Title: Xenogenetics
Summary: The Condesce had always been a prankster. Condesce(spade)Ψiioniic
Note: I don't even know. I alway thought the Ψiioniic/Condesce relationship had to be pretty interesting, so I tried to give it some more depth. I haven't read anything with these two characters in canon/like this before, so I guess this is a fresh outlook for me. It might have been done, though. Man, I wrote this all out in one fell swoop, so I dunno if it's all that wonderful. And you know, I put Sci-Fi and Romance as the genres here, but somehow that just seems weird. :/ But whatever.
Warnings: A few swear words. (Ohhhhhhhh how awful!)
Pairings: Weird Blackrom Trollmance, I guess. When did I become a writer of WBT? I don't know anymore.
Characters: Ψiioniic, Condescension, Signless/Sufferer in mention

I own nothing of Homestuck. I am not making money from this, nor am I intending any copyright infringement.

"Ψiioniic?"

Her Imperious Condescension entered the battery hold of her ship, a place she'd recently taken a habit to visiting with an increased frequency. She may have pondered more deeply the meaning of her fascination with her newest Helmsman, if she had been someone who had to worry about someone above her making a judgement call and culling her on the spot. But hell, she was the queen of queens, the Empress of the most aggressively invasive species in the universe, she could do whatever she pleased and continue skewering anyone who took issue. The perks of having all the power of her species in her left hand were wide and varied, but having the freedom to not give two shits about anything was definitely among the top ten.

Oh, what humor. She loved joking with herself and with everyone around her. The Condesce had always been a prankster, from the moment she'd hatched from an eggshell of a completely new and perfectly unique color, all those hundreds of sweeps ago.

But she was no fool. One does not fabricate a foolish, blood-based hierarchy among an entire species, then proceed to place herself at the top, and give herself all the power by being a fool. The fools were absolutely everybody who believed in class segregation, who believed in her almighty strength and oh, did she just love stringing them all along.

And if any of her beloved race somehow failed to become blinded and enraptured by her segregationist fairytale prank, she'd just bring them before her and take their lifespan, let them wither and crumble on the spot.

Her Imperious Condescension closed her eyes and hummed with contentment as she approached the Helmsman. His eyes were flashing with raw psionic power, and her web of amusing, ironic magenta strangling him just to the brink of death. Ah, irony. She was a woman of irony as well.

"You are a massive, despicable bitch," he wheezed, in the customary greeting.

"Yes indeed," she responded, and opened her eyes and smiled. Settling down and leaning on the vessels connected to his battery of a body, she gazed dreamily up at his snarling face. Such a fine face. "What shall we talk about today, my dear Ψiioniic?"

He groaned, but whether it was of pain or exasperation it was impossible to tell. "Why do you do this to me? I don't want to talk to you. Aren't thousands of sweeps of torture enough for you?"

"Hmmm," she said, pretending to think about it. And then she giggled softly, "Nope. I just find you to be terrifically detestable company. It's quite refreshing."

It was always like this. They danced around every subject and argued with varying degrees of noncommittally genuine honesty. He was not only the most powerful Helmsman she'd ever owned; he made far more interesting conversation than her previous ones, who all seemed to make a challenge of seeing how loudly and how long they could scream in pain until their vocal cords tore apart. And then they were mute. Boring as hell.

"You're a fake, you know that?" said the Ψiioniic suddenly, "A massive bitch ruling over a fabricated caste ladder. Your blood is no better than mine. You blood is no better than... his..." He coughed sharply, and then growled. Red and blue lights flickered to a new tempo, casting a psychedelic glow on the magenta veins that wrapped about the room.

Her Imperious Condescension examined the magenta paint on her nails with a slight grin on her face. This was new. Honestly, she'd expected him to start saying such things much sooner, given his background. But she wouldn't kill him for it. For all his psionic might, he was powerless here, and they both knew it. Besides, why let a perfectly good battery go to waste?

"Of course I know that!" she laughed, "What kind of Empress would I be if I didn't?"

The Ψiioniic's shocked silence stretched on, and The Condesce looked away from her nails, instead admiring the bloody magenta hue of the room. Oh, irony. It was both a perfect mesh of art and a perfect, brutish trident with which she could catch and murder her prey. Irony went hand in hand with her love of pranking. You couldn't have one without the other.

The rise of the Signless had threatened everything she'd worked for in all her expansive lifetime. Her hatred of him ran deep, but of course he had to be dealt the hand of death if her rule was to continue. The Condesce was no fool. But she did allow the Signless to become the Sufferer, she forced upon him a name and a brand of shackles, imprisoning him in her fabricated hemocaste and torturing him into darkness. Just as she'd given herself the power of the almighty, she'd condemned his novel color to one of extinction. The ultimate underclass, never to be seen again.

He was a mutant, he said. Look at me, I do not have a sign, I do not have a name, my color is outside and alone, he said. Look at me as proof that the hemospectrum is a lie, he said.

Her Imperious Condescension grinned widely at the irony. He'd nearly ruined her prank, but she'd gotten the last laugh.

The Ψiioniic finally found his voice again. "You... You..."

"Now, now, let's not be a broken record, Ψiioniic. You're more intelligent than that! Have you figured it out?" She twisted her neck around to look at his face again. "Of course you haven't. I haven't told you the story. But for you, I'll do it. It will intensify your hate for me, won't it Ψiioniic?"

She hated the Ψiioniic for breaking through her net of lies, for dodging her spear of irony, seeing through her species-wide prank. She hated him for being naïve, for thinking that equality was what he deserved, when he'd done nothing but blindly follow the one who'd truly struck out against her. She hated him for letting his friend take the reins and make the change that he wanted to see in the world. The despicable thing. And now he was chained to her ship, and he was so good at his job that she couldn't tell if the reason she didn't kill him was out of practicality or out of true, black hate.

She'd hated the Sufferer, but killing him had been a matter of necessity.

But now, she could hate the Ψiioniic in peace, and he could do no real damage to her.

She grinned with a fresh irony. What a sadly one-sided partnership this was. Of the disadvantages of having all the power of her species in her left hand, her inability to practice the hate she truly desired had to be among the top ten. Committing Xenocide and Genocide could only be so much of an outlet.

"You're a monster," he said, "The only hate I have for you is the one where you are left murdered by my hands."

But this only made her grin wider, "Really? I suppose that is to be expected. After all, I hated the Sufferer most blackly, but for the sake of... our beliefs, I had to condemn him to death. It's the same with you, I presume?"

He glowered at her, eyes flashing red and blue and red and blue.

She leaned comfortably back against the veins, "So I'll tell you. I'll tell you exactly how well I know the hemospectrum is fake. The Sufferer was born amutant, wasn't he? His blood special, new, never before seen, outside of the twelve colors known to trollkind.

"It's not the first time a mutation has happened to the blood. I expect we're all mutants, to some extent or another. Isn't that funny, Ψiioniic? Isn't it hilarious that everyone believes in such a vast lie?"

He was silent.

"When I was born, no troll had heard of magenta blood. Seadwellers were all purple, and they got along with all colors. We lived the dream you strived for Ψiioniic. It was a pretty boring time. I changed all that. I threw our entire race into class warfare, and I drove into their hearts the idea that I was a god, with the blood of the god Gl'bgolyb, who had surfaced from the depths of the oceans to become my guradian, sent from a place beyond the edges of our universe." She closed her eyes again. "What a gullible race you are."

He was silent.

"And look at me now, a mutant sea troll with blood no more special than any other, and everyone bows before me with the utmost conviction that I am truly Empress by bloodright. It nearly makes me laugh every single damn time. In return for my amusement, I take care of them all, bring them victory after victory in our conquests against the rest of existence, and make them believe that they are superior, and of them I am the most superior of all."

She opened her eyes again. "I've told this story before, but never to a troll that could speak back. Tell me, Ψiioniic, what do you think of me now?"

He was shaking; she could feel it through the veins. A blast of psionic light nearly escaped his eyes into a damaging beam, but the ship sapped it up and simply accelerated them to their next destination of conquest.

"I hate you," he whispered, when the blast subsided, "I hate you, you, you..."

"At a loss for words?" she smiled, stood up, and faced him. She reached out and gently touched the side of his face. "You're no Sufferer, but your hate will do..."

He snarled at her, but didn't bite her hand.

"...Ψiioniic."