Starlust Lover

""And then my sanity—or indeed, what little was left of it—began to crumble apart until the birds were pecking at it. So I took it out on the Ants. I will climb the highest mountain, punch God in the face, then run all the way back as He tries to zap me with lightning bolts. Why would I do that? Simple. Because at the end, at least I know that these guys have it way worse than me, and I enjoy that.""

- The happy little author

A Real Person Fic by Yayzikens, the girl who brought you other lighthearted little stories such as It Hurts and Llyako Shinta. Then there's Hospital Walls. All three of these are filled with trauma and mind screws, but they're original fiction. Starlust Lover just has to be different, right?

WRONG.

It's pretty safe to say that this story is more traumatizing than those three put together, which is really saying something. Sure, it has a few happy moments, but for the most part, it's on the cynical side of the scale.

Anyway, with the summary: The Ants are a group of five young men who have risen to fame overnight. Two of them, Gary Tibbs and Adam Ant, are stranded in the middle of some city, where they have some pretty crazy adventures. Their fun is brought to an end when they run into some talking sparkle. Weirdly enough, the talking sparkle has a name--Pragmata. She gives Gary some superpowers, then summons up a huge monster.

Gary refuses to fight it, so Pragmata blackmails him into beating it to a bloody pulp. After that she basically just forces the Ants to destroy all the monsters that are attacking the planet. Sure, it seems pretty simple and happy at first (after all, who hasn't seen this idea plenty of times?), but then things just go downhill. Pretty soon the story takes a completely different shift in mood.

Oh yeah, and it's Always Night.

And just for that Brenda bitch:
 * Gary: The bassist dude. He prides himself on his beautiful blond hair and is rather vain, often bragging about himself at the most inappropriate of moments. According to some flashbacks, his mother really liked telling him that he's exactly like his cowardly mess of a father. She's right. He has abandonment issues and tries very hard to be the complete opposite of his dad, and when he finds out that they have a lot in common, he freaks out. Then he learns some other crazy stuff. In the last arc, he suffers a mental breakdown and gets sent to an asylum, where he often talks about Merrick, much to the confusion of the people there. After coming to the conclusion that he has lost everything, he shoots himself in the head, thus triggering The End of the World As We Know It.
 * Merrick: A relatively quiet and self-contained drummer who just happens to have an inferiority complex. He's philophobic, something that stems from his sister's death because they happened to love each other ... in that way. The other Ants are scared of him, and although he feels really lonely, he still tries to hide it under his chilly mask. But Gary manages to defrost him. As you (probably) know, everything goes to shit in the last arc and Merrick here spends most of his time in a coma after falling victim to some very cruel Mind Rape. He wakes up to find that Gary is missing and looks for him. He finds him all alone in the rubble of a huge building. Merrick tries to talk some sense into this blond guy, only to wind up dead. Well dang. Oh, and he helps Gary destroy the entire universe in the last chapter. That's cool.
 * Adam Ant: The nicest person in existence, according to a very reliable source. Sadly, he isn't nearly as innocent as he appears and struggles with low self-esteem and other such things. You know it's true when he tries to jump off that building in the fifteenth chapter. Now that's pretty damn early, considering that this isn't like some of my other stories, which are usually only nine chapters or so. Marco stops him, and they develop a ... not very heterosexual relationship. Then Adam gets tortured to death in the penultimate chapter and it's all sad and stuff, because apparently the last arc doesn't have enough Tearjerkers already. No seriously. That last arc is cruel.
 * Marco: The Jerkass Big Guy. He's arrogant, loud, brash, mean, and violent. It's also worth noting that he, along with the other Ants here, is nothing like his real self. Just trying to clear that up. He actually has really low self-esteem, so low that it makes Merrick, the guy who said that the one thing he hates more than anything else is himself, seem like the most confident person on the planet. According to Marco over here, he's such a terrible person that he doesn't even deserve the pleasure of dying. Then the last arc comes around and it becomes pretty damn horrifying. He still forms a tight bond with Adam, going as far as to promise to protect him forever, dude. Then Adam dies horribly right in front of him. Yeah.
 * Terry Lee: The Quiet One. He, like the other Ants, lives in Adam's shadow, though he doesn't mind much. After all, he hates the spotlight. This all changes drastically after he receives his superpowers and becomes quite the fighter. He is revealed to be the selfless type, something that surprises the other guys. It reaches the point where Adam looks up to him as a brother. Their relationship gets kinda disturbing, though, after Terry Lee confesses his love for Adam. Adam rejects him, stating that he loves Marco, and just leaves. Terry Lee actually has very low self-esteem and feels as if he's not good enough to be an Ant, leading to several failed suicide attempts. ...That's all I'm gonna tell you, jeez. You can piece the rest out yourself. HUMPH.

Tropes present in this ridiculously over-the-top include (but are certainly not limited to):
""Changing yourself to fit the world didn't accomplish anything, now did it?""
 * Aborted Arc: The Neon Lancer thing in the revision, mostly because the story was long enough already.
 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Those sewers, man... Dear god.
 * Abusive Parents: The Ants all had some form of this.
 * Action Girl: Jennifer, Beth, and Kylie. Mostly Jennifer.
 * After the End
 * A God Am I: Merrick. But given that the guy can destroy an entire universe and mess with everyone's memory, then is he really that far off?
 * Ambiguous Situation: The story ends with Merrick asking Gary if he wants to be his friend. No seriously. That's the actual ending. That was how Natalie decided to end it.
 * And I Must Scream: The Dox Tunnel. You're trapped in a white tunnel for all eternity, unable to move or even think...
 * Angst Coma: Merrick slips into a coma after falling victim to a very cruel Mind Rape.
 * Anti-Hero: Gary's nice and all that, but his sense of morality is so twisted and he is rather cowardly. He sees nothing wrong with killing off an entire planet as long as he lives.
 * Armor-Piercing Question: Merrick to Terry Lee.


 * Asexuality: Chris. You can imagine how Yuri feels about this.
 * Attempted Rape: Terry Lee tries to rape Adam in the revision. This is taken out in the revised revision, naturally.
 * Bare Your Midriff: Adam wears the Goody Two Shoes outfit in the second half.
 * Blond Guys Are Evil: Gary and Chris take this to the extreme.
 * Bloodier and Gorier: Yep.
 * Bloodless Carnage: In the original, to a ridiculous degree.
 * Break the Cutie: The Ants start out so hopeful and persevering, but THEY JUST COULDN'T STAY THAT WAY.
 * Broken Messiah: Adam's nothing if not this.
 * Can't Live Without You: If Adam dies, Marco dies!
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Deconstructed with Gary.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: Several.
 * Terry Lee gets his legs torn off, crushed repeatedly and eaten alive. This is bad enough, but then you think about how it must have felt for Marco, knowing that he was brutally murdering his own friend.
 * Adam basically gets tortured to death. I'd elaborate but it's hard to describe torture without it being really confusing.
 * Poor, poor Shak. Getting your intestines set on fire doesn't even begin to cover it.
 * Merrick gets raped by Gary, then stabbed to death. There's also reason to believe that he managed to survive after that, which suggests a much more painful death. His dead body does have its eye gouged out.
 * Cry Cute: Everyone. Yes, even the villains.
 * Defrosting Ice King: Marco and Merrick.
 * Despair Event Horizon: It's crossed by pretty much everyone.
 * Driven to Suicide: Pretty much everyone. Adam tries to throw himself off a huge building in the fifteenth chapter, but is saved by Marco. Terry Lee attempts to kill himself once or twice, but he just survives. Merrick and Gary actually kill themselves, while Marco just wants to go with Suicide By Cop. Oh yeah, and Jennifer shoots herself in the head.
 * Easily Forgiven: Adam is willing to forgive anyone, no matter what they did to him.
 * Eaten Alive: Terry Lee's fate. And it's told in his point of view, too!
 * Enigmatic Minion: Pragmata. Is she really on the Ants' side or is she using them to her advantage? Turns out, a mix of both.
 * Eye Scream: Gary truly illustrates his complete and total lack of sanity by drawing pictures of naked people with their eyes torn out.
 * When Gary does that Shut UP, Hannibal thing, Quarrie just responds with stabbing him through the eye.
 * The Maze is nothing more than an empty field with a bunch of impaled eyes thrown in.
 * When Marco gets captured by that Eldritch Abomination, he is surrounded by millions of bloody eyes. Being an Ant, he doesn't seem to notice.
 * Merrick gets his eye ripped out in the fourteenth chapter. Much later, his dead body is found with the other eye gouged out.
 * Fingore: Terry Lee gets his fingernails ripped off.
 * Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Marco slaps Merrick in order to snap him out of a Heroic BSOD.
 * The next chapter has Merrick slapping Terry Lee after he stabs him in the arm.
 * Adam has to seriously beat Terry Lee up after he rejects him. It's not pretty.
 * The Glasses Come Off: Yes, Adam wore glasses at one point in his life.
 * Grey and Gray Morality
 * Hero With Bad Publicity: In the revision, the citizens just want the Ants dead.
 * Humans Are Bastards: Merrick certainly thinks so.
 * Idiot Hero: Adam, though it's more naivete than actual stupidity.
 * I Have You Now, My Pretty: A gender-flipped example occurs when Amia captures Adam. If that's not Squick, I don't know what is.
 * "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Done several times with Marco, and only once does it work.
 * In the revision, Terry Lee goes on a crazy rampage after being possessed by some tentacle things. Adam tries to stop him, but it doesn't work and he has to shoot him instead.
 * Interrupted Suicide: In the fifteenth chapter, Adam tries to throw himself off some building, but Marco pops up and talks him out of it.
 * Luminescent Blush: All the Ants, all the time.
 * Kuudere: Merrick.
 * Mercy Kill: Terry Lee begs Adam to kill him, but he refuses. This has heartbreaking consequences.
 * Mind Rape: The Ants all fall victim to this.
 * Mr. Fanservice: Oh Adam... you're just so hot!
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: They are extremely common in this universe, and given the Ants' superpowers, they usually recover from them just fine. Usually.
 * Offing the Offspring: Marco's mother tried to kill him.
 * Orphanage of Fear: The orphanage Adam was sent to.
 * Rape As Drama: Poor pretty much every Ant except for Marco...
 * Throw the Dog A Bone: Terry Lee's life gets better for about six seconds. Then he dies.
 * Tsundere: Marco's a male type A.
 * Unlucky Childhood Friend: Terry Lee was Adam's best friend back as a kid. Flash-forward to the present, where he gets rejected rather brutally.
 * Unwitting Pawn: Obviously the case with Adam, who is way too trusting.
 * Yandere: Terry Lee's love for Adam is... unsettling, to say the least.
 * Yangire: Gary's sweet on the outside, but DEAR GOD is he twisted on the inside!
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Gary and Merrick in the last chapter.