#*especially* when riz is in such a bad spot emotionally & psychologically

[thecryptidzenith]

I was thinking today about a timeline where Midnight Oil Riz gets back to his mom and somehow ends up in a party with the rest of The Bad Kids in Junior year (ignore the logistics). Thinking about him having to interact with the Rat Grinders is so funny; I feel like he'd see Kipperlilly being mean to Kristen, immediately try to find something to blackmail Kipperlilly with to force her to drop the election, and accidentally uncover Porter's whole plot in approximately four days.

First of all, I'm delighted that my silly little fic lives in your brain enough that you're thinking of alternate timelines, that's incredible. And thanks for sending this to me! I love excuses to procrastinate and excuses to yell about my guy.

So obviously, I'm God, and there's a lot of stuff prior to where this would be on the timeline that would have an impact, but I'm going to keep my cards as close to the chest as possible, however I think the thing that would impact this the most has already happened: which is that Poxson Tiktaalik is a student at Aguefort. On that, Kalina says "I have contacts at Aguefort." and "There’s more than one conspiracy going on at Aguefort," (to which Riz's internal response is 'what a fucked up school,' a sentiment made extremely funny both because he's an Aguefort student in canon and because he'd be an Aguefort student here.) This will be said directly soon, but Riz has met Eugenia, he's passing rogue class. Logistics aren't a problem at all.

But here's the fun part: the second conspiracy Kalina's referring to is Porter's plan to take Ankarna's place in the pantheon. Him and Jace are her contacts who take care of the administrative aspects of Poxson Tiktaalik being a student there. And Riz has already passed freshman and sophomore year with flying colors, and Eugenia knows who he is. The only thing that would need to happen would be changing his name in the system, and that's not technically necessary. Porter knows Kalina, and he knows Kalina wanted Riz in Aguefort's system for some reason. Throw in anything he may have heard about Poxson from Eugenia or any other networks he may be a part of, and suddenly, he looks like an incredibly useful ally with a high likelihood of helping them. If Kalina did, surely her protege would too, right?

Plus, this is a super tumultuous time for Riz. His living situation has changed drastically, his mom is alive, and he only recently found out that his godmother--his closest confidant--kidnapped him as a child and groomed him to be her actor in the physical world. Kid's not doing great as a baseline, and this makes everything so much worse.

How much does he really know or care about the Bad Kids? He's not exactly a team player here, and these kids are directly responsible for his ability or lack thereof to go to college. In canon, Riz doesn't have any resentment for them, but here? That's likely to be a different story. The two people he actually cares about are his mom and Aelwyn, the later of whom is working for Kipperlily Copperkettle.

Would it be so wrong of him to be a little angry? After everything he's been through, would it be unreasonable for him to get a little mad?

This isn't to say he'd join--there's no way he wouldn't despise the Rat Grinders, especially Kipperlily. He'd find them incredibly entitled, petty, and incompetent. Porter and Jace would probably annoy him too, their final goal is just to make Porter a god, and that's not something Riz would find worth it. Maybe his complicated feelings about Cassandra/the Nightmare King have solidified into hatred and he just wants her to hurt when her wife's domain is given to a new god, but that's the strongest motivation I can devise. Compare this to Kalina, who gave him a personal reason to help her in bringing his parents back and a societal reason in using the Nightmare King's power to fix the ugly parts of the world Riz got to know all too well in Gravalvia. Porter and Jace just aren't that good. Sorry to say, but nobody's doing it like Kalina.

And then there's the Kalina of it all. Does he want to help them because it seems like the thing she would have wanted him to do? Or is he spiteful and works tirelessly to destroy them instead? There's no way he isn't curious about what in the hells she was up to with them, but what does he do with that curiosity? Maybe he plays both sides until he knows exactly where he stands. He could pretend to infiltrate the Rat Grinders for the Bad Kids and the Bad Kids for the Rat Grinders. It'd be hard to pull off, but he's Riz 'Poxson' Gukgak. He excels at hard things.