp for lost causes,” Vriska grumbled, still sulking as she swirled a finger along the rim of her water glass.

“They certainly do,” Kanaya said with a sigh, but the resigned tilt to her eyebrows spoke more to some inner frustration than an attempt to build onto Vriska’s attempted barb.

Sollux’s eyes glazed over. He didn’t want to listen to this inane chatter. He simultaneously didn’t want to maintain this discussion of the trolls who’d made his life a living hell, perpetuating the guilt and hurt that every troll victimized by the Empire held in their slurry-spun genetic code in a circular chasm of chromatic trauma. The long-dead Ualona clung wetly to his lapels, sputtering out, What did they promise you? The Empire had upheld its end of the bargain while he served as an interrogatormentor–Karkat hadn’t found himself in its clutches. Whether that was due to his own ingenuity or the pact he’d made Sollux didn’t know, but he no longer held interrogatormentor status. Did the Empire find a method by which to sway one of the last bastions of his sanity? Would Karkat deny a seasoned interrogatormentor instructor medication and send him into a withdrawal-fueled manic breakdown?

Worse scenarios carved icy channels up his spine–Sollux had proven himself a successful agent of the Empire, tormenting rebels within his brig in a twisted haze of helmsman conditioning-tinged megalomania exacerbated by a lack of stability and a support network. He still remembered their wailing and his own desperation to lash out, to make something hurt like he hurt, and his programming filled in the blanks. Would Karkat comfort him with one hand and set his worst nightmare upon him with the other? He’d seen Karkat cursing about getting shipments past Imperial blockades enough. He’d eliminate the risk of exposure by ridding himself of the need to smuggle an illegal medication through checkpoints and the vengeful shadow of a friend with one platonic duel with enough careful orchestration.

Terezi’s voice swam through the thick fog Sollux’s head swam with. “A counterpoint, then. Would said denial, coupled with a promise to return said medication, finally solidify his allegiance to the rebellion?”

Sollux choked down a mass of bile and mucus balling in the back of his throat. “Not. By itself,” he gritted out. “He’d need external motivation.”

“A push. An inciting incident. A trigger to the loaded gun in his thinkpan.”

“Sure.”

“Such as, for example, a troll freshly sprung from the Imperial crèche starting to nose around his safe harbor?” Sollux did not respond, and Terezi cocked her head to the side. “I do remember Vantas not long ago in this very room arguing for your solo ventures to the exercise room so you could what, do physical therapy?”

Equius let out a derisive bark of near-laughter. “I expressed my doubts about the validity of that request. The sardonic, layabout twinArmageddons, shedding his erstwhile dependence on his psionics to do his bidding in favor of becoming a gym squeaker? It is an insult to those of us born with actual strength and valor.”

“Hey, that’s not fair to Karkitty,” Nepeta said, lightly bapping a chagrined Equius on the knuckles. “He wouldn’t do that to Pawllux.”

Gamzee waved his hand in a flippant, circular motion. “Nah, nah, it’s because she’s tugging your motherfucking chains to pump her ego full of hot air. Switch the names around, wrap them around, affix the nameplate proper ‘round the neck of the dirtbound hangman in our motherfucking midst. Captor didn’t motherfucking know about the bayou-bopper rotting in the next wing until we all started biting for his rehabilitation to pick up the motherfucking pace.” He leaned forward, eyes wide open for the first time the whole meeting. “We start fiending for a motherfucking miracle in gore-gold finery to nab us an opening aboard the Imperial fleetschool, and bam!” Gamzee’s words, climbing with every syllable, finally peaked into a roar that thundered with ancestral malevolence. A sing-song whisper followed, half-buried underneath the echo still rolling through the room. “The two powder kegs paint their sanguine music on the blockwalls and the victor sits in pieces that our resident spitfire gets to coddle back together into one loyal, obedient, battle-hardened piece of tantrum-split pottery to act as our skeleton key. We should be motherfucking grateful we get to grind his gold-grit marrow into the lacquer ourselves.”

A creeping terror gnawed at the nape of Sollux’s neck, bringing with it the insidious idea that Karkat had something to do with this after all. He couldn’t figure out Gamzee’s angle, twisting as it was in eldritch spirals of conflicting motivations. His interrogatormentor training failed to find purchase in the purple’s paint, microexpressions slipping off the slippery surface of Gamzee’s face in a field of black and white. He hated that he could see the logic there. Karkat hid his social cunning in layers of bluster and expletives, ensconcing himself defensively in petty, vindictive vendettas that bit any hand that struck at him or those he cared about. The leap wasn’t far, that a desperate Karkat backed against the wall would throw his best friend into the fire in the hopes he’d emerge with loyalty and affection restored. They’d both tormented each other, casually and with frivolity, and threatened worse on many an occasion. They’d grown into themselves and apart, and for all his talk of memory to ground him the seed of doubt sprouted–did he even know Karkat anymore?

The room filled with bickering, everyone’s voices clashing up against each other. Sollux tried to listen, tried to grab onto anything that sounded like words, but understanding slipped through his fingers in a silvery stream. He couldn’t pick out a consistent tone of condemnation or support, no line drawing itself in the sand Gamzee had strewn all over the proceedings. He dimly registered movement, scenes flickering like a faulty projector’s slideshow against his eyes as he disassociated–Terezi lambasting Gamzee for snatching away her grand reveal, Feferi standing up in attempt to clutch the last threads of democracy her co-conspirators seemed intent on unraveling with bickering, Tavros chewing his nails down into nubs.

Uncertainty burned holes into the canvas stretched over Sollux’s ocular cavities until all that remained was Karkat, his own eyes wet and wide and pleading. He didn’t remember turning to look at Karkat, nor crowding all his limbs into his chair with the grace of a grotesque scrambling for a perch without purpose atop this harlequin cathedral’s facade. Ruddy tears bubbled from Karkat’s saline expunger ducts, spilling forth without a need to blink. He didn’t blink. A false crier would blink, screw up their face and nose, rub their face, something, but Karkat’s apparent misery flowed from him without effort. He wore terror well, soft cheeks wet and quivering and flushed with frantic and heretical warmth, but Sollux had no way to identify the source of his despair. Innocence, or the realization of a plan unraveled?

A metallic glint streaked on Sollux’s periphery–a coin tossed high. Scratch up, scratch down, light catching on uneven edges and dents, and with a ping Terezi’s cane made contact with the coin on its descent. It ricocheted towards Sollux and he ripped the psionic-dampening bracelet from his hand. He’d trained for many grueling hours to stop projectiles even before his time as an interrogatormentor and he needed to prepare for further threats.

Tchhht!

A final tongue click sounded in synchronicity with the resurgence of the damned crying mercy, the doomed caterwauling in full force. Sollux recoiled, the coin striking him square in the forehead. In that moment fear coalesced into a jagged spike of iron centered on the impact site, radiating psionic energy and dripping with cerulean and yellow ichor. He saw Vitzii Pozoia standing over him with his makeshift spear as he fell onto his back, he saw Rapard cracking his knuckles in a cloud of freezer vapor, he saw Juyere and Rosmer and Ophlia and Ualona staring balefully at him from the depths of their sunken sockets. The figures all bled together in a pulsing amalgam of misery and condemnation made flesh.

Psionics whipped around his head, lights swaying and flickering to the beat of the sobbing half-screams tearing out of Sollux’s throat in harmony with the full force of his personal doomed choir. Disembodied hands snatched at anything they could reach as he thrashed in and out of range, sight and hearing and touch blending together in a catastrophic storm of hellish, psionic synesthesia. He couldn’t sort between the physical and the ethereal, alien voices suspended in bloody bubbles leaking from his eyes and lips and entombing him in a column of monolithic petrichor. Shadows surged forward as his psionics chewed through Sollux’s connection to reality, recoiling only when wood and metal creaked as chairs surged to encase him in a protective shell. He could hear his teeth hatching, enamel falling to dentin to cementum settling back in his lungs each time he inhaled.

A lighthouse kept a steadfast vigil on the cliffs of Sollux’s despair, foghorn sounding in the dark. Sollux sucked in a breath and lurched upright, a horror-movie snap to his spine as his limbs dangled in the wake of his psionics doing the brunt of his work. He fell into Aradia for a moment, scrabbling for purchase, and she didn’t flinch even as his psionics burned surface streaks of Lichtenberg figures along her face in the wake of his clawing fingers. She merely let out a roughshod purr, pressing her burning cheek to his. She filled half his pusher with her earthy pale pheromones, but it wasn’t enough. Hands came in pairs and so Sollux dove for the other, colliding with Karkat’s chest as he sobbed hysterically.

Karkat’s hand lowered atop his head, psionics dissipating from the static shock of hair flying around Sollux’s ears in its wake. Sollux bit down on the redblood’s palm but Karkat did not pull away, staying still until Sollux relaxed his jaw. Karkat did not hide the wound, and before impulse control could catch up to him Sollux licked the treasonous beads of crimson away.

The coin unstuck itself from the surface of Sollux’s forehead, spinning out across the table. It spiraled once, justice’s face with a score across her eyes grinning at the ceiling. Another spin and the coin glowered at the ground, unmarked and pure. Sollux hid his face in Karkat’s neck, sneezing as rather than the typical gentle pheromones he was met with an explosion of pale signals fired out of the other troll’s scent glands like a gun. He sagged into Karkat, effectively tranquilized and shuddering as Aradia pressed her temple to Karkat’s and wrapped her arm around Sollux’s chest to keep him flush to her. She breathed, deliberate and forceful, and once they all breathed in unison she eased them all into two seats between the three of them.

The coin settled. Justice scowled up at the silent room, unblemished dismay painted across her metal features. All the trolls in the room had backed away from Sollux after his outburst, the remaining chairs haphazardly strewn about by the brief psionic squall in a makeshift blockade around Sollux and atop the table proper. Terezi popped out from behind her chair with a fearless crow of delight. “The coin has delivered its final verdict–the guilty has proven his innocence before the court!” She puffed out her chest, gesturing wide at the table. Her arm swept past the coin. “Karkat Vantas is acquitted of all charges against his personal character and blah blah blah, you all know this wasn’t who this trial was for.”

“Oh, wow,” Kanaya deadpanned. She fetched her chair, dragging it into place and settling back down. “No. I cannot believe this shocking turn of events. Color may return to my cheeks.”

She was drowned out by Vriska cutting in with a shrieked, “What?! You!”

“Teehee,” Terezi said, fighting back an actual laugh as she plucked her own seat from the mountain of wayward furniture.

“You maniacal, insensible fuckgavel,” Karkat said faintly, with no small amount of awe in his voice.

“Apologies for the deception, cherry tart, but I needed to pull out all the stops to interrogate an interrogatormentor! Especially with how the whole deck of cards almost combusted considering how the one-troll cough-syurp brigade decided to blow my load for me.”

“Always happy to give a motherfucker a handy,” Gamzee said. He sniffed, looking down his nose at Terezi. “Don’t blame a motherfucker for getting bored.”

Terezi flipped her hair in Gamzee’s face, plopping into her seat and kicking her feet. “You didn’t notice the like, nine thousand holes in my line of questioning? I did find the pills in your block, technically, but only because Dzuvir was looking for you on his way to fuss at his loser moirail and shove pills down his throat.”

“You’re picking those up, by the way,” Karkat said with a sharp tone, pointedly ignoring the apology. Terezi’s ears briefly flicked back, but neither of them let their guards down. Karkat shook the moment away and continued. “What did he want?”

“Something about checking in about Riarra’s mission. Pozoia’s climbing the fucking walls about him being gone too long or something. I think he can suffer a little longer.”

“Mmrmmrmgmgl,” Sollux gurgled into Karkat’s barrel chest. He tried to lift his head, but the adrenaline crash proved more powerful and rendered him a overcooked noodle.

“Sure, sure, whatever you say,” Terezi said absently.

“What have you proven here, seaxactly?” Feferi looked equal parts relieved and frustrated as she spoke. “You put this entire counchil in peril! Look at the state of Sollux, the poor fin. This isn’t reely a point in our favor to make shore he’s on our side.”

“Eh, he’s a fucking adult, he can handle it,” Terezi said. “What did I prove? Our worries were his sparing of Pozoia was a fluke, and he only scrambled for help from rosewater carp over there when he got in over his head. That, and that he’d reach out to the Empire after lulling us into a false sense of security, especially since he found you so easily.” She began counting on her fingers. “He doesn’t think Vitzii Pozoia was acting on Imperial orders. This was a personal moobeast butcher-slab between them. A dull milk-solid condiment spreader was found on the scene that he used to break from his cuff, confirming my sources’ observation that he’d stolen the implement a while back.”

“You… You knew this the…the whole, uh…the whole time?” Tavros’ words stutter-stopped with an increased frequency, exasperation plastered over his face.

“Yurp.”

“Don’t fucking… ehm–yerp? At me?”

“No, yurp. You gotta drop your jaw. Anyways, yeah, absolutely. But if we keep him under the tightest security, how are we going to see what he does when he thinks our guard is down?” Terezi smiled demurely as Tavros opened his mouth then closed it again. “If he wanted to kill Pozoia from the get-go, he’d have freed himself without breaking his wrist into… How many pieces, Feferi? You fixed him up.”

“Two, nautureely,” Feferi said from behind her hand. A telltale, upturned crinkle at the corner of her eyes betrayed her otherwise contemplative expression.

“Naturally.” Terezi inclined her head to Feferi. “So that confirms that he wasn’t acting on the Empire’s orders–you heard it from him. Pozoia has a culling order by virtue of his prolonged stay with us, not to mention a condition that any propaganda-gorged soldier would volunteer to get shot behind the shed about. An interrogatormentor acting in full capacity would have had his psionics primed and ready to cull.” She gestured at Sollux. Sollux peered back at her from underneath Karkat’s jaw, too exhausted to interrupt. “After interviewing the moirail of Vitzii Pozoia, and reviewing the footage we extracted of Captor’s schoolfeedings, I isolated an external tell common among those lucky cull-dodgers suffering absence seizures–a tap of the tongue as consciousness returns. Said noise is enough to trigger an involuntary psionic meltdown from Appleberry here, but notice something in particular.”

She leaned forward. “An agent of the Empire, faced with a cripple and a dissident, directs their rage outwards. They handle things independently, especially if they’ve got as much raw firepower as he does. We got a nubbin of Captor’s power on our tongues–Pozoia should be ash.” Her expression sobered. “Most of you did not watch Captor’s interrogatormentor schoolfeeds. As my eyes, Kanaya, share your opinion of the torments Captor and his unit at the hands of people such as Pozoia featured in those archives”

Kanaya’s lips pursed. “Death is a mercy for those involved,” she said with a vitriolic hiss.

Something rattled inside Sollux’s ribcage, a bemused fluttering at how disgusted someone he’d attempted to disembowel when last they met sounded on his behalf. He started shaking, horns sparking painfully, and Aradia caressed his face before slipping the psionic bracelet back around his wrist.

Terezi nodded, running her hands along the interlocked chair wall. “My panmeat should be spattered across the ceiling after I repeatedly bonked that cholerbear on the snoot, but the explosion pulled in, it shielded… On Alternian soil and in its airspace, cowards survive skirting the shadow of the culling knife and the oppressors thrive along its blade. We need someone that can dance along both.” She took a breath. “Now, are you going to share with me why you smell like blood and formaldehyde, Appleberry?”

The rebel council turned in unison to Sollux, and in that moment he balked. He started shaking again, saliva started to pool in his mouth as nausea rolled through him. Aradia slid her hand down his torso, still purring but with purpose now. Sollux acquiesced to her silent direction, rolling his hips back against her in a gradually relaxing stretch and giving her the gap she needed to pull the folded paper he had tucked within his hoodie pocket. He’d shoved it there after extracting it from a protective capsule embedded in the brainstem of the troll that had shattered his awakening’s peace. Equius made a strangled noise, sneezing helplessly as Karkat’s overwhelming pheromones finally made their way over. He sat on the ground hastily rather than wasting time extricating a chair. Nepeta poured her own glass of water over his head.

Aradia’s cut her purr short, unfolding the paper as she leaned forward and smoothing it face-up on the table. As everyone craned over to look Terezi reached her cane forward, fumbling briefly before catching her coin in the crook of its draconic head. She kept its orientation steady, licking its surface before letting out a self-satisfied hum.

“Oh. Oh, no,” Feferi said, picking up the paper. Creases riddled the surface of the revealed bill of sale, distorting the dead-eyed visage of Golese Riarra, the matesprit of Vitzii Pozoia, as he held up his own hex code on a placard in front of his bare chest. His mop of hair was now absent, instead shaved in preparation for the helm.

“What is it?” Terezi made a grabby hands for the paper, but Feferi instead passed it to Kanaya who flipped it over and lifted it to her nose. “Someone let me get my tongue on it. I smell–”

“Blood?” Kanaya said, disdain dripping off the single syllable even as her pupils dilated. “What gauche little pretender writes in blood these days?” She paused, scanning the paper. “Pretenders. How romantic.”

Yellow script clung to the paper like a scab, a cheery invitation in a near unintelligible surgeon’s scrawl:

“Kuluya Juyure, Sollux Captor, Ophlia Davrot, Trisia Avarae, Vitzii Pozoia, you’re invited to the memorial dinner of Golese Riarra aboard our vessel, the IIC Reanimator, as he takes his place amongst the stars in service to our Glorious Empress! Dress Code: Black Tie. Coordinates carved into the seventh vertebrae. Plus ones encouraged. It’s not a corpse party without a crowd.

Forever your loyal compatriots,

The Surgeons

Underneath the shared title Rosmer Leywet had inscribed his swirling signature with the dull bronze blood of Zesaim Exeria, while her jagged signature was written in oxidized olive.

“What is it?” Terezi repeated, frustration mounting.

“A fucking trap,” Karkat said.

Sollux took a shuddering breath. “I’m not the key to the fleet. KK isn’t wrong, but this is an invitation to an interrogatormentor-grade cruiser and that is, especially one with room for…” He counted silently. “Ten. Ten guests.”

Terezi blinked, and then clapped her hands together in delight. “The trollcops ride again!”

Vriska let out a frustrated scream. “Trollcops! Aren’t! A! THIIIIIIING! Stop trying to make it a thing!”

“If Karkat and Aradia won’t give up on him, neither will I.” Terezi smiled again, soft this time with only a hint of teeth. “Welcome back, Sollux.”

7 notes · View notes

interrogatormentors · 5 months ago

Note

psii, what do you think of Sollux Captor? He's a chill guy in my opinion.

Your opIInIIon II2 noted and IIrrelevant. He exII2ted for a tIIme IIn my 2IIght

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and nece22IItated my helmIIng code be updated. HII2 pre2ence and re2II2tance two my condIItIIonIIng 2o IIt progre22ed at half the rate of the average fIIll2 me wIIth the clo2e2t thIIng two annoyance a helm2man can feel

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a2 IIneffIIcency II2 not tolerated IIn the EmpIIre. He wa2 caprIIcIIou2, 2tubborn IIn all thIIng2 mechanIIcal and per2onal--

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two 2ay nothIIng of the fact hII2 per2onalIIty 2hould have been eroded away by the tIime of hII2 decomII2IIon--and a paIIn IIn my bIIowIIre-rotten 2IIde two keep out of the network2 confIIdentIIal fIIle2. II monIItored each and every one of hII2

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traIInIIng2 for becomIIng an IInterrogator two 2ee IIf 2uch IImpertIInence contIInued and

01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110000 01100101 01110010 01101110 01110101 01101101 01100101 01110010 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110110 01100001 00100000 01110101 01101110 01101101 01100001 01101011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110100 01110011 01100101 01101100 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100010 01110101 01101100 01100001 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110110 01101001 01100001 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01110111 01101100 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100111 01101111 01110100 01110100 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100111 01100001 01101100 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01100011 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100101 01101110 01100011 01101000 01100101 01110011 00111011 00100000 01110100 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101100 00100000 01110100 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110

luckIIly for the EmpIIre IIt dIid not. HII2 current 2tatu2 II2

01101100 01101111 01100011 01101011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01100010 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110010 00100000 01100011 01100001 01100111 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01100100 01100111 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101000 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101011 01110011 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110100 01111001 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101100 01101111 01101110

unknown

01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101001 01101101 01110101 01101100 01100001 01100011 01110010 01110101 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01100010 01100001 01101100 01101001 01111010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100110 01100001 01100011 01110011 01101001 01101101 01101001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01101000 01101111 01100010 01100010 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01100001 01101101 01100101 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100001 01101110 01100100

and IIt IIs the hope of the EmpIIre he reappear2 2ooner rather than later two fIInII2h the job he 2tarted.

#homestuck #interrogatormentors #homestuck au #interrogatormentors au #askblog #anonymous #the helmsman #Helmsman Translation:#Your opIInIIon II2 noted and IIrrelevant. He exII2ted for a tIIme IIn my 2IIght #(caught in an unblinking quartet of eyes the wire soldier baptizes his son in the blood-choked font)#and nece22IItated my helmIIng code be updated. HII2 pre2ence and re2II2tance two my condIItIIonIIng #at half the rate of the average fIIll2 me wIIth the clo2e2t thIIng two annoyance a helm2man can feel #(the gold-plated snare tightening around twin throats forces the rabbits tight against the screaming stake #until the memory of teeth chews away the frontal lobe)#a2 IIneffIIcency II2 not tolerated IIn the EmpIIre. He wa2 caprIIcIIou2‚ 2tubborn IIn all thIIng2 mechanIIcal and per2onal--#(hells stacked within the bone marrow revenant only have their self-made demons to blame for the corroding frost)#two 2ay nothIIng of the fact hII2 per2onalIIty 2hould have been eroded away by the tIime of hII2 decomII2IIon--#and a paIIn IIn my bIIowIIre-rotten 2IIde two keep out of the network2 confIIdentIIal fIIle2. II monIItored each and every one of hII2 #(torments entombed in primordial ice catch its glacial origin with twice-damned claws)#traIInIIng2 for becomIIng an IInterrogator two 2ee IIf 2uch IImpertIInence contIInued and #(the supernumerary nova unmakes itself to save the nebula #but still the leviathan trawls forgotten galactic trenches; try again‚ try again)#luckIIly for the EmpIIre IIt dIid not. HII2 current 2tatu2 II2 #(locked tight in the vestibular cage so the fledgling's shrieks underneath brackish water pass underneath the tyrant's talon)#unknown #(how long the simulacrum will remain dormant before it cannibalizes its failing facsimile hobbling lamely in the sand)#and IIt IIs the hope of the EmpIIre he reappear2 2ooner rather than later two fIInII2h the job he 2tarted.

12 notes · View notes