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Back to the Garden - chapter 2 part 1
I was getting so tired of sitting on this. Of course as always it's a HUGE chapter already, and not even half of what I wanted to happen in it has happened yet, so that makes things unbalanced and the pacing awkward. It's mostly socializing and character dynamics; the next scene ought to be Plotty Planning and the last Kicking Ass & Taking Names, so it would kinda climb up and up re: tension, but they're proving hard to write. Jade isn't talking to me. ;___;
My paleTP is showing. Karkat♦Gamzee Forever! Also contains some Gamzee♥Tavros and Rose???Eridan. :3
Hit the tag for chapter one, I'm too lazy to link. And this is the WIP version so if you find anything that needs editing I'll be glad to hear it!
==> Be theswoony Friendleader Knight of Blood.
"I still say we should have kept that sweet wagon. Tricked it out with steel caps, chrome bumpers, some pimpdaddy-purple velvet pillows on that front bench, my spare stereo..."
Strider's voice is an irritating toneless drawl; it isn't especially loud, but still manages to embody the best qualities of the buzz of an insect in the dark. No matter where you go or how much you swat at it, it's still right here, next to your ear as it looks for the best spot to sting you; tuning it out is impossible.
It's not like you can turn around and tell the cluster of humans to control the constant flow of word-bile that spews forth from their ever-flapping facegashes, either, not when others are talking as well. You tried to enforce silence for maybe ten minutes at the very start of the walk; it was of course doomed to failure, you don't know what possessed you to hope it wouldn't be.
You speed up a little, to go check on... urgh, who is there to check on that you actually want to talk to, not Eridan or Vriska, that's for sure. Tavros maybe? Bet he'd just grin and bounce on his fleshy toes and take ten minutes to say how, uh, how very happy he, um, is, that, er, they're home and, um, not besieged by imperial drones and a couple battleships and maybe a nest of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
Maybe Terezi...?
"The sleepy lioness wonders how much farther the brave hunting party must journey to reach its cozy den."
Flop. Suddenly, a Nepeta handbag. You trip a little, glower down at her from where she's hanging all her weight on your elbow. She's... not that much smaller, but apparently in that third-of-a-perigee you now have on her you had a bit of a growth spurt and -- obviously, being dead at the time -- she didn't, so she stayed a compact bundle of nothing but hard muscles and sinews. Heavier than she looks, and much tinier than she weighs.
Being younger doesn't make her face look any less lined with exhaustion. A prickle of guilt makes you swallow the 'when did you turn into a blood flow-hampering anterior limb accessory' you were about to let out. She's been on point ever since you guys started walking, alone and covering three times as much ground as everyone else, and it'll only be another two hours at most before dawn.
"... The mighty pride leader knows what he's doing, okay?"
Nepeta tilts her head and makes one of her retarded kitty mouth-noises that she thinks are cute. You sigh. You're too tired to find it annoying.
(Not so tired you actually find it cute, you'd have to cull yourself, but enough to feel a little twinge of a pale desire to pat her head and tell her all about how ridiculous she is, in the nicest way possible. You get random shooshpapping twinges around just about everyone you know, though -- and instead of getting territorial over the mere mention Gamzee finds it adorable as all fuck, so you just try to ignore it and only guilt about it the barest minimum.)
"I've been counting those stone markers by the road. We've now seen three roadside shelters at about the same intervals, so if I'm not missing my guess there'll be a fourth soon and then we can stop for the day."
Those shelters are so weird. Not the make itself -- dug right into the embankment so the back wall and half the sides are cool, packed earth and the front is all thick, whitewashed rocks to reflect daylight away, living tree branches bent and tied together to add a layer of shadows over the roof; makes sense against the daylight heat if you have to do without materials of carpenter drone make -- but the fact that they exist at all, and that obviously it's a standardized habit.
You figure it's got to be a human thing, something else they changed, because no troll you've ever heard of would have bothered making things easy for other travelers they don't know from their quadrant-corner's lusus, and if they didn't know where the hell they were going, or couldn't manage to find their own shelter, well, too bad for them and plan better next time you crotchstains whoops too late.
Humans are ridiculously community-oriented, though, there's only to look at the way that village back there was built all squeezed in together, houses almost climbing on top of each other, wall to wall, you'd have fit maybe three rustblood lawnrings there, tops. Even communal hive stems like where Sollux used to live put some actual space between apartments.
... Something else they changed.
It's Alternia. It's definitely Alternia.
You recognize everything. The night-blooming scents in the air, and the beasts slithering just out of sight, testing your awareness and whether they could cull one of the sixteen of you from the herd, and the dappled patterns of light and shadows on the face of the amethyst moon.
The emerald moon has apparently fucked off at some point and been replaced with the most boring celestial body imaginable. It's half the size the emerald moon used to be and pale-grayish -- silvery if you felt like being generous, but you don't, so instead you dub it the pasty moon, which is sort of very lame but it's that or the rainbow-drinker moon for the way it glows white and like fuck you are calling it the rainbow-drinker moon, Rose would blather on and on about you hitting on her matesprit and what that means about your subconscious desire to grow up to be your lusus. Makes the light weird, kind of pink, but the paleness reflects a greater amount of light, compensates for the smaller size so you're not actually having to walk around blind.
"Ow!"
Apart from the humans, that is. But you are not paying attention to the humans, you're paying attention to... hm. Sollux and Aradia and Feferi, and gogdamnit why are Aradia and Feferi holding hands with each other, they're not in a quadrant are they? Gaaah, pisses you off, it's like they all take turns being various shades of red for each other, and every time you hint at Sollux about it he just smirks like the proverbial purrbeast with a bowl-full of delicious cream-covered featherbeasts and he refuses to say anything. And he smirks some more until you want to fix his lispy problem with one well-placed angry fist. Even more than you usually do, that is.
Okay, no, you're paying attention to, let's go with Kanaya, yeah, why the fuck not. Who's been as always useful and easy to work with, even now she's making herself useful illuminating the path with her glowy face so that her snarky matesprit won't trip and fall flat on her pugbeast nose and argh, you were not paying attention to any humans!
"...but do you know how to handle a draft not-quite-ox?" Lalonde is asking Strider, all silky and amused, and he shrugs in that irritating, barely-there way of his.
"Fuck no, but I figured we could harness John and Jade, they're filled with so much bounce-happies they could pull a whole house."
... They are, too. Even now. Hearing their names, they look over their shoulders at the same time, arm in arm like a pair of adorable childhood moirails straight from one of those idyllic movies that you love mostly because they never happen in real life seriously how can that be an ideal if those derpy clutchclones somehow manage to be it, and they beam with all their considerable amount of teeth (somehow those plate-sized meatcutters never do look threatening.)
"Karkitty is really happy we can keep our humans, hmm?" Nepeta chirps in your ear.
You flinch and try to shake her off, but she has somehow become a horrorterror-lioness while you weren't paying attention and all her suckers are glued onto you.
It's too late, you will never escape. You keep trying anyway. "What the hell are you on about? No, wait, I don't want to know, it won't make sense anyway, it never does, your thinkpan is rotted through with cat puns--"
"The purrocious lioness didn't really want to give them back either. Jade gives the best scritches! And John will play with me for hours, and, and Rose is sort of scary-looking but she knitted me a new hat that one time I lost my old one, and..."
"--tell you, this was an advance war party, why else would they be so far from all troll territories, I know they roam but never in such big packs, there were over thirty of them!--"
"--hell, there was a reason we settled so far inland--"
"--they had humans with them, fucking pieces of shit trollsucking traitors, serve as guides no doubt--"
"... and I'm glad we're keeping them."
Nepeta's arm goes tight, claws pricking your biceps. For a second you almost expect her fucking purrbeast-ear-shaped horns to droop, that's how down she seems.
That's how down you feel.
"Yeah," you mutter, and you look away. "I suppose I'm. It's. Probably better that way."
Nepeta's frown melts away and she smiles at you all crinkle-eyed and dimple-cheeked, it's disgusting. You put your free hand on her forehead and shove her off.
"For now! They might still choose to leave later. That'll be fine. Whatever."
You really should have kept the wagon, instead of leading it back to the village after the three humans on it had absconded at high speed, shouldn't have bothered trying to be good neighbors to those diarrhea-speckled ass-wipes. You admit the sixteen of you make for a pretty impressive strike force, but who'd ever believe Egbert's barkbeast friendliness hides murderous intent?
(Come to think of it he'd make a terrifying laughssassin.)
Anyway.
John was the most hurt. Jade was pained for a minute, you think, but you know she was raised alone by her lusus, so even if she has a human's social instincts, in short order she was cursing up and down their ancestor forest or bush or something like that (human reproduction is disgusting) and then she was over it. Rose and Strider are cynical, wary, pessimistic assholes who'd almost deserve to be trolls; you're sure they weren't even that surprised.
Anyway so John was the most hurt, at first, but Terezi and Spiderbitch stayed back to eavesdrop some more and apparently the towns farther to the west dealt with more trolls and were less hostile (that's apparently how you translate "trollsucker" from the native Speciesist Asswipe) and that was where you all wanted to be, and from that point on he was filled with ridiculous enthusiasm for those mythical places of equality and harmony.
You've been walking ever since. Nrrgh.
"The lioness wonders why her crab friend looks so crabby. She says, he will have wrinkles before he's even ten sweeps old!"
And then she licks the pad of her thumb and tries to rub the spot between your brows like it's a smudge of dirt she can actually erase. You flail in protest and try to dodge, but while you were deep in thought Nepeta has reclaimed your arm. Again. How did you not notice, it is simply ridiculous. You are trapped, there is nowhere to go, and now you have catgirl spit on your face!
You flail your free hand in her direction a bit, though you don't get it too close in case she captures that one as well. "Stop slobbering all over me! That's disgusting, holy grubmunching fuck."
"Karkitty, why are you frowning." She scowls at you. It looks like a caricature of John's Serious Face, which already looks like a caricature in the first place.
"I'm not frowning, my face is just that way, okay. It's a birth defect, now shut up and go back to the despair pit of nerd hell you came from."
"Nyaa?" she says, and tilts her head like a dizzy, horn-shaken wiggler.
"No, seriously. There's nothing to frown about, everything's been going really well since --" You feel your frown deepening this time; you turn your face away; "--since then, no blisters, no food gone bad, we keep finding fresh streams to drink from, hopbeasts throw themselves in our path..."
"Yes! It's grrrreat, isn't it!"
"No it's not. It's suspicious as fuck! Shit happens. Shit happening is a constant in all of our lives. When shit is not happening it's because shit is happening in areas we have not come across yet and it's in the process of piling up high enough for a shit tsunami, which will conveniently start whenever we happen to walk by that lovely and insufficient shit dam. Welcome to MiddleOfExcrementLakeVille, Population: You."
Nepeta is giggling against your shoulder, since both her hands are clamped onto your arm. You consider shrugging her off, it feels weird, but at least she's smart enough to muffle her voice while the lot of you are walking in an unknown forest a couple hours before dawn like a bunch of ambush-bait idiots.
"... Honestly it's come to a point where I'm pretty sure Vriska sucked out all of that asshole village's luck as revenge for making John sadface."
(As much of a selfish, grandstanding bitch as Vriska is, you find you're almost ready to like her just for how furiously she will defend him. Thankfully the impulse to do so only lasts as long as it takes for her to open her wordhole.)
You glance around for said Vriska, since her babysitter is busy flirting with someone else at the moment. (Goddamn you get that romance is great as fuck but honestly! You thought you could depend on Aradia and Kanaya, but apparently making moobeast eyes at their matesprit -- or what ever the fuck Feferi is to Aradia, seriously Sollux can see them flirt he is right here -- won against making sure their respective threats-to-keep-at-heel didn't fuck off into the night or otherwise provoke some kind of calamity.)
(Your own threat-to-keep-at-heel is currently ambling beside Tavros and making him blush brown to the tip of his ears, and looking remarkably casual about it. You Do Not Want To Know. Most likely Gamzee is oversharing and doesn't realize. Or thinks it's cute to fuck with people and watch them fluster themselves into an aneurysm. You're his moirail and you can never tell which.)
Nepeta has progressed from giggles to laugh-snorting, for some arcane reason you are quite happy never to unravel. Your shoulder is going to be covered in forest green snot.
"The lioness agrees this is furry likely! Vriskers is sooo red for John. Oh, I want my paints...!"
You grimace, but there's no refuting it.
"It's so sweet that she would do that fur him."
"Yeah, it's also just fucking damn sweet that she did it behind everyone's back and didn't mention it later apart from that really creepy smirk so we can have things ready in case they, you know, figure it out and retaliate. Planning ahead? No, not us, who needs that."
To be honest with yourself (no one will ever hear this, not Nepeta, not even Gamzee, and certainly not Vriska) you probably should scold Vriska for pissing off people who might come at you with pitchforks, no matter how unlikely it is they'll figure it out -- holy nookchafing fuck, teamwork is actually a word that exists! with official spelling and a definition, even! -- but in truth you're just upset you didn't think to order her to do it first.
"Karkitty should pounce before she does," Nepeta says, eyelashes lowered demurely and eyes gleaming underneath.
Oh, hell no. Crazy catgirl and her shipping. Fucked if you go 'what makes you think I even want to seriously it's been three years and it wasn't even that quadrant' because it's impossible that you mean it, and fucked if you go 'pounce who' because that's straight-up denial and we know what that means, and fucked if you go 'pounce what' because then she'll explain. Actually if you even acknowledge that you heard her, you automatically lose.
"The mighty leader needs to do some mighty leadering on the bitchiest spider who ever webbed and the glubbiest prissy douche who ever skinny-dipped now. Nice kitty, get the fuck off me."
You tell yourself she's not laughing at you when she lets go, because being laughed at by the chick who thinks she's a purrbeast is pretty much the last deplorable step before ascending to the glorious throne of emperor of pathetic assholes, and the population in that empire might even outnumber that of Her Imperial Condescension herself. (Granted, there's a humongous amount of overlap.) You tell yourself you're not absconding, either. You are horrifyingly bad at lying to yourself, you guess that's why you can't stand you; there's no dissimulating all those horrendous personality defects behind a layer of hazy recollections and indulgent self-flattery.
And Sollux is still grinning as Aradia giggles in Feferi's ear, what is going on there. He talked them into doing it just to torture you, you can tell.
If you had water powers you'd turn the tube-shaped water ejector on them right here and now. You don't, that'd be too useful, so you scan the group for your wayward woolbeasts. Last you checked they were -- aha.
You drift to the side of the group and pretend to check your shoes for pebbles, so people won't stop and ask what you're doing (if they can be assed to pay attention to anyone but the partners they're chatting up, that is) and then when almost everyone has passed you, you ghost back up.
Your targets are clustered. This is only slightly less suspicious than those times when Egbert sneaks you side glances while going hee hee hee like a panshaken yet oddly happy goat. Eridan's been sore about being dumped out of Vriska's black quadrant ever since it happened, in other words forfuckingever ago. Granted the time was probably shorter for him but even back before Kanaya cut him off his whiny mourning was edging into tedious.
(Alright, no, back in the day you liked hearing all about his troubles and advising him, to the point where kid-you, being a stupid little fuck as most past Karkats are wont to be, was vaguely entertaining thoughts of dragging him in the diamond quadrant if he ever, miraculously, managed to flip flushed with Feferi. Only Eridan just never really listened to you or advised you back.)
They're not sniping right now, not even really looking at each other. They're whispering, heads close, but watching someone else, throwing little guarded glances. You might have been counting down the minutes until one of the two of them felt safe enough to abscond and-or otherwise fuck the whole group over, but if there's something worse than another attempt to rekindle that particular clusterfuck of a kismesissitude, it's probably the two of them in cahoots.
You sneak. You're not surprised that Eridan doesn't notice -- he has good, sharp senses but he's overconfident about them -- but that Vriska doesn't means she really must be invested in the conversation.
"... cull evveryone!" Eridan whispers. Okay yes no what the almighty fuck you need to know what they're talking about right now.
"Okay, I miiiiiiiight see your point. She's kind of... But -- Karkat! Hi. What are you doing here."
Fuck.
The flat, suspicious glare Vriska directs your way only widens your toothy grin. You wanted to listen in longer, but oh well, there are other ways! You step up between them, an arm around each neck. It almost looks friendly. If you're blind. Or socially mutilated and incapable of reading a threat.
"So! Who are we planning to cull today?" you ask brightly. You swear your fangs would sparkle if there was just a touch more moonlight.
Eridan gives you a look full of wounded innocence at the sheer, black unfairness of your question (hi Feferi, hi Kanaya) while Vriska stiffens and goes "If we were going to cull someone, we wouldn't tell you! How stupid do you think we are!"
Funny how normal grins make your cheeks ache in short order, but when you're thinking about how happy you'd be to eat someone's face off it just feels like the most natural configuration for your facial muscles to take. Some days you're afraid Gamzee influenced you just as much as you've influenced him. Right now you bet he'd just tell you "whatever makes you happiest, best bro!" and you are nothing if not a considerate moirail who listens faithfully to the advice of his paler half.
Eridan is the weaker link, so you go full cannons on him. "Okay! Don't tell me. Maybe you'll tell Feferi."
He sneaks Feferi's back a look, all long swinging hair and swingier hips, and he shrinks.
"What was that?" You lean your hearing plate toward him. "Glub glub yes please sir, oh boy would I love to? Well, no reason to wait!" And you start to pull him so he'll walk faster.
You're expecting it when he digs in his heels, but when Vriska does the same on your other side, and adds a really sharp elbows under your ribs on top, you're a little more surprised. The glare she spears you with is soul-withering.
Or would be, if you had a soul. As it is, you've traded it in for a leadership. (No wonder you got saddled with such a band of nookstains, thing was shrunk too small to be worth much.)
"There an issue I should know about regarding our delightful heiress-no-more? I wouldn't want you two to think I'm not listening to your concerns in a benevolent and impartial manner. Even though I'm not." It's weird that Vriska is siding with Eridan, she has no issue with Feferi that you know of. Then again, they were sort of looking in that direction but maybe someone else... Vriska has no issue with Sollux either, but Aradia was riding herd on her earlier and maybe she doesn't want her to be reminded and get back to it. "I owe Aradia a little kick in the back flesh cushions anyway; come along."
Eridan glubs again and shrinks a little more, somehow, goes to dead weight under your arm. Vriska hisses, but you ignore her. You stop walking, stare at Eridan until he looks back at you in question.
"Aradia."
Cringe.
"Aradia."
Shudder.
"Araaadia."
"Gnn will ya fuckin stop it already! What if she hears?"
Okay, what the vast croaking fuck. "Alright! It's a joyous night full of wonders and too much healthy exercise, so I'm willing to be generous. You can talk, or you can talk. The difference between the two is you'll regret the second."
"Oh my gog!" Vriska throws her hands up in the air. "Why do you like to hear yourself talk so much!"
"Hey, Egbert! Spiderbitch is going a-culling again."
The look she gives you is so black you're uncomfortable meeting it, lest you see spades there at the bottom.
"Haha, what did you say, Karkat? Jade was--"
"Nothing, go away." You pull your double armful of prey a little farther back; John gets distracted pretty fast, but at least now Vriska is sulking because she knows you've got the bigger weapon.
"You're so irritating! We weren't talking of culling someone, gog, we were talking of someone culling us."
"If the rest of us haven't culled you two yet, it's probably not in the cards just yet," you admit. You're pretty resigned to this by now, as sad as it makes you. "Now what the hell is the matter with Aradia? Jegus on a butterless toast, next you'll tell me you have a problem with Tavros."
You look at Aradia again, trying to see it. Same long hair... okay her horns are way bigger now, but those things happen with -- huh.
"She's an adult," Eridan says through a sneer. "Look at her, she's almost big enough for the fuckin Armada!"
Eridan is thin under your arm. Pubescent, and tall for his age, but half-finished. Vriska is more fleshy, but she's not all that much older than he is. Not even half a sweep, perhaps barely a third. You outweigh them both, and you're not big as trolls go. Aradia is taller than you are, and curvy, and okay her horns are impressive, but that's not all it is, Feferi is even taller and as Strider would say it her imperial trunk accommodates a lot more junk. It's just... Aradia looks it. Her eight sweeps and then some.
Okay, you sort of understand. Trolls don't usually socialize outside of their age group. You've got to be particularly pathetic to look to younger trolls -- means you're too pitiful to stand your ground against people you don't have sweeps of size and experience over -- and particularly cocky -- or suicidal -- to look to older. The older trolls get and the more cull-happy, it seems; got to practice for when they join up, after all. So making friends across such an age gap just doesn't happen. (Maybe it happens up there in the Fleet, but once you're off-planet everyone is an adult and it doesn't matter anymore which batch you were hatched with.)
You sort of get it. Doesn't stop you slapping the back of their heads. "She's Aradia, you witless fucks, you've known her since forever."
You get glares for your troubles, and half-hearted shoving, but neither of them yanks free of your neck-grabs. It comes to you then that maybe the reason why even Vriska hasn't retaliated for that yet is that even you seem a bit old and scary to them. This is so weird. You're too used to looking six sweeps old, same as them; apart from the clothes it's not like the game updated its graphics.
It should probably be weirder than it is to be granted a different body now, but it's not like you had time to brood about it before you were thrown ass-first in undead assholes, and then it turned out if you didn't over-think it your body moved pretty normally, and the undead assholes worked really hard at not giving you time enough for self-reflection. Still, the body might work but your self-image hasn't updated yet. Bit lacking in reflective surfaces out here in the woods.
"Shit, you FLARPed with her. You know what she's like. Death fangirl or not, she's never even violent until you push her pretty damn far." You pause to consider it. "Or unless you're Equius. Huh, okay. Maybe she gets a little violent sometimes."
Eridan grimaces. "Oh, stop fucking with us already!" growls Vriska.
"Aw, but it's the most fun I've had in perigees. Would you really take that from me? You're heartless, Serket, just heartless." You relent, though. Younger or not, Vriska won't take it much longer without preparing her revenge, and she's dangerous. And Eridan... well, he can be dangerous too but so far he's been subdued enough that you're mostly worried about epic sulking fits.
Alright, and maybe it would bug you a tiny little bit to see either of them flounce out of the group, never to be seen again. Shit, you guys have cooperated and survived together for a sweep and a half, that's unprecedented for a group that size. It just... well, you got into the habit, you guess.
Your idiot-herding endeavors would not be doomed enough without those two particular pains in your ass. Yeah.
"More seriously, she has no reason to flip out on either of you, just because you're tiny and scrawny and vulnerable." x2 twitch combo. Hah. "I'd be more worried about that happening with Gamzee. Guess you two weren't around for that one, though!"
"... Shaddap," Eridan mutters.
You flick the edge of his fins with the back of a claw, curious to see what happens; he growls under his breath and gives you a hurt, betrayed look, it's like you kicked a barkbeast. He doesn't even wriggle against your hold. Crazy. Practical, though. You are going to use the shit out of it until they get desensitized and start back up with the casual disrespect.
"Anyway even if she ain't cullin anyone much, what happens when the recruitment drones come for her? 'cause I bet they'd cull us a make a way through an' take her, easy -- uh, Kar? ... Kar, yer growlin."
You are, indeed, growling. Fancy that.
"Yeah, no. Fuck the drones. Fuck them without a fucking bucket, fuck them up the bulge and out through their waste chute, no."
Vriska gives you a strangely cautious look. "Bit missing in nookmunching and butt stains," she says, airy like she doesn't care, but she's still watching you. You briefly close your eyes and breathe out.
"...My most insincere apologies, your great grubfucking Condesce, for failing to deliver a gog-damned epic poem of 'sick burns' for the delight of your discerning noise holes." And you look at her, and at him, and you couldn't keep your voice from dropping quiet and deadly if you tried, and so you don't. "But anyone tries to take one of the sixteen of us away, they'll have to cull me first."
There is no way in hell you can stay here anymore, not with the way they stare at you, not after what you said -- shit, what the hell was that, maybe you'd do better with a tattoo on your face, Karkat Vantas Is The Hugest Paleslut Since Troll Debbie Shooshpaps Dallas, at least people'd be warned. You drop your arms from their necks -- it's just gotten embarrassing, like it's not a threat anymore, like you actually mean it -- and you stalk away, chin held up high like you're not fucking ashamed.
Gamzee. Where the fuck is Gamzee.
You'll apologize to him later, he deserves it, because you're pretty sure Tavros had a bit of the look of a young jade debutante starting to let herself get charmed against her best judgment by the roguish yet oddly alluring rustblood the Mother Grub warned her about. But when you walk up to him he takes one look at your face and his arm lifts in invitation, and you slot under it and against his side like you're a fighter jet returning to the mothership.
His arm around your shoulders is the farthest from threatening, or mocking. It's safe and sheltering and comfortable, and this is where you belong. You don't want anyone else. You don't.
He doesn't question you. What happened, why you're growling. He just goes "okay, bro?" and you two fall into step the way you should be unable to, with the ridiculous length of his legs. You nod because you don't really want to talk about it, and he drops it because he can tell.
Eventually you're even a little sorry about the barging in, but hopefully watching how good Gamzee is at pitying people will make Tavros less nervous about saying hell yes. Not that you really have any idea what's attractive in any flushed way in your moirail, but seriously. You guess Tavros' shyness is what Gamzee finds so pitiful about him. Or maybe how utterly blackrom-handicapped...
Nope, sorry, the only response this invokes in you is the platonic kind of pity, because honestly that's just sad. Blackrom is awesome. (Even though you've technically never had that quadrant filled.)
Yeah, romance. Romance is nice to think about. The rest of your assholes will have to sort themselves out for a bit.
--
Hours in the future, but not many...
The sky is lightening noticeably in the east when Terezi -- on point, having taken over from Nepeta -- comes across the shelter. You were starting to worry you'd miscounted the milestones. But no, there it is, a little off to the side under the trees. It's like a big white stone box sunk halfway into the earth. John bounces down the entry stairs and through the door first, before you can yell not to go alone, and immediately goes "empty!", not even having the decency of giving you some time to get a good rant going.
"There's a couple hooks we can put hammocks on," he says as he comes back out. "But man, I don't think it's made for so many people. There better not be any other visitors in need tonight or we'll be sleeping in piles."
You don't see what's wrong with sleeping in piles. Granted you've never made a pile out of live trolls, but it's a staple of the roadtrip movie genre to make piles of culled ones at rest stops. Can't be any worse.
It occurs to you that maybe you're a little tired.
You're the co-leader, you should be co-leadering, but turns out there isn't much even a heap of moron refuse like the fifteen you've been saddled with can mess up about sitting down to grab a bite to eat and then going in and finding a corner to cram themselves into. There isn't even that much chatter, everyone's quiet. You stay outside for a bit, squinting up at the lightening sky. The colors are violently gorgeous, kind of the way animals will be decked in all kinds of ocular-globes-bursting shades to prove how venomous they are.
The lighter a color, the more lethal, that's why nothing fucks with lusii. The sky's getting pretty golden over there...
"Hey, best friend! Saved you a spot, for when you get around to coming in and getting your snooze on."
Whoops. Okay, that was embarrassing. You almost fell asleep right there outside. You pull yourself up and clump down the steps.
It's a single rectangular room inside. It would probably be big enough for five humans and a couple riding beasts. Maybe ten humans, if they were feeling regrettably amorous. It's not exactly made with trolls the size of Equius or the width of Tavros in mind (where the hell did those shoulders come from, he'll catch up to his horns if this keeps going, it's so unfair that you came back a half-sweep older than him and still undersized and -- okay, yes, you did acquire a sweet layer of muscle, but it barely shows under that stupid Knight tabard. The Universe Has It In For Karkat Vantas, evidence number three bazillion and one.)
"Last one in gets to close the door!" Sollux quips. You roll your eyes at him, but well, someone has to. You hip-check Eridan out of the way and heave the massive door away from the wall; it thunks closed in a way that says a lot about how much you wouldn't like getting your hand stuck in it.
Of course it's a bit too primitive a set-up for an electronic lock-plate, but you can figure it out. Yeah. Um.
"The bar."
"Shut up, I saw it on my own." There is indeed a wooden bar, thick and heavy, and it seems to slot deep into the stone wall; in your admittedly not expert opinion it all looks solid enough that the wall would probably come down before the door did.
You tap it with a knuckle. Ow.
Sollux snickers. You glare at him; he scratches his chin, pretends to look elsewhere. "...I did that too."
You pinch your lips rather than smile back. He can probably tell anyway.
"Might make a pretty thweet fuck you from beyond the grave in case thome daring land gamblignants in sun coats decide to gas us all to rob our corpthes. We might be dead, but you won't have our valuables! Haha, we win."
"Oh sweet, loose Mother Grub refuse, Captor, never try to sound positive ever again."
You lower the bar into place single-handedly like the strong leader-type troll you are and don't wince or wobble at all, and even less almost-drop it on your foot. Sollux snickers again. You'd kick him, but he absconds before you can, waving back at you without looking as he joins his red-mates in the corner they've laid claim to. Aththole.
... It's really cramped in here. Huh.
Kanaya and Nepeta are collaborating on a pile. Terezi is going against all of trollkind and actually stringing herself up a hammock. (It's one thing when you can't make piles anyway and you can and will suffocate if you don't sleep in the air, but being all wrapped up in thread and so visible and off the ground, urgh. You bet she's doing it mostly for the Death From Above angle.) Vriska is "helping" Tavros.
For all you know she's actually helping him without the ironic quotes, but when Gamzee's eyes narrow at her you sigh and wave at him to distract him from her, yeah, yeah, you'll be with him in a second.
You pass Eridan who is still standing by the door, making your way to John, sitting on the floor against the wall and as always wrapped up in his moirail orgy, Jade on one side and Rose on the other, and Strider already perched overhead in another hammock, hands stuck behind his head and a leg swinging lazily like he's thinking of accidentally-on-purpose kicking you.
"Hey. Do your job, you lazy asshole. Think we should post guards?"
John looks around the room, where everyone is fussing with their piles or even already burrowing and staring sightlessly at the walls. "... Dunno. Last night -- uh, day -- wasn't really much of a rest, and then we walked all night, and everyone is still drained from whatever we did that made everyone just crash when we came out of the game..." A furrow between his eyebrows, he cups a hand. The resulting breeze barely makes the bangs hanging in his eyes shiver. "How about yours?"
"Let's pass over the fact that my God Tier ability is the biggest fraud any chump has ever been cheated with. I could maybe make one of Tavros' skull-shaving nicks scab." Sigh. "Point taken. We're all more or less useless."
"There's also the fact that we're all tired enough to fall asleep even if we're trying not to," Rose intervenes, "since there is no space here for a watcher to entertain themselves without disturbing others. And with the walls so thick and the aeration openings so hard to see out of it's likely the advance warning they bring us would be counted in mere seconds anyway."
"Huh. Conclusion, not worth the bother." You arch an eyebrow at John. He shrugs up at you.
"I'm planning to blame exhaustion for fuzzying out my judgment if anything happens! No, really, it's like I have nothing but dust bunnies in there!"
You trollfully refrain from snorting and thinking real hard about how surprised you are to learn he ever had anything else. Okay, no, you don't. John kicks at your ankle, though it mostly looks like his foot just slipped and he misses by at least a whole handspan.
"... Anyway, my dearest copalhoncho desire is sleep for everyone. No one can blame us!"
You snort. "We can blame us, bulgeface. But fine. Not like I'm not used to the sweet caress of self-hatred." Okay, it's settled, now time to return to your moirail and crash for a week...
"Over here, Mr. Ampora."
... or not. You stare down at Rose. She's ignoring you entirely, freaky mutant sea troll eyes fixed on Eridan, who stares back at her with utter bafflement. She even ignores Strider's tiny frown and sudden stillness, or Jade's raised eyebrows. She just stares Eridan down until he starts making his cautious way across the room to her, because it's that or saying no and she might just eat the poor fool's soul in an entirely unrelated incident if that were to happen.
Eridan sneaks you a wary glance in passing. You are suddenly overcome with the need to pretend that you're still in deep conversation with someone else right around here and that while in perfect eavesdropping distance you have zero interest in whatever happens, honest. "Uh. Hey, Jade. How is it going?"
"You may have the spot between I and the wall," Rose is saying. "I won't subject you to the nerve-wracking experience of sleeping straight underneath my dear ectobrother."
Jade answers you with a just-as-distracted "Uhn, good. Yeah."
"Wouldn't want to deprive you of the years of passive-aggressive munitions you could rake in out of my hammock falling under the tremendous weight of my swag and pancaking you, sis," Strider drawls.
"You know the way to my heart so well, Dave-dear."
"Under the ribs and up looks less direct at first glance, but really it's way less complicated, guys," Jade pipes up, abandoning all pretense. Rose's and Dave's lips twitch in amusement; John chokes on a snicker. You try to keep pretending you're not still right here, which involves not breathing lest you also choke. Jade just turns to Eridan, who's still standing there and looking unconvinced. "Don't be shy! I bet she's just doing it because it's going to get way hot in here and you're cold-blooded."
"You've caught me red-handed," Rose replies in a tone dry as a desert, that doesn't even pretend to be even vaguely acquainted with convincing. "Sit down," she tells Eridan. (You're not sure if it was a polite suggestion or an order. Possibly both.)
You are mildly fascinated by this bizarre event, and glad that Eridan has more or less forgotten you were still standing there.
"Tha's... kinda pale a you," he ventures.
You're not sure if he's more suspicious or painfully hopeful... No, huh, actually, the usual immediate assumption that someone has finally recognized his inherent greatness is pretty much absent. He's mostly wary, really, confused. Aw heck, stupid asshole kid, if only he wasn't such a creep and guaranteed to take your whole anterior appendage up to the shoulder socket if you give him a single pointing frond, you'd ... nrrh, Gamzee, Gamzee.
"I mean okay, yeah, I'm kinda a smart guy, I can take a hint, I'm not fuckin stupid, that's probably not how it is on account a how you're an alien who can't ever really wrap your understanding around it, but see it from my side, okay? It's a bit..."
Rose rolls her eyes. "If you must ascribe a quadrant to it, it would be closer to ashen. I do not especially like you, Mr. Ampora, nor do I pity you, but I find I am invested in coming between you and the rest of the world. So if it will help -- yes, I am in fact expressing interest of a quadrant-related nature. Now if you will --"
He counters with a vaguely spluttering "That's not how it works," (you are biting your tongue from the effort of not saying the same, seriously, your tongue is bleeding but holy shit you can not miss this) but even then he's already putting his back to the wall and sliding down to sit by her, hugging his knees.
"Wow, Rose," Jade says, craning her neck to look around John. "So if we still count as your moirails, can we say congrats on getting your third quadrant filled? Hi, Eridan. Guess that makes us cousins or in-laws or something."
"I don't think trolls have cousins. I think they have quadrant-corners?" John suggests with a hapless shrug, and Dave goes "Shit" from his hammock, disgusted yet already resigned, like this is a thing that happened and there's nothing more to be done but live with it.
You think you'd stand there all day being amazed into total brain death by their ridiculous lackadaisical approach to the quadrants -- that or Rose's tastes, because what -- only then a long arm wraps around your chest from behind and yanks you back. You stumble.
"Time for all little nubby miracle trolls to get their sleep on, bro. Come along."
"You know, there's a difference between moirail and lusus," you grumble, but when Gamzee herds you away, you let him.
--
==> Karkat: Be the lusus-y moirail. The lurail? The moirailus? Oh hey, sounds like a right bitchtits thing to be. Kinda like a fatter goatdad -- no, wait, that's walrus. Is it?
==> Be the tool who thinks it'd be fun to be a walrus.
Hours in the future, but not many...
Whoa, man. You know from dreams, but this one was especially bitchtits wicked. All up and standing on your hands, honking things with your face, and the most wicked horns growing from your mouth of all places. Unsopored dreams are fun. Almost be worth the three times you half-woke up to your palebro swatting at your nose cause he couldn't get his sleep on, on account of your hand all up and finding his neck somehow and thinking it'd be fun to hug that motherfucker real tight.
Almost only until you wake up in full, and then not worth it at all.
You know most trolls get night terrors.
In your nights, you are the terror.
"Urgh..."
You look down in time for Karkat to flop around and headbutt you in the shoulder. He has the most adorable round horns, man, there is no way he could put any kind of serious hurt on a brother with those. Might bust someone's nose if he's lucky, but he never is. The universe granted your brother the gift of perseverance, and if he got things the easy way just by standing there he'd never get to show it off. Guess the universe had to provide things to rise against, too. Things shine brighter in the dark.
You kind of want to cuddle him.
"You hug me and I'll make you regret it."
Karkat's eye is cracked open, glaring at you. He looks like a wet purrbeast. You grin. It's pure magic how he gets you so well. "Aw, could never regret getting my cuddle action on with you, brother."
He goes all red in the face and splutters and bats at you, and it makes the daymares slough away, like just knowing he's not scared off (and still pale for you) is enough to shed them right off your thinksponge.
"... You are the most -- most shameless flirt I've ever -- ngh."
Muffled giggles on your other side. You turn your head, lean up on an elbow. Look at that, miracles everywhere. Tavros is all hiding his mouth behind his hands, like maybe he's trying to catch any more of those laughterbits before they can come out, which is a shame because they're pretty as music. His face is just as blood-flushed as your palebro's.
"Um. Hi, Gamzee."
"Just great," Karkat whimpers, and tries to burrow his way between your back and the floor with his face. You oblige him by rolling on your side entirely so he won't have to dig.
"Hi, Karkat?" Tavros whispers across your side, all shy but with that adorable amused little smile curving his mouth that you kind of want to kiss a lot.
"... Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let me sleep."
You shrug. Nothing wrong with your brother getting some more snooze on, even though others are stirring in the room and will drag him up soon. You sit up, though, so you can watch out for him. You never know, some motherfucker could come tripping on horns or stairs or things and fall right on him. Best be ready to catch them.
You watch as Tavros pushes himself up on his elbows all slow and careful, with his head angling this and that way like he's doing a thinkpan dance. Those are some nice muscles he's got there, rolling under his skin, all corded up his neck, round shoulders...
"Um, Gamzee, can you move away from the wall, just a tiny bit? I, uh, I'll get you with my horn otherwise."
Whoops, got it. He's pretty good at not knocking into people and shit with that enormous rack of his. You can only admire that mad skill. Yours pretty much only point up and a bit to the sides, so unless a motherfucker trips on you from above there's no risk of accidental impalement. Maybe falling trapeze artists, but they'd have to not be very good at their job. Might want to take up juggling instead.
You shuffle forward on your butt. Karkat mutters sleepily. Tavros pushes himself up and sits with pretty much just his hands.
You really, really want to get your hands all over those most excellent shoulders. If you try it now he'll go all brown in the face and squeak and make that panicky grimace like he doesn't know if he wants to run away or what.
You don't want to scare him. You really, really don't want that.
"... Hey, bro."
Your voice is quiet because Karkat's sleeping, but maybe because of other things too. He looks up at you a little wide-eyed, all nervous and confused and so, so pitiful. You lean to curl your fingers around the top of his bare foot. You're gentle and light like he's a chirpbeast; the best miracle of all is when they all up and decide they like it in your hands, and not even because they're too crushed up to fly.
You give his foot a little shake. "Getting your forgetting on?"
He lights up all over and his toes curl and spread like a row of the ten most adorable baby sausages you've ever seen, you'd eat them right up, and you laugh with him because you can't not.
"Oh wow -- I didn't really forget but, you know -- it's been so long and... Wow, just wow."
Your hand is on his ankle and he hasn't tried to pull away. He's still grinning at you. You rub a circle on that little bony bump part with your thumb and grin back.
"Oh gog," Karkat groans, and makes a gagging noise like those times he tries to bolt down his breakfast on account of having more important shit to take care of than feeding his digestion sac. You crane your neck to look at him.
"Bro?"
"Fucking most shameless panfucked clowntard ever in all the history of Alternia. All the histories of Alternia, from every single reset and doomed timeline. All of them."
"Shoosh, bro."
Tavros giggles again, and you smile at him some more, only then he looks away and over your shoulder. Aw, unchill. Looks like someone's fixing to get their interruption on.
"Good evening, Jade. Um, how are you?"
You look back and sure enough it's the girl human with the troll hair. Looks all happy and bouncy and just like a little mountain of determination. Ain't gonna be shifting that anytime soon. "Hey Tavros, and pretty good! Hey Gamzee. I've got to ask Karkat something."
"Aw, sis, give a brother a little more time to wake his bad self up."
"I heard him bitching, he can't be that asleep."
You scratch your chin. "Dunno 'bout that. Sometimes he'll lay wicked rants against those bad dreams."
Tavros gets the giggles again. Karkat grumbles as he wraps himself tighter around you and headbutts the small of your back. "Thanks for the support, asshole." Then he rolls back his head a bit so he can look up at Jade. "Why can't you just nap a little while longer? Just tell me that, come on, one good reason. For the record, hating the fact that I'm getting decent rest for once doesn't count."
She makes a face like one of those doubtful motherfuckers as don't believe you know any food-making miracles that ain't pies. "Uh, are you really sure you want to know everything about my need to pee."
Karkat's head goes flop again and he presses his face against you like he's in pain. You pet his hair; it springs back up. "... No, you're entirely right, I don't. But urgh, it's still light outside. Is the sun even down yet?"
You squint up at the little squiggly windowthings that go their twisty ways to the outside. The ceiling's pretty high, and they're all up and near the top, but even so ain't no way to see outside from there, but the rocks are white or near white and it makes your see-globes ache.
"I'll go check. And I'll notice pretty fast if it isn't. Worst I'll get is a sunburn."
Of course when she goes skipping off to that big bad door your palebro sighs and drags himself up, too, on account of he couldn't live with himself if she got herself crisped and he wasn't right there to get all up and crisped with, trying to get her back inside this rad shelter in time. Aw man. You were enjoying the cuddles. He's such a toasty-warm little motherfucker, and you're fine being stone-in-the-shade-cool your own self but it feels so, so nice to have your hands all up on someone who isn't. Like, right up the back of their shirt, making them squeak and wriggle and be so warm all over you.
You bet Tavros would be real warm, too. Or your most excellent Time-sister. Or the humans, they run hot like any rustblood ever, only your palebro runs hotter. You wonder if Strider would make a sound if you ghosted your hand up his spine and sank your claws in, left slices all down his back for burning rivulets of glorious, repulsing red to run down and gild your arm like profane tear tracks on some martyr's face.
"--can do it, okay!"
"No, I can -- I don't need--"
You're on your feet and stepping over all manners of legs and piles on your way to the door, like some obstacle course where the murderpits are made of people. You vaguely consider flopping down onto Solbro, since he up and went to the trouble of making up a clever trap with his pointy knees, only then Karkat starts flailing at Jade-sis and she's all thwapping at his hands like they're naughty barkbeasts all up and getting into her food block trying to lick up her pie, and that shit ain't good for barkbeasts. The thwaps are not good for your palebro's hands either.
"Hey there," you say, and reach right between them with a hand so you can flip up the bar that waits, right there on the door being all 'sorry my fleshbrother, you're not going out today' at you. You know it's the bar's job and you respect that, but you're not letting a bar boss you around either. Your palebro wants out, he gets out is all.
Jade and Karkat make faces at you. You scratch your head and shrug.
"Tell me again how heavy that bar was?" she asks your palebro.
"Too heavy for your scrawny little human arms, and that's still a thing that's true," Karkat replies, face all pouty and scrunched up.
"Oh yeah," you confirm absently, and move it up and down against the wall a couple times to test your grip. "You too, bro. All nice and thick like this, would make a right loud splash dropping on someone's thinkpan." Hmm. "... Balance's all wrong, though."
You don't have your full understanding on about why Karkat's hand is all of a sudden all up and papping at your face, but it's nice, so you lean in and purr a bit.
"... Um, guys. Not that you're not cute and all, but can I open the door now?"
Jade is all up and waiting with her little foot tap-tapping and hands on her fine hips, but when Karkat pushes you off all flustered she just goes and grins, and then she pulls out some miracle shades out of her sylladex and plops them on her nose.
Her teeth are wide and cutting and so, so white like this.
"Ready to go, Captain Vantas! Open the hatch!"
"Figures you'd have this ass-backward understanding of how chains of command work," Karkat mutters, though you can tell he kind of likes it, that being a captain business. He goes "Cover your eyes everybody!" and now you're pretty sure everyone who wasn't awake yet is, blinking their eyes open right when they oughta get their listen on. You laugh, but you help Karkat open the door, only you guess it went and became a hatch instead but you're not sure of the difference but seriously it's all cool with you.
People yelp and dive headfirst in piles when the light gets in; you're hidden behind the door but you squint anyway, your ganderbulbs feel all tight and unhappy. Jade tosses her hair like she's a musclebeast and that's her totally fly mane, and she strolls out like it ain't no thing. You wait for her to burn.
"Sun's down! But it sure is hot out here."
You can feel it rolling in against your skin, and in your horns even a bit, like it's water and there's currents sneaking in from the depths all wrapping their sneaky way up your ankles, only instead of wet and cold it's hot and bone-dry.
"Alright!" There's a little pschh of decaptchalogued noise; on the floor in the puddle of light her shadow hefts up its wicked Denizen-slaying gun, the edges of her all neat and sharp-edged. "Back in five."
"Jade, wait, don't go alone!"
Of course your palebro scrunches up his face until his eyes are almost lost under his eyebrows and charges out into the heat and light, blinder than your most legal of sisters ever was.
When you trudge out after him you leave the door wide open, and a dozen voices inside sing out together in protest, and you grin into the white-blue sky, eyes closed and clubs in hand. Gotta get them to sing other things later on, but it's a pretty good start.
"--Ow."
"Karkat, why are you on the ground."
"Why am I on the ground? Why am I on the ground, she asks me! Maybe because of all those stupid branches some lazy tree-custodian faerie left lying around to trip up blind travelers which at the moment, what a shock, include me!"
You up and navigate your way to Karkat by sound, only cracking one of your eyes open from time to time to correct course. You trip on rocks a bit, but it's not hard to catch yourself before you fall. Your poor palebro has a shorter trip to the ground to fix his balancing act in. Also he's graceful like a new-hatched barkbeast, which is to say not really or more like really not but at least it's devastadorable.
"You didn't have to come out, you know -- um, why are you still following me?"
"Hello? Unknown forest possibly full of bandits and gogdamned certainly full of hungry predators?"
"Hello, I need to pee and I'd like you not to be in earshot!"
"--Oh right. Uh."
You can hear her taking in a deep patience-giving breath all the way over there. "Listen, there's bushes just a bit thataway. I'll go there. How about you sit down under that tree -- you'll be in the shade, and if I scream you can hear me, and also you won't be a creepy stalker. Okay? Good."
"Hrrn. You swear it's not that far?"
"Argh. I'm not that stupid, Karkat! Okay, now turn left a bit -- there, good. The tree is just ahead -- ack, duck!"
"... I appear to have found the tree," he says, all dry. Jade goes 'umm' and snickers. "Thank you for your invaluable assistance."
"Oh, piss off, it was just a couple leaves to the face. And now I need to go before my bladder explodes in a gruesome disgusting shower of pee and blood -- and don't listen!"
Well, you're all up and willing to let a sister have her tinkletime privacy. You crack an eye open to get your bearings -- you don't like it, it aches, but it's doable -- and close your eyes again. One step two steps oh hey a rock, four steps duck down...
"Ow!"
You appear to have found Karkat. You feel around for his face. Pap pap.
"Stop shooshing me and get off my foot, you vacuous polebeast!"
Oh hey, not a bad plan. "Sorry, bro. Can't see for shit."
"How can you be so heavy, I don't get it. You're nothing but tendons stretched out over a giant chitinous frame."
He sounds already exhausted. You pat him between his horns. "Staying put, bro?"
"Unless she starts screaming, yeah."
"Okay then. I'mma gonna get my exploration on."
"The shi -- Gamzee, no!"
"Shoosh, bro, won't go far. You can yell me back."
You make sure to go in the opposite direction from the Jade sister's bushes, down to the road and on the other side. It's all forest loam under your feet, soft and bouncy and smothering all noises, all echoes, makes the world all cloud-wrapped and cotton-soft. Overhead there's leaves whispering to each other in the breeze, very quietlike as if they know it's early evening and ain't no reason to get noisy and bothersome and wake a brother up yet. Sometimes your foot snaps the spine of some poor little branch as gotten lost on the ground, or a chirpbeast sings its little waking song, trilling all sweet and sharp and high.
You walk slow, spine loose, clubs hanging easy from your hands and feeling high grass tangle on the blunt ends, feeling leaves dance their shivery path against your ear, catch in your hair. Sometimes you get to thinking you might be wanting to lean left or right or bend over, the forest all drawing an interlaced web of shadows on your eyelids, of tingles down your horns, all muted soft. Little clawbushes try to up and keep your pants with them, and it smells like dry powdery earth and spicy plant sap all rising up to you from where you up and step, filling your smelling nodes with deliciousness and mysteries, and there's this funny rushing, rustling sound in the background ...
You tilt your head to dodge a branch that was all throwing cold shadows across your face and another little clawbush gets its stubborn on, and then the ground all comes at you, only it's not where you thought it would be and your other foot finds nothing, and then your hands find nothing.
You have time for one single HONK before sudden cold slaps you in the face and swallows you.
The water rushes at you, in you, all around you, but not like the waves going back and forth, it keeps dragging you with greedy fingers and rolling you on the rocks at the bottom until it steals all your ups and downs. You go limp, let it roll you, until your feet are first and down and you can brake. Your blood is cold enough that you could stay a while, if you had more air, but you don't so better to come up now.
Your hair is all up and glued to your face, and you kind of want to pant a lot only your air sacs are too busy coughing themselves up your windhole. When you blink your eyes open the river is all glittering shards of light right back at you and it hurts, and in the woods there's noise like a trunkbeast what got stung by bees and is trying to get its hive-flattening on, all furious and wood-splintering. You anchor yourself to a big rock that breaches the surface and shake water out of your ears and haul yourself half-out, a club up and ready.
"My aching vascular pump cannot handle this kind of unfunny joke, Gamzee, I'm warning you, if you simply found a bucolic patch of grass to frolic in, my revenge will be so fierce you'll -- Gamzee! Where the fuck are you?!"
You try to get your answering on and cough a little more instead. And then he goes ow and you can speak somehow, because him being worried for you is one thing when you know where your ass is parked and that you're chill and fine, but you being worried for him, you're not letting any stupid water in bad places try to stop you.
"Here, bro!"
You cough up some more water. The trunkbeast crushes its way downriver. "Gamzee? What are you--"
"Whoa, whoa, stop!" you say, on account of how he's just popped up one step away from the edge and you ain't too sure he wouldn't crack his horns on the rocks tumbling in. He stops, all tense and frowny and trying to force his eyes open, and you can't help but laugh. There's a huge orange caterpillar all up and hitching a ride in his hair. "Nothing to get your harsh wrath on, best friend. I just up and went and found a river."
He lets out a sigh so huge you don't even need your ganderbulbs open to know he just deflated like a balloon the day after the most wicked wiggling day party. "And I found trees. With my face. This is a journey of staggering discoveries."
Somewhere off behind Karkat, the Jade-sis starts to laugh.
"Best bodyguards, the two of you."
"Oh, shut your food trap. So, Gamzee, do you intend on getting out of the water anytime soon, then?"
"Nah. Got me a sweet rock to get my perch on, think I'll chill for a bit."
The water is nice and fresh against your skin, tugs at your pant legs all playful and shit like it didn't just try to drown you, but that's how water is. The sea's like that too, one moment dancing with a motherfucker and the next wrapping 'em up and shoving 'em face down in sand and surf. It plays pretty rough, but you forgive it.
You let the leaves and the water sing you a lullaby, a tinklerustle whispersong that tiptoes its shooshing way down and down your braincase to where the harsh acrimony lives and wraps it all tight and cool and winter-sleepy.
You'll be wanting to get your slaying wrath on again soon, but for now you nap.
My paleTP is showing. Karkat♦Gamzee Forever! Also contains some Gamzee♥Tavros and Rose???Eridan. :3
Hit the tag for chapter one, I'm too lazy to link. And this is the WIP version so if you find anything that needs editing I'll be glad to hear it!
Wherein twelve trolls and four humans, having bonded in uncommon fashions and gained a significant amount of martial prowess through great hardships, decide to build their hives and live together in hard-won peace, henceforth proceeding to accidentally become the de facto Lord Protectors of the area and eventually changing the fabric of Society as we know it. Contains several instances of interspecies relationships, quadrant flipping, and scandalously out-quadrant concupiscent and conciliatory affairs, as well as several battle scenes containing numerous instances of minor-character culling and incredible badassitude.
==> Be the
"I still say we should have kept that sweet wagon. Tricked it out with steel caps, chrome bumpers, some pimpdaddy-purple velvet pillows on that front bench, my spare stereo..."
Strider's voice is an irritating toneless drawl; it isn't especially loud, but still manages to embody the best qualities of the buzz of an insect in the dark. No matter where you go or how much you swat at it, it's still right here, next to your ear as it looks for the best spot to sting you; tuning it out is impossible.
It's not like you can turn around and tell the cluster of humans to control the constant flow of word-bile that spews forth from their ever-flapping facegashes, either, not when others are talking as well. You tried to enforce silence for maybe ten minutes at the very start of the walk; it was of course doomed to failure, you don't know what possessed you to hope it wouldn't be.
You speed up a little, to go check on... urgh, who is there to check on that you actually want to talk to, not Eridan or Vriska, that's for sure. Tavros maybe? Bet he'd just grin and bounce on his fleshy toes and take ten minutes to say how, uh, how very happy he, um, is, that, er, they're home and, um, not besieged by imperial drones and a couple battleships and maybe a nest of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
Maybe Terezi...?
"The sleepy lioness wonders how much farther the brave hunting party must journey to reach its cozy den."
Flop. Suddenly, a Nepeta handbag. You trip a little, glower down at her from where she's hanging all her weight on your elbow. She's... not that much smaller, but apparently in that third-of-a-perigee you now have on her you had a bit of a growth spurt and -- obviously, being dead at the time -- she didn't, so she stayed a compact bundle of nothing but hard muscles and sinews. Heavier than she looks, and much tinier than she weighs.
Being younger doesn't make her face look any less lined with exhaustion. A prickle of guilt makes you swallow the 'when did you turn into a blood flow-hampering anterior limb accessory' you were about to let out. She's been on point ever since you guys started walking, alone and covering three times as much ground as everyone else, and it'll only be another two hours at most before dawn.
"... The mighty pride leader knows what he's doing, okay?"
Nepeta tilts her head and makes one of her retarded kitty mouth-noises that she thinks are cute. You sigh. You're too tired to find it annoying.
(Not so tired you actually find it cute, you'd have to cull yourself, but enough to feel a little twinge of a pale desire to pat her head and tell her all about how ridiculous she is, in the nicest way possible. You get random shooshpapping twinges around just about everyone you know, though -- and instead of getting territorial over the mere mention Gamzee finds it adorable as all fuck, so you just try to ignore it and only guilt about it the barest minimum.)
"I've been counting those stone markers by the road. We've now seen three roadside shelters at about the same intervals, so if I'm not missing my guess there'll be a fourth soon and then we can stop for the day."
Those shelters are so weird. Not the make itself -- dug right into the embankment so the back wall and half the sides are cool, packed earth and the front is all thick, whitewashed rocks to reflect daylight away, living tree branches bent and tied together to add a layer of shadows over the roof; makes sense against the daylight heat if you have to do without materials of carpenter drone make -- but the fact that they exist at all, and that obviously it's a standardized habit.
You figure it's got to be a human thing, something else they changed, because no troll you've ever heard of would have bothered making things easy for other travelers they don't know from their quadrant-corner's lusus, and if they didn't know where the hell they were going, or couldn't manage to find their own shelter, well, too bad for them and plan better next time you crotchstains whoops too late.
Humans are ridiculously community-oriented, though, there's only to look at the way that village back there was built all squeezed in together, houses almost climbing on top of each other, wall to wall, you'd have fit maybe three rustblood lawnrings there, tops. Even communal hive stems like where Sollux used to live put some actual space between apartments.
... Something else they changed.
It's Alternia. It's definitely Alternia.
You recognize everything. The night-blooming scents in the air, and the beasts slithering just out of sight, testing your awareness and whether they could cull one of the sixteen of you from the herd, and the dappled patterns of light and shadows on the face of the amethyst moon.
The emerald moon has apparently fucked off at some point and been replaced with the most boring celestial body imaginable. It's half the size the emerald moon used to be and pale-grayish -- silvery if you felt like being generous, but you don't, so instead you dub it the pasty moon, which is sort of very lame but it's that or the rainbow-drinker moon for the way it glows white and like fuck you are calling it the rainbow-drinker moon, Rose would blather on and on about you hitting on her matesprit and what that means about your subconscious desire to grow up to be your lusus. Makes the light weird, kind of pink, but the paleness reflects a greater amount of light, compensates for the smaller size so you're not actually having to walk around blind.
"Ow!"
Apart from the humans, that is. But you are not paying attention to the humans, you're paying attention to... hm. Sollux and Aradia and Feferi, and gogdamnit why are Aradia and Feferi holding hands with each other, they're not in a quadrant are they? Gaaah, pisses you off, it's like they all take turns being various shades of red for each other, and every time you hint at Sollux about it he just smirks like the proverbial purrbeast with a bowl-full of delicious cream-covered featherbeasts and he refuses to say anything. And he smirks some more until you want to fix his lispy problem with one well-placed angry fist. Even more than you usually do, that is.
Okay, no, you're paying attention to, let's go with Kanaya, yeah, why the fuck not. Who's been as always useful and easy to work with, even now she's making herself useful illuminating the path with her glowy face so that her snarky matesprit won't trip and fall flat on her pugbeast nose and argh, you were not paying attention to any humans!
"...but do you know how to handle a draft not-quite-ox?" Lalonde is asking Strider, all silky and amused, and he shrugs in that irritating, barely-there way of his.
"Fuck no, but I figured we could harness John and Jade, they're filled with so much bounce-happies they could pull a whole house."
... They are, too. Even now. Hearing their names, they look over their shoulders at the same time, arm in arm like a pair of adorable childhood moirails straight from one of those idyllic movies that you love mostly because they never happen in real life seriously how can that be an ideal if those derpy clutchclones somehow manage to be it, and they beam with all their considerable amount of teeth (somehow those plate-sized meatcutters never do look threatening.)
"Karkitty is really happy we can keep our humans, hmm?" Nepeta chirps in your ear.
You flinch and try to shake her off, but she has somehow become a horrorterror-lioness while you weren't paying attention and all her suckers are glued onto you.
It's too late, you will never escape. You keep trying anyway. "What the hell are you on about? No, wait, I don't want to know, it won't make sense anyway, it never does, your thinkpan is rotted through with cat puns--"
"The purrocious lioness didn't really want to give them back either. Jade gives the best scritches! And John will play with me for hours, and, and Rose is sort of scary-looking but she knitted me a new hat that one time I lost my old one, and..."
"--tell you, this was an advance war party, why else would they be so far from all troll territories, I know they roam but never in such big packs, there were over thirty of them!--"
"--hell, there was a reason we settled so far inland--"
"--they had humans with them, fucking pieces of shit trollsucking traitors, serve as guides no doubt--"
"... and I'm glad we're keeping them."
Nepeta's arm goes tight, claws pricking your biceps. For a second you almost expect her fucking purrbeast-ear-shaped horns to droop, that's how down she seems.
That's how down you feel.
"Yeah," you mutter, and you look away. "I suppose I'm. It's. Probably better that way."
Nepeta's frown melts away and she smiles at you all crinkle-eyed and dimple-cheeked, it's disgusting. You put your free hand on her forehead and shove her off.
"For now! They might still choose to leave later. That'll be fine. Whatever."
You really should have kept the wagon, instead of leading it back to the village after the three humans on it had absconded at high speed, shouldn't have bothered trying to be good neighbors to those diarrhea-speckled ass-wipes. You admit the sixteen of you make for a pretty impressive strike force, but who'd ever believe Egbert's barkbeast friendliness hides murderous intent?
(Come to think of it he'd make a terrifying laughssassin.)
Anyway.
John was the most hurt. Jade was pained for a minute, you think, but you know she was raised alone by her lusus, so even if she has a human's social instincts, in short order she was cursing up and down their ancestor forest or bush or something like that (human reproduction is disgusting) and then she was over it. Rose and Strider are cynical, wary, pessimistic assholes who'd almost deserve to be trolls; you're sure they weren't even that surprised.
Anyway so John was the most hurt, at first, but Terezi and Spiderbitch stayed back to eavesdrop some more and apparently the towns farther to the west dealt with more trolls and were less hostile (that's apparently how you translate "trollsucker" from the native Speciesist Asswipe) and that was where you all wanted to be, and from that point on he was filled with ridiculous enthusiasm for those mythical places of equality and harmony.
You've been walking ever since. Nrrgh.
"The lioness wonders why her crab friend looks so crabby. She says, he will have wrinkles before he's even ten sweeps old!"
And then she licks the pad of her thumb and tries to rub the spot between your brows like it's a smudge of dirt she can actually erase. You flail in protest and try to dodge, but while you were deep in thought Nepeta has reclaimed your arm. Again. How did you not notice, it is simply ridiculous. You are trapped, there is nowhere to go, and now you have catgirl spit on your face!
You flail your free hand in her direction a bit, though you don't get it too close in case she captures that one as well. "Stop slobbering all over me! That's disgusting, holy grubmunching fuck."
"Karkitty, why are you frowning." She scowls at you. It looks like a caricature of John's Serious Face, which already looks like a caricature in the first place.
"I'm not frowning, my face is just that way, okay. It's a birth defect, now shut up and go back to the despair pit of nerd hell you came from."
"Nyaa?" she says, and tilts her head like a dizzy, horn-shaken wiggler.
"No, seriously. There's nothing to frown about, everything's been going really well since --" You feel your frown deepening this time; you turn your face away; "--since then, no blisters, no food gone bad, we keep finding fresh streams to drink from, hopbeasts throw themselves in our path..."
"Yes! It's grrrreat, isn't it!"
"No it's not. It's suspicious as fuck! Shit happens. Shit happening is a constant in all of our lives. When shit is not happening it's because shit is happening in areas we have not come across yet and it's in the process of piling up high enough for a shit tsunami, which will conveniently start whenever we happen to walk by that lovely and insufficient shit dam. Welcome to MiddleOfExcrementLakeVille, Population: You."
Nepeta is giggling against your shoulder, since both her hands are clamped onto your arm. You consider shrugging her off, it feels weird, but at least she's smart enough to muffle her voice while the lot of you are walking in an unknown forest a couple hours before dawn like a bunch of ambush-bait idiots.
"... Honestly it's come to a point where I'm pretty sure Vriska sucked out all of that asshole village's luck as revenge for making John sadface."
(As much of a selfish, grandstanding bitch as Vriska is, you find you're almost ready to like her just for how furiously she will defend him. Thankfully the impulse to do so only lasts as long as it takes for her to open her wordhole.)
You glance around for said Vriska, since her babysitter is busy flirting with someone else at the moment. (Goddamn you get that romance is great as fuck but honestly! You thought you could depend on Aradia and Kanaya, but apparently making moobeast eyes at their matesprit -- or what ever the fuck Feferi is to Aradia, seriously Sollux can see them flirt he is right here -- won against making sure their respective threats-to-keep-at-heel didn't fuck off into the night or otherwise provoke some kind of calamity.)
(Your own threat-to-keep-at-heel is currently ambling beside Tavros and making him blush brown to the tip of his ears, and looking remarkably casual about it. You Do Not Want To Know. Most likely Gamzee is oversharing and doesn't realize. Or thinks it's cute to fuck with people and watch them fluster themselves into an aneurysm. You're his moirail and you can never tell which.)
Nepeta has progressed from giggles to laugh-snorting, for some arcane reason you are quite happy never to unravel. Your shoulder is going to be covered in forest green snot.
"The lioness agrees this is furry likely! Vriskers is sooo red for John. Oh, I want my paints...!"
You grimace, but there's no refuting it.
"It's so sweet that she would do that fur him."
"Yeah, it's also just fucking damn sweet that she did it behind everyone's back and didn't mention it later apart from that really creepy smirk so we can have things ready in case they, you know, figure it out and retaliate. Planning ahead? No, not us, who needs that."
To be honest with yourself (no one will ever hear this, not Nepeta, not even Gamzee, and certainly not Vriska) you probably should scold Vriska for pissing off people who might come at you with pitchforks, no matter how unlikely it is they'll figure it out -- holy nookchafing fuck, teamwork is actually a word that exists! with official spelling and a definition, even! -- but in truth you're just upset you didn't think to order her to do it first.
"Karkitty should pounce before she does," Nepeta says, eyelashes lowered demurely and eyes gleaming underneath.
Oh, hell no. Crazy catgirl and her shipping. Fucked if you go 'what makes you think I even want to seriously it's been three years and it wasn't even that quadrant' because it's impossible that you mean it, and fucked if you go 'pounce who' because that's straight-up denial and we know what that means, and fucked if you go 'pounce what' because then she'll explain. Actually if you even acknowledge that you heard her, you automatically lose.
"The mighty leader needs to do some mighty leadering on the bitchiest spider who ever webbed and the glubbiest prissy douche who ever skinny-dipped now. Nice kitty, get the fuck off me."
You tell yourself she's not laughing at you when she lets go, because being laughed at by the chick who thinks she's a purrbeast is pretty much the last deplorable step before ascending to the glorious throne of emperor of pathetic assholes, and the population in that empire might even outnumber that of Her Imperial Condescension herself. (Granted, there's a humongous amount of overlap.) You tell yourself you're not absconding, either. You are horrifyingly bad at lying to yourself, you guess that's why you can't stand you; there's no dissimulating all those horrendous personality defects behind a layer of hazy recollections and indulgent self-flattery.
And Sollux is still grinning as Aradia giggles in Feferi's ear, what is going on there. He talked them into doing it just to torture you, you can tell.
If you had water powers you'd turn the tube-shaped water ejector on them right here and now. You don't, that'd be too useful, so you scan the group for your wayward woolbeasts. Last you checked they were -- aha.
You drift to the side of the group and pretend to check your shoes for pebbles, so people won't stop and ask what you're doing (if they can be assed to pay attention to anyone but the partners they're chatting up, that is) and then when almost everyone has passed you, you ghost back up.
Your targets are clustered. This is only slightly less suspicious than those times when Egbert sneaks you side glances while going hee hee hee like a panshaken yet oddly happy goat. Eridan's been sore about being dumped out of Vriska's black quadrant ever since it happened, in other words forfuckingever ago. Granted the time was probably shorter for him but even back before Kanaya cut him off his whiny mourning was edging into tedious.
(Alright, no, back in the day you liked hearing all about his troubles and advising him, to the point where kid-you, being a stupid little fuck as most past Karkats are wont to be, was vaguely entertaining thoughts of dragging him in the diamond quadrant if he ever, miraculously, managed to flip flushed with Feferi. Only Eridan just never really listened to you or advised you back.)
They're not sniping right now, not even really looking at each other. They're whispering, heads close, but watching someone else, throwing little guarded glances. You might have been counting down the minutes until one of the two of them felt safe enough to abscond and-or otherwise fuck the whole group over, but if there's something worse than another attempt to rekindle that particular clusterfuck of a kismesissitude, it's probably the two of them in cahoots.
You sneak. You're not surprised that Eridan doesn't notice -- he has good, sharp senses but he's overconfident about them -- but that Vriska doesn't means she really must be invested in the conversation.
"... cull evveryone!" Eridan whispers. Okay yes no what the almighty fuck you need to know what they're talking about right now.
"Okay, I miiiiiiiight see your point. She's kind of... But -- Karkat! Hi. What are you doing here."
Fuck.
The flat, suspicious glare Vriska directs your way only widens your toothy grin. You wanted to listen in longer, but oh well, there are other ways! You step up between them, an arm around each neck. It almost looks friendly. If you're blind. Or socially mutilated and incapable of reading a threat.
"So! Who are we planning to cull today?" you ask brightly. You swear your fangs would sparkle if there was just a touch more moonlight.
Eridan gives you a look full of wounded innocence at the sheer, black unfairness of your question (hi Feferi, hi Kanaya) while Vriska stiffens and goes "If we were going to cull someone, we wouldn't tell you! How stupid do you think we are!"
Funny how normal grins make your cheeks ache in short order, but when you're thinking about how happy you'd be to eat someone's face off it just feels like the most natural configuration for your facial muscles to take. Some days you're afraid Gamzee influenced you just as much as you've influenced him. Right now you bet he'd just tell you "whatever makes you happiest, best bro!" and you are nothing if not a considerate moirail who listens faithfully to the advice of his paler half.
Eridan is the weaker link, so you go full cannons on him. "Okay! Don't tell me. Maybe you'll tell Feferi."
He sneaks Feferi's back a look, all long swinging hair and swingier hips, and he shrinks.
"What was that?" You lean your hearing plate toward him. "Glub glub yes please sir, oh boy would I love to? Well, no reason to wait!" And you start to pull him so he'll walk faster.
You're expecting it when he digs in his heels, but when Vriska does the same on your other side, and adds a really sharp elbows under your ribs on top, you're a little more surprised. The glare she spears you with is soul-withering.
Or would be, if you had a soul. As it is, you've traded it in for a leadership. (No wonder you got saddled with such a band of nookstains, thing was shrunk too small to be worth much.)
"There an issue I should know about regarding our delightful heiress-no-more? I wouldn't want you two to think I'm not listening to your concerns in a benevolent and impartial manner. Even though I'm not." It's weird that Vriska is siding with Eridan, she has no issue with Feferi that you know of. Then again, they were sort of looking in that direction but maybe someone else... Vriska has no issue with Sollux either, but Aradia was riding herd on her earlier and maybe she doesn't want her to be reminded and get back to it. "I owe Aradia a little kick in the back flesh cushions anyway; come along."
Eridan glubs again and shrinks a little more, somehow, goes to dead weight under your arm. Vriska hisses, but you ignore her. You stop walking, stare at Eridan until he looks back at you in question.
"Aradia."
Cringe.
"Aradia."
Shudder.
"Araaadia."
"Gnn will ya fuckin stop it already! What if she hears?"
Okay, what the vast croaking fuck. "Alright! It's a joyous night full of wonders and too much healthy exercise, so I'm willing to be generous. You can talk, or you can talk. The difference between the two is you'll regret the second."
"Oh my gog!" Vriska throws her hands up in the air. "Why do you like to hear yourself talk so much!"
"Hey, Egbert! Spiderbitch is going a-culling again."
The look she gives you is so black you're uncomfortable meeting it, lest you see spades there at the bottom.
"Haha, what did you say, Karkat? Jade was--"
"Nothing, go away." You pull your double armful of prey a little farther back; John gets distracted pretty fast, but at least now Vriska is sulking because she knows you've got the bigger weapon.
"You're so irritating! We weren't talking of culling someone, gog, we were talking of someone culling us."
"If the rest of us haven't culled you two yet, it's probably not in the cards just yet," you admit. You're pretty resigned to this by now, as sad as it makes you. "Now what the hell is the matter with Aradia? Jegus on a butterless toast, next you'll tell me you have a problem with Tavros."
You look at Aradia again, trying to see it. Same long hair... okay her horns are way bigger now, but those things happen with -- huh.
"She's an adult," Eridan says through a sneer. "Look at her, she's almost big enough for the fuckin Armada!"
Eridan is thin under your arm. Pubescent, and tall for his age, but half-finished. Vriska is more fleshy, but she's not all that much older than he is. Not even half a sweep, perhaps barely a third. You outweigh them both, and you're not big as trolls go. Aradia is taller than you are, and curvy, and okay her horns are impressive, but that's not all it is, Feferi is even taller and as Strider would say it her imperial trunk accommodates a lot more junk. It's just... Aradia looks it. Her eight sweeps and then some.
Okay, you sort of understand. Trolls don't usually socialize outside of their age group. You've got to be particularly pathetic to look to younger trolls -- means you're too pitiful to stand your ground against people you don't have sweeps of size and experience over -- and particularly cocky -- or suicidal -- to look to older. The older trolls get and the more cull-happy, it seems; got to practice for when they join up, after all. So making friends across such an age gap just doesn't happen. (Maybe it happens up there in the Fleet, but once you're off-planet everyone is an adult and it doesn't matter anymore which batch you were hatched with.)
You sort of get it. Doesn't stop you slapping the back of their heads. "She's Aradia, you witless fucks, you've known her since forever."
You get glares for your troubles, and half-hearted shoving, but neither of them yanks free of your neck-grabs. It comes to you then that maybe the reason why even Vriska hasn't retaliated for that yet is that even you seem a bit old and scary to them. This is so weird. You're too used to looking six sweeps old, same as them; apart from the clothes it's not like the game updated its graphics.
It should probably be weirder than it is to be granted a different body now, but it's not like you had time to brood about it before you were thrown ass-first in undead assholes, and then it turned out if you didn't over-think it your body moved pretty normally, and the undead assholes worked really hard at not giving you time enough for self-reflection. Still, the body might work but your self-image hasn't updated yet. Bit lacking in reflective surfaces out here in the woods.
"Shit, you FLARPed with her. You know what she's like. Death fangirl or not, she's never even violent until you push her pretty damn far." You pause to consider it. "Or unless you're Equius. Huh, okay. Maybe she gets a little violent sometimes."
Eridan grimaces. "Oh, stop fucking with us already!" growls Vriska.
"Aw, but it's the most fun I've had in perigees. Would you really take that from me? You're heartless, Serket, just heartless." You relent, though. Younger or not, Vriska won't take it much longer without preparing her revenge, and she's dangerous. And Eridan... well, he can be dangerous too but so far he's been subdued enough that you're mostly worried about epic sulking fits.
Alright, and maybe it would bug you a tiny little bit to see either of them flounce out of the group, never to be seen again. Shit, you guys have cooperated and survived together for a sweep and a half, that's unprecedented for a group that size. It just... well, you got into the habit, you guess.
Your idiot-herding endeavors would not be doomed enough without those two particular pains in your ass. Yeah.
"More seriously, she has no reason to flip out on either of you, just because you're tiny and scrawny and vulnerable." x2 twitch combo. Hah. "I'd be more worried about that happening with Gamzee. Guess you two weren't around for that one, though!"
"... Shaddap," Eridan mutters.
You flick the edge of his fins with the back of a claw, curious to see what happens; he growls under his breath and gives you a hurt, betrayed look, it's like you kicked a barkbeast. He doesn't even wriggle against your hold. Crazy. Practical, though. You are going to use the shit out of it until they get desensitized and start back up with the casual disrespect.
"Anyway even if she ain't cullin anyone much, what happens when the recruitment drones come for her? 'cause I bet they'd cull us a make a way through an' take her, easy -- uh, Kar? ... Kar, yer growlin."
You are, indeed, growling. Fancy that.
"Yeah, no. Fuck the drones. Fuck them without a fucking bucket, fuck them up the bulge and out through their waste chute, no."
Vriska gives you a strangely cautious look. "Bit missing in nookmunching and butt stains," she says, airy like she doesn't care, but she's still watching you. You briefly close your eyes and breathe out.
"...My most insincere apologies, your great grubfucking Condesce, for failing to deliver a gog-damned epic poem of 'sick burns' for the delight of your discerning noise holes." And you look at her, and at him, and you couldn't keep your voice from dropping quiet and deadly if you tried, and so you don't. "But anyone tries to take one of the sixteen of us away, they'll have to cull me first."
There is no way in hell you can stay here anymore, not with the way they stare at you, not after what you said -- shit, what the hell was that, maybe you'd do better with a tattoo on your face, Karkat Vantas Is The Hugest Paleslut Since Troll Debbie Shooshpaps Dallas, at least people'd be warned. You drop your arms from their necks -- it's just gotten embarrassing, like it's not a threat anymore, like you actually mean it -- and you stalk away, chin held up high like you're not fucking ashamed.
Gamzee. Where the fuck is Gamzee.
You'll apologize to him later, he deserves it, because you're pretty sure Tavros had a bit of the look of a young jade debutante starting to let herself get charmed against her best judgment by the roguish yet oddly alluring rustblood the Mother Grub warned her about. But when you walk up to him he takes one look at your face and his arm lifts in invitation, and you slot under it and against his side like you're a fighter jet returning to the mothership.
His arm around your shoulders is the farthest from threatening, or mocking. It's safe and sheltering and comfortable, and this is where you belong. You don't want anyone else. You don't.
He doesn't question you. What happened, why you're growling. He just goes "okay, bro?" and you two fall into step the way you should be unable to, with the ridiculous length of his legs. You nod because you don't really want to talk about it, and he drops it because he can tell.
Eventually you're even a little sorry about the barging in, but hopefully watching how good Gamzee is at pitying people will make Tavros less nervous about saying hell yes. Not that you really have any idea what's attractive in any flushed way in your moirail, but seriously. You guess Tavros' shyness is what Gamzee finds so pitiful about him. Or maybe how utterly blackrom-handicapped...
Nope, sorry, the only response this invokes in you is the platonic kind of pity, because honestly that's just sad. Blackrom is awesome. (Even though you've technically never had that quadrant filled.)
Yeah, romance. Romance is nice to think about. The rest of your assholes will have to sort themselves out for a bit.
--
Hours in the future, but not many...
The sky is lightening noticeably in the east when Terezi -- on point, having taken over from Nepeta -- comes across the shelter. You were starting to worry you'd miscounted the milestones. But no, there it is, a little off to the side under the trees. It's like a big white stone box sunk halfway into the earth. John bounces down the entry stairs and through the door first, before you can yell not to go alone, and immediately goes "empty!", not even having the decency of giving you some time to get a good rant going.
"There's a couple hooks we can put hammocks on," he says as he comes back out. "But man, I don't think it's made for so many people. There better not be any other visitors in need tonight or we'll be sleeping in piles."
You don't see what's wrong with sleeping in piles. Granted you've never made a pile out of live trolls, but it's a staple of the roadtrip movie genre to make piles of culled ones at rest stops. Can't be any worse.
It occurs to you that maybe you're a little tired.
You're the co-leader, you should be co-leadering, but turns out there isn't much even a heap of moron refuse like the fifteen you've been saddled with can mess up about sitting down to grab a bite to eat and then going in and finding a corner to cram themselves into. There isn't even that much chatter, everyone's quiet. You stay outside for a bit, squinting up at the lightening sky. The colors are violently gorgeous, kind of the way animals will be decked in all kinds of ocular-globes-bursting shades to prove how venomous they are.
The lighter a color, the more lethal, that's why nothing fucks with lusii. The sky's getting pretty golden over there...
"Hey, best friend! Saved you a spot, for when you get around to coming in and getting your snooze on."
Whoops. Okay, that was embarrassing. You almost fell asleep right there outside. You pull yourself up and clump down the steps.
It's a single rectangular room inside. It would probably be big enough for five humans and a couple riding beasts. Maybe ten humans, if they were feeling regrettably amorous. It's not exactly made with trolls the size of Equius or the width of Tavros in mind (where the hell did those shoulders come from, he'll catch up to his horns if this keeps going, it's so unfair that you came back a half-sweep older than him and still undersized and -- okay, yes, you did acquire a sweet layer of muscle, but it barely shows under that stupid Knight tabard. The Universe Has It In For Karkat Vantas, evidence number three bazillion and one.)
"Last one in gets to close the door!" Sollux quips. You roll your eyes at him, but well, someone has to. You hip-check Eridan out of the way and heave the massive door away from the wall; it thunks closed in a way that says a lot about how much you wouldn't like getting your hand stuck in it.
Of course it's a bit too primitive a set-up for an electronic lock-plate, but you can figure it out. Yeah. Um.
"The bar."
"Shut up, I saw it on my own." There is indeed a wooden bar, thick and heavy, and it seems to slot deep into the stone wall; in your admittedly not expert opinion it all looks solid enough that the wall would probably come down before the door did.
You tap it with a knuckle. Ow.
Sollux snickers. You glare at him; he scratches his chin, pretends to look elsewhere. "...I did that too."
You pinch your lips rather than smile back. He can probably tell anyway.
"Might make a pretty thweet fuck you from beyond the grave in case thome daring land gamblignants in sun coats decide to gas us all to rob our corpthes. We might be dead, but you won't have our valuables! Haha, we win."
"Oh sweet, loose Mother Grub refuse, Captor, never try to sound positive ever again."
You lower the bar into place single-handedly like the strong leader-type troll you are and don't wince or wobble at all, and even less almost-drop it on your foot. Sollux snickers again. You'd kick him, but he absconds before you can, waving back at you without looking as he joins his red-mates in the corner they've laid claim to. Aththole.
... It's really cramped in here. Huh.
Kanaya and Nepeta are collaborating on a pile. Terezi is going against all of trollkind and actually stringing herself up a hammock. (It's one thing when you can't make piles anyway and you can and will suffocate if you don't sleep in the air, but being all wrapped up in thread and so visible and off the ground, urgh. You bet she's doing it mostly for the Death From Above angle.) Vriska is "helping" Tavros.
For all you know she's actually helping him without the ironic quotes, but when Gamzee's eyes narrow at her you sigh and wave at him to distract him from her, yeah, yeah, you'll be with him in a second.
You pass Eridan who is still standing by the door, making your way to John, sitting on the floor against the wall and as always wrapped up in his moirail orgy, Jade on one side and Rose on the other, and Strider already perched overhead in another hammock, hands stuck behind his head and a leg swinging lazily like he's thinking of accidentally-on-purpose kicking you.
"Hey. Do your job, you lazy asshole. Think we should post guards?"
John looks around the room, where everyone is fussing with their piles or even already burrowing and staring sightlessly at the walls. "... Dunno. Last night -- uh, day -- wasn't really much of a rest, and then we walked all night, and everyone is still drained from whatever we did that made everyone just crash when we came out of the game..." A furrow between his eyebrows, he cups a hand. The resulting breeze barely makes the bangs hanging in his eyes shiver. "How about yours?"
"Let's pass over the fact that my God Tier ability is the biggest fraud any chump has ever been cheated with. I could maybe make one of Tavros' skull-shaving nicks scab." Sigh. "Point taken. We're all more or less useless."
"There's also the fact that we're all tired enough to fall asleep even if we're trying not to," Rose intervenes, "since there is no space here for a watcher to entertain themselves without disturbing others. And with the walls so thick and the aeration openings so hard to see out of it's likely the advance warning they bring us would be counted in mere seconds anyway."
"Huh. Conclusion, not worth the bother." You arch an eyebrow at John. He shrugs up at you.
"I'm planning to blame exhaustion for fuzzying out my judgment if anything happens! No, really, it's like I have nothing but dust bunnies in there!"
You trollfully refrain from snorting and thinking real hard about how surprised you are to learn he ever had anything else. Okay, no, you don't. John kicks at your ankle, though it mostly looks like his foot just slipped and he misses by at least a whole handspan.
"... Anyway, my dearest copalhoncho desire is sleep for everyone. No one can blame us!"
You snort. "We can blame us, bulgeface. But fine. Not like I'm not used to the sweet caress of self-hatred." Okay, it's settled, now time to return to your moirail and crash for a week...
"Over here, Mr. Ampora."
... or not. You stare down at Rose. She's ignoring you entirely, freaky mutant sea troll eyes fixed on Eridan, who stares back at her with utter bafflement. She even ignores Strider's tiny frown and sudden stillness, or Jade's raised eyebrows. She just stares Eridan down until he starts making his cautious way across the room to her, because it's that or saying no and she might just eat the poor fool's soul in an entirely unrelated incident if that were to happen.
Eridan sneaks you a wary glance in passing. You are suddenly overcome with the need to pretend that you're still in deep conversation with someone else right around here and that while in perfect eavesdropping distance you have zero interest in whatever happens, honest. "Uh. Hey, Jade. How is it going?"
"You may have the spot between I and the wall," Rose is saying. "I won't subject you to the nerve-wracking experience of sleeping straight underneath my dear ectobrother."
Jade answers you with a just-as-distracted "Uhn, good. Yeah."
"Wouldn't want to deprive you of the years of passive-aggressive munitions you could rake in out of my hammock falling under the tremendous weight of my swag and pancaking you, sis," Strider drawls.
"You know the way to my heart so well, Dave-dear."
"Under the ribs and up looks less direct at first glance, but really it's way less complicated, guys," Jade pipes up, abandoning all pretense. Rose's and Dave's lips twitch in amusement; John chokes on a snicker. You try to keep pretending you're not still right here, which involves not breathing lest you also choke. Jade just turns to Eridan, who's still standing there and looking unconvinced. "Don't be shy! I bet she's just doing it because it's going to get way hot in here and you're cold-blooded."
"You've caught me red-handed," Rose replies in a tone dry as a desert, that doesn't even pretend to be even vaguely acquainted with convincing. "Sit down," she tells Eridan. (You're not sure if it was a polite suggestion or an order. Possibly both.)
You are mildly fascinated by this bizarre event, and glad that Eridan has more or less forgotten you were still standing there.
"Tha's... kinda pale a you," he ventures.
You're not sure if he's more suspicious or painfully hopeful... No, huh, actually, the usual immediate assumption that someone has finally recognized his inherent greatness is pretty much absent. He's mostly wary, really, confused. Aw heck, stupid asshole kid, if only he wasn't such a creep and guaranteed to take your whole anterior appendage up to the shoulder socket if you give him a single pointing frond, you'd ... nrrh, Gamzee, Gamzee.
"I mean okay, yeah, I'm kinda a smart guy, I can take a hint, I'm not fuckin stupid, that's probably not how it is on account a how you're an alien who can't ever really wrap your understanding around it, but see it from my side, okay? It's a bit..."
Rose rolls her eyes. "If you must ascribe a quadrant to it, it would be closer to ashen. I do not especially like you, Mr. Ampora, nor do I pity you, but I find I am invested in coming between you and the rest of the world. So if it will help -- yes, I am in fact expressing interest of a quadrant-related nature. Now if you will --"
He counters with a vaguely spluttering "That's not how it works," (you are biting your tongue from the effort of not saying the same, seriously, your tongue is bleeding but holy shit you can not miss this) but even then he's already putting his back to the wall and sliding down to sit by her, hugging his knees.
"Wow, Rose," Jade says, craning her neck to look around John. "So if we still count as your moirails, can we say congrats on getting your third quadrant filled? Hi, Eridan. Guess that makes us cousins or in-laws or something."
"I don't think trolls have cousins. I think they have quadrant-corners?" John suggests with a hapless shrug, and Dave goes "Shit" from his hammock, disgusted yet already resigned, like this is a thing that happened and there's nothing more to be done but live with it.
You think you'd stand there all day being amazed into total brain death by their ridiculous lackadaisical approach to the quadrants -- that or Rose's tastes, because what -- only then a long arm wraps around your chest from behind and yanks you back. You stumble.
"Time for all little nubby miracle trolls to get their sleep on, bro. Come along."
"You know, there's a difference between moirail and lusus," you grumble, but when Gamzee herds you away, you let him.
--
==> Karkat: Be the lusus-y moirail. The lurail? The moirailus? Oh hey, sounds like a right bitchtits thing to be. Kinda like a fatter goatdad -- no, wait, that's walrus. Is it?
==> Be the tool who thinks it'd be fun to be a walrus.
Hours in the future, but not many...
Whoa, man. You know from dreams, but this one was especially bitchtits wicked. All up and standing on your hands, honking things with your face, and the most wicked horns growing from your mouth of all places. Unsopored dreams are fun. Almost be worth the three times you half-woke up to your palebro swatting at your nose cause he couldn't get his sleep on, on account of your hand all up and finding his neck somehow and thinking it'd be fun to hug that motherfucker real tight.
Almost only until you wake up in full, and then not worth it at all.
You know most trolls get night terrors.
In your nights, you are the terror.
"Urgh..."
You look down in time for Karkat to flop around and headbutt you in the shoulder. He has the most adorable round horns, man, there is no way he could put any kind of serious hurt on a brother with those. Might bust someone's nose if he's lucky, but he never is. The universe granted your brother the gift of perseverance, and if he got things the easy way just by standing there he'd never get to show it off. Guess the universe had to provide things to rise against, too. Things shine brighter in the dark.
You kind of want to cuddle him.
"You hug me and I'll make you regret it."
Karkat's eye is cracked open, glaring at you. He looks like a wet purrbeast. You grin. It's pure magic how he gets you so well. "Aw, could never regret getting my cuddle action on with you, brother."
He goes all red in the face and splutters and bats at you, and it makes the daymares slough away, like just knowing he's not scared off (and still pale for you) is enough to shed them right off your thinksponge.
"... You are the most -- most shameless flirt I've ever -- ngh."
Muffled giggles on your other side. You turn your head, lean up on an elbow. Look at that, miracles everywhere. Tavros is all hiding his mouth behind his hands, like maybe he's trying to catch any more of those laughterbits before they can come out, which is a shame because they're pretty as music. His face is just as blood-flushed as your palebro's.
"Um. Hi, Gamzee."
"Just great," Karkat whimpers, and tries to burrow his way between your back and the floor with his face. You oblige him by rolling on your side entirely so he won't have to dig.
"Hi, Karkat?" Tavros whispers across your side, all shy but with that adorable amused little smile curving his mouth that you kind of want to kiss a lot.
"... Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let me sleep."
You shrug. Nothing wrong with your brother getting some more snooze on, even though others are stirring in the room and will drag him up soon. You sit up, though, so you can watch out for him. You never know, some motherfucker could come tripping on horns or stairs or things and fall right on him. Best be ready to catch them.
You watch as Tavros pushes himself up on his elbows all slow and careful, with his head angling this and that way like he's doing a thinkpan dance. Those are some nice muscles he's got there, rolling under his skin, all corded up his neck, round shoulders...
"Um, Gamzee, can you move away from the wall, just a tiny bit? I, uh, I'll get you with my horn otherwise."
Whoops, got it. He's pretty good at not knocking into people and shit with that enormous rack of his. You can only admire that mad skill. Yours pretty much only point up and a bit to the sides, so unless a motherfucker trips on you from above there's no risk of accidental impalement. Maybe falling trapeze artists, but they'd have to not be very good at their job. Might want to take up juggling instead.
You shuffle forward on your butt. Karkat mutters sleepily. Tavros pushes himself up and sits with pretty much just his hands.
You really, really want to get your hands all over those most excellent shoulders. If you try it now he'll go all brown in the face and squeak and make that panicky grimace like he doesn't know if he wants to run away or what.
You don't want to scare him. You really, really don't want that.
"... Hey, bro."
Your voice is quiet because Karkat's sleeping, but maybe because of other things too. He looks up at you a little wide-eyed, all nervous and confused and so, so pitiful. You lean to curl your fingers around the top of his bare foot. You're gentle and light like he's a chirpbeast; the best miracle of all is when they all up and decide they like it in your hands, and not even because they're too crushed up to fly.
You give his foot a little shake. "Getting your forgetting on?"
He lights up all over and his toes curl and spread like a row of the ten most adorable baby sausages you've ever seen, you'd eat them right up, and you laugh with him because you can't not.
"Oh wow -- I didn't really forget but, you know -- it's been so long and... Wow, just wow."
Your hand is on his ankle and he hasn't tried to pull away. He's still grinning at you. You rub a circle on that little bony bump part with your thumb and grin back.
"Oh gog," Karkat groans, and makes a gagging noise like those times he tries to bolt down his breakfast on account of having more important shit to take care of than feeding his digestion sac. You crane your neck to look at him.
"Bro?"
"Fucking most shameless panfucked clowntard ever in all the history of Alternia. All the histories of Alternia, from every single reset and doomed timeline. All of them."
"Shoosh, bro."
Tavros giggles again, and you smile at him some more, only then he looks away and over your shoulder. Aw, unchill. Looks like someone's fixing to get their interruption on.
"Good evening, Jade. Um, how are you?"
You look back and sure enough it's the girl human with the troll hair. Looks all happy and bouncy and just like a little mountain of determination. Ain't gonna be shifting that anytime soon. "Hey Tavros, and pretty good! Hey Gamzee. I've got to ask Karkat something."
"Aw, sis, give a brother a little more time to wake his bad self up."
"I heard him bitching, he can't be that asleep."
You scratch your chin. "Dunno 'bout that. Sometimes he'll lay wicked rants against those bad dreams."
Tavros gets the giggles again. Karkat grumbles as he wraps himself tighter around you and headbutts the small of your back. "Thanks for the support, asshole." Then he rolls back his head a bit so he can look up at Jade. "Why can't you just nap a little while longer? Just tell me that, come on, one good reason. For the record, hating the fact that I'm getting decent rest for once doesn't count."
She makes a face like one of those doubtful motherfuckers as don't believe you know any food-making miracles that ain't pies. "Uh, are you really sure you want to know everything about my need to pee."
Karkat's head goes flop again and he presses his face against you like he's in pain. You pet his hair; it springs back up. "... No, you're entirely right, I don't. But urgh, it's still light outside. Is the sun even down yet?"
You squint up at the little squiggly windowthings that go their twisty ways to the outside. The ceiling's pretty high, and they're all up and near the top, but even so ain't no way to see outside from there, but the rocks are white or near white and it makes your see-globes ache.
"I'll go check. And I'll notice pretty fast if it isn't. Worst I'll get is a sunburn."
Of course when she goes skipping off to that big bad door your palebro sighs and drags himself up, too, on account of he couldn't live with himself if she got herself crisped and he wasn't right there to get all up and crisped with, trying to get her back inside this rad shelter in time. Aw man. You were enjoying the cuddles. He's such a toasty-warm little motherfucker, and you're fine being stone-in-the-shade-cool your own self but it feels so, so nice to have your hands all up on someone who isn't. Like, right up the back of their shirt, making them squeak and wriggle and be so warm all over you.
You bet Tavros would be real warm, too. Or your most excellent Time-sister. Or the humans, they run hot like any rustblood ever, only your palebro runs hotter. You wonder if Strider would make a sound if you ghosted your hand up his spine and sank your claws in, left slices all down his back for burning rivulets of glorious, repulsing red to run down and gild your arm like profane tear tracks on some martyr's face.
"--can do it, okay!"
"No, I can -- I don't need--"
You're on your feet and stepping over all manners of legs and piles on your way to the door, like some obstacle course where the murderpits are made of people. You vaguely consider flopping down onto Solbro, since he up and went to the trouble of making up a clever trap with his pointy knees, only then Karkat starts flailing at Jade-sis and she's all thwapping at his hands like they're naughty barkbeasts all up and getting into her food block trying to lick up her pie, and that shit ain't good for barkbeasts. The thwaps are not good for your palebro's hands either.
"Hey there," you say, and reach right between them with a hand so you can flip up the bar that waits, right there on the door being all 'sorry my fleshbrother, you're not going out today' at you. You know it's the bar's job and you respect that, but you're not letting a bar boss you around either. Your palebro wants out, he gets out is all.
Jade and Karkat make faces at you. You scratch your head and shrug.
"Tell me again how heavy that bar was?" she asks your palebro.
"Too heavy for your scrawny little human arms, and that's still a thing that's true," Karkat replies, face all pouty and scrunched up.
"Oh yeah," you confirm absently, and move it up and down against the wall a couple times to test your grip. "You too, bro. All nice and thick like this, would make a right loud splash dropping on someone's thinkpan." Hmm. "... Balance's all wrong, though."
You don't have your full understanding on about why Karkat's hand is all of a sudden all up and papping at your face, but it's nice, so you lean in and purr a bit.
"... Um, guys. Not that you're not cute and all, but can I open the door now?"
Jade is all up and waiting with her little foot tap-tapping and hands on her fine hips, but when Karkat pushes you off all flustered she just goes and grins, and then she pulls out some miracle shades out of her sylladex and plops them on her nose.
Her teeth are wide and cutting and so, so white like this.
"Ready to go, Captain Vantas! Open the hatch!"
"Figures you'd have this ass-backward understanding of how chains of command work," Karkat mutters, though you can tell he kind of likes it, that being a captain business. He goes "Cover your eyes everybody!" and now you're pretty sure everyone who wasn't awake yet is, blinking their eyes open right when they oughta get their listen on. You laugh, but you help Karkat open the door, only you guess it went and became a hatch instead but you're not sure of the difference but seriously it's all cool with you.
People yelp and dive headfirst in piles when the light gets in; you're hidden behind the door but you squint anyway, your ganderbulbs feel all tight and unhappy. Jade tosses her hair like she's a musclebeast and that's her totally fly mane, and she strolls out like it ain't no thing. You wait for her to burn.
"Sun's down! But it sure is hot out here."
You can feel it rolling in against your skin, and in your horns even a bit, like it's water and there's currents sneaking in from the depths all wrapping their sneaky way up your ankles, only instead of wet and cold it's hot and bone-dry.
"Alright!" There's a little pschh of decaptchalogued noise; on the floor in the puddle of light her shadow hefts up its wicked Denizen-slaying gun, the edges of her all neat and sharp-edged. "Back in five."
"Jade, wait, don't go alone!"
Of course your palebro scrunches up his face until his eyes are almost lost under his eyebrows and charges out into the heat and light, blinder than your most legal of sisters ever was.
When you trudge out after him you leave the door wide open, and a dozen voices inside sing out together in protest, and you grin into the white-blue sky, eyes closed and clubs in hand. Gotta get them to sing other things later on, but it's a pretty good start.
"--Ow."
"Karkat, why are you on the ground."
"Why am I on the ground? Why am I on the ground, she asks me! Maybe because of all those stupid branches some lazy tree-custodian faerie left lying around to trip up blind travelers which at the moment, what a shock, include me!"
You up and navigate your way to Karkat by sound, only cracking one of your eyes open from time to time to correct course. You trip on rocks a bit, but it's not hard to catch yourself before you fall. Your poor palebro has a shorter trip to the ground to fix his balancing act in. Also he's graceful like a new-hatched barkbeast, which is to say not really or more like really not but at least it's devastadorable.
"You didn't have to come out, you know -- um, why are you still following me?"
"Hello? Unknown forest possibly full of bandits and gogdamned certainly full of hungry predators?"
"Hello, I need to pee and I'd like you not to be in earshot!"
"--Oh right. Uh."
You can hear her taking in a deep patience-giving breath all the way over there. "Listen, there's bushes just a bit thataway. I'll go there. How about you sit down under that tree -- you'll be in the shade, and if I scream you can hear me, and also you won't be a creepy stalker. Okay? Good."
"Hrrn. You swear it's not that far?"
"Argh. I'm not that stupid, Karkat! Okay, now turn left a bit -- there, good. The tree is just ahead -- ack, duck!"
"... I appear to have found the tree," he says, all dry. Jade goes 'umm' and snickers. "Thank you for your invaluable assistance."
"Oh, piss off, it was just a couple leaves to the face. And now I need to go before my bladder explodes in a gruesome disgusting shower of pee and blood -- and don't listen!"
Well, you're all up and willing to let a sister have her tinkletime privacy. You crack an eye open to get your bearings -- you don't like it, it aches, but it's doable -- and close your eyes again. One step two steps oh hey a rock, four steps duck down...
"Ow!"
You appear to have found Karkat. You feel around for his face. Pap pap.
"Stop shooshing me and get off my foot, you vacuous polebeast!"
Oh hey, not a bad plan. "Sorry, bro. Can't see for shit."
"How can you be so heavy, I don't get it. You're nothing but tendons stretched out over a giant chitinous frame."
He sounds already exhausted. You pat him between his horns. "Staying put, bro?"
"Unless she starts screaming, yeah."
"Okay then. I'mma gonna get my exploration on."
"The shi -- Gamzee, no!"
"Shoosh, bro, won't go far. You can yell me back."
You make sure to go in the opposite direction from the Jade sister's bushes, down to the road and on the other side. It's all forest loam under your feet, soft and bouncy and smothering all noises, all echoes, makes the world all cloud-wrapped and cotton-soft. Overhead there's leaves whispering to each other in the breeze, very quietlike as if they know it's early evening and ain't no reason to get noisy and bothersome and wake a brother up yet. Sometimes your foot snaps the spine of some poor little branch as gotten lost on the ground, or a chirpbeast sings its little waking song, trilling all sweet and sharp and high.
You walk slow, spine loose, clubs hanging easy from your hands and feeling high grass tangle on the blunt ends, feeling leaves dance their shivery path against your ear, catch in your hair. Sometimes you get to thinking you might be wanting to lean left or right or bend over, the forest all drawing an interlaced web of shadows on your eyelids, of tingles down your horns, all muted soft. Little clawbushes try to up and keep your pants with them, and it smells like dry powdery earth and spicy plant sap all rising up to you from where you up and step, filling your smelling nodes with deliciousness and mysteries, and there's this funny rushing, rustling sound in the background ...
You tilt your head to dodge a branch that was all throwing cold shadows across your face and another little clawbush gets its stubborn on, and then the ground all comes at you, only it's not where you thought it would be and your other foot finds nothing, and then your hands find nothing.
You have time for one single HONK before sudden cold slaps you in the face and swallows you.
The water rushes at you, in you, all around you, but not like the waves going back and forth, it keeps dragging you with greedy fingers and rolling you on the rocks at the bottom until it steals all your ups and downs. You go limp, let it roll you, until your feet are first and down and you can brake. Your blood is cold enough that you could stay a while, if you had more air, but you don't so better to come up now.
Your hair is all up and glued to your face, and you kind of want to pant a lot only your air sacs are too busy coughing themselves up your windhole. When you blink your eyes open the river is all glittering shards of light right back at you and it hurts, and in the woods there's noise like a trunkbeast what got stung by bees and is trying to get its hive-flattening on, all furious and wood-splintering. You anchor yourself to a big rock that breaches the surface and shake water out of your ears and haul yourself half-out, a club up and ready.
"My aching vascular pump cannot handle this kind of unfunny joke, Gamzee, I'm warning you, if you simply found a bucolic patch of grass to frolic in, my revenge will be so fierce you'll -- Gamzee! Where the fuck are you?!"
You try to get your answering on and cough a little more instead. And then he goes ow and you can speak somehow, because him being worried for you is one thing when you know where your ass is parked and that you're chill and fine, but you being worried for him, you're not letting any stupid water in bad places try to stop you.
"Here, bro!"
You cough up some more water. The trunkbeast crushes its way downriver. "Gamzee? What are you--"
"Whoa, whoa, stop!" you say, on account of how he's just popped up one step away from the edge and you ain't too sure he wouldn't crack his horns on the rocks tumbling in. He stops, all tense and frowny and trying to force his eyes open, and you can't help but laugh. There's a huge orange caterpillar all up and hitching a ride in his hair. "Nothing to get your harsh wrath on, best friend. I just up and went and found a river."
He lets out a sigh so huge you don't even need your ganderbulbs open to know he just deflated like a balloon the day after the most wicked wiggling day party. "And I found trees. With my face. This is a journey of staggering discoveries."
Somewhere off behind Karkat, the Jade-sis starts to laugh.
"Best bodyguards, the two of you."
"Oh, shut your food trap. So, Gamzee, do you intend on getting out of the water anytime soon, then?"
"Nah. Got me a sweet rock to get my perch on, think I'll chill for a bit."
The water is nice and fresh against your skin, tugs at your pant legs all playful and shit like it didn't just try to drown you, but that's how water is. The sea's like that too, one moment dancing with a motherfucker and the next wrapping 'em up and shoving 'em face down in sand and surf. It plays pretty rough, but you forgive it.
You let the leaves and the water sing you a lullaby, a tinklerustle whispersong that tiptoes its shooshing way down and down your braincase to where the harsh acrimony lives and wraps it all tight and cool and winter-sleepy.
You'll be wanting to get your slaying wrath on again soon, but for now you nap.
no subject
Hmm..so the human settlements on Alternia hate trolls and think of J/J/R/D as traitors to their species? And Nepeta has no cool stories to share about Dave?
"You have time for one single HONK before sudden cold slaps you in the face and swallows you."
I know that was a serious moment..but I burst into peals of laughter at the mental image of Gamzee suddenly going HONK while falling.
Gosh your characterization is brilliant. You make me like characters I was just okay with. Make me think more about what motivates them and how they reason.
Randomly...I was overcome with feels at the thought of all sixteen staying together..traveling together..an alternative not even a thing to be thought of. *dabs handkerchief at eye* They make me happy<3
no subject
Humans settlements all have different views on troll things depending on ... well, the local trolls and local history. In some places they commerce with each other and in others there was war recently/might be war again soon, it depends.
It wasn't really serious if I put a HONK in it XDD i was having fun trying to be all melodramatic about Gamzee tripping in the river.
TOGETHER FOREVEEEEEEEER T^T-b
Re: long comment is long, part two!
no subject
Protector!Karkat, and nobody splitting them up ever, and Gamzee the adorable sweetheart and also remorseless killer, and humans doing quadrants way too easily, and kyaaaa~
I find myself curious about how you divide up chapters: there's a *lot* here already, and your scenes are long enough that I think a lot of writers would make them individual chapters on their own. How do you decide where a chapter should end? (I'm still pretty awful at long fic myself, so I'm fascinated by how people answer questions like that.)
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Oh god, chapters VS scenes.
A scene is ... it starts in one place, and there's possibly discussions or actions, and then nothing interesting happens anymore/they change locations/there's a time gap so it can jump to the next! This is totally different from a chapter, which must accomplish something and have a sort of conclusion? okay this is hard to explain, since any scene in the story should ideally accomplish something (though there's also fanservice scenes, which accomplish happiness for the reader but don't serve the plot much, hmmmm.) I don't know, there's a theme/topic for the chapter, and it kinda follows a "starting point -> development -> OHSHIT!! -> conclusion/transition/pause point" pattern, like a story but smaller. ... this is also very loose guidelines and ... idk, it's mostly on instinct.
I'm not like this for ALL my fics but considering the first chapter had a zombie attack, I feel like it's a let-down to have zero action/kicking ass scenes in this one. False advertising, kind of. It would have been different if I were writing a get-together where character interaction is the only thing that matters. Here these scenes have been fairly aimless on their own, though they do show "yay new life safe and together" and "how so and so get along now after Stuff That Happened Offscreen", but no crisis happens to be pushed against, so it feels a bit like set up to me, and set up without plot is fillerish, and so posting them alone it would be a waste of time for the reader because sure it was a lot of cute but it didn't progress the plot at all!
I don't know, I only USE that brain, don't ask me to know how it works! XD;
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JoIsBishMyoga: It's more an artistic thing than a strict one. Scenes have different tones -- "the kissing scene", "the fight scene", "the grocery scene which is for character development" -- but you want chapters to be more similar to each other even as they push the story forward, so that your story seems more harmonious instead of flipping about all over the place. It's like a patchwork quilt, scenes are all the individual patches that don't have to look much like each other at all when placed side-by-side, but one row of a patchwork quilt isn't really going to look all that different from the rest and they'll all come together to make a full harmonious cozy blanket.
I dunno if it helps you but it speaks to me, so hey, maybe. XD
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imperial junk accomodates more junk- ded.
sweet caress of self hatred. oh Karkitty.
eat the poor fools soul in an entirely unrelated incident- pfffahaha. yis, Rose is a badass.
Gamzee's decription of choking his morail in his sleep is shiver inducing. Frankly, all his POV stuff is amazing to me. It's just such a sharp left turn from normal people thinking that it's refreshing...in it's own psychotic, psychedelic sensual kind of way. XD XD
It was sweet to see that Gamzee worries about Karkat being afraid of him enough not to want to be morails. Bwahaha, Rose is the perfect person to handle Eridian. Yes.
It's nifty that Gamzee's blood let him handle almost drowning better. And hey, if this is the first river they've found what have they been doing for water? And does being higher on the hemospectrum (and being more aquatic) mean that they need more water than lowbloods? How come Karkat addresses all the humans by their first names except Dave? How is the hemospectrum aging difference going to work? What about the supposed immortality of those who've reached God Tier? :D :D
haha, I am supposed to be sleeping. I should know better by now- that won't shut me up. Welp. First comment?
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Gamzee is so much fun to write, if a headache and a half. He'll be all whimsical one second, and then next he'll... still be whimsical, but about breaking heads and painting in people's blood. Mmm creepy clown.
They've found streams, drinkable but nothing deep enough to bathe in. Possibly the deepest was maybe knee high in spots, if that much.
Higher on the hemospectrum doesn't mean they need more drinkable water, it just means their skin gets dry easier but at the same time they have better insulation against the cold.
Karkat calls the humans by their last names when he finds they're doing weird human shit, or when he's annoyed at them, and Dave pisses him off as a sport so he's Strider pretty much all the time. XD
Aging difference is spoiler. Immortality is also spoiler.
*does dance of first comment* ahaha it's five am and of course NOW i'm inspired for the next scene. it figures. let's go to bed, both of us, yes? yes. *thuds*
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So Sollux is going to win Karkat's spade? I'm glad, I am so gooey for Karkat, I tend to wish him Terezi or Sollux for his spade, they're the ones I could see being fluffy black for him. (Cute, loving hatred, that is. Honestly, I'd be unhappy myself if I couldn't mix a bit of that sort of black into my relationships. Matesprits, pff. Human continuous emotional spectrum beats troll emotional leaps for complexity any day. [yes, I'm stealing that from Outside_Context_Problem, because it's _correct_.])
Ok, time to see what's shiny after you made me squeesplode.
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talkativetypative crazy today?)no subject
A: Karkat complaining about good luck to Nepeta
B: Karkat recalling that's it's because Vriska stole luck from people who were mean to John.
C: Nepeta suggesting that Karkat should jump John.
D: Karkat cuddle-threatening Vriska and Eridan.
E: Everyone gets to the rest stop.
Individually, the scenes are wonderful, but when you revealed that Karkat knew Vriska had stolen luck, I reread a bunch to figure out what he was still wondering about. That scene would be better if you moved Vriska's reveal from a parenthetical 'this happened' narrated by Karkat to the present tense, like so:
A: Karkat complaining about good luck to Nepeta
B: Vriska revealing she stole the jerk's luck to Karkat, who lightly explodes (but wishes he'd thought of that first)
C: Nepeta suggesting that Karkat should jump John.
D: Everyone gets to the rest stop
E: Karkat cuddle-threatening Vriska and Eridan.
This way, it makes sense for Karkat to be paranoid about good luck, and lets you get some tortured "I felt X, then Y, but really Z when Person V did thing W" exposition out of Karkat's mouth and being played real time instead.
The order change is mostly to get a break from Vriska being awesome so it's less odd that she's scared. It also gives Vriska and Eridan a more clear and present threat to react to -- they're afraid to go into the shelter with adult trolls. You can also put the sleeping on piles of the slain into their mouths if you want. (Oh, and confirm early that Feferi is Eridan's moirail again, or is it Aradia? OK, clearly I need to reread this and the problem may really be that I was loopy. Still, evidence before the court -- an explicit statement that someone feels moirallegiance to Eridan may help the fuzzy-brained idiot reader.)
Leaving their first meeting with humans to be told in retrospect makes sense -- it guarantees to the readers that these aren't important people and keeps the impact of the first meeting you do show high. I just think you want to cut back in to live action as soon as you can after that.
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One little point: in the line about "the emperor of pathetic assholes", you refer to "Her Imperial Condescension". In Homestuck itself, that character is consistently referred to as "Her Imperious Condescension", or alternately "The Imperial Condesce" (a nice eight-and-eight word pair) - but the long form never uses "Imperial" AFAICT. I don't know if you care about that level of detail, but if you do, that should probably be corrected.
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re: disjointedness, yeah. I don't see how to fix that, either. .__.;;;
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Two things which I think are contributing to it are A: the fact that these multiple segments are being presented all at a go instead of being split up (into separate pages and/or chapters), analogously to the original chatlogs, and B: the relative dearth of visual and positional description - which of course is a side effect of its being first-person POV and sort of stream-of-consciousness. Not sure if either of those helps figure out a way to improve it, though.
Also, one other minor fixit note: in the tags, you have "Nepeta Lejoin". That should be "Leijon"; it's actually a Swedish surname, and is almost certainly going to be pronounced "lion" (which latter realization has made it much easier for me to remember the name in the first place).
long comment is long, part one!
Humans are ridiculously community-oriented, though, there's only to look at the way that village back there was built all squeezed in together, houses almost climbing on top of each other, wall to wall, you'd have fit maybe three rustblood lawnrings there, tops. This is a run-on, of course, but that fits Karkat's thought process (and if I corrected all the run-ons we'd be here all night!) so whatever. But! I would change "there's only to look at the way" to "you just/only have to/need to look at the way" etc. The phrase reads better if a subject does the looking.
It looks like a caricature of John's Serious Face, which already looks like a caricature in the first place. This is officially the most adorable image in the history of ever, okay? :-)
(Alright, no, back in the day you liked hearing all about his troubles and advising him, to the point where kid-you, being a stupid little fuck as most past Karkats are wont to be, was vaguely entertaining thoughts of dragging him into the diamond quadrant if he ever, miraculously, managed to flip flushed with Feferi. Only Eridan just never really listened to you or advised you back.) First, aww, poor Karkat! Second, I changed a preposition. Third, maybe remove "just" from "Eridan just never really" to strengthen the impact of that sentence.
Some days you're afraid Gamzee's influenced you just as much as you've influenced him. Tense agreement.
The older trolls get and the more cull-happy, it seems; got to practice for when they join up, after all. Change to "The older trolls get, the more cull-happy they are, it seems;" otherwise that clause doesn't make grammatical sense. (You could also use "become" or "get" in place of "are," but you need a verb there.)
You're too used to looking six sweeps old, same as them; apart from the clothes it's not like the game updated its graphics. I love the idea that their physical, presumably three-dimensional flesh-and-blood bodies were controlled by game graphic limitations. Way to play with the inherent nature of canon and Hussie's deliberately low-rent art! :-)
"Anyway even if she ain't cullin anyone much, what happens when the recruitment drones come for her? 'cause I bet they'd cull us ta make a way through an' take her, easy -- uh, Kar? ... Kar, yer growlin."
John bounces down the entry stairs and through the door first, before you can yell not to go alone, and immediately goes "empty!", not even having the decency to give you some time to get a good rant going.
Granted you've never made a pile out of live trolls, but it's a staple of the roadtrip movie genre to make piles of culled ones at rest stops. !!! Well, I suppose I should have expected that, really, given the givens of troll culture. I bet Gamzee'd think that was romantic as fuck, actually.
The lighter a color, the more lethal, that's why nothing fucks with lusii. Iiiiiiinteresting. *steeples fingers, demands more world-building* (This also applies to the sun coats you mention later on, btw!)
You'd kick him, but he absconds before you can, waving back at you without looking as he joins his red-mates in the corner they've laid claim to. Athhole. It's hard to know how to write a doubled S in Sollux's voice, isn't it? I'd go with a single TH to represent the sound and then get on with the rest of the word, which is why I removed an extraneous T. If you're going to write TH for each S, you need to add another H, making it "aththhole." Which looks very silly. Oh, Thollukth, alwayth tho much trouble. *wry*
"Let's pass over the fact that my God Tier ability is the biggest fraud any chump has ever been cheated with. I could maybe make one of Tavros' skull-shaving nicks scab." So Karkat's a healer, eh? Useful! Also not terribly OOC! But I can see why he'd be pissed off about it. *pets him, gingerly*
[continued in next comment, wtf, stupid LJ character limits, gnrgh]
long comment is long, part two!
"You may have the spot between me and the wall," Rose is saying. I swear to you, that is correct. The pronoun (me) is the object of a preposition (between) and therefore must be in accusative case rather than nominative. People screw up because they know 'me' is incorrect in phrases like "Me and him are going to X" and think 'me' must therefore always be colloquial and grammatically wrong... even when it is right and using "I" makes them sound like uneducated idiots. Which Rose is emphatically not. (Also, by this point the incorrect usage has become embedded in colloquial English as a Thing and more people default to it than to the correct usage. Which drives me fucking nuts.)
Ahem. Sorry. I have FEELINGS on that topic. Moving on!
==> Karkat: Be the lusus-y moirail. The lurail? The moirailus? Oh hey, sounds like a right bitchtits thing to be. Kinda like a fatter goatdad -- no, wait, that's walrus. Is it?
==> Be the tool who thinks it'd be fun to be a walrus. *dies laughing* *no seriously, DEAD* *and typing as a zombie, for reals*
In your nights, you are the terror. It is you. :-)
You're gentle and light like he's a chirpbeast; the best miracle of all is when they all up and decide they like it in your hands, and not even because they're too crushed up to fly. ...He says, casually, as if he's crushed birds and mice and such before just for the heck of it and so knows what he's saying from personal experience. Oh Gamzee, how are you so adorable and simultaneously creepifying as fuck???
You can feel it rolling in against your skin, and in your horns even a bit, like it's water and there's currents sneaking in from the depths all wrapping their sneaky way up your ankles, only instead of wet and cold it's hot and bone-dry. That is a seriously excellent bit of description. :-)
There's a little pschh of decaptchalogued noise; on the floor in the puddle of light her shadow hefts up its wicked Denizen-slaying gun, the edges of her all neat and sharp-edged. A little repetitive. Maybe change to "her outline all neat and sharp-edged" instead?
Gotta get them to sing other things later on, but it's a pretty good start. Gamzee. Please tell me you are thinking about horrible rap songs or something, not about going on another massacre.
"Okay then. I'mma gonna get my exploration on." "I'mma" is a colloquial contraction of "I'm" and "gonna," so change this to either "I'm gonna" or just "I'mma." (Or maybe "I'mma go"?)
The water is nice and fresh against your skin, tugs at your pant legs all playful and shit like it didn't just try to drown you, but that's how water is. The sea's like that too, one moment dancing with a motherfucker and the next wrapping 'em up and shoving 'em face down in sand and surf. It plays pretty rough, but you forgive it. Again, lovely description and so very, very Gamzee -- he would have that attitude, after growing up next to the ocean and dealing with Seagoatdad's near-perpetual absence.
Overall assessment: yay! Here's hoping Jade starts speaking to you and you can get part two finished soonish!
Re: long comment is long, part two!
So Karkat's a healer, eh? Useful! Also not terribly OOC! But I can see why he'd be pissed off about it. *pets him, gingerly*
Nooooot really. XD He can, uh, at the moment he can stop blood from flowing out of a wound and make it go from wet and glidey to scabbing. He really hasn't been God Tier long and since he thought it was kind of useless when they had a Witch of Life around he didn't train much.
...He says, casually, as if he's crushed birds and mice and such before just for the heck of it and so knows what he's saying from personal experience.
Mmmmmh. Oh Gamzee.
♥~
Re: long comment is long, part two!
(Anonymous) 2012-05-03 12:43 pm (UTC)(link)To formal it up, because even though "between me and the wall" is correct, Rose would probably say "between myself and the wall" or "between the wall and myself." Y/N?
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I had to stop reading and find a pillow so that I wouldn't disturb my dormmates with my squees. I LOVE YOU FOREVER.
I'm not going to ramble about Gamzee, I swear.
...*really wants to*
Anyway! I'm really loving how sneaky!antagonizing Jade's being, it's absolutely wonderful, and all of your characterizations of them are my headcannon now.
I was wondering how you'd choose to manifest Tavros's special Page status ever since the update with Jake/mind!Dirk interaction, but then I re-read this and realized that we probably wouldn't be seeing any of that, what with the game being over and all. Then again, the Seers still have their mind thingies, and Vriska's still got her thief on, so... any chances of seeing that?
Also! (I swear, I'll go to bed after this one) I've been re-reading the troll arc and hit myself with a stick for not realizing where you got the Sun-zombies from the first chapter, but now I'm kind of wondering where "the terrible MUSCLEBEASTS who roam at night" are. Or do they conveniently not exist on this NotQuite!Alternia?
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Well. They're all God Tier now. So... I have no idea what Tavros is going to be like. XD I'm bullshitting that because he hasn't been God Tier long his power wouldn't be very developed right now. Just like most everyone else's. Most powerful would be the humans, since they've had the longest time that way, and even they are having trouble.
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Also, does he have a lowblood fetish or something? XD Seriously.
(Oh gog, I loved that bit with him contemplating if Dave would make a noise. Loooooved it)
Did you know that Gamzee's a little scared of Vriska in cannon? I've been going over act five again and just sorta stumbled across it.
I'm admittedly curious as to why they aren't able to use their god-tier powers. Is it because they're out of the game, or is it just a temporary thing?
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Oooh really? shiny, when/where was it?
God Tier being unavailable is re: both that they had to give a lot of juice to manage to get out of the game and they're running on empty, and now they can't count on game mechanics to replenish their stocks with a "night at the inn" dalala all HP/MP points restored. The energy has to come from somewhere. Eventually they'll be back to full power but they'll always recuperate a bit more slowly. Things would be way too easy otherwise, if they could just spam tornados all day.
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Yeah, that makes sense. For some reason I thought the God-Tier powers were dying from being away from the game. :?
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Eridan sneaks you a wary glance in passing. You are suddenly overcome with the need to pretend that you're still in deep conversation with someone else right around here and that while in perfect eavesdropping distance you have zero interest in whatever happens, honest. "Uh. Hey, Jade. How is it going?"
"You may have the spot between I and the wall," Rose is saying. "I won't subject you to the nerve-wracking experience of sleeping straight underneath my dear ectobrother."
Jade answers you with a just-as-distracted "Uhn, good. Yeah."
Nope, not paying any attention, nope, none at all. Totally not obvious. xD
Gamzee is so delightfully creepy, it's amazing.
I... kind of want art of Karkat walking into trees. Because. Karkat. Walking into trees.
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he'd be bored if they DID get along. Nothing more to do! apart from fretting that things are NEVER this good and there's obviously a horrible thing waiting at the corner. Or maybe he's dying of brain cancer and none of them wants to tell him. Something Is Wrong!
Oh mean, wanting to see karkat all bruised and rubbing adorably at his nose because fuck, why are there so many trees in that forest couldn't they be elsewhere. So mean.
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RE: Healing powers?
Of course, Knight is a combat class focused mostly on getting in peoples faces and hurting them, so I guess that Karkat uses his powers more easily to rip the blood out of people than to shove it back in, or to deal more damage the more beat up he is. Or maybe both, Blood is not something that has been shown off well.
Re: Healing powers?
Re: Healing powers?
(Anonymous) 2012-05-04 12:51 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-05-04 07:28 am (UTC)(link)Am very curious about the trolls on new Alternia, and their interaction with humans. At this point, drones seem unlikely since the humans are in the middle ages and don't think of trolls as allpowerful creatures with godlike mechanical guardians.
But if there were drones, how powerful would they be to be seen as a legitimate threat to god tier players? Or is the fear of drones more a reflex ingrained in all trolls?
Gamzee is awesome as ever, adorable and horrible both. Gotta love how Karkat deals with him, so casually accepting of the danger and reacting to being chocked in his fucking sleep by his most trusted person with swats to the nose. That, plus the corpse pile idea, really serves to bring home how much violence is a part of troll culture.
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At this point, drones seem unlikely since the humans are in the middle ages and don't think of trolls as allpowerful creatures with godlike mechanical guardians.
Hm? Drones are biological, it's only in the alpha universe in Dirk's future that they're mechanical. Is that what you meant? @.@
Rest is spoiler bwahaha.
Mmmm Gamzee&Karkat. I'm glad you like the interaction. ^^
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I love all the bits of wordbuilding about how the two planets have melded, especially earth's moon in the sky - that just seems to drive it home, somehow. and Karkat Karkat Karkat ALL the Karkat love here 'specially the bits with Vriska and Eridan and the oh shit their tiny realisation - that new age difference looks to be all kind of interesting.
And especially this bit: You don't have your full understanding on about why Karkat's hand is all of a sudden all up and papping at your face, but it's nice, so you lean in and purr a bit. h Karkat even when you get to have nice things they're terrifying stress inducing potentially murder spree-ing things. <3
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Yay! I'm happy you like the worldbuilding. u.u-b And that you're enjoying Karkat! MY BABY. ♥
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And the way you write GamKar ... /happy sigh
It's just my favourite favourite pale pairing ever (although my other favourite pale pairings also involved Karkat ... damn it Kar, why are you such a reasonably-canonical pale bicycle?) and you write the balance of responsibility and feelings between them so well and urghhhhhh pale feels everywhere.
Also, Troll Debbie Shooshpaps Dallas is hilarious and totally a classic of the pale porn genre.
I really like the world exploration you've got going on with Vriska's and Eridan's near instinctual reactions/worries about Aradia the Adult. Considering the only time that kid trolls would ever see adults while they're still children is in movies then it makes sense that they would have a very instinctual fear of them, what with troll society being the way it is.
I was going to say something else though I've forgotten....
I love how possessive/protective Karkat is of everyone. Never mind the fact that Aradia is older than him and a God of Time, he will fight anyone and everyone if they so much as try to lay a claw/finger on her!
Also, what's your headcanon regarding Karkat's Blood thingy? Did you mean that he makes people bleed or that he's kind of a healer? I didn't really get it....
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Gamzee is fun to write! when he wants me to write him, the asshole. >___>
Also, Troll Debbie Shooshpaps Dallas is hilarious and totally a classic of the pale porn genre.
It really is. Bwahaha. I bet Karkat would totes beat her record, though, mostly because his would actually not be porn-faked. Hah!
(i wonder if this universe would have that movie. it'd be hilarious if the comparison came up from some poor OC at some point XD)
My headcanon is kinda v. spoilery but at this time all karkat can do with blood is make it scab (he hasn't tried the reverse, IE getting someone's slowly clotting wounds to open back, but he could probably do it too, only he doesn't have a lot of juice.) At the moment he's been God tier maybe three months and he hasn't trained much, the one GT power he really got any use of was flying.
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I fail in worship.
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♥ glad you're enjoying it.
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(Anonymous) 2012-05-15 08:24 pm (UTC)(link)I just have a question though. What happened to the trolls' wings? And everybody's ability to fly? Did they just not get to keep those abilities?
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From Abbreviation, with love.
(Anonymous) 2013-01-12 07:34 am (UTC)(link)Thank you for describing a normal day in my life.
PPS. I will forever love your Gamzee and your Jade and your Karkat and your Feferi for that matter. Just thought I would give you a little shout out and let you know that even if you don't finish this verse, it reads well as is. I can walk away from this and feel like they have adventures (very big and very small, let getting that caterpillar out of Karkat's hair) ahead of them.
I always love your dynamics (jade with her sassy hips) and I adore your world building. The details of the forest and the light and shadow on Gamzee's face.
I would be very interested in seeing how Tavros reacts to Gamzee's darker thoughts.
Anyways, thanks for making my night as always! c: