Chapter Text
The building in front of them was large, but there really wasn’t much else to say about it. It was plain, made of stone, a dull overall color. Once again, Dave was disappointed by the lack of flair in these trolls’ style, but at this point, they were way past fitting any of the dynamics of any movie cliché he was familiar with. Which, again, was disappointing.
Oddly enough, it didn’t look like the building had been hit yet, and he was about to vocalize the question in his mind, when the door opened, and he was basically shoved inside.
It took his eyes a little longer than a few seconds to adjust to the sudden darkness, and then he realized he wasn’t alone, nor was it actually that dark. He was in some sort of control room, and Sollux was sitting at the controls. There were tons of screens, more than 10 at least, but what he caught on a few of them stopped him from counting.
“What the-?” The one he was looking at was an image of John. He knew it was him through the few face-to-face calls they had made through the years, and the occasional pictures. He was standing outside of his home. That wasn’t what was weird about the image, though. What was weird was that John was fighting these strange sort of small black beings, side by side with a grinning female troll. At a closer look, he saw another girl, seemingly throwing the things around without touching them. He wanted to watch more, but flurry from another one of the screens drew his attention to it.
This one had Rose, also with girl trolls, also fighting. Her house was huge. It was on this screen he noticed the colorful items the black things dropped, that Rose hopped around quickly to collect. He looked expectantly for a screen with Jade fighting too, and was surprised to not find her.
He had so many questions. So many, but barely any words to ask. This had to be some bizarre dream, right?
“Took you long enough.” Sollux snorted.
“What is all this?” Dave asked carefully, advancing to look at more of the battles’ details. He saw a flurry of motion in one screen at the bottom corner, and he saw Karkat, sitting on a carpet, inserting a disk into a computer, which immediately sent a troll from Rose’s area running off.
“It’th kind of complicated, and we don’t have much time before we all thart entering the theth-session.”
“Session?” Dave questioned.
“Yeah. A bunch of uth are already in, including your friend, Jade.”
“What about John?” Dave pressed.
“John jutht entered. You’re the last one, mostly due to the thupid “escape” plan you tried to pull.”
“Maybe if one of you explained what was going on, I wouldn’t have climbed up a fuckin tree(like a badass).” The last part was muttered, but the corners of Sollux’s mouth twitched upwards.
“You just have to enter the game. Don’t worry, I’ll be there to hold your hand.” The last part was meant to be snarky, but Dave could hear Sollux’s voice flattening a bit at the end, like he actually meant to help him out.
Dave was nodding. Not because he understood a damn thing, but because he didn’t want the other guy to know he didn’t understand a damn thing.
“So, what do I have to do?”
Sollux pointed to his right. “Karkat entered your dithk. Go and take over what he’th doing.”
Dave peered down the hall. It was dark, and the ceiling looked like it was going to collapse at any given moment. Not to mention, the floor was kind of wet with some mystery liquid. He’d rather go on a romantic candlelit dinner date with Lil Cal than go anywhere near that hall. He looked back at Sollux, who was staring at him with a “well?” look on his face. Dave sighed and walked quickly down the hall, avoiding the bigger puddles of what he now saw as less liquid than sludge.
He hurried towards what sounded like muffled shouting, glad he didn’t have to guess and check on each of the sketchy doors he was passing. The one Karkat was behind was open. The short troll looked at him as he entered.
“ABOUT DAMN TIME.” He said. He stood up, shoving the laptop he was holding into Dave’s hands. “YOU DEAL WITH HIM. HE’S YOUR IDIOTIC SHOEFUCK OF A FRIEND.”
“Awww, but Karkat!” Came the voice from the computer. Dave looked down at the screen. He saw Jade, not John, whose voice that definitely was. “Hi Dave!”
“Yo.” Dave answered, sinking down into a criss-cross-applesau-juice position. He placed the computer on his lap. He saw the little blue skype icon flashing as Jade scurried around what had to be her house. Rose was doing god knows at her house, and John was in front of his house if he remembered correctly from the creeper screens Sollux had going on in the main room. “Hang on. Why does everyone else get to do whatever the fuck this is in their own house. That’s bullshit.”
John laughed. “Sorry, Dave! We need that building for later on!”
“For what?”
He heard silence for a moment. John was probably figuring out what to say. “That’s complicated, when we finish what we need to do now, I’ll tell you.”
“Well, why couldn’t you have entered using it?”
“Dave! You’re in Texas! How was I supposed to get there?”
“I dunno. These trolls seemed to get here easily enough. John, I don’t have any of my shit. Except my sword and phone. Maybe some random shit I captulogued. Now that I think about it, I probably have most of the shit I need or use.” Dave took a deep breath. “But whatever. What do I do?”
“Well, Karkat’s already basically done everything for Jade. We just have to get you all set up.”
As if on cue, he heard a large thump behind him. He turned and saw some pure white machine with way too many buttons. He turned to Karkat for explanation, but he was gone. Figures.
“Alright, John. You have to explain everything. Start with what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing. Then, I’ll do it, and you'll begin your super long, unnecessarily detailed, story. Beginning with when you disappeared.”