#CYOA: Imperial Favor

[palestporn]

Gamzee: What those horns do tho

"So, uh, horns," you say, like a chill motherfucker who hasn't been throwing looks at this growly little motherfucker's head since you met him this morning.

"I've heard of them," he says, sass-mouthed little emperor with his tiny horns tossed like a challenge. Starts off toward the next block, and goes and takes the crown off his horns and peels his shirt off like it ain't no thing. You knew he was a solid little armful, but damn.

"Damn," you say, out loud, and he turns back to look at you like he's about to ask what's up and then sees you getting a full motherfucking ogle on and goes reddish at the ears and horns again.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, and waves off your looking at him. "So, horns?"

Oh shit, right. "Horns," you say back, and hurry on up to come after him. Are you supposed to take your shit off too? Way they trained it, if the emperor wants one of them touched he touches and if he wants their skin out he says so.

...Karkat turns away from you to fuck around with folding his shirt up, and shows you the whole length of his back, bared at you. You get kinda motherfucking stupid about it. Damn.

When you step up on him from behind him and put a hand real careful on the side of his neck, he goes tense and then eases slow--when you tilt back his head a little bit, he lets you.

"Out at the yellow, shit's about texture, I got told," you say, and just rest the blunt tip of a claw to the blunt tip of a horn. there's a little edge of ridge up and around; you can click the flat of a claw up along where it fades away, real light and slow. With his shirt off and his weight resting back on you, you can feel him shiver. "Gotta play nice if there's not a lot to get your grip on of, but you can rattle the fuck out of 'em if they're longer."

"Like yours," he says, intending at some shit. You had it shown at you how it feels to lock horns, not slamming against like a challenge but shifting around and clicking and catching together. Goes all down your posture column, like sparks. He's not got the horns, but you felt how strong his fronds are and he's sure the fuck got claws.

...Focus, motherfucker.

"Like mine, yeah," you say, and make distraction at yourself about how that might feel by sliding your grip on down and getting the heel of your frond right into the base of his horns.

You knew he'd like it, on account his ancestor's shit's been mapped and marked a hundred sweeps. But it still makes you feel like the emperor your own damn self, when he goes "Hhha, fuck," all shaky and sways back hard against you.

"Down at the red," you say, and press just like how you got taught, deep and slow, smoothing down his shaved-down hair along how it lays, not against it. "Gotta give some motherfucking pressure."

He says "Oh, fuck," again--and again, like it's about all he can think to say. Breathes slower, leans harder, grasps back and grips at you behind him. "Oh, shit."

"Gotta push harder than you figure," you say, for all your voice sounds cracked and not yours. "Head conciliatrix smacks the shit outta your knuckles if you go too light--feels like you're gonna hurt a motherfucker but if you get in there real good--"

You press again and he makes like to curse and only lets out a whine like pleading instead, crooning under it in his rattlebox. Bites it off embarrassed a second later, but holy shit. Fuck.

"--That shit'll undo knots all the way to the motherfucking ground if you do it right," you finish off, and for a beautiful miracle of a second you don't think about being pissed, or scared, or ghosts or emperors or any other bullshit. Just how he goes loose in your grip, barely keeping his feet. "Motherfucker, you sound so fucking good."

"I'll pay you back with interest," he croaks out, brave show but wavery. "In the evening. We need to sleep. Hha, shit. C'mon, 'coon."

"Tonight" again, huh? Lotta shit happening tonight. Who fucking knows how your life's gonna shake up by this time tomorrow morning.

You think you can just about motherfucking live with that.

[-END-]

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #Thanks for playing everybody! #My last day of vacation is tomorrow I really worked this one down to the wire huh #I don't think I've ever done one this long you guys were vital and I'm so pleased QuQ #Your replies reblogs and votes are a gift #and I am incredibly lucky to have you :D #Followup if I posted this on AO3 it seems most logical to make each post a ''chapter'' but I hate to make a fic with like 18 chapters #of probably 1K words or less each #thoughts on most practical means of posting something in this format definitely welcome haha

[palestporn]

==> 👑 ==> ♦️

(CW: references to canon-typical violence/ implied torture and execution, blood. Signless/Sufferer execution, etc. Caveat lector)

#gamkar #miracrails #CYOA: Imperial Favor #I genuinely don't know exactly where this is going with either main so this will be a fun improvisation exercise lol #anyway I'm going to bed #the better to hopefully wade into this tomorrow :)c

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Get fucking rudenasty about it

Today's been a shitshow, and it's well past noon, and there's a ghost in your head and a terrible and ancient motherfucking destiny leaning on you...and there's fuck-all you can do about any of that, so instead you scoot over at the second-biggest deal in the empire and put a palm on the back of his neck to squeeze a little.

"Oh, uh," says the Second Coming.

"Think you could do to sleep before sunrise," you say down close by his ear, and give his neck a squeeze, to see if he pops you one. He goes all red again instead, so that seems good. When you get your other hand on his hot cheek he won't let you turn him to look at you, but he doesn't slap you away either, working his claws on nothing. "...You got a back full of knots and an ache in your horns, and I got hands and nothing but time, motherfucker. Put the two together we might just make some miracles happen."

"Ha!" says Karkat, high and harsh, which would make you feel like the dumbest and clumsiest motherfucker if there wasn't half a eager chirp on the noise. When you take your hand back away again, he leans after it fast and then pretends like he was stretching, and then shivers when you put it back on him. Glances over at where his ancestor's still scolding at nothing, and quiets down to half whispering. "You don't have to kiss my ass about stuff. It's great when you're, fucking, six sweeps old and you think you're gonna save the universe, but. If that's what you're doing, you can stop. But..if that's not what you're doing, then, I guess--"

He looks up past you and breaks off, raises up his voice to growl. "...What? Fuck off."

The emperor is looking at the both of you when you look up, and you recall all at once where you're at and what's up and who you're talking to, and what the rest of the conciliatrium would scold at you if they heard you getting fresh with the Second Coming after all their lessons on keeping your salty mouth sweet and sober. You sit straight and put your fronds back in your own business again.

"Shit, KK," says Sollux, who started pretty far down your list of people you were chill with, and is getting his jump on up it. "Get some."

The emperor says, "You do understand that the consortium was just...the most well-insulated place I could hive you?" Like he thinks you're doing some wack shit out of nowhere or something. "You're not obligated to act like one of the consorts."

For once this heretic motherfucker speaks some damned sense, growls your ancestor in your ear. If you won't cull these mutant aberrations at least restrain yourself from playing pile-pet to some loud-mouth stripling rabble-rouser.

"...I mean, nah, bro," you say, and see the emperor cock a brow at you and say "I mean, motherfucker--uh. I mean. Sir? Only it's like. I'm only not a conciliatrix on account I got no moirail because some crusty old motherfucker I guess I share face with had negative fuckin' game--"

Don't you speak on my motherfucking GAME, says your ancestor, insulted at you. I pulled like you wouldn't fucking believe, you mouthy little shit.

"--But I got the training and everything," you say, and look at Karkat, hoping. "If some motherfucker might like me better."

The emperor looks still like he has more to say about all that, but Karkat squares up his shoulders and lowers his horns again, that way he stands sometimes that means let's get this motherfucker done. "Good," he says, "Great. Well, so, let's just--go fucking figure some shit out!" He stands up, brushes himself down, straightens up his little hanging gold-and-jewels crown. "Your place, or mine?" he says, bossy, and only goes a little bit red about it.

Gamzee: His place, or yours?

==> The Imperial Hive-Suite ==> The Imperial Conciliatrium

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #y'all knew exactly what you wanted with this one huh lmao #just a perfect ascending order from most polite to most handsy #Y'ALL KNOW WHAT YOU'RE ON THIS BLOG FOR

[palestporn]

==> Who the fuck are you?

Motherfucker, that is a great fucking question. As far as you know your name's still GAMZEE, and that name itself is about all you've got to it.

Well, no, you got plenty of shit. But not a single piece of it's really yours. All you've got for your color is your own eyes; all you've got for a sign is the one around your neck, and that's on everything, because it's not yours either.

It's the emperor's.

Both of them; His Triumphant Ascension, Sufferer Redeemed, and his heir, still not titled but whispered on more every night. Preacher-king and his little warlord straining the chain like a barkbeast ready to attack.

The emperor's ruled in peace hundreds of sweeps, but that doesn't mean other motherfuckers don't want a piece of him and his empire, big like it is. From what the older motherfuckers in his Conciliatrium tell you, and from...whispers you heard, he always took real poorly to war. But his heir's going at it horns-first.

You met the emperor, one time, sweeps ago. He plucked you up from your hive and hauled you in and asked you a whole motherfucking load of questions you didn't understand. And then he made wave of his frond and whisked off your sign and your name, and hid you away.

He's never made call for you since. They trained you up for want of something better to do with you, showed you how the red and royal emperor likes his pile made, but he just went on not calling for you. So the sweeps have gone by, and you've gotten bigger, and quieter, and as sneaky and slick as a dumb motherfucker like you can get.

Seems like some motherfucker's getting their watch on right back at you. Couple perigees back, a message showed up in your block when you went to bed down for the day, telling you trolls with their own secrets should watch where they stick their snuff-nodes.

There's a lot of shit going on around the imperial hive. Questions on mysteries on secrets. Today, you set out with some thought you'd like to figure one of them out.

Gamzee: Snoop

==> who is 'whispering' to you about the emperor? ==> why did he take you in the first place? ==> which secret of yours did they learn?

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Attempt the complex advanced maneuver known as "get hugged, idiot"

It's only being as how you got "be cool, dumbass" slapped into your thick nugbone so hard so many times, that you don't go "huh?" and freeze up--but whatever shit your face does get up to must read plenty clear enough anyhow, because Karkat goes "...Hm" at you.

"Everybody's always rubbing all kinds of disgusting body parts talking about how the consorts must just be committing the most decadent possible acts of debauchery to each other all night, every night," he says. "I guess I'll use my fucking, lightning wit and wildly functional gazebulbs to deduce that's just a rumor."

You nod your head, and then shake your head, and then shrug at him.

"I know how shit gets done--"

"For me," says Karkat, laying it out clear, still frowning. "By you."

Motherfucking relief to hear he gets it. But when you nod grateful at him, he frowns some more. "Well, as far as I'm concerned that falls under the heading of ass-kissing," he says. "Which we've already figured out, you're not going to be doing. So. Well. Maybe, just--"

He marches up to you, and hugs you hard.

Startles you to freezing up for a second--but he's gripping hard, and he's so warm, and when you put your arms down around him he makes a low little satisfied chirr and squeezes you harder.

Your body gives way on you in pieces and parts; he tries holding you up a second or two and then stops fighting it and lets you down on the ground, lets you curl closer around him and grip onto him hard. For a second, he twists and wiggles loose--but before you can try to get yourself to let him go he just hugs you again, over your shoulders this time, so he can put your face in his shoulder and grip a hot, strong hand on the back of your neck.

"Okay," he says, over your head, and pets at your hair, like he's not sure he's allowed. "Yeah? Good. That's enough bullshit for today, you uh. You did good, we're done. Fuck, I thought you were going to kick Kankri's ass. He would've deserved it."

Hits you first that Kankri must mean the emperor; second, flinching fear like you gotta not be allowed to know that. Third, boiling-up anger you can't even blame on your ancestor's whispering this time.

"...Wanted me safe," you say, thin over the growl you're choking on. "He said--"

"Yeah, well, maybe if he ever bothered explaining his fucking high-horned for your own good plans to people, he wouldn't be so fucking insufferable," says Karkat. "Maybe he did keep you safer in here! But holy shit. If I was you I would've hunted him down a long time ago and blown up right in his fucking face." His claws knead prickling at your back, protective at you. "...You can get pissed off. That's uh. What I'm here to help with. If you want."

You haven't gone and wound yourself up like that since you were new, when you didn't get how everything was all set to go and no point arguing--but you remember how ugly shit got when you let it, and how much trouble you got in. The growl that pushes out of you is ugly enough already, even if he doesn't flinch back from it.

"Yeah," he says. Low and half-relieved and holding you even tighter like the ugly's just exactly what the fuck he was looking for. "Come on. Say it."

Gamzee: Rage

==> Your body's been changed ==> You lost your name and your sign ==> They came back with a hundred sweeps of curse on them ==> All for your own motherfucking good

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #I am thinking...... about Kankri's personality as seen as a dancestor combined with his history as the Sufferer #and then adding several hundred sweeps of being an emperor and taking hard lessons on practicality on top of that

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Blow up your ancestor's whole motherfucking spot

Finding your way back out of whatever the fuck he's doing (your ghost your ancestor the grand fucking highblood, every time you think this day can't get any more motherfucking wild--) feels like stumbling your way through choking smoke. Feels like when you woke up from getting your pan rung earlier, except this time when you find your way back, instead of a fight happening over your head, everybody's all staring at you while they bitch each other out.

"KK, shut the fuck up," says Sollux, and clicks his claws in front of you couple times, and watches you twitch. "I think he's hearing us again. Hey, good evening, moonshine. What the fuck--"

"What did you see?" says the emperor, real intense, and you stare at him and feel your hand try to twitch--to touch his cheek or tear his neck open you have no fucking idea. You don't think your ghost does either. Fuck. "Focus! Look at me. What did he show you?"

A whole lotta shit, is what. Fire, death and blood. A mutant who looked only just Karkat's age--arguing long nights with him through the bars on a dark cell. A hand reaching through the bars to your cheek and how all of everything flipped to spin around that second where he touched you.

"Motherfucker's pale for you," you blurt out.

Sollux and Karkat turn at the same time and stare at the emperor, and then at you, and then at the emperor, like they fucking practiced it. Your ghost does a noise that doesn't amount to words. The emperor does much the motherfucking same.

"I beg your fucking pardon," he says.

IN WHAT MOTHERFUCKING WAY, howls your ancestor, what part of FATAL AND WEAKLING FAILURE and UNDYING MOTHERFUCKING AFTERDEATH OF SHAME did you FAIL TO COMPREHEND?!

"And he's fucking salty about it," you say, fool mouth running without you, on a laugh of disbelieving. "Oh, fuck. You just touched him the one time and he's fucking gone about it, he just, ha, hhaha, he hates it so motherfucking much."

The emperor, it transpires and turns out, goes red a whole lot the same way like his descendant does. "Fucking, really?!" he says, only half at you--to the dark, to the shade he can't see. "It's been hundreds of sweeps! You tried to execute me!"

I regret NOTHING, mutant, says your ghost in boiling furious snarl, and his hating regret sings through your horns. I linger only to see your long-delayed death and drag your soul to the messiahs' cull-pits by motherfucking hand.

"What, you're. You're just, hanging out waiting for him?" you say, and Karkat's face does some kinda SOMETHING. "Like so you can go on together? Motherfucker, damn."

"Thirsty," says Sollux, and it pushes a laugh out your mouth like a punch in the gut, especially how it makes Karkat's face do a whole different kind of something. "Ehehe--"

"This isn't funny, Mituna," says the emperor, sharp over your ancestor's howl of scouring rage and cursing on your soul.

"No, it's fucking not!" says Karkat. "Is that why you put him in the conciliatrium?! He's not the same person as his ancestor, you absolute throbbing boil on the waste chute of the empire, that's not how descendants work and I should fucking know!"

"Karkat, shut the fuck up," says the emperor. He's pinching the bridge of his scarred-up, broken-ass nose.

To REVENGE himself on my memory, says your ancestor, to my MOCKERY AND DEBASEMENT, turning a hatched subjugglator of my holy bloodline to some purring, pampered--

"Hey, if you didn't like learning pile stuff you coulda just left, motherfucker," you say, stung a little. "Not like either of us ever had to do the motherfucking job, being as how I guess you fucked up my shot at getting any action a billion fuckin' sweeps ago!"

Sollux fucking cackles about that. The emperor says "You didn't have a 'shot'! Neither of you have anything even resembling a shot, okay?! Kurloz, you dense piece of shit--"

"Don't fucking talk to him like that," says Karkat, at the same time you go "Who the fuck is Kurloz?" and then both of you stop and look confusion at the other.

Never did I give him my hatchname and never ALLOWED him to use it, your ancestor's growling, sulky now, all sorts of shit you can't get a vibe on rolling around your thinkpan, while the emperor makes lecture and scold at the air where he isn't. Speaking at me like he knows me, bossy little MOTHERFUCKER. Claiming some power to speak down at the King of Colors, the culler of a thousand worlds--

"I'm Gamzee," you say, by way of explanation, and Karkat stares at you and then says, "I'm. Karkat?" like he's not really actually all that sure right this second. Sneaks a frond out and rests it on your knee, while his ancestor's yelling at the dark and his buddy's laughing his ass off, and then whips it back again red in the ears.

...You want to touch him back. Not just to kneel there sweet and let him get up in your business, but butt rudenasty up in his. So that's. New.

"Hey, uh," you say, and shoot your motherfucking shot.

Gamzee: Get up in the Second Coming's business.

==> Courtly ==> Polite ==> Bold ==> Downright Presumptuous

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-TENSION BREAKERRRRRRR lmao #I have to do a pretty lengthy drive real quick lol vote amongst yourselves

[palestporn]

Gamzee: RUN MOTHERFUCKER

Don't have to tell you twice, you're so motherfucking down with that--except when you hit the ground and start scrambling at the door, you only make it four staggering steps before red and blue sparks snap back around you like burning ropes and drag you back.

It lifts you full off your feet again, and for a second you're so pissed off and so fucking scared, you don't see anything. Don't feel anything except the way it burns everywhere, don't hear anything except howling, roaring, so loud and close it rings your horns and tears out of your throat, too-- They'll cull you, you'll rip them apart, they'll burn you alive, lowbloods and mutants, how motherfucking DARE--

Someone half-catches you, half-tackles you as the psionic full drops you, purple in the eyes now and yelling out, holding his head--you slap out at whoever's touching you and your useless motherfucking claws scrape pointless over the Second Coming's face. Would've ripped him open if you weren't--bound, HOBBLED, motherfucking DEBASED is this your revenge, mutant, is this why you watched them do it IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED--

"Hey, hey, hey," says Karkat, and grabs your shoulders and shakes you hard. Makes you breathe, startles a gasp into you. "Shhh, fuck, stay there. Stay--stay put, a second, shh."

He doesn't touch your neck with those knife-claws this time, he puts his palm to your cheek and pets and pats at you, like you're supposed to do, pulse in his wrist where even fangs as blunt as yours could tear it out.

It's clumsy as a fucking pupa. The head conciliatrix would shout him in shape for hours over just the sound of his shooshing. It still feels all hells of motherfucking good right now.

"I gotta--" you say, without any fucking idea what you're saying, clinging and clawing at him, both useless without any fucking claws. "Get the fuck off, motherfucker let go--!"

"You're the one holding on!" he says, and he's right, and you can't let go. "Shhh, sh. Sollux, you glass cannon piece of shit, you better be good over there."

"Fuck," says the psionic, kinda wheezy. "Fwh. Yeah. 'M fine. Lemme get him--"

"Nobody's getting anybody," Karkat says, before you can make another fucking bolt for the door or rip him apart. "Hey, look at me, don't freak out--We're good, we're fine. Everybody calm the fuck down. I'm handling this bullshit."

"Yeah you're handling something," says the psionic, still gasping, but he manages to snicker at you anyhow, while his sparks lift him up on his feet. "Ehehe. Damn, KK." You figured he just had stupid motherfucking glasses, but his eyes glow the same red and blue underneath, too, a real familiar set of colors.

The Ψiioniic's spawn pops his gazepanes back on his pointy li'l nose and grins at the both of you. You try to cringe back from him and try to spring up at his throat with your fangs, and don't manage at doing either. Just sit there like a bounding hornbeast that wandered up in front of a scuttlebuggy, and try to remember how you ever breathed without panic-growling the same time.

Karkat says over your head, "You said you couldn't go talk to him because it was too dangerous, well that barkbeast's fucked. So, it's time for you to pry some answers out of that crimped deformity you call a squawkblister. Your Ascendance." Either he gets some shape of a nod, or he doesn't care, because he looks back down at you and pats your face again, firm. "Okay. Focus up. What do you want to know?"

Gamzee: What the fuck DO you want to know?

==> Audience: Enter Question

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #......................splickedy did you find-- A WAY TO DRAW THE GHB SOME MORE?? YES I DID THANK YOU.

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Oh shit.

First thing you realize when you start to drift back to your body real slow, is the air's all sparking around you and your feet aren't touching the ground. So that seems real motherfucking foreboding. Second thing is the Second Coming is yelling and snarling like a fucking ripsaw, which seems even worse.

Third of all, the guy he's yelling at--

...This seems bad.

"Karkat," says the emperor, and you don't know what he's talking about until it makes the Second Coming cut off his growling. "We've talked about letting your temper get ahead of you, wriggler."

"Don't play that fucking game with me," says the Second Coming, who you guess is called Karkat, so that's a hell of a motherfucking thing to know. You never heard him called by name before. "You vanished this guy out of his hive and locked him up in your quadrant consortium like some kind of horny bad-touch highblood from a bodice-ripper!"

"That was not the situation," says the emperor, high-horned and bristling, still not growling even though it couldn't be clearer he wants to real bad. "He needed to be somewhere safe and--emotionally stable, and there's nowhere more secure or more peaceful than the conciliatrium. I never touched him--"

"No, yeah, great, except you didn't tell him any of this shit!" Karkat says, and lowers his short little nubby horns like he's about ready to ram the emperor off his chair. "So you're still the badtouch warlord except then you fucked off and let him sit there waiting for the badtouch part! For sweeps!"

"He--" says the emperor, and cuts himself off, folds his hands up in front of his mouth for a second, and then says, "...It would have been...dangerous, for him to be near me. Dangerous for both of us."

"Uh-huh," says the Second Coming. "Shit, you're such an asshole, I can't fucking believe we share genes. I hear nothing all night every night except your fucking sermons about equality and individual dignity and whatever the fuck, and then every time I turn around you've got a new reason why you had no choice except pulling some absolute bullshit! His fronds were tied, everybody! No choice! Fuck you."

"My sermons are from when I was a 15-sweep community organizer," says His Triumphant Ascendance, and rubs one of his horns like he's trying real hard not to yell back. "It's good to be goal-oriented, but practicality-- Are you going to stop growling at me at some point? For fuck's sake. I'm not engaging with this if it's going to be a screaming match."

"Engage with my fucking nook, you sanctimonious piece of shit!"

Somebody snorts. There's a skinny motherfucker leaned up in the corner with a frond out toward you, not paying a whole lot of attention; he's sparking the same colors as the light that's crawling all over you. The emperor looks at him too, and frowns.

"...Sollux," he says, "This is a personal affair. You can go."

"Yeah?" says the skinny motherfucker. "I mean, your buddy over here woke up a hot second ago, but I can put him down if you want."

Everybody all turns around and looks at you. Two burning red stares, two sets of blunt, lowered horns like you're the one who came here to pick a fight-- All of a sudden you're freezing cold, and hot and sweating, and shaking like a motherfucker, and your jaw cramps how hard you have to work not to snarl.

"Shit," says Karkat, and then the psionic drops you on your feet and the sparks vanish, and you're loose.

Gamzee: NO TIME TO THINK, JUST--

==> FIGHT! ==> FLIGHT!

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #I thought about including Fawn and Freeze as options which would have been fun but.... it does feel punchier this way.... #several people said very nice things and all of a sudden I remember how to draw haha #I am holding up my right hand with thunder crashing in the distance. IT'S..........ALIVE........

[palestporn]

HAMARTIA

Second Coming Of The Grand Highblood:

==> Repent ==> Testify

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #please consider this the splickedy CYOA equivalent of a [S] page haha #sometimes a spark of love isn't enough to redeem you but it is enough to fuCKING KILL YOU GET WRECKT OLD MAN #cw blood #cw torture

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Say it

"For my own fucking good, he said," you say, and the words you had said at you so many times taste like rotting sopor in your mouth, sugar and cold motherfucking comfort. "All the reason any motherfucker would ever give, just. Better if you stay here, for your own good. Better if you hush up and watch your mouth and dull your claws down and mind your manners. Better if you don't try to sneak your sign on shit, little dumbass like you are you can't tell what's not safe--better if you can stop flashing your fins when you're worked up--"

"So you did have--" Karkat says, quiet, and thank fuck he doesn't make like to touch the scars again, because if he tried you might not be able to stop from biting him this time. You're already mangling up your own words, on growls and the flex of your jaw trying to snap at something.

"--Not safe if you can't keep your shit under wraps, motherfucker, if they're gone you can't fuck up anymore and it'll be good, that's why he won't see you and it's not fucking good yet--"

Karkat's growling a little too, quiet echo under yours, and his fronds knead at you as helpless as your jaw cramps to bite.

"Do you still...want him to--?" he says, and your claws drag blunt at his back.

"I'd tear that motherfucker in half if he fucking tried it," you say, and then catch up with the words and cringe down on yourself, freezing still. In his descendant's claws, half-grown and already a warlord like old trolls used to be, and you making threat at the emperor--

"Yeah," says Karkat, and squeezes a hand up to find your jaw, steers clear of the scars and rubs strong and deep at meat of snapmuscle, soothing the cramp, humming low in his throat. "Yeah, I bet you would. I mean, I'd have to pull you off, but. I'd let you get a good hit or two in."

Gets a laugh out of you enough to break the growling a second, and his hand softens, palm and callus petting at your cheek and your posture-column, making long sweeps down. Playing cautious not to touch the gillslits you've not got anymore.

Fuck, but that feels nice. You've felt little hints and hums of how it's meant to feel--that deep-down-inside warm shiver-purr when another troll touches you soft and talks to you gentle, how your pusher slows and everything gets easier. But it's been all just fast touch and pulled away, to make instruction at you how good you might get to feel somenight. Seems like "somenight" is tonight.

Your eyes got wet and you don't remember when. But the growling's dying off for now, even if the rage stays burning.

"I'm not letting him sneak something like this past me again," Karkat says in your hair, determination like a troll twice his size and four times his age. "He's not figuring out this haunting situation by himself. I'll kick the fucking door down and scream my throat bloody if I have to. We're going to be there." He rumbles discontent. "We can go talk to him in the evening."

The evening is too long to wait and not nearly far enough away, both at the same time. But it simmers the rage back on down some more, at least the tiniest of bits. How he says "we'll talk to him".

"Real tired," you say, muffling off in his shoulder, so you don't have to hear your own self. "--Real damn tired of big motherfuckers putting me down, and going 'stay there, be good, pupa' and fucking off, and not telling why. I coulda been plenty good. Motherfuckers just never told me why."

"Well, when you're good for me," says Karkat, firm little general voice, and comes up to your cheek again, pap pap. "You'll get my phenomenal natural talents in a pile that definitely won't be shown up by actual sweeps of professional training. So that's 'why'. Briefing for future situations pending what kind of bullshit we're wading through that night." He coughs, looks away from you like he can't leave sweet-talk like that in the air. "So. What non-bullshit stuff did they teach you? And. Did they teach you how to teach somebody else."

Gamzee: Hands-on scholarly demonstration

==> Nerve distribution of caudal sensory protrusions ==> Auditory sensory stimulation and autonomia ==> Standardized somatic intimacy scale

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #I see that plenty of other people share my deep baggage about the concept of ''I Know You Hate This But It's For Your Own Good'' lol #you're valid we're all valid #plus that kind of encompasses the other choices tbh so good general coverage #I have to go eat dinner so take your time deciphering that nonsense

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Be bad at your job

If you learned any one thing all the sweeps you've been here, it's how it's not your business to lose your shit. It's your business when the emperor comes in losing his shit, to chill him out and settle him down--if he ever wanted. And it's your business to be chill and let him make you chiller, if he ever fucking wanted.

What happens isn't that.

Kind of starts that way, with "man, who even knows what he's thinking, he's got his own business--" ears down and voice soft like it should be, except when you say, "I dunno, when I was eight he called me up off the beach to his hive," one of the thoughts you had handled under the sopor jumps back up like a laughsassin and stabs you right behind the horns. The bad thought, which is what if dad's still looking for me and the worse one, which is of course he's not, you dumb motherfucker.

Your claws are too dull to cut in when they dig in on his leg, but they catch on a plate of armor and squeeze until your fronds ache.

His hand is still on you; the longer you talk, the stranger he looks at you, not suspicious and demanding anymore, not blushing and confused. Just staring, taking you in like he doesn't know what you are.

"--He saw something and that motherfucker looked at me like I painted up and told him to tell me a joke and he just, fucking, put me away--" you catch yourself too late, bite the growl back and wince in guilt. You wouldn't get culled, for the prayers you make--the weak and scattered mirthful church can't make even a growl of a threat anymore. But law not leaned on is still a law when it counts. You've been well schoolfed how here, in the hive of the emperor who almost died on the empire's flogging jut, you're tasked to keep it well to your motherfucking self. (Like in shame, in SHAME of us, you should've seen our heights of motherfucking glory)

"He wouldn't lock you up just for that," says the Second Coming, and waves a hand, dismissing. He narrows his fire-red eyes at you. "...What else did you say he asked you? What's your sign."

Rage comes so sudden you don't recognize its face for a second--him asking you that, him, with those red eyes just like the motherfucker who stole what you were away from you. Force of it drives you up off your knees, out of your pretty, cringing kneel where you're supposed to be--rocks his chair back how hard you sink your dulled claws into the arms of it. Feels like something's pushing and tugging at you, laughing in your horns.

"Motherfucker, I don't have one!" you say between your fangs, and you see the very motherfucking second he looks at you and sees another troll looking back at him. His eyes go wider, his hands twitch for the sickles by his sides, but he doesn't draw them. "Don't have a name, don't have a sign, don't even have fucking sopor anymore! You're asking me?! What the fuck do I know? I'm the one owed answers, motherfucker, what am I even for anymore?! Why the fuck--!"

You get just a half a second to realize you raised your voice up to yelling--see him reaching up a hand for your face, looking at you like a battle he means to win--

Then something hits you like a hive falling, and everything goes black.

--

Gamzee: Wake up.

==> Where are you? ==> Who's yelling? ==> How fucked are you?

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #Struggling!!!! Art is hard today for some reason. But I stay silly!!!!!!!!!! 💪💪💪 #thank you all for your lovely comments I am a small creature and have trouble keeping up motivation and the feedback is very appreciated #Hoping to at least get close to finishing up today! #I'll do my best!!

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Why did he grubnap you anyway

Shit, you've been asking yourself that as long as you've been here.

What you remember of the night you got brought, the Sufferer Redeemed asked you not a whole motherfucking lot worth remembering. Some shit as easy as chatting on the street, about your lusus and your hive, your name and your hatchsign. Some shit more confusing, about dreams, and what a troll is and who they are, and what you thought about the hemospectrum, and about souls and spirits and ghosts.

You recall answering best you could, but you'd been eight sweeps and growing and hungry and more interested in the food he had out than in how he looked at you. Shit's been rough the colder your blood goes since the empress fell long the fuck ago, and you only remember one thing standing out at you--how you saw his fine food and his rings in gold and candy red and his crown that he stole and he took it from you, WHAT YOU SHOULD BE BY BLOOD AND HATCHRIGHT--

He'd been looking past you, when you pulled your stare away to look up at him, and for a second he'd been froze and still, showing teeth and wide, red eyes. Not at you, but somewhere past you in the dark. And then he'd taken name and sign and hive from you, and stowed you away like a wriggler sneaking a treat in their pocket.

You would've heard the door open if some motherfucker came in behind you while you talked, you know you would have. So it's been a real hell of a mystery all the sweeps you've been here, what he was looking at.

Downright motherfucking mysterious.

You were just about chill with it, for a while there. You got chill about a lot of stuff. And then a couple perigees ago the head conciliatrix caught you in your sopor and cut you off cold, and a lot of shit you were cool with has started niggling and biting at you again.

It's enough to send a motherfucker out of his damn thinkpan, just sitting in the conciliatrium and thinking and THINKING on shit. So when you saw everybody move and hustle around one of the reading blocks, like they only do when the emperor's up late, you only needed the ghost of a push from one half-whispered thought to send you up on your feet and moving.

You weren't called for, and you know it--you'll figure that out once you get inside. But first, there's a big, mean-looking motherfucker at the door, shorter than you but a whole lot wider. So it seems like you gotta use whatever dim spark of thinkpan you've got and figure a way to get this motherfucker to let you in.

Gamzee: Intrude

==> Play soft and harmless. Time to try what you've learned. ==> Play proud and pushy. Nobody denies the emperor's palemates. ==> Tell the truth. There's no law you can't come talk to your emperor. ==> he's sle⁇py an※ slow tæΨ£ his t⸘roat out

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #oooOooOoOoooo happy halloweeeeen lmao #this poll see-sawed so aggressively between all three options which is great because it means I balanced them well #but also sucks because I kept having to shift what this post was about as I wrote it lmao #As I type this I think this option may no longer be winning but also I had to make the cutoff some time or I would never get this done haha

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Blow this joint

You spare a thought for a second or two how the rest of the conciliatrium would look at you if you came back this time of morning to get nasty with a guy they definitely didn't train you to get nasty with, and say "Yeah, yours, how about?" faster than maybe you meant to. It's not wrong to help out the Second Coming if he figured he needed it, but to your knowing he never has, and the quadrant consortium is his ancestor's, not his.

And anyhow it makes Karkat go "Oh," again and reach out to take your frond again. He looks all shy at you a second, and then remembers motherfuckers are looking at him and puts 'grumpy and grim' back on. "Well, good. I mean, fine. Let's get moving."

"Romantic," says Sollux, and slaps the Second Coming of the Alternian Empire on the ass, then floats up off the ground out of the way when tries to punch back. "Yeah, it's past bedtime for whiny pupas, better get to the 'coon already. Weak shit."

"You're going to crash for twenty hours as soon as I find wherever you're stashing energy drinks this time," Karkat says, and swipes at him again. "And I'll fucking laugh at you. Get back here!"

"Nah," says Sollux, and opens the door in sparks and goes sailing off toward it, laid down on his back in the air. "Sounds like your new sidepiece is tired of sitting on the bench, KK, better give him the grubball and aim him down the field."

If I required more proof of my ultimate damnation, says your ancestor in tone of flat despair at you, while Karkat curses and growls after his buddy, this would be a gracious motherfucking sufficiency indeed.

"So don't watch, motherfucker," you hiss at him, and give up on waiting for Karkat to make with the moving--settle your grip on his frond and start out of the block, taking pains so you're not looking at the emperor. "If you can keep your flap still when I'm on the load gaper you can keep your horns out my motherfucking way."

That must be argument enough, because the whispers fade in grumbling and then are gone and don't show back up again. Karkat glances around uneasy, and then growls and heads off, fast and sure and taking the lead of you, pulling you behind.

His hivesuite's not like the conciliatrium; everything there is soft and near and lit low and gold like sunset, and his entry block's a great, dark place with clothes and armor and uniforms and weapons on racks and a big war-table. Karkat marches out into it, and then stops there, and you can see clear in the way his fronds work and how he looks around his block, he doesn't know what the fuck to do now.

He looks real small, with all this big and fancy shit set out around him. Puts to mind of how the empire's resting on him, how you've heard he's taken to the task of war his ancestor hates so bad. Good at it a motherfucker might be, and maybe he doesn't mind it, but damn if those shadows under his eyes and the way his shoulders sit tense and high and tight don't speak otherwise.

You're about to step up behind him and get your hands on him some more--maybe see about his back and his neck and if the rumors are real, how easy it is to just about drop somebody when their horns are all root like that--except then he turns back around to you and cranes up to get a hand at your jaw, about the highest he can reach.

"This has been the weirdest day full of bullshit I've ever had the excruciating pleasure of living through," he says. "And I'm not the guy who--" he waves frond at you, you guess just to sum up your whole shit. "What do you...like? I mean, you know what I mean. What do you need?"

Gamzee: Uhh

==> 🫂 ==> 😭 ==> 👀💦

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #Gamzee: oh hell yeah I've trained for this part I will finally have any motherfucking idea at all what's going on #Karkat: so what do I do for you. What things do you like. since you ofc know all the things trolls can do and which ones you like #Gamzee freezing like a possum in front of a combine harvester: what do I. What.

[palestporn]

Gamzee: ???!? ?! ??? ?!!!?!

There a fuckload of questions that need answering--why he needed you calm, why he wanted you secret, why he took your name, your sign-- You open your flap to say one of those, and find the emperor's just looking at you, with that same look on his face as the night he took you. You didn't find a name for it, that time--didn't fit, wasn't right, he's the emperor. But this time, you know what the fuck you're seeing, aimed back at you like a mirror.

"...Why the fuck are you scared of me?" You say, fucked up and raspy from growling so much for the first time in so long, and Karkat laughs like he thinks you're taking a dig and then looks back and sees his ancestor's face and stops laughing real fast.

"Wh-- Seriously?" he says.

"He did just pull some primo coldblood panfrying bullshit out of his ass," the miniature Ψiioniic--Sollux--points out, and then shrugs real quick, playing a big motherfucker who doesn't give a shit. "I mean, they were pretty good, anyway, I guess--"

"He said you saw something before that freaked you out, too," Karkat says over top of him, turning accusing on his ancestor. "Something in his shadow."

"Oh, what," says Sollux. "The ghost?"

Every motherfucker in the room turns to stare at him, you most of all. He looks back at you like he didn't expect, like he's not spitting some wild motherfucking shit at you right now.

"You don't have to act like you don't know," he says, at you. "AA sniffed it out sweeps ago. What, when I sent you that note about secrets did you think I meant, like. The thing where you cuddle a cushion when you sleep, like some kind of pupa?"

"What," you say, because you got fuck-all else to say.

"You knew about this?!" Karkat says, outrage at his skinny buddy now. "How many fucking wrigglers are we locking up around here that everybody knows about except me?!"

"He's not a wriggler, KK, he's like twice as big as you," says Sollux.

"Please don't blow this out of proportion," says the emperor. He's sat himself down at his document plateau since you looked at him last, and he's holding his pan in one hand. "There aren't any other...prisoners. If you can call him that. And he's 12 sweeps."

"He's what?" says Sollux, and looks the size of you up and down. "Fuck off, no you're not."

"So get a hauntwhisperer in here and peel the ghost off him," Karkat says, impatient. "How has this taken multiple sweeps to figure out?! Am I the only person with a functional thinkpan around here?"

"It's not--" the emperor stops, growls the first time, low through his fangs. "...I didn't bring him here because of...the ghost. As dangerous as that is even by itself. I brought him here because of the reason that ghost is clinging to him, specifically. Can't you--" Stops himself again, takes a breath and lets it out. "You never saw him," he says, reminding at himself. "Neither of you would've ever seen him."

"Enlighten me," says the Second Coming, and when he squares up his shoulders and drops his horns forward the gems on his horns and gold on his ears shine almost as bright as his eyes.

"His sign was Capricorn, Karkat," says the emperor, bleak and heavy like that's some big, important shit Karkat should know, not just the shape that was close to you like the pads of your palms the first eight sweeps of your life. "His hatchname was Makara. He wouldn't have made it long, out there, especially not as he got...older. Bigger. Someone would have noticed, eventually."

Karkat's hands twitch back off you like you turned red hot. Sollux doesn't flinch back, but he's watching you hard, like he's thinking on you, seeing what you do. The emperor doesn't look up. Like he's said everything that needs said. And every single motherfucker gets this shit except you.

Gamzee: Demand backstory, already

==> ...From the Sufferer Redeemed ==> ...From the Second Coming ==> ...From the Spymaster ==> ...From the Shade of Rage

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #There were some good ones in there but mmm this angle is fun #also very funny bc as far as Gamzee's concerned he is just. a Little Guy. Just a sopping wet creacher who doesn't even have claws. #He has zero awareness about 1. how big he is. he is just a lil fella. like a great dane that doesn't know why he can't get in your lap #and 2. exactly how freaky normal people find HAUNTED NIGHTMARE RAGE HOWL as a fear response

[palestporn]

Gamzee: (❁´◡`❁)~◆

You're taller than most trolls twice your age, you're not exactly some soft little pretty pile-warmer. But yeah, you figure you can just about give "soft and harmless" a motherfucking shot. Sure would be a whole lot quicker and easier if this motherfucker didn't have the motherfucking gall to get in your double-damned motherfucking WAY--

...But there's not a hell of a lot you can get done about that, so you stand yourself small instead, keep your horns turned away and your jaw off a little one side so he can see your throat and ease up to the door.

You see him see you, then see the emperor's sign on your neck, then the soft, no-armor shit you're wearing, then the look you're giving him, which is a worried and hoping smile you don't have to work at to put on. When you raise a frond at him, you see him scope your hands, your blunted claws. His face turns olive-colored.

"Hey," you say, and put maybe more of a croon on it than you mean, because you see his claws give a little twitchy knead at his spear, and his face goes even more olive at you. "Gotta get past you, bro."

"I didn't, uh," he says. Seems like maybe he's noticed how, big as you are, his face is lined up with your throat, which has fuck-all to guard it except some glittery shit. Easy as fuck, some motherfucker could put their fangs there, and the pretty shine only shows off how bare it is. Seems like maybe he's noticing it real good at the moment. "I didn't hear that one of the, uh. That he'd summoned anybody."

Fuck, yeah, there's only the one door here, huh. He'd have seen if somebody got sent out to grab you. You panic real quiet to yourself a second, and then say, "He lets us know when he wants us," and reach out and touch his frond with your blunted-down claws, and see him get real motherfucking stupid about it.

Even with your fangs and claws blunted useless you're strong enough to tear him open and he has to raise his chin to look at you and he wears armor you're not allowed but his grip's gone soft on his weapon and you could--

He says, "Well. Then, so, if he said-- If he wants--yes. Of course." And you breathe again.

It's dark in there, when you sneak on inside, and there's just one light to read by, set by a big sitstub turned away from you. When the door closes, you hear the emperor shift around in the chair, but he doesn't turn back to look at you. Shit. You didn't figure what you'd do if you got this far. You don't guess you'll get more than a question in.

Gamzee: Take audience with royalty

==> Ask him what he saw in your shadow ==> Ask him if he needs some company ==> Ask him if he's ever going to let you go ==> finally FINALLY motherfucking LISTEN to me snap his MOTHERFUCKING NECK

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #slkdjsfl literally zero people voting for Gamzee to try being imposing and imperious tbh it's a good call but it's also very funny #although not as funny as the five or ten minutes where ''do a murder'' was winning with 50% of the votes #like damn yall found out my boy's got a malevolent ghost and were like 'well he probably knows what he's about' I love everyone in this bar

[palestporn]

Gamzee: Check in with your thoughts.

You wondered what the fuck was up, when your pan whispered shit you didn't have ways to know--about the emperor, about the church. You figured you were just pan-cracked right down the middle, and always would be, and that was all there was to it.

Over your head, the emperor says, "The less he knows, the better off all of us will be, him included," and Sollux says, "Well, so what, are we supposed to just camp out on him for the next--however the fuck long--?" but you're not listening. You're thinking about your thinking, for the first time in a long-ass time.

Feels like cold salt water. Smells like blood and salt and wax and burning meat. Ignorant little pupa, whispers the voice in your pan, and you can feel it's more than a thought when you turn your eye to it, when you look it full in the face; thoughts don't hum in your horns like that. Blood of my blood, you heeding me now? Finally got your LISTEN ON? A growl that rumbles your back teeth, tries to call one of your own up to echo back at it. They'd talk over your head how to stow and store you like fucking CHATTEL. Look how they turn their looks off you, in FEAR of us, in SHAME of the coward-ass unfunny end he made of me--

"Who the fuck are you, though?" you say, and don't hardly notice when Karkat looks sharp over at you. 'Blood of my blood', he said, and with the emperor and Second Coming in front of you, and the Ψiioniic's spawn, that's enough to make a fearful shape of something kin to delight knot up in your throat. Ancestors, that's like. Storybook shit. Like a motherfucking miracle.

Murderous monarchy mirthful and raging, the whisper croons against the inside of your skull, and it rattles down your bones and plucks your nerves like strings. And the wars on the sea, earth, and stars I was waging, motherfucker, messiahs themselves called it money. Another growl, a rage that tastes so familiar it could almost be yours. Burned like a heretic, he finishes. How's that for FUNNY.

"Hey," says the Second Coming, and leans over to touch your face again. Wavers you from your thinking, sways you after it. You always took to it too sweet, the rare times when you were trained up and some motherfucker touched you just to make example. But your ancestor's still making riddles at you, talking deep behind your eyes, and even the warm hand on your cheek can't pull you back to surface. "We'll figure something out, okay? Something that doesn't involve you, just, locked up in a conciliatrium for the rest of your life." He stops, and far off you see him frown at you. "...Hey. Are you hearing me?"

Should have stoved in that little mutant's thinkpan the second he was brought to my throne, mourns your ghost, furious. Should've never let him speak, never let those double-damned hands near my motherfucking face--

"Hold up," you say--to him, to both of them, you don't know. "I can't hear the both of you together. What the fuck are you talking about?"

Motherfucker tried to QUIET me, your ghost growls, and you look up at the emperor and see him break off what he was saying and look down at you, startled and then confused and then realizing. So I threw that mouthy heretic in irons to burn and STILL his FUCKING HANDS were in my soul. And when I stepped to his screaming corpse to watch him die, to BURN HIM OUT OF MY THINKPAN, his dirtbloods turned against me and the messiahs punished me for my motherfucking WEAKNESS. Bear witness to my fall, little brother.

"Who's he talking to?" says the emperor, and starts to stand up. "Karkat--"

Gamzee: Bear witness

==>

[START OVER]

#CYOA: Imperial Favor #downside to the fact that I am improvising this entire thing: we have diverged wildly from the normal content of this fluffy pale blog lol #oh well!!!! no way out but through! #................ (sneaks back to add content warnings to the opening post RE: canon Sufferer execution stuff)