Being the Holy Grail is Suffering... [Worm/FSN Quest]

Dinah awoke with a start.

"Bad dream?" The girl, older, high school aged, laying in the hospital bed next to her turned on the light between them, illuminating the room enough to make her roommate, for lack of a better word, visible.

Dinah nodded her head, trying to control her breathing. It had seemed so real. The fire. "I did this for you...this is all your fault."

"Me too." The girl, a red head who managed to look pretty despite the bags under her eyes, said in a somber tone. "It was like I was back there…" She trailed off, her eyes focusing on something far away before she seemed to fall back into reality. "Sorry. Are you alright?"

"No." An honest answer.

"Right."

The silence was awkward. Dinah couldn't say she and the red head had bonded over their trauma; surviving all your friends killing each other...killing yourself...it wasn't the sort of thing that encouraged someone to trust others. Dinah had no idea what exactly the girl, Emma, had seen or done in that clown's game, and Emma didn't know about Dinah's experiences either. All they knew was that they were 'winners'.

The word made her feel sick.

"Chance Emma commits suicide?"

[62%]

Lower than yesterday. Good. Only a day after they woke up in the hospital and it had already dropped nearly twenty percent. Dinah had been tempted to ignore the girl at first, but when that high number showed up, Dinah couldn't just let it go. She wasn't-

Fire...Suffocation...I can't breathe…

-going to let someone else die. Not if she could help it at least.

Dinah had been getting a handle on her powers. It was pretty simple. Ask a question, get a percentage. She found herself answering other people's questions sometimes though, and she was still having trouble clamping down on that. After that first time she rattled off a bunch of numbers she at least figured out that she could just mumble them under her breath.

Didn't help with the headaches though, but she found she actually appreciated that aspect of her powers. The pain was distracting, so if she wanted to get her mind off things she'd just rattle a handful of questions off to herself and let the migraine wash all her worries downstream.

"Hey, Dinah?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think anyone in your group got powers?"

"No, I don't think so." A lie. "Why?"

"It's just...nevermind. It doesn't matter."

"Okay."

Dinah wasn't really paying attention. Instead…

"Chance the clown is caught before he can do this again?"

[3.1%]

Laughter…He's laughing at you…Ha ha ha…

Lottery numbers, election results, chance of rain…Dinah felt pressure build up behind her forehead. She leaned back and let out a sigh of pain. At least the laughter was gone.

---

The Grail dusted themself off as Mech Eli-Chan rose into the air and flew off. Due East, though the robot would double back several times before going North and eventually stopping at one of Dragon's factories in case any flying capes tried to follow. BB was confident her distraction would keep the heroes occupied, but her creation was not so confident in her.

Really, it made BB rather sad to see such lack of faith from her baby. Made her feel bad enough that she sought comfort from Dragon. It was nice of Dragon to let BB envelop her in her code. (Dragon was terrified, but was still muted, and so BB didn't notice.)

Next to them, the Grail heard a low snarl. Turning their head, they saw a large feline, about chest height, orange with a white underbelly and black stripes. The tiger roared as it lunged at them. The Grail idly smacked it on the nose, forcing it to the ground.

The remnant squatted down in front of the dazed tiger, now laying on the ground. They laid a hand on its head. "Please kindly do not do that again." The Tiger sneezed, but stayed calm. "Good boy." A growl. "Girl then."

The Grail stood up and looked around. It was dark. The sun had set sometime on their way here and it seemed wherever they were was mostly devoid of human life. Well, no, that wasn't true. For one, thousands of humans could be felt only a short ways away, but for the most part the immediate area was just animals. The tiger nudged them from behind, and slid between their legs, lifting them off the ground. Angra Mainyu could feel two balls of negativity. Misery and isolation being the most prominent among the tangled mess of feelings.

Interesting…

---

Trickster inhaled, took the rolled up paper with...some substance in it (at some point he had graduated from marijuana to something "custom") out of his mouth and exhaled. He felt the smoke get caught in his lungs and he broke into a coughing fit, beating his fist against his chest as though to try to dislodge something.

He felt annoyance shimmer as the man across from him laughed, a sort of airy sound that reminded Trickster of a stage whisper. "But too strong, buddy?"

"I'm not", Trickster coughed, "your buddy. Fuck. Did you poison me?"

"You ask that now?"

"I was high before."

"You are high now."

"I've come back around."

A bird landed on the concrete next to Trickster's seat, causing the cape to jump and fall over. Blasto laughed again, taking another drag of his custom product. "Yeah, looks like it."

"Shut the fuck up." Trickster didn't get up, simply opting to lay on the ground. "Fuck! Did you poison me?"

"Nah."

"Why not?"

"Why would I?"

"I stole your shit?"

Blasto laughed again. Trickster wanted to punch him in the face. In fact…nope. It wasn't that he couldn't get up, it was just that the concrete felt nice and cool is all.

"Listen, that was like years ago. Fuck. Move on."

Trickster rolled his eyes. "Less than a year."

"Shit? Really? How'd we become best friends so fast?"

"We didn't."

"Fuck. Then why didn't I poison you?"

"That's what I'm asking!"

They lapsed into silence. After a time, Trickster sat up, groaning. "So yeah, about your girl…fuck, that sucks."

"Yeah, fucking blows." Blasto's fungal mask seemed to flinch away as he took another drag. "Hey, what about your girl? You said you've been having problems?"

"Yeah. I mean, we had rough patches before, man. You know. Break up. Make up. That shit."

"Shit sucks! I mean, all this, 'oh, it would be better for us if we weren't like this' or 'oh, we can't do this anymore', crap. Like, fucking why?"

"Yeah…but, you know, I knew she was the one, so I kept us together, tried to help her through her shit. But right now, well, she has kind of turned into a monster, and it has been taking a bit of a toll on, well, you know, us."

Blasto nodded his head, stroking his chin in thought while he waved his other hand in a sign to continue.

"And worst of all, I don't know why this happened. Just, like, she got all bad all of a sudden, and I wanted to help, but it just gets worse."

"Like how?"

"She's hungry all the time, and keeps getting bigger, and she has these, ugh...emotional swings. You know, happy and normal, then all cranky after that."

Blast nodded along. "You two have sex?"

Trickster spun around to look at Blasto, then held his head as the world continued to spin without him. "Ow. Shit. What?"

"You stick your dick in that?"

"I mean…not for a long time, no." Trickster narrowed his eyes, trying to look intimidating, though the way his mouth drooped and how red his eyes were didn't lend itself well to that image. "And no, I don't think the 'd' can fix this."

That laugh again. Blasto stood up, taking a full three minutes to walk a foot over towards Trickster, then he sat down next to the cape. "Nah, I think the 'd' is what got you into this mess."

"What?"

"She's cranky, hangry, big and spanky! Dude! She's preggers!"

A long silence followed. Trickster imagined a legion of Trickster clones marching across the globe, doubling the Earth's rotation as they perpetually replaced everything with something five feet to the right of it. The speed of the planet's rotation going so fast that-

Trickster shook his head. "Dude, no. I mean she became a…shit. You know. Capes that look like they aren't all human or whatever?"

"Oh! Shit. Case53?"

"Yeah, like that." Though not really. Kind of? She had her memories and no tattoo.

Blasto paused, looking thoughtful. What wisdom would the brilliant Harvard Tinker have to share? "She got tentacles?"

Pause. "Yeah?"

Blasto patted the younger cape on the back, giving him a thumbs up. "Nice."

Trickster scowled, but just as he was about to tear into the Tinker something caught his eye. "Woah. I'm fucking high."

"What do you see?"

"Fucking bloody bride on a Tiger."

"I think it's a metaphor."

"Really?"

"Yeah. That must be how you see your girl."

"So...I want to marry her?"

"And you think she is really strong. You know, 'cause tiger."

It made sense. "But what about the blood?"

"Maybe she's pregnant?"

Trickster froze, his eyes widening. "Holy shit. Am I gonna be a dad? I'm not ready to be a dad!"

"Hey, you ain't gonna skip out on her, are you?"

"No way!"

"Good boy."

The Grail approached the two capes on their newly acquired tiger with a bit of trepidation, a bit unsettled by the overall vibe they were giving off. "Hello sirs? May I have a moment of your time?"

"Shit, buddy! I'm seeing a metaphor now too!"

"Fuck! Really?"

What was wrong with these people?

Blasto patted the concrete beside him. "Hey, dude! Are you a metaphor?"

The Grail blinked. "I am a collection of multidimensional entities trapped within the body of a human female."

"Fuck…that's deep." Trickster nodded in agreement.

The Grail looked down. The Tiger looked up and sneezed. The Grail looked back at the pair of capes. What the hell were they supposed to do in this situation?

---

OPTIONS:

[] Wait for them to sober up

[] Fuck it, have a smoke with them

[] This is too weird. Leave.

---

AN: I spent a long period of time reading Blasto's interlude again as well as the Migration arc, trying to work out how exactly this meeting was going to work. Somehow all that time and effort resulted in this. Two guys with girl problems getting high together in a zoo. Yeah. I don't know either.