Fighting the Current - Part 6

“She's in a better motherfucking place,” Gamzee offered, and there was nothing in Eridan that could begin to agree with the purpleblood's conclusion. A better place? Wasn't life supposed to be a better place? Wasn't being here, at the side of her Empress, a better place? No, there was nothing 'better' in a death like this. Nothing and there never would be either.

That didn't mean he could afford to stay there, staring at the coat he had draped over his lost guardian and hating Gamzee for his stupid platitude. There were things to be done, people to be helped, and nookstains who thought themselves so far outside of the law that they could do whatever they wanted. He had every intention of dedicating his life to proving them wrong. Maybe if he avenged his guardian, the Empress, this whole damn Empire, maybe that would put the victims in a better place. If not it would at least satisfy his need for vengeance.

No, he had to remind himself, his fist clenching so tightly that he could feel his nails pressing painfully into the skin, not vengeance. Never vengeance. Justice. That was what his guardian had raised him to believe in. That was what she had given her life to. There was no chance that he could live up to the expectations she had set for him if he failed to devote himself just as powerfully to the ideal.

“Gamzee,” he found himself saying with a levelness to his voice that astonished him, “I need you to do something for me.”

“What ever you up and need from me, I will motherfucking deliver, my brother,” Gamzee assured him, his face a picture of obedience as Eridan finally turned to look at him.

“There's a lot that has to be done here. It's going to take a while, and I can't do it properly if I'm afraid for Fef. I need you to go and...”

“Not even motherfucking happening,” the purpleblood snarled, his voice sending a shiver down Eridan's spine. In all the time that he'd known Gamzee, in all the interactions he'd had with him, he had never grown used to the viciousness the normally sedate troll had been displaying since insisting that he join Eridan in the journey to the grandballblock. All of the earlier obedience and deference had melted away into a flashing fury in his eyes that made the yellow of them seem to blur toward orange. It made sense when Eridan glanced at the shorter, sharp cornered, red and teal clad troll at his side. While he'd never had a kismesis of his own, he knew enough of the theory behind it to know that it would be almost impossible to drag Gamzee from his blackest quadrant so long as he thought she might be in danger. “Ain't nothing going to keep me from keeping this addlepan from getting herself up and killed.”

“Do you really think that I'd be at any kind of risk now that the source of the problem has been removed?” the tealblood demanded with the calm, certain, unshakable confidence of someone that could only be a legistroll of one persuasion or another. An interesting choice of kismesis for a guidance adjustor like Makara, but there was clearly more than met the eye with the sharp woman.

“No,” Eridan sighed, shaking his head. “He has a point. I can't ask him to leave without you, and I can't let you go. You're a witness to what has happened here Miss...”

“Pyrope. Terezi Pyrope,” the tealblood quickly provided, though it seemed more out of force of habit than any real desire to introduce herself.

“Miss Pyrope. I need to know what you saw, what you remember, every last detail. I don't know what detail might be the key to...”

“You should look into Vriska Serket. She's the one that attacked you up on the podium.”

Eridan found himself unable to do much more than just stare at this Terezi Pyrope in shock. Was it really possible that he'd managed to find the only other individual in the whole ballroomblock who actually happened to know Vriska Serket? How was it even possible? From what little he knew of her, Vriska was the kind of troll to make sure she left an impression but never in places where it could come back and bite her in the ass. So did that make this troll's presence quite interesting, and possibly telling.

“Serket's her auspmesis,” Gamzee offered after a moment, his lips turning into a vicious smirk. “Karkat is their auspistice.”

That... explained a lot when he really wrapped his pan around what he was seeing. While he didn't know much about the complicated interplay that had led to the final form of Gamzee's quadrants, he had heard hints of the period before Karkat and Gamzee pledged red. About the complicated ploy of someone Gamzee was inclade with and how it facilitated moving Karkat's red-hinted relationship with one troll into a decidedly ashen one that freed his red quadrant up for Gamzee. It had sounded like something out of the plot of one of those romantic comedy movies that Karkat and his new mentor obsessed over. Now it had become strangely useful for the current situation.

Except, of course, for one important point.

“Did you see Serket before the explosion?” Eridan demanded, his voice still calmer than he felt. Was it possible that...

“She was passing out drinks,” Terezi told him, a pensive look on her face.

“And did you take one?”

“Yeah, but...”

“Gamzee, take her to a healthtender now,” he commanded, ignoring the outraged look that flashed across the tealblood's face.

“I don't need a healthtender!” she protested loudly, even as Gamzee's hand clamped down around her wrist. Still, there was a questioning look on his face as well. Looks like he'd have to waste time with explanations, which wasn't something he wanted all things considered.

“Look around us. There are way more trolls down than make logical sense for the way things played out. It's likely there was a poison in the drinks, one that affects the different bloodcolors differently. You took a drink from your auspmesis that might have been poisoned, and she likely had a reason to want you dead, if nothing else than for what personal knowledge you have of her. So until I am assured that you aren't going to keel over and die on me, we are going to act as if you will at any moment. Gamzee...”

The look of outrage and indignation on Terezi's face was more than clear as Eridan explained his logic. Clearly she was going to protest any moment if given the chance. Thankfully the look on Gamzee's face was that now familiar combination of righteous fury and absolute refusal that could only mean one thing. His too-large hands slammed over Terezi's opening mouth before he bodily lifted the smaller troll and hauled her away toward the healthtenders that had started to arrive with a flock of fresh Enforcers on the far side of the block. For a moment he worried that he should have told Gamzee to bring her back or at least send him a message if they were taken away so he'd know, but then there was a young Enforcer, one who looked to be almost of an age with himself, running up to him.

“Sir...” the troll, a ceruleanblood by the trim of his coat, greeted even as he kept his eyes averted in deference. The young ones were always like that with superiors on his level, and it never stopped being awkward for Eridan. He could have gone to schoolfeeding with this young Enforcer, and yet he was still treated the same way that a troll centuries older than him would be annoyed by. Eventually he was going to have to either get used to such treatment, or send out an agency wide memo telling them to lay off or suffer some kind of wrath.

“What could you possibly want right now?” he demanded, striding past the shorter troll as he made his way back toward the masses of victims and witnesses that all had to be interviewed before they could be released or at least freed enough to inform their families or quads that they were alive and well.

“Sir, I was... Uh... I told to report to the Generali to serve as her assistant during the investigation,” the ceruleanblood all but stammered as he followed in Eridan's silently fuming wake. “I was hoping you could tell me where she was at this juncture.”

It was possible that he didn't know. Or that he wasn't watching the broadcast that would have shown his guardian's death. Maybe the broadcast hadn't shown it. Possibly there was confusion or hope that she'd survived or maybe he just wasn't all that bright. What he was certain of was that it wasn't that this kid was intending to be cruel. No, he'd just asked the wrong question, none-the-wiser about how badly it would hurt him to hear.

“She's back there,” Eridan answered as levelly as he could for all that he wanted to turn around and tear the other troll's throat out. “Under my coat.”

That was apparently all the other troll needed to hear, because in moments his footsteps accelerated and Eridan all but sensed the ceruleanblood fall into step beside him. Thankfully he was smart enough to not say anything about what Eridan had told him; the troll just pulled out a notepad and pen and flipped to a blank page. No condolences, no apologies, no empty platitudes that would mean absolutely nothing to Eridan. Just straight into business, to the task of fixing the problem however he could.

He was sorely tempted to give the young troll a promotion on the spot.

“I was never good at note-taking,” Eridan lied through his teeth, and the barely audible scoff under the troll's breath was enough to tell him that the other troll knew it as well.

Still, it was an easy lie, and all he needed to make it clear to the young Enforcer that he understood, he accepted, and he was willing to take this little work relationship for a spin, so the kid better impress him. After all, the regime was changing over, and Eridan was going to need people he could trust and rely on at the top. Yeah, his guardian's top trolls were all good, but he knew as well as she had that they were sticking around for her. That they didn't like the idea of reporting to a kid. They had stuck around hoping, maybe figuring that when it came to it the Empress would ask one of them to step up when her moirail eventually retired or passed on. But there was a new Empress now, a new order, and with him on top things were going to have to change because they were going to change whether he wanted it or not.

Too bad he couldn't get the one Enforcer he'd had his eyes on having as his trusted second when this day eventually came. Granted he had expected this moment to come almost half a century from now. That had been what they had been talking about timing wise. But nothing was perfect, nothing had gone his way before, so why should he complain now?

After all, his guardian wasn't the first part of his planned out future that had died long before their time.

* * * * * *

“Secondar Ampora? I... No one informed me that you would be...”

“No one was informed that I was going to be here,” Eridan offered along with his outstretched hand. “Of course, no one else was expecting you to arrive so early.”

“I did not see informing central division as to my arrival time as relevant to the situation,” Alyssm Waleti informed him with all of the self-assured coolness that her superiors noted in their reports on her. Of course, there was also quite a bit about her that the reports didn't note. How that self-assurance spread past her voice and into the way she carried herself, into the tight and yet playful choice of braiding her hair, and even into the impassiveness of her features as she stared at him.

Her picture didn't do any justice to the beauty she possessed.

“I think that when it comes to issues such as those presented by Comtroll Captor, it's the Generali or myself or someone else a bit higher up than you to decide what is and isn't relevant,” Eridan countered. The indigoblooded woman seemed to consider the words for a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly to herself and shaking his outstretched hand. Her hand was warm in his, the way an indigoblood's always felt, but markedly lacking the clamminess that he had come to expect of Zahhak.

“I suppose that is your prerogative, sir,” she replied, still cool and collected. “I do wonder how you were capable of...”

“I know more than can be expected,” Eridan admitted, turning and opening the hatch on the crawler. “It is safe to assume that you intended to proceed directly to speak with Comtroll Captor, but there are things we need to speak about as well.”

“Forgive me, Sir, but I cannot begin to fathom just what business we have with each other outside of Captor, so I feel it would be best if we were to...”

“Get in the crawler, Waleti. That's an order.”

It came out more snarly than he wanted, harder than he expected, and all together not what he had intended it to be. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go, but there was only so much he could do about that now. What was said was in the past, what to be said in the future. It was the future he was supposed to look toward now, not the past. Past was for warmer thoughts than the ones running through his head, and investigation of crimes. The future... was a colder thing to think about.

“And if I said I was not currently on duty?”

With that Eridan couldn't help but smirk. “How else am I supposed to take the fact that you're in your uniform?”

That actually led to the most minor twitch of Waleti's lips, a smirk half a millisecond long. There, for just a moment, he had made her almost smile. Now if only he could figure out how to draw a real one out of her.

“I suppose you do have me there,” Waleti ceded as she finally moved past him and slipped into the crawler. “I am here on official business, but it seems you are intent to stand between me and my duty.”

“It is more than just your duty you're doing here,” he pointed out as he moved to join her in the crawler and close the hatch behind him. “We could have had him escorted from Capitol on our own, or you could have sent a subordinate. But...” Eridan paused to punch in a destination. “Instead you came here on your own to see to this. I am surprised, to be frank with you. All this distance for a Comtroll?”

“Sollux Captor's special condition puts him into a special category when it comes to handling issues,” she responded quite curtly, and for a moment Eridan almost froze. There was something there, in her voice, that made no sense. Something that his pan told him not to go after. “There was always a question as to whether or not to bring him into the active force. There were concerns related to his temperament as well as his powers. It was my word that put him into the uniform after his time in the academy. Many of my superiors insisted it was a poor choice, that he was going to end up here in Capitol under the Generali anyway. I intended... Intend to prove them wrong.”

“Such is your right,” Eridan acknowledged, leaning forward to view the map of the route the landcrawler was taking to their destination and then redirecting it onto a longer route with just a few strokes of his finger over the screen. “But we both know that the ones Tethys wants are the ones she gets.”

That made Waleti stiffen in her seat in a way that Eridan hated, but he forced himself to ignore it. So there was more that had driven her here than just her responsibilities. There was more to this Sollux Captor than what he had done as well. It hurt, but it didn't matter. No, he had to look forward. Always forward. To who he would someday be, to who he would need to help him. Only then would he really be free to go after what he wanted. Needs first, desires later.

“He does not deserve what she offers.”

“Maybe,” Eridan acknowledged before fully relaxing back into his seat. “But in all honestly that's not what I'm here to talk about.”

“Then what is?”

“I've read your file.”

Just like clockwork Waleti went on the defense. Any troll he said that to seemed to do that, whether they'd ever done anything wrong or not. There was just something about the idea of having people read pieces of paper with information about you on it that set a troll to snarling and bearing their teeth. Strange, she was lovely even when she looked ready to bite him.

“Those are...”

“I'm the Secondar. It's not really private to me. And I'm not here to reprimand you for slugging your superior or anything like that. You should know as well as I do that your file is full of glowing praise and positive remarks.” That seemed to calm Waleti down, but only a little bit.

“Just why do you care?”

“Because I am having a lot of trouble finding Enforcers with nearly so much promise and so much of a future before them,” he said utterly honestly. “There will be a day in the future where I'm not the Secondar, Waleti. There are a lot of those on the top rungs of the Enforcer ladder who aren't happy with that. They aren't exactly quiet about it either. Eventually, unfortunately, I'm going to be at the top and while politics say I have to play nice, I know more than half will be ditching the service. I'll need the best to replace them.”

“And you're telling me this, why?”

Eridan just gave her his best conspiratorial smirk. “Because you're going to be one of those replacements if you play your cards right.”

Waleti looked just about ready to spit. “And what do you want in return?”

“For you to be the best for whatever position I need you in. To keep up your record. To surprise your superiors at every turn and make sure that when you climb it's always into positions to make yourself look better and fit better. When I pull you up, I want it to be an easy thing. I don't want fights.”

“And if I don't want to be tugged up on your coattails?”

“Oh no,” Eridan laughed, shaking his head, “I'm not pulling you anywhere. I'm saying that when I come to offer you the position as my Secondar, when that day comes, you better be qualified for it.”

The timing was perfect. Just as Eridan let the words sink in the crawler came to a stop outside of the temporary residency hivestem where Sollux Captor was waiting for his escort. He left Waleti sitting there, gaping at him, as he opened the hatch and stepped out into the fading light of day, pulling the hood of his uniform solar protection garment over his head. He had other business. Right now the seeds were planted, which was all he needed.

If everything went well, he'd have plenty of time to win her over in the future. Needs first. Wants later.