#dpcmm

"or" as if that word does not mean "and" when you are annoying and love talking about your own bullshit like i am and do

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blood will have blood

blood will have blood is the planned sequel to my m.e. big bang fic from last year, serpents in the garden, just won't be for a big bang. probably. don't quote me.

in serpents, tevos confides in irissa that she intends to pull the alliance in as an ally to the asari republics, to combat the tight alliance between the turians and salarians and their influence over the non-council species; she feels that bringing humanity in as an ally, potentially even a client race, is key to maintaining asari superiority and bringing the others back to heel. in blood, tevos, concerned by irissa's response and worried she's straying too far from the fold, gets permission from the other matriarchs to bring irissa in on the beacon conspiracy. irissa, still stunned by what she learned before, is floored, but smart enough to keep her wits about her and pretend to be onboard and a good little supremacist.

in reality, she takes the intel to quentius. quentius was told by sparatus at the end of serpents that sparky and his two predecessors have been quietly gathering intel on tevos and the matriarchs to take them down for decades, and immediately realizes this is the smoking gun they've been waiting for. he arranges a meeting with sparatus so irissa can share what she knows, and after discussing with sparatus irissa agrees to testify in exchange for protection, as she's put the pieces together that this is the same thing that happened to matriarch aethyta several years ago. sparky agrees.

unfortunately, tevos catches on, and all three become targets.

the assassins have instructions to stagger the deaths so it doesn't look connected. unfortunately for her, she's wanted to off sparky for years anyway, and in her eagerness forgets that he has a horde of spectres who are deathly loyal to him. while saren, nihlus, and avitus are investigating the assassin they foiled, irissa is gravely wounded, and that's when it clicks. the mission gains a second layer of trying to protect the three until sparky can bring the case to court, and irissa can testify, and tevos can lose. and eventually they follow the trail back to tevos's bondmate eshaasya t'daana, acting on her orders, who just. betrays her flat-out. no loyalty, because the relationship was always just about ambition for the both of them, and isn't that just the greatest damnation they could ask for?

basically it's a mix of political intrigue (my beloved <3) and a spectre mission fic and i'm so hype for it i just need to get in the headspace for it. unfortunately the big bang crunch WAS very good for writing serpents. the title comes from another macbeth quote, same as serpents did, referencing how tevos's ambition and ruthlessness will turn on her and spell her downfall in the end.

sentiment and reason (ch2)

sentiment and reason [ao3 link!] is the second fic in the dead parents club murder mysteries series. a prequel to to catch a rabbit, sentiment follows avitus and macen investigating the murder of a famed and much-beloved general on a border world - while posing as a married couple to infiltrate the community, and while avitus is still nursing his old one-sided "rivalry" (crush he was mad about) with macen from basic training.

in chapter 2, avitus is recruited for the mission and arrives on thracia to get briefed by saren and discuss the plan with desolas and gen. callendella agonian, the victim's granddaughter and general in charge of colony defense for thracia. unfortunately, this is also where he discovers his old rival from basic still has the audacity to exist and be, like, a nice guy and attractive, and he's pissed about it, to the point he briefly forgets not to embarrass himself in front of his old mentor, his hero, and the person he's asking to trust him to find her grandfather's murderer. and tragically, that's what gives saren the idea to borrow macen from blackwatch so they can infiltrate the neighborhood posing as newlyweds wanting to move in.

here have a snip

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Just like that, he deflated. Whether it was the shame of annoying an officer he’d thrown his whole heart behind a lifetime ago, or just the embarrassment of his outburst being witnessed, he wasn't sure and didn't want to say, but either way, the air rushed out of his chest, and he awkwardly shuffled his feet. “In my defense, he pulls shit like that on me all the time," he muttered, a weak protest even to him.

Desolas scoffed, and Avitus wilted a little further. The Scourge of Shanxi was anything but prim and proper at the moment, slouched sideways in a cushy chair in front of a wide desk with one ankle propped up on his knee and bare foot dangling idly in the air, but he still radiated all the charisma and authority that had an entire empire eating out of the palm of his hand. Avitus and his friends on Shanxi had had long discussions about him late at night, how he was different from all the stuffy old generals they’d met before and how sure they were he’d lead them to victory in no time at all - and now he’d just made a fucking fool of himself right in front of him. Cool.

Saren’s eyes flicked between them for a second before he coughed into his fist. “You’ll recall, Desolas, that I recruited Nihlus after meeting him hungover and missing his pants,” he commented, “and he has outsmarted justicars and taken down sapient-sacrificing cults. Off-color introductions belying hyper-competence is par for the course in our department.”

One blue-striped brow plate went up, and Desolas mulled this over a bit before snorting hard enough to rattle his nasal plates and giving a rough shrug. “Fair enough,” he grumbled.

Avitus could have kissed the little twink on the mouth. He settled instead for fluttering his mandibles, and Saren gave him a small, conspiratorial wink before adding, “Besides, you subjected us all to seventeen minutes of complaining about your wife lifting you off the ground to assert dominance, so I personally don’t think you have any room to talk here.”

Desolas blinked at him, then scrunched his nasal plates and dropped his mandibles in a snarl, only to be abruptly cut off by -

“Gentlemen, please.”

All three of them jumped, but Avitus most of all. He hadn’t even registered that the chair on the other side of the big desk was occupied, he was so focused on the brothers asshole in front of him. They’d interviewed Old Tag’s granddaughter on the news a few times, the usual sound bite-hunting bullshit about how the family was handling the old man’s death (sad, obviously) and if Thracia would be honoring him in any way (a plaque on the memorial wall and a good funeral), but Avitus hadn’t paid much attention - it turned out the Agonians all looked an awful lot alike. There was almost something spooky about seeing Callendella now, steepling her fingers in front of her narrowed eyes and leaned back in her chair, a ghost of a younger Tag with the crest ripped off. Same dark burgundy plates, same intelligent gray eyes, same swooping white tattoos. Her mandibles even had the same little notch on the lower front corner, if he squinted. The age fade was smaller, only most of the way out to her fringe instead of eclipsing most of her head, and she didn’t have quite the same sturdy build that gave Tag so much presence in formation, but the family resemblance was uncanny all the same.

Avitus’s neck grew a little warmer, and he dipped his head. Desolas was less impressed. “You didn’t have to be here, Agonian, you could’ve just lent me your office and fucked off for a few drinks,” he groused, sitting up slightly and reaching over to pick up a Creamy Way cup off the desk. Not the fancy horosk bottles Avitus remembered him cracking open back in the day, but then, he did have a kid now, didn’t he? “Prep for the funeral, or whatever.”

trade secret it was an actual toss-up between this and sentiment who was getting started this year

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through the bars is to be the third fic in the dead parents club murder mysteries series, a sequel to to catch a rabbit. picking up a few months after the events of rabbit, saren, nihlus, avitus, and macen are taking a much-needed vacation on the colony world macedyn, going hiking in a national park, drinking, making out, and generally having a good time... until a recently-deceased corpse is found tossed in a ravine, showing signs of having been mauled. and they'd be perfectly happy to turn it over to the cops and carry on their merry way, but, well.

macedyn is a turian colony, on the asari border. and the body is a human.

so the three spectres get roped into investigating, much to their chagrin. macen, for his part, is just happy to be included, and avitus vouches for his helpfulness in piecing together clues, so it's fine. the body is identified as [name undecided yet], a recent immigrant to the colony who chose to live in a turian-heavy neighborhood rather than the more alien-friendly areas of the capital city, and somehow, nobody seems to have any idea who could have killed her. she was overall friendly and helpful, trying to be a part of the community even if she struggled a bit with the cultural differences, and nobody seems to have a motive. nobody in their right mind would kill her, as far as they can tell.

so they start trying to figure out why the killer wasn't in their right mind.

the title, in keeping with the naming scheme of the other two fics, comes from another poirot quote, this one from murder on the orient express:

"The body - the cage - is everything of the most respectable - but through the bars, the wild animal looks out."

it's a clue to the killer's method and motive; with minimal spoilers, bars is taking a lot of jabs at popular (stupid) turian fanon, esp fanon wrt human women dating turian men and some of the more egregious tropes i've seen in that subset of fanfic that wouldn't actually fucking fly. i've been here a decade, i've got beef and we're putting it into murder mysteries.

it's kryterius and barrix centric, with a bit of eyebrow waggling at the four of them just being a big platonic polypile. saren and nihlus are officially a couple as of rabbit, and are dealing with the next emotional steps as they adjust to that shift in their dynamic. avi and macen, on the flip side, have been together much longer, and when macen starts getting That Look around all the babies and young kids that the victim's neighbors have (neighborhood of mostly young families), avi has a lot of turmoil to work through, both in whether or not to raise children with macen and in the deeper implications of commitment that macen is thinking about it at all.