Chapter Text
Karkat, stop being the girl experiencing complex emotions immediately.
You stop being a girl experiencing a pivotal moment in her final childhood years and become the young man passed out on the dirty floor of a cave. Holy shit, everything hurts so much. It’s impossible to tell how long you’ve been out- a few hours maybe? Your eyelids are two impenetrable curtains of concrete, your body feels like it was filled with sand. Everything hurts, every molecule of your being is tingling in that distinctly uncomfortable way that makes your very bones itch. At this point you'd be completely fine with just burrowing into the fucking dirt and sleeping for a hundred sweeps.
While you contemplate this hypothetical hibernation, you hear something shift next to your head. Something tells you you've not yet earned the reward of respite, nor will you receive it for a very long time.
You force yourself to sit up, every muscle in your body screaming in protest. Something cracks- loudly. You can deal with that later.
Scanning the room, you see Kanaya and Vriska apparently left at some point. Should you be mad at them for ditching you? No, that's ridiculous- you were fucking unconscious, what the hell were they supposed to do, drag you?
Oh shit.
You look around the room quickly, searching for Sollux. You spot him a few feet to your left, looking about as bad as you feel. Dragging yourself over to him, you try to determine exactly what level of fucked he's at without having to physically move him.
Your digestive sac churns sharply as your ocular globes adjust to the horror show you've subjected them to. His face- oh dear God, his face . Everything that can bleed is doing just that, sickly yellow fluids draining from his mouth, his nose, fuck- even his eyes . You don't think you've felt this disgusted in your life, if you had eaten anything you're certain it would be on the floor by now.
Ok, you need to calm the hell down. You're no good to him like this, your hands are shaking worse than a newly hatched malnourished grub. Just relax.
Relax.
Fucking relax .
You've come to the conclusion that silently screaming at yourself to relax is actually quite counterproductive to your end goal. Okay, new tactic- you just have to channel this pan frying panic into something productive, like helping your not-quite-boyfriend bleed out on the filthy fucking ground.
You aren't quite sure of how to stop bleeding when it's coming from someone's face. Should you move his head? Wait, didn't you read somewhere that's like, really bad? It could damage someone's neck or some stupid shit like that. Does that only apply to scuttlebuggy accidents, or just all accidents? Does this qualify as an accident? Why is this so fucking difficult ?
For one horrifying moment, you contemplate kissing him. That's supposed to work, right? Another glance at his face sets you straight through- who in their right mind would smooch a bloodied corpse?
He's not a corpse Karkat he's not fucking dead stop saying he's dead you rancid sack of shit he's just... sleeping. Yes, sleeping. And you have to wake him up.
KARKAT: OKAY. OKAY THIS IS FINE.
KARKAT: I CAN WORK WITH THIS.
KARKAT: SOLLUX? YOU CAN HEAR ME RIGHT?
KARKAT: YOU'RE JUST DOING THAT SHITTY THING WHERE YOU PRETEND TO BE ASLEEP SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO TALK TO ME, WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS A HUGE DICK MOVE.
KARKAT: RIGHT?? YOU'RE JUST DOING THAT. YEAH.
He's definitely not doing that. He'd get a goddamn academy award for this performance if for some lunatic reason he decided the best course of action in this moment was to fuck with you by faking his death really, really , well.
That awful idea creeps back from the backlog of your pan again. It's not like there's anyone here who'd judge you. If it works- great, fan-fucking-tastic, he's awake. If not, he never has to know.
You lean over and-
SOLLUX: wH47 fh3 H3LL
KARKAT: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD'S HEAVING DICK WHAT THE FUCK!?!
You nearly leap out of your goddamn skin as you try to very quickly make it clear that you weren't trying to mack on Sollux in an ill advised attempt to revive him. Definitely not. Was he awake the whole time?
Before you can ask this this very pressing question to determine whether or not you can punch him for being a terrible person, he cuts you off with-
SOLLUX: h22ut 7h34 up fukcck y0uyr chumphy 5uckyfuck fr0nghumph1ng 8r1nd3 573m r1g7h up3 y0ur 5h17f7y ph3l5m504k3d pr083chu7h3 71l7 1z 5uck 4zz 8171ch 15 5uckky 5uchy fuck37y 5uckh0l3 fucky fcuk3y fuck fuck fuck-
Hm. Interesting development.
KARKAT: UH.
KARKAT: WANNA RUN THAT BY ME AGAIN?
SOLLUX: w4guhh ffff 5h17h1h7 5h17
KARKAT: OH GOOD GRIEF.
KARKAT: ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME RIGHT NOW? YOU’D BETTER NOT BE FUCKING WITH ME, I DRAGGED YOUR ASS THROUGH UNGODLY LENGTH OF SHITTY TUNNEL SYSTEMS FOR TWELEVE FUCKING HOURS STRAIGHT, IF YOU ARE IN ANY REMOTELY POSSIBLE WAY PULLING MY BULGE ON THIS I’LL-
Sollux grabs you by collar and yanks you down to his level. Your face is inches away from his, his hot and frankly kind of rank breath hitting your skin. You feel deeply uncomfortable. His fucked up pupiless eyes bore into yours as he forces his mouth to cooperate, which apparently has become a task he struggles with in the past day.
SOLLUX: GHEEE3E4h73333E3EE3EET.
SOLLUX: I11hT.
SOLLUX: 0UGH77.
KARKAT: WH-
SOLLUX: 37 17 01U7 G7 17 0U7 G3 17 0U7 G37 7 0U7 G37 1 0U7 G37 17 U7 G37 17 07 G387 17 0UGG37 17 0U7 G337 17 0U7 G377 17 0U7 GE37 117 0U7 G37 177 0U7!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!!1!!!!!!!!111!!!!!1
Okay, you don’t know what the hell is wrong with him but it’s freaking you the fuck out. His horrifying shrieks melt into nonsense, the sounds of someone suffering agony so great the words with which to describe them have been all but completely stricken from collective consciousness. He loses his grip on you while he wails, clawing at his neck while-
His neck.
Shit.
You pull him towards you and try to fight against his violent convulsing as it all suddenly clicks together. That goddamn implant- when the fuck did he put it back in? Why did he put it back in? How in the world did you not notice a giant fucking bug attached to his neck? He must have overloaded it or broken it somehow, probably with that light show with the drones. His whole body is shaking, breathes quick and shallow while a strange clicking noise keeps emitting from his throat. God- if you don’t get this thing out it’ll fry his fucking pan.
You wipe the sweat out of your eyes and force yourself to focus- a herculean task given that he won’t stop fucking screaming, that awful sound bouncing off the walls and enveloping the both of you. It pounds your ears like a fucking belling ringing and ricocheting through every inch of you skull, it feels like its’s itching even now, cracking, ready to break open if you can’t help him soon oh god oh why did it have to be you why did it have to be him god dammit why why wh -
You try to still his head with your hand-
-you don't know what you’re doing-
-you can feel blood and sweat and drool coating your filthy hands-
-you’re going to kill him-
-you can finally see it, at the base of his neck-
-he’s going to die you fucking moron-
-purple, swollen, pulsing, drenched in his blood-
-he’ll die in your arms and he’ll die hating you-
New screams fill the air, harmonizing with the ones Sollux keeps creating from the pit of his stomach- they’re yours, you’re yelling now too as you grab hold of that disgusting thing and begin to pull with all your strength.
It’s not all that big, but whatever stinger is embedded into his spinal cord is buried deep in there and, sickeningly, fused to his skin. It pulls up like a tent of flesh, barbed hooks tearing through grey skin like paper, you whisper a million apologies as you’re forced to listen to his sobs, feeling as her jerks and spasms in your grasp without the words to tell you how badly you’re hurting him and why in the fuck won't this thing come out ?
SOLLUX: 27OPP.
You let go of him immediately, God, you’d never thought you’d live to see the day where you were happy to hear him speak. He doubles over, grabbing at his head- pulling frantically at clumps of his hair, shaking, sweating, heaving and clawing at his stomach. The whole scene laid out before you just keeps twisting the knife in your gut. He's the most pitiable creature you've ever seen in your life.
You try to help- you're not really sure what you think you're going to do, pat him on the back maybe? However, the second you try he angrily bats your hand away and goes back to dry heaving on the ground. It's like watching a barkfiend with a chronic case of fleas.
That thing is still attached to his neck, grotesquely dangling by its stinger. You must have ripped out like eight inches off that shit, how is it still in there? You watch in sickening fascination as its legs twitch erratically. Errant sparks crackle around it, little red and blue fireworks leaking from his body.
KARKAT: OH... OH GOD.
KARKAT: I SHOULD PROBABLY FINISH-
SOLLUX: guhg5h
SOLLUX: n0o. no.
SOLLUX: 1 dont7. ffu4ck. 5h17 2sh117 52HII1T-
KARKAT: OKAY STOP! STOP- TRYING TO TALK IT’S-
KARKAT: ALRIGHT I DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE THIS WITHOUT DIRECTLY INSULTING YOU SO I WON’T.
KARKAT: SO I’M GOING TO POLITELY ASK YOU TO PUT A FUCKING CAN IN IT SO I CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL TO DO.
Sollux makes this strange little noise but doesn’t protest further so you guess he agrees? It’s hard to read him, all you know is looking at him makes you feel terrible.
Is this permanent? Did his thinkpan go up in flames and all you could do was sit here slack jawed like a fucking ape? Now that you think about it, trying to brute force that thing out of his head was probably a terrible idea, you could have torn something, many somethings, important things. Oh, this is making your head hurt. Sollux is the only one who knows how it works and he's currently preoccupied shuddering on the floor trying to keep his mind from fracturing further.
Part of you wants to grab the girls for help, but you’re really uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him alone, and moving him is- no. You cannot move him.
Fuck, could you stop being so completely useless for like two seconds and help him?
KARKAT: SO, UNSURPRISINGLY TO BASICALLY EVERYONE, I’M NOT REALLY SURE WHAT TO DO HERE.
KARKAT: LIKE THAT THINGS BASICALLY A TERTIARY ORGAN AT THIS POINT, IT SEEMS LIKE AN EXTRAORDINARILY TERRIBLE IDEA TO JUST RIP IT OUT, RIGHT?
Sollux groans.
KARKAT: I’M CHOOSING TO TAKE THAT AS A YES.
KARKAT: I GUESS THAT ALSO MEANS YOU CAN UNDERSTAND ME? THAT HAS TO BE A GOOD SIGN, RIGHT? LIKE ALL OF YOUR COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS HAVEN’T JUST SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTED.
KARKAT: JUST THE ONES THAT LET YOU TALK. AND MOVE. AND FEEL PAIN.
KARKAT: OH SWEET MOTHER OF HORRORS ABOVE THIS IS REALLY FUCKING BAD.
KARKAT: SOLLUX, I’M SO SORRY-
A sharp pain goes up your ankle. This asshole just kicked you.
KARKAT: OKAY! I GET IT, FUCKING HELL.
KARKAT: I SEE YOU CAN STILL FUNCTION WELL ENOUGH TO BE A LITTLE BITCH ABOUT EVERYTHING, BUT YOU’RE RIGHT.
KARKAT: ME SITTING HERE AND VERBALLY FLAGELLATING MYSELF IS OF NO BENEFIT TO EITHER OF US RIGHT NOW. I JUST THOUGHT I SHOULD HAVE IT ON THE RECORD.
KARKAT: LIKE “HEY SOLLUX, SORRY FOR BEING IN DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR IQ GOING INTO THE LOW DOUBLE DIGITS, THAT SOUNDS REALLY SHITTY!”
KARKAT: IF YOU WERE CAPABLE OF FORMING THE WORDS YOU’D PROBABLY SAY SOMETHING LIKE
KARKAT: ahaha that make2 two of us
KARKAT: BECAUSE YOU’RE PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE OF NOT GETTING YOUR FUCKING DIGS IN NO MATTER HOW DIRE THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
KARKAT: OH FUCK ME, AM I WRITING YOUR JUVANILE QUIPS *FOR* YOU NOW?
KARKAT: IS THAT WHAT WE'RE DOING NOW? I JUST HOLD A ONE MAN DIALOGUE WITH MYSELF FOR SEVERAL HOURS WITH YOU OCCASIONALLY INTERJECTING WITH GIBBERISH AS YOU’RE PREOCCUPIED WITH BEING TRAPPED IN A MENTAL PRISON OF UNIMAGINABLE ANGUISH?
KARKAT: HUH. I GUESS IT REALLY *ISN’T* ALL THAT DIFFERENT FROM HOW WE USUALLY AOW FUCK I KNOW I’M NOT HELPING STOP KICKING ME YOU INFINITE SHIT LORD!
KARKAT: I GUESS WE SHOUGODDAMMIT I DIDN’T EVEN DO ANYTHING THAT TIME!
KARKAT: SO HELP ME GOD I AM *NOT* ABOVE KICKING YOUR ASS RIGHT NOW!!
KARKAT: I JUST-
KARKAT: I REALLY WISH I COULD HELP YOU RIGHT NOW.
KARKAT: I WISH YOU COULD HELP ME HELP YOU, BUT I GUESS THAT JUST FURTHER ACCENTUATES MY HOPELESSNESS.
KARKAT: ISN’T THERE *SOME* WAY YOU COULD TELL ME WHAT TO DO?? A WAY THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE ME PINNING YOU TO THE GROUND AND POURING GASOLINE ON THE GREASE FIRE THAT IS YOUR THINK PAN BY PERFORMING IMPROVISED NEUROSURGERY?
He doesn’t say anything. Great! He died while you were once again consumed by your own self loathing, how incredibly fucking oh wait he’s moving.
He’s digging into his pockets. What the hell is in his pockets? Nothing, apparently, but he still keeps grabbing at them. Is he trying to tell you something?
KARKAT: UH.
KARKAT: I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE AWARE OF THIS BUT YOUR PALMHUSK ISN’T IN THERE MAN.
He gives you an exasperated groan, as if you were missing something incredibly obvious. Hell, maybe you were, but his shit attitude about it isn’t making things any clearer so he can shove it up his nook.
Sollux pulls himself up onto his knees, his face lost of all color, an ashen ghost pulling grabbing at you wildly, intense concentration screwing up his face as he grasps at your pockets now, which are also completely bare.
He pulls at your face, a stream of bunkum and tommyrot flowing from his lips as freely as a leaky faucet. His hands are ice cold, the hands of a corpse. Are you hallucinating right now?
Get your head out of your ass and focus, Karkat. Pockets, what the fuck does he mean by pockets? They’re all empty- they have to be an analog for something. Fuck, what is this, Troll Lassie? What is it, you stupid canine? Did Little Timmmy do an acrobatic pirouette into a well for the fifth goddamn time this month? Maybe we should just leave his ass down their since he likes it so much! You don’t have anything on you, not anything that wasn’t already-
KARKAT: MY SYLLADEX!!!
Sollux slumps back onto the ground, a pained grimace on his face. So that's progress- he needs something from your sylladex, but what? You guess you’ll just dump everything on the ground and let him sort through it and go from there.
You pull it up- the two of you had switched fetch modi a few sweeps back, Encryption had been too much of a headache for you to use practically. A little pang of jealousy swept over you every time you saw the ease with which he was able to access his stuff. It had given you fucking conniptions just trying to grab your keys and put more than a few holes in your battered hive.
The one you had now was much less infuriating, but what it lacked in inducing rage addled fits was substituted by its shitty gimmicky nature. It was Anaglyph; anything you captchalogued an item, it would convert it into a 3-D image printed onto its corresponding card. The only way to access it is if you’re wearing those stupid glasses that make you look like a geek high on his own irony. Wow, you look like a tool! On purpose! How revolutionary.
So while Sollux got a modus perfectly suited to his skill set, you got saddled with one that forced you to swallow whatever ounce of pride your body was still capable of producing and asking him to borrow his idiotic eyewear so you could grab your jacket. Story of your fucking life.
You kept telling yourself you’d get another one, but the opportunity has yet to present itself, what with you being on the lam and all.
You snatch his glasses off his face- the blue lens has been cracked to hell and back- and begin yanking junk out of your sylledex.
Assorted detritus litters the ground around you; your old sweater, a battered copy of ~ATH - A HANDBOOK FOR THE IMMINENTLY DECEASED , your sickles- in sore need of sharpening, sopor pills, your notebook WHICH NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO READ EVER, garbage, trash, junk- when was the last time you cleaned this thing out? It looks like a hoarder’s asshole exploded.
A little plastic baggy hits the ground with a clatter. You don’t remember what’s in there, but Sollux’s eyes widen with sudden interest. He snatches the bag and rips it open with a ferocity that unnerves you. As you watch as he pops a little yellow sphere no bigger than a walnut into his mouth, you remember with a start what he’s eating.
A fresh batch of panic rushes through you as you process what he’s done. He gave you that mind honey ages ago, never telling you why, just that you had to keep it safe. You don’t know much about mind honey, but the one thing you can recall rings clear as day in your mind:
YOU DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE EAT THE MIND HONEY.
You’re about to start tearing into him, asking him what in the almighty fuck possessed him to have such a spectacularly cretainous idea like turning himself into a living bomb. Before you can begin ripping him a new proverbial nook, he suddenly gets a very strange look on his face. He doubles over once more, the dry heaving back in full force. He clutches at the sides of his head, beating his temples black and blue as he twists over and arches his back. He sounds like a meowbeast with a particularly stubborn hairball lodged in its speakpipe. Red and blue static races up his body. Breath quickening, he bares his fangs as he reaches around and clutches that bug thing tightly in his grasp. With a guttural cry, he jerks his hand down sharply and snaps its stinger off at its base. It falls from his hand, partially crushed, leaking clear, viscous fluid.
His breathing slowly returns to normal, deep inhales and exhales as he forces himself to calm down.
KARKAT: SO
KARKAT: UH
KARKAT: THAT WAS AWFUL TO WATCH.
SOLLUX: 552hut up. pleas5e shut up. do the decent thiing for once iin your liife and ju2t 5hut the hell up
KARKAT: WELL EXCUSE ME FOR BEING CONCERNED! NEXT TIME YOURE HAVING A GRAND MAL SEIZURE I’LL JUST MAKE MYSELF A DRINK YOU UNGRATEFUL SPAZ.
SOLLUX: oh my god ii can’t 522tand the 2ound of your voiice
SOLLUX: for the love of god ju55t
SOLLUX: be concerned quiietly or 2omthiing
KARKAT: UGH.
KARKAT: how’s this?
SOLLUX: much better
KARKAT: yeah whatever.
KARKAT: so you want to tell me what the hell all that was or are we just agreeing that you’re completely certifiable at this point?
Sollux shuts his eyes for a moment, trying to find the right words to say. His voice comes out in a creaking whisper.
SOLLUX: 22o
SOLLUX: remember a whiile ago when ii gave you that 52tuff
KARKAT: YEAH?
SOLLUX: ughgh.
KARKAT: sorry, geez!
KARKAT: i remember, i also recall that under no circumstances was i to let you eat any of it under threat of an incredibly violent and pyrotechnic death.
SOLLUX: yeah
SOLLUX: usually that 2hiit wiill fuck your pan 55iix way2 two frondday
SOLLUX: but
SOLLUX: under very 2peciifiic ciircum52tance2
SOLLUX: iit can paciify a volatiile miind
SOLLUX: liike now
KARKAT: what happened?
SOLLUX: back there
SOLLUX: wiith the drone5
SOLLUX: ii could feel that hunk of 22hiit break
SOLLUX: iit felt liike chunk2 of my miind were beiing burned off
SOLLUX: two much p2iioniic dii55charge ii gue222
SOLLUX: everythiing wa2 ju2t trapped iin my head
SOLLUX: iit wa522 555tiill 2yphoniing off power. ii would have burnt my22elf out iif ii diidn’t get iit out
KARKAT: but it’s not out!
KARKAT: you broke it off, that shit is still wedged up in your melting pan.
KARKAT: also, as an aside, trying to extract that creature from your head is going to give me nightmares until the sun implodes.
KARKAT: everything about you is on an impossible level of revolting and i will never understand how you managed to mutilate yourself that badly.
SOLLUX: eh
SOLLUX: iit2 not agiitatiing me a5 badly
SOLLUX: ii can deal wiith the extraneou552 22hiit later
SOLLUX: ii knew what ii wa2 2iigniing up for
KARKAT: so to be clear: you knew there was basically a high probability if not a certainty that the outmoded tech you connected to your *fucking pan* would one day blow a fuse and incapacitate you for god knows how long, if not forever?
SOLLUX: pretty much
KARKAT: oh! of course! how silly of me!!
KARKAT: this was far and away the most obvious choice to make, no wonder illegal mental augmentation is so fucking popular!
KARKAT: excuse me while i go implant a chip in my bulge that allows me to use it as a prehensile appendage so i can write an eloquent hate letter detailing exactly how fucking stupid i think you are!!!!
SOLLUX: ii thiink we both know how unbeleiivably attracted to me you are, no need two try and get my pant2 off whiile ii’m 25ufferiing acute thiinkpan damage
SOLLUX: try two keep iit 2heathed though. ii’d hate two fiinally diie wiith my bulge out
KARKAT: you’re revolting.
SOLLUX: ii try
Well then. You guess this is a little better than where the two of you began, specifically the shrieking and thrashing and being unable to talk and whatnot. He still isn't looking too hot though- he still feels very cold, his muscles keep twitching erratically. You guess he was just electrocuting himself from the inside out, a rather unnerving notion to consider. He's still slurring his words, his S sounds coming out as a little buzz. However, compared to the alternative, you could definitely get used to it.
You glance at the discarded bag. There are probably about a dozen left of those little mind honey balls. You look at Sollux nervously.
KARKAT: about the mind honey.
KARKAT: was that just a one time thing? like you're stable now so-
SOLLUX: not even clo2e
SOLLUX: even wiith that viile 5hiit helpiing me iit'52 fuckiing exhau5tiing ju2t formiing word2
SOLLUX: nothiing'5 really lii25teniing two me the way ii need iit two riight now
SOLLUX: ii'll probably need another iin a few day525. maybe hour2
SOLLUX: ii really hope ii can hold out though, thii2 5hiit'll wreak havoc on my nervou2 2y22tem iif ii acciidentally OD
KARKAT: but you're already almost out! what the hell are we supposed to do then dumbass?
Sollux' s face goes blank for a moment, forced to contemplate the worst possible scenario.
SOLLUX: ii hope you're 52tiill tiight wiith that capriiciiou2 douchebag, becau55e that'2 the poiint we'll have to 2tart relyiing on fuckiing miiracle2.
His somber words weigh on you like an anchor, dragging you back to the awful rot black pit of your worst thoughts. A cacophony of "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT" and "WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM" rise up from the depths along with a hundred other immature threats and taunts that have stuck to you like flies in a glue trap over the course of your life. It's kind of impressive how narcissistic your self loathing is- you bet you'd find a way to make the end of the world about you. You often wonder about your inevitable final freak out- the moment you'd crack like splintering wood, being reduced to some babbling, sobbing pathetic waste pile. You feel it on your worst days, all it would take is a little match to set the ocean of oil your pan has sopped up to have it finally burn to a crisp in a blaze of mediocrity and poor choices.
A pang of guilt hits you hard. You can't even afford a self indulgent thought of your own approaching destruction. You can't leave Sollux like that, you'd never forgive yourself. More importantly, he'd never forgive you. He needs you now, much more than you ever needed him.
God, why did he have to go and put that thing back in?
If you had any energy left, you think you'd berate him from now until the end of time. You can barely focus your eyes, but all you can think about is how incredibly stupid that stunt of his was, how badly he could have been maimed, how there's a chance he'll never quite be the same.
You take another look at him and feel the rage your body is trying so hard to muster up wash away like chalk in rain.
Sollux Captor is the biggest fucking idiot the galaxy has ever shit out, but he's your idiot, and you'll be damned if you let this stop either of you. You'll spend the rest of your life trying to find a way to help him, even if it ends in the two of you sequestered off in some little shithole in the darkest corner of the universe.
You kind of like the thought of that. You had never really given much thought as to what you'd do beyond your Trials. The threshecutioner thing was nothing more than a dying dream, a half baked scheme, something you told yourself so you had a reason to wake up in the evening. What else could you do? Live every night as if you had twelve hours to live, that's what. Hold yourself up in your hive, curled up on the floor, being so very aware of how many people would be that much happier if you would just drop dead.
Well they can kiss your fine ass for all you care. You've found something else to keep you going. You just want him to be safe, and you hope you can be there when it happens.
You pull him into your lap, he's not even trying to push you away now. You try not to move his head much, it looks like it still hurts him even if you just graze it. The thought of his burnt out swollen pan pressing against the confines of his skull sends another rolling wave of sickness through you.
He's still scratching at his neck. You twist to see what he's picking at and are suddenly reminded of a hot new memory you spent the entire walk here trying to suppress. Will he become a rainbowdrinker if he dies now? You're unsure of how all that works, mostly because a day ago you thought it was all made up fairy tale bullshit for especially slow witted wrigglers and teenagers with poor taste in romance. You might like a bad movie or two, but that shits on a whole other level.
You spot a glimpse of ink smudged on his arm and something else comes back to you.
KARKAT: sollux?
SOLLUX: hm?
KARKAT: so, uh, before you came up to go rain hell on the drones outside, when you were in kanaya's weird ass basement pit-
SOLLUX: thii2 about that dumb note?
Shit.
KARKAT: that... is a possibility, yes.
KARKAT: before you say anything, i'd just like to have it stated for the official record of our batshit friendship that i was completely convinced that i was going to die out there, subsequently absolving me of any responsibility of follow up, i.e. an especially saccharine feelings jam or something equally disgusting and sentimental.
KARKAT: furthermore-
SOLLUX: ii love you two karkat
What.
KARKAT: WHAT?
SOLLUX: ii'm not 5ayiing iit agaiin, al522o what the fuck diid ii 5ay about your voiice?
KARKAT: sorry, I just seem to be suffering from some sort of stress induced auditory hallucination.
KARKAT: please excuse me while i continue to go insane.
SOLLUX: why do you have two be 22o fuckiing dramatiic?
KARKAT: well it's not like you're naturally chatty on the topic of your feelings!
KARKAT: half the time i forget you even have them, making it much easier for me to personally demoralize you.
KARKAT: but that's not even the point!
KARKAT: are we even saying the same goddamn thing right now??
SOLLUX: only you would fiind a way two compliicate a sentence a22 5iimple a5 ii love you
KARKAT: shut your trap i'm being serious here.
KARKAT: like how do you know when i said it, it wasn't aligned in a conciliatory context, huh?
SOLLUX: probably becau2e you've wanted two fuck me the past 5weep and a half, but 22omethiing tell5 me you won't liike that an5wer.
KARKAT: SHUT THE FUCK UP.
KARKAT: THIS ISN'T ABOUT PAILING YOU OR YOUR MEDIOCRE WITHERED EXCUSE FOR A BULGE AND THE FACT THAT YOU KEEP MENTIONING IT MEANS YOU OBVIOUSLY MUST HAVE DELUDED YOURSELF WHICH IS HONESTLY PRETTY FUCKING LAUGHBLE.
SOLLUX: 252HU7 UP!
KARKAT: I'M S-
KARKAT: i'm *sorry* okay!?
KARKAT: you know it is incredibly difficult for me to go long periods of time without yelling!
SOLLUX: my apologiie2. plea52e regale me wiith more tale2 of your hyper 2p2eciifiic and completely poiintle552 problem5
KARKAT: oh fuck you.
KARKAT: and no, that was not an invitation for you to respond with some characteristically insufferable quip like iif you 2ay 2o because i will kill you where you stand if you try it.
SOLLUX: ii diidn't realiize you loviing me meant iincurriing your wrath a5 frequently. how tragiic
KARKAT: it's called multitasking bulge breath. i harbor within me many emotions for you, and in no small supply is a burning hatred for everything you are and represent
KARKAT: along with a small nugget of respect buried somewhere in the part of my pan that makes all the shitty decisions that ruin my life on a nightly basis.
KARKAT: it is my gift to you.
KARKAT: you're welcome. you fucking piece of shit.
Somehow, that insane little tirade of yours seems to have put the ghost of a smile on his face. If he could only know the things you'd do for him, the things you'd do for the both of you. You give his hand a little squeeze.
How did you two get here?
That thought crosses your mind a dozen or so times as you carefully gather up all the shit you’d thrown from your sylladex.
Well the answer is simple, isn’t it? You’re here because of you, Karkat. It’s your fault.
This simple revelation comes as a surprise to absolutely no one, but still turns your stomach sour. It almost feels like an inevitability really, like in the way your death will be your fault because your lousy organs couldn’t be bothered to keep working or something like that.
How does anyone get anything done? You can’t remember the last time you were motivated by factors outside of pants shitting terror and, quite frankly, that little trick has been less and less useful lately. The mechanisms of your mind, the little gears that are supposed to keep things ticking along neatly have been worn out for sweeps, rusted over and gunked up, straining and cracking and falling into disrepair.
Your hand grazes your notebook. You got it around the time you turned five, although you’re certain it is much older than that. It was bound in leather, real leather, not that cheap chitin crap that's used for everything in the empire nowadays. It had these tiny, jagged little spikes covering its surface that made handling it nigh impossible without shredding your hand open, so obviously that made it the perfect material to use for common lowblood household items. What a joke.
There was a certain nostalgic if completely morbid element to the material however. Your lusus’ exoskeleton was made of the stuff. It made physical affection in any form intolerable on your end, but you can’t help but miss him when you see it.
The notebook you hold now was almost certainly made for some stuffy ‘roided up blueblood, but you had gotten it for practically nothing at a pawn shop a few blocks down from your hive. You don't even remember why you were down there in the first place, but the second your eyes had landed on it you knew you had to have it.
Over the course of the few sweeps you’ve owned it, you’ve written in a total of nine of its pages, even less technically, given how big your handwriting is. It had always felt like you were sullying it somehow whenever you used it, its pages meant only for the most thought provoking and heartfelt passages. Thinking back on it, that rule sounds incredibly stupid, but it was important to you at the time, because most things you cared about were incredibly stupid.
You haven’t read it in a while, you can barely recall what you had even written. Actually, you had avoided reading most anything that was written by you over a sweep ago, because you considered Past Karkat to be objectively the dumbest motherfucker this side of the galaxy, the further back you go, the dumber he becomes. It’s almost like a black hole of ignorance, destroying everything in its path and fueled purely by its own arrogance. You’ve never had the displeasure of talking to that guy- except when you leave yourself passive aggressive reminders to complete tasks in the later on because Future Karkat is somehow even more of a patronizing egomaniac than Past Karkat- but if you did you’re certain you’d cave his skull in on sight. Fucking dick.
Well it's not like you have anything else to occupy your time. Sleep would be preferable, but that would leave you and Sollux as two jackasses passed out on the floor completely unaware of your surroundings. Again. You’ll just kill some time until the girls get back.
THE FLEETS CAME TO MY SUGRUB TODAY, APPARENTLY ONE OF MY PANSY ASS NEIGHBORS WAS TRYING TO DESERT THEIR DUTY. THE DETAILS ARE FUZZY, ALL I KNOW IS THAT THEIR GARISH HIVE IS JUST A SMOLDERING PILE OF RUBBLE NOW. HA! SERVES THEM RIGHT. ANYONE WHO CAN’T HANDLE SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS THEIR TRIALS CLEARLY WASN’T CUT OUT FOR SERVICE. THEY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN GUTTED WITHIN A WEEK OF BASIC TRAINING, ANOTHER SMEAR OF RUST FOR THE CUSTODIAL STAFF TO HANDLE.
CAPTOR SAYS I’D BE LUCKY TO MAKE IT ONTO A REMEDIAL JANITORIAL SQUAD ON THE PLANET OF SHIT AND PISS. SHOWS HOW MUCH HE KNOWS; I’LL BE KICKING ALL KINDS OF INSANE ASS WHILE HE’LL BE HAVING SOME KIND OF LOVECRAFTIAN BUKKAKE IN THE GODFORSAKEN BOWELS OF A HOITY TOITY BLUE BULGED ASSHOLE’S LUXURY STARSHIP. IF HE THINKS THEY’LL JUST LET A MUTANT LIKE HIM SLIDE BECAUSE HE’S ju2t that good OR WHAT THE FUCK EVER THEN HE HAS ANOTHER THING COMING. HUSKTOP NERDS ARE A TROLL CEAGER A DOZEN AND THEY CAN’T BREED NEARLY ENOUGH BIOBATTERIES. GET FUCKED SHITHEAD.
I GUESS I JUST FEEL SORRY FOR THE GUY? HE’S OBVIOUSLY DILUTED HIMSELF, POOR BASTARD. THERE ARE ONLY LIKE, WHAT, FIVE POSITIONS IN THE ARMADA WORTH PURSUING? HE KNOWS WHERE HE'S GOING TO END UP, IT’S OBVIOUS TO ANYONE WITH A HALF FUNCTIONING THINK PAN.
BUT WHO THE FUCK AM I, RIGHT? THE CIRCULAR FOOD RECEPTACLE CALLING THE SCALDING LEAF JUICE BOILER BLACK.
BUT THAT’S THE VERY CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND THE REST OF THESE INSUFFERABLE CROTCH SNIFFERS. I GET SHIT DONE. PEOPLE MY NOT LIKE MY METHODS OR MY TEMPERMENT OR GENERAL “COMBATIVE ATTITUDE” OR WHATEVER ELSE BULLSHIT THEY MADE UP TO JUSTIFY THE FACT THAT THEY’RE JEALOUS TO VOMIT WORTHY PROPORTIONS. I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THIS PALLID CREW OF REJECTS WHO EVER ACTUALLY AMOUNTED TO ANYTHING. AT THE VERY LEAST I’LL BE THE ONLY ONE WHO ISN’T COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE BY THE TIME WE’RE TEN.
NO MATTER WHAT SOUL CRUSHING BULLSHIT THIS PLANET DEIGNS TO THROW AT ME, I’M STILL COMING OUT OF THIS ON TOP. WHEN YOU LOOK UP THRESHECUTIONER IN THE VOCABULARY TOME, YOU’LL SEE MY FUCKING FACE. ALSO CHECK UNDER “COOLEST AND MOST BADASS MOTHERFUCKER YOU’LL EVER HAVE THE DISPLEASURE OF MEETING.”
OH SON OF A BITCH MY PANLESS CUSTODIAN GOT IN THE GARBAGE AGAIN.
Wow. That was awful.
You shut the book immediately and groan into your hand. God, is that what you sounded like? What you sound like?
You’ve never read something so unashamedly naive and self-aggrandizing in your entire life, and frankly, you’re pretty fucking embarrased for it to be associated with you in anyway. Fuck, it doesn’t even feel like you. Did you even write this?
As much as you long to denounce this pathetic fantasy clearly dreamed up by some hapless wriggler aiming much to high to not have his dreams crushed under the steel toed boot of the harshest mistress known to all- fucking reality- it's all clearly in your giant, blocky handwriting black and white. Or, grey actually. Whatever.
You're reading it again- why are you reading it again? Your mind is alight with the righteous fury of someone who's just discovered the true extent of a person's capacity for inanity, and that capacity has been used to its complete extent within this fucking book.
Something within you hungers for the complete and total destruction of these words and the person who dredged them out of the bottom of whatever feculent wasteland their thoughts lay in. The rda must be completely obliterated, not to be brought back in any form lest they infect the minds of those who dwell on them.
You begin eating the paper. You rip out ragged chunks of white and grey and consume them savagely, annihilating a chance of their continued presence. Past You can shove it up his nook for all you care.
A calmer, possibly saner person than you would have most likely come to the realization that what you're doing is fucking ridiculous. But you're not them- you're you right now, and Now You wants to hit Past You and basically every other iteration of You with a fucking truck until there's nothing left but a little red streak on the pavement.
Being You is a burden, but a necessary one, given that if you weren't You then some other fucker would have to be You and probably find some way to fuck it up even more spectacularly than you already have. Being You is a fucking public service. You're like those grimy asshole rustbloods who work at the dump- the last line of defense between the world and living in a literal shithole. You're welcome, dipshits.
These thoughts comfort you as you lose the last few shredded remanants of your already dubious sanity while you eat paper in a fucking hole because you hate yourself so much.
You hope Past You understands your contempt for him. You hope a shudder just went up his posture pole as he feels the sharp toothed bitter wind of your loathing from several sweeps in the future. Hell, now that you think about it, you hating yourself is such a disingenuous statement. You don't hate yourself , you hate that detestable, sniveling little smug fucker who had to go and ruin basically everything for yourself and everyone you know until the end of time. There's no way he could be you, because he fucking sucks and you don't.
Wow, what an elaborate fucking ruse! All this energy spent throwing yourself a goddamn pity party, meanwhile the real wriggling day boy was perched in the corner, laughing his ass off at your misery. What a cruel joke! That limp fronded joke has no idea what's coming.
Why did that idiot even pick threshecutioners to pointlessly fanboy over anyway? Dumb fucking name, by the way. It sounds like some talentless hack slammed two completely unrelated words together to try and sound clever. Newsflash asshole! Nobody thinks you’re funny and you’ve created absolutely nothing of worth. Go home and weep into your cocoon like the waste of space chute stuffer you’ve allowed yourself to become.
Their fucking ill-concevied Troll Alice in Worderland ass name notwithstanding, the threshecutioners aren’t even that badass. It’s just another squadron of bluebloods strutting around like they’r hot shit- even if they were in any way remotely aspirational, it’s not like you could have joined.
Oh hell, it’s all coming back to you now. You’d spend hours cooped up in your block, engrossed in harebrained schemes to live your life like some sort of discount thresh prince of nowhere. What a dumb show. What kind of imbecile concocts such a brazenly self indulgent show. That Smith guy would have gotten his ass served to him by his flaysquad on a silver platter like the goddamn guest of honor at the butler island bicentennial.
Okay, that’s a little far. Troll Will Smith is still fresh as fuck, you just can’t immerse yourself in that fantasy anymore. It feels wrong.
When did you become such a killjoy?
Sitting here wordlessly cursing a forgotten past version of yourself is getting you nowhere. He doesn't give a shit about you- in fact, he probably thinks your life is fucking awesome. Endless carnage and tools to give the business to, like in those shows you and Terezi had watched together as wigglers.
You try not to think about her much. Just another one of the few genuinely good things in your life you weren't allowed to have. She drove you shithive maggots of course, but you admired her all the same; she was cunning, determined, wicked- everything a troll could want. Anyone would be lucky to have her in any quadrant.
The acidic feelings of your old flushcrush crash over you like an icy wave. You hope she's alright. Vriska's vague mention of her earlier hadn't boded well. She was always brash, but she wasn't stupid . You were the stupid one. Terezi could do anything she wanted.
That's probably something you should revisit in the future. Maybe when things calm down and you're able to just live like a fucking person for once, you'll find her again. Apologize for not saying goodbye.
Terezi had a certain energy to her you could never really explain. There was always this way that she spoke that made it seem like she was playing some sort of game, like she was guiding you to some sort of predetermined conclusion. She had already finished the conversation in her head, and was watching you play catch up while you floundered in your misguided rage towards whatever stupid bullshit you thought she was saying. She got you mad about things but, mad about them in the right way, you guess? Mad about things that mattered. Angry in a directional sense.
You recall one time the two of you had been chatting online, talking about what you wanted to do when you were shipped off planet. Terezi had obviously been ecstatic about the legislacerator program, going on and on about the gruesome cases of historical note from her textbooks. She was a natural fit for it, a model teal, even if she was a chalk eating tree dwelling recluse with no lusus and a predilection for morbid theatrics. It gave her an edge you could appreciate, despite your initial outward disapproval.
She had asked you what you hoped your assignment was and... you froze. You hadn't told anyone at that point, which seems pretty unbelievable given your later boasting on the subject. At the time though, telling anyone about your private aspirations had been unthinkable. Treasonous even, although you aren't sure if that betrayal was against yourself or your empire for daring to consider such an idea. She badgered you about it for nearly an hour, needling and poking through your half baked excuses and paranoid outburst, like you had believed someone besides her would be there to see your answer.
Given the state of surveillance in the empire, that's not actually such a wild idea. You'd be more surprised if someone hadn't been reading your logs, this was before Sollux had set up your much more secure Trollian software.
After enduring all the badgering you could withstand, you finally told her of your hopeless aspirations, expecting a cackle and scornful response, but none ever came. In fact, she was oddly enraptured by you setting such seemingly impossible goals for yourself. Later on, Terezi would tease you about the big head you'd gotten over the idea, Alternia's first lowblood threshecutioner, but she never doubted for a second that you could do it.
Of all the friends and forced acquaintances you ditched after your assumed culling, Terezi will always be your favorite, burning as bright as your planet's sun, bold as the red of her eyes. If nothing in this world is good, then she must not be a part of it. She both inspired and terrified you, making her the perfect candidate for legislaceration training. She certainly had the brutality for it at least.
The study of Alternian law has always eluded you. Then again, it isn’t for someone like you to understand, but even a cursory glance at the basics during your brief schoolfeeding had left you baffled. The current judicial system of your planet was nearly as old as the empire itself, its governing laws a dense web of indecipherable clauses, regulations, amendments, abrogations and straight up contradictory statements that, with a helping claw of regular subjugation and general mayhem, made the Extreme Court of His Honorable Tyranny and His Atrocouncil a veritable juggernaut of barbarity. In your humble but objectively correct opinion, the practice of law seems much more akin to some sort of abstract artform than any sort of rigorous academic application. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see a legislacerator completely makeup absurd and provably false details about a case in order to better amuse the magislaughterer. Pointing this out to anyone was tantamount to hearsay and punishable by immediate death.
You don’t mind that every part of the justice system was essentially a grotesque pantomime of everything it claimed to uphold. Well that- that’s a gross oversimplification of your feelings, but overall you don’t really care, at least not to examine them. What you don’t get though is why everyone seems so fucking committed to the bit. If you want to kill people then just do it, the whole barkfiend and hoofbeast show just overcomplicates things. What purpose does it serve to orchestrate a trial in the false epithet of due process when everyone involved is just craving the apogee of the proceedings, the bloodbath of the evening. Does drawing it out stimulate their erogenous zones or some other equally vile shit? What was the point of laws in a world in which one was deemed guilty the moment they hatched?
You’d tried asking Terezi about this on a particularly slow night, not realizing you had opened the proverbial floodgates of an ancient criminal justice history lecture. You weren’t paying much attention. It was a very histrionic tale about a failed joke and a bad temper. What had struck you about that particular story was the swift sentencing of someone as illustrious as Fishface What’s-His-Name. The fact that the Dark Church had enough power to play judge, jury and executioner with such swift retribution for his supposed slight with nary a word from the Dread Empress alarmed you in ways you can’t quite put to words. Everyone knows what kind of sway the Grand Highblood and his gang of Faygo sucking, panrotted chucklefuck cohorts had with his seadweller superiors, but this cemented it for you in a way it never had before.
Were clowns, in a sense, the ones really in power; or did Her Condescension allow them leeway to make them believe they were? In a sense, this question is what kept the empire running, so long as it was never answered.
It probably isn't that deep. Clowns were, are, and will continue to be the dumbest chute stuffing frond fuckers in the dark heart of space in which you all reside.
A deep rumbling rouses you from your thoughts. You gently move Sollux from your lap, who has apparently dozed off again while you were busy ignoring him.
There is a slight tremor in the tunnel walls. You can feel something resounding in the distance. Whether it's troll or beast you cannot say, but you know one thing for certain:
You are at the end of your fucking wits.
You feel a little guilty leaving Sollux behind, but he should have thought about that before passing out from exhaustion. Jerk. You make your way back down the tunnels searching for the source of that trembling, barely a thought to where you're going or how you'd get back. It would be fine- you just needed to make sure there wasn't something massively stupid you'd have to deal with later due to negligence, like underground bandits or starving Chud lusii, a nightmarish subspecies of the much more docile yet equally unnerving musclebeasts.
Gravel crunches underfoot as the rumbling becomes louder, deeper, reverberating from the soles of your strutpods to the base of your horns. It occurs to you that maybe you should have left a trail or something as you make your fourth or fifth left.
As you round a corner the rumbling suddenly stops, replaced briefly by the rough shriek of an alarm.
The section ahead of you is about 20 feet deep, ending in a set of imposing metal doors that have probably seen better nights. The makeshift hall is illuminated by a bright red light embedded above the door, bathing everything it touches in its crimson glow. It's hypnotic.
This is a conveyor block, and someone just used it.
A hard lump forms in your food tunnel. Should you grab Sollux? Wait for Kanaya and Vriska? Or should you just stand here, breaking out in a cold sweat as a thousand deadly scenarios play out before you?
Sitting around and waiting for your possible doom doesn't seem like the best use of your time. Besides, dragging Sollux's dead weight towards the ominous sound and possible hostiles seems counterproductive at best. He'll be fine where he is. Probably.
You would have been more than content standing here arguing with yourself until the end of forever but your body's apparently already made the choice for you, drawing you closer towards uncertainty as you step into that brilliant red light.
Perhaps it's arrogance or suicidal inclinations that's guiding you now, dreamlike and stupefied into that eye of flushed scarlet, but it is with little hesitation that you press the worn button on the control panel and wait for the screeching mechanics to groan to life once more. The doors open.
You step inside and they slam shut behind you with a mighty bang. The light above was busted at some point, leaving you in total darkness. The conveyor block begins to move down.
If this was a horror movie, someone would be screaming their head off at you.
This thing is even older than it looks. Every movement sounds like it pains it’s very core, piercing squeals hitting your aural caverns like bullets. The conveyor gently swings back and forth, whatever needed to hold it steady apparently long gone. You imagine its old cable suddenly snapping and plunging you to your death and your knees go weak. Couldn’t this place just have some goddamn stairs? You like stairs, stair based accidents are much more manageable.
After an agonizing 30 seconds, it comes to an abrupt halt, the doors sliding open jerkily.
When you step out, you find that your feet don’t hit dirt, but a smoother, much more polished surface, like tile or linoleum.
You’ve entered some kind of underground complex, and from the looks of it, the place is massive. The ceiling is decently high, about 15 or 20 feet, and roughly carved from stone. You take a step forward and you land on something that makes a loud crackling noise, scaring the piss out of you. Looking down, you find you’ve stepped on a discarded bag of salt and vinegar Maggot Chips. Son of a bitch.
You equip your strife weapons and proceed with caution.
Looking around, it becomes apparent you've stumbled into some long forgotten bookhive. You're surrounded on all sides by shelves of books, a few tomes in each hexagonal slot. The shelves have a slight curve to them, not lined up row by row, but radially. The conveyor block is probably the center of the room. Gaps just big enough for you to walk through are between each shelf, revealing more behind them. It's impossible to tell how far they go. It's probably an archive for the jades, which means you absolutely should not be down here.
You make your way through the stacks as quietly as you can, although that proves to be much more difficult than initially anticipated due to the world's worst echo. This place is infested with glowworm larvae, their fat, fuzzy bodies schlepping around corners and scuttling across shelves, giving you brief moments of levity from the darkness.
You freeze in your tracks. Footsteps? You strain to hear something, anything for a few, but nothing. You're probably just paranoid. Shit, maybe you're not paranoid enough . There's definitely someone down here, you heard them earlier. It hits you that they almost certainly heard your descent. They'll be waiting for you.
Perhaps you didn't think this through as thoroughly as you had led yourself to believe. What you wouldn't give for Kanaya's chainsaw!
Cold sweat trickles down your neck as you carry on. You nearly trip over a few books carelessly tossed on the ground, cursing yourself over the ridiculous amount of noise you've been making. You pick up the offending literature, a heavily annotated copy of HYSTERIARCH: The Madness of Mothers. A quick skim through shows a collection of personal anecdotes from different jade cluster's brood leaders over the centuries.
This is the most illegal book you've seen in your life.
You pick up another, this one entitled A Comprehensive History of Alternian Law and Practical Application of the Hesiodic Method, 175th edition. You weren't aware there were this many editions, although from the looks of it this one has been out of circulation for a while. From your understanding, whenever changes were made to an existing text all previous copies were destroyed completely, for obvious reasons. You wonder how this one differs from the current version.
You toss it in your sylladex. If you ever run into Pyrope again, she'll sniff out any discrepancies.
You guess someone just decided to hog all this illicit material in a hole in the ground for... what? Posterity? Sentimental value? Simple defiance? Your eyes skim over more titles: Sentinel Drone Model XVII Systems Repair Manual, The Care and Upkeep of Lusii Brachyura, Lime Hues: Fact or Fiction?, The Dark Carnival Exposed: The Mirthful Messiahs Unraveled, When Giant Amphibians Roamed the Planet, The Mass Exodus of Alternia’s Adults, The Physical and Psychological Ramifications of Biobatteries, The Man on the Moon, Four's A Crowd: How Long Term Serendipity Is Detrimental To One's Personal Betterment, An Asshole's Guide to Undermining Authority, even a worn copy of Sugoi Quest for Kokoro Volume 413: Two Trolls One Bucket!
Those comics really went downhill after the first 40 or so.
While it's obvious to you why most of these were scrubbed from the public lexicon, some just appear to be regular ass books. Then again, it's entirely possible that they got blacklisted for one suspicious sounding line or something their author did completely independent of the work itself.
You feel as if you're standing in an abandoned corpse field. There must be tens of thousands of books in here, maybe even millions. There's no doubt in your mind that every single one of their previous owners is dead. You wonder how they'd feel knowing some piece of the work they died for lived on down here.
You catch a glimpse of that Eastern Alternian pornography again and realize you might be acting a little melodramatic right now.
You keep walking, leaving a trail of books behind you as you make your way deeper into the labyrinth. Could someone track you with your marker system; yes, absolutely, but at least you'll know what direction they'll come from.
You keep popping books into your sylledex, having saved up a shitton of captchacards over the sweeps and by God you intend on wasting them all on illegal, pilfered, and mildly interesting books you've found just now. It's not like you can be even more wanted, the candy blooded freak thing most likely takes precedence over contraband.
Round and round you go. How long have you been down here? It would almost be pleasant if you weren't certain someone is stalking you.
Despite your internal resolve to keep moving, one book in particular stops you dead in your tracks.
It is old and tattered, spine barely clinging to bone yellow pages. Its cover is an iron grey, imbued with the scent of smoke and war. A red ribbon hangs loosely at its side, fraying at its ends and faded as if left in the sun for ages. All of this is auxiliary to what really grabbed your eye-
Your sign, crudely etched into the base of its spine.
Now, you’re not one to believe in crackpot shit like destiny or kismet or, God forbid, miracles, but you’ll be damned if one of that twinkly eyed fucker's little mistakes didn’t just land in your lap. Your body’s gone pure electric.
The cover reads-
-The Times and Teachings of Kankri Vantas-
- though it's written in a much older version of the Alternian alphabet, one that reads right to left. As soon as your gaze hits “Vantas” you feel as if you’ve suddenly fallen, your digestive sac still suspended somewhere a thousand miles above you. Who’s this douchebag?
You’ve never considered your caste name rare, despite never having met anyone sharing it. You guess you never really thought about it, but in hindsight the thought you were assigned one at all strikes you as more than a little strange. The fact you were able to leave the caverns at all as a wiggler was a gross oversight, but the fact you managed to get a caste name and lusus despite not having a legally recognized hue is nothing short of a motherfucking godsend.
Caste names are linked with- well, castes. Duh. A thought clicks in your head.
Does this asshole have the same mutation as you?
Your digestive sac does a angelic swan dive from its perch in the stratosphere to swiftly plummet itself to the ninth fucking circle.
It seems pretty fucking obvious, but your pan is still going through great troubles letting you even consider this as a possibility. Maybe when you were some idyllic cocoon wetting pupa, and it’s not as if you’re so self centered as to believe you could be the only mutant in written history, but this seems... serendipitous. Comically so. Cosmically? Both, you know Old Nick is getting his rocks off on this shit.
Fuck, even his name is similar to yours.
Quit stalling and open the book dipshit.
Someone’s written a forward on the inside cover:
“During his penance, it was said the Sufferer's compassion for his people underwent a divine transformation, into limitless, burning rage. It burned hotter than the irons shackling him to the imperial flogging jut, and redder than the blood soaking his Righteous Leggings. When he was finally killed, his anger rung through the cosmos with his last breath. This Vast Expletive was his final sermon, and somewhere encoded in its wavelengths was the truth in his teachings, waiting to reveal itself to any who would inherit his burden.”
So it is written. So it shall be done.
Rest in fury, my love
WHAT?
WHO? WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK? HUH? SAY THE FUCK AGAIN?
Oh, this is bullshit. This is some fucking motherfucking BULLSHIT. What in the fresh hell? What in the undulating taint tickling freshly plucked FUCK what in FUCK GODDAMMIT ALL WHAT IN SWEET BURNING PERDITION IS THIS FUCKSHIT GODDAMMIT HELL SHIT FUCK.
You let out a throat ripping scream because WHAT THE FUCK and you don’t even care because WHAT in the FUCK you are about two seconds from collapsing onto the fucking floor and throwing a tantrum so hard to rival the Vast Fucking Honk itself. The Vast Tantrum they’ll call it, when a troll shat his pants so hard it ripped a hole in space time with the pure violence of its force.
Your taste appendage feels as if it's been coated in acid. All you can see is red, bright cheery, red, oh what a detestable tint! What a repugnant complexion! The crimson swill clogging your veins is what conjoins you permanently and relentlessly to that fake ass folktale flimflam counterfeit motherfucker. There’s no way he’s real ! The very notion of it is preposterous! The conception is sending you into hysterics!
You guffaw up a category five storm, whooping and cachinnating between tears, leaving their rose stained pathways along your ashen cheeks. You! The Second Signless! A conceit so utterly devoid of any capacity for rational thought it has left you in blithesome delirium! Even your very thoughts have become more fanciful! Clearly you’ve finally descended into madness.
Poor Karkat, they’ll say, he’s finally become the joke we knew he was worthy of, known by few, liked by even less, driven to the brink of complete mental aberration because he read something so fucking stupid he died on the spot.
Preoccupied by your world shattering nervous breakdown, you have yet to notice the troll watching you lay prostrate on the ground as you continue to flip the fuck out. You do not notice the echo of its heavy work boots, nor the looming shadow they caste over your small body. You do not notice the curve of its graceful horns nor the glint of dagger like fangs jutting from sable lips. You do not notice the slight glimmer of charcoal skin or the look of extreme indignation at your presence.
You do, however, notice when a clawed hand grabs you roughly by the collar of your shirt and yanks you to your feet, grabbing you by your doughy cheeks and pulling you close so you’re only inches away from a squared, angular face.
??????: ▲ what the hell are you doing here? ▼
Is this a fucking adult?