12th Perigee Extra 1: Don’t Think Twice
((This is a of an homage of the #TumblrLogOff protest. Served well with the new KH III song Don’t Think Twice. Kept short and sweet.))
3 a.m. All was still in the temporary hivestem. Mayola finally managed to strip down into a sleek pair of warm sleepwear, perfect for lounging for another solid hour before even thinking about getting any sort of sleep. Unlike Valeba, who somehow managed to conk out on the couch without even making it into the actual respiteblock of the suite. But for Mayola, between the time zone shifts, the odd hours of the dance (they still had hours left in the night, yet brunch was coming at 11 a.m. for those who wanted it? What kind of schedule was that) and the general mood of the whole festivities succeeded in making it impossible for her. Not that such was bad, but any sort of value judgement didn’t change a racing blood pusher.
Ideally, she needed to sleep. That’s what the recuperacoon is for: calm a troll in any emotional state and force them to rest. Were Icasui here, that’s what she’d tell her to do, at least.
Her pink palm husk buzzed loudly on the table, blaring out the lyrics to Cherry Bomb. Valeba jerked awake, grabbing around uselessly for anything on the couch. Mayola snatched it up in one quick swoop, hurriedly approving the call and putting the thing up to her ear before Valeba did something stupid. Like stab her palm husk for waking her up. That would be bad.
“Mayola?” a frantic voice over the phone asked. “Mayola are you there? Pleasssse tell me you’re --”
Pallia? What the hell was Pallia of all trolls doing calling her? Did Aisral need something? “God, yeah. Yeah. I’m here.” Mayola shook her head. “The hell’s going on? Why d’ya sound upset?”
“Is Dontoc sssafe? He hasn’t anssswered his phone in hoursss and I’m getting worried”
Oh. That was all she was worried about. No big deal. “Are you just worried ‘bout him again? Cause like, Valley’s got it handled. She put a --”
“No Mayola. You don’t….fuck.” There was a pause on the line, followed by Pallia swallowing thickly. “Turn on the TV.”
She looked over at Valeba, curled up tightly on the couch and, hopefully, asleep. “Uh...I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“No Mayola you need to see thisssss. Put the newsssss on. Now.”
The sudden authority in Pallia’s tone threw Mayola through a loop. “But Val--”
“Valeba needs to, too.”
Mayola groaned. She sauntered over to the couch, pushing Valeba’s legs out of the way just enough so she wasn’t sitting on them. Not that it mattered. Valeba pushed herself groggily into a sitting position. “The hell’s going on?” she rasped.
Mayola turned the TV on with a helpless shrug. No point keeping it quiet now. “Just Shorty. I’m placating a fucking…oh.”
As the television screen flickered to life, she saw exactly what Pallia was talking about. Images of cities, some she recognized and some she didn’t, in literal chaos. Lowbloods with obscured faces with molotov cocktails marching through the streets. Midbloods evacuating from a burning officeblock, some perfectly safely through the door, others jumped out of top windows, shattering glass just to end it before it collapsed on them. Lusii rampaging through city streets, bulldozing everything and everyone in their path. Drones cutting down anyone who got close to them. Blues and greens of the upper castes painting the streets as frequently as the browns, yellows and reds of the bottom. No matter which city, the same carnage.
Distantly, she recognized the reporter’s voice speaking over top, but registered no words. Hell, the titles of cities that flashed over and over again looked like symbols on a screen until one of them looked distinctly like a symbol set of the city not far from them. And here they were, sitting ducks in a hivestem ignoring the whole fucking thing. How pathetic.
Mayola gripped her phone with a clammy hand. She dared not look over at Valeba.
“Is...how’s--”
“Sandyhorn’s fine,” Pallia said quietly. “We turned on the newss before going to ssssleep. I just saw one of those cities, ssstumbled upon the name and…”
The looming silence between them only broken by muffled, choked tears from the other end told Mayola everything she needed to know. Who knew how long she’s been freaking out.
“Yeah, we’re fine. Perfectly safe. Just some cancelled plans it’s soundin’ like.”
“Sssssorry.”
“Ain’t your fault. But yeah, let Ace know the two of us are fine and if this somehow hits our shores, we sure as hell ain’t goin’ down without a fight. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Can do.”
“And get some fuckin’ sleep. Please.”
“Mmhm.” Mayola heard something shuffle around on the other side as she added, “But ssseriously, if you see Dontoc can you...can you text me? He hasn’t answered me in hoursss and if it weren’t for all of thissss, I probably wouldn’t be conssssserned but I am he’ssss not like you and Valeba and--”
“Right, yeah. I get it. Val and I got this. You go sleep.”
Pallia hung up the call without another word. Mayola’s gaze flickered back up to the screen. It cut away from the violence back to the reporters, a couple of unfazed bluebloods who spoke coldly about the whole topic, how callous these trolls are for putting undue stress on Alternia so close to the holidays.
“So this is how it feels being a highblood, huh.”
She jerked her head over to Valeba. The brownblood’s gaze was affixed to the screen, unfocused. At some point, she must’ve readjusted herself into a sitting position, knees tucked underneath her chin. “Getting to sit comfy in your ivory tower while the world falls apart around you.”
Mayola grimaced. She wanted to rebut, but what could she say? That it wasn’t true? That Valeba was overreacting? Everything would be okay, because they would be safe, she could trust the man running it was hemoloyal enough, no one would want to touch him? With a sigh, she said, “Yeah. That’s about how it works. Everything goes to shit around you while you’re in the only sunny spot and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. I doubt they’ll touch here though. Her Imperious Sunshine ain’t one to fuck around with galas that sing her praises.”
“We’ve fought them before,” she pointed out. “I get we can’t do it now cause it’ll look bad. I do. Teals talk and all that shit. But we already weren’t going home until after 12th Perigee. This city’s so close it’d be easy, and the both of know riots like this last until the damn city is decimated. That shit takes weeks. And no one else here’s gonna give a shit.”
She wasn’t wrong. Mayola fought drones for target practice. Valeba’s aim with a bow was the result of sweeps upon sweeps of honing it into deadly precision and aim. The two together, as she’s found out more than once, were lethal together. So long as the chaos stayed mostly under control, they might be able to knock the drones off without word getting out off-planet of a seadweller assisting.
“You realize Eeks would tell me no, right?” The words sounded hollow in Mayola’s head. She might’ve said it sweeps ago, but now Mayola wasn’t so sure. She might end up saying that she’s upholding tyrian leadership and showcasing her power as possible Empress by standing up to the drones of the current one. More importantly, Mayola desperately wanted to slice and dice on in true 12th Perigee revelry and mayhem tradition. Combined with becoming a living, breathing incarnation of karma in at least one city toward a bunch of perfect targets for such and it all made it difficult to tell herself no.
“I’m not Icasui,” she said flatly. “They deserve justice.”
“You’ll worry your moirail.”
“Dontoc’s got bigger things to worry about than me right now.” Valeba’s gaze turned to her. Even in the darkness of the room, Mayola felt the angry, determined gaze burn holes into her soul. “You fucking know you want to stick it to those goddamn jackass, no good, hemoloyal fuckers. And what better way to do it than jumping out of that stupid, mile high tower and into the fray that’ll dirty their claws?”
Her breath caught in her throat. She’d never meet another troll who could speak to her like Valeba. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
The screen flipped back to the city. Mayola caught blood castes of all kinds fighting back. Bluebloods and yellowbloods pushing back in tandem. Olives and jades and rusts and teals taking advantage of their strengths for a common goal. All together, as if this were Sandyhorn and not a zone of high Empress control, cooperating. All except one caste.
Mayola couldn’t see a single seadweller among the dissenters.
She placed a hand on Valeba’s knee, grinning silently. Now wasn’t the time for words. She didn’t need them. Valeba understood. There would be hell to pay, and the regular trolls weren’t the ones in debt.
