Chapter Text
> Be the Mage of Doom.
The noise when they come through is unreal. A brain-vibrating thunder of blurry apocalypse that gets down under your skin and makes your bones ache and your ears ring. Tomorrow everything will sound a tiny bit muffled, and you'll be extra jumpy because that's just what you need to make life complete right now, to be deaf too.
For now, though, it's all about the blast. And the skin of your face and the little hairs on your arms are prickling in small warm waves. Nobody's holding your arm right now, so you resist that backward scramble you desperately want to make, and let the explosion of sound and energy roll over you. You smell ozone. You smell something like flowers. You smell sweat and fear and stale air and then fresh air coming from the blast. It dries the sweat on your brow and you think, somewhere there's a nice spring breeze, and we're getting the leftovers.
For a moment you think it's the demon finally coming to finish the job your insane teammates started. KK's weird chess piece friend, but not the same one. His twin from another universe with a ring from a different session. A ring that makes him fucking invincible, isn't that great? But the light that's making your exposed skin heat up must not be evil acid green, because nobody is shrieking in panic. To your right, KK hisses a curse under his breath, but that's all. Kanaya and Terezi are somewhere to your left, silent. Not the demon, then.
So you remain where you are and wait for shit to make sense again. You have a feeling you'll be standing here a while.
The roar diminishes and finally dies. The wind weakens to a puff of disturbed air that lifts your fringe and then it's gone too. There's a commotion and a yelp and a thump from the center of the lab. You hear voices--new voices, speaking a language you understand. This makes you briefly nervous, but you're pretty sure they aren't your Voices, with a capital V, the ones you've only just gotten rid of, because the imminently deceased have never sounded this cheerful. There are strangers in the lab, emitting a babble of high-pitched greetings and sobs and scrambles that sound like a race of shoes squeaking lightly across the rusty metal floor of the lab, and the almost-familiar sounds of your teammates' own shoes are getting quieter as they move away from you and toward the newcomers in their aura of fresh air from another world.
Oh shit, it's the human kids.
You can't sort out how many of them, though. Tilting first one side of your head toward the noise, then the other, you wonder which side of your brain is better for sorting out sounds. You figure you should really be an expert on brains by now. Wasn't your entire planet in the Medium one huge throbbing mass of the goddamn things? And fire. (And wasn't that just the greatest combination ever. You still have some shirts that stink of brain-charcoal and singed cotton, locked away somewhere in your inventory.) None of this does you any good. You make a mental note to find out more about neurology as soon as you have spare time, and then remember you won't be doing any reading anytime soon. The guy who builds mechanical eyes is in a bunch of pieces in the ectobiology lab, and you're pretty sure you're going to die before you figure out how to write your name in troll Braille anyway.
Oh well.
You want to be anywhere but here. This was never your thing, this plan to work together with the humans and be best buddies or whatever. You guess you forgive them for what happened, but that doesn't mean you want to slobber all over their weird pink faces just because they found a way through to your universe. Let Terezi handle the licking fetish thing. (This last thought finally gets you to take a few shuffling steps backward, until the cold steel of the wall is flat against your back and you have something to lean against. It's nice to have something solid at your back.) Besides, you don't know where the door is without somebody to lead you, and you have no interest in fumbling around in plain view of these nonsensical chattering aliens until you find it for yourself.
The humans have weird voices. Half of what they say sounds like bird calls to you. It's nothing like their movies. Just raw pressured babbling, high-pitched laughter and a sudden hysterical sobbing in the middle of it all that gets quickly hushed by a soothing voice--that's Kanaya, anyone who's ever lost their shit on Alternia would recognize her voice--and everyone else goes silent like they're sharing some kind of moment of solidarity or something.
There's a wet sniffle and several clearing throats and a tentative murmur from a lower voice. A nervous laugh from one of the new arrivals. Terezi cackles and you hear a skin-on-skin clapping sound. A louder voice cuts over the others. "Where's my rape whistle? Jesus, I just got here and I'm covered in bitches."
The skin all down your spine goes electric and chilly. That's the one called Dave, their time player. The one who wired the money after your session went to shit. You've watched him plenty, but this is the first time you've heard him. He sounds... really young.
> Sollux: Be subjective third-person narrator.
"You're Kanaya," Rose says, and tries to push her dark lips into a smile. Before her stands her first example of the Troll race: tall, slender and elegant, a confident gray ink wash sketch of a girl just becoming a woman, draped in a wine colored evening gown. She would be overdressed on Earth. Here she's a splash of smooth color amid ludicrous jags of broken science fiction laboratory machinery and tangles of dim rattling pipes. Her skin is luminescent, a flashy contrast to the flickering overhead banks of fluorescent lighting that bathes the room around their little group. Kanaya Maryam is a poised alien doll of a girl, and Rose admires how the short licks of velvet-black hair sweep back from her high brow and those huge, curiously gentle yellow eyes.
And she has horns, just as advertised. Rose is impressed, but she remembers how their last conversation went and is on her guard nevertheless.
"Welcome to the Veil, Rose," Kanaya replies, and there's real warmth in her voice. As she speaks those white flashes of teeth draw Rose's gaze away from her eyes and she is reminded of the way animal eyes flash in the darkness, a feral promise half-hidden in the dark. "I am so glad you four made it safely through."
Rose isn't sure what to say next. Part of it is that Kanaya's teeth have unnerved her, and also she's been on edge since this plan was put into motion. These are not optimal conditions for proper interspecies discourse, she thinks with despair. Being wrong-footed during a first contact situation is the worst thing. She should say something, Rose decides, and regain control of this conversation.
"You're glowing," she blurts, and feels her face flush with horror. This is the worst day of my life, she thinks, and is immediately horrified when the troll in the elegant gown begins to laugh softly, and places two small gloved hands on Rose's shoulders in welcome.
--
Karkat watches John pull himself up from the floor. Coming through, he somehow managed to trip over his own stupid oversized teenage feet and go sprawling. He made his glamorous entrance on his knees with his glasses halfway down his nose and slightly askew. It's all Karkat can do to keep from bursting out in triumphant gales of laughter. This is the Heir? This grinning, bucktoothed child? He extends one hand to help John up, finds it taken with absolutely no hesitation, and bites back an insult as he gives a steady pull.
He's got no energy left for berating anyone, even John (who seems to ask for it twice as hard). Tomorrow, yeah. He'll have the heart for it then. But right now he's just glad the stupid asshole made it alive and in one piece, and brought the others through safely. He can appreciate good leadership when he sees it, even if it's wearing a stupid cartoony hood that drags on the ground behind him.
John dusts off his pants and watches the gray cloud settle. It doesn't help. The knees and probably the ass of his cool godtier uniform are black with filth. (That's lame, comic book superheroes never have to deal with stains.) He looks at Karkat and smiles, but they don't speak at first. They just take each other in, and Karkat notes with a certain satisfaction that he's just a little bit taller than the human.
Then John starts to giggle, and Karkat sees red. "What the fuck," he asks, "is so funny?"
"You're real," John says, happily. "You're real and you're an actual alien. This is so cooool."
"And that's funny because...?"
John turns Karkat's bewilderment to horror with a massive hug, which he has been saving for this occasion, and Karkat feels his shriek of outrage die in his throat. He cannot wrestle free and quickly surrenders. How can such a blue streak of adolescent nothing have such obscene strength?
--
Terezi's method of greeting Dave is to leap into his arms from across the room. He is not expecting it, but his catch is casual and smooth, and his face remains without expression except for one raised blond eyebrow. Terezi's body is light in his arms, all shifting hips and elbows and warmer than a human in her drab gray jeans and black t-shirt. "My darling coolkid," she chirps, and flings both of her arms around his neck, "I was so lost without you."
"How the fuck did you know which one was me?" he asks her too-close face.
"You have the best butterscotch hair," she explains, and attempts to give his ear a lick. He sees that her tongue is kind of bluish, like she's been sucking on a popsicle. He remembers that she's supposed to have blue blood or something, like literally blue, and he huffs one silent hah of laughter at how ridiculous this whole thing is.
"Glad to hear it," he says, and leans away. "Nice grill."
Terezi grins so wide he can see the sickly overhead light shine off the tips of every single halloween pumpkin fang tooth, a langolier buzzsaw smile on the face of a grayscale elf-girl. "Thanks for noticing." Her breath puffs in his face hot and peppery and sweet.
He's finally met the girl who killed him and she is as every bit as much of a freak in real life. From her scuffed sneakers to her hilarious horns--which look like the kind you'd see in old Japanese drawings of demons--everything about her screams B-movie nerd-loon and he thinks that's pretty cool. Her hair is matte black and all dusty with cobwebs and clearly hasn't been combed in maybe forever, but it smells like some fruity shampoo and he thinks, at least trolls have soap.Behind her red glasses, cloudy glazed eyes peer with sightless curiousity beneath quirked eyebrows that promise mischief until the end of days. Which might be today, actually, but who the fuck is counting?
He figures she's okay. Bugfuck insane, yes, but pretty okay.
"Ride's over, my feral Valentine," Dave says, and places Terezi gently back on her feet. "If you're done giving me Jaws flashbacks, maybe you could introduce me to your friends so we can get this world-saving shit started?"
--
Jade has been sobbing since just after they came through. She doesn't know why. Well, she knows why but not how it overcame her so quickly, right now when she should finally be feeling a little bit safe, now that everything might be all right after all.
Kanaya and Rose have moved to her side and are trying to calm her down, but she's still sniffling between them.
She's scared of Jack Noir. Her dog died. She's never been in a room with so many people, and half of them are aliens, and all of them are talking at once. The world ended. She's been chatting with Horrorterrors in her sleep. Somehow it all comes together and what it comes to is too fucking much, and she can't control it anymore, and it all comes flooding out. She's only thirteen. It isn't fair.
"I swear I'm not really like this," she whispers into red silk as glowing arms wrap around her. "I don't even know why I'm crying!"
"It's okay," Kanaya says, falling easily back into her role as the pacifying force of her social circle. Rose gives Jade's tangled hair an affectionate stroke.
"It's okay," Rose echoes, and feels no guilt at all for the lie.