For day three, I've got a short story about how I think Vriska and Terezi first met. I hope I've stayed as true to canon as possible.

Chapter Text

3: Scourge Sisters

(Three solar sweeps before the events of Homestuck)

It’s still running after you. You thought you’d lost your assailant by diving head over heels into the thick scrubs. Now all you’ve gotten out of your brazen move are scratched open hands and knees. You’re beginning to tire. With ragged breathing you run on. There is a brook somewhere over here, maybe you could lose your cling-on if you dive into the water. For a split second you look over your shoulder. Your attacker is panting too, it won’t be long until the both of you are out of energy.

‘H-hey! Stand still! Don’t make this so hard!’

The surprise hits you so hard that you slow down a bit. You didn’t expect such a young voice from the one who’s chasing you. And most certainly not a girl’s voice either. The last sentence makes you doubt. That’s enough for you to almost come to a stop. Within a second, she’s on top of you. A flash of metal rakes your cheek. Biting through the pain, you slam your knees into her stomach and fling her off you. Now you’re the one who’s pinning her to the ground. ‘Why did you attack me?’ you inquire.

‘You think I’ll tell you? Shut up, you filthy lowblo-’ she stops in the middle of her sentence. Wriggling one hand out of your grip, she shakily points at your face. ‘You… you’re teal…’

‘Yeah, what if I am?’ You grab her hand again and pin both arms above her head. You feel the bones shift in her wrist and she cries out. ‘Now why did you chase me? Tell it or I’ll break them!’ With those last words you knead her wrists again.

Her eyes have become big in fear as she says: ‘No, p-please don’t… I just need to- to feed my lusus.’ After a shaky breath and an attempt to get you off her, she adds: ‘And I never kill anyone above olive, I swear!’

So that’s what a lusus needs? To be fed with other trolls? For the first time in your three-sweep life, you’re happy that you don’t have one. Of course, that doesn’t take away the hunger in your stomach or your dry throat. Slowly, you let her go and offer her a hand. She accepts, pulls herself to her feet, dusts off her clothes and puts the dagger between her belt. You see her sign now, deep cobalt blue. Looking down at your own shirt, you see that your sign is so faded that you could just as well have been an oliveblood. Or a really poor indigo, since it’s not really teal-colored anymore. The cobalt-blooded girl sees you looking. Some concern sounds in her voice as she says: ‘That’s not safe, you know? You’ll get culled if anyone sees you with that, I can’t even see what color it is.’

‘And what do you think, that I wear this for fun?’ you snap. It didn’t have to sound so angry, but you can’t really help it. When she steps closer to you, you inch back automatically. But she softly grabs you shoulder.

‘No, of course not. Hey-’ She squeezes your upper arm now. ‘You’re really skinny, you know?’

‘That’s mean, whoever you are.’ Another thing you don’t need to be reminded of.

‘I’m Vriska Serket. Your name?’

‘Terezi… Pyrope. And stop that!’ You swat away her hand, which had traveled to your ribcage. She begins to say that she really didn’t mean to hurt you, since you’re a tealblood and all that, as you stop her in the middle of her long-winded sentence. ‘Yes, you already said that. Because you need to feed your… lusus. Do I need to do that too?’

‘What? No! Only some lusii require that of their wigglers. Say, I sure hope yours isn’t like that.’

Now she’s struck a painful point. You shift your jaw and avert your head, you don’t want her to see you cry. For a young cobaltblood, she’s quick. Before you’ve managed to turn away from her, she’s almost nose to nose with you again. You look down at her bright red shoes and at your own, faded brown and too small. When she’s standing so close, you see that she clearly isn’t a tramp like you. She has healthy full cheeks, her eyes are sparkling and her arms aren’t bony like yours.

‘I’m sorry, okay?’ she says, stretching the first o. ‘I’m sorry again. Jeez, you’re a bit of a crybaby.’

‘Would you be one if you didn’t have a lusus?’

That clearly takes her aback. She stutters for a second before asking if you’re joking. The first teal tears welling up in your eyes are enough of an answer for her. ‘Alright… no wonder you’re looking so bad. Where’s your hive? I’ll get you some food from mine!’

No one has ever offered something like that to you. ‘Eh… it’s the tallest tree in the forest, not that far from here. Should I show you?’

As she’s following you through the forest, you’re not really sure what to say next. Vriska seems nice enough, to offer you food like that and not pounce at you now that your back is turned to her. ‘There’s a thick root over there, don’t trip,’ you point out as you step into the clearing by your hive. At the trunk of the tree, you pull the both of you up by the counter-weight system. After warning her that it’s a huge mess inside, to which she says that she never cleans up too, you open up the trapdoor at the roof. A “mess” is a bit of an understatement. Since you don’t like spending time in your hive, it’s littered with trash. Scraps of whatever food you could find, such as bones from the animals you try to hunt, dirty clothing and earth from the forest are spread throughout your respriteblock. Vriska makes a comment on the smell. You gruffly reply that you never do anything in here except sleep.

‘Hey! You don’t have a coon!’ is her next sentence.

‘I can’t buy sopor slime, it’s too expensive.’ You gesture uselessly at a pile of assorted blankets and pillows in a corner, that’s where you sleep. ‘But weren’t you going to get food? I’ll try to clean up a bit while you get it.’ Maybe there’s a little too much hunger in your voice, you think. But Vriska grins.

‘Sure, and I’ll get some other… stuff too. I think I know a way for you to get some more money. You don’t know how good sopor feels,’ she says before heading up to the roof again. You let her down with the counterweight and when she races away through the forest, she turns back three times to wave at you. Once inside, you overlook your respriteblock. Firstly, you decide, you’ll try to get the food scraps out of there. Grabbing a sack from your storage, which is painfully empty, you start to fill it with the mess. There isn’t much that still looks remotely edible, since the times you’ve tried to stock up on some reserves didn’t really work out. You ate everything within a few days. A half-empty packet of dry grubcrackers, the only thing you can buy most of the time, and a single fruit from the forest is all that stays on the table in the middle of the room when you’re finished. You stuff the garbage bag down a pipe in the tree. The waste collection droids will get it out of there soon. Then you open up all of your windows to let the wind blow through your hive and maybe get rid of the stale smelling air. Next is your husktop and the few lamps you have. It’s at least two perigees ago that you’ve used electricity, and you’re quite surprised when the husktop still works. The big T on the backside blinks up green. Trollian is still opened up on the screen, from the last time you’ve used the device. It still shows that one conversation you had with that CG-guy. Then you open up your closet, cough at the dust that comes out of it and take out your cape. It’s bright red, with a dragon snout and two buttons as eyes. It looks a bit goofy, but you made it when you where a single sweep old. It’s warm and in the dark equinox, you wrap in around you at night to try not to feel the biting cold. Not that that works. When you grab two cracked food plateaus and place them on your now-clean table, Vriska’s voice calls out from the base of the tree. ‘Terezi! I’m going to send the food and stuff up first! You ready?’

Hurrying to the top of the hive, you yell back that you’re ready as can be. The packet she sends up feels as least as heavy as you, and you’re glad that the counterweight makes it easier to pull up. She yells at you to hurry up, just when you’ve got the bag off the rope. Next up is the troll. When she’s on the roof, she looks down. ‘It’s really… high up.’

‘Don’t look down then, you’ll get dizzy and fall off,’ you say.

As you get back inside, Vriska kicks off her shoes and helps you haul the bag to the table. You can’t help but gasp when you unpack it. There’s probably enough food to sustain you for an entire perigee. Vriska quickly stocks up your thermal hull, you just stand by the table and gawk at the food for a good amount of time. A pinch in your arm startles you out of your amazement.

‘Dig in! It’s of no use to just stand there and look at it. The food’s not going to walk into your protein chute.’ Vriska plops down on a chair and cuts off a good portion of grubloaf for herself. You help yourself to it too, and she raises her eyebrows at how much you stuff into your mouth. And probably at the fact that you’re eating it without anything else. And at the crumbs flying everywhere. ‘I got mhno manners, I know.’ It’s a bit hard to talk with the food in your mouth. She laughs, loud and breathy.

‘Yeah, you look like a cholerbear after it’s hibernation.’

After you’ve eaten, taken a warm shower (which you have to explain that you almost never did since you don’t like coming into your hive) and put on an almost fresh set of clothes, you crash into your blanket pile. Vriska gets a book from her bag and shows it to you:

HANDBOOK FOR FATAL-LIVE-ACTION-ROLE-PLAYING

‘Or just FLARP,’ she says. ‘It’s a good way to get money.’

She explains the basics to you. It all comes down to the facts. You have to create a character.

‘I’ve already got two. First my Spidersona. And I’m working on a second one.’

Then you team up with someone, she suggests herself for this, and go on so-called campaigns against other teams. If you win, you get rewards, both money and other treasures, like costly items or weapons. If you lose… well…

‘You’ve got a change of dying,’ Vriska explains. ‘But if you’ve got me on your team, the campaigns will be a breeze.’

FLARP. You like the idea. To your question if you can be a dragon, she sadly says no. It has to be a more or less troll-like character. She starts to tell about the one she’s building now. Her name is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, and she’s basically the most awesome person ever. According to her, she really lived once, sweeps and sweeps ago. Now Vriska has a journal of this Gamblignat, and she’s supposedly her descendant. ‘That’s a real honor, you know? Like, having a super cool pirate like that as ancestor!’

It sounds pretty cool, you have to admit. Talking about FLARP, treasures and more, you eventually feel pretty drowsy. You gather a bunch of blankets around you with one big sweep of your arms and nestle deeper into the pile. Vriska covers herself up too. And you feel different. There’s not that eerie feeling in you that you always had when you were in your hive. The feeling that something essential was missing. As you turn to your newfound friend, because that’s how you’re calling each other now, she slings her arm over your chest. It hits you in the eye and she complains: ‘Urgh, there’s no place on you that’s not sharp and bony. Even your face is like that.’

‘Can it…’ you mumble. She grabs your sharp and bony shoulder and yawns. Her eyes glisten in the faint light. ‘Hey… your eye’s… a bit… weird,’ you say.

‘My vision eightfold? That’s not weird, that’s super duper cool.’ She puts her hand on the side of her head. ‘I’ve got powers, Terezi. Mindy powers.’ She squeezes her right eye shut. You see the seven little pupils contract in the other one. With somewhat of a huff she drops her hand again. ‘Oh man, I wanted to show you…’

‘Show me what?’

‘My mind control. I could’ve made you do a silly dance, or… or stick your head into your load gaper.’

You can’t keep yourself from laughing. ‘If you can do that…’

‘No, that’s my point. Your mind… it’s like a maze. I can’t control you.’ She softly punches you in the arm. Then shakes her hand. It’s sharp and bony, you bet.

The next morning, when you see her off, she suggest that you come to her hive as quick as you can. So you two can work on a character. ‘There must be something you like, so you can be that,’ she says. ‘Something else than dragons.’

‘Justice,’ is your answer. ‘I like the law.’

She hands you a little piece of paper, “arachnidsGrip”, it says.

‘My trollian name. What’s yours?’

‘gallowsCalibrator.’

Saying that she’ll remember that one, you walk her up to the roof. ‘I’ll send you something about the Law or justice or the courtblock today. A friend of mine’s a bit of a bookgrub. Her trollian name is grimAuxilliatrix, maybe you can contact her too. She’ll also send us all the fabric we’ll need for our costumes. All of it!’

That day, you indeed receive a document from her. “The customs and laws of the Alternian Legislacerators”, it says. It’s a scanned book, apparently.

Three days later

You run up to her hive. She’s sent you the location via trollian. As promised, she’s waiting for you where the scrubland that’s the outskirts of the forest ends. It’s a short walk to her castle from there. She points out her closest neighbor’s hive. A weird square tower with lost of repaired bits. ‘Zahhak’s hive. Odd guy, indigoblood, if I’m correct. Sometimes I hear explosions from there.’

‘Pfft, maybe I should be happy I live alone in a tree.’ You walk alongside her.

Suddenly there’s a gap in front of you. You were looking at the tall building in front of you when there’s no ground under your feet. With a scream, you fall. Managing to grab Vriska’s ankle, you almost pull her down too. She throws herself backwards and your left leg scrapes along the rock. ‘Aaaah! Help, please!’

‘I got you.’ Vriska grabs the hand that’s locked around her leg with both hands. ‘Don’t fall.’

‘Of course not, I-‘

A low hiss sounds below you. You turn your face to the bottom of the pit you fell in. With another scream, you look back to Vriska. ‘What is that?!’

‘That would be my lusus, now don’t you dare to let go, Pyrope,’ she says. With some effort, she pulls you up. The white spider in the pit hisses threateningly again. You’re absolutely sure of the fact that it wants you for a meal. As Vriska shakily pulls you to your feet, you wince when you land on your leg.

‘Please don’t say it’s broken, then we’re deep in the shit.’ Vriska now forces you down again. When you sit, resting on your stretched arms behind you, she prods hard in your leg. You cry out, but nothing feels broken. ‘Can you stand on it?’

‘I think so…’ You grab her shoulders for support and slowly walk to her hive.

‘I should’ve told you about that pit. Like: watch out for the gigantic spider that wants to eat every troll on Alternia and probably it’s moons too if it could. I’m really sorry.’

‘Nah-’ you pat her on the arm. ‘- you pulled me up.’

Once inside, she gets out a medical kit and bandages your leg. Then you two sit down in a comfy pile of pillows (made especially for you, according to Vriska). She hands you the real version of the book she send you. ‘Found anything you like?’

‘There’s this one woman… on the portraits of the Legislacerators, that were made once every two sweeps, she looks a lot like me.’ You skip to the end of the book. ‘There.’

‘Let’s see… the third one from the right on the second row…’ Vriska traces the names at the bottom of the page. Only the titles of the trolls are mentioned, not their actual names. ‘Neophyte Redglare. Hey, wait a second…’ Her eyes widen in some kind of shock. She gasps and looks from the picture to you and back. ‘She does really look like you. Her sign is yours, she was a tealblood too, her horns are the same shape… even her hair fans out like yours… no, this can’t… Terezi…’ The silence between you is really grave and you start to wonder if there’s something wrong. ‘I think she’s your ancestor.’

You start to laugh. ‘Can’t be true, she’s so… cool. And a Legislacerator, and-’

‘No, you don’t get it! Listen, that Mindfang I’m making a character from, remember her? Yes? Good. I’ve seen a few pictures of her. Painted portraits just like these-’ She taps on the page. ‘And she shared my sign, blood color and horns too. This can’t be a coincidence!’

You swear you hear tears in her voice. When she slowly shuts the book and tries to crawl deeper into the pillow pile, she whispers: ‘And Mindfang killed Neophyte Redglare.’

‘I don’t get what you’re so upset about. So what if your ancestor killed mine? What in the world does that even mean for us?’ You try to get closer to her to comfort her, but she only tries to drown herself deeper in the pillows.

‘Don’t you get it, Terezi? Has your… oh wait, you don’t have a lusus, of course… You’re supposed to tread into the footsteps of your ancestors! Oh god… oh no, no, no, no! I just saved your life! Should I have pushed you down instead?’ She now buries her face into a pillow and you see her shoulders shock in silent sobs.

‘Hey, uh-’ you say. ‘Who even believes that nonsense? Why do we have to? If we’re going to be Redglare and Mindfang in FLARP, couldn’t we just make them friends?’

With some effort, you manage to separate Vriska’s face and the pillow. It’s now stained with cobalt tears. Softly, you suggest that she and you are different from whoever your ancestors were. We aren’t enemies, you tell her, we don’t have to be and we never will be. She slowly relaxes.

‘S-sorry. I just… overreacted a little. But Mindfang wrote about Redglare in her journal, and she s-said-’

‘Then I should use that information for my character!’ you say excitedly. ‘And modify it to suit our new… our new beginning! We can change it, Vriska, really.’

‘Sure… if you say so. Maybe uh, we can start by looking at those costumes first.’ A bit shakily, she opens the book again.

About half and hour later, she boots up her husktop and types a message to grimAuxilliatrix. You two need red cloth, sturdy and firm. And teal, cobalt and black. Furthermore, you need boots. Folded near the knees for her, straight for you. She also orders a red sash for herself on the grubnet, and a pair of red glasses for you. Then she shows you the site of the FLAP-ing organization. ‘We have to name our team if we want to do the team-campaigns. Those yield much more treasures than the solo ones I’m doing. Urgh, look at all these loser names.’ She scrolls over the list of teams. ‘Winners, Psionics, Bronze Beasts, Charge, Seadwweller-’

‘What was that last one?’

‘With double “w”. Say, do you have any idea’s that aren’t lame like these? Want to hear mine first?’

‘Sure’, you say.

She takes a deep breath. ‘I say we call ourselves Team Scourge. How does that sound, Redglare?’

You just manage to stifle you laughter. ‘Pffft… That sounds eh, exceptionally good, Mindfang.’ When you’re able to breathe again, you add. ‘It makes sense, scourging was a punishment I read about in that scan you send me. And it sounds like something that would happen on a ship too.’

She signs both of you in. The next campaign is scheduled to start in ten days. You don’t have that much time to work on your costumes, but if you stay at Vriska’s place for that time, it has to be doable. She slightly adjusts her glasses and shows you a smile. You also grin, and softly say the name again. Team Scourge.