=> PHERES: Abscond.

[refiningspacetime]

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> FLEETBOUND POST. [refiningSpacetime - FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]
 

SUMMARY: Taking drinks from strangers is generally a bad idea. Pheres needs to be picked up from a party, but life is hard when your moirail is out of town and all of your friends are terrible. Luckily, there's always Fleetbound!

WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.

THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c

For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!

ALSO:  Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu

Comments

[activatingaggro]

Man, you are so fucking tired.

Staying up all day isn't new shit to you. Kids don't want surgeries during the night: lately, it seems like whenever you're trying to excise a lightshow gland or picking up a corpse, they always want to creep in during the middle of the day, like that makes their shit less suspicious.

And how many times has Boopis gotten pissed with you, and set up matches back to back on opposite coasts? She likes to give you just enough time to leave the ring and get on the road, so by the time you arrive, daystruck and exhausted, it's time to get right back in the ring.

(It's a good thing she's a great lay, or she'd be so fired. Fucking teals, man.)

But just because you're used to it doesn't make sleep deprivation any easier. You're yawning and scrubbing at your eyes as you pull up to the sidewalk, a foot tapping impatiently on the pedals. People are looking at you, and you resist the urge to flip them the bird.

You're a rust in highblood territory, right now. You're not going to give them a reason to pull out the rope.

Capitol City hasn't been the Empire's capitol since adults left the planet, and for the most part, it's a decent place to hang out. The outskirts are all new builds, formed by carpenter drones and industrious kids over the last few centuries, and they're mostly lowbloods. The scene can be kind of wild, but it's fun, and it's safe: stick to the suburbs and you can walk for miles without encountering a single shade above saffron.

Unfortunately, that's just the outskirts. The city proper is still built the same as it was back when the Empress lived here, all canals and high streets and buildings that stretch as high as the eye can go, and this is where all the highbloods live. Kids, mostly, but once you get into the core..

Well. Not all the adults were banned from Alternia.

The amount you know about the Imperial Education Programs could fill a shotglass. You're a rustblood, and you're not a psionic: trying to even sign up for one of their entrance exams would just mean the ink they'd use would be red. They've got a helmsman division that you know Pheres's been eyeing, where they install wetware and shit early so the kids are all revved up and ready come conscription, and you know that the entire thing is run by elderly finfaces - but that's about it.

There's never been a reason to learn anything about it, and you've always had more important shit to focus on. You're not regretting it, precisely, as you idle here on your motorbike, and avoid eye contact with the curious bluebloods.. but you kind of wish you knew more. There's a set of tall, white hivestem clusters off in the distance, separated from you by a gate, and the sign on it says LEGISLACERATOR DIVISION, #8.

Hopefully this is the spot Marduk meant, because - welp. You're not about to go in there to retrieve her.

[forgottensebayt]

"You're doing what?"

Sappho is not sympathetic to your plight. You don't even know why you told her.

(Because she asked, and you thought maybe it was a sort of starter, an invitation for the two of you to become hate-friends. You've lived together for six perigees, after all. It'd be about time.)

"This is absurd, even by your ususal standards," she says, propping herself up on the lip of her coon. Her hair is dripping sopor all over the side, and her face is streaked with green. Sappho takes a special pride in the fact she can sleep submerged. "When I said you need to stop being such a drab little wallflower, I didn't mean you should go trouncing through the sewers."

Some students have quadrants outside of the academy, where Proctor Sungazer can't enforce the three caste rule. But you're hlad of the fact that both you and Sappho are students, because you don't have to fret about any coloured undertones with her. You can just take the easy contempt at face value.

Lucky you.

"Catacombs," you correct her quietly, finishing your make-up. Cosmetic facepaint like this is highblood frippery, but you like the way the undereye concealer hides the black smudges under your eyes. With the rest of your paint on, it doesn't look like you've spent the day guarding your phone and vomitting from anxiety. You just look tired.

"Whatever. Who are you even meeting?" Her neckfrills lift, and she glubs out a wet pop of a laugh. Your lusus perks a scaled ear, but otherwise, he pays her no mind: he's used to looking the other way with highbloods. "Have you finally catch yourself some fronds?"

She keeps up her commentary while you get dressed in your shabbiest clothes, the ones that you won't mind getting ruined, and then when you leave the room, she follows, throwing on her robe as an afterthought. You want to tell her to go away, but she's indigo: the only thing you can do is try to control the spikes of anxiety brewing in your digestion sack, and hope that she gets bored.

She's still trailing you when you reach the gate, and spot Sipara idling at the other side. The light is too dim for you to see well outside of the grub-lit halls of the academy, and you're mostly being led by your leached lusus, but even in the gloom, it's impossible to mistake the red and white streaked figure amongst the purple and blue crowds.

"Oh, no," Sappho says, delighted, and you can't help the way you tuck your chin in as you open up the gate.

[activatingaggro]

People are looking at you, and you count the fucking seconds until Marduk appears.

The little comments are easy enough to ignore, and you can deal with the looks, although it makes you want to put your thumb through someone's eye. But the boredom is what's getting to you, more than anything else. You've been over in this side of town before, running the occasional pick-up for one of your moirail's bullshit orders. So long as people assume you're someone's pick-up, shit's fine: it's when you start acting like you're here for anything other than business by breaking out your phone or fucking with your bike that the highbloods get shitty.

Case in point. You're not even doing shit, but there's a finhead peering at you, her painted lips pulled into a careful frown. Judging by the set of her horns, you'll give it twenty, thirty seconds before she flounces over to see why the hell you're idling here.

Maybe you'll just tell her to fuck off. You're still amped up from dealing with OA and PC's bullshit, and right now, the idea of getting to sink your claws in someone's throat sounds great.

But you know the fight wouldn't go like that: bubbleblowers don't believe in playing fair, and bluebloods are always willing to play family when it comes to beating down the lower castes. You'd get culled, painfully and publicly, and the thought makes you force a thin, toothless smile at the seadweller until she looks away.

Thank god that Marduk appears at that point, because you feel like you're about to start biting yourself, in lieu of shit else to do.

She's being led by her lusus, all set up on a little leash-rig, and.. for some reason, there's a lanky-ass seadweller tailing her, a fuzzy black robe trailing her like a cape. She's got to be one of those in-betweenies: girl looks purple as a churchmouse, all legs and frizzy curls, but those are definite fronds on her neck. Shame: she'd be almost cute, for a blueblood.

"Sup, kid," you call out. You're glad you cleared out the sidecar: Marduk's barely seven, but she's not exactly tiny, and neither is her lusus. Even empty, it might make for a tight fit. "You ready?"

[forgottensebayt]

Sappho is laughing: real brays of amusement, not the whistle-pop of her glubbed pastiches. "Oh my glubbing cod. I mean, I knew you were slumming, but.. with a redblood?"

You ignore her, stepping forward: Sipara's asking if you're ready, and you give a brisk nod, easier than chancing any irritation in your voice right now. Your roommate is an incorrigible irritation, but it's not your place to respond to it.

But ignoring her evidently isn't an option, either, because she claps a hand on your shoulder, her grip feather-light like she never even thinks you would shrug her off.

You'd like to say you considered it, but sweeps spent in the Academy have taught you that only one response is allowed. You freeze, your lusus stopping mid-step beside you, and she laughs.

"You minnow, I thought you were crazy, but now I get it."

"Um."

"Warmbloods are fun," she says appreciatively, showing her teeth. "You know what they say about a red sky at night?"

Sappho never seemed the sort to like lowbloods: certainly, she doesn't like you. You squint at her, but it's too dark to really see her expression, or much beside the amused press of her eyes and the sharp, white daggers of her teeth. "No? Well, you'll learn."

"I'll cover for you," she adds, "if get me her number."

You're. not entirely sure what just happened. "Okay," you say carefully. Agreeing is usually the best route. "Well. Goodbye."

Sappho is laughing as you open the gate, walk over to the bike, and climb into the sidecar. Your lusus hops in after you, doing a quick spin and then settling in your lap with ease.

"I'm ready," you tell Sipara. Your roommate is still watching you, a blur of pale gray against the muddy backdrop of your home. "Oh - and, um, Sappho wanted me to let you know that she said hello."

[activatingaggro]

You underestimated your sidecar: Marduk fits in there neat as a hivecell, with room enough for her knees and her lusus to sit nice and comfy. Or maybe you just overestimated Marduk's size. You forget that she's a tiny fucker, barely bigger than Pheres.

Olives tend to be bigger.. or, at least the ones that you've fought. Maybe she's a perfectly normal size for jades, though. Who the fuck knows? There's only like, what, a hundred of 'em.

Sappho must be the leggy seadweller in the robe. She gives a wave when you look at her, flashing fangs that look sharp enough to shred stone. You grin back.

"Haha, really? Sweet. Give her my number." That's the only good thing about being nookdeep in highblood territory: most of them prefer the hassle of floatation devices in the canals over paying a psirunner, and so the roads are mostly clear when you pull off.

Something about the off-hand comment hits you, though, and you wrinkle your nose, resisting the urge to bluh. "Wait, fuck. You're seven. Is she seven?"

"'cause if so, don't give her my number, gross. I don't fuck pupas."

[forgottensebayt]

"She's almost eight," you say, dubious. The specifics of Sappho's hatchdate is one of the many details you are unclear on, like her symbolhight, or her precise height, or if her gills are functional in liquid less oxygenated than sopor. "I think."

"I don't see why you'd care, though. Seven is hardly a pupa, and several of my compatriots have already contributed pails for older quadrantmates," you say primly. Some people are embarrassed about this sort of thing, but you're too old for that: drone season is just a fact of life. "You're eight and a half, aren't you? That's only seventeen perigees in difference."

[activatingaggro]

Almost eight.. hm. Is that close enough?

No, no, it is not, you decide, as Marduk takes hold of the conversation and steers it in a frankly alarming direction. Thank god for the fact she's about as subtle as a boulder, and Pheres is missing, or you'd chuck her to the side of the road and take your chances.

Lowbloods age early: your eyes were filled in at six, and you've seen maroons flashing red early as five before. Seven and eight isn't that bad, when you're both warmbloods. But with olives, it starts slowing down. Marduk's seven, but she looks like she could still be six: she's built like a baby cholerbear, all pupafat and eyes that're only just now starting to darken with colour.

Highbloods take literally forever. Raphae's an indigo, and pupation hit him hard: he looks like he's twelve now, but you were there a sweep ago, when his eyes were still pale and his cheeks round. The idea of someone pailing him at seven..

You gag.

"Fuck you and fuck this goddamn conversation," you snap. "'cause this is gross and I'm like, two seconds from spewing my fast all over you, and this night's been shitty enough without having to add time for scrubbing acid off my paint, too."

"Where the hell is this sewer at, anyway?" You've been driving along, letting the road carry you, but the canal's ten feet ahead and you haven't seen a sewer drain yet.

[forgottensebayt]

Sipara is so dramatic. Your lusus rumbles from your lap, unhappy with her tone, and you scratch his head, claws rasping at the softer scales behind his ear.

"Turn left," you tell her. "And then go straight for another three blocks, and we'll go in there. I'm afraid it'll be around an hour's walk before we reach the catacombs.. but it's a short trip from there."

"I brought some supplies, in my sylladex.. but did you bring the antifungals?"

[activatingaggro]

Bennue's been real pissy ever since you cut it: used to be that he could hide his entire body in your curls, but now he just tucks himself in the space between your horn and your ear and sulks. When he hears the rumble, though, he sticks his beak out and hisses back.

"Yeah, 'course," you say idly, turning the corner, "and I've brought something even better. Pops here is gonna be our torch. Shits hands-free."

There's no one on the street, so you gun it, and you let the bike skid to a shrieking halt when you reach the sewer grate. The way the curtains rustle all around you makes it well worth it, even if you can't see anyone through the pitch-black windows. Stupid bubbleblowers; hope you woke them all up.

You park the bike on the side of the road, pull out the antifungal case from your pocket, and swallow two pills dry. It won't do much if something maims you, but it'll keep the spores from settling in your lungs, at least. "Here," you say, climbing off of the bike, and toss it at Marduk's head.

[forgottensebayt]

Your lusus is unhappy, and by the time the bike comes screaming to a stop, so are you. The little xiezhi hops out of the sidecar as soon as he can, and then waits pointedly as you fumble with the door.

The pill bottle hits your horn and the pain draws an involuntary hiss out. "Thank you," you say through clenched teeth, taking the bottle. You remove a waterbottle from your sylladex, take two pills, and then place both back into your inventory, filing them back under Food & Drink. It'll be easy to find.

That done, you head over to the sewer grate. It's a swampy slot of gray in the black of the street, easy to see, but you fumble for a moment before finding the handle.

It's far too heavy for you to lift.

"Maybe if you take the other side..?"

[activatingaggro]

Haha, she's maaaad.

It can't be good for her, being so tight-laced all the time. You're making her loosen up, doing her a favor, and you're amused and jaunty when you head over to help her with the grate.

"Just scoot over, small fry," you advise, and as soon as she does, you grab the lid and lift. The prosthetigrub starts feeding out power reluctantly: stupid blighter made sure it got its sleep, but it works out. As soon as it wakes up enough to start properly producing, you heft the lid off of the grate, and step back wit a flourish.

"After you, pipsqueak."

[forgottensebayt]

Sipara's manner can be grating online. In person, it is not proving much better.

Your lusus seems to agree. He sneezes distastefully as the two of you back up, and as soon as the grate opens, he shrugs free of the harness and jumps down into the sewer. You can't help the way your hand goes out to stop him, even though you know he'll be fine: he's part scalebeast, part meowbeast and entirely boneless, when he wants to be. The only harm the jump'll do him is if he accidentally chips his horn.

"I am taller than you," you inform Sipara snippily, and then you descend down the ladder after him.

[activatingaggro]

That's.. actually kind of impressive, the way the little critter just hurls itself down the hole. You peek down, and it's sitting down, washing itself like the jump wasn't any shit at all.

Sweet.

Bennue tweets at you, disapproving, and you get a move on. Marduk's already scuttling down the ladder, taking it slow as a grub about to pupate, and it takes forever to get down, waiting for her to meet each step. But finally, you've got both feet on the ground.

The light from above makes it hard to see in the gloom, but that's alright. You'll be moving soon, and with that in mind, you whistle at Bennue, offering up your wrist. He settles there like he was hatched on it, and immediately starts burning. The psionic flames are too weak to hurt you, barely the temperature of your own skin, but they're bright enough to see.

"Three inches is like, bullshit. My horns are three inches." Just barely. "Now, which way are we going?"

[forgottensebayt]

"I sincerely doubt that. My shortest horn is four inches, and it looks like it is significantly longer than yours."

You grabbed the harness before descending, and you reattach it to your lusus, who takes the interruption to his bath with good forbearance. You're lucky that the species chosen for the jadeblood variant of the lusus fluke were all selected for their intelligence: if he was an actual meowbeast, then getting him to lead you in the dark like this might be difficult.

But he is quite intelligent, moreso than even many of his peers. "We're going to Hinnom's hive," you tell him, and he climbs to his feet, leading you down the sewers. You can barely see more than a few inches ahead of you, even with Sipara's lusus's light.

"What sort of lusus is that?" You take the opportunity to look back at him. He's resting on her wrist, burning steadily away, but the flame isn't generating any heat you can feel - and if Sipara feels any discomfort, she shows no sign. "Is he a firebird? I've never seen one so, ah.. diminutive."

[activatingaggro]

"His name is Bennue."

Bennue rustles his feathers at the mention. He's not the brightest LED on the circuit, but he knows when people are talking about him, and he warbles out a happy note when Marduk looks back at him. You blow air at his head, just to make him stop.

"Yeah," you say. "He's a firefinch, if you wanna get all, like, proper and shit. Means he's like, the mini version. But who the hell knows what a finch is? Bird's way more straight-forward."

Her lusus is keeping you two at a steady pace, and you're a little surprised that something so short can walk so fast. "What about yours? Aren't jade lusii supposed to be, like, a little bigger?"

[forgottensebayt]

You know what a finch is! But perhaps that isn't the sort of generalised knowledge that a lowblood would know. You're not precisely sure what sort of schoolfeeds they get as standard intake: caste structure, maybe, instead of zoology?

"Some species can be. But the vast majority that I've found are small." You shrug. "There's a great deal more lusii parasitized for each cohort than actually manage to select a grub in the caverns. Perhaps on average, the jadeblood fluke favors larger specimens, but the relative rarity of the caste makes it seem otherwise?"

"I don't know. I suppose I'll find out when I go to the caverns."

"Are most brownblood lusii that small?"

[the extent of sipara's interest in history is "did it happen to me"]

[activatingaggro]

Oh, god, not the brooding caverns.

Talking to jadebloods is like talking to psionics: it's a loaded gun, and whatever you do, you don't want to end up pulling the post-conscription trigger. Getting sent to the caverns, to go fondle larva eggs and cull grubs for bread, isn't quite as bad as getting shoved into a helmsman rig.

But it's not much better. Worse, in some ways, because psionics burn out fast. You've read the books Pheres's dug up for you, over the years, all the old helmsman records: maybe they last longer than ten or twenty sweeps now, but you doubt it.

They'd hatch a lot less of the fuckers, if that was the case.

"I guess you will." You clear your throat and let the conversation drift into silence: uncomfortable on your end, but maybe she just sees it as companionable, because she sounds perfectly unbothered when she speaks up, a few minutes later. "Are most brownblooded lusii that small?"

"Haah, yeah, they're a bunch of shrimps," you say, eager to jump on the digression. The conversation continues in that vein for awhile: you don't go out of your way to talk to greenbloods, but you always end up surprised at how little they know about other lowbloods.

At least your ignorance about greenbloods is excusable. There's only like, ten jadebloods in a cohort at any time, and what do olives have to their name? No psionics, no money, no strength, nothing at fucking all. And limes, of course...

Were limes ever even really a thing, or was that just one of those terms for cusps that fell out of favor? You can't remember, and that shows about how important they were. Are. Whatever.

The conversation's moved into a thoroughly boring direction. Marduk's going off onto a passionate tangent about laws and legislaceration, and you're just letting the words roll over you while you take in the scenery. The dank-ass river has stayed steadily to your left as her lusus leads you through the sewers, but it feels like the ground has steadily sloped down as you've walked in circles, and that's... a little weird.

You're still in the sewers. There's pipes all along the wall next to you, gray and damp and corroded with rusty patches along the joints. But the brickwork is getting strange, almost patchwork, and niches are starting to appear in the walls where it was smooth before. She said it'd take an hour to get down to the catacombs.

You haven't been down here for an hour.

"Um," you interrupt, "where the fuck are we?"

[forgottensebayt]

After your jaunt through the sewers yesterday, you spent the rest of the day and night researching them. You had to stay up until Pheres or Hinnom told you they had arrived, or their name appeared on the culling lists: it was only smart to do some research during it.

So after the discussion of castes and lusii dies down, you started telling Sipara all about your research. She seems interested enough, asking questions where needed and commenting when you pause, but she seems content to let you carry the conversation.

That's alright. You have plenty of things to talk about!

" - they used to be used by cults, frequently, but, ah, don't be concerned. I'm certain that there are none out here now." Your lusus chirps, questioning, and you laugh, a little awkward. "Probably! I mean, their remnants likely remain. Historically speaking, the accepted practice with insurgent churches was simply to cull them wherever and whenever they were found, and to leave the majority of remains behind to serve as a deterrance towards others following their example. Subsequently, you could argue that there are technically still cultists down here, given that some likely have been colonised by fungal parasites due to the wet environment and..."

"Where the fuck are we?" Sipara demands, interrupting you.

Oh. You look at the niches in the wall she's frowning at. This high up, they've been empty long enough for the mycellium to have taken over, and the red fuzz that simply permeates the cracks of the rest of the stonework has swollen into bumpy protusions here. "We're in the beginning of the ossuary. In thirty minutes, we should be in the catacombs proper."

[activatingaggro]

You are never going underground ever, ever again.

If you thought it was fucking creepy in the ossuary, then that's nothing compared to the catacombs. The walls are damp down there, the air heavy with humidity that smells less like sewage and more like heat and deep water, and in that heady environment, the fungus has gone mad. It's poured through the nooks and crannies of the stonework, infiltrated the niches, and overtaken the ceiling, until it's nothing but a dim green blur above you. It's even tried to spread onto the floor, and you have to walk carefully to avoid slipping on the damp, spreading patches of red and green on the floor.

Worse yet, it's spread to the bodies. Because of course there's fucking bodies down here. You'd brought and taken the anti-fungals mostly as a precaution: surely here, in the heart of the fishhead territory, there wouldn't be too many daywalkers roaming the underground. No way they'd tolerate it, literally in their own backyard, when they've got drones just dying for the chance to murder anything they can get their clawed mitts on.

Nope!

It's fucking infested.

The first daywalker, you spot long before it sees you, and Marduk's lusus leads you in a detour around it. The second one can't be avoided, but Bennue manages to distract it until the three of you headed past.

The third one, you literally walk into. Punching it straight through the guts doesn't do much apart from getting your hands soppy with blood and strands, and its teeth are damn near scraping at your throat before you manage to put some distance between the two of you.

You should've brought a different specibus. Marduk yanks out her sword, but the two of you are close-range fighters, with lusii too small to be of any help, and it takes nearly five minutes for the two of you to cull it.

And by then, the noises have attracted others.

You manage to lose the herd, without losing any members of your little make-shift party. (Marduk doesn't get the joke. Of course she doesn't get the joke.) But by the time you make it to the door of Hinnom's hive, you're exhausted, and Marduk doesn't look much better, her face-paint streaked and running with sweat and residue from the damp air.

"I can't open it," she says, pouting as she stares at the lock. It's pretty high-tech shit, for all that it's got to be a century out of date: some sort of hand-print sensor with a needle in the sensor, linked to some long-dead sucker's hemocode. "It's for yellowbloods only."

"So.. we can't get in."

"Of course we can get in." The look she gives you says she's fed up with your shit, and you sneer back. It was a valid question! (Statement. Comment.) "I just have to knock," she says primly, and then proceeds to pound on the door, as hard as she can.

Welp.

You back up a little, and peer down both ends of the hall. You're in an alcove right now, but if the noise draws daywalkers, you'll be the first to know.

[activatingaggro]

The door opens, and Marduk hops inside first, ducking her head under the plank of wood that's been nailed across the front. (Weird.) You follow, and -

Pheres stares at you, bright-eyed, from behind some nubby maroon kid.