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interrogatormentors · 5 years

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Event Seven: Freezer Burn

Sleep came in fits and starts for the trainees, but they all snatched what little they could as their training continued. Despite this, they all spent the scant hour of free time the instructors allotted them in different ways. Zesaim studied, scouring books whose origins she refused to reveal for interrogation techniques. Rosmer baked in beakers, often coercing Sollux into using his psionics as a heat source. Ophlia worked out, Trisia ever by her side. Sollux himself dozed as he idly explored the limitations of his tablet, poking holes in the security to try and get his nose out for some news. Ualona often joined him, his maroon text a constant in the chat channels.

- actualizedClairvoyant [AC] has begun trolling twinArmageddons [TA]!-

AC: any progress on protecting a c-| |-annel? AC: avoiding mics is cool and all but w-| |-at if t-| |-ey are monitoring everyt-| |-ing we type? TA: no progre22 TA: they’re reportiing all thii2 2hiit two the empiire and the drone2ll be here iin liike two hour2 AC: D: TA: who do you fuckiing take me for ii’ve coded liike fiive proxiie2 iin the la2t ten miinute2 alone. AC: -| |-ell yeah! AC: so can you send me t-| |-at new installment of sunspots and starship -| |-eresy you found on the net t-| |-en because i kind of need somet-| |-ing to take my mind off tomorrow’s private training AC: i -| |-eard its gonna be some INTENSE friggin quizzes TA: god ii don’t want two enable you gettiing your globe2 off two helmiing porn you know that riight. AC: i mean AC: w-| |-en you put it t-| |-at way… TA: w/e iidgaf

-twinArmaggedons [TA] has sent file [kiinkyba2tard.xml]!-

TA: porn ii2n’t trea2on anyway we don’t need protected channel2 for that. TA: 2o who’2 goiing two be your traiiner tomorrow niight?? AC: that pozoia guy that oversees the p-| |-ysical training :[ AC: im freaking out!! -| |-es going to eat me alive! AC: w-| |-at about you? TA: rapard. AC: O-| |- S-| |-IT TA: w/e TA: he doe2n’t 2care me.

The next night when the morning alarms went off, however, Sollux hesitated as he squinted at his schedule for the day.

Sollux Captor: Report at Training Block A13 - Rapard - Dress Code: Swimwear

“Swimwear?” Zesaim’s puzzled voice came from her bunk just as Sollux read the words on his own schedule, and he looked over. “What happened to quizzes?”

“I don’t see how having a personal trainer’s going to help us swim better,” Sollux said, sitting up on the platform. “God, I don’t give a shit if I have to chase a wader through open sea, I’m drowning regardless.” He ducked, just in time to avoid a pillow getting thrown at him by Mercuo at terminal velocity. The seadweller glared at him from his bunk.

“You’ll need the fucking practice if you don’t want me to drown you,” Mercuo said, climbing down from his own bunk.

Sollux snorted, flicking Mercuo’s fin once with his psionics before stripping down. They filtered out to their assigned blocks after that, and it seemed the coolbloods didn’t receive any alteration to their dress codes for the day. Sollux found walking alone to a lesson disconcerting, and the halls seemed so much chillier and ominously dark without someone at his side. The faint fizzle of the lights above him served as the only background sound apart from the faint paps of his own bare feet on the metal tile.

He stopped in front of block A13 after a few minutes, looking up at the door. The metal seemed thick and reinforced, and a card reader sat adjacent to the heavy handle. A hand reached past Sollux, sliding a card into the reader and causing Sollux to jump. He hadn’t heard Rapard coming. “Quit flinching, helmbait,” Rapard said, hauling the door open. The door hissed, steam rushing out of the dark block in a billowing cloud. Sollux took a step, paused, and then moved forward only after Rapard shot him an unimpressed look.

The cold had given Sollux pause, an almost physical wall of frigid air that only intensified as the door behind him closed with a heavy thud. For a brief moment only the natural illumination from Sollux’s own eyes cast any sort of light, before a single, dim bulb on the ceiling flicked on. It didn’t really help. A metal chair stood fixed in the middle of the room, and Sollux felt a prickle of fear skitter up his spine as he spotted manacles on the armrests and near the legs. “What kind of quiz--”

“Emotional endurance is the topic today,” Rapard said. He gestured towards the chair, one eyebrow arching up. “I don’t have all night, recruit.”

Sollux gritted his teeth, glancing from the chair to the door and back again. Rapard stood between him and the door, and somehow he doubted he could overpower a fully matured seadweller in such a cold environment. Sollux’s own limbs felt stiff, and his teeth already chattered. He had his pride, but he also had an ounce of self-preservation in his bones. He sat down in the chair, jerking away too slow to avoid the manacles snapping shut around his wrists and ankles.

“I get the physical training, I get the mediculler shit, but what the fuck is up? Sir,” he added at the expression on Rapard’s face.

“How slow do I have to speak to drill something through your pan, recruit?” Rapard said, starting to pace, a shark circling through icy waters. “Welcome to emotional conditioning. The goal today is to learn control. The moment you emote, your quarry loses faith in your resolve to hurt them.” Rapard stopped off to Sollux’s left, shifting his weight from left to right before settling back on his heels. His expression remained as blank as ever. “This also serves as a practical demonstration of your schoolfeeding. Recap what you learned about temperature moderation and interrogation, grublet.”

Sollux took a breath, trying to settle the sparks already settling around his hornbeds that had triggered out of anxiety. “Temperature. Short-term temperature shifts out of habitable zones can lower reaction time and inhibitions. Long-term it can influence the immune system and wear a troll down.”

Rapard snorted, reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform and pulling out a small remote. He pressed a button, and fans lining the walls kicked on with a furious intensity. Sollux yelped, turning his face away from the sudden blast of cold air smacking against his face. “Temperature drop, two degrees,” Rapard said. “Watch those sparks-- I can read you like a fucking book. Get it together.” He started pacing again, and Sollux tried to resist the urge to follow his movements with his head. “What temperatures can the average lowblood withstand?”

“Average?” Sollux worried his lower lip with his teeth, scrambling to answer ahead of Rapard’s impatience. “Hypothermia takes place at an internal temperature of 97 degrees, and we can survive with an external temperature of 140 with enough water.”

The fans whirred again, and Sollux gritted his teeth. “Watch those ears,” Rapard said. “In the interrogatormentors, your emotions are a weakness. If you can’t turn them off like the husktop you are, then what use are you? You can’t be caught at the mercy of your own instincts.” He shook his head, still pacing in a wide circle around Sollux. “What will affect a lowblood’s internal temperature more, cold air or water?”

Sollux faltered, looking up to the fans. Well, that seemed like the proper answer right there. He couldn’t think straight, really, his thoughts coming to him in sluggish waves as he shivered in his bonds. A red light blinked in the corner of the room, a camera watching this entire affair. What did they even need this footage for? “Cold air,” he said finally.

Rapard hummed. “Interesting answer,” he said. “This isn’t about the immediate effect, this is a matter of thermodynamics.” An odd click came from above Sollux, and he looked up just in time for a set of freshly revealed nozzles protruding from the ceiling to unleash a deluge of icy water. Sollux sputtered, gasping and choking against the spray. The water left him a shuddering mess, each breath an agony stabbing into his lungs.

“I gffkfk- got it,” he said, coughing hard. “Cold. Cold’ssss good.” His lisp had worsened due to the chattering of his teeth, and he found himself biting his tongue more than once. “Fuck. Fuck.”

The fans came to life again, and Sollux screwed his eyes shut. “You’re cursing out of an emotional response,” Rapard said. Sollux felt cold hands grasp his jaw, and he peeled his eyes open to meet the seadweller’s own. “Turn off your emotions, brat.”

Sollux took a breath as Rapard released him, schooling his response back. He tried focusing inwards, fixating on the thought of warmth, of his bunk and fresh food and summer nights. Turn it off, turn it off, turn the emotions off, think of something else. His expressioned slackened, smoothing out into an expressionless mask despite the way his muscles spasmed due to the cold.

The quizzing continued from there, and Sollux did his best to answer each question thrown at him. The temperature kept dropping despite his efforts, until he felt icicles gathering in his nose and his eyes felt swollen from how much tears streamed down his cheeks from the cold. The lesson continued even after Sollux started hacking blood onto his legs and the floor, his entire body quaking. He couldn’t hear his own voice. He didn’t even know what he said in response to Rapard’s questions, and he knew at least half of his answers were unintelligible. He couldnt even begin to imagine what warmth felt like anymore.

Eventually Rapard looked at his watch and hit another button, and the manacles around Sollux’s limbs popped open. Sollux couldn’t have moved if he tried, and it took careful prying and warm water to loosen him from his quite literal frozen position in the chair. Sollux struggled to remain conscious as Rapard swung him over his shoulder, gasping as they emerged into the relative heat of the outside corridors.

Rapard deposited Sollux into a communal block, into a flock of suffering recruits. To the left side of the room, where Sollux tumbled onto the ground, lowbloods clustered around each other in bundles of blankets, heated mats underneath them. To the right, highbloods all seemed intent on drowning themselves in ice baths. Sollux couldn’t bring himself to move, and remained face down until he felt a blanket settling around his shoulders.

“Hey, Sparkles,” said a weak voice above him. Sollux looked up to see Trisia, her face flushed a brilliant teal and her dreadlocks hanging limply around her cheeks. “You look like shit.”

Sollux let out a ragged laugh, fingers curling around the edges of the blanket. “You do too. Did they stick you guys into an oven?”

He heard shuffling behind him then, and a sniffle. “I want to die,” Ualona said, voice very small. “They didn’t warn us it’d be like this. We’re the interrogatormentors, not- Why are they torturing us?”

The door opened again, revealing a petite purple with a massive collar of spikes framing the back of her head like a matured daywalker. She pushed a stumbling Ophlia into the room, tittering and wiping a little smear of purple from the corner of her own mouth before shutting the door. Sollux caught a glimpse of the back of her neck then, which revealed that the spikes were indeed protruding from her skin in a uniform circles of daywalker bruises along her spine. When Ophlia lifted her head, Sollux saw her ear was bleeding. Sollux swore, shivering. “This place is fucked.”

Trisia got up again, and Sollux heard her murmuring to Ophlia before supporting her up to an ice bath. Ualona scooted closer, and Sollux saw an ominous darkness to his nose and the edges of his fingers. “What did Rapard promise you?” he said.

Sollux tried to think of what Ualona meant, but nothing came to him. He only shrugged, his cheek pressed up against the floor. “Nothing. But I'm not waiting to find out what you're talking about,” he said. “Let the others know.” He closed his eyes. “We’re getting out of here.”

#homestuck #homestuck au #sollux captor #interrogatormentors #illustrated fic #fic #come get yalls juice #got a cool refreshing treat for u #thanks everyone for ur patience!!#interrogatormentors event

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everypieceintoafire · 5 years

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my homestuck fics on ao3 - a smallish masterpost

I realised I only had these linked on a custom page, which isn't very mobile-friendly, so here they are.

Let There Be Light

An Earth-Shattering Confession was the first fic I ever finished and, aside from an abandoned Star Trek story, the first of my fiction to see the light of day since the mid-00s. I wrote the first chapter on our netbook, sleepless, sat up in bed, uploaded by morning, and I had no idea where I was going with it. Two days later I was uploading chapter two. I had so much fun.

It's about a trans girl who comes out to her friends. That's pretty much it. It's like fifty percent pesterlog.

The amazing thegeekgene has performed the whole thing!

TT: I've been meaning to ask you for a favor. And that favor comes with a confession. TT: It's rather a large favor. GA: I See GA: How Does It Compare To The Size Of The Confession GA: Are We Talking Mountains And Burrowbeast Hills Or TT: The confession is, if anything, larger. TT: Earth-shattering, if you will. Or possibly Alternia-shattering. One way or another one of our planets is going to get caught in the shockwave created by my horrifying secret. TT: The moment I open my mouth to speak the terrible truth will be remembered in the histories of advanced civilizations as the origin point of the bizarre spatial anomaly that erased this world, burrowbeasts and all, from the universe. TT: You may wish to bring a portable transportalizer so you can escape to a less doomed planet once I've opened my heart to you. GA: I Am Afraid I Have No Such Device GA: But As A Troll I Am Capable Of Surviving The Vacuum Of Space For Several Minutes Without Suffering Harm GA: Its Entirely Possible My Mysterious Rainbow Drinker Powers Will Extend That GA: And According To The Book You Loaned Me Two Weeks Ago A Mere Thirty Seconds Is All You Need Before A Helpful Soul In A Passing Spaceship Arrives To Affect A Rescue GA: Provided Said Ship Is Powered By An Engine Sufficiently Humorous And Improbable GA: So We Can Assume I Will Live Through This Momentous Event GA: And With That Assumption Safely Made And Acknowledged By All Parties Move On To The Confession Itself TT: Ah.

The Other Girl came next and is a one-pager about dysphoria.

On Bananas followed that and is basically about how I don't understand Spironolactone.

These stories are grouped together in a series called Let There Be Light. There's also the unfinished stories Growing Up Again and We'll Stand Up Together, which may well continue at some point!

Prompts

Finding the Path was written (mostly on trains and in a great hurry) as a pinch-hit for Homestuck Ladyfest 2013. It's patchy, but the dialogue is kind of fun (primarily because I only had about two days to write it so I wrote the dialogue first and filled in everything else after).

AG: Where did you land? GA: I Am Stuck In A Tree GA: It Is Not Dignified GA: The Branches Are Poking Me GA: The Matriorb Is Okay Though The Future Of Our Race Is Still Assured GA: So GA: You Know GA: Good AG: Stop ram8ling and tell me where you are! I don't like the look of these woods. GA: How Can You Not Like The Woods Isnt Your Lusus Literally A Giant Spider That Eats People GA: Are You Not By Definition The Scariest Thing In Any Given Set Of Woods GA: Oh No A Spider Troll Come To Feed Me To Her Enormous Monster Parent GA: Isnt That You GA: And Yes Of Course I Am Rambling I Go On Like This When Im Nervous GA: For Some Reason Dropping Through A Weird Glitch In The Side Of A Hill Into A Wood That Wasnt There A Moment Before Has Put Me A Little On Edge

Little Blue Heart was written for Homestuck Rare-pair Swap 2014. It's a Rose/Vriska story set a while after the end of Homestuck (which is a thing that hadn't happened yet when I wrote it) when the characters are adults and finally old enough to fuck up their own lives without any outside assistance. It contains the only sex scene I've ever written.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and something inside you makes it rain.

A reporter came out to the house a few weeks ago looking for a story in the stormclouds that persist over Rainbow Falls, but what was there to say about it except, it's always raining? She asked questions; you lied. She got some footage you doubt ever made it to TV. You deliberately wore a borderline-offensive shirt for the interview, not because you thought it would make them omit you from any potential broadcast—pixelization is a thing, after all—but merely to express your feelings on the whole process.

When she left for the last time, Kanaya told you that your growing contempt for other humans was an unbecoming quality, that your whole attitude towards people and the planet you ended up on was evidence of a bruise on your soul she was on the verge of giving up trying to heal. Things could have been so much worse, she'd said; you could, after all, have all reincarnated on a recreation of Alternia! You shouted back that that would have been better because maybe some troll there would have been willing to take you apart and find out what's wrong with you, and that was what prompted her to slam the front door on her way out. It still doesn't close properly.

Kanaya's staying in town, for now, and occasionally pops up on Pesterchum. She worries. You wish she'd go further away.

But it's true; something inside you makes it rain. The weather responds to your moods as if auditioning for a horror movie, and in the lightning flashes of your anxiety attacks you see writhing shadows in the forest, reaching for the clouds. They match the wriggling and itching under your skin, and what began as a creeping dread grew in the weeks of your solitude into a horrified certainty: when your head aches and the storm breaks the sky in half above you, you feel them as the limbs of something that crawled inside you long ago.

You can put a name to its tendrils, to the things curled around your spine, to the smoke that gathers in your head: horrorterror.

You are almost insulted to be so comprehensively invaded by something with such a stupid, stupid name.

Skylighter was written for When Worlds Collide: Crossover Fanwork Exchange, and is a Homestuck/Pacific Rim crossover. It's also kind of rushed, but it's okay.

AG: This is the 8est one yet! CG: YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT. IT'S ALWAYS THE BEST ONE YET AND JAEGER PILOTS ARE ALWAYS 'ULTIM8 8ADASSES' AND YOU'RE GOING TO BE A PILOT ONE DAY. AG: Yeah, just as soon as I find someone awesome enough to Drift with me. AG: And none of that ever stops 8eing a thing that is true. Look at that punch! CT: D –> This is e%traordinarily gratifying GA: Yes Oh My Goodness I Am Enthralled GA: Left Hook Right Hook Oh My CG: YOU'VE BEEN PRACTICING SARCASM AGAIN, HAVEN'T YOU? GA: I Dont Know What You Mean CG: SOLLUX SHOULD NEVER HAVE MADE THAT INTERDIMENSIONAL TRANSCEIVER, ALL IT GETS USED FOR IS APPALLING HORNLESS ALIEN SOAP OPERAS AND DEPRESSINGLY PERSISTENT BONE-POLISHING OVER ALIEN PORNOGRAPHY. TA: hey fuck you. TA: iif the iimperiial navy ii2 goiing to hang a hiighly 2ophii2tiicated panuniiver2al trackiing 2y2tem diirectly over our head2 they 2hould equiip iit wiith a better 2ecuriity 2y2tem and 2taff iit wiith troll2 capable of fiindiing theiir 2hame globe2 wiithout a map.

#homestuck

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