#rustbloods

quick overview on time! its an aspect connected to mechanics, inevitability, death and so on. it can even be connected with music, due to the timing in bars of songs or the progression of time as music plays.

furthermore, to talk about rustbloods as a whole, theyre connected to the original sgrub players of alternia, which would be aradia and the handmaid. its important to give explanations on these connections and thats exactly what ill be doing! i havent read hiveswap or played the friendsim so i will not be using those rustbloods as a reference to look at.

the beta troll rustblood is aradia, maid of time. she embodies the time in her session, and as a maid she keeps her aspect "tidy"! aradia was especially connected to the death in the time aspect. she had died, been trapped in a body not hers, been a sprite and so on. for a while, she WAS made of death and therefore that was a way of being made of time. but when they were at the universe gate and aradia sent out all her different aradiabots, that was her way of roleplaying as a witch of time (her ancestor!), as she manipulated previous timelines to CREATE (maid word!) more time for her friends to act! though maids are considered an active class, they "prepare others with their aspect" and otherwise tend to stay in the background always tending to their aspect themselves, helping the session grow. aradia did this in multiple ways. first was when she first died, and worked with the spirits to get her sgrub session started. and we all know death/the dead are very related to time.. then, after godtiering, she travelled to countless dream bubbles, keeping those memories and times afloat, doing the "housekeeping" a maid does with their aspect. and theres also aradias off-screen timeline travels, as at one point she says shes been through hundreds of years worth of doomed timelines! all of these actions are inextricably linked to time, and even sometimes the death in it, and further proves how aradia is made of time. in the end, aradia has always been maid/made of time, and the inevitability of time allowed her to accept her challenge of self-relying easily, and shes a solid character!!

so i believe how rustbloods connect to aradia is through that "made of time" play on words! this means rustbloods can be heavily related to any part of the time aspect whether its death/spirits, mechanics and routine, or just a sense of inevitability. its loose, but rustbloods take what aradias putting down, and relate to it how they can. they also carry the self-reliance of maids, and are usually very powerful in that same sense!

the rustblooded ancestor is the handmaid, one of the 2-3 ancestors who made it off alternia. shes also a witch of time! witches are naturally rebellious of their aspects rules, which brings about their nature-changing powers. the handmaid rebelled from the timeless inevitability of having to serve lord english, and tried to overcome it as hard as she could, but doc scratch unfortunately guaranteed her fate. its also of note that witches tend to have familiars (jade with bec, feferi with her lusus) and so the handmaids would be lord english!

the beforus counterpart of the handmaid is damara, also a witch of time! she embodies her classpect in a fuller manner, as she had some free will of her own. of course, she has the alpha troll curse (NOT GETTING ANY SCREENTIME...) T_T;.... but its obvious shes very rebellious against inevitability and instead does things her own way, which is not caring too much about anything!

this connects rustbloods to doing what they want with the sense of inevitability, death, etc... time is of the essence, and they inherited the witch's powers of doing whatever they want with that essence!

Watching in utter disbelief, you take a sip of scalding leaf water as the tiny figure uses a rope to haul themself up, one determined pull at a time. If you were more awake you might be impressed; it’s obvious that they’re really going all out on this. They can’t be any bigger than a rustblood male, but despite their size they appear to be fairly strong. You wish it isn’t so cloudy so you could see who the hell this joker is.

It says a whole lot about your life that spying on some cullbait climbing a pole is the most interesting thing you’ve seen all perigee. You go places. You clean. You leave. Sometimes you even get paid, but that’s becoming less of a thing these nights for whatever reason. Some highblood tries to kill you and you get away in the nick of time. Somehow, you keep living.

The newly-healed scar on the back of your neck twinges.

You give a small hiss when the climber slips and almost falls, only for somebody else to dart out of the shadows, looking up towards the siren. The climber calls down to them but you can’t hear what they’re saying, due to the fact that the siren is up on a nearby hill. With renewed vigor, they tighten their hold on the rope and keep going.

“Not bad, squirt,” you mumble.

Another person detaches themself from the cover of a tree, taller than the other two, and joins the other troll on the ground. The first troll gives the newcomer the finger. The newcomer shrugs, their body language betraying no annoyance at the insult.

So these guys are a team, huh? This ought to be good.

Your attention snaps back to the climber when they finally reach the siren. They quickly fling their rope over the head of the machine and actually clamber up on top of the thing, like an actual freakin’ monkey.

This dude’s just asking to be culled. Wow.

You can’t see exactly what’s going on, but they’re obviously messing with the thing. A bit of concern makes your brows furrow as you consider the situation-- that siren could mean the difference between people living or dying. Should you try and stop them?

… No. Even with Catmom around, you’re still outnumbered, and Catmom raised you to not start stupid fights.

“Mrraow?”

Speak of the devil. You reach down and stroke your lusus’s ears. “Get a load out of this. Maybe I should take up parkour, too. You’d be a great teacher.”

Catmom rears up on her hind legs and stares intently out the sliding glass door. She goes still for a moment, and then her long white tail starts whipping back and forth.

“What is it?” you demand.

She meows again, more urgently this time, and starts pawing at the door.

You hesitate. You don’t want her going out there. That wasn’t an I need to pee meow, that was a there’s something up meow.

And that’s when the moons shine through a gap in the clouds, lighting up the silhouette of the climber as they fiddle around with the insides of the siren.

Even before your thinkpan registers their strange-but-familiar pale skin, or their fluffy white-gold hair, you know who it is. The air whooshes out of your bellowsacs, and you set down your mug on the counter before tearing open the door and sprinting like your life depends on it, Catmom right on your heels.

The two trolls at the base of the pole are more than ready for you when you scramble up the hill, so you raise both of your hands even as Catmom arches her back and hisses. One is an oliveblood chick with a spiky mane of hair and even sharper claws, and the other is a tall jadeblood boy, which definitely isn’t something you see every day. Both of them look very strong and ready to tear your rustblood ass up like a napkin.

“I’m a friend,” you say quickly. “Their friend.”

The oliveblood stares you down, but before she can respond you hear a shout of surprise from above. “Marsti!”

You look up at the alien, moonlight twinkling in their wide eyes. Something in your worn-out bloodpusher softens. How they’re alive, you have no idea, but they’re really here.

“I thought you were dead,” you say, swallowing back something in your throat.

“Marsti, you can’t be here! There’s gonna be a drone raid!” they cry.

Any happiness you feel at seeing your long-lost friend evaporates like acid rain in the sunlight. At your side, Catmom arches her back and hisses. Your acid tract does a backflip and falls right out of your anus like a brick.

You just stare at them. “And how the fuck do you know that?”

“Because we do! That’s why we’re here, to trigger the siren early so people have a better chance of getting to safety sooner,” the oliveblood snaps, crossing her arms.

“Like you, for instance,” the jadeblood explains, much more calmly than either of his companions.

“Guys!” You look back up to your offworlder friend, who is gripping the sides of the pole between their surprisingly strong legs and holding onto something in the siren. “Once I touch these two wires it’s gonna go off.”

“Do it!” the jadeblood calls. He’s clearly more excited about this whole plan, even though he immediately covers his ears and braces for the deafening wail. You and the oliveblood do the same, and you wonder how the fresh hell any of this is actually happening.

Your disbelief about this entire situation doubles as you watch the alien simply… flash out of sight for a fraction of a second before reappearing on the ground beside the greenbloods. None of you say anything as the siren starts to wail, slowly rising in pitch and volume until all four of you are running away with your hands over your ears.

Catmom herds everybody inside your hive and shuts the door behind you. Both the oliveblood and the jadeblood are looking around warily, but your alien friend seems more interested in giving you a hug, which you return in your shell-shocked state.

“So, you can teleport,” you say instead of spilling your guts about how much you missed them.

“Yeah! Long story. I’m glad you’re okay.” They grin up at you and run a hand through their hair. You’re amazed at all the little details you’re seeing on them now, like all of the colors in their eyes and the barely-there layer of fur that covers their skin. Is it fur? You’re not certain.

You nod. “Yeah. Me too. I mean, I’m glad you’re okay too.”

The oliveblood comes up to gently pat the alien’s arm, fond but exasperated. “How many friends do you even have?”

“A lot.” They beam proudly and lean against her. “Marsti, this is Polypa, my moirail, and that’s Lanque. Thanks for letting us into your hive so we don’t go deaf.”

“That’s still up in the air,” Lanque groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks like he’s in physical pain from the howling of the siren. You don’t blame him; every time that damn thing has gone off you end up in your recuperacoon with a pan-ache.

“Sorry babe, should have brought ear protection.”

“Hmph.”

Your friend looks hopefully up at you. “Look, we have fifteen minutes before the first bombs start to fall. Are you gonna come with us?”

“I might live in the shittiest neighborhood known to trollkind, but we do have bomb shelters,” you assure them. “This isn’t my first rodeo. Catmom and I will be fine.”

“... Alright.” They look reluctant, even as Polypa starts tugging them towards the door. “Once I get a palmhusk I’ll text you, okay? Stay safe.”

You give them a smile. When’s the last time you smiled? “I will.”

Lanque nods to you and follows the pair back out into whatever hell awaits them. You watch them go, feeling Catmom circling your legs as she urges you over to the basement door. It won’t be long before the drones show up.

“Alright, I’m coming, I’m coming,” you sigh as you grab your water bottle and your palmhusk off the counter. “What a fucking night, huh?”

She swats at your ankles for your language, but you can tell she’s feeling the same way.

<>

Your name is DIEMEN XICALI and you think this might be it.

This isn’t totally unusual for you, given that you are hiveless and broke, but it’s the first time since you lost your lusus that you would be facing a drone raid alone. You can hear the sirens not too far away, accompanied by the occasional sound of somebody screeching and running for cover. The oblong meat product you ate for breakfast churns nervously in your acid tract.

You’re deciding against making a run for it, given that you have literally nowhere to run to, when you feel the ground shake beneath you as the first bomb hits. The shockwave blows out the windows of a nearby hive not long after. You wince and cover your ears.

Well, this sucks.

Beside you, your palmhusk starts ringing. It’s Mallek.

“You’re literally calling at the worst time ever, dude,” you whisper frantically, shutting it off as fast as you can. Everybody knows the drones can track a palmhusk. Given what you’ve been up to these last few perigees, you wouldn’t be surprised if that actually happens.

A wave of grief and guilt hits you as you think of what happened to your juggalo friend. Mazzot Sazzox had died saving your stupid self from another clown that had gone insane for whatever reason. In doing so, he gave you enough time to get away from the drones that decided to show up out of nowhere.

Maybe in another life, you two would have been together, as close friends or maybe even more, but you guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

A lot of things aren’t.

Another explosion lights up the night sky, closer this time. That’s when the screaming starts, and you pray to your dead friend’s Messiahs that it’s not the five-sweep old that lives just down the road. She deserves to live, they all deserve to live, and even if they don’t survive the next few hours you pray that they’ll make it to wherever they’re meant to go in whatever comes next.

Where would you go? The Dark Carnival? Probably not, you’re no purpleblood, but one time after Mazzot preached to you about his faith you had the strangest dream about a dazzling carousel and some butterfly-winged angels. Could that be it?

“Oh, oh fuck somebody HELP ME-!”

BOOM

You shriek and curl up into a tight ball as you feel another shockwave nearly blow out your eardrums. Whoever was screaming stops.

The roar of drone engines passes over your bush. You don’t breathe until you can’t hear them anymore and release a shaky exhale. Not too far away, a second siren joins the first.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” you groan, holding your ears for all they’re worth.

Something a random guy told you at a party once comes back to you. He was a bronzeblood, you think, with big anter-like horns.

“Do you ever think about how some people believe we’ll be hatched as a higher caste after we die? Like we’re supposed to wait our whole lives for something better, except it’s only better because society made it that way?”

You were extremely stoned, but you remember telling him, “Dude. That’s deep.”

“Thanks. Pass me the blunt?”

You pass him the blunt and watch some gold chick and her moirail have a psionic orgy in the corner with a couple of rustbloods and a cerulean. She asked if you wanted to join earlier, but you were way too high to even hold a bucket upright, much less bust a nut, so you passed. Maybe you should have said yes so you didn’t have to think about how fucked up everything is about the world you live in.

Everything is so fucked up.

The bombs start falling with greater frequency now. Underneath you, the ground rumbles, and the part of you that’s still a kid is scared that it’ll break and you’ll fall into the planet.

“Get the fuck up,” somebody says. You startle, and then you realize you’re the one who said it.

You stare at a candy wrapper lying in the dirt an arms-length away, and you repeat yourself. “Get the fuck up, Diemen. You’re gonna die under a bush if you don’t move now.”

Amazingly, your right arm moves, followed by your left. You push yourself upright. The world spins around you as the blood rushes from your head.

You grab your palmhusk and do the universe’s sloppiest youth roll out of the bush, taking off running like you’ve never run before. Smoke and fire is filling the air, into your bellowsacs, and you barely make it a block before you have to stop.

Death smiles and waves at you as you look back just in time to see your bush go up in flames as a bomb blows everything up. You dive behind a nearby tree to avoid the resulting blast, and once it passes you’re running again.

Up ahead, the hive of the five-sweep old is nothing but a hollow husk.

You stumble to a stop and stare.

Keep moving, you tell yourself, except what you do is charge and leap in through a hole in the wall like some kind of idiot.

Stuff is on fire, but you remember enough about the layout of your own hive to know where the bomb shelter is. You shimmy around the burning hole where the living room used to be and make your way into the kitchen. The Messiahs must have been listening, because the trap door is unscorched and intact from the bomb.

You tear it open. “HEY! Hey, kid! Can you hear me?”

“YEAH!”

You whoop for joy, and for a moment everything is okay. “We don’t have a lot of time before the drones come back for seconds! Can you walk?”

“Yeah! Sort of!”

It takes a few minutes for the girl to drag herself over to the ladder, but once she hauls herself up to the main floor you can see why. Her left leg is totally broken, and her left ankle is dislocated. Behind her comes her lusus, an elderly beaverrat, who chitters warily before reluctantly allowing you to carry her precious charge around the destroyed living room and out the hole in the wall.

“Everything hurts,” the girl tells you quietly as you carry her down the sidewalk.

“I know. Don’t worry, I have a cerulean friend with a medicalizer. He’s let me use it before,” you tell her.

“So… so I can walk again?”

“You’ll walk again.”

On the way out of the neighborhood, you pass Marti’s hive, which has been completely blown to pieces. You hope she’s okay.

Once you get this kid’s legs healed, you’d come back for her and Catmom. Something is different about tonight-- the stars are shining so brightly they hurt to look at, and there’s a fragile unease in the atmosphere, like all of Alternia is holding her breath. You keep walking and don’t look at the moons, which stare down at you like a pair of eyes.