War Makes Beasts of us All
by bakedpotatocat

==> Be Vriska Serket.

holy shiiiiiiiiiiit, his name IS big boss! real bony shoulders though, and just a MESS of hair. not the best piggyback ride you’ve been on. that goes to like. Terezi, of course. dave wasn’t half bad but he was a twig too. this guy REALLY reminds u of someone but u cant put your finger on who. man, you miss Terezi, she would know who this guy is. everything feels so swimmy. you aren’t dying, you know what that feels like, so you figure your brainpan went for a real tumble. oh that’s right, gamzee’s here. he looks very dead. wait, is that his blood on your hands? holy shit, you think you killed gamzee. that kinda rules actually, though you aren’t sure why you didn’t just do that like. a long time ago. something about cant keep down the clown. Terezi would know. shit, you miss her. oh big boss is putting you down now, leaning you against a car. the car seems familiar too. maybe you should listen to what hes saying. that’s a REALLY good cosplay Kanaya must have worked on it for ages


dang its bright out, the sun and your headache sure are making it hard to follow this conversation. you sure hope you aren’t going blind that would SUCK. Terezi would make so much fun of you.

big boss props you up against the back of a car, facing the street, and leans gamzee against your shoulder. man, this sucks. but hey, big boss must have a plan!

he disappears into the shrubbery nearby and your friends are out of sight, you think breaking into another car.

a hovercraft lands (damn this is some nice production value, sci-fi flarp was so low-budget back in the day) and a squad of like… six guys comes out? theyre kinda blurry, you cant get an exact count. one of them points a rifle at you. you must be a hostage! yeah, that’s your part in this flarp. you try and wave but man your limbs are heavy. he yells something at you but it doesn’t process. oh, does he want gamzee? why would anyone want gamzee lol

a shadow stalks out of the hovercraft and holy fuck your brain is suddenly back in gear. That’s a fucking drone, your ass is gonna get culled if you don’t get up and get moving immediately. Think, Serket. Get to cover first and then figure out how to get the fuck out of here. You force yourself up and the guy raises his rifle but thankfully your good friend gamzee soaks up the bullets for you. Man, he must have put on some weight, he feels way denser than he used to be. Not that a few bullets would stop you normally.

you are trying to get up and there is so much yelling and all of a sudden holy shit people are hitting the pavement. a guy drops in front of you, a knife sprouting from his neck, and two more hit the ground, the cannon fire of an automatic rifle erupting in tandem with brain and red blood, much brighter than even the lightest burgundy, splattering everywhere. big boss is running from the bushes and full on tackles a guy, using him as a body shield to soak fire as the bushes disintegrate from a hail of bullets and then a grenade goes off and smoke chokes everything and you are coughing, and you hear more yelling and what must be a human in armor stumbles forward, a sickle buried so deep in his chest it pokes through the back, and he falls, coughing up blood in the smoke and you are screaming and then the 10-foot tall drone stalks forward and it is so big and you you are so small and it is going to kill you and jegus you just want to see Terezi one more time before you die and all of a sudden big boss is there, he is on its back climbing it like a feral purrbeast and there is a roar from the man, deeper and more bestial than anything you’ve heard come from a mortal body as he slams a metal fist into its biomechanical skull and rips out its brain.

you breathe and there is a rifle slung around his neck and it disappears as he scrolls through some sort of captchalogue wheel and holy fuck that’s an RPG and its firing and the hovercraft rockets upward in an explosive haze

you hear a scream from behind you and pick up the pistol from the dead man at your feet, the sickle having carved a bloody swathe through his ribcage, and you throw gamzee off of you and stagger forward and jegus you cant figure out how to decaptchalogue your sword and the last soldier has tavros held hostage in front of him and vrissy… why do you know that name, she looks and sounds so much like you… vrissy is squeezing a silenced pistol in her clammy grip and talking so fast, blue tears rimming her eyes, mascara running. and the soldier sees you stumbling with a gun in your hands and points his at you, and you can see from the practiced look in his eyes he is shooting to kill. the look that you saw reflected in shock-wide eyes so many times and you wonder briefly, because you remember with the adrenaline surging through your cobalt veins that you are a god, if your death will ever be anything other than just

and seconds before you close your eyes you see that savior appear behind the soldier and scarred arms wrap around that thin human neck and twist and you hear the telltale sound of it snapping

and you see a thin scratch on the savior’s cheek and its bleeding bright red candy blood neither troll nor human and all of a sudden you know who the big boss cosplayer with the bony shoulders and the messy hair and the angry edge to his voice is and you fall to your knees in shock and your voice is so small


he wraps his too-long arms and too-tall, too dark, too old frame around you and you hear an all-too familiar sob course through him


and your thinkpan, too fucked up to figure out what all of this means, feels the familiar warmth of a friend and you cry too